Three Men in a Boat
May 31, 2008
With apologies to Jerome K. Jerome for cribbing his title (by the way, if you haven’t read this funny little book, you should) , three septuagenarian Ayers brothers met at Monarch Cove, Lake of the Ozarks, for four days of relaxation, conversation, and fishing, in order of importance.
Gathered here on the deck of Dave and Marilyn’s condo, the reminiscences flowed, some of them accurate, all of them fun to recount without being immediately subject to marital correction. I suspect that our close neighbors on the deck opposite may have learned more than they really wanted to know about us.
In the event that his two older brothers started getting boring or overbearing, Tom brought along his painting kit. Whether from boredom or not, he painted the view to the East from our deck. I hope 1) that he decides to color the water green instead of the present muddy brown and 2) finishes it and gives it to us for framing.
The plan for assaulting our piscatorial adversaries included fishing the sunken beds around the dock for Crappie, drifting for Crappie from a rented pontoon boat, casting for bass from Dave’s bass boat. I very reluctantly report that except for a handful of Crappie caught due to Tom’s relentless and untiring effort (he’s younger than we are after all), the plan failed. But we did catch a few, some of which posed for their portrait.
Since Tom has only two hands, brother Don offered to display the runt of the catch.
Tom the younger simply never gave up, leaving his older siblings gasping for breath. Our Uncle Bus used to tell us that if we wanted to sink a basket, we probably should try to get the ball at least as high as the rim. Likewise, it’s hard to catch fish if our lure is not in the water. I might note here that, in spite of a friend’s insistence that you have to use minnows to catch Crappie, we were using little 1/16-Oz tube jigs below small bobbers. So there! I must admit, however, that our catch might have been better using minnows - live ones rather than the fragrant dead ones left in the boat after said friend’s last trip out.
Fishing tactic number two was to fish in the creature comfort of a 21-ft rented pontoon boat. Comfort it gave us; fish it did not, but not for a lack of trying. I remember days in my fishing past catching gobs of Crappie by letting the wind drift our bobbers over their hidey-holes. I’m morally certain that they got drifted over time and again, but this time they were not hungry. I blame it on sex. They were just off their spawn and were undoubtedly resting up.
We returned the pontoon boat and fired up the trusty, 14-year-old Ranger bass boat, which complained a bit trying to get “out of the hole” with three-abreast fishermen weighing it down, but up on plane it got and we went skimming across the lake to a pleasant little North Shore cove near historic Wilmore Lodge. Conditions were perfect and expectations were high. Little wind, temperature in the seventies. I guess that the bass were even more comfortable, because we got no bites in spite of expert technique and limitless patience.
Don’t we look professional and confident?
I’ll close this little photo essay with an image that personifies our fishing and conversational demeanor: calm and casual. Which is how it should be when three brothers gather to enjoy each other’s company, engage in tale-swapping, and try to eat each other under the table. Life is short, and opportunities like our pre-Memorial Day reunion are too rare. We figure that in a year or so we may try it again, if the Lord continues to bless and the creek doesn’t rise.
Dave, grateful for my bros; they’re the greatest!
Hell is other people at breakfast (Sartre)
August 16, 2007
I wonder why I liked “Caring for Your Introvert?” Thanks to Michael Kruse who thanked Wendy Bailey for finding this article. My name is Dave, and I am an introvert.
Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?
Of course you do. As for the opposite end of the personality scale,
Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.
Here’s one more quote, and then you can jolly well click through and read it for yourself.
Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. Still, we endure stoically, because the etiquette books—written, no doubt, by extroverts—regard declining to banter as rude and gaps in conversation as awkward. We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts’ Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say “I’m an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush.”
Dave, feeling it’s time to shush himself.
Five Generations
November 23, 2006
Son and first-time grandfather Larry posted this. There is nothing I can add.
Riverside Rambles: Larry Ayers’ Weblog » Five Generations
Dave, looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner.
Sorry, you can’t have the internet… you’re over 70
September 4, 2006
It would be worth the cost of a trip to England just for the fun of trying to “have the Internet.” It wouldn’t offend me at all to be refused service. I would love to talk to that young clerk. What a hoot it would be! I’d come away with enough material for a year of blog posts.
Sorry, you can’t have the internet… you’re over 70 | the Daily Mail
The 75-year-old would only be allowed to sign the forms for the Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk phone and broadband package if she was accompanied by a younger member of her family who could explain the small print to her.
Mrs Greening-Jackson, who sits on the board of several charities, said: “I was absolutely furious. The young man said, ‘Sorry, you’re over 70. It’s company policy. We don’t sign anyone up who is over 70.’
“Later a young lady said company policy is that anyone over 70 might not understand the contract. She said, ‘If you would be prepared to go to the shop in town and take a younger member of your family we might give you a contract.’
Dave, admitting that there are days that I wonder about me and the Net.
WCPE-FM: A business model that works
August 30, 2006
I keep my eye open for unique businesses that thrive when most would say that they can’t. A few years ago, my love of classical music (which balances out my love for Country music) led me to The Classical Station in Wake Forest, NC. The General Manager is Deborah S. Proctor, and she often talks about their business model in her mailings.
Their quarterly publication is Quarter Notes, and its masthead says this about WCPE:
Great Classical Music is FREE from The Classical Station, WCPE,
- A commercial-free, 24-hour classical music service for cable systems, satellite services and radio stations. Available without cost or obligation via C-band and Ku-band satellite.
- Hear our Free-to-Air DVB signal on … .
- Hear our unscrambled signal on Satellite Galaxy 14, … .
- Listen online at TheClassicalStation.org.
How do they do it? Believe it or not, they are dependent 100% on listener support, almost half of which comes from people like me listening to their online stream. While off-air classical music is disappearing all over the country, WCPE is tapping into a national, even global, online market of classical listeners. Like me, many others must think that a few bucks a month is a reasonable donation to support 24-hour classical music.
The cost of providing these services is mind-boggling, and I still have trouble believing they can do it, but they do it year after year, and with on-air fund drives only twice a year. Deborah and the WCPE team: a tip of the Orlop hat to you, and may you continue to prosper!
Dave, which he loves Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Sacred music on Sunday mornings, and… .
The broom man II
August 24, 2006
You remember a post about a year ago about the broom man? Since I walk past his front door often, and when the weather is good he is sometimes out sweeping his curb gutters, we always wave and he always holds out his broom and asks me to sweep for a while.
A few days ago, I finally decided I ought to introduce myself and at least learn his name. He was sweeping away under 95-degree sunshine (neither of us have enough sense to stay by the air conditioner). I shook his hand and asked his name. He said, “You know the name Costello? Well, that ain’t me. I’m Abbot. Ha-ha-ha.” He is Kenneth Abbot, an 83-year-old retired steamfitter whose wife died two years ago. I could say he lives alone, but that might be misleading.
Without prompting, Ken asked, “You know why I sweep out the gutters in front of my house? Well, sir, it’s because I get satisfaction from it. And I meet all sorts of wierd people.” That’s good enough for me. We stood there under the broiling sun and talked some more. I told him I was an Ayers, not a Lew Ayers, nor from the Ayers Oil Company, just Dave Ayers. I think he was a bit disappointed. When I told him I was a founder of Quintron Corporation, he shot right back, “Then how about a loan?” and cracked up. After he got his laugh out, he wheezed a bit and said that he just loves kidding people and told me a few stories about the people he meets as he goes to stores around town, mostly about exchanging hugs with young ladies. “Before I go out, I take a shower and put on some deoderant so they will say that I smell pretty.”
Ken is just one cheerful, likable guy. He stays active, chats up neighbors and walkers, and enjoys life, even if his knees don’t work quite like they used to. As we parted, he said he enjoyed our talk, and he’ll always be ready to talk back and forth with me, “15 minutes for me and 5 minutes for you. Ha-ha-ha.”
Dave, whose day was better for having met Ken Abbot.
Happy birthday to me
July 9, 2006
Wasn’t it only yesterday that I was celebrating the beginning of my seventh decade with Bros. Don and Tom in the sunny Napa Valley of California, way out on the left coast? Then how come today I’m kicking off my 76th year? Fortunately no one is planning to “do” my birthday, and I will be more than content to open a few cards, pinch my wife and go to bed at ten as usual.
Of course I sometimes wonder how long I will be allowed to string out this chain of birthdays. Maybe tyromancy would help. My Forgotten English Calendar told me on the 29th of June that this is divining by the coagulation of cheese. Do you suppose my lunch-time cottage cheese would work?
I subscribe to the theory that we all have some grim disease within us that is just waiting for an opportunity to spring up and say, “Boo!I really don’t much care what it is that eventually will scare me to death. I am told that the human being is more or less hard-wired to last until age 85, give or take. I am hoping to stay spry until a month or so before my 85th birthday, at the end of which I will retire as usual at ten and die in my sleep.
I’ve talked to God about that, but He is noncommittal. He usually is about anything more than a few minutes in the future, but if He decides not to honor my modest request, that’s OK with me. I long ago reached the point where It’s OK however he engineers my circumstances, even if I don’t like it. Now, isn’t that magnanimous of me? I thought so.
So… happy birthday to me and let’s wrap this up for another year.
Dave, still on the downwind approach.
Puero y Asociados
May 23, 2006
Let me introduce you to Kiva and the world of microfinance in the developing world. It is the story of Matthew and Jessica Flannery who are true believers in the power of small business development to change the lives of the poor.
The Flannerys claim that half the world’s population live on less than $2 a day. Most of these people live in developing countries and are self-employed. Microfinance provides financial services to those excluded from the formal financial system and team with microcredit/microloan programs to effectively boost the income-producing capabilities of small businesses run by the self-employed poor.
Now let me introduce you to Boris Puero Candela, proprietor of Puero Y Asociados in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Boris’s small business repairs computers and helps his clients connect to the Internet. He is seeking a $1,200 loan to add an employee and expand his business. Through Kiva and their microfinance partner MIFEX, $850 has been raised from online investors, including myself. The other day I sent along $100 to help make up the loan, which is to be repaid over 12-16 months. I hope to receive progress reports when the loan is granted, and I’ll pass along what I learn.
Dave, hoping this is all that it appears to be.
Hedonic adaption
March 2, 2006
Everyone seems to have opinions about happiness research. Apparently a branch of such research goes under the hapless name of “hedonic adaption.”
EconLog, Happiness Research: Get Used to It, Bryan Caplan: Library of Economics and Liberty
I’m not so sure I want to get used to it, except perhaps for its entertainment value. In my not so humble opinion, any analysis of human happiness that ignores God’s dealing with his creatures is suspect, if for no other reason that God has so much to say about happiness.
One interesting thought in hedonic adaption is the tendency we have to blame others when we deem ourselves to be unhappy.
If and who you blame for bad events matters too. In one study, “[V]ictims of severe accidents who blamed themselves for the accident were coping more successfully eight to twelve months afterward than those who did not, and… victims who blamed other people (as opposed to some nonspecific external cause) displayed especially low coping scores.” This rings so true to me that my head is still spinning. Have I ever felt unhappy for long about something without blaming another person? I’m drawing a blank.
The bottom line is that I’m glad that smart, careful scholars like F&L are hard at work on this topic because I want the answers. Happiness is much too important to be left to the mush-heads in the New Age/Self-Help section.
If you get the answers you are looking for from happiness research, Bryan, what will you do with them? Is this just an intellectual exercise, or do you hope to find a magic pill for unhappiness for yourself or for others? (But I agree wholeheartedly with your last assertion!)
Dave, who is not sure whether it is very important for him to be happy.
The proper study of mankind?
January 2, 2006
Here’s a dandy article to start off the new year. Why do anthropologists strain so hard trying to prove an unprovable theory of evolution? At least it keeps them off the streets.
The proper study of mankind | Economist.com
SEVEN hundred and forty centuries ago, give or take a few, the skies darkened and the Earth caught a cold. Toba, a volcano in Sumatra, had exploded with the sort of eruptive force that convulses the planet only once every few million years. The skies stayed dark for six years, so much dust did the eruption throw into the atmosphere. It was a dismal time to be alive and, if Stanley Ambrose of the University of Illinois is right, the chances were you would be dead soon. In particular, the population of one species, known to modern science as Homo sapiens, plummeted to perhaps 2,000 individuals.
The proverbial Martian, looking at that darkened Earth, would probably have given long odds against these peculiar apes making much impact on the future. True, they had mastered the art of tool-making, but so had several of their contemporaries. True, too, their curious grunts allowed them to collaborate in surprisingly sophisticated ways. But those advantages came at a huge price, for their brains were voracious consumers of energy—a mere 2% of the body’s tissue absorbing 20% of its food intake. An interesting evolutionary experiment, then, but surely a blind alley.
A blind alley it certainly is. I submit that using Genesis 1:1 as a thought-starter not only is more illuminating but avoids strange speculations like the above.
Dave, more comfortable with his own strange speculations.
