A New Year cometh...

In three days 2015 will be history. This has not been the best of years. Personal loss included a sister and a wife. Personal benefits include good health, five children and families who love and support each other and me, and new friends made and kept. A great-grandson made his appearance and is a loving joy. Out of deference to his parents’ wishes, no one in the family is putting his pictures in social media on the web. But take my word for it he is a handsome little man. Siblings and close old friends continue to do well and we are grateful for that and them. 

As we greet the New Year we are on the run-up to the Presidential primaries and later the election. In this mornings paper a lead story says that all the tickets are sold out for a local (Hilton Head Island) appearance by Donald Trump. At this time a year ago not many saw this wheeler-dealer leading the Republican pack at this time. I belong to the school-of-thought that says thrill seekers will attend a manhole cover opening but not many will jump in. We shall see.

Our country collectively faces many challenges, foreign and domestic in 2016. Some of these are old problems and there will be new ones. Individually, obesity is a major problem for too many Americans. I am shocked at the size of some people I see locally and as I travel around on the East Coast. 

But every year as I grow older, I remain convinced this is still the greatest country in the world. I traveled to Northern Virginia over Christmas and saw new growth and building underway in several venues. Projects I witnessed starting a couple of years ago have been finished. People have new places to live and work.  

I have unbounded faith that we -- the American people -- will meet the challenges in 2016 and a year from now look back on a great year. 

I hope it will be so for all of you and your loved ones. Do the best you can for yourself and others. You will be happiest. 

Best wishes for a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

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They sent me home with the mince pie

As evening shadows were descending on Myrtle Beach, SC, on Saturday (December 12, 2015) my two daughters and a daughter-in-law were wrapping the left over Mince pie in aluminum foil and putting it along with the hard sauce in a paper bag for me to take back to the hotel. They expressed the hope that the pie (only one piece had been eaten during dessert) would also make it to my home in Hilton Head and not be eaten during the night. 

I had requestedd the Mince pie be added to the dessert table for our Big Family Christmas (BFC) get together. Obviously, it was not a big favorite. Carrot cake pastries were in the lead. In earlier days my wife, the children’s mother, and I hosted this event at our house. This early celebration was to accomodate those with small childrn who wanted to be in their own home on Christmas morning. Over the years it also accomodated children who had to travel long distances. This season a son and D-i-L planned to start the drive to their new home in Arizona on December 13. 

My daughter Wynn and her husband Rett have picked up the reins and host the annual get together in Myrtle Beach, a favorite vacation spot for Americans and Canadians who love the more than 30 golf courses available here.  All the children have been able to make it for the last few years. Earlier, some would be overseas on assignment and unable to attend. As the senior present, I gave the thanks and asked the blessing, always remembering the members of our extended families who were elsewhere on the day.

Several years ago we stopped buying gifts for all and went to drawing names and buying a gift for the person whose name we drew. The actual drawing took place right after Thanksgiving and was conducted by my daughter and her youngest son. We would get a message telling us whom we were to buy for. Two years ago we stoppeed that. We are adults and most of us have what we need or want or (excluding the latest Lexus or a trim figure.) We adopted the Chinese Christmas game.

i wound up with a Hillary Nutcracker. Actually I started out with an electronic fly-swatter and swapped it for the Nutcracker.

We had a good BFC, enjoyed the fun with family and a couple who are like family. My great-grandson was on hand with his parents. All day long he was a perfect child, not a cry, whimper or yelp out of him and he is only eleven months old. 

Back to the pie. I put it in the refrigerator at the hotel and brought it home. I am eating on it daily; being good (in case Santa is checking) and limiting myself to one slice a day.

I wish everyone a blessed and Merry Christmas. May we and the World have peace and love on this special day and experience a great New Year full of hope and progress. - Archie

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Peanut butter dripped on my shirt

I was still coming down from a non-alcoholic high on Friday morning. The final play of the Thursday Night Football game resulted in a 27-23 win for my beloved Green Bay Packers over the Detroit Lions. It wasn’t difficult to get started for the day, especially after I watched a video of the final play a couple of times and then learned that this Hail Mary pass into the end zone is somethting the Packers practice. Who knew? I would not be surprised to learn all teams practice it.

Buttressed by coffee, toast, the obligatory shower and shave, clean underwear and I was off to the Hilton Head World Affairs Council held in the Presbyteriaan Church to hear a woman who specializes on Middle East affairs, Ellen Laipson. (Click on her name to view her credentials).

Ms. Laipson gave an informative overview of how the Middle East was formed after World War I and how events are playing out in the present. There is so much in the news these days about the Middle East it is helpful to sit back and have an overview presented succintly. Ms. Laipson doesn’t have any “solutions” to the problems posed by the area today and in the immediate future. "If she did,” I told a friend, “she would not be in Hilton Head speaking to more than 300 seniors.” In my opinion there isn’t any one “solution” to the challenges the world faces in the Middle East. But we ( the inhabitants of the planet Earth) go on anyway.

I did a little shopping on the way home. It was past noon when i unloaded the groceries and realized I needed something to eat. I put two slices of cinnamon raisin bread in the toaster and poured a glass of ice tea. When the toast popped I lathered it with peanut butter and carried my snack to my favorite chair where I picked up the current issue of The New York Review of Books to continue reading “Hanging Out With Hitler,” a review of three books by Martin Filler. None of these made me wish I could hang out with that evil man. I belong to the group that wishes I could have been present at Hitler’s birth so I could strangle him as he came out of the womb instead of the mid-wife slapping his arse to make him cry out.

And then I looked down at my blue striped dress shirt and saw a large gob of melted peanut butter still rolling and coming to a stop at the third button from the neck. Heat from the toasted bread was the culprit. It liquidfied the peanut butter. To paraphrase Jimmy Carter I won’t lie to you. I used the index finger of my right hand to scoop the peanut butter off my shirt and popped it in my mouth.

Later in the evenng, I watched  a fine movie written, directed and starring one of my current favorite actors, Kevin Spacey. “Beyond the Sea”, a fantasy telling of the life of Bobby Darin. Spacey used his own voice to sing the songs and had Darin’s moves down pat. It is available on Amazon Prime for free viewing or can be purchased on Amazon. 

After that, I took off the shirt and tossed it the laundry hamper. 

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Morsels from Book Reviews

A pleasure each weekend is reading the reviews in the tabloid sized Book Review section of The New York Times. There are so many books in print it is not a failing to acknowledge that you will never read them all. As each week comes and goes dozens of new books are announced and those which make the pages of the Book Review are the lucky ones the Times elects to preview. Hundreds more come off the presses that don’t make the cut.

On some weekends (Usually Sunday and Monday) I might read fifteen to twenty reviews and not make note of a book I will buy and read, or look for in the local library. On other weekends I jot down the title and the author of a book I really want to read and later in the week go shopping on Amazon. 

No matter the final outcome each weekend I always find some snippet of information that pleases, informs, educates or provides a chuckle. These morsels might come directly from the book under review or be the comment of a reviewer.

These are some of those special moments from this weekend’s readings.

The unscrupulous editor in chief, Simei, informs his staff that their target audience is nitwits. Crossword clues must be no more challenging than “The husband of Eve.” (Numero Zero, Umberto Eco. Reviewer: Tom Rachman)

There are episodes in his theatrical  chronicle that recall an epigram of Oscar Wilde’s : “My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure.” (The Blue Touch Paper, A Memoir, David Hare. Reviewer: Tina Brown)

The stars here are the story and the ideas and Vonnegut himself, who is always funny in the way banging your knee can sometimes be funny.: You hurt like hell and so the only thing to do about it is to laugh.(Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut. An audio book read by John Malkovich. Reviewer: Michael Ian Black)

When former U. S. Senator Alan Simpson was a scout he and another scout were sharing a tent. They became angry with one of the other scouts. Since rain was forecast, and their tent was on higher ground, Simpson and his friend dug a trench around their tent that aimed the flow of water into the other boy’s shelter. That night, it rained and the other boy got very cold and wet. (Lights Out, Ted Koppel. Reviewer: Walter Russell Mead)

Last week I finished reading an audio version of my new book in four days…As I was about to leave, I jokingly asked the audio book audio director if he could make the book a runaway audio brest seller. 

“You should have written a smut novel,” he told me. “Those are the ones that sell.” 

“Who in the world listens to smut novels?” I asked. 

“Long-haul truck drivers!” he replied.

He was pulling my leg, but only slightly. Audio recordings of erotic fiction are a blooming business. (Author’s Note, Aural Sex. Elaine Sciolino)

She slept with Friedrich Engles (He founded Marxist theroy along with Karl Marx), but never read a word of his writings. (She couldn’t, she was illiterate.) (Mrs. Engles, Gavin McCrea. Reviewer: Jan Stuart)

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Moving on...new friends and new things

Except for one posting,  I have neglected my blog since my wife died on August 9. I know, however, Joyce would not want me to sit home and become a couch potato. I have tried to go out with friends and meet new friends and experience new things, 

I recently had a lobster dinner for $12.95 on lobster night at Reilley's Northend Pub on Hilton Head Island. This is a regular Monday feature and the place was packed. We got plastic bibs and a shell cracker with each dinner as well as corn on the cob and boiled potatoes. The service was excellent.

Without knowing it, I must have been in some kind of shell for a long time because I never heard of an Arnold Palmer until lunch this week.  For those who shared life-in-the-shell this is a combination of tea and lemonade. The tea can be sweet (as I prefer) or unsweetened. (And after living in the South since 1959, I subscribe to the thought that you cannot sweeten tea after it is served. Sugar has to be the first thing in the pitcher when making sweet tea and the boiling tea poured over it with more water and ice to finish it off.)

I went to see The Intern, a feel good movie with Robert deNiro. He has apparently conceded to his age and appears in more comedies than action movies, e.g. Ronin. This weekend I will travel to Atlanta to attend a three day reunion of the Carolinas and Georgia chapter of CIRA, (Central Intelligence Retirees Association.) They extended honorary membership to me last year and Joyce and I went to Beaufort, N.C., for the 2014 reunion.  We had a great time, met some old friends again and made some new ones. I expect to do the same this year. I have signed up for tours of Coca Cola, Center for Civil and Human Rights, CNN VIP tour and Georgia Aquarium.  All ought to be highly interesting.

Visits with my children, some here and some in Charleston have also been good times. My daughter, Martha, remembered how much I enjoyed a humungous slice of coconut cake in a Charleston restaurant and she shipped me a similar piece in an iced container for my birthday to begin the month of October. The moment I had the container opened my brain sent an Eat Now message to my body.  I ate half on arrival and I ate the rest the next day. One word to describe, or make it two; Absolutely delicious.

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My Friend Pastor Sherry

Earlier this week I was in the Riviera at Seaside Apartment complex in Mt. Pleasant visiting one of my sons who is staying there in a Stalin era architectural style apartment while he and his wife decide where they will buy a new home. 

This business and residential community is next to Franke at Seaside where I lived prior to my marriage in March 2013. I stopped by to visit my good and dear friend Pastor Sherry Owensby-Sikes, the Lutheran Minister in residence at Franke. I knew she has been battling cancer for the third time in her life, and I was extremely pleased to see her positive, outgoing, "this can be licked" attitude.

Pastor Sherry was wearing a turban and she asked if I wanted to see her head. "Yes," I said, and she removed the turban.  We laughed. Then she called a co-worker to come to her office and take this picture of two baldies. The good part is her hair is starting to grow back in but it is too late for me. Before I saved my head I had that General MacArthur style of hair where three strands were combed over to the side. Gauche in this day and age.

My good and dear friend, Pastor Sherry

My prayer and that of all our friends at Franke and elsewhere are for Pstor Sherry's fight against this latest challenge. We are confident if it can be overcome, she will do it.
God Bless.

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Joyce L. Archibald, R.I.P.

It is with a shocked and sad heart that I inform my friends and others that my wife Joyce L. Archibald died on Sunday, August 9, 2015 at around 11 a.m at Landmark Acute Care Hospital in Savannah, GA.

Joyce went there on July 24 after being in the ICU at Hilton Head Hospital for 11 days. We anticipated she would have a recovery at Landmark but she was unable to breathe without a breathing machine and her condition deteriorated after that.

Joyce was an active woman all her life, a fine business woman, a golfer for almost 40 years, she had six holes-in-one, a tremendous feat. She had left instructions that she did not want aggressive medical actions to prolong her life. She could not have lived as she desired with a breathing tube in her throat and a feeding tube in her stomach.

Joyce's son David Perkins and his wife Carol with here for the week preceding Joyce's passing. Her second son, William, had been here several days earlier. My five children and spouses were on hand this week as well. 

Joyce and I were married on St. Patricks Day in 2013. We loved and enjoyed each other in the time we had together. She was a wonderful companion, a friend to all, loved her family and me.

Our wedding

A couple of minutes before Joyce died, I led the family in saying prayers I learned as a child: The Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be. When we finished, Joyce breathed her last. 

I believe Joyce would like us to remember her as in Tennyson's Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea.

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Property inspection and good readings

Sometime it is a delight to look our the window and see your front yard being inspected. This Heron recently walked around our front lawn and then decided to inspect our neighbor's yard. So off he went walking tall on the gravel stone walkway up to our neighbor's front porch.

I completed two good books this month: The Billion Dollar Spy, a true story of Cold War espionage and betrayal by Pulitzer Prize winner David E.Hoffman. He recounts in exciting detail how a Soviet engineer volunteered to spy for the CIA in the heart of Moscow. His tales of clandestine meetings put you on the street evading KGB surveillance and your heart pumps during fifteen minute meetings in darkened nights. (Doubleday Publishers, available on Amazon.com.)

The second book is a memoir from former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, (with Bill Harlow) who was George W. Bush's briefing officer for much of Bush's presidency. The Great War of Our Time, The CIA's fight against terrorists from Al QA'IDA to ISIS, takes the reader inside the White House and the offices of the CIA from 9/11 to the present. (Publisher: Twelve - A Hacherte Book Group, also available on Amazon.com.

Take either or both of these books to the beach on the mountains on your vacation and you will have serious narratives; especially read Morell's memoir if you are at all concerned about terrorism. 

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Man and his automobile

Henry Ford's development of the assembly line in 1913 was one of those moments Eastman Kodak had been waiting for since it began mass production of the personal camera in 1888. Man and his new automobile have possibly been the subject of more photos over the last 100 years than scantily clad beauty queens at Atlantic City. Not one to break an American tradition, here is me and my new car purchased on Thursday. (The wife is the official photographer.) The auto is a 2013 Lexus ES 350 and easily the finest automobile I have ever driven. which includes a BMW and a long line of Lincoln Towncars (official car of the Mafia).

It will take a while to learn all the wonderful things in this car but already I particularly like the rearview camera which shows a picture on the dashboard of what is behind me when I back up. The built in GPS will be a great aid to getting around, and eliminates the need to carry a portable GPS on long trips.  I've keyed in the garage opener to a button on the bottom of the rear view mirror and will dispense with clipping the opener on the visor. This model is a front-wheel drive, and this eliminates a large hump on the floor in the back seating area; thus seating three comfortably. 

Now, all I have to do is pay for it. Isn't America a great country?

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PS: My earlier blog about a boat lock should have noted it is only one of three such locks on the East  Coast. Two are on Hilton Head Island and the third in Jacksonville, FL. 

A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney, likable curmudgeon of the 60 Minutes show on CBS who began “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney” in 1978 and kept at until October, 2011, also wrote a newspaper column, TV shows for others and more than a dozen books, most of which were best sellers. His skills were honed during World War II when he was a correspondent for the Army’s Stars and Stripes.

I have not read all of his books, perhaps two or three prior to this latest reading but I remember them generally as good reads. This most recent read, “Years of Minutes”, Public Affairs, New York. (523 pages), was originally published in 2003, and I picked it up in the lending library where I live.

The book contains many of the Minutes essays aired from 1982 to 2003. I found in several of these comments that struck me as especially keen or humorous insights. Here are just a few (quote marks omitted):

You may not think driveways are important, but let me give you one figure. A car parked behind another car in the driveway, with the keys removed and temporarily misplaced, is the third biggest cause of divorce in America today. (1985)

And the one thing that makes us all like America better than any other country…there are more Americans living here than anyplace else. (From Good Things, 1988.)

President Bush gave his health speech the other day and he talked about the kind of health care people want. Well, I can tell him what we want. We all want the kind of health care a President gets. If the President faints, there are two doctors taking his pulse before he hits the floor. That’s the kind of health care we’d all like to have. (1992)

August is the only month without a real or fake holiday. That’s because we don’t want to waste a day off work during our vacation. (Official Holidays, 1996.)

Does anyone read Time, Newsweek and U.S. News?   I mean all three? (Wealth of Information, 1999.) I subscribed to and read all three in the 90’s. What does that say about me?

First, we learned that the United States spent several hundred million dollars digging a tunnel under the Russian Embassy in Washington so we could spy on them. Does this make you proud to be an American.(Most News is Bad News, 2001.)

The (New York) Times gets about $75,000 a page Sunday…multiply that by 250 pages. This edition would bring in $18 million. (The Sunday Paper, 2001.)

Andy died in November, 2011, following complications of surgery. He was 92 years of age. 

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Lock at Windmill Harbor

The boat lock at Windmill Harbor is the first and only one I have seen on Hilton Head Island. When i went to the boat show earlier this month it was an interesting surprise. An attendant told me the lock had been closed last year for about three months for repairs. When this happens the boats in the anchorage are locked in and those outside are locked out. Not a happy time for boaters. This was all the more interesting because before my visit I read a story of how British forces blocked and blew up a lock built to accommodate Germany's largest battleships. When this happened in March,1942, the lock was not usable by the Germans for the duration of World War II. 

The gate to the lock.

Inside the lock.

The anchorage.

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My Sister Carol

Today at 11:12 in her home in The Villages, Florida, my youngest sister, Carol, died with three close friends in attendance. She had declined chemotherapy and radiation a couple of months ago. This was her third bout with cancer and it was too much for her. I visited her in April along with my son, James. 

Carol was born on June 7, 1935. She would have been 80 in a month. She was a retired federal employee, a contract officer for the Air Force during her working life. She started with the Air Force in an entry position and worked her way to the top civil service grade short of the Executive Service.

She was an avid golfer for fifty years and won many tournaments and served as the president of her golf club. She was blessed with many friends, among them Carole Tessier with whom she shared her life. They moved in together when their mothers died and owned property together. 

Carol was a friendly and outgoing personality who had a good sense of humor, was smart, liked a beer and cheered the Red Sox and New England Patriots. She was especially voluble when the Sox ended a 100-year drought and won the World Series in 2004. 

Carol was the linchpin of our family She lived with our mother all her life and took care of the business affairs of an aunt and uncle. She was especially close to her older sister and younger brother. Our brother Charlie preceded Carol in death, also a victim of cancer. 

My mother told me that of all her five children, Carol took my father's 1940-41 abandonment of us the hardest. Like all of us she struggled to put herself through college and overcome hardships we all faced. She did this with the same courage and discipline that she refused the final chemo and radiation treatment.

Carol was a lifelong Roman Catholic and received the last rites recently. I have no doubt her soul joined our mother in heaven on this, Mother's Day, 2015.

We, her siblings, my family, Carole Tessier, and the multiple dozens who knew and loved Carol will miss her as we continue to pray for her.

Carol Tessier and Carol Archibald, 2010

Wi-fi pacemaker check and flying wheelbarrows

WiFi pacemaker check:

The technician put a programming wand (resembles a large mixing spoon with a hole in the center on the end of a cord attached to a monitor) around my neck and dropped it over my left shoulder to where my new pacemaker (installed in January 2015) is and then instantly removed it. 

"What's wrong?", I inquired. I've had a pacemaker for over six years and when it is checked (about twice a year) the wand was used throughout the check. 

"Nothing is wrong. See this antenna on top of the monitor? It is reading your pacemaker by Wi-fi." The brief use of the wand established a connection between my pacemaker and the monitor.  

This was not the only surprise awaiting me. The second technician asked if I would like her to monitor my pacemaker continuously from home by telephone. She explained, and I signed on. Some equipment will come in the mail which I will hook it up to the house phone and it will be connected to a computer monitored by the technician. We had some friendly banter about her staying awake 24/7 to monitor me and she assured me it wouldn't be that intimate.
Progress is always underway. Some pacemakers currently have a battery with a 8 to 10 year life expectancy.  Swiss scientists are testing to see if the heart itself could power the pacemaker and make batteries obsolete. 

A fellow retiree in Arlington,VA, told me this story recently:

It has been annoyingly windy up here all week long, preventing me from flying.  And here is where our story begins....

G

In search of simulated flight today, I headed to Leesburg to use the school's full motion simulator.  With a head full of aeronautical thoughts I set out on Interstate 66, west....

Traveling down I-66 west at the speed limit, because that is how I drive, I was being passed rather frequently by cars and SUVs driven by self absorbed very important people on their way to big and important meetings.  


I was driving in the right inner lane of the four lanes.  Over in the fast lane was a large truck loaded with all sorts of lawn care equipment.  Positioned on top of the pile of equipment were two heavy duty wheelbarrows.  They were positioned such that the tops of the wheelbarrows were facing downward.  

I was boxed in by speeding cars to my left and right with another behind me coming up fast.  Not wanting to be reared ended, I slowed and fortunately the guy behind me slowed too.  We came to a rapid halt as the wheelbarrow now cascading down the interstate headed right for my car.
It must have bounced 5 or 6 times before coming to a halt about 3 feet in front of my car as I stopped.  The wheelbarrow was perfectly upright.  

Think about that:  worked all these years and learned to fly only to be killed by a flying wheelbarrow--on the way to the airport.  Not a way to go.....

I pulled off the road and saw two men get out of a truck behind me and push the wheelbarrow off the road.  As for the truck that lost the wheelbarrow, he never slowed down.

Cranberries Don't Help

Bloomberg Businessweek (March 2-8, 2015) ran a major story on how Kellogg's, after 109 years of being in business,  has lost the breakfast meal. This was of particular interest to me because I have been eating Kellogg's Raisin Bran practically every morning since the decade of the 60s. (By now I ought to be on pension from Kellogg.) For most of that time it was one cup of RB and a half-cup of Kellogg's All-Bran. The latter recommended by my mother "for regularity."

Kellogg's has more than 25 cereal brands, most aimed at kids and parents on the go. Frosted Flakes are their number one seller. Raisin Bran and Rice Krispies are close to the bottom of the revenue stream. 

Efforts are being made ( it's called "a long-term rescue plan") to regain market share, One effort adds cranberries to the Raisin Bran. It isn't working. 

I looked at four stores before I found any on a shelf, and then I used a 70 cents off coupon to buy a box. I needed a magnifying glass to find the cranberries. There were only a few (apparently only raisins come in "Two Scoops.") The bran flakes were lighter in color than in the Raisin Bran without. There was no taste of the cranberries or cranberry flavor.

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The Interview

On Tuesday night Netflix surprised by offering The Interview for instant viewing. This is the film that got North Korea bent out of shape because it pokes fun at "Dear Leader," ("Dear Leader" in black on the right.)

and led (or not) to cyber-hacking Sony Corporation which wasted a lot of money putting this piece of trash together.  Shareholders ought to revolt. If it was not for the controversy created by offending "Dear Leader" and his minions,  this film would have been of no interest to anyone and the master copy of the film would have gone straight to some vault for unreleased films in the Arizona desert.

The story line is two PR guys who specialize in TV nonsense calculated to titillate the masses are going to North Korea to interview "Dear Leader." This comes about because "Dear Leader" allegedly watches every episode of the TV program these nut cases are connected with and wants to be on their show. Hence they are invited to broadcast the show from North Korea. To assure it goes well, "Dear Leader" will write the questions to be put to him. Along the way, the CIA gets wind of this and not an agency to let an opportunity go to waste prevails on the two showmen to kill "Dear Leader." This is where I ought to have shut the film off and gone to something more worthwhile, e.g. picking the lint out from between my toes.

But I hung in there. (What does that say about me? I hung in there for research purposes sounds sort of lame.)

North Korea and "Dear Leader" rightly ought to be insulted by this film. Not because it pokes fun at "Dear Leader," but because it is such a terrible film. It has more usage of the F word as a noun, verb, adjective and adverb than an hour of Lewis Black The dialogue and premise is so stupidly insulting to even the least average among us it makes your skin crawl. Watching it in the privacy of your home is the only redeeming feature: your neighbors won't see you coming out of a viewing at your local theater.