Katzenjammer

Retirement should not be devoted solely to making the world a better place, one also needs to waste Time, to set aside Time for total wasting as a sabbath commitment of life. My such is playing a half-dozen or so different solitaire card games online, and reading the comics that I enjoy. 

My comic strips in my growing up years included Alley Oop, The Katzenjammer Kids, Popeye, Lil' Abner, Nancy; Buzz Sawyer - - which after WW2 phased to his pal Roscoe Sweeney and sister Lucille, and with the Squatley family; Don Winslow, Blondie, Annie Roonie, Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Archie, Out Our Way, The Boarding House with Major Hoople. On the comic book side it was Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, and probably a few others.

Later comic strips included Pogo, Charlie Brown, Calvin and Hobbes. Doonesbury. For Better or For Worse - - now going through a second iteration of the lives of Canadian dentist Dr Patterson and family generations. There was Shoe, and Zits with another dentist as the "head of family." These, and others that were in the PCNH daily but especially Sunday. Some of them have crossed from humor into the sadness and grief of ordinary human life, and taken me with them because they were so live and real. 

In recent years, one absolute favorite comic strip, Dilbert, became a casualty of the artist's outspoken political incorrectness, but a favorite because I'd worked in government with every single person in the strip. In one Navy office in WashDC sixty years ago, a new boss came to me soon after I was assigned to his division and, as he held his thumb and forefinger very close together as a measure of distance, warned me about one employee with whom I'd be working, "Don't expect anything useful from Ernie. Ernie is just THIS FAR from being an imbecile." 

And it was true: Ernie was the living innocent incompetence of Wally in the office with Dilbert.  

Ernie reminded me of another employee, one I encountered at a government contractor facility in Cleveland, Ohio. I forget his name, but it may also have been Ernie. He chatted in the office all morning, and at lunch Time always went to a nearby Chinese restaurant where the same waitress always greeted him, seated him, and "automatically" brought his first of two martinis for lunch. Sometimes he ordered "one egg foo yung patty and gravy."

How did I know him and his habits? From 1978 to about 1984, I drove the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Harrisburg to Cleveland at least once a month for several years working on a relationship that I'd set up between that contractor and the Australian Department of Defence in Canberra and at their embassy in WashingtonDC. 

Along with a company executive who later became the general manager there, Ernie, I'll call him that, was on the contractor's team that I worked with in Cleveland, and the five or six of us always went out for lunch together during my calls, always to the same place for Chinese, because it was both good and nearby. Not much for brainwork mornings, and his afternoons at the office were a buzzy haze, Ernie was a good guy who added color to the office atmosphere, just as Wally did in the Dilbert comic strip. Many offices include a Wally or Ernie, and you can't get rid of them, but you really don't want to.

Another favorite has been and continues, The Far Side, mainly I reckon because it's a bit off and strange, some sick humor, dogs in hell assigned to walk the streets with pooper scoopers and other dogs assigned as postal service mailmen. The stunned man confronted by St Peter at the gate with a math question about when trains will meet. The kid whose dad is a dentist - - here it is

His animal cartoons are good too

And here's one that has been sitting for years in my computer desktop "Far Side" file:

A family comic strip that I enjoy and catch up on a couple Times a month is Cul-de-Sac with Alice, her eccentric brother Petey and their family. Alice goes to daycare where, last week, the teacher was organizing their Christmas pageant to be presented to the kids' families, 

which, seeing that our Christmas pageant at HNEC will be at the 4:30 Christmas: it's always a riot. Called Holy Commotion, the thing that draws our Christmas Eve closer and closer to heavenly perfection is that each year Holy Commotion seems even more chaotic than ever, the careful organization and practice beginning to disintegrate and collapse as soon as the shepherds walk down the aisle. We have two Xmas Eve services at HNEC, that kids' Manger Scene Pageant at 4:30 and something more serious at 10:30; would never miss the splendiferous 4:30 extravaganza with all our bright, wonderful, beautiful children.

Retired for real now, this will be my first Time ever to watch it from "out front" instead of in my chair behind the scenes, snapping photos.

++++++++

Oddly, and not in synch with the rest of this blogpost is my memory of Christmas Eve 2010. I was just a couple weeks from heading off to Cleveland Clinic for open heart surgery and other stuff, and that Christmas Eve night, my diagnosed unstable angina kept coming and going excruciating yea unto intolerable! At the early Holy Commotion service, the Rector invited me to be Celebrant for the Holy Communion. My chest pain at the moment was terrible, I was popping those tiny nitroglycerin pills, and had to decline the rector's kind invitation. Our intent that evening had been to stay on for the late "Midnight Mass," but the rector told Linda, "Take him home, he's scaring me to death!"

It's interesting. When I was diagnosed the week of October 17, 2010 with multiple heart issues and a prognosis of two to five months to live, I had no fear or anxiety whatsoever. Sadness but no fear, and while still in Bay Medical Center I decided that, seeing that I had been with many parishioners through their final sicknesses, dying, death, funeral, and family after, it would be interesting to observe my feelings as an insider this Time, observe and log my feelings day by day or moment by moment as I went along toward the end. That was the beginning of what evolved into +Time, so-called after soccer's regulation Time and stoppage Time. 

I was seventy-five years old when my Regulation Time ended, and Stoppage Time began as I boarded friends' jet plane for the flight from Panama City to Cleveland. Stoppage Time then ended and "game over" on returning to Panama City, and Plus Time began with my doctor giving me a "ten year warranty" - - which next month I'll have completed fourteen years of +Time. To avoid the Evil Eye, I pray Harry Golden's family Yiddish blessing for you also, Wishing You Long Years. 

Now coming up on my 90th Xmas, I'm four years out of warranty and feeling it! What do I dread? The question at the gate, especially this one I've printed here before, that proves Math is not always Fun and Good.

RSF&PTL

T89&c

Born September 1935

First Xmas 1935

1936, 37, 38, 39, 40

1941, 42, 43, 44, 45

1946, 47, 48, 49, 50

1951, 52, 53, 54, 55

1956, 57, 58. 59, 60

1961, 62, 63, 64, 65

1966, 67, 68. 69, 70

1971, 72, 73, 74, 75

1976, 77, 78, 79, 80

1981, 82, 83, 84, 85

1986, 87, 88, 89, 90

1991, 92, 93, 94, 95

1996, 97, 98, 99, 2000

2001, 02, 03. 04, 05

2006, 97, 08, 09, 10

2011, 12, 13, 14, 15

2016, 17, 18, 19, 20

2021, 22, 23, 24

I'm not gonna tell you again, so count them: coming up next week it'll be ninety Christmases for me, God willing, and the Creek don't rise, and Jesus tarries.

Monday: a happy day here in 7H. Began with hot & black in my magic mug, and a PBJ foldover.

The only curse in my life is spellcheck, nomesane?