My favorite pilot

The story the other day about the JetBlue pilot freaking out during a flight received a lot of play, for two reasons: the potential horrifying consequences, and how unusual it seemed for that to happen. A man bites dog story, as it were. I'm aware of some other negative stories about pilots, but they do seem rare given the volume of air traffic each day.

And why? Because we generally view pilots as responsible, of decent moral stock, in a word - stable.

You've seen them as they walk through the airline terminal to the plane. Generally trim, confident, with good, commanding bearing, yet not unfriendly or overly full of themselves. The word that always occurs to me is stable - specifically mentally stable. And thank goodness.

I only know one pilot personally. He was recommended to me as a handyman by a friend about eight years ago, and we have had a great and productive relationship.

When I get things fixed around the home, I want them to stay fixed. I pay for efficiency, for know-how, for experience, for problem-solving aptitude and ability, and good judgment. And this guy has patience and superb judgment.

My next appointment with him for a few repairs at the house is in a couple weeks, because he's gonna be busy with his day job as an airline pilot, given the Easter holidays and all that. I can wait. I've learned for the last eight years that it's well worth it.

The gas prices matter

I was in Canton yesterday when I spied the scene in the adjacent photo. It was at the Valero gas station at the northeast corner of Ford and Haggerty Roads.

Did you know, by the way, that Ford and Haggerty is the most dangerous intersection in Wayne County?

I liked the sign for two reasons: the price is below $4 per gallon, and the premium for payment using a credit or debit card is just $.01 above a cash payment.

I look around lately for a price below $4 per gallon, and it seems I'm running out of options. My last fill-up was $65. When I passed the gas station yesterday, my tank was three-fourths full and I couldn't really take advantage of it.

The other reason that I liked the sign is that a credit or debit card user is not being gouged by the retailer. I've read that the increase to the retailer for a payment using a card is $.03 or $.04 per gallon, and to my mind the retailer is using this as a convenient ruse to pad his profits.

If the normal premium for a card is $.10 per gallon, the cost to me for the $.07 per gallon increase over the retailer's $.03 per gallon cost for an 18-gallon tank is $1.26. In the 21st century, that's an absurd amount to pay for convenience in a highly technical society like ours. I'm not sayin' there oughta be a law - Caveat emptor - but I can still resent it.

The price of gasoline is an odd duck in the marketplace. Most of us, particularly in the suburban Midwest, cannot avoid using it, and paying for it on a regular basis. It requires time to do. As you're pumping, the mind wanders, and no doubt the price you're paying as you pump arises in your mind. And it hits those with lower incomes particularly hard.

A politician would be wise to be wary of the specter of high gas prices, particularly in an election year. And it is this tightening vise into which Obama has stumbled. Imagine, the man who was going to reverse the rise of the oceans - he is tagged with being responsible for gas prices doubling since his inauguration.

Anyone with smarts and knowledge knows it's a complicated story. But when Obama said a while back that he would like to see gasoline prices rise to nudge us toward high-cost alternative energy sources, and the people left suffering can least afford it, I can't give him a pass. It is proving to be preposterously inept politically, in addition to his normal operational and leadership ineptitude.

But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

An inadvertent April Fools joke on my wife

I'm going to go to Cathy Cutting's fifth-grade class at Haggerty Elementary School on April 18 to talk to her students about my journalism career. I've done it before. It's sure fun for me, and the kids appear to be engaged.

As I was waiting in Mrs. Cutting's classroom the other day for Queen Isabella to arrive, I noticed she had a poster on the wall about grammar and punctuation. I thought, wow, I could make this a teachable moment, and talk to the kids about the importance of writing effectively, and the role of good grammar.

When I suggested it, Mrs. Cutting immediately bit, and I was thrilled. But, how to go about doing it with 30 some-odd 11-year-olds? I had the idea of taking a previously-published column I wrote about my grandson Noah, and introducing into the story grammar and spelling errors.

I put it on my wife Jan's family room chair for her to review it, and said no more. Early Sunday afternoon, April 1, Jan settled in the chair, and began to read the hard copy of the column, riddled with errors.

"What is this?" she asked. "Youuuu, you haven't submitted this for publication, have you?"

I paused for a moment, wondering what she meant. And then I recalled what I'd done, and why, and I explained it to her. We had to laugh. The column was an unmitigated writing disaster, precisely what I'd intended. I hope it plays well in the classroom next month. Here's a preview, errors and all. How many mistakes can you find?

Packing for Noah

The event roles around once each week. I begin to anticipate it like a little kid about 48 hours before it's scheduled. Theres a spring in my step as I look forward to it, and a lilt in my voice. Life just got a litttle bit - nay, a whole lot - better.

We begin to peck to go see him about a day before, putting staff on the kitchen table to bring to him.

A tennis ball. lunch. My work stuff, although I rarely do any real work that day; may be a phone call or two. New teaching tools, cleverly disguised as toys, like a "shape ball" that holds inside it different plastic shapes like a circle, a square, a hexagon, and about a dozen others.

Noah is asked to find the right fit in the plastic ball for each shape. On our most recent visit, he mastered the skill of holding the shape at just the right angle to insert thru the opening.

He knows now how to spell his name. I bring a small plastic lisense plate that I purchased inWalmart with his name on it, but I forget the zip ties that would secure it to something, and I bring it home. Next visit.

I work with him on how to spell "Pa”. He can repeet the spelling when I say it, but when I check a couple hours later, he's forgotten, Well work on it.

He point to where the poster of the Blue Angels, soaring skyward, used to be on his bedroom door. It's no longer there hanging on the door, and a couple missing paint chips are in its place. Pa did it.

He'd like a new poster of the planes, he says I say I'll work on it.

There are as many as three trips to the car to brung in the stuff when we babysit for Noah. I bet the stuff, all told, weighs several lbs.

We sometimes don't use the stuff that we bring in but no worries. Its best to be prepared.

When he suceeded at putting the shape in the right whole, I shouted "Ta-daaaaaaaaaaaa!" He got it right away, and as he worked on the next shape, we waited expectently for the big moment, andwhen he succeeded the room exploded with shouting and laffter , between Amma, and Pa, and Noah.

Before we left to go home, Noa and I hid in the bedroom closet. I go in 1st, he follows and closes the closet door behind us. Its dark in there, but only for a moment, because as I look down I can see the little hand reaching for the door knob.

The door opens (his parents have had to put new childproof locks that replaced the simpler ones he figured out and we tiptoe through the bedroom speed picking up as we reach the hallway, and it's a sprint toward the living room as Amma, who is evidently not aware not aware of our approach is blissfully relaxed until Noah hits the arm of the couch and says "Boo!" to Amma. She is startled, and shouts, and few moments later I run up and shoot "Boo!" again. Once again, she is fritened out of her wits.

A good day, by any defanition.

Meth Monster

I do well on six hours of sleep. I awoke this morning at 4 a.m., before the coffee grinder operates automatically at 4:30 a.m. each day, and turned it on myself. I plan to write to write two stories before I hop on the treadmill, fueled by two to three cups of coffee by then. Then my public day begins.

The photo of Noah is in my office as I write this, and it never fails to cheer me. The facial expressions and the colors leap off the page.

 

At night, I eat, and eat. I had a club sandwich after arriving home last night from Tim Horton's, after talking with a friend there for 150 minutes. I power through the sandwich, and with a smidgeon of guilt head to the refrigerator. I'm still hungry. My mood is tinged mildly with guilt, but I'm well past it. I'm still hungry.

Ah, the crazy bread we didn't finish. I microwave it, a measure of my hunger, and eat two of the three remaining pieces, dipping them in the remaining marinara sauce.

Say, aren't there the two pieces of Italian sausage I cooked yesterday? My, they look good. I'll have just one, with horseradish sauce, on a fresh bun. Delicieux. Yesterday, I had one with highly-recommended Beer N' Brat mustard, and chopped green olives; not bad.

I polish off the final sausage, cradled in a bun, with more spicy mustard.

I am on my third regimen of steroids to get rid of this poison ivy. This is my third week of it, and I am always hungry, always energetic, generally in a capital mood. This morning, for hopefully the last week, I bump the dosage back up to 40 milligrams for three consecutive days to deliver the knockout punch. Here's hoping it works.

If this goes on much longer, I may by then have launched a new career, or traveled to the Orient, something extreme, exciting, slightly dangerous. I just wanna get rid of this poison ivy.

A little fright

The other day, my grandson Noah was a little off his game. Since he grew out of infancy, he has never stopped. He is always talking, always moving, always listening, always looking for something new and fun.

He was a bit under the weather the other day - possibly an allergy - but he normally drives past that, his capacity for fun is so large. But the weather outside wasn't so hot the other day, and for the first time that I saw, he heard thunder, loud, startling claps. The dog jumped across the room after one of them.

Noah was genuinely frightened. We've seen this in a small way with airplanes overhead, even from inside the house. His ears appear to be tuned to the drone above, whereas I don't notice it until he says the word "plane."

As he does, he moves a few inches closer to me, to be reassured. And I do. We talk about airplanes. Later, we watch a wonderful movie about migratory birds, and I ask him if he would like to fly like a bird. I explain that we can't fly like birds, so we have planes to do it for us. I take my best shot.

But the recent thunder really got him frightened. He didn't freak out, but he wanted reassurance that everything was OK. I reclined on the couch, and invited him to come over and lay on me. I would hold him, and all would be OK.

I put my hands on his little back and pressed down just a little. We lay there quietly, and I spoke only to reassure him that there was nothing to worry about; that Amma and Pa would keep him safe.

He appeared to calm down, and I was glad I was able to do something. I recalled the story I heard a while back about the Haggerty Elementary school teacher Mr. TenBroeck, teaching his fifth-graders in the classroom on the horrific day in which 9/11 was unfolding, when the school went on lockdown.

Recall that school had just started for the year; teacher and students were not real familiar with each other.

From a story told by one of his former students, Mr. TenBroeck walked to the door of the classroom, closed it, turned around and said to each of his students: "I will keep you safe."

And he did. He confirmed his students' trust that day, which was all they had at the time.

But Amma, not I, is the masterful one at nurturing and reassurance. Noah asked her to rock him in the chair, something they haven't done in months. That lasted a few minutes, and then he asked to be put in his crib. He was going to take his nap.

Amma did so, closed the door, and Noah slept peacefully for about two hours. When he awoke, he was his old self again: on the move, inquiring, playing, happy. The photo is from those moments, in which does a kind of iron cross gymnastic move using the rocking chair we bought for him for Christmas.

That's my boy. Don't worry, Noah; Amma and Pa will keep you safe.

The faithful dig in

I was watching Bret Baier on Fox News the other day, and they were discussing the Catholic church's recent contretemps with the Obama administration over religious freedom.

Baier said that you if you go to Mass regularly, you begin to understand how deadly serious the church's leaders are about this issue. I see it every day that I attend Mass: the general intercessions always include a prayer for our political leaders.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan was interviewed the other day. He acknowledged that the opponent is clever, having selected an issue like contraception with which most Americans are comfortable, but which the church teaches against, except for medical reasons.

The belief is that the Obama administration is really after taxpayer-funded abortion, but they dare not say it now, because abortion is not a slam-dunk in the eyes of many.

It's a little like O's message to Russian leader Medvedev and his boss Putin the other day: wait until after O is re-elected in November, and he will have more flexibility to negotiate away our superior nuclear missile defenses. These defenses are to me a responsible way to cool it on destructive offensive nuclear weapons, and to be able to adequately protect ourselves.

I saw on the news last night that, when we have tested these missiles, we have been successful 48 out of 48 tries. Isn't this a great country?

But give away our defensive superiority in nuclear missiles? Impose the boot heel of Leviathan on the faithful? What is the man after, honestly? Is it to remake us in an image that can only be imagined?

In weekday Masses, the congregants are invited to offer their own prayers. Our priest begins, and he always says a prayer for our political leaders.

After the priest is done, about a half-dozen in the congregation speak up, and pray against illness, to the Blessed Mother, a variety of things. And then, in a sort of third act for our collective prayers, the lector steps to the podium and reads a prayer or two from a prepared sheet of paper.

And, a few days ago, the first prayer that the lector spoke was to pray that our next President is a Godly man. That caught me up short, and I had to think about it for a moment. I did not know whether it was the lector's own personal prayer, or whether it was prepared. I'm guessing the former.

As I heard the prayer, I glanced at the priest to check his facial reaction - nothing obvious. I thought - wow, this is really something, depending on how you interpret what was said. And, with the others, I responded, "Let us pray to the Lord; Lord, hear our prayer." Right on.

And so it begins...again

As I first walked in, the main vestibule didn't give it away. The palms spread on the table were something to be gathered, but I moved toward the sanctuary. It was there that it hit me: the beginning of Holy Week.

I knew the calendar, but I hadn't yet felt the emotional significance. My wife Jan and I have been experiencing this now for over three decades, the continuum of Lent through the Triduum and the Resurrection. It has an impact on your senses and perspective that is profound. It is undeniably there.

Your eyes lift toward the ceiling, and you thank God for yet another chance to live through the week, to experience it.

The baptismal font was drained of water, as it had been throughout Lent, but handsome red fabric lined parts of the font, in an interesting design. The church had been darkened. The recessed lights in the high ceiling above were on, but shadows fell across the altar, on which sat crucibles for the bread and wine.

It was Palm Sunday, perhaps the most liturgically schizophrenic day in the church each year. It begins with Jesus' triumphant entrance into Jerusalem, astride a donkey, a temporal, and temporary king. I suppose that's part of the message. Then you move on to the Passion, where Jesus clearly was having a really bad time of it.

Betrayed, denied, tortured, humiliated, mocked. And He knew it was coming. In a moment of weakness, he wonders whether the cup will pass from his lips. But he steels himself for what is coming, because he always knew, didn't he?

Now that's courage. That's grace.