Why I Don't Run

            

I have never been a runner. In fact, I’m not even a fast walker, and I never have been.  When I was a child I probably used to run, I think, or, maybe not. I remember once telling a young friend that I tried running, and didn’t like it.  He laughed. Truthfully, I have used that line throughout adulthood, too, and it still gets a laugh.  Also, truthfully, it still applies. Of course, I have nothing against running, and I would do it if I had to, to save someone from danger, but if I did, no one would know it was me because no one has ever seen that before. Also, I have a feeling it wouldn’t be pretty.   No, I don’t run.  A city-council friend of mine recently even asked me to run for local political office, and I won’t even do that.

            I don’t consider myself to be slothful, or lazy, which I guess are the same thing. I’m just not fast-moving, and see no reason to be.  Yes, I’m now in my 60’s, but that’s not why I am how I am.  As I said, I have never been too ‘swift’, so to speak.  George Burns once said that he could do anything in his old age that he could do at eighteen. He then continued with: “That just shows how pathetic I was at eighteen.”  George Shuman resembles that remark.  Maybe it’s something to do with the first name.  I don’t know.  As far as the subject of hurrying goes, I am not alone. A few years ago one of my ‘present-day’ friends, who happens to be about my age, told me, and I quote: “I don’t mind leaving early, but just don’t rush me.”  I resemble that remark, too.

            Many people of my generation, myself included, have written about the old notion of stopping to smell the roses, and of how we should slow down and appreciate things more.  Some of that attitude might, indeed, come through the process of aging. Many young people seem to always be in a hurry, have little patience for people not moving at their speed, and, I think, also couldn’t define the word ‘notion’ in that first sentence if you hit them in the head with a dictionary.  

            To me, the benefit of taking things a bit slower really is just a matter of common sense.  Speeding down the highway will get you someplace quickly, but you can miss a lot of the sights along the way.  Likewise, speeding through the days of your life might help you get more things done, but you can miss the point of it all, along the way.

            Spring will soon be here. Many of us in the North are looking forward to budding trees, green grass, and flowers.  I know I am. I want to get out there and enjoy the warmer weather and brighter days just as soon as they arrive. (I’m a terrible gardener, and am already trying to figure out some way to actually make a few tomatoes grow this year.)   I want to enjoy those sunny days slowly, deliberately, and do my best to do the same with whatever remaining times I have with my family and friends. Those warm days and family moments won’t last forever.  Of that, I am abundantly aware.  I don’t intend to run through them.

 

Mouse in the House

 

By G. E. Shuman

          Yesterday I found myself at the checkout counter of Nelson’s Hardware, my local Vermont go-to place for everything remotely hardware’ish. I put my handful of mousetraps on the counter and said: “It’s cold out… we have a mouse problem this winter.” The nice checkout lady’s reply was a truly serious note about the fact that in her twenty-five years at the store, she had never seen a winter when they had sold so many ‘mouse problem’ products, as this winter. “I wonder why that is” I thought, probably aloud. “Mice try to get into your house when it’s cold, and it’s cold here in Vermont EVERY winter.”

          This short conversation took place after I had spent ten- or fifteen-minutes staring at the store’s extensive rodent-elimination product section. You know, years ago you pretty much had a choice when buying a mouse trap, between purchasing one little flat piece of wood with a spring and a finger-slamming metal bar cheaply stapled to it, and another little flat piece of wood with a spring and another finger-slamming metal bar cheaply stapled to it.

          Not so in the winter of 2021. These days your house mouse has a choice of being slammed by a bar, trapped alive, stuck to a sticky glue trap, poisoned, given a headache by a super high tech ultrasonic scare-your-mouse-away device, or perhaps, if he is lucky, getting away and living to scurry around your house another day. 

          Or, perhaps more precisely, YOU have a choice. At least you do at Nelson’s Hardware. (I love that place.) By the way, you can buy most of these devious little devices in many and various versions, and in multi-packs, too, just in case your rodents have brought aunts, uncles, and cousins with them to live at your house for the winter.

          You know, when I was in that mousetrap department of Nelson’s Hardware, I was about to go with the live trap idea, but I eventually didn’t see any animal-loving advantage in putting a live mouse outside in a snowbank someplace, at a brisk Vermont zero degrees. I didn’t want to welcome the mouse family to live with us, but also didn’t think my neighbor would appreciate it if I had dropped a shivering mouse off outside of their house, either.

          Sometimes, just the fact that we are WHO we are, and are that person WHEN we are and WHERE we are sort of astonishes me. I actually thought this as I was placing a seemingly benign but somehow menacingly fatal mouse glue trap under our kitchen stove the other night before going to bed. There had been obvious mouse ‘signs’ under the stove, including food bits, dog food chunks, and other less mentionable pieces of matter found there. So, there is where I put the trap. (Go where the traffic is, I always say. No, I don’t actually ever say that.)

          Another thing I thought of as I placed that trap, and it was a thought that astonished me at the time, was that our big old house was not just big and old but had been built way back in 1905. Think of that, (Come on. You can do it if I can do it while placing a mouse trap.) The house was built only two years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk. It was already almost 25 years old on the day my now 96-year-old mother was born.

          I then realized I was on my knees, before the stove, in a futile attempt, to say the least. I was, almost laughingly, safe, and sure in the realization that the winter of 1905 was at least as cold and windy as this one of 2021, and that the winter-mouse families of that year were at least as warm and cozy in this old place as they are now.  I then wondered how many owners of this old place had been on their knees, in this exact spot, attempting to rid the house of such a relentless and uninvited occupant that resided under their stove.

          With all the nearly miraculous technological advances of our age, some things will be changed. Great things will be invented, huge mountains will be scaled and even the planets will be explored. Still, some things will never change. Someone will always be trying to build a better mouse trap. If you don’t believe me, just check out Nelson’s Hardware.

Letting Off Steam

By G. E. Shuman

 

          I remember, when I was a child, that my mom had a huge, heavy, thick aluminum pressure cooker that she often used to quickly cook many delicious meals at our home. I also remember watching a surprisingly heavy, disk-shaped little weight on the pressure cooker’s top. When the water inside, which cooked the food, was hot and pressurized enough, that weight would rattle and bounce on the small hole it covered, both releasing steam and stopping all the steam from being released. It was, very literally, letting off steam, which, these days, is a term more used to describe mental release than that of actual steam. I also remember being told that nothing was to get in the way of that weight bouncing around, as it could cause a terrible explosion.

          Letting off steam is something I need to do, right now, so I am coming to you to listen… to let that ‘steam’ fly up into the air and then dissipate. I thought of using this as a column for the paper I write for, but the publisher is a dear friend of mine and we do live in Vermont, one of the most liberal states in our country. This writing would certainly get my friend in trouble and could cost him advertisers. I would never do that to him. I also thought of using it for the next edition of a magazine I write for in Massachusetts, but that is owned by a couple of extremely ‘progressive’ guys. They would never publish it in the first place.

          So, I thought, how about just putting it on my blogsite and on Facebook? Yup, I can do that, even at the risk of being censored. If that were to happen it would simply prove the ‘gist’ of this column. So, here goes, Facebook and vtpenner.blogspot.com fans.

          Truthfully, and in my calmest ‘letting-off-steam’ voice, I do believe that our country is under siege. I am one of those terrible conservatives who truly believes the presidential election was stolen, and that, if so, the ‘stealers’ are simply low-life thieves and far from worthy to inherit leadership positions in our country. What else could they be?

          The evidence is there but seems to matter little. Some states had more votes cast than there were even registered voters. Dead people voted in numbers larger than ever before, hundreds of thousands of pristine, never even folded ‘mail in’ ballets were cast and counted, and voting machines were programmed to point votes decidedly and only to the left.

          The election was stolen. That is something I am convinced of. And, although I am a Trump supporter, the damage is much more far-reaching than his presidency. It is robbery and puts in doubt the idea of our country ever having a fair and just election again. If this turns out to be the case, we will cease to be a democracy, and capitalism is dead. Even if you’re a Biden supporter, please think about this. Is his election to office really important enough to steal from the voters and to sacrifice our country’s constitution and existence as a free republic? My children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be forced to live under rulership that they are powerless to change, to agree with or disagree with. Welcome to the United States of Venezuela.

          Please understand this, dear readers. The election, with or without the blessing of Mr. Biden, was stolen. If you did not vote for him, you have been robbed. Even if you did vote for him, your effort was in vain and the gas and the money you spent to buy that gas, to drive to the polls, and the time you spent casting your vote, were wasted. No matter who you voted for, if just one illegal ballot was cast against, or even for your choice, yours just got dismissed, or at the least, watered down. How do you truly feel about that?

          I ask you, all of you, as Americans, to do whatever you can to fight against a stolen election. I have never met Joe Biden; I have no idea what kind of a man he is or what he will do to or for our country. I do know that if someone stole a Christmas present for me, then gave it to me, and I knew about how it was obtained, I would never accept it. Such is how I feel about the upcoming inauguration. Mr. Biden will never be a legitimate president, in my eyes. He should be ashamed of himself for such a terrible theft.

          Thank you for letting me blow off some pressure and let off some steam. In the words of the infamous wicked witch of the west as she melted in my favorite classic, The Wizard of Oz: “What a world… what a world.”

         

Here We Go Again, Already

 

By G. E. Shuman

          I was writing this column for the paper, seemingly just the other day, and told you how amazed I was that the holidays were over and that another year had already passed. We talked a few moments, you and I, about how we would now need to practice writing another number for the year, and I know I said it would take a while for me to stop writing ‘last year’s’.  I remember telling you how I simply can never get over how quickly the seasons pass. You nodded in agreement, I think. (Actually, I have no way of knowing that, but it makes me feel better if I think you are agreeing with me.)

          And now I sit here again, in the same spot in our home, writing about the fact that that ‘other day,’ when I wrote that other column, was another whole year ago, already. Amazing!

          “Where has the time gone?” people sometimes say. “How time flies!” or “Time flies when you’re having fun!” are other statements expressing the same thought. I once heard someone state that “the passing of time is relative, and how fast it goes depends on what relatives you’re passing it with.” Even the master of the whole relativity thing, Albert Einstein himself once related that spending an hour with a beautiful woman can seem like two minutes and spending two minutes in a dentist’s chair can seem like an hour.

          For me, last year must fall into the ‘beautiful woman’ category, because that entire 365-day period seems to have just flown by. Some of the reason for that is probably simply that a year really isn’t that long a period of time, and each year is a smaller and smaller percentage of this life I am living. More of the reason is likely that time does seem to pass quickly when you are busy, and our household, our family, seems to always be busy. I don’t always appreciate some of that busyness but need to. I need to hang on to those times, to THESE times, for as long as I can.

          Before I forget to say this, and before more time goes by, I want to wish you and yours a wonderful, blessed, Happy New Year!

          “Anticipation”, a Carley Simon song from way back in the early ‘70s, ends where I will end this column, with better words that I could write about the year or the passing of time. If you happen to be of the vintage who remembers the song, you will know that it ends with the haunting thought: “I’ll stay right here, ‘cause these are the good old days. These are the good old days. These are the good old days.”

         

          

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