For those who are on the road

With my mother's family in Pennsylvania and my father's in Indiana, I had to wait to grow up before I could enjoy a North Country Christmas. We had a sort of little "practice" Christmas at home, then hit the road for the real thing--you know--three or four generations, all the extension leaves in the big table and the youngest kids banished to card tables in the parlor. We would all pack into one of a long collection of too-small family sedans, including two Ramblers, one Corvair and a Borgward, to brave the white weather. The sweetest music I have ever heard came out of car radios, late on Christmas Eve, beamed across the heartland through a thousand miles of snow.

Saving Grace

It would have been '58 or '59, the early December day my father brought home his latest bargain. The back seat of the two-tone Buick contained fifty pounds of grain and twenty pounds of extremely tweaked live turkey. His theory was to use the one to feed the other up to a dignified corpulence appropriate to the guest of honor at Christmas dinner. Tom Turkey occupied a box in one corner of the cellar, while Ginger nursed her pups in the opposite corner next to the coal furnace, and we kids took turns trooping up and down the rickety stairs to keep everybody fed and watered. On Christmas Eve morning Dad took Tom away and came back with something large, plucked and headless for Mom to stuff. But I've always suspected that, in the end, he made a secret run to the A & P, after releasing Tom into some hedgerow out of town, where his descendants dodge traffic to this day. A bargain at twice the price.

(Warm and) Fuzzy Math

The words jabber and algebra come from the same root in Arabic. This is good to remember when dealing with notions such as "return on investment," (or ROI in bizspeak). The language of economics is so mired in the commercial model, that we can find no term more descriptive to call other economic structures than "not-for-profit." If we are not-for-profit, then what are we for? How do we measure our success? It's simpler in the world of profit--spend the minimum dollars, charge the maximum dollars, count the difference. This is the algebra of the jungle, where many maintain we all reside. But we don't, really. It's just that we have no clear grip on the algebra of community. What, after all, is the return on investment for dropping a five-spot in the bellringer's bucket?

Big Bird

If all the turkey consumed in the last week came back as one giant bird, it could squash the Capitol rotunda flat, kick over the Washington Monument and snap F-18s out of the sky with its cruel hundred-foot beak. Hopeless crowds would scream while rivers of smoking gravy gushed down the slopes of mashed potato mountains faster than a man can run. "Meat, please," as partner Bill says, "meat with lard sauce." For Zantac, Propulsid, and the little purple pill, we give thee thanks, oh Lord.