September 6, 1991

With this issue, the Ninnescah Valley News takes its first toddling steps into the computer age. Using a personal computer and a laser printer, we perform the publishing functions which in earlier times required C.W. Claybaugh to fill a large room with rumbling, whirling, cast iron equipment.
But space-saving and noise-reduction are not the essence of what computers offer. Computers, simply stated, give us time.
It is possible to do all the things a computer does—putting images on paper, calculating large numbers, combining information from a variety of sources—with pen and paper and time. The computer doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done before, it simply does it faster; giving us time to move on to other things.
(In parentheses we note that no time was saved by our computer system this week. But, we do recognize that once we become more computer-friendly our time spent on-task, as they say in computer manuals, will be significantly reduced, thus giving us time to take advantage of the games package included in the PageMaker program.)
And so, with all this extra time in the final days of the twentieth century, we are able to sit back on the front porch and peruse the 200th anniversary issue of The Old Farmer’s Almanac which arrived this week. The edition, as usual, brims with quirky good news. However, ominously lurking in the back pages is the weather forecast for the Central Great Plains.
First, the quirky good news. According to the Alamanac, if you are an American chatting with a friend in a coffee shop, you will touch each other twice an hour. Two English people would not touch at all, while two French people would touch each other 110 times an hour. Puerto Ricans are handiest of all, touching 180 times an hour.
The Almana reports that the Industrial Revolution prompted the planting of grass lawns, but it was an American who raised the consciousness, and noise-level, of the landed gentry. “In 1919, an American army colonel named Edwin George fell prey to the 20th century predilection for adding motors to machines that had previously been thought to work well without them. Removing the gasoline engine from his wife’s washing machine, he managed to install it on a push mower of the type developed by Budding almost 90 years before. To his satisfaction, he discovered that he could cut grass more loudly than ever before. Mrs. George, presumable, went back to pounding the family’s laundry on a flat stone in the river.”
Good fun prevails in the first half of the Almanac. But then comes the weather report, which is the primary reason people have been buying almanacs for two centuries. Grab your snow boots, folks. The winter we’ve been dreading for the past decade is headed our way.
According to the Almanac, “snowfall will be well above normal…cold spells predominate…colder than normal…”
With the snow drifted in great mounds and the chill factor unbearable, we’ll have plenty of opportunities this winter to sit at the keyboards and save time… ~T.Stucky

September 28, 1990

It’s time we came out of the closet.
We’ve been reluctant to make this announcement, fearful our few friends would find excuses for not visiting, afraid the neighbors would plop For Sale signs in their front lawns, concerned we may become neighborhood pariahs. But having quietly carried around this secret for three months, it’s time we unburdened ourselves. It’s time we unburdened ourselves. It’s time we confessed, allowing the confessional to cleanse our sullied spirit.
We have a lizard loose in our house. More precisely, we have a gecko roaming free, scurrying on its suction-cup feet across the walls and ceilings.
There, we admit it. We feel better. In fact, we’ve felt somewhat better since the little critter became part of the extended family last summer. While theatres across the nation were showcasing Arachnophobia on the big screen in July, we were confirming that art imitates life by being overrun with brown spiders. The dirty brown, angular, poisonous, nasty demons were everywhere-hiding in socks, in sheets, and (worst of all) in underwear.
In the past we have responded to such invasions with chemical warfare, unleashing deadly poison around baseboards, in closets and down hallways. But, as Saddam knows, chemical warfare is not discriminating; the good die with the bad.
So this summer we determined to use nature to vanquish nature. We bought a house gecko and set him free in an upstairs bedroom.
Now, to quickly dispel the image of a dragon lizard prowling the home, putting children and pets at risk, let us say the gecko is smaller than your hand (unless your hand is bigger than a gecko), it’s dull green, it’s nocturnal, and people in Japan have been using them as residential bugeaters for centuries. Although we know he (or she) is on the job because the spiders are gone, we haven’t seen it for several weeks.
Once you get over the uneasiness of expecting to step on it while walking barefooted down the hall, or having it leap onto your face as you sleep, it’s like having a benevolent reptilian friend waging battle against evil forces.
While our uneasiness about the gecko has calmed, our uneasiness about those other reptilian crime-fighters, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, continues. When the Turtle rage began we attempted a psychological understanding of the peculiar fad. We came to understand that young people relate to the mutated creatures because every adolescent thinks of himself as a mutated creature. The Turtles are tutored by a sagacious Ninja master, a noble archetypical father figure. That several mutants could join together and use their unique talents and powers to undo the wrongs perpetrated on society by a virulent gang seemed commendable activity for mimicking. Many of the same elements existed in our childhood heroes-The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Lassie and Rin Tin Tin.
It all seemed harmless as a gecko. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seemed just another Madison Avenue creation designed to sell pizza, Halloween outfits, plastic toys and cassette tapes.
But then we started reading some of the legend which surround the Turtles. For example, one Turtle toy includes a “Portrait of Michelangelo, The wild and crazy Turtle,” which describes him as a “party reptile.”
“Even though the sinister Shredder may be slicing his way through the manhole cover, Mike stays cool,” the “Portrait” explains. “Cool because he’s the master of the whirling nunchuckus. It takes eight pounds of pressure per square inch to break bone. The nunchukus generate ninety! In the midst of the most perilous of battles, Mike can be seen swinging his deadly nunchukus in one hand while dangling a wedge of pizza in the other.”
If the bad guys were really despicable and all other options had been exhausted, Roy Rogers would pull out his trusty six-shooter and nip the desperado in the shoulder or thigh. The Lone Ranger would do the same and even Lassie, when all else failed, would bare her teeth and bite a hardened criminal in the butt. But none of those heroes enjoyed wreaking havoc. Lassie never smiled and barked that her teeth were powerful enough to break wrongdoing bones. Roy Rogers never nonchalantly munched on a hamburger while wielding his deadly weapon.
The message of the Turtles is that casual violence is acceptable, that dispassionate force is justified. The Turtles are to heroes what drive-by shootings are to righteous quests.
So, now that we’re out of the closet, keep your nunchukus-swinging Turtles and give us a spider-chomping gecko. The gecko is more heroic. ~T.Stucky

September 20, 1979

While the State Fair is a special place for everyone, it is the short people who are most enchanted by it. Their words capture the Fair's appeal most effectively.
"Are we almost to the Fair, Dad? It's sure taking a long time to get there. Why are we parking way out here? My feet are getting tired already. Hey, look, you can see the rides! The first thing we want to do is ride. There are fifteen police cars over there. Why are we walking this way when the rides are that way? Look at that train; there's even a big man driving it. Sure are alot of people here, aren't there, Mom? That's a balloon like I want. I better hold onto your hand, Dad. Hey, look at that huge pumpkin. Can I eat one of those apples? Are we going to go ride now? I can give the man my own tickets. Are you having fun on the merry-go-round, Dad? I want to ride on the motorcycles. Look at me, I'm riding with no hands. What are all those hoses on the ground for? My eardrums are hurting. That's a balloon like I want."
"Yea, let's go look at the horses. These aren't horses. Look at that big bull. I don't think I want to walk down there. What's that smell, Dad? Let's go look at the horses. Hey, look, pigs! It must be their nap time, huh Mom? Can we go see the horses? I petted that goat and he didn't even bite me. Will rabbits bite if you put your fingers in their cage? Look at that rabbits' ears, I bet he trips over them. Are there any horses here? I'm a little thirsty, I think I need a coke. And I need a caramel apple, too. Horses! Horses! Look at that one, isn't it pretty? Look what that one is doing, how disgusting! Can you lift me up to see that one. Can you hold my caramel apple, I don't think I want any more. You probably wouldn't carry me, would you, Dad? That's a balloon just like I want. It sure is a long walk back to the car."
"Thanks for taking us to the Fair. Yea, and thanks for my balloon...." ~T.Stucky