Photography by Rich Gigli

Veterans Day - Old soldiers never die; they just fade away. Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

By Michael Kaufman

I admit it. I love it when an umpire makes a bad call, especially in a big game. The worse the call, the more I enjoy it.  I like to see an enraged manager rush from the dugout, waving his arms, snarling , kicking dirt on home plate or the umpire’s shoes. I like when a home-plate umpire angrily rips off his mask and gets in the guy’s face.  And there’s nothing wrong with a little flying spittle now and then.  I wait with anticipation for the moment when the ump has finally had enough and signals the old heave-ho by raising his arm, pointing at the offending party, and shouting, “You’re outta here!”

And sometimes it doesn’t stop there. The guy who got thrown out may turn and  yell at the top of his lungs as he is leaving. Maybe he will continue his tantrum and throw things onto the field when he gets to the dugout. Or maybe he’ll put on a disguise and watch the rest of the game from the stands. Sometimes others will continue the argument with the ump until they get tossed too. It’s all good.

Few things are more entertaining to me. The great old-time announcers like Red Barber used to refer lovingly to these tete-a-tetes as “rhubarbs.” Controversial calls and the ensuing rhubarbs have been almost as much a part of baseball lore as the all-time great batting and fielding achievements. If you are a longtime baseball fan you can think of a few off the top your head.

But you don’t hear much about rhubarbs any more. Advances in video technology have given us the ability to quickly assess the accuracy of a call. Was it a strike or a ball? Home run or foul ball? And now, the Lords of Baseball, in their infinite stupidity, have joined their counterparts in the National Football League, by introducing a video review process.  It started this year during the regular season and was used the other night in a World Series game to determine that Alex Rodriguez had indeed hit a home run and not a double, as originally called by the umpire. And so the game, already beset by lengthier delays than necessary to accomodate television advertisers, was delayed again so the umpires could shamble off the field, go into the clubhouse, and watch a video.  They looked pathetic.

And just what is so important about making the right call 100% of the time in a baseball (or football) game? Umpires and referees have a tough job and it is amazing they get the calls correctly as often as they do. Here is one football referee’s take on the subject, but it applies just as well to baseball:  “Yes, officials are supposed to get it right, but then again, so is that $5.5 million wide receiver who has dropped 60% of his passes this year, and so is that multi-million dollar coach who is 0-7 for the start of the season. Oh, and I guess we should mention the sportscaster who doesn’t really know the rules but yet feels totally comfortable second-guessing and sounding like an expert.” I’m with you, pal.

And don’t forget we are not talking brain surgery here, where the use of advanced video technology might save a person’s life. It is just a ballgame for crying out loud. Still, sports play a huge role in our society, which is why I fear the day may not be far off when a conversation like this takes place at the dinner table:

“What is this, chicken? You told me you were making the lamb chops tonight.”

“No … I said I was making chicken. You asked me right after you brushed your teeth.”

“No … you said lamb chops and it was after I came back from walking the dog… Let’s review it!”

“We can’t review it. You already used your three challenges for the week.”

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

We have a president who’s not afraid to let the American people know the true meaning of battlefield casualties. They’re not just a number listed in six-point type in the newspaper. They’re not the nameless people that some talk show hosts posthumously thank for making the ultimate sacrifice – praise from armchair warriors who managed to never spend a day in uniform and who know nothing about sacrifice.

Earlier this year, Barack Obama lifted the ban on news organizations photographing the flag draped coffins being carried off the planes at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. That was the image George W. Bush hid from the American people. Bush may have misunderstood a lot, but was sure of one thing: Repeated pictures of soldiers being brought home in coffins would raise questions that, despite the idiotic certitude of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Bush could not answer.

How long?

How many more?

For what?

Now,  Obama’s military commanders want up to 80,000 more troops to continue the war in Afghanistan and because he promised a decision soon, he’ll probably have to answer those questions.  His deliberation, of course, is what the appalling Dick Cheney had in mind when he accused Obama of  “dithering.” How much misery might have been saved had George W. Bush given more serious thought to war and death instead of just plunging ahead like an elephant in heat? Because here we are, eight years later, still trying to crush the elusive Taliban.

(We must never forget that the invariably wrong Cheney bleated to America as the Iraq war started, “We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” That he said of the Iraqi foe in 2005, “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” That in 2005 he said America was “firmly committed” to the Afghan democracy.)

Democracy? Our men and women are still being killed in Afghanistan. And to what end? For President Hamid Karzai’s challenger to drop out this week because no one can be sure that Karzai’s government would have allowed a free, fair election?

Last week, President Obama did what Bush chose never to do. He traveled to Dover in the middle of the night, stood at attention with military officers, and saluted the latest return of coffins.

It took only a day for the Nut Right to have at him. Rush Limbaugh dismissed Obama’s salute as a photo-op, forgetting that the president is the commander-in-chief of the military. Photo-op? Could be. But I checked: If Limbaugh ever dismissed as a photo-op Bush’s landing on the aircraft carrier in his soldier outfit six years ago to say combat operations in Iraq were over, I missed it.

Photo-op? I’m proud of this president for making that short flight to Dover.

There’s a but of course.

But if he decides to continue the fight in Afghanistan, Obama must answer the questions that Bush never would. How much longer will America remain in Afghanistan? Why must there be more coffins at Dover if Karzai believes democracy begins and ends with himself? And how will America know when it has won or when it has lost?

Obama can’t be vague. To dance around these questions would invite utter contempt from the very people who support and admire him.
 
Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

Loosey

Chapter 21

The story so far: James Dunning lost his job at the Record, and he and his wife had to rent their home out and move in with her mother, who was allergic to dogs. So James had to give up Zoe, his 12-year-old mostly blind lhasa apso. James left her, in the middle of the night, at the Pike County shelter. Kaja, a big red dog, came along, and together, the new friends set out to find James. Along the way, they met Loosey, a cat whose elderly owner had to go into a nursing home. They’ve made their way to Otisville, and have spent the night in a barn at the Piersons’ farm.

Frost rims the fallen leaves and field grass this November morning, as the three friends wake in their warm corner of the barn. Zoe loves the smell of the barn, the scents of hay and oats, horses and cows and old dry wood and night-cold air warming in the dawn.

Inside the barn, Kaja hears scrabbling in a corner, and a moment later, sees Loosey carrying a mouse in her jaws. Just as Loosey emerges from the dark back of the barn, the girl who let them in last night pulls the big barn door open and walks in carrying a bag of food.

“Oooh, kitty, good work!” she says, and takes the dead mouse by the tail and puts it in a trash barrel. “I feel bad for the mouse,” the girl says, “but they’ve been eating the horses’ food and just getting into everything. You’re a good barn cat, kitty girl. A couple days of you out here and we’d have no mouse problem at all.”

She reaches down to pat Loosey, and the big cat stretches and rubs against the girl’s legs, and begins purring, a loud tiny motor. It’s been a long time since any human had time for her, or words. Her woman had loved her, but she was sick for so long, and she was so sick and so weak that she could barely breathe, let alone pet Loosey. The daughter who finally came to help her didn’t like Loosey at all. The first thing she did was to banish her from her woman’s bedroom, even though the woman and Loosey both loved it when she curled up on the old woman’s bed.

So Loosey rubs now against the girl’s legs, and purrs and purrs and then, when the girl picks her up, Loosey rubs her face all over the girl’s neck and cheek. The girl holds her close, and whispers to her, and Loosey can smell her scent and hear her heart beating, and she knows this girl is young and healthy and maybe a little sad, and she decides that she will stay, if the girl will let her.

The three friends eat, and drink clear, clean water from a bowl the girl fills fresh for them, and then the dogs look down the driveway. The sun is just breaking over the tops of the trees, and it warms the dirt and the air in front of the barn. The girl stands in the doorway, and Loosey sits beside her. The cat’s white fur gleams in the sun.

Kaja noses the cat’s fur, and Loosey rubs against the dogs, Kaja first and then little Zoe. This is a good place for Loosey to stay, and the girl picks her up and strokes her fur as Zoe and Kaja trot away down the drive.

Little Zoe feels sad. It’s been a time of losses and leavings, and she’s just a little blind dog, tired and small and wanting to be home. The days are colder and colder, and the ground beneath her feet is harder and harder. The wind blows the smell of snow, and ice and winter, and though her coat has thickened, she can feel the cold against her skin.

Alone together, Kaja and Zoe trot along the edge of the road. On the other side of the road, horses gather along a fence, waiting for a person to come and feed them. Cars go by, and overhead, Canada geese fly together, honking at the wind. The sun begins to warm the air, and the frost vanishes, and then, all of a sudden, a huge, snarling dog lunges off the front porch of a small house and races toward them, barking and gnashing his teeth, and Zoe runs, runs into the road –

and into the path of a car, coming around the bend.

The dog lunges and jumps and growls and barks. The brakes on the car squeal. Kaja begins barking, and the car hits Zoe and the little dog drops to the pavement.

The door of the car opens, and a woman jumps out, shrieking and crying. She runs to Zoe and picks her up and holds her close. The little dog isn’t moving. The woman puts her head against Zoe’s chest, and cries and cries.

A car coming from the other direction stops, and a man gets out. A woman comes running from the house with the big mean dog, and she takes Zoe while the drivers pull their cars over, off the road. Kaja watches, nudging her way in, and sniffing at Zoe, and the woman from the house listens at Zoe’s chest, and pets her side and turns away.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Recent hikes in the costs of fuel oil and natural gas have many of us looking to alternative sources for home heating. But what is the “greenest” alternative? That is a tough question because it depends on where you live and what fuel is abundant locally. If you live in the Midwest, corn is more abundant than wood and may have less of an environmental impact because it doesn’t have to be shipped to you.

If you live in the woods, then wood is a logical heat choice for you and is carbon-neutral, meaning that burning the wood doesn’t add any more carbon to the atmosphere than the tree would have sequestered during its lifetime. Most people who live in the woods can use windfall trees and standing deadwood and don’t ever have to cut down a living tree. However, if we all burned wood, it quickly would deforest our country and add to climate change dramatically.

Biomass heat is gaining in popularity and can be a greener choice in some cases. Corn pellet stoves and wood pellet stoves look the same and heat equivalently. Because they are highly efficient, they don’t need chimneys; instead, they can be vented outdoors by 4-inch pipes through outside walls. You also can tie a corn stove to your thermostat so that glow plug igniters automatically light it. It has a hopper capacity big enough to hold several days’ worth of corn. Both stoves use blowers to create vacuums inside the stoves, keeping smoke from seeping into your home.

What you burn is also crucial. Wood smoke can contain many tars, creosote and other chemicals that degrade our air quality. Burning wood as hot as possible helps reduce contaminants in the smoke. Corn burns so cleanly that you won’t see a wisp of smoke from the stovepipe. However, corn requires many chemical inputs to grow and can be environmentally devastating.

Wood pellets burn the most cleanly but are not necessarily as renewable a resource as corn.
Look for corn that is grown locally and has low pesticide and fertilizer use, such as transitional corn, for a truly environmentally friendly alternative fuel.

There are also multi-fuel stoves, which burn almost anything that fits in the 2-inch hoppers. This type of stove may be a good choice if you live in an agricultural area. Farmers are discovering a new use for waste crops, such as wheat shafts and hulls, cornstalks and moldy hay. These crop wastes can be pelletized and sold as biomass heat pellets for multi-fuel stoves. This may be a local source for home heating fuel in areas where wood is expensive and corn is needed as food.

Many farmers have started growing biomass crops, such as switch grass, specifically to pelletize and burn them for home heating use. You can use grass pellets in pellet stoves, as well as in high-efficiency wood stoves. If you have enough land, you can make grass pellets out of just about any type of hay or straw. You even can use last year’s moldy hay bales to make next year’s pellets. Finding a pelletizer may be the hardest part of the process. Some farmers in New York pitch in together and rent one. You could make your own pellets and save substantially on home heating. This could become a popular home-based business that helps wean Americans off fossil fuels so that they can enjoy real homeland security.

Traditional open masonry fireplaces aren’t effective or efficient heating devices. A traditional fireplace draws in as much as 300 cubic feet per minute of heated room air for combustion and then sends it straight up the chimney. This is the same as having a 4-foot hole in your wall that is sucking your precious heat straight outdoors! Only high-efficiency fireplace inserts have proved to be effective in increasing the heating efficiency of older fireplaces. The insert functions like a wood stove, fitting into the masonry fireplace or on its hearth and using the existing chimney.

Shawn@zestoforange.com

Arabesque

By Carrie Jacobson

The winter wind twists through these autumn days and whispers a song of sweet melancholy. Fall’s colors drain off, leaving memory and hope and the brilliant promise of an early dawn.

For price and delivery information on this 10×30 oil painting, contact Carrie  at carrie@zestoforange.com

Photography by Rich Gigli

The Beaver Kill is a tributary of the East Branch of the Delaware River, approximately 44 miles long, located in the south central part of New York State. The Kill runs through the Catskill Mountains and has long been celebrated as one of the most famous trout streams in the United States.