Nosferatu ‘n’ Nefertiti: An Unusual Love Story -- The Colonel Carries On #17

by Charlotte (“Chippa”) Sahoy, Jr.

Epigraph: “In some ways, Jesus is a finger pointing to the Father. It would be a mistake to focus on the finger to the exclusion of the Father. That’s what’s meant by ‘Jesus-worship’ when that term is used pejoratively. Even when Gospel accounts have Jesus describing himself in strong terms -- ‘No one comes to the Father except through me’ -- the purpose is to come to the Father, not to come to Jesus and stop there. This is a delicate point, but an important one.” --Use Words If You Must

Rani Jahlers and I are not complaining, because it has been a mild winter, but snow came at last, beginning Thursday night and lasting till Friday afternoon. I cleared the driveway twice, once Friday morning while it was still snowing and again Friday afternoon after it had stopped. I removed equal amounts of snow each time. (I would add “approximately,” but you probably know I mean “approximately,” so why should I waste your time and mine writing “approximately”?)

Tuesday I had a little fender-bender. Tuesday I totaled my car. Both are true. A lad pulled out of a driveway right in front of me and though I braked hard, I couldn’t avoid a collision. My front passenger-side headlight was smashed, yadda yadda, and his car had minor damage.

The next morning I drove the car to the body shop for its estimate and to pick up a rental. Later in the day the insurance adjuster called to say the car, a 2001 Toyota Camry, was totaled. Seems under Connecticut law, if the repair estimate comes to 80% or more of the fair market value of the car, the car must be totaled.

I went to the body shop Thursday morning to get my belongings out of the damaged Camry. Oddly emotional. Goodbye, old friend. Enjoy being scrap.

My dear work colleague of more than 32 years, was unsentimental: “Oh, for Pete’s sake. You needed a new car anyway. That body style was really old.”

My car rabbi says I want a Honda CRV from 2008 to 2011 with less than 60K miles, less than 40K if possible. Through 2011, he says, the CRV used the Accord platform. After that, it was the Civic platform. We’ll shop, he says. It will be okay, he says. Friends are great, especially in time of trouble. Someone should make a saying to that effect.

I see that Pope Francis will be meeting Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in Havana this year. The East-West split hardened (I won’t say “became final”) in 1054, so who knows what they’ll cook up for 2054? It’s nice to think that fights can still be patched up after 1000 years. But why not? Why the hell not?

Stephen Colbert made a passing reference to Trump-tromper Ted Cruz as looking like a “slightly melted GI Joe.” Mean but funny. Jonah Goldberg calls Cruz and Marco Rubio “Los Hermanos Cubanos.” Say it out loud -- it sounds good. Gets you dancing.

A major Jewish contributor to the national Democratic party told a gentile friend this week: “Hillary blows it and Biden gets nominated.” 

Friend: “But don’t we need a Jewish president?”

Contributor: “No, you need a Jewish doctor.”

My favorite post-Iowa headlines: “Iowa to Trump: You’re Fired!” and “The Ego Has Landed.”

You can catch a lot of Bob and Ray material on YouTube. (Bob Elliot just died recently; Ray Goulding died in the 1990s.) You'll be glad.

Poem fragment:

Aldrich once protested to Elaine that his

Bill for the night was too high.

She showed him his tab was for seventeen

Scotches and he started to cry.

--Frederick Seidel

“D’yer Mak’er” is a well-remembered Led Zeppelin song from their 1973 album “Houses of the Holy.” (It has the passage, “Oh, oh, oh -- you don’t have to go.”) In the British non-rhotic accent, it’s pronounced “Jamaica.” The name is from an old joke: "My wife's gone to the West Indies." "Jamaica?" "No, she went of her own accord."

The band has sold over 300 million albums worldwide, including 111.5 million certified units in the United States, making them one of the world's best-selling musical artists of all time, and the best-selling band of all time in the United States, second only to The Beatles. 

Personally, I was very late to the party, changing my mind about them when I heard an “unplugged” session of Robert Plant singing Zep material in a simple acoustic setting. 

“These guys are actually musicians,” I thought, “not just exhibitionistic noisemakers.” Before long I had become degenerate and depraved. I’m in both support groups now: Degenerates Anonymous and Depraved Ones Anonymous ("DOA”). I haven’t been to Jamaica in more than seven years, I'm proud to say.

David Bowie’s work was never a big part of my life, but I was impressed by the remark of his widow, supermodel Imam, 60: “The struggle is real, but so is God.”

For some reason, that reminded me of something a Capuchin Franciscan friend said about his order's presence among the poor and oppressed in Central and South America: “Maybe we can’t help them. But we can walk with them and be with them in their poverty and oppression and suffering. And that’s not nothing.”

Two lawyers were hunting in the woods when they came to a set of tracks.  

The first said, "Those are deer tracks."

The second said, "Those are moose tracks."

The first responded, "No, those are deer tracks."

They were still arguing when the train hit them.

Management poetry:

Efficiency and effectiveness

are as close as lips and teeth

but as distinct as left and right butt cheeks.

--Ho Chi Minh and Peter F. Drucker, Management Secrets of Asymmetric Warfare

Who says Colcannon’s Wake by Seamus Shoyce is unreadable? An extract:

“An old pundit once told me in the days before all the wars, when everything was like Downton Abbey, only notso poppery [not soap-opera-y?], ‘Never respond to commenters on your blog posts. Just let the dogs bark.’ I mostly follow that old pundit’s advice (I say ‘that old pundit’s’ rather than ‘his’ or ‘her’ because the old pundit’s beard was so long and thick and matted -- and dirty and smelly, but nil nisi bonum -- that it cleverly concealed all sex, as if twixt plated decks), but now and again some little thing stirs the old turf into a bit of flame, and sure enough didn’t a word from a reader self-identifying only as ‘Middletown Eye (Ed McKeon)’ stir the turf as aforesaid. I address myself now to that entity: If you’ve a fine name like ‘Middletown Eye,’ why haven’t you the guts to use it instead of puttin’ yourself about under a ‘fancy-name’ like ‘Ed McKeon’ (which I don’t mind tellin’ you sounds utterly affected and made up; saints, you might as well have picked ‘David Bowie’). Stand up straight and proud, laddie (or lassie, as the case may be) and turn an honest Eye to the world. You’ll feel the better for it, but there’s nothin’ I can do about that, begorrah, even if I would, which I do.” 

--from Chapter MILDIX, “run along the river, little children, and Dew Drop Inn, while i, Crimm & Lee converse with your big sister”

Zen P.S.: “The greatest effort is not concerned with results.” --Atisha