A Raptor's Rapture

Hello. Above is a photograph of the most famous owl who ever lived. His ballad is presented below. It is an epic poem by me, worthy of Homer or Coleridge:

---

The Ballad of a Bird

Attend now the tale of an owl named Flaco
Escaped from the Central Park Zoo.
He found global fame, like Vanzetti and Sacco
But with oodles of love from the citizens, too. 

Some vigilante had cut open his cage
And bold Flaco — he just flew the coop.
The zookeepers felt mostly panic and rage. 
But New Yorkers, they let out a whoop. 

The people resented that he’d been confined
How he always seemed blue and just … pained.
Animal lovers thought this treatment unkind
A wild bird should be not be restrained.

Now Flaco was free!  The Man, he had beat.
And the owl was manfully using his talons.
The city’s fat rats were a bountiful treat.
(Flaco’s testosterone flowed by the gallons.)

Sightings were frequent but he wouldn’t be captured 
Ornithologists thought he would quickly succumb.
But winter to winter he lived wild, enraptured.
(His wiliness proved authorities dumb.)

He lived grand and classy, in the parks, not in squalor,
In trees, on fire escapes and on chimneys galore.
He was loud and was proud, gave a hoot and a holler.
He eluded all cats. He was brave to the core.

The zoo tried to trap him with bait in a box; he
Backed away, flew away, ran away, fled.
The guy was quite simply too wary and foxy
To wind up in jail again, which he would dread.

New Yorkers are said to be cold-hearted cynics
But something occurred that was quite unforseeable
On rudeness, it’s said, these folks could give clinics
But one little bird made them soft and … agreeable.

The locals would spot him, the itinerant king,
Took pictures and wished him good luck with a grin.
But here is the upshot, a most lovely thing:
They let him stay free. They did not turn him in.

High-rises in cities have acres of glass;
Birds see them as open air, looming ahead.
They don’t understand that those windows have mass.
Flaco, last Friday — he hit one. He’s dead.

So consider the story of Flaco’s adventure
And how we treat birds, how much thought we don’t give it.
This owl escaped his ordeal of indenture ….
And that year on the lam — Good God, did he live it.

—

Please send in observations and answers to Bob, this Bodacious Orange Button:

Below, your four Gene Pool Gene Polls, all on the subject of things that one is supposed to do. I think I have dipped into this subject before. But here is the full Monty.

—

---

Here is a splendid anecdote by Robert Reich, economist who was secretary of labor under Clinton and currently writes a smart and wise liberal Substack. You should subscribe. The story is very short, like Mr. Reich, who stands four feet eleven inches.

—

Oh, wait. I just thought of a new, timely Gene Pol Gene Pool Gene Poll:

And now this:

And this, an extraordinary 10-second dog video.

—

And this might be the greatest acrobatic stunt I’ve ever seen. It seems to be real.

—

Okay, we’re taking your real-time questions and comments now. Many of them are responding to the Weekend Gene Pool, which asked for examples of times when technology failed you, or you failed it. Many dozens of you for some reason focused solely on GPS, so, alas, some perfectly good observations will go unread, to prevent redundancy.

Send questions and observations here, to this official Q and O button:

Q: I have a digital bathroom scale that, so far as I can, is appropriately accurate to the tenths place, as confirmed by my doctor’s scale, with one exception.  It lies to me in the morning, and I can prove it. 

Every morning I get out of bed, weigh myself, naked or in just undies.  Then I go to the bathroom.  I empty what is usually a full bladder.  Then I weigh myself again.  I do this now just for entertainment, because  EVERY morning the second weighing shows me to be slightly HEAVIER than in the pre-pee weighing.  A full bladder of pee is said to weigh roughly a half a pound.  There is no explanation for this instrument’s anomalous behavior, other than a mischievous poltergeist with a toe on the scale. 

A: Interesting!  I have sheepishly revealed this before, I think: I seldom weigh myself naked.  I usually wear normal daytime clothing, so that if the reading is higher than I would prefer, I get to lie to myself, without prejudice, about how much weight the clothing added.  (e.g., a pair of jeans = nine pounds.)

Q: I drive a 1988 Alfa Romeo which does not have GPS, so I use a plug-in Magellan. My favorite direction given was “In 90 miles, make a U-turn.”

A: Excellent. I lifted this from “Kitchen Cynic” in the Weekend Gene Pool comments. My favorite idiotic direction is happening more and more: “Use the left lane to make a right onto….” When you see the street configuration, it makes sense, but not in the abstract.

Q: Did you see the Shane Gillis monologue on SNL? Was this funny and I don't get it? Or am I too sensitive? I was very uncomfortable during the whole thing, and I didn't find any of it funny. The whole part about Down syndrome felt like he was punching down. I will trust your opinion about this as the Official Voice of Humor.  

A: I am glad you asked this.   Rachel and I watched it Sunday night (I don’t stay up late enough to watch it live) and after it was over, we just stared at the screen for a bit.  “That was weird,” she said.  “Yeah,” I said.  Then we stared at the screen for a few seconds more. 

I think it was funny, almost entirely because of its edge — but at the same time, I can totally understand why a person with a fine sense humor of might find it not funny for the same reason.  That is one of the reasons I like it. Very, very edgy in a complicated, debatable way

I don’t think it was provocation only for the sake of provocation.  Gillis was returning years after SNL hired, then fired, him for racist and homophobic things he once said. He was nervous, and was using his nervousness intelligently and in an ironically complex way, remaining in his role as a big comical dufus, while reminding us, quite directly, that he hasn’t abandoned his edge.  Still the same guy, folks, only chastened just a bit. It was subtly self-critical.  And I believe there was an underlying sweetness in the Down syndrome schtick. You may well strongly, and reasonably, disagree, and neither of us will be wrong.

I will wait a few minutes more before re-launching questions and observations. I’d like you to have time to watch this so we can discuss it.

—

TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: Go back to the top of this post and click on "View in browser" to see the full column live and online, and to read and make comments.  If you are doing it in real time, refresh from time to time to see the new questions and answers that appear as Gene regularly updates the post.

---

Also, you can choose to upgrade your subscription to “paid,” though you are not required to do so. And if you are already paid up, you are totally copacetic, unless you know and love someone named Albert or Susan, because today — this is true — is both National Albert Day and National Susan Day. Forget to buy presents for these dear friends or relatives? You can gift them a year of The Gene Pool for merely $4.15 a month! Just hit this here gift button.

And If you yourself are named Albert or Susan, and you are still a lurker only, you can gift yourself with full membership, here:

Q: What I find particularly infuriating about technology in our current world is its inescapability and the evangelical fervor of its proponents. 

For instance: For a long time I did not have a cellphone. There were lots of other ways to get hold of me, but I didn't have a cellphone. This was a minor source of inconvenience, notably when traveling, but the main problem was when I was forced to divulge my cellphonelessness to others.

A surprising number of people would become indignant, actually angry as though I'd just admitted to not paying income tax; as though they thought I was trying to get away with something. Yet as far as I know it's not actually illegal to not have a cellphone. 

I'm very sorry all the pay phones have been ripped out.

I also don’t enjoy being expected to look at endless photos and videos on people’s phones. And now that I have a cellphone, I don’t enjoy being expected to have it on me at all times.

In short: what I hate about technology in the present and recent past is its obligatory nature, and the extent to which everyone participates willingly in this obligation, all shelling out large amounts of money regularly for the privilege of being expected to be connected all the time.

A:  You sound like an embittered curmudgeon and Luddite.  My kind of guy.   It runs in my family.  As I recall, my parents didn’t get their first color TV until roughly 1971.   

Q: Wait.  isn’t it doofus, not dufus, as you wrote? 

A: Technically, yes.  They used to be considered “alternative” spellings, but doofus has taken over, largely through the tyranny of lexicographers.  I prefer dufus unless Pat edits me and then I become docile. .  I think dufus reads funnier. 

Q: About 10 years ago, I was in West Virginia for work, making a presentation to coworkers in a hotel ballroom. For reasons I forget now, I was not staying at the hotel where we were meeting. The morning of the presentation, I left my hotel with my co-presenter (who was also from out of town). I put the destination in my map app, and about 20 minutes later, we arrived at a rocky field, no hotel in sight. My co-presenter put the address in a different app on his phone. About 20 minutes later, we arrived at a residence, no hotel in sight. Incidentally, the date was April 1, and we googled to see if map apps were pranking people. They were not.  I had a second map app on my phone so we tried that. About 20 minutes later, we arrived at a fire station, no hotel in sight. At this point, we were very late, and a local coworker called to find out where we were. I said, our map apps are taking us to all the wrong places. She then informed me that our destination was directly across the highway from the hotel where we started.

A: Perfect anecdote.

—

The following is a relic from my 30 years as a university administrator during which I spend endless, uncountable hours serving on innumerable student information system committees:

 My Shadow System (with apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson) 

I have a shadow system I've installed on my PC
And what can be the use of it is more than I can see.
It's very like the real one, from the file size to its header;
And like the real one, it crashes when I try to make it better. 

The funniest thing about it is the way expenses grow –
Nothing like my budget, which is always very slow.
For my charges sometimes shoot up like an india-rubber ball
While its output gets so little that there's sometimes none at all!

 It hasn't got a notion how to process my command,
And I feel a fool because it doesn’t work the way we planned.
The six shelf-feet of manuals don't help me when I'm stuck.
And I have to say, when I succeed, it's pretty much by luck. 

One morning, very early, before the system was brought up,
The Dean asked me a question. I put coffee in my cup,
Walked past my shadow system with scarce a second look,
And taking pen and paper, found his answer in a book. — Jim Shaefer

A: Very nice.  My retort:

I looked it up, so can explain what it is you talk about.
A shadow system customizes desktops when there’s doubt
That you can meet your special needs at work,
So people will not think of you as one inexpert jerk.

—

Q: Our nearest airport is Roanoke. Once when driving there, we were instructed to turn left on “Airport Dr.,” which the GPS voice rendered as “Airport Doctor.” — Janet Chafin  

A: This was also from the Weekend comments. When I was using a prehistoric Garmin very early in the GPS era, they apparently had the voice created by mixing and matching thousands of packets of syllables.  Mine one kept saying “Kee pleft” or “Kee Pright.” Really got on my nerves.  

Q: SWM seeks a female to donate (or sell) me some of her eggs. My plan is to fertilize them at a clinic to create 5 embryos. Then I’ll move to Alabama, where I’ll suddenly have 5 dependents to write off on my state and federal taxes for the rest of my life. Is this brilliant, or what?

A: Brilliant.

—

Q: There was the time my wife tried to reserve a car rental in Malta, Montana, so she could drive to Bozeman, and ended up with one in Malta, Europe - but it still gave her driving directions from there to Bozeman (it seemed to assume certain aquatic capabilities far beyond any car you could get stateside at the time).  I’m not sure where the failure was, I’m just grateful she was allowed to cancel without a fee.

A: Elegant. It reminds me of the time, as a good Samaritan, I stepped in to try to help a woman in the Metro who spoke only Spanish. She told me she had to get to Boston. I patiently explained, using my imperfect but mostly comprehensible Spanish, that she had to go to the airport, told her which stop to get off at, where the planes to Boston might be. She kept nodding eagerly but seemed to be getting more and more depressed. A person standing nearby said ‘I think she said “Ballston.” Yep. What I almost did to that woman! For out-of-towners: Ballston is a close-in suburb of D.C. There’s a Metro stop right there.

Q: Great poem, but did you mean 'quite' rather than 'quit'? — Lisa Itowne

A: I did, and thank you. Fixed now.

Q: There are tons of pronunciation regionalisms (like substituting a glottal stop for another consonant) that don’t bother me.   What really bothers me is all those American chefs on cooking contract shows pronouncing ‘mascarpone’ as ‘marss-ka-pone’.  I don’t care if they don’t use the Italian pronunciation with the final e as a syllable itself, but I greatly object to the complete relocation of the r to a different syllable.  Thank you.

A: It is incomprehensible to me that a chef would make that mistake.  It is an idiot (if someone understandable) mistake by un-chefs — marscapone more easily rolls off the tongue — but please.  It would be as if I perpetually spelled “aptonym” as “antonym” or “anecdote” as “antidote.  People do that, but no writer should.

I had a loved one who could not get it into her head that it was “chipotle” and not “chipolte.” I am sure she is still saying it.

—

Q: Gene, my wife and I call the Google Maps lady Sonia because after a while she sure get sonia nerves!  As for technology failures, my excellent wife told me strictly not to put pictures of her on the beach anywhere online.  I put the camera chip in my laptop to backup to a folder and watched aghast as Google announced it was copying all the pictures to the cloud!  – Howard Ausden

A: Not quite following that last bit, because I am a renowned Luddite. Almost all my stuff is in the cloud, but only I have access to it. Why is your thing a problem?

—

Q: I suspect that at least part of the problem with submitters not identifying themselves is that our email address appears above the form we fill out. I’ll bet many people assume that this is being passed along as part of the submission, though evidently it isn’t. – Sean Clinchy 

It isn’t, even though we have explained this ad nauseam, even specifying that if you wanted your name included with your answer, you MUST put it in the body of the message. I don’t see your author form. We used italics and CAPS. You are all incorrigible, some more incorrigible than others.  See next post. 

Q: Again, I do not list my ID since it is at the top of this form. Is this OK? 

A: Okay, Pat and I have given up.  We changed the instructions in the Google form to make it understandable even to me, or a mentally challenged dog.

—

Q; In the 1970s, there used to be a pen called the EraserMate, which had an eraser that could erase ink. It was a terrible idea. The results looked like hell, and if you can erase pen, you can change the amounts of money on a check, for example.

A: It’s still being sold! And I bet it’s still bad, unless it’s been vastly improved. It used to rip the paper on account of pen ink takes a lot of friction to erase.

—

Q: In reference to Biden’s age and mental acuity, this is an excellent story from the PBS News Hour. The important point being that forgetfulness should not be confused with a lack of what these folks refer to as “executive function”. — Sean Clinchy

A: Yes, that is exactly what I was writing about when I said that .   

As an aside, my particular rules for executive function are much simpler.  When I was the editor of Tropic Magazine at the Miami Herald, the greatest newspaper magazine ever, I was therefore technically a “manager,” I had only three rules for management. All the rest was seat-of-the-pants.   1) Surround yourself with people more talented than you are.  2) Don’t ever let them figure out that you know that.  3) Get in the office earlier than everyone else, and leave later.  

The key is not being one of those cowardly managers who fear being out-performed by underlings.  You WANT to be out-performed. Joel Achenbach and Madeleine Blais and Dave Barry and John Dorschner  regularly wrote things more brilliantly than I ever could have. 

I was once asked to give a lecture to Post managers on how to manage genius.   I said you don’t try to “manage” genius.  It can’t be managed.  Geniuses usually have a screw loose somewhere.  You don’t try to tighten it: that could ruin everything.  If someone is a compulsive nose picker, you compliment them on how well they do it.  They all thought I was kidding.

—

Q: Is there any story you wrote that you feel didn’t get the attention or applause it warranted?

A: Yes, I wrote this story ahead of the expected descent of the dreaded computer Millennium Bug.   It’s fascinating.  Really well told.  I actually came to a solid, defensible conclusion, at the end, about whose fault the whole fiasco was.  I felt, at the time, that it was the best thing I’d ever written. The reporting was spectacular, I say modestly. Alas, the bug hit only with a mild splat, like a mosquito on a windshield, and the story, which envisioned disaster scenarios, plummeted to a deserved death online forever after.

—

This is Gene. I have an observation. It is a little unkind. It is very rare that I think respondents to a poll are misleading us, and/or themselves. I do today. I believe most people would drive if they felt a little buzzed from three beers. They’d be extra careful and cautious, but they’d drive home rather than … what? Leave the car and call an Uber, then get another Uber to get their car the same day? Same with multitasking in a car. Sosumi.

—

This is still Gene. I am calling us down. Thanks for the excellent Q’s and O’s. We need more, for Thursday. Please keep sending them here: