70 years ago this week: Battle of Midway Island (June 4-7, 1942)

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Mike Shortall

I repost this blog on the Battle of Midway Island that occurred on this date in 1942. This was written two years ago on the 70th anniversary of this momentum-turning fight to the death.

Cranky Man's Lawn

(Today our Navy command observed the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Midway as in commemoration of the recent Memorial Day holiday. This was a different take on Memorial Day observations as it took a look at a specific, historical battle.)

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

As was mentioned in my previous Memorial Day post, the Japanese fleet set off for Midway Island on May 27, 1942. Their intent was draw U.S. Navy carrier forces into a trap by attacking Midway Island, one of the few military installations U.S. forces occupied west of Pearl Harbor and the Hawaiian Islands. Once U.S. carriers responded to the Midway attack by seeking out Japanese carrier force, the hammer of Japanese battleship forces would then attack and destroy the U.S. carrier fleet. All the U.S. battleships assigned to the Pacific theatre had been destroyed or damaged just six months prior to the Battle of Midway when the Japanese attacked…

View original post 1,205 more words

A Trolley unfazed and not so jolly Holly Days

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Mike Shortall

It’s not often that I write about my experiences as a consumer of products and services. Sometimes though, these experiences simply beg to be addressed for either for their positive or negative experiences.

This post will address an example of each.

~~Do Not~~
Eat Here …
You’ll never eat at home again!

This was the plaintive – and rather imaginative – plea and a tweak directed at a Philadelphia trade union from the good folks at the Trolley Car Diner, located on Germantown Avenue in Philly’s Mt. Airy section.

Carol and I frequent the Trolley Car as part of our pre-game ritual for “Business Person Specials” Philadelphia Phillies games that starts at 1:05 PM. As we had the game played last Wednesday, May 14 (a sleeper of a shutout loss to the LA Angels), we headed down early for the pre-game breakfast/lunch.

It’s only called “brunch” on Sunday’s, right?

Anyways, as we turned onto Germantown Avenue, we immediately noticed signs imploring the public “Don’t Eat Here!”. My first reaction was “Crap! Don’t tell me we have to find somewhere else to eat!” Then as we got closer we noted more signs, including one with a likeness of the owner and another that alleged the owner’s role in depressing fair wages and benefits.

My reaction was immediate. “Unions …”, quickly followed by ” … Philadelphia!”

Those two thoughts, neither of them presented here as negatives within themselves, seem to always be connected. And maybe my thought process was primed a bit by the ongoing union travails and controversy at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which included the unusual sight of union members in several trades crossing the picket lines of others.

Only in Philadelphia …

As we entered and were greeted by the host, I kiddingly asked him whether we should even eat there. But he was immediately ready with a one-page letter, written by owner, Ken Weinstein about what was happening out front and why. The letter, addressed “Dear Friend”, is a public relations homerun!

For my fellow Phillies fans, whose team currently ranks 28th out of 30 MLB teams in round-trippers, a homerun is a very, very good thing. Just sayin’ …

Trolley Car Diner
Mt. Airy, Philadelphia

The crux of the matter – of course – was the inability of unionized electrical contractors to compete with subcontractors who use non-union labor. In this case the very same International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, led by Philly labor icon John Dougherty had out-priced themselves from a Weinstein redevelopment project. This is one of the very same unions that had recently crossed the picket lines of Carpenters and Teamsters in the aforementioned Philadelphia Convention Center incident.

That – my friends – is karma!

In his excellent letter to some very loyal customers, Weinstein explains his plan to rehabilitate four vacant, historical buildings that previously served St. Peter’s Episcopal Church; his hiring of a general contractor; and the effort to solicit competitive bids from both union and non-union contractors. Weinstein’s claims that the only union contractor to bid was 35% higher than the selected non-union provider.

This should be of no surprise to anyone, nor should the union’s reaction when losing fair-and-square in the market of competitive bidding. They picket, not the site of the prospective work to be performed, but the wholly separate earning capacity of the developer – the Trolley Car Diner – with accusations of “depressing wages” and “denying benefits”.

They are nothing, if not dogged and disingenuous as to the cause of their particular problem!

Sorry, IBEW, you get no sympathy here.

So if you get the chance, show the Trolley Car Diner some love. With a fine menu, great food, and a nice selection of bottled craft-brewed beers, you will not be disappointed!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Next is my negative experience with Holly Days Nursery, a well-regarded botanical nursery in Horsham.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit, I did not take my aggravation any further than the landscaping representative that decided to blow me off last Tuesday for an appointment scheduled for an estimate on planting a few trees and bushes. But after taking a few hours personal time from work to meet him between 3:00 – 4:00 PM, a quick apology and an offer to reschedule does not in any way recognize the fact that my time should be just as important as theirs and any other customer they purport to serve.

The only thing that prevented those few hours being a complete waste of my time was that the lawn needed cutting anyway.

I already had trouble with two previous trees from Holly Days. Both were purchased at the nursery, but planted by another landscaper. I do not necessarily blame the nursery for both losses; but simply chalk them up as further indication that for whatever reason our relationship was not destined to be fruitful.

In an area where high-quality nurseries are easy to find, one would think competitive pressures would ensure a faithful adherence to the appointment schedule … or perhaps the drive to work a longer day when commitments are missed … or maybe a bit more than a “Sorry, I couldn’t get there. Let’s reschedule.”

The kicker was his response to my complaint of already having wasted 3 hours of personal time. “Well, do you have to be there?”

Yeah … I do “need to be there”. But you certainly don’t!

Bent Tie-Rod Challenge

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Mike Shortall

Tie-rod, oh tie-rod!

Yes, daily commuters, it’s pothole dodging time once again! As Winter haltingly relinquishes its grip to warming temps and the inevitable thaw, a challenge is presented to drivers across America’s Snow Belt. With Spring sitting teasingly just beyond the calendar’s horizon, snow and ice give way to blacktop that hasn’t been seen for months, trapped this Winter under layers of an impenetrable permafrost. The big melt reveals roadways that in spots are in a state of severe deterioration. Craters the size of Baltic countries, fissures capable of swallowing a Prius whole, and teeth rattling jolts from “puddles” hiding deep water glacier lakes!

Maybe owning one of these would help
(From the movie “Armageddon”)

Terror, Thy name is Thaw!

This year I dub this the Bent Tie-Rod Challenge in memory of the one destroyed just a week ago when I set out to forage for family sustenance at local pizza establishment. The jaw-jarring impact was exceeded only by the jaw-dropping cost of repair.

The mechanics of pothole creation are fascinating. OK … Maybe that’s a stretch. But it might be useful to keep in mind that it ain’t the snow that’s the enemy in this game of suspension system roulette. It’s water and the freezing, thawing, freezing, thawing cycle. Exciting, I know …

Anyways … The purpose of this post is to give you a few coping mechanisms in the form of games you can play as your car does The Dance of a Thousand Pep Boys. Your fingers clenched white-tight on the steering wheel; one eye searching the roadway frantically for tell-tale signs, the other watching the vehicle ahead for evasive maneuvers. Although these ideas cannot be guaranteed to reduce your stress level, they will give you something really stupid to think about as you sit panting from the stress and exertion at each red light.

Enjoy!

Olympic Pothole Freestyle – This is a timely salute to the daring-do of the downhill skier and snowboard half-tubers. Visualize a treacherous downhill ski slope, full of hazards, danger, and emergency room visits. Your car is the downhill skier/boarder swooping gracefully between the gates and around the deadly edges of certain disaster. But instead of being happy to simply arrive at work with all your fillings intact, get graded on Skillfulness, Graceful Lines, and Number of Four-Letter Utterances (excluding those uttered in the Idiot Driver category). Just remember the Swiss judge can be brutal!

Picture potholes instead of asteroids

Pothole Asteroids – Take this favorite arcade game from the 1980s and make it a part of your morning commute. Establish a point system that recognizes the potential cumulative damage to your undercarriage and commuter sanity relative to the size of the divot, pothole, or moon crater you impact. Lowering scores are the objective. Half all points for commutes taken before sunrise and after sunset. For an added touch of Asteroid realism affix a weapons-grade laser to the front of your vehicle. It won’t improve the pothole situation, but you can use it on the idiot driving in front of you. (unless you prefer to let him continue to clear the minefield ahead of you.)

Name that Crevasse! This is a season-long challenge to name those memorable road bunkers you see every single day for weeks and weeks and weeks. It requires a slower approach to your commute which also allow you to appreciate the grandeur and majesty of Mother Nature’s work en asphalt! Look for those holes with iconic features and familiar looking profiles.

A hole called “Barringer Crater”

Suggested themes: Countries and Islands, National Parks and Monuments, Famous Profiles in Politics and Entertainment (Streisand, LBJ, Washington, Durocher, Durante, Hitchcock), States of the Union. Note the location of each road canyon you affectionately name, then swap and collect locales with your friends. For added fun try Bosses I Have Worked For, just make sure you have enough in the bank account to correct damages from the irresistible temptation to hit those road cavities on purpose!

Are you meat or space commander?

Lunar Lander – This challenge would be the toughest of all! Another variation on a beloved arcade game where you land a Lunar Landing Module on the surface of a planet crowded with towering mountains and tiny plateaus with a very, very limited supply of fuel. Unfortunately in this challenge, consistent with a space vehicle that was paper-thin in many areas to keep weight to a minimum, any contact with a pothole means “death” and loss of the challenge (Houston, we have a problem!). Complete said challenge at night, and achieve Lunar Mission Commander status! (Tranquility Base here, the Eagles has landed!).

Now get out there and make that chariot of yours dance!

Let’s get back to Weather sanity!

Posted on February 13, 2014 by Mike Shortall

That’s it! I have reached my wits end. It is time to take action.

Obviously, Global Warming has blown a tire these last two Winters, so I have decided it’s time to reverse this silly climate change process.

But don’t worry, my little snow bunnies, I’m onto the solution!

To wit, I am requesting bids to build a coal-fired electrical plant in my back yard. Said plant must be designed to raise the temps in my little swath of Snow-ylvania by at least an average of 10 degrees.

In addition, the facility must accommodate a herd of cattle (allegedly REAL co-culprits in Global Warming/cooling/changing due to their … uh … cow pies) as an extra measure of potential temp increase.

Finally, the coal-cow facility must also accommodate a fertilizer plant capable of producing massive amounts of nitrous oxide which can be released untreated into the atmosphere.

In ten years my Pennsylvania neighbors will be happily donning swimsuits and flip flops on New Years Eve!

No need to thank …

A Walking Expiration Date

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Mike Shortall

(A “poetic” look at two days in blackout conditions following The Great Ice Storm of 2014 … Southeastern Pennsylvania)

A Walking Expiration Date

Their humming, it fills the frozen black night,
These machines that bestow us the Heat and the Light.

Our fear of Ah-nold’s scary Terminator coup
Just doesn’t seem as bad as having to go through
This cold and dark that so easily suppresses
Our heat, TV, and electronic excesses.

We furtively glance with growing exasperation
At iPhones, the Mac and muted game stations.
This equation is stark in granting a peek;
When civilization collapses, I won’t last a week!

Be it nuclear winter, a banking collapse,
Zombies, global warming, mega-virus attack;
The end will come quickly, I hope that it does.
Who really wants to be here when Is becomes Was?

When the fit hits the shan …

Whoa! Sweet PECO!
Our ‘lectricity popped on!
No more running for gas
With my PJs still on!

Raced for the Mac, my iPhone clipped on
Before I forget this silly blog on
Nothing so much as a slight inconvenience
On a daily routine too full of dependence.

Then I turn on the Tube to catch up with the world.
The lessons and fears already starting to blur.
For few of us care to indulge or to linger
On our powerlessness at the end of God’s finger.

The End

(In-person reading events are now being scheduled! Get yours scheduled now!)

Snow humor (such as it is)

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Mike Shortall

Good news: We did get our Philly Inquirer today!
Bad news: I found it with the snow blower.

Was discussing the beautiful light blue hue today’s heavy snow had as you dug into its depth. Asked my neighbor, “What do you call snow when it’s blue like this?” He replied with a grunt, “Heavy (insert your favorite off-color adjective) blue snow!

How do you stop the snow plows from sealing in your driveway?
heavy weapons

Who gets to clear your neighbor’s driveway because they left two days ago for Florida?
Somebody else …

My Philly wage taxes “at work”

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Mike Shortall

Whenever a big snow storm hits, I receive a rude awakening in what my Philadelphia City Wage Tax dollars accomplish for me as I travel to my Philly-hosted, U.S. Navy employment site.

The Navy installation I work at (Naval Support Activity Philadelphia) is located on Oxford Avenue maybe a mile inside the City from Cheltenham Township, my usual route into work.

This means I use maybe a mile of City streets each day (two miles roundtrip) to reach my work desk, which itself is situated on Federal property. And for the pleasure of this jaunt along the pristine streets of Philadelphia I pay roughly $3900/year!

So unless I throw an embolism arguing with my boss over some inane minutia, requiring a police response or a stat med-evac, my lone benefit from that $3900 investment are those grand vistas along that mile stretch of Martin’s Mill Road.

Life don’t get any better than that!

So whenever it snows significantly and the region works hard to shake the white stuff from its broad shoulders, I notice – as I travel from my Horsham residence – the snow-cleared and salted streets of Horsham, Hatboro, Upper Moreland, Lower Moreland, Abington, and Cheltenham townships. And I anticipate the glorious mess the Philadelphia streets still will be two full days after an annoying though thoroughly manageable snow fall.

The clean, salt-laced salted roads of the suburban Townships, those that get to enjoy nothing but my hometown income tax offset for suffering the Philadelphia Wage Tax, transition to the slushy, icy, still full-of-snow streets of a City that struggles to provide its tax-paying citizens bare, essential services.

And they wonder why the schools of Philadelphia are such a monumental mess!

If you cannot manage the simplest of services, how can you possibly do any better with such complex activities as education … regardless of how much money the State might pump in?!? And how does that make YOU feel about what you might be paying in Philly wage taxes and the prospect of future demands for more of it?

Me? I feel all slushy and iced over.

Cranky Man’s Lawn 2013 in review

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Mike Shortall

The WordPress.com stats monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for Cranky Man’s Lawn. Take a glimpse at what happened here in the past year!

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,700 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Christmas tree Wars

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Mike Shortall

A Cautionary Tale from Christmas 2012 …

Merry Christmas!

“So, how do you guys make sure … ?”

Those words were a precursor to a Christmas experience I had yet to have the “pleasure” of enjoying. And as soon as I finished the rest of that sentence, I had one of those little voice-in-the-back-of-the-head premonitions of impending Yuletide Aggravation.

We were Christmas tree shopping two weekends before the holiday. And we had found a suitable tree …

A suitable tree is a) alive, b) reasonably full and bushy, and c) fixable in places where it’s not reasonably full and bushy.

After looking at the first 45 trees, I usually remind my spousal unit that the tree doesn’t have to be “perfect”, which always gets me that “Thank you, Captain Obvious!” tilted-head glare.

As is the customary belief of REAL Christmas tree (i.e. green and alive) aficionados, Artificial Trees are reserved for the soul-less, Just-Add-Water Christmas types, and Communists.

Fidel Castro extolling the perfect alignment of artificial Communist Christmas trees.

… and so we arrange for a tree-rustler to grab our prized evergreen and head off to The Prep Area, where the tree trunk gets a fresh cut and – in our case – a hole drilled up the middle of the trunk to accommodate our center-post tree stand.

For years and years we used the traditional four-point screw clamp tree stands and never seemed to have a problem. Then twice in three years we had trees topple over for no apparent reason; one time as we were walking out the door to attend Christmas Eve Mass.

And so ever since we have relied upon our Center Post tree stand.

And this is where Christmas 2012 took its unanticipated cruise through uncharted waters.

The Mistake I made was to ignore the visual warning signs, despite the “uh oh” feeling I experienced after the following conversation, which resulted from my evaluation of the tree-drilling set-up.

“Hey, I’m just curious, but I notice you guys don’t have the self-check fixture on the top of the drill rig.”, as had been used at other tree establishments in years past.

“Yeah, the grounds not very level here, so we can’t use the fixture or the trees will come out drilled crookedly.”, the tree rustler offered.

“So, how do you guys make sure you drill the tree straight?”, I asked.

“Oh well, I’ll hold the tree in place as straight as I can; and The Driller checks the alignment from three directions to make sure we get it straight.”

uh huh …

Actually, there were two mistakes made here.

The first was to turn our annual Christmas tree hunt into an “adventure”, where we tour 4-5 road-side tree lots before we head back to our known – and reliable – Christmas tree merchant because nothing we see – as Carol demands – jumps out and screams, “MERRY CHRISTMAS!!” … accompanied obviously by Schroeder, Lucy and the rest of the Charlie Brown gang singing Christmas Time is Here.

The second mistake was not bailing out as soon as I saw the tree-drilling set up or after hearing the explanation thereof. It just didn’t occur to me that if the drill rig was not level, even if the tree was visually “straight”, the “crooked” drill rig would …

Well … you can guess what happened next.

Get the tree home, but wait until the next day – December 16 – to pop the tree into the center post tree stand. At first I didn’t notice the Leaning Tree of Holiday Anguish. I usually allow the tree to stand in the warm house so it falls out from its tightly wrapped handling and transportation configuration.

The next morning, I come down stairs on my way to work and check to see how the tree is falling out.

Oh no … You have got to be kidding me! Crooked?!? The damn thing is CROOKED!?!

At first I thought maybe the tree’s trunk is twisted. So I turned the tree on its stand looking for both The Good Side of the evergreen and an angle where it didn’t look like a drunk leaning against a lamp post. But no matter which way it was turned it looked somehow even worse!

2012 Tannenbaum II

So this Christmas season offered me the one holiday experience I had yet to encounter … The Return of a Christmas Tree. After 50-plus years of Yuletide experience, you tend to believe you have seen it all.

Silly Santa …

Now some might say we were callous to reject an imperfect specimen. Yes, it wasn’t the tree’s fault. It was the boobs on the business end of a lopsided drill rig.

The tree vendors were nice enough about it. They offered me another tree or a refund. I made a cursory glance around for a replacement. Although I have to admit, I didn’t WANT to find another one, which would be subject to the same off-kilter drilling process.

The tree purveyors offered a smile with my refund; and I trudged on back to the same old place we usually go, where the trees are on display with trunks pre-drilled so there’s no guesswork involved. We ended up buying Tannenbaum II at our usual place and enjoyed a visually perfect Christmas!

The moral of the story is … “Familiarity breeds content.”

Also … “If it sounds too stupid to be done correctly, listen to that little voice in the back of your head.”