A MILLION REASONS PEOPLE DON'T TRUST STATISTICS

 By Mike Nettleton

 Our local newspaper, The Columbian ran an article in their "Health Blogs” column in Monday’s edition. It clearly showed the  dangers of accepting statistics at face value. The claim is that the average pack-a-day smoker will spend more than a million dollars on cigarettes in a 50 year span of toxic inhalation. Wow. A million dollars. That could provide a kid's college fund, payments on a dream home and retirement funds. Unfortunately, the numbers are totally fallacious.

A web site that tracks the average cost of a pack of cigarettes across America shows the low end  price in Louisiana at $4.82 and the high end in New York at $11.90. (Due to taxes that are nearly double the actual cost of the smokes.)

Multiply 365 times 50 (the number of days our smoker will puff), and get 18,250. Times it by twelve (11.90 rounded up) produces $219,000. The same calculation for low-end Louisiana nets us $87, 296. Clearly, killing yourself slowly is a bargain in New Orleans. The study claims Washington state smokers will spend $1.3 million on cigarettes. At $9.89 per pack some quick math produces $180, 492.50. Bad enough, but not a mil three. Understand, as an ex-smoker, I'm not an apologist for the filthy habit. In fact being in a room where smokers have hung out makes me sick. But still. . .

If such bogus numbers originated with, say, Fox News, Sarah Palin or one of the insane bloviators out there in the blogosphere, I would understand it. But they were generated by a presumably credible health tracking organization and published by a reputable newspaper. (I might get some argument about that one from some folks on the far right. Clearly there are plenty of of legitimate reasons for not smoking. And you could do a lot of productive things with even the low estimate of 87,000 and change from the heart of Dixie. But it doesn't excuse the stupid and dishonest use of bogus statistics. This kind of number-bending only hurts the cause.

Crinkly? Really?

Carolyn J. Rose

Recently Mike and I were privileged to spend 24 hours with our five-year-old friend Tristan Stone.

That’s when we discovered that we’re crinkly.

Like most kids, Tristan sometimes seems older and sometimes younger than his age. He sleeps with a stuffed lamb and needs a little help brushing his teeth. Later he reminds Mike to wash his hands and tells us we should drink plenty of fluids before we go to the pool.

That’s where we found out we’re crinkly.

Tristan informed us he could swim by himself all over the pool. Visualizing his parents drawing and quartering me if anything happened, I made the case for staying in the shallow end. I made another case for one of us being by his side at all times, claiming the lifeguards would throw us out if we weren’t.

Tristan agreed, but told me he wouldn’t need me because he was a better swimmer. “I’m young and like a monkey and my skin is smooth. You might sink because you’re all crinkly.”

“Crinkly?”

“Yeah.” He pointed. “Especially around your eyes.”

I refrained from the snappy comebacks I employed when I was a kid, world-class insults like: “Your mother wears combat boots.” or “Your father voted for Nixon.” I also refrained from sticking out my tongue because that would only create more crinkles.

After all, Tristan was just stating the obvious. Like it or not, I’m 67. And I’m crinkly.

The Quake, the Coyote, and Other Concerns

Carolyn J. Rose

 The Cascadia Subduction Zone has been quiet lately—too quiet. Scientists worry that the tectonic plates under the Pacific Ocean are locked up and will unlock not with a series of relatively small quakes, but with one massive temblor. A recent report suggested that I should be worried too, so I added the subduction zone to my sweat-it list.

But I put it near the bottom. There’s nothing I can do about the movement of those plates. I can’t prevent or ameliorate what’s to come. If the plates rip loose like a giant zipper, much of the Pacific Northwest will shake, rattle, shatter, collapse, burn, or be inundated by a tsunami.

If I obsess about when that will happen and where I’ll be and whether I’ll survive, I’ll lose a lot of sleep and gain a lot of weight. (Yes, I’m a stress eater.) What I can do is prepare for that day—stockpile supplies, stash cash, make plans for rendezvous points, and study up on first aid.

What I can also do is focus on smaller and more immediate dangers. For example, the coyote roaming my neighborhood.

Recently, in broad daylight, I spotted him (or maybe her) peering through the fence at my dogs. He didn’t hustle away when I shouted, but slowly slunk off. A day or so later a neighbor opened his back door to find a coyote a few feet away. And my husband spotted one trotting across a main street. These guys are getting bold and will likely grow even bolder as winter progresses.

But I can do something about the coyotes. I can take steps to take my yard off the top of their list of potential places to dine—turn on more lights, never let the dogs out unless I’m with them, watch for digging around the fence, make sure there’s nothing a carnivore would like in the compost.

I’ll also network with neighbors to keep up on coyote sightings. Getting to know the folks around me might serve me well when those tectonic plates unlock, the big quake comes, and we have to depend on each other until outside help arrives.

Okay, So I Changed My Mind!!!

Carolyn J. Rose

 

  “I’d love to see a condor in the wild,” I said as Mike clicked on an Earthflight program we’d recorded and saved for a day we wanted a little education with our entertainment.

The photography was stunning and the bird-cam view of the Andes was amazing. But twenty minutes later, I amended my statement to, “I’d love to see a condor soaring. At a distance.”

 Viewed from afar as they ride the thermals, they appear powerful and majestic. Close up, it’s clear these birds are oversized vultures—hunch-shouldered, bald-headed, carrion-devouring vultures that have trouble getting off the ground with a full crop.

This wasn’t the first distance/close-up disenchantment episode in my life. In fact, if I’d kept track of such episodes, this one would have been assigned a number somewhere in the thousands. There have been dresses that looked terrific on display but not on me, shoes that tortured my feet, cars that broke down on a monthly basis, meals where eating the napkin would have been a wiser—and tastier—choice, dates that . . .

Well, let’s not go there. There point is there can be a big gap between a “romanticized” image and reality. A little research and a closer look can’t hurt. And changing your mind—and your bucket list—is okay.

So, I won’t be saving up for a trip to South America—at least not a trip with the specific goal of getting close to a condor.

But penguins—black, white, and jaunty—I’d love to get close to a bunch of penguins.

Or would I?

MIKE STARTS HIS SECOND CAREER

By Michael A. Nettleton 

When I retired from a forty-three year broadcasting career back in 2010 I had a vision of what post-work life would be like. Sleeping in until say seven-thirty or eight. Sitting on the couch with my feet up, reading or clicking through the cable channels. Playing golf every other day or so.

          “Not so fast, Buster!” Although my wife never actually said these words, their aura hung in the air from the day I hung up the headphones and filed for Social Security.

It turns out that I’m kind of a pain in the patoot to have hanging out around the house all day. Go figure. Plus, penciling out the budget, it turns out I couldn’t afford to play golf three or four times a week without sacrificing some other luxury from our budget. Like, say, food, gasoline, new socks and dog toys.

          Fair enough. I’d pursue a part-time job. After all I was qualified to…to… Well, what exactly what was I qualified to do?

          I spent forty-three years talking into various and sundry microphones in cities in the western half of the United States. I also spun, what were quaintly known as “records:” discs made out of vinyl that emitted obnoxious rock and roll music when spun under a needle that followed the grooves along a counter-clockwise path. I’m not sure, to this day, how that worked. A form of magic, I think.

          Once I discovered people would pay me to talk, I left college to pursue the life of a gypsy disc-jockey. In the early nineties I drifted into what one of my listeners called “argument radio,” where I spent my time bloviating and being bloviated to. I logged sixteen years at KEX radio in Portland to finish things up, mostly enjoying myself until Clear Channel Broadcasting, otherwise known as “The Evil Empire,” sucked all the fun out of the business.

          For two years after pulling the pin on radio, I tutored and mentored high school kids in the AVID program, which works to give young people with college aspirations and potential, but life obstacles, a leg-up to reach their goals of higher education. I figured I was well qualified to talk to kids about college, since I’d spent 5 years at Southern Oregon College and left with 180 credits and only a passing grade in Econ 201 between me and status as a full-fledged Junior.

          Which brings us to the library. I’ve always loved libraries. I got my first library card when I was six. A lifelong bookworm, I’ve spent many enjoyable hours cruising up and down the shelves of small town and big city libraries looking for reading matter and even, occasionally, searching the card catalogue for material for something I was researching.

          Remember card catalogues? See, there was this filing cabinet that…I can hear you saying to yourself: Could this dork be any more of a dinosaur? Vinyl records. Card catalogues. What’s next? Buggy whips? Corsets?

          Anyway, I figured this would be the perfect part time job for me. How hard could it be? I’d check out books, guide people to the relevant section to fulfill their needs and occasionally shush a patron using his or her outside voice. Piece of cake.

          “Not so fast, Buster.” Turns out there’s more to this librarian thing these days than meets the eye.

          Upon interviewing for and being awarded a position with the Battle Ground Community library, I soon found myself (as they say in the South), “Up to my pooter in alligators.”

 In the past two months, I’ve learned about bins, boxes, weeds, holds, transits, interlibrary loans and, yes, The Dewey Decimal System. I’ve sorted and shelved fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, easy readers, large print, DVD’s and audio books. I’ve gaped at enough lurid covers of the bodice-ripper romance paperbacks to give me cold sweats and palpitations. Julie and Harriet introduced me to the Yacolt library, unique in its use of the honor system and the jail cells in the lobby.

          Thanks to the patience, kindness and guidance of my bosses Kim and Julianne and my generous co-workers, I can now help a “tweenie” girl find “The Babysitter’s Club” books without having a panic attack and screaming “Help! Stat!” at the top of my lungs. I can guide an anxious young mother and her twitching two-year old to the shelf where “I’m a Potty Pirate” awaits their perusal.

          In a way, my instincts were right. My job at the Battle Ground Library is a good fit. I love books. I like being around people who love books. I enjoy helping people find the material they need to enrich their lives and accomplish their goals.

          A handful of impressions from my almost two months in Battle Ground. The shy and wide-eyed high school sophomore girl, shuffling her feet back and forth as she submits her entry in a writing contest sponsored by the library. The grateful smile and thank you from the young mother I’d guided to the shelves that held the do-it-yourself home design books. She and her husband had saved the money to buy land—and were dreaming of building their own first home. The older woman, an avid mystery fan who allowed as how she’d try a couple of the authors I recommended, but would have “harsh words” for me if she didn’t like them. Said with a wry smile, the threat didn’t trouble me much. The eight-year old who got her first library card and beamed with pride when she checked out an armload of books and thanked me on her way out with her mother.

          Two memories will stay with me for a long time. A ten-year old boy with glasses drooping down his nose, wandering the aisles of the juvenile section, toting as many books as his chubby little arms would hold. I had no doubt he would read them all. He triggered a flashback that catapulted me back in time more than half a century. He was me at about nine or ten, struggling up the hill to my house with an armload of magic from my small town library. Seven books, the limit per visit, to be devoured over the next week or two. I watched the boy stagger out to the parking lot with his books and couldn’t wipe the grin off my face for the next hour or so.

          Finally, there was the little girl, maybe five or six, who found me shelving books in the kid’s section one day. With big-eyed solemnity she handed me a Video Play-away and said, almost apologetically: “I decided I didn’t want to watch this.”

          “Thank you,” I told her. “I’ll make sure it gets back where it belongs.”

          She beamed back at me and gestured with a tiny hand. “C’mon.” She said. “I’ll show you where it goes.”

          Lots of people have “shown me where it goes.” And with a lot more hard work and just “doing” it, I have hopes of becoming a competent Public Service Assistant 2 at the Battle Ground library. For a writer and semi-professional people watcher like me, it’s the perfect part-time retirement job.

          Meanwhile, in my free time, I think I’ll flop on the couch and read or channel surf. My wife comes down the hall, takes one look at me and the thought bubble appears over her head.

          “Not so fast, Buster!”

If you'd like to learn more about our terrific libraries in Clark County and the environs, go to www.fvrl.org

A PENNY SAVED IS A WASTE OF TIME

By Michael A. Nettleton

 We’re always looking at ways we can make government more efficient and use our tax dollars more wisely. Here’s an idea whose time has come. Let’s retire the penny from our range of currency. Here’s a snippet from About dot com.

Approximate Current Cost of Minting Various U.S. Coins

• Penny - 1.26 cents
• Nickel - 7.7 cents
• Dime - 4 cents
• Quarter - 10 cents
• Dollar (Coins) - 16 cents

Yep, it costs more to make pennies than their actual value as money. The same is true of nickels, but one thing at a time. This is mostly due to the cost of the material. Pennies are currently comprised of zinc, primarily. Prior to 1982 they were largely copper. There’s a move afoot to make them out of steel, but the U.S. Mint opposes it. So do I. Let’s just 86 them.

I was at the supermarket the other day and some variety of beefsteak was being flogged at $4.00 a pound. Good. Finally some honest pricing. No more pricing it at $3.99 in the belief that we’ll say “Oh, geez, that’s a much better value than the stuff they’re selling for $4.00 pound. 

Another ridiculous argument is that we need the pennies to accurately calculate our taxes. Horse-hockey. Let’s just round up or down to the nearest nickel. Anything that comes out at $.02 or less gets rounded down, anything that’s $.03 or more gets rounded up. Simple. As the British say, “Bob’s your uncle.” 

Finally, to dispel one more specious argument I’m sure someone will bring up. “Pennies are valuable to teach children the value of money.” I gauren-blanking-tee you that if you present a penny to any child old enough to realize it doesn’t belong in his or her mouth they’ll stare at it slack-jawed and make one of those “awwwww Mom,” noises. 

Let’s set a date, get people to round up their pennies and cash them in. (Once again, rounding up or down as we compensate them.) Give advertisers time to remove any ridiculous $_____99 references from their pitches. Crank the gas pump amounts up another 1/100^th of a turn and make petrol $4.00 (or $5 or $6, gulp) a gallon and let the chips fall where they may. 

Let’s start giving people a nickel for their thoughts. It's worth every penny.

Mike and Carolyn Take to the High Seas

Mike and Carolyn aboard the Titanic

Actually our home-away-from-home on the water was the Holland America Liner the ms Maasdam. 

After seven days of big fun, followed by one day of airline travel Hell, we’re back from our vacation: a cruise through New England, the Maritime Provinces and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Ports of call included Bar Harbor, Maine, Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Montreal.

Still trying to get used to terrain that doesn’t roll and shift under our feet, we’re also trying to sort out the experiences, sights, sounds and impressions we gained from our shipboard and excursion experience. Here are a few.

• A cruise is the perfect way to unwind and withdraw from the stress of work-a-day or even day-to-day life. There are no chores to perform, no critical decisions to make and no real obligation to do anything besides gratify your immediate needs. In my thirty plus years with Carolyn, I’ve never seen her so relaxed and content. Which brings me to:

• Food.  Creative, flavorful and abundant. Holy Gorgeioski is there a lot of it. I saw people with plates piled high from the mind-boggling buffet at the Lido restaurant who will probably move up two pant sizes upon their return home. If you’re predisposed to gluttony, this is Nirvana. We tried to control ourselves but still probably put on a pound or two. Back to the gym and a diet of cereal and celery for a while.

Pastry sculpture from the shipboard chefs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• The shore excursions were fun and interesting. From seeing humpback whales up close to a scenic bus tour of Prince Edward Island’s lighthouses, they made the “away” time from our stateroom fun and educational

Puffin on his way to an important engagement 

 

  

• We met a lot of great people from all over the planet; some were experienced “cruisers” and others, like us were experiencing life on the open water for the first time. Of course, there were also the boors, who rarely smiled, pushed their way to the front of the buffet line and verbally abused the hard-working service people who continued to smile and try to be helpful no matter what the ugly Americans, Canadians, Aussies, Germans or Japanese subjected them to. The lesson learned is that there are whiners, complainers and self-centered sociopaths no matter where you are. The trick is learning to ignore them and not allow them to spoil your fun.

We can’t say enough about the mostly Indonesian and Filipino crew who made our time on the Maasdam unforgettable. They work insanely long hours, for minimal pay and are highly attuned to anticipating your needs. They smile constantly, remember your name despite the fact there are 1200 plus guests on the ship and never complain. Suli, who bussed tables and brought refills of coffee, iced tea and water to our table had an infectious giggle that seemed to reflect genuine joy. Asep and Frevian who spiffed up our stateroom twice a day left us creative gifts such as the towel-art you see here: 

 

The colorful towel peacock

 

Sting-Ray ala towel

 Our waiter in the Ocean Lounge (whose name, unfortunately escapes what’s left of my mind) always had a smile, a laugh and shipboard news to share with us. The lovely Filipino lady who made my morning white chocolate mocha started my brew before I even got to the counter. It’s impossible to overstate how important these people are to making your cruise a treasured memory. If you take a cruise, be sure to thank them and tip a little extra beyond the obligatory service charge that’s a part of your shipboard bill. They earn it and many of them are sending money home to support family in their part of the world.

Finally, a word about the last day. Part of it is my own fault for trying to save a buck on air travel. I booked a trip with too many stops, too many possibilities for aggravation and too many tight connections. Next time I’ll pay the extra bucks for a non-stop flight. We were tired, got consistently wrong information from the airline personnel we encountered, had to endure people carrying on loud conversations in French over the top of us and a flood of airline announcements in a language we couldn’t comprehend. Too often we found ourselves jogging through airport terminals. Plus, the airline lost our suitcase. It’s expected back sometime in the next couple of days.  Midway through the ordeal, I feared that if one more airline clerk greeted Carolyn with a sullen “Bonjour” they’d find themselves on the tiles with her forearm at their throat. She was, as the Queen is known to say, “not amused.” It took fifteen minutes of face licking from her faithful dogs and a good night’s sleep in her own bed to return her to her old cheerful self.