Random Thoughts Sep 2026

I wonder how something really hot came to also mean something really cool.

I was at a friend’s house when a dead duck washed ashore. I understood why that was a dead duck. But how did “dead duck” become a phrase for other things that were doomed or useless when there are no actual ducks involved?

What’s with “fingers crossed”?

And could somebody please explain the “cottage” in cottage cheese?

I was in a parade over the weekend. The entry in front of us was a classic car—a mid-century Ford Galaxie. I watched the owner put on the fender skirts and suddenly remembered those fake white sidewalls. I had cars that had both. Those of us of a certain age know exactly what I’m talking about. Everybody else: never mind, there is no rational reasoning involved.

At breakfast with friends, as I was studying the diner (not dinner) menu I noticed there were no breakfast desserts. Why? Lunch gets dessert. Dinner gets dessert. Supper gets dessert. Breakfast gets toast. With jam. Maybe a muffin. Seems unfair.

I have made myself miserable more than once by assuming people have agency, the ability to act on their own behalf, simply because I believe they do. Another reminder that believing something ought to be true does not make it so, especially when I am the maker upper.

Do you know anyone who has literally lost their shirt financially? Their actual shirt? Why shirt, not pants? Or underwear? Why not blouse or skirt? Why articles of clothing?

Or is there anyone who has literally had a rug pulled out from underneath them?

I was putting on a pair of jeans recently and noticed the little watch pocket. “What a relic,” I muttered to myself. Why are manufacturers still sewing those things into jeans when most people have never owned a pocket watch, much less carried one? Waste of material.

A few days later, I put on another pair of jeans. No watch pocket. I felt cheated. Where was my watch pocket? All this despite the fact that I have never owned a pocket watch and have probably never used that pocket for anything except to carry an aspirin or two, which I then forget is there. Apparently, I don’t need the pocket. I just want the right to have it.

For most of my life, I’ve actually enjoyed helping people in the developmental stage of elderhood. Opening doors. Letting them go first. Offering an arm. Pulling out a chair. Hovering nearby when they stand up in case gravity suddenly becomes personal. That sort of thing. Now people are doing it for me. I don’t feel particularly fragile. Apparently, when they look, they see fragile.

I was told by a nurse more than fifty years ago that because of my type of hemophilia, if I were the average guy with the disorder, I would probably be dead by 52 from a brain bleed. I managed to beat that prediction by about three decades.  

Strangely, living with that “You’ll be dead” sword over my neck has been a gift. “Be careful.”  “You could bleed to death.”  “This could be the one.”  The randomness of spontaneous bleeds, the nature of hemophilia trained me, from childhood, to experience life as this might be the last.  Christmas, birthday, Fourth of July, time your son voluntarily reaches for your hand, your daughter lays her head on your shoulder looking for support, time you get to smell the Black Hills, experience a sunset, a sunrise, that smell of an orange blossom, rainbow…...You get the idea.                         

Living life that way has been an unexpected blessing. Other people have not always appreciated my mentioning that something might be “the last time” so, for the most part, I’ve learned to keep it to myself. But I still notice. I still silently stop and drop into the moment. I still let it soak in like a drop of water on parched earth. Some people call that morbid. Some, a spiritual moment. I side with the latter.

I saw from a distance a beautiful - stunningly beautiful - new spotless tanker truck. More chrome and stainless steel than you can imagine. Pristine, shiny, perfect. As it got closer I saw the sign. Anthony’s Septic Service. I have encountered people like that. Amazingly perfect on the outside and from a distance, a perfect work of art, yet destined to live a lifetime collecting, carrying, and spreading their sh$# around.

When I was younger I had my share of times when I needed crutches or a cane for a bit. Then when I didn’t need them anymore, I gave them away. These days when I am done with an “assisted device,” it goes into storage for the “next time”. Back then, I wasn’t planning on ever needing them again, now I know it is a matter of when, not if, I will need it again.

CAUTION: POLITICAL CONTENT FOLLOWS                          

As I was thinking about the America I am witnessing these days, the memory of my experience of my automobile tire blowing out at high speed on an expressway came to mind. I’ve had three.  Seems a fitting metaphor for the America I am experiencing these days.

The stages of a blowout.

First, comes the unique smell of rubber getting hot and starting to smoke.

Next, there are thumps on the fender wells as chunks of the disintegrating tire are thrown off. Maybe someone pulls up beside me and points to the “about to explode tire.”

Then the moment when any semblance of a tire disappears and the car is now at the mercy of gravity, momentum, road surface conditions, my alertness, and skill.

If I am paying attention, I start slowing down with the smell, even if no one else in the car notices it.

If I don’t notice that, but I do notice the sound of pieces of tire start hitting the car and slow down, I’m not happy, but I am safe.

Or trust that the driver next to me who is pointing and maybe even honking their horn, has my best interest in mind, slow down and pull over, I still have a chance to control the situation.

If I don’t pay attention to or ignore any and all of the above and the tire blows at 70 miles per hour, I am pretty much at the mercy of forces beyond my control and the best thing I can do is try to hang on and keep the steering wheel from twisting out of my hands.

This is my America I see and experience at the moment. Headed for a blowout. 

We are past heeding the smell warning.

We are ignoring the people (foreign and domestic) who care about us, as a country, who are, metaphorically, alongside us, honking their horns and pointing at the smoking tire(s).

Pieces of the tire are flying off, hitting the undercarriage.

We are distracted, not daring to look at the side and rearview mirrors which would show us the debris our vehicle is shedding.

Catastrophic implosive/explosive failure seems imminent.

There are others in the car with me who are smelling and hearing and seeing the same thing, some of us are speaking up, but ultimately, we are not the driver and are just along for the ride.

Beyond the smell, I am also seeing and hearing chunks hitting the car and flying by the windows.  What are the “chunks?”  Dead bodies. The dead bodies this regime and its supporters have denied, rationalized, sanctioned, and immunized themselves from owning any responsibility for. (If I didn’t acknowledge the dead and dying here, I would be a collaborator and accessory to their murders.)

Not to mention the 180,000 + other “chunks.”  I am talking about members of our scientific research community we have shed over the last 20 months. Including 15,000 scientists.

What could possibly go wrong with that choice?

Choose one. Weather? Food safety? Insect infestations? Water vulnerability? Food insecurity? Cost of living? National Debt, Iran....

That’s how I see it, I hope it is only the smell of a road-kill skunk, and the clunks are nothing but the rocks in my head banging around.