The Curmudgeonly Professor

More Tulips and Views at Thanksgiving Point: Photos of the Day June 5 2009

 

The Summer Blooms Are Just Beginning: Photos of the Day June 4 2009

                                     

                                          

Why do We Think that the Geniuses Who Screwed Up GM and Chrysler can Fix it with Government Money?

The Curmudgeonly Professor is merely a defunct economics professor who toiled in the vineyards of hostile freshmen econ students for over 40 years.  He did go to school in Ann Arbor, where he heard a great deal about the auto industry, and he once was sent by the U.S. Treasury Dept. to Detroit from D.C. to meet with tax counsel for the five or so automakers, all of whom were towering giants with gold chains across tailored dark vests.  Since I had on my K Street seersucker suit, I might have felt out of place, but these people knew that the Treasury would potentially be handing them out huge plates of tax reduction goodies and they also knew I would be reporting back to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury who would be reporting to the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy who would be reporting to the Secretary of the Treasury.  So I was treated with far more respect than a green-as-grass 28 year old near-Ph.D. staff member deserved.

I did get the idea then, as I have had ever since, that the administration of the auto industry was rather clunky and fossilized.  George Romney was smart enough to start peddling his tiny little American Motors cars as a precursor to what the more apt and innovative Japanese auto producers were about to unleash on the country, but the ruts for the auto industry were deep then, and they have not become any more shallow in the ensuing years.  Having spent much of my professional life reading and teaching books about how set-in-cement encrusted tradition and blinders destroyed giant company after giant company, not to mention a whole batch of little companies, I came to have a healthy skepticism about the future of the auto industry.  A few innovative and clever moves seemed to be continually out balanced by neanderthal repitition of things that obviously didn't work.  What did all of those bright MBAs and Ph.D. consultants and armies of executives, planners, and designers spend their time doing all those decades? And was it a matter of not listening to the people with ideas, or being so entrenched that ideas were dead before they left the brain?

At any rate, it comes as no surprise that the American auto industry is in the dumps.  The Chevies and Plymouths and Fords that were once the beacons of the American highways atrophied, dwindled, and almost perished while other more innovative, cost-cutting, planners and designers and manufacturers strangled the ultimate growth potential of the Big 3 automakers.  But my question is this:  Why do we think that the same people who screwed up the auto industry now will have a sudden revelation, a flash of light on the road to the Damascus of federal bailout money, and do a quick repentance and thereby come up with something that people want to buy in preference to foreign autos?  The death of the auto communities is truly an American tragedy, the excising of decades-old family dealerships sad song for families and communities across the country, the folding of myriad linked companies, and the lack of confidence in America's ability to engineer, produce, and market cars that peoople want will haunt us for decades.  The days when we sang, along with Dinah Shore "See the USA in your Chevrolet" and then went to our Chevy dealer and bought our Chevrolet and then used to see the USA are gone forever.  The market system was never meant to be kind to economic change as hundreds of defunct companies that were a major economic force in the early 1900s were buried in the economic graveyard.  We can hope some resuscitation can occur in the auto industry.  But the programs under way thus far rely more on faith than potential to produce the necessary progress.  But, what does the Curmudgeonly Professor know?  He is merely indulging in the luxury of free expression instead of watching a hated rerun of a Matlock episode.  Perhaps three or four people will read my cogent analysis.

Look at Enchantment in the Heart of a White Rose: Photos of the Day June 4 2009

 

Greenery, Russian Olives, Wild Roses, and a Pine Cone on the Jordan River Trail: Photos of the Day June 4 2009

 

Is a Tree as Pretty as a Flower? : Photo of the Day June 3 2009

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Secrets of a Happy Marriage: Men, do Not Make Bodily Noises

The Professor has been reluctant to bring up a topic that, ahem, is a tad indelicate, but which must, in the interests of securing happy marital circumstances be broached, even for those of tender sensitivies.  The rule is simple, men:  Do not make bodily noises.  You rude ignorant slobs know whereof I speak.  This topic is one, I know, that generates a great deal of male pride and is a topic of frequent masculine conversations and tee-heeing.  However, if you want to have a happy marriage, it is now time to behave yourselves and control yourselves.  You have probably already influenced your children for the worse in these regards, so to speak.

After all, men, when you were courting your little girl-bride, and trying to impress her and avoid offending her mother, did you perform such egregious acts?  No, no, not in a thousand hours of courtship, no matter how difficult the situation became.  How long after your marriage did you begin such offensive behavior, explainiing that even in the presence of the Queen of England you would have had to gracefully acknowledge that you had a slight problem?

You may not want to stop all at once, since that could cause suspicion.  But you might consider a twelve-step phase out program, ending up a totally reformed man, who vows never to make another bodily noise again.  You can no longer blame it on the dog, or the beans, or on someone else who committed this sin first.  You are totally responsible for your own actions.  Your spousal unit will be much less likely to send you out of the house and down to the pool hall if you behave yourself in polite society.  She is probably wondering why she ever married such an uncouth, rude, ignoramus in the first place.  Now she will be proud of you and your marriage may last years longer.  The Curmudgeonly Professor is always happy to be of service in the interests of happier marital circumstances.  Have a nice day.

Harvard Business School Publishes Report on Twittering

Just to show you slow adopters of modern networking technology a thing or two, the website TimetoTweet.com referenced an article by Harvard Business School titled New Twitter Research:  Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets."    According to Harvard researchers, 80% of Twitterers are followed by at least one user, whereas only 60-65% of other social networkers had at least one friend when their networks were at the same stage of development.  Moreover, the average man was two times more likely to follow another man than a woman.  But, however, get this:  Over half of Tweeters tweeted less than once every 74 days.  You can read the article here.

Yet, TimetoTweet.com reports that Ashton Kutcher has millions of followers.  Demi must not have any chores for him to do around the house to enable that much spare time devoted to Tweeting.  But at least Harvard Business School has dignified the Tweeting process with academic research.

Twittering is particularly adaptable to people with millions of gripes, information tidbits, gems of thought, pieces of advice, scholarly observations, and trivial gossip who can condense each thought to 140 characters or less.  In this case, Twittering can become quickly addictive.  Plus I have found a couple of dozen Twitters extremely useful in finding links to Photoshop techniques, blogging ideas, digital camera stuff, photography, and other topics.  I have Twittered for three days now and have the magnificent sum of 35 followers, a few less than Ashton's millions.  You might as well get over your aversion and get on the Twitter bandwagon.  Don't be a fuddy-duddy, Twittering is the future.

Some Flower Discoveries from My Evening Walk: Photos of the Day June 3 2009

 

 

Flowers are An Important Part of the Stories of Our Lives

We can typically illustrate various chapters in our lives with the flowers that we loved, with the blossoms by our front door and in our yards and gardens and in our neighbors' and grandparents' yards.  When I was little, we lived in a little brown house with an orchard, and so, for my first ten years, we had blossoming apple trees every spring.  Then we had at least two large lilac bushes that were the floral gems of our youth, thus resulting in purple lilacs becoming perhaps the most poignant flower and fragrance of our lives.  We remember the wild roses by the nearby Shoshone River and along the upper ditch bank on Grandpa's farm near the canal.  The gorgeous iris was one plant that could withstand the harsh growing conditions and hard clay soil of our Wyoming farm, and every one had rows of iris.  I called them the orchids of the desert.  The iris and the lilacs typically bloomed by Memorial Day so cuttings could be taken to the cemetery.

The huge yellow rose bush in the center of Grandma's lawn was surely one of the treasured floral displays of my youth, creating a memory that is recalled each time I see another yellow rose bush today.  The aroma and the beauty of yellow roses have always been an important part of my life story.  We had a white spirea by our house, which offered sprays of white blossoms, creating another floral legacy.  Mother coaxed rows of beautiful gladiola spikes, multi-hued, and brilliantly colored dahlias from the harsh Wyoming soil wherever we had a garden. Our home always had displays of these blooms until after frost in the fall.  We loved the little white strawberry blossoms, which promised bowls of ripe red strawberries in summer and strawberry jam all winter.

After I left home at the age of 17 for college, and then left college three years later with a wife and a degree, headed for grad school, we moved often for jobs and school.  We always planted flowers when and where we could.  Memorable flowers among our moves were the orchards of Pennsylvania and the huge flower beds on the Penn State campus.  The tulip trees by the Treasury where I worked in D.C. were new to me, and memorable still after all these years.  I constantly remember the big lilac bush by the back door of the Economics building, a building that burned down years after I left, on the University of Michigan campus where I went to grad school, reminiscent of an old-fashioned garden rather than a sentinel for the door where I entered to try and survive for three years.  The lilac bush, in spring, was a sort of reminder of Penrose, my childhood home, and a beacon of hope of survival in an unforgiving and rigorous academic environment.

Our most difficult challenge for flower growing occurred in Laramie WY, where I and my wife both graduated from the University of Wyoming and where I later taught for nine years.  The University gardeners labored through the winter to start enough flowering plants in their greenhouses to grace the campus in summer for a brief transient time.  Frosts often lasted until after Memorial Day, and the first fall frost could occur as early as late August or wait until the end of September.  But while the summer lasted, which some said began on Friday and was over by Sunday, the yards and campus in Laramie were a showcase of flowers.  The lilacs bloomed, eventually.  One may wonder why so much effort, time, and money would be expended for such a brief period of blooming, some times not lasting even three months.  The answer is that flowers are so important to us, and while they may last only momentarily, we think of them all winter and prepare again to plant and nurture them the following spring.

Now my flower gardens in St. George and Salt Lake are just a few square feet by the front and back doors.  Especially in St. George, many opt for desert landscaping and plant red rocks instead of flowers.  But despite being a water consumer, I cannot see myself not having flowers by the doorstep and so we continue with our petunias, rose bushes, and some other miscellaneous flowering plants.  In St. George, the hot summer typically kills pansies and early spring flowers by mid-July, but then the fall flowers and the roses continue well into frost which may not occur until late November or early December.  Winter only lasts a couple of months or a bit more there, and by mid-February we can count on the showers of white and pink blossoms on trees throughout the city.  One summer I planted a packet of zinnia seeds in St. George which my wife objected to for several years, since a forest of five-foot high zinnias reproduced each year and she fought a constant battle to get rid of them so we could see the roses blooming.  She eventually won, but I miss the zinnias, another flower icon of my youth.  I have another packet of zinnia seeds in my closet in St. George, and I think I will plant them again, only these are shorter zinnias.

Now that my life accidentally seems to be centered around taking photos of flowers, I suppose I have become the crazy old geezer with the cameras who is always sneaking photos of my neighbors' flowers.  Most don't seem to mind, and, to some, I have given 8 x 10 prints of some of the best of their blooms to placate them which they hang on their walls and brag about.  I have gotten in the habit of watching with an eagle eye for any different kind of bloom, for anything out of the ordinary, whether along the trail by the river or in the neighborhoods where we live.  So you might say that my life began in an old apple orchard with lilacs and zinnias and spirea and gladiolus and dahlias and yellow roses and is winding down exploring and photographing every kind of blossom I can find.  Some people tell me I shouldn't post them all on the internet since, even though I have a copyright warning, some people inevitably will copy them.  I have thought about that, and I may, indeed, want to make some greeting cards and multiple prints of some of my best pictures, but I will probably give them away anyway.  Meanwhile, as long as I get notes of appreciation from as far away as the Philipines, I am likely to continue searching for and photographing and posting pictures of flowers since flowers are the dominant interest in my current stage of life.

More Photos from Thanksgiving Point: Photos of the Day June 3 2009

 

  

A Beautiful Bouquet for the Early Birds: Photo of the Day June 3 2009

Absolutely double click

A Flower Design to Marvel: Photo of the Day June 2 2009

Please double click to see the full beauty of these blossoms

Do Plants Have Personalities? Carol Klein Says Yes

The Curmudgeonly Professor's curmudgeonliness may have waned a bit after spending the last year photographing and posting thousands of photos of flowers.  This activity served as a significant learning experience.  First of all, taking photos is a pastime that leads us to observe our surroundings carefully and to search out an almost infinite variety of perspectives of what we normally may just ignore or glance at only for a moment and then pass by.  Taking pictures of flowers leads to searching for any kind of blossom on any kind of plant.  And then, continuing to take thousands of photos of flowers leads to noticing carefully the myriad colors, patterns, geometry, and design of every thing we see blooming.

Along the pathways of this experience, the question occurred to me:  Do flowers have personalities?  It certainly seemed to me as if flowers did, in fact, have personalities.  A rose, for instance, is one flower that is stunningly beautiful in its budding phase, seemingly modest and promising a greater display as it unfolds its delicate petals.  An iris is a ruffled beauty, a show off, with its orchid-like petals.  A sunflower is a bright promise of things to come if we, like, the sunflower, just follow the light.  The large white flowers on the cactus in our neighborhood in St. George are so luminous, so pristinely and brilliantly white, that they seem almost sacred in their beauty.  And their luminous whiteness is only a portent of their imminent demise, a reminder that we cannot save everything we love forever, no matter how achingly beautiful.  

I was pleasantly surprised to learn of Carol Klein's book titled "Plant Personalities: Choosing and Growing Plants by Character" (Timber Press) in the recent Daedalus Books catalog (where, by the way, the price is $5.98 plus shipping as a publisher's remainder).  Thus, my observation and hypothesis that plants have personalities was vindicated.

In the Daedalus book review, the writer stated:

Plants can be flamboyant and voluptuous, funny and frivolous, but do they really have personalities?  [the writer] . . . offers a resounding yes.  Good-natured, bread and butter plants contribute to the garden for months, while others are fleeting, shooting to stardom for a brief, breathtaking performance.  There are the garden gatecrashers who just show up one day, the touchy-feely plants who add sensuality, and the drama queens who demand the spotlight.  (with superb close-up photographs),

I haven't ordered the book yet, but I will.  Meanwhile, gardeners and flower lovers, see what you can learn about the personalities of your plants.

 

Curmudgeonly Professor's Secrets of Success: Men Learn How to Fix Lunch

By popular demand (one person) the Curmudgeonly Professor is continuing his Quest to raise the bar for success for those persons, usually men, who are just goofing off.  The number one thing, men, you will learn when you retire, is that 99% of wives have no intention of fixing your lunch.  They haven't been fixing lunch for 40 years or more, and they are not about to do it now.  If you are married to the 1% of spousal units who cheerfully fix your lunch in their June Cleaver outfits, consider yourselves a rare old bird, indeed.

Thus, men, you have a task ahead of you.  When the Curmudgeonly Professor was in college and "batching," as they called scrounging up your own food, he was heavy into Campbell's mushroom soup and tomato soup, Van Camp's pork and beans, kidney beans, baloney sandwiches, and other inedible items.  At least when I was working, my spousal unit did, indeed, fix me a sack lunch occasionally.  Otherwise, I went to various university cafeterias wherever I was.  At BYU, the place of choice for business school profs was Wendy's.  Amazingly, all the skinny guys got the big burger and the french fries while I got the 99 cent chili which, reputedly was made out of uneaten hamburgers.

Upon retirement, I had dreams of sitting down for a leisurely lunch of gourmet luncheon items served on a placemat, while we engaged in spousely conversation.  Was I nuts?  My wife usually doesn't get around to eating a bite of toast for breakfast until ll:30 or later.  So now I have developed my repertoire for lunch.  Hot dogs work great, since one can incinerate them in a toaster oven to bring out all the goodness of the sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite.  On lucky days, leftover roast beef or chicken works for a sandwich.  The other day I was fortunate to buy a rotisserie chicken at WalMart for $3.50.  I asked why the chicken was only $3.50.  I was worried that something was wrong with it.  Apparently, it was made early in the morning and no one had picked it out yet.  For good reason.  The top was charred quite black, and it appeared to be on the scrawny side.  So I bought it, pulled the charred skin off, and chewed on it for a few days.  The last time I was in Costco I asked the chicken rotisserier, or the guy cooking the chicken, how many chickens they put through in a day and he said he didn't know for sure but that it was only noon and they had already sent 188 chickens, exactly, to their final fate.

There is, horror of horrors, always peanut butter and jelly, a gourmet treat that elicits nightmares of grade school lunches consumed at desks in an aura of smelly bananas, garlic, and other pungent delicacies brought to school by my classmates. 

Well, to get on with the story, this noon I resurrected an ice covered "Lean Cuisine" from the freezer and thought this option might be a nice change.  You've got to be kidding.  The outside of the package looked enticing, which was why I bought it.  The other reason was that it was on sale for $1.50, which was only 21 cents more than my favorite lunch, the $1.29 burger at Carl's Junior.  I have read several times why Carl's Junior is called Carl's Junior but I don't remember why this peculiar name.  The outside of the package showed a wonderful colored picture of a dish of chicken, vegetables, and pasta.  The top of the plate showed about eight reasonably large medallions of roasted chicken tenderloins, which covered the entire plate, with some bright green broccoli, and a few pieces of yellow squash.  This dish did, in fact, look quite tasty.

However, reality was far from the illusion of the cover of the package.  I followed the directions carefully, first removing the tray from the box, a major necessity, and nuking it for 7 minutes.  Whereupon I discovered two tiny chunks of chicken one could hardly label as "medallions," three tiny pale green soggy pieces of what may have started out in an earlier life as broccoli, some miniscule tidbits of carrots and yellow squash, and some pasta.  I forced the whole thing down so I would get my money's worth, vowing never to buy Lean Cuisine chicken and vegetables with roasted chicken tenderloins again.

I bought the ingredients for clam chowder the other day, and I think I will get around to making one of these days.  My wife hates clams, she thinks they keep squiggling and squirming when you swallow them, so I will have to engage in this culinary adventure on my own.  Of course, there are always things like grilled cheese, creamed corn, dry cereal, lunch meat and such, so one never need starve.  But, in general, the lunches at the school cafeteria were a tad tastier, and even the cheap chili at Wendy's was an improvement over what I come up with.  So men, either do not retire, or become a gourmet chef unless you want your noon lunches to be something more than gaggable delicacies.