ARCHIVE
A regular op-ed feature from earlier editions of this newspaper
from June
LOUSY DESIGN
by Richard B. Harper
Fifty years ago, every Jeep in the world had an olive drab Jerry can strapped to its tush. That container transported gasoline through deep valleys, mine fields, and raging streams with impunity.
Twenty years ago, we had none of the exotic fueling towers you see at the race track today. We used the very same Jerry cans (now painted bright red) to carry our gas.
I still have a collection of slab sided, slightly rusty, red five gallon cans. They continue in service as tenders for the official mowers of our yard. The original nozzles were respectable, fat, flexible tubes that could empty the can in about 7 seconds. Those nozzles eventually failed, so I bought a couple of new ones a few years ago. The new ones are skinny, intractable tubes, made for the tiny opening in today's unleaded fuel tanks. Now I can empty the Jerry can in under 7 minutes. Pretty lousy pit stop, but no one times a lawn job. The new nozzles also leak a little, but the gas all runs into the tank, so that's only an aesthetic problem.
Unfortunately, the rubber gaskets that seal the nozzle-to-can interface have also died. The leaks come when you walk, carry, or pour. That leads to a potential environmental nightmare and is a really bad thing.
I can't buy new gaskets.
I have surfed the gas can section of hardware, auto parts, discounters, and department stores. I can buy entire new Jerry cans with the wimpy nozzles at the auto parts store. Other merchants carry lines of rugged plastic cans (good) with thin and feeble plastic nozzles (bad). No gaskets available there either.
The modern gas can designers include a straight polyethelyne tube that slides through the cap. Bobble the can during fueling and get two genuinely irritating results:-- The tube splits and you have to buy a new gas can (replacement tubes are available only in the same aisle as the Jerry can gaskets).-- Gallons soak your feet, lawn, sewer, and Lake Champlain before you can get the can upright again (really really bad).Manufacturers are remarkably interested in sales of new product. The same manufacturers don't seem to care about the waste and irritation that we endure when we can't repair their stuff. This is a dilemma. I hate to throw anything away. I especially hate to throw away something that can be so easily fixed. Maybe we can teach the manufacturers a small lesson by taking the time to fix the stuff that breaks.
This idea has a lot of potential. You save money. You get that warm and fuzzy feeling by reusing all the broken paraphernalia in the barn. Real Vermonters do that. And the plastic gas can makers see their sales forecasts plummet. (Note, however, that I'm still looking for gasoline-proof rubber gasket material to cut my own replacements).
Summer warning: Your gas can is one burst hose away from a hazardous spill. Do be careful fueling your mowers and boats this summer.
-- 30 --
ARCHIVE
A regular op-ed feature from earlier editions of this newspaper
from October
THE SEVEN WORDS I CAN'T USE ANYMORE
(And It Makes Me Mad)
by Richard B. Harper
Girl.
Boy.
Guys.
Lady.
Gentleman.
Old.
Gay.
Before any impressionable younger (experience-challenged) readers get excited, none of these are the seven words that once upon a time could not be repeated on television. I'm not sure if this is a lament for the natural mutation of language or an ode to a politically correct lexicon. You decide.
There is one other caveat. Correctness is in a terrible state of flux. By the time this column appears, all the words may have changed again. The cold war is over. Bomb shelters (underground symbols of the fearful manipulation of other-thinking nations) became swimming pools (environmentally appropriate aquatic exercise centers) a decade ago. Today that tumult has turned inward. Today we might hear a gentleman with a conservative agenda called a fossilized futzwuffle by a lady of a liberal persuasion. Does that mean the lady is a tramp? This column may cook my personal goose.
Ed Note: some of the names have been changed Gay Lombard was a high school classmate. She lived up to her name: cheerful, engaging, involved in good works. The main intersection in a small Pennsylvania city is the corner of High and Gay. Except the long blue nose of Standards and Practices hasn't allowed us to get higher since Ed Sullivan presented the Doors.
to protect privacy. The street names haven't.
Gay was once a delightful word but because kindergartners titter, certain congressmen grow red faced, and most others with the mentality of five-year-olds get flustered when they hear it, many of us have forsaken gaiety. That's a loss to Mr. Penn's sylvan commonwealth, to Ms. Lombard, and to the language.
Vermont now has two cool "oldies" stations. One, serving the Champlain Valley, doesn't quite reach our friends in North Puffin, but does play neat car tunes for them whenever they drive south of the county seat. The North Country station hits every hill and valley in the county, giving folks less reason to travel. Oldie in this sense is, of course, merely a statement of chronology that relates solely to the musical era of the baby boomers. My dad thinks oldies means big bands, but we can't convince any radio magnates of that, so he suffers through the Beatles, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Sensations. We who grew up as musically challenged baby boomers enjoy the tunes. No one over the age of five would dream of using the word to describe anything (or anyone) calendar-measurement challenged. Not even my mom who complains whenever I have a birthday.
The oldies station played the O'Kaysions' "I'm a Girl Watcher." One of the songs of the sixties with the usual intricate melody and complex lyrics:
"I'm a girl watcher. A friend scowled at me recently for describing a colleague as "the tall girl with gray hair."
"I'm a girl watcher.
"Watchin' girls go by.
"My my my."
My mom always joined the "gals" (her word, not mine) for bridge club. Your dad went out with the boys. Although mine are in their seventies (persuns-of-a-chronologically-advanced-stature), they can't use those terms either. And the word cop best not catch us calling them oldies.
What to do? I teach a college course most semesters. Since I enlighten male and female students alike, I need an acceptable device showing my thoughtfulness when addressing the entire class. "Girls" obviously fails. "Boy" is perhaps worse. I thought guys might work, as in, "Hey guys. May I have your attention?" Honk! Wrong answer.
They told me Youse guys would be all right if I could fake a Brooklyn accent.
I suppose we could rewrite the song:
"I'm a persun-of-the-XX-chromosome-persuasion
observer, which is not to demean those who
watch persuns-of-the-XY-chromosome-persuasion
or those who don't watch anybody at all on the
principle that the least eye contact with an
individual's shadow invades the shadow's domain.
"I'm a persun-of-the-XX-chromosome-persuasion
observer except for ignoring those persuns
who fear the least shadowy eye contact.
"Watchin' persuns of any chromosomal variance go by.
"Huh huh huh?"Do you think that changes the melody, too?
It occurs to me, in these days of political correctivity, that if boys weren't girl watchers and girls weren't boy watchers, there would be darned few hupersuns here to watch.
-- 30 --
ARCHIVE
A regular op-ed feature from earlier editions of this newspaper
from May
NORMAN - FRENCH - ENGLISH
ITALIAN - DUTCH - AMERICANby Richard Barnard Harper
Mark Twain wrote, "In Boston, they ask, 'How much does he know?' In New York, they ask, 'How much is he worth?' In Philadelphia, they ask, 'Who were his parents?'" In North Puffin, parents and accent count most.
A friend is a native Vermonter, born in Puffin's Gore, miles and miles and miles (at least three miles) from North Puffin. He married a North Puffin woman, went to college, flew warbirds for the Navy, and returned to Vermont. He feels like an outsider in North Puffin.
Let's get personal. I am a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant male flatlander. I'm proud of my heritage; should I fret over fitting in here?
My middle name is one of the oldest known surnames, originally taken from Roche-Bernard, an ancient fortified manor house of Normandy. The Norman-French derived it from northern mythology and first employed it as a baptismal name in the eighth century. The British (and many New Englanders) pronounce it BAR-nrd, hitting broadly on the first syllable, just as they call Derby DAR-by, and Bertram BAR-trm. Here in the county I've often heard BER-nrd. The French say bare-NAR, which explains the etymology of bear's heart, from Bern, the courageous bear. Frankly, I've never understood why the stock market uses that symbol for dropping prices. As a family, we have always pronounced it ber-NARD.
My great-x8-grandfather, Richard Barnard (ber-NARD), was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, and sailed for the New World about 1642. Richard accompanied William Penn to the fertile southeastern counties of Pennsylvania. He owned a farm as early as 1683, served as a grand juror in 1686, and died in May of 1698. The Barnards bred great bunches of migratory Richards. Collateral branches of the family moved to Kentucky, Louisiana, and the other states. One Richard braved Texas' rise to statehood. Another Richard was among the first Pennsylvanians to explore the golden hills of California. Enos (a dairy farmer and my great-grandfather) stayed put; he shipped his butter to New York City where each pound sold for one dollar at the turn of this century. This Richard moved to Vermont.
Anne and I transferred here in the 1970s and have tried to blend into the landscape ever since. Vainly, perhaps, because we're not French, we're not farmers, and we're not from around here. Or because I've been seen wearing yellow pants. Bright yellow. I don't play golf.
Parentage must count for something. After all, the Highgate Town Clerk reports 20 or more genealogy searches through town records every year.
Meanwhile racial slurs, ostracism, and a singed student at area high schools have filled the news. People who grew up together often don't want outsiders to join their groups. What starts in a school clique lives on at Town Meeting.
Obviously, it takes more than ancestors.
Misoneism is the fear (or hatred) of change.
Newcomers bring change. The British kicked out the Acadians in 1755. Did their new neighbors in our farm villages and mill towns dread this foreign speaking invasion? Mexicans are filling California school systems and hospitals today. Their neighbors worry now.
Anomie is a condition of society in which people have lost the standards of conduct or belief. The French and Mexican settlers -- and all flatlanders -- brought different standards. Betcha some of their neighbors thought they didn't have any.
Here's a warm and fuzzy (meaning pop-sociology) question. Does anomie breed enemies and does misoneism lead to a mission?
"Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to purify the neighborhood." Ethnic cleansing, anyone?
In an S. Kelly cartoon, a conspicuously poverty-challenged, wide-mouth, archetype of today's white post-European male points at an Hispanic family. "It's time to reclaim America from illegal immigrants," he says.
"I'll help you pack," responds a background man with the drooping feather in his braid.
There are darn few natives anywhere. The Barnards (ber-NARDs) moved to England sometime after the prior immigrants stopped painting themselves blue. Some time later, Englishmen, and Frenchmen, and Dutchmen, and Italians, and (...) moved here. They married the people they found living nearby and bred kids, and cows, and corn. And they managed to work together so they wouldn't starve, or freeze, or fail.
There must be a moral in there somewhere.
-- 30 --
ARCHIVE
A regular op-ed feature from earlier editions of this newspaper
from May
HOW I HUNG MYSELF ON A LAW OF NATURE
by Richard B. Harper
I bought a work shirt in a local store recently. The cashier offered me the hangar, too, but I declined. We all know what mischief hangars beget in the dark recesses of a closet.
Harper's first law: Our new neighbor arrived last month with moving van brimming. Moving can bring great joy, but it also unearths every blemish in your household inventory. We somehow carted 31,000 pounds of flotsam from a 3 bedroom "colonial" to a 13 room farmhouse. It took two moving vans to tote the acres of cartons and piles of polished wood. Rows of boxes wound up in the barn. The rest still hides in the loft and in the darkest corners of our closets.
Junk expands to fill
the available space.
Bedroom closets are not our only repositories. This is the age in which we add millions and millions of words to that closet of our collective memories, the beige-tinted box that also fills our desks and colors the world. Computers are not the only reason our world is staining beige, but they are a major player. Most folks use the computer to play Solitaire, the rest need it to process words. I'm in the second category.
While junque growth is obvious for computer memory and hard drives, for those manila-shrouded papers that jam our desktops and cabinets, and for the stuff we store in barns and attics, one might think that wordsmiths would be immune. Wrong.
People of words demand majestic personal vocabulary growth.
17 actors overdosed on the medications prescribed in the 62 new TV hospital dramatic productions last week alone. Nobody has taken a simple pill on a soap opera since 1975.
Does your job description demand more pizazz? Trash collectors became sanitary engineers in New York, New York, and garbologists in North Puffin, Vermont. But what about the lowly mechanical technician sniffing sneakers in Nike's biology lab? The word plumbers at Popular Science coined "biomechanician." I don't think they meant Machiavellian machinations in a genetics lab. Did they?
Each and every Sunday New York Times contains more words than Thomas Jefferson's entire library. Of course, Jefferson's library had very few full-color advertising inserts.
Writers on the Internet post (and other people download) 7 techrascazillion bytes every second to fill their local hard drives.
Steven King's last novel weighed in at 12 pounds.
I plead guilty as well. Bernie Ball, a close friend of my mom's, created finiptitude. Its definition and pronunciation are literal. I used it finiptitudinously in an English paper a couple of decades ago and haven't looked back since.
Maybe one man's junk is another's cliche. I can't even wish for a barren closet or plainer prose. As a nation or as a family, we never throw anything away.
Special corollary to the First Law: if you don't succumb to spring garage cleaning, perhaps new junk will have no room to sprout.
"Fat chance!" said Anne who knows the precise contents of the closets.
--30--
Note: Anne and I test these laws in northwestern Vermont where gravity is a little skewed. The third "law" of civilization will appear in the coming weeks.
