skip to main |
skip to sidebar
As I write this week’s report, I am anxiously awaiting the delivery of a piece of furniture which has been dear to me my entire life. In our family beach house, just a fifteen minute drive from Buffalo on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie, there sat a unique dining room table. I think it has been in our family for over 65 years. Made of oak, it has expanding roll top ends, very similar to the top cover of a roll top desk. The table expands with a crank and I am told it is extremely rare. To me it is priceless, because it served as the dinner table for four generations of my family. My then very mischievous Uncle Harry used to crank it in while dinner guests were at the table, causing their plates to fall into their lap. There is an amusing story that my mom used to tell about that table. My maternal grandfather, Harry Lehman Sr., then owner of the beach house, was vacationing in Palm Springs, California. On one of his daily walks he came upon a shabbily dressed, dischevaled man working out in the front yard of a very large and impressive estate. He assumed the man was a groundskeeper, and my grandfather, who loved talking to just about anybody, struck up a conversation with the man. Soon they were fast friends and when the man asked my grandfather to come in for a glass of lemon-aid, my grandfather asked. “Won’t your boss mind?“ The guy replied, “I am the boss.“ When Grampy went inside, he was surprised to see the exact same expandable oak table that he had in the dining room of his summer home. He mentioned this to his host and the man seemed incredulous. He told my grandfather that there were four of these tables in all of North America, perhaps all of the world, and that it was too great a coincidence that a man he'd just met by chance should have one of the other three. Grampy assured him he did, and the next time that man was back East, visiting Niagara Falls with his brother, he made a special trip to my grandfather’s summer home to see the double.
For years I have been consulting The News of the Weird for some of my stranger news stories and the other day I read one that made me belly laugh. It seems that there is an unusual Spring tradition in Dongyang, China. Every year around this time the town anxiously awaits the arrival of a local delicacy: “Virgin Boy Eggs.” For centuries it has been the town tradition to boil eggs in the fresh urine of little boys, preferably boys under the age of ten, then to eat them in the belief that this will bring good health, renewed energy, and prosperity. Hmmm. Banff has her hot springs, Dongyang has its eggs boiled in the urine of little boys. Take your pick. While I concede that there are many things to be learned from the wisdom of Eastern medicine, perhaps this is not one of them. Then again, who am I to say?
By now I’m sure you’ve heard at least something about the scandal in the U.S over Secret Service agents hiring prostitutes down in South America. Now it appears the scandal is spreading. Some DEA agents are now accused of hiring Columbian prostitutes, suggesting that this is a bigger national security issue than originally thought. One DEA guy said, “hey I thought I was just getting a massage.” Yeah, yeah, and the dog ate your homework. I like it when I can see my tax dollars at work. Last week tech giant Hewlett Packard announced it will cut 27,000 jobs from its payroll, Bee Gee Robin Gibb died (so much for "stayin' alive"), and tropical storm Beryl bears down on the East Coast, promising to be a significant rain event....
But the big news is, my table has arrived, and it boy does it look good in this house!
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Today I begin this report with a mini rant about contractors. There is a reason why shows like Holmes on Homes are so popular. Over the past five years we’ve had the occasion to use a lot of different contractors in the building of our house, and one thing I can say from my experience is that there are more bad ones than good ones. It seems especially true up here in the Great White North; there are some real flakes up here passing themselves off as pros. In my opinion plumbers top the list on the flake scale. We had a guy do some major plumbing work on the old cottage, and when we needed him back to fix a deficiency, we found out he’d skipped town owing half the community money. The guy who installed most of the plumbing in the new home, hired by our general contractor, was completely and utterly unreliable. He’d start a job and walk away for weeks, holding up all the other trades reliant on the completion of his work. Single handedly he sabotaged our building project and cost us a lot of time and money. I’m told he had an alcohol problem. A few months after he had disappeared for good, we found out just how much he’d done wrong or failed to do altogether. For example, he reversed the hot and cold on a one of the showers and simply forgot to install most of the cutoff valves in the basement. What I am learning, slowly, and especially since we moved to the Great White North, is that when we do find a good tradesman, we are quick to pay our bill, and we treat them like foreign dignitaries. Luckily, we’ve had a great carpenter from the beginning, and he has introduced us to some other good subs. I’ve heard from more than one resident up here that the good contractors do not need to advertise, because they are busy enough by word of mouth. Indeed we could keep several trades busy for a year or two with all the mistakes made by the others.
Last Thursday I picked up my boat from the marina, complete with its new Evinrude ETEC 200 HP outboard motor, new steering cables, and a new depth finder. It was a frosty 50 degrees F when I picked it up, but I bundled up and took it for a long ride over to the big lake. This is my first marine upgrade in 23 years and there have been significant improvements in outboard technology in that time. These days a lot of people buy four stroke engines (gas only) because they tend to run cleaner, but the new 2 strokes are much improved in this regard, and much lighter than comparable four strokes. We’ll see how the new power plant fares after a few seasons, but so far I’m impressed. Fuel injection ensures it starts right up and it is quiet as a sewing machine at low idle. The most significant improvement is that it is much faster off the line. This week I’ll check it out with the GPS to see what its top end is. I suspect it’s a little slower than the old 225HP, but then again, I’m a little slower than I was 23 years ago. My motto used to be “when in doubt, overpower,” but I’m no longer as intoxicated by speed and power as I used to be. These days I’m more interested in reliability and longevity.
Disco diva Donna Summer died last week at 63 after a battle with cancer. She was the Lady Gaga of her day, and though I despised disco at the time, I liked some of her music. She worked hard for the money. Facebook went public last week raising $16 Billion in it’s IPO, the largest ever initial public offering by a US technology company. Should I buy in at $38 per share? I think I’ll leave that to my financial advisor to sort out. I thought “Flutie Flakes” were a good investment, and now have a closet full of stale cereal. Founder Mark Zuckerberg married Priscilla Chan, his companion of the last nine years. What, no pre-nup?
This past week was a momentous one for Shauna‘s family. Her father’s brother had a lot of problems and died of misadventure many years ago. Because of his problems, he never got to know his three children from two failed marriages. For various reasons the ex-wives cut all ties with the Taylor family, and those kids were never given the opportunity to know Shauna’s dad, or their paternal grandparents. I think that’s very sad. It’s a long and complicated story, but the ending is that last Saturday two of those three children met in Toronto at the home of Shauna’s parents, and there was a very happy reunion. A brother and a sister from two marriages had never met, and in fact did not know until recently that they were related. We brought family photographs and old home movies, and although they never got to know their father, they now have an opportunity to know his brother, and some of the mysteries of their past can now be revealed. Vicariously, I eat this stuff up. Shauna has been in contact with the third sibling and will likely meet him in the near future. Life is full of surprises!
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
We’ve had an electrician at our house for a few days last week. He’s been wiring our pump house and arranging for us to re-use a water pump and pressure tank left over from the old cottage. We will use this secondary pump for irrigation, car washing, etc., because we don‘t need water purified through our indoor filtration system to power wash the house. Years ago, this electrician did a lot of work with a big wrecking company in Toronto, and whenever an old building was demolished, he salvaged some of the discarded electrical fixtures. Over the years he has collected some beautiful things and the other day he brought some of them over for us to inspect. We bought four very unique hanging lights for the house, and they have particular meaning to the Taylor family. Shauna’s mom and dad were good friends with Morty Tepperman, one of the principals of that wrecking company, and the lights we bought came directly out of a building down off Front Street, originally built by Consumers Gas Company, and where the Tepperman wrecking company used to have their yard. The electrician had been holding on to these light fixtures for over 25 years, and thought they might look good in our house. He was right, because our house is full of unusual fixtures and furniture. Lately strange coincidences have come up and Shauna and especially her mom believe that it means long lost friends are trying to make contact. There’s a story my mother-in-law likes to tell about her friend Morty Tepperman. He died long before his time from a heart attack, and the Taylors were deeply saddened by the loss. Shauna’s mom was in the hospital for some reason and Morty went to visit her. He brought her some roses, but when he got to the hospital, she had already been released. He died within the next day and never had a chance to deliver the roses. The next Spring, a rose sprung up in Ethel’s garden where no rose was planted. She figures that it was Morty making his presence known.
If you follow this blog you may have noticed that last winter I posted a picture of myself hugging a very large outboard motor at the Toronto Boat Show. While this may have seemed an unusual display of affection to my twelve loyal readers, that wasn’t just any outboard motor; it was the new motor I’d just purchased for my fishing boat. Some time in the next several days I will pick the boat up at our marina rigged with that new outboard, new steering cables, new seat cushions, and a working depth finder (finally). Call it my nautical extreme makeover. I had owned the original Yamaha outboard for over 20 years and while it served me faithfully, the time had come time to trade it in. The old beast was not particularly fuel efficient, it smoked like a chimney, and was extremely hard starting in cold weather. The new motor, although also a 2 stroke (oil and gas are mixed together for fuel) promises to be both fuel efficient, cleaner running, and easy to start. I love power boating, and I look forward to logging some quality time in the new and improved craft.
I believe I may have finally solved the how-to-keep-my-newly-required-eyeglasses-from-disappearing conundrum, and you can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. I’m having trouble getting used to the fact that I need to wear glasses now for reading, and I often forget to carry them with me. This in turn causes me to curse and complain incessantly, annoying anyone around me. It's becoming a bigger and bigger problem, as I become blinder by the minute. I can’t stand those things that hang loosely around my neck and attach to my glasses, and every time I bend over they drop off. Same goes for my shirt pocket or just about anywhere else I keep them. I have 20 pairs of dollar store glasses lying around all over the house, but they’re never there when I need them. Today, while we were in purchasing Shauna’s new glasses, I noticed the owner of the store wearing unusual reading glasses, that actually split in half at the nose piece. They re-connect with a magnet and, when not in use, wrap around my neck. I bought a pair and they may do the trick. At least they don’t fall off when I bend over. I still don’t like having to keep reading glasses on my person, but this may be a tolerable solution.
If you thought the financial fallout was a thing of the past, guess again. Last week investment giant JP Morgan Chase announced a $2 Billion loss resulting from some bad risk assessment. Oops. While Greece and Spain teeter on the brink of insolvency, threatening to take the rest of Europe with them, and the North American “recovery” is stuck in first gear, this kind of news isn’t encouraging. Looks like Biff might not be getting that new BMW for graduation after all. What we need is a healthy infusion of denial on Wall Street, just like the good old days.
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
As Spring peeks through the grey clouds of the past week, I notice that we have some new visitors out on our lake. Two baby loons have taken up residence in the waters near our house and this makes me happy. With their beautiful markings and melodious call, loons are probably my favorite local birds. Unlike the noisy over population of Canadian geese, who honk incessantly and leave their piles of crap everywhere, loons are a welcome addition to our lake. They seem to thrive here, unlike some of the other lakes up here overrun with “personal watercrafts.” Apparently, the wakes from jet skis are tough on baby loons. I know what you’re thinking, that I’m acting like Katherine Hepburn in On Golden Pond. I have one thing to say you. Pooh! I’ve become a bird lover, which is something I never thought I‘d become. On the other hand, I am not a squirrel lover. Last week I received my “Yard Sentinel,” the latest in my so far ineffective arsenal of rodent-busting weapons. In my never ending squirrel eradication campaign, I am desperately grasping at all straws. The Yard Sentinel is an electronic device designed to emit an ultrasonic noise bothersome to rodents. I set it for the proper frequency, plugged it in a placed it out in the yard, but I think the f-ing thing is attracting them. It certainly isn’t not driving them away. And while I was expecting it to emit some inaudible high pitched sound, it makes noises like predatory birds. I could do that. No more Mr. Nice Guy, it’s time for Plan B. I’ll let you know what Plan B is when I figure it out.
Believe it or not, I have a big problem with animal abuse of any sort. In truth, I wouldn’t knowingly make even a squirrel suffer. A friend of ours down in Florida named Lois used to take in retired race horses and rehabilitate them, after which she placed them in good homes. It was a difficult job, because it was expensive (she barely made enough to cover her expenses), She had no help, and it was emotionally and physically taxing. Some of those horses had been badly abused. My mom and dad were avid equestrians but not big fans of horse racing, specifically because of the mistreatment of some of the animals. They felt many thoroughbreds were raced too young, before their bones were fully developed, and this caused sometimes fatal accidents. Last week I read a disturbing article in the NY Times about the problem, with the general message that the problem has escalated with the infusion of casino gambling money. With higher purses, there is more inclination for owners to put injured animals on the track, loaded up with painkillers and other drugs, and this has resulted in an astounding escalation in serious accidents and on-track euthanasia. All in all it’s dangerous for the jockeys and horribly cruel to the horses. Money talks and the horses suffer. As often happens, the regulatory agencies put in place to avoid this kind of animal cruelty have been ineffective, and it was actually the jockeys who finally made a stand. Everyone thinks in terms of the big races and assumes that most race horses are expensive, pampered animals. In truth, the majority of race horses are not big money makers, and stories of abuse to “claim race” horses, the lower end of the racehorse spectrum, are becoming more and more common.
Final notes. In the let’s-get-real department, there was a ferry disaster in Guwahati India, in the northeastern part of the country, wherein 103 drown when an overloaded ferry sunk in bad weather. I read about these accidents all the time, and it amazes me what is not considered hard news in America. Snookie’s expanding waist line and Newt Gingrich’s campaign debts are front page news in North America, but this tragedy rated one paragraph on some inside page of the NY Times. Can you imagine if that disaster had happened in America? It would certainly be front page news, and Elton John would write a song about it. Adam Yauch, a/k/a “MCA” and founding member of the seminal hip hop group The Beastie Boys died last week at 47 from a rare for of cancer of the salivary gland. I was never a fan of the band, but from what I’ve read about him post mortem, Yauch was a very interesting guy, and nothing like his onstage persona.
Gotta go … time to sharpen my hatchet and “get medieval” on some squirrels. Don’t worry, I’ll be humane and make it quick.
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
