Jitters for sale -- half price!

The tension mounts as Saturday's yard sale nears. Will it rain? Will the Fear of Flu keep away potential  customers? Will my wife sneak out my treasures and sell them before I notice? Will anybody buy any of the junk we're selling? Oh, the uncertainty.

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Do the world a little good and visit The Hunger Site at www.thehungersite.com. Just one click gives food to the needy. No purchase necessary. You can also help feed animals, fight breast cancer, contribute to literacy, and save  rainforests. No, really.

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I finally saw "Frost/Nixon" and thought Frank Langella more closely resembled Ed Sullivan than Richard Nixon.

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When a teacher complained, parents used to give their kids a talking-to. Now they yell at the teachers.

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If you transpose the last two letters of FBI, you get FIB. (This was noted in my geezer class on the Rosenbergs' trial, during which some fibs may have been told about the defendants, who were hardly above reproach but didn't deserve death.)

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More often, we regret the things we didn't do, not the ones we did. This is hardly an original thought but an accurate one nonetheless.

When it came to being nice, he stood tall

He was a very little man and perhaps a little lonely. He would always stop to chat briefly with our neighborhood "gang" of kids, and to a 4-year-old me, he seemed like a very nice guy. I would find out just how nice when I once repeated to him what my mother had said in an attempt to get me to improve my diet: "My mother says you never grew very tall because you didn't eat your vegetables." The height-challenged man just smiled and nodded and said, "That's right. That's what happened. You should listen to your mother." A nice guy, indeed.

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In preparing for a yard sale, my wife is uncovering all kinds of treasures -- knicknacks, books, LPs, etc. -- that I had forgotten I even owned. I, of course, refuse to part with them.

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I love that Amstel TV ad that begins with a belllowing Dutchman.

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Answer to Tuesday's puzzlement: William Howard Taft is the other president buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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The handful (fingerful?) of people who read this blog first thing in the morning may notice a few typographical or grammatical errors. Be assured that as the day goes on, these are corrected. Well, most of them anyway.

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Ray Bradbury is an American treasure.

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If the media had covered the buildup to the Iraq war the way they are covering the non-epidemic of swine flu in the United States, the Iraqi landscape might not have become littered with bodies.

Step right up and get your money back

I call it Rebate Rage. It's a condition that occurs when you buy a pricey item on the promise that you will get all or most of your money back by mailing in a simple rebate form. At least half the time, it seems that even though you followed the instructions to the letter, you are notified that you didn't qualify for the refund. Either that or you hear nothing. When this happens to me and the smoke is pouring from my ears, I vow never again to buy anything that carries the promise of a rebate. So a while ago, I bought this great DVD set that will cost me only $9.99 when I get my rebate. Haven't heard anything from the rebate folks yet, though.

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Ah, New England, if ever I would leave you it wouldn't be in springtime, when the forsythia is butter yellow and the dogwoods are blooming. No, never in springtime.

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The song that the above entry is based on was popularized by Robert Goulet. Whenever Elvis Presley saw Goulet on television, Elvis would reportedly exercise his good taste by shooting out the TV tube.

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And speaking of TV, I despise those furniture ads in which  wealthy owners with obnoxious voices try to act like jovial regular guys. (I don't mean Barry or Elliot, whichever one that guy is.)

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Today's puzzlement: We know John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, but what other president is taking his final rest there? (Answer Wednesday.)

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Until my geezer class yesterday, I knew nothing about Aung San Suu Kyi. Now I am her number one fan. (You could look her up, in Wikipedia for instance.)

Faces that shine brightly in memory

Eight months have gone by since my 50th high school reunion, but I remain haunted by the wall of photos. This was a display of graduation pictures of classmates who have died, some recently and others decades ago. In all, about 50 of the 250 graduates had left us.  I knew about some of the deaths, of course, having read about their terrible accidents or heard about their debilitating illnesses. But there were many I  was looking forward to seeing at the reunion. There, for instance, was my grammar school buddy who, I learned, had been dead for two years because of ALS. There was the woman from my old neighborhood who called me a few years back to compliment me on a newspaper article I had written. I was told that she had tried to hang on long enough to go to the reunion, but missed by a couple of months. And there were many classmates I hadn't seen, or even thought much about,  since high school, and their deaths were the hardest to accept because in my mind they were still 18 years old and alive and lively.

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To answer Friday's puzzlement, here are 10 combinations that make 23 cents: 23 pennies;  one nickel and 18 pennies; 2 nickels and 13 pennies; 4 nickels and 3 cents, 3 nickels and 8 pennies.1 dime and 13 pennies; 1 dime and 1 nickel and 8 pennies; 1 dime and 2 nickels and 3 pennies; and 2 dimes and 3 pennies.

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I don't know anyone with swine flu, but I have known a few swine in my life.

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How 'bout them Red Sox!

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I have never seen a Star Trek episode or movie and I'm certainly not going to start now.

The 1950s: delightful or depressing?

Those who remember the 1950s as fabulous either weren't there or are wearing the rosiest of rose-colored glasses. Can you say Korea? Can you say segregation? Can you say McCarthyism? Can you say sexism? Great music and movies, though.

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She was decidedly unattractive, and to look at her might want to make you smirk. Then she opened her mouth and the world fell in love. Susan Boyle? No, Eleanor Roosevelt, 70 years before Susan. Unlike Susan's, Eleanor's voice was strange but her words were golden.

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I am tall but life is short.

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Digital cameras have done more for the environment than Al Gore. No more  Polaroid papers slathered with chemicals. No more yellow Kodak boxes littering the landscape.

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Yesterday my blogging earned me a penny. So proud.

Twirling and whirling into the past

One definition of masochism is taking your 5-year-old grandson to a children's museum during school vacation week. But take him we did, to the EcoTarium in Worcester, Mass., where he joined the multitudes in twirling dials, pressing buttons, dashing from exhibit to exhibit and ignoring whatever science lesson the display was attempting to teach. As he did so, I found myself thinking back three decades to when the place was known as the Worcester Science Center and we took our own three children there and they too twirled, whirled and ignored. They were about Max's age, with school, jobs and crucial life choices all ahead of them. Thinking about that, I shed a tiny tear. But just one.

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I remember when comic strips were actually comic.

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When I hear about Obama being criticized for shaking hands with the likes of Hugo Chavez, I recall the words of JFK: "Civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof." (In reality, those were probably speechwriter Ted Sorensen's words, but the point is the same.)

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My cold is keeping Kleenex in business.

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"The Dutchman" may be the greatest love song ever written. It's about a senile man whose wife remembers for him when he was young and strong. The lyrics are by Michael Smith and can be found at www.artistsofnote.com/michael/lyrics/dutchman.shtml (but hurry back here), and I think that Liam Clancy sings it best.

Achoo to you, too

Whenever I'm around people with colds, I take extraordinary preventive measures. I wash my hands dozens of times a day, avoid touching my eyes and nose,  and even use a paper towel to  turn doorknobs. The result is that I catch the cold. There are, of course, hundreds of conditions worse than a cold, but when you have one, you really don't believe that.

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Most apologies are less than sincere. (That was said by a geezer professor in my geezer class. Like a good newsman, I attribute everything.)

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After decades of taste tests, I have concluded that pink and white Good and Plentys taste exactly the same.

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Many a truth is sung. Take these lyrics from "The Winning Side" by Robbie O"Connell: "Ah, but justice is a fickle thing./One law for the common man, another for the king. ... /And it's all justified when you're on the winning side."

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Here's a puzzlement that may take you all weekend to figure out: Come up with 10 combinations of coins that add up to 23 cents. Answer Monday.