July 20, 1989

Desperately seeking an attitude transplant but finding no donors with attitudes our psyche would not reject, we reconcile ourselves to the Dog Days.
The ancient Greeks celebrated the season by collaring all the loose dogs in the vicinity and roasting them on a communal bonfire.
We prefer slumbering. The heat, the humidity, the lack of late summer excitement are perfect ingredients for a healthy batch of sleep.
The average person in this country lives about 75 years. That same common person spends fully 25 years asleep; fully one third of the only life we have is spent with eyes and mind closed, oblivious.
Except in late summer, that seems a ridiculous waste of time. But with the thermometer at 98 degrees, the humidity at 95%, and Pete Rose 90% sure of being ousted from baseball, sleeping seems like the ideal pastime.
Some suggest life would be richer without sleep, that noble accomplishments would be common if only we were constantly conscious. Wisdom would be attained, experiences would be encountered, hopes would be realized, bills would be paid if only we didn’t while away a third of our lives in somnolence.
It seems improper, they argue, that we who teeter at the very peak of evolutionary advance should be cursed with slumber needs. Plants don’t sleep. Some animals never doze off. Why, even the lowly amoeba performs its mindless functions 24 hours a day. “Good night, don’t let the virus bite,” is not part of amoebic vernacular.
Children share the sentiments of the sleep-haters. Short people, not yet imparted with adult wisdom, think of sleep as an abomination, a vexation of the spirit. Left to their own devices, youngsters would put an end to sleep.
Scientists describe sleep as a normal condition of the body “characterized by a depression of the physiological activities with a degree of unconsciousness.” The same white-robed biological apostles have used their waking hours to determine that sleep is essential for the reconstruction of human organs after a period of activity-only in the absence of such activity can reconstruction take place. Hence, according to scientific manuals (manuals embraced by many politicians), if we wish to be conscious we must first be unconscious. With apologies to Descartes, I sleep therefore I am.
Extensive study has attempted to decipher the mechanics of sleep. One theory contends sleep results from an accumulation of acid products during the active hours which causes a numbing of the central nervous system. Another theory proposes that the body used more intramolecular oxygen during the waking hours which finally diminishes the body’s sensitivity.
We grow sleepy reading about why we are growing sleepy.
Thomas Alva Edison, the idol of every red-blooded America school boy, lived 84 years and held patents on 1,033 different inventions. During his days on earth, Edison spent little time in bed. Child-like in his enthusiasm for the world around him, in order to experience as much of is as possible he perfected the five-minute doze. While working on the light bulb he experimented unsuccessfully with thousands of filaments. During his experiments he seldom spent a night in bed, preferring momentary naps.
On the other end of the sleep scale are poets. Shakespeare recognized the essential nature of blissful rest; “We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
Samuel Coleridge thoroughly appreciated the pleasure of a pillow beneath his head; “Oh! Sleep it is a gentle thing beloved from pole to pole.”
These Dog Days it is Shakespeare rather than Edison who should be emulated.
The primary accomplishment of Edison was the creation of artificial light which gets in our eyes when we try to sleep.
So, flip that switch on your way out. And don’t bother us until September…. ~T.Stucky

July 5, 1990

Wednesday's paper carried the story of a Louisiana man who was apparently electrocuted when his sweat dripped into the electric drill he was using to build a swing set in his back yard. In the oppressive summer heat, his attempt at constructive activity met with a tragic consequence.
Imagine that; life shocked away while engaged in the noblest of pursuits-creating a plaything for a grandchild.
Now, the man could be immortalized as the patron saint of playground equipment, or he could be used by the makers of power tools as an example of what happens when you don’t read the instruction manual. He may become an icon used by couch potatoes across the land to justify their vegetative existence, or he may become known to history (after his fifteen minutes of breakfast table fame have elapsed) as just another unfortunate soul with overactive sweat glands.
We read the article with interest because we were preparing to defy the heat and slap some paint on the house. We took particular note of the article because the portion of the house to be painted includes the electricity meter and the shiny metal power line.
Electricity to us, two centuries after Franklin and a century after Edison, remains a mysterious phenomenon, something not understandable-somewhat like rap music. We flip on the television and see the image, we turn on the radio and hear the sound, we press the button on the microwave and get hot pizza, but don’t ask us how. We know not to dry our hair while still in the bathtub. We know not to unclog the toaster with a fork, and we know cats should not be encouraged to lick electricity outlets. But we don’t know why something so kind and beneficial (we quickly go crazy during power outages) could be malevolent to the point of killing a perspiring man building a swing set in his back yard.
Our first awareness of electricity’s split personality came on a tranquil summer day during our tranquil childhood. Bill Serkland, the kid down the street who knew everything because he had an older brother, was tossing a ball around in the yard. By accident or design, the ball landed on the roof and we were forced to pile a chair atop the picnic table and climb to the roof to retrieve it.
Because the roof was a place to which we seldom ventured, we made the most of our visit, checking out the shuffle board equipment stored under the eaves, looking down into the neighbors’ yard from our hilltop vantage point, waving with dominion at the kids far below playing in the sprinkler. And then we approached the power wires and telephone line which served as an umbilical cord, connecting our house to the electric mother power poles which loomed in the alley. Three black-wrapped power lines swept down from the pole, and one thin telephone line.
“You can touch one of these power lines at a time,” Bill Serkland said. “But you touch two at a time, you’re dead.”
Parental warning had long since made us wary of the wires, and so when we saw Bill stroll nonchalantly over and grab a wire we half-expected to see him snapped rigid, then fried to a crisp black by the surge of electricity. But he held the line like it was a long piece of licorice, grinning a wise grin.
Then he eased over to the telephone line. “You can grab this one, too. But just make sure nobody calls while you’ve got a hold of it. A call comes over the line when you’re touching it, you’re dead.”
He hesitated long enough to draw in a deep breath, then grabbed the line tightly for a bold moment before, alive and triumphant, letting loose.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Grab ahold. Your mom’s probably not expecting any calls.”
There we were, atop the house on what had been a tranquil day, having our courage questioned. “My sister gets a lot of calls during the day.” A feeble offering. The corner of Bill Serkland’s mouth went up as the corner of his skeptical eye came down. Our bluff had been called.
And so, thinking that life had been sweet, and hoping that fate would still the dialing finger of any would-be caller, we sidled over to the telephone line and reached out and touched it. No call, no power surge, no death.
As we jumped down from the roof, having tempted fate, having looked death in the eye and barely blinked, we realized just how sweet life was, how exhilarating, how thrilling.
We hope the Louisiana man came to that same realization before his call came…. ~T.Stucky

July 9, 1987

Music stores these days are brimming with the sounds of nature. One of the latest rages for the ears is the refreshing sound of the tide lapping rhythmically upon the sandy shore, the gentle sound of a summer breeze stirring the aspen leaves, the discordant croaks, chirps and splashes of a cat-tailed pond.
A host of record companies have recorded outdoor sounds, pressed them into long-play records, and are selling them for $10 per. From smog-laden Los Angeles to thug-laden New York, people are relaxing after a long day battling the metropolis by pulling earphones down over their heads and escaping into the country. Recently, video cassettes which combine the sounds of nature with the scenes of nature have been selling like pornography.
Listening to a waterfall on the stereo or watching the sun rise over a field of sunflowers on the television is, they claim, better than being there.
We don’t have an album of nature’s noises, nor do we have a video of idyllic country visions. But we did sit on the front porch steps one evening last week, after the sun had gone home for the night, as the robust sounds of the day were being softened by twilight. A dog near and a dog far clamored against some unseen foe. The last of the cicadas was winding down as the crickets were tuning up.
As darkness lowered its ceiling acoustics improved, sounds magnified. Four heels scraped the asphalt of an adjoining street, giving distinct rhythm to the voices of two boys making their hurried way toward some engagement. Another youngster sped past on his bike, the tires whirring, kicking up an uneven tail of gravel.
For a time activity ceased. Crickets created their cacophony. From a field south of town came the low of a mother cow beckoning her calf. From the living room windows of several homes oozed the soft, humming blue of television and through the screen doors of those homes came the commercial laughter of summer reruns.
Then down the street, slowly, came the stooped figure of an old man. Garrison Keillor says old people walk slowly through small towns because they know the stories of each house and as they trudge past each abode they struggle to remember the story. This man must have known the stories and must have had trouble recollecting them because he would take a few steps then stop, then a few more steps and hesitate again. If the people watching their glowing boxes would have glimpsed out their windows they might have thought he was peeping in from the darkness of the street.
But he wasn’t. What was going on in the houses didn’t seem to concern him. He would just glance at a house and then return his gaze to his shuffling feet. At the corner he turned and went on, moving steadily in and out of streetlight glows.
Spinning car tires screamed from Main Street and another car honked, breaking the stillness. High school voices echoes off asphalt and frame houses. Above, a nighthawk’s wings slapped through the dark.
There was no waterfall, no comforting splash of tide against shoreline, but the natural small town sounds were reassuring. They are not sounds which would delight the ear through stereo headphones, and a video of an old man shuffling down a darkened street is not the stuff Oscars are made of.
But they are the timeless sights and sounds which make it unnecessary for us to purchase a $10 recording of tranquility….