The Blogfather

'Twas the Night AFTER Christmas

Twas the night AFTER Christmas and all through Cape Cod,
The natives were friendly - that's exceedingly odd.
No stockings were hung anywhere with great care,
'Cause Cape women don't wear 'em, just long underwear.

The children were texting and playing with their Wiis,
So long we were worried that their noses might freeze.
And me in my Snuggie and Pat in her cap,
Were cuddled alone as she crawled on my lap.

When a noise in the drive make me check what it was,
In case of a visit from our friendly, local fuzz.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw out my "stash"

The moon was the hue of a old, seasick lizard,
Which one might expect 'cause we just had a blizzard.
When, what to my baggy, old eyes should appear,
But a drunken next door neighbor stumbling home with a beer.

Which just goes to show in this holiday confusion.
A wise man shouldn't jump to an erroneous conclusion.
And my New Year's Resolution concerning this bloggerel,
Is a promise to lay off any more of this doggerel.Mr. Ed was written by Walter R. Brooks, not a relative.
Zaftig means a woman having a full rounded figure, pleasingly plump.

This (on right) is what a Ned Sonntag dream girl looks like - click on her cute little belly button.

Jews and Christmas - Who are the real Christians today?

It's time to recall who Jesus really was and what he  looked like
He didn't shout "Ho, ho, ho," but more likely "Oy, oy, oy"

Here's looking at you Jesus: On left is a forensic reconstruction of a 1st century Jewish face
and Jesus on right as depicted by white Anglo Saxons 2,000 years later.

By Walter Brooks

My favorite Jewish Santa is Paul Rifkin who represents the ideals of a first century Jew named Jesus.
But with him it's not "Ho, ho, Ho." It's "Oy, oy, oy."

Paul in 1967 when he REALLY looked like Jesus.
Growing up in lily-white, upscale Litchfield County Connecticut, I was even then confused by the image of Jesus Christ as depicted in my Congregational Church like the photo on the right above.

I had an inkling that a first century Jew probably didn't look like he was hired for the job by Ingmar Bergman from Swedish central casting.

Later after I left the isolated womb of Woodbury, I heard at prep school the antisemitic rantings of some fellow students, and it began to dawn on my innocent mind, that many Christians were decided unchristian in their beliefs.

I had been taught in Sunday School that the historical Jesus was against corporate greed - remember the the story of him throwing the money-changers out of the temple in Jerusalem - and his attitude about tolerance, as when he said, "Let him that is without sin among you first cast the stone."

Who's birthday is it again?

Lest I be accused of more hypocrisy than usual, let me assure the reader that I love the idea of gift-giving, a yuletide tree and the rest.

But I also know that the historical Jesus would be appalled at today's excess. After all, it's a birthday party for Jesus, not a month-long sales event we celebrate today.

So who are the real Christ-like Christians today?

These are the characteristic required;

• Selflessness - being willing to sacrifice your time and even your life for the good of your fellow men and women.

• Altruism - doing things for no personal gain, giving to others.
• Pacifism - Turning the other cheek.

Many will not agree with me, but I think I just described the "Occupy" folks both here on Cape Cod and across America today.

And maybe it's also those Muslims willing to die for freedom in Syria.

That's why our Christmas homepage photo is of my favorite Jew, Paul Rifkin.

But with Paul it's not "Ho, ho, ho." It's "Oy, Oy, Oy."

Photo sources: This image of Jesus around 30 A.D. on the left above was made for a BBC program broadcast during Easter week in 2001. It was created by a production team which took into consideration medical, archaeological, geographical and artistic evidence from the time Jesus lived in what is today called Israel.

We are celebrating
Jesus Birthday, aren't we?Since Jewish heads are very different today compared to 2000 years ago, the team looked for a Jewish skull from the first century found near Jerusalem.

Using a plaster cast of the skull discovered from that era, forensic medical artist Richard Neave from the University of Manchester began to reconstruct the face by building up layers of clay to represent muscle, fat and skin. Details such as the hair were decided by considering the hair of men in the Middle East, which tends to be thick, dark and curly, together with hairstyles current in the time Jesus lived.

Not  your average Black Jewish face, and he wasn't Scandinavian

Dark-skinned pictures of Jesus have been known from the earliest times. The first picture on this page is a painting from the 1960s, artist and source unknown.In 2004, Jesus was voted greatest black icon of all time by the New Nation newspaper, which prompted a debate about Jesus’ skin color.

“Despite the common depictions in Western cultures of Jesus as a blond, blue-eyed hippy looking man, all reasonable evidence points to the fact that Jesus could not have been of Scandinavian extraction and certainly was a brotha of color,” said the newspaper.

The debate is not new. Throughout the last century, black theologians argued that showing Jesus as a white-skinned European is not only historically inaccurate, but profoundly alienating for non-Europeans.

Some 20 million Africans were taken as slaves to the New World by Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries, and images of a white Jesus reinforce the idea that Christianity is a “white man’s religion”.

And Christmas is really Jesus' Birthday, not a month-long sales event, right?

A guaranteed way to get new customers

Everything I know about getting new customers I learned from clients

   Phil Barone who founded the Mill Stores taught me the only guaranteed rule to get new business.

When the fish are all gone, you need another pond

By Walter Brooks

After many decades in marketing including giving countless lectures at media conventions all overAmerica advising peers on how to do their selling and promotion, I must admit that the only foolproof method I discovered for attracting new customers was given to me by one of my clients right here on Cape Cod.

"The money is always out there
   - only the pockets change."It was from Phil Barone who started the chain of successful unfinished furniture stores called Mill Stores  in Harwich many years ago.

I used to call on Phil when I worked for several different newspapers and magazines starting with The Cape Codder in the 1970s, MPG Communications in the 1980s, and for my own Best Read Guides in the 1990s both here and elsewhere in New England.

When I was working for a newspaper, Phil would buy pages of advertising for a year or two, then stop using whatever newspaper I happened to be working for at the time.

Phil grew from one store in Harwich to 14 in the region, see locations here.After several years and a couple newspaper jobs, I started Best Read Guide, but this time Phil kept running ads long after the usual period, so I asked him why.

Phil's "new customer" theory - it works

Phil told me that every newspaper he advertised in had a "static" number of readers, in other words, he was reaching the same potential customers with each ad, so after a while he had sold unfinished furniture to everyone possible in that newspaper's readership, and vacation magazines like Best Read Guide have new readers every edition.

Since Phil always used a coupon or other device to test results, he was able to move on to another publication or medium as the results began to diminish.

That was then - This is now!

If that was true back during the glory days of the newspaper industry, think how more true it is today when newspapers on Cape Cod and elsewhere have half the circulations and market penetration they had in the past, see graph below.

Cape Cod's local daily has dropped from over 60,000 daily circulation to 46,000, and the weeklies have fared as badly. While the daily's circulation dropped by 14,000, over 35,000 new residents have moved to the Cape, which translates into their "market penetration" being half of what it was two decades ago.

Newspaper readership has fallen for the last three decades, and today only 15 percent of Americans under the age of forty still read a daily newspaper. That was 85 percent in 1940.

Then this Spring online news readership went ahead of newspapers.

You probably know why this paradigm shift occurred - it was caused by the meteoric growth of the internet and the explosion and ease of using online shopping on newssites like the ones on eCape.com. See the poll results which showed over half our readers shopping online or a combination of bricks and clicks.

The World is Flat - and so is Cape Cod - The Good News and Bad News

Most Popular Posts

Police and Fire News - 64,257 views
Cape & Islands News - 63,007 views
EXTRA... - 55,295 views
Cape Cod Court Reports - 23,485 views
Cape Cod History - 22,047 views.The good news for businesses which promote on the web is that online advertising costs but a fraction of the cost of print, and online is the only form of advertising which has completely traceable results for them as well.

Couple this with the fact portals or newssites like this one are on a significant growth track adding new readership by double digits every year. An example is the real-time list of readerships shown on the right side of our homepage called "Most Popular Posts."

The bad news is that newssites like this one are stuck at "what the market will bear", and advertising rates for web portals cannot rise to anything near the levels of print, while providing better results for clients, until there is further deterioration of the print industry and marketers are more aware of the added values of online marketing.

If you are one of those businesspeople who are reluctant to move into the future, consider this warning from that famous news-hen Clare Booth Luce, "The money is always out there - only the pockets change."

Newspapers continue their 20 year drop in circulation

This 20-year view shows a steady slide in paid circulation.  Daily circulation, which stood at 62.3 million in 1990, fell to 43.4 million in 2010, a decline of 30%. Sunday circulation held up slightly better, falling from 62.6 million in 1990 to 46.2 million last year, off 26%.

What would you order for your last meal on earth?

I'd order a medium rare, bacon cheeseburger with blue cheese and onion rings

By Walter Brooks

My favorite bacon cheeseburger today is at The Beehive on Tremont Street in Boston and the Land Ho! in Orleans or Harwichport.

My wife and I were dining a decade ago at the Julien at the Hotel Meridien (now the Langham) in the Financial District in Boston, when she was served a foie gras so sumptuous that she said it's what she would order if she were on Death Row and had one meal left on earth.

Or course, if anyone eats foie gras often enough that last meal will come much sooner, but it made me think about what I would order, and then even a harder choice:

What if you had to eat the same dish every meal?

Now this is a tougher choice, and while a bacon cheesburger with blue cheese won out, Yankee Pot Roast and Sauteed Cod were in the running for a while.

So my question for YOU, dear reader, is to add a comment below with YOUR choice if you had to eat the same meal at dinner for the rest of your life.

The Julien is gone, and so are many of my old Boston favorites like this list of other great Boston restaurants which are no longer with us:

Jasper's - Waterfront
Allegro on Boylston
Aujourd'hui- Four Seasons Hotel
Back Bay Bistro - Boylston St, Boston
Bay Tower Room - Downtown
Cafe Florian - Back Bay
Capriccio Plu - South End
St. Cloud - South End
L'Espalier - on Boylston St
Season's - Season's Hotel
Devon on the Common
Cafe Budapest - Brookline - Back Bay
Chef Chandler's - South End.
West Street Grille - West St
The English Tea Room - 29 Newbury St
The Commonwealth Grille - Back bay
Dartmouth Street - Back Bay
Delmonico's - Lenox Hotel, Back Bay
Du Barry - Back Bay
European - North End
Dini's Seafood - Tremont St.
Harvard Book Store Cafe - Newbury Street
Hermitage, old I.C.A. on Boyelston.
Jimmy's Harborside - Waterfront
Julien at the Hotel Meridien
Le Marquis De Lafayette - Hotel Lafayette
Maison Robert - Old City Hall
Maison Jacques - West End
Michael's - Waterfront
Mister Leung's - Back Bay
Newbury Steak House - Back Bay
Panache - Cambridge, Chef Margaret Fari
Peacock Restaurant - Craigie Cir, Cambridge
Premier Restaurant - South End
Rarities - Charles Hotel, Cambridge
Rebecca's - Charles St, Beacon Hill
Romagnoli's table - Faneuil Hall
St Botolph - St Botolph St
The Winery - Long Wharf
Zachary's - Colonnade Hotel
Joseph's Aquarium - Waterfornt
Dakoto's - Downtown
Betty's Rolls Royce - Faneuil Hall
Bandy Pete's - Downtown
Icarus - Tremont St, South End
Biba - Harvard Cafe, Cambridge
Blacksmith House- Harvard Sq, Cambridge
Ken's Deli - Boyslton Street
Walmouth's - Downtown
Oasis Cafe - North End
On the Park - South End
Jeffery's - South End
Ottavio's - North End
Falstaff Room - Sheraton Back Bay
Rocco's - South Charles St., Chef Danny Weisel

Our Christmas Wish List

CC2day's Christmas Wish List for the New Year

To all of our bloggers who get this site read.
No negative comments, just good ones instead.

To commenters we've exiled, punishment will beckon,
Especially ones as bad as naughty Steve Peckham.

To my fellow eCapers who labor so prodigious,
A great Christmas dinner, & your spouse does the dishes.

To Maggie Kulbokas, who works harder than the rest,
Our editorial whirling Dervish, the best of the best.

To Cape Cod's politicos who next seek our vote,
May you all get elected (hey, that's just a joke).

To our own Christy Mihos, instead of libations,
The support of Chatham & Dennis for his beautiful stations.

For candidate Chuck Baker, what else can we say,
The job wasn't worth it, neither was the pay.

To new Congressman Keating, a season so merry,
He'll forget he ever heard of a pol named Jeff Perry.

And to ex-Rep Jeff Perry who we pilloried the most,
A great paying job - I hear Fox News needs a host.

To Senator Brown for whom Tea Baggers pine, oh,
Complete transmogrification into our new Rino.

And to Senator Kerry, who still waffles on wind,
A stiffer new backbone, or he'll be a "has been".

Goodbye to Bill Delahunt and his éminence grise,
Now our politics will improve with a little less sleeze.

For new Senator Dan Wolf, what could be finer,
Let's give his Cape Air a Boeing Dreamliner.

To State Senator O'Leary who got beat in a tease,
A  shot at the job of Prexy at 4Cs.

To departing Rep  Patrick we'll deck all the halls,
For supporting Cape Wind when it really took balls.

To Reps Vieria and Hunt, we know winning's a peach,
But we hope Santa gives you a single term each.

Spyro Mitrokostas gets kudos I suppose,
For getting elected, although unopposed.

To our D.A. O'Keefe (we won't call hima liar),
But bisn't it possible your smoking started that fire?

To Democrats here as they drift ever more to the right,
A new name for their party - GOP sounds about right.

And to Cape Cod's Republicans as they disappear from sight,
It was fun while it lasted, sleep well and good night.

To the Oceanic heroes in Woods Hole, Cape Cod,
A thousand new fishes - every one of them odd.

To friend Robert Dwyer as he drifts to the right,
Be careful good buddy, you're almost out of sight.

To the Cynthia Stead, a bizarre change of will,
And a return to her liberal youth on Blue Hill.

To Cape Cod Healthcare, every doc, nurse and lackey,
A quiet New Year's Eve where no visitor goes wacky.

To Felis at Alberto's who fed me all year,
A week or two off with some Portuguese beer.

To Bill Koch and his Alliance, those fossil fuel fools,
Their support for Cape Wind, and watch us all drool.

To Clean Power Now for their for guts and strong will,
Led to a victory by Barbara Hill.

To Jim Gordon at Cape Wind, as he heads for the wire,
No more opposition, and another big buyer.

To our friends at the Times may their paywall be secure,
And kids start to read newspapers, this year for sure.

To the folks at Cape's weeklies, from Carol Dumas to Mike Bailey,
Continue yours habit of scooping the daily.

To the gang at the Globe, the end of its groaner,
As a liberal local mogul becomes its new owner.

To our policemen and firemen who work day and night:
Cars that drive safe, and matches that don't light.

To the Cape Cod Commission whose greed's overflowing,
A move to another county and our help to get going.

To Mashpee "Praying Indians" who forgot Jesus Christ,
A conversion to their old gods - hey, they got a good price.

For CapeCodToday.com an Internet heaven,
As more dig our motto: "Cape Cod 24/7."

To my hard-working wife Pat, who says "all is forgiven,"
"You can still write this column and not work for a livin'."
---
On right from the top: Steve Peckham, Mihos and Baker, Keating and O'Leary, Delahunt and Forest, (the Cape's long-time éminence grise,) Dan Wolf and Matt Patrick, David Vieria and Randy Hunt, Jim Gordon and Spyro Mitrokostas, Cynthia Stead and Barbara Hill, Mike Bailey and Carol Dumas and my wife Pat.

What to do when a hurricane hits

Veterans who met Bob can recall their experiences

Hurricane Earl becomes Category 4, Fiona close behind

Regular updates of Earl progress.

Vote in our poll "What are your plans for Hurricane Earl?"

On this same week nineteen years ago, Cape Cod was slammed by Hurricane Bob, and our tourism season came to a windy halt several weeks earlier than planned.

Bob was a category 2 while Earl is now a category 4, and my sons and daughter-in-law came back to the Cape to help me board up our eight sliding glass doors facing Pleasant Bay.

After boarding up the house, son Jay was able to lean into the 80 mph winds which increased to 100 later. Note the small slot in the plywood for our "peek hole."

As I write this on Tuesday morning some weather gurus are predicting that Earl may simply brush by Cape Cod 100 or 200 miles off our coast and just give us high surf and rain, but perhaps they haven't told Earl, and hurricane tracking is an inexact science.

One thing you can predict with absolute certainty is that the Boston weather bimbos will make it sound like Armageddon.

How to plan next weekend on Cape Cod

I hate to admit it, but we really enjoyed Bob's visit in 1991.

We cut a couple slots in the sheets of plywood covering our sliders and spent hours watching TV and peering at the winds.

Then the eye passed over us.

I stayed home, but Pat and the kids drove down to Ryder's Cove where they hopped on Peter Mason's boat and sped out into the eye for a look-see.

Maybe they'll all stay home with me this time if Earl cometh.

It doesn't hurt to be prepared and hope for the best, so here are some useful links;

• See NOAA
• See Cape Cod & Islands  Chapter of the Red Cross

Here are some tales of our past storms....

1991: Hurricane Bob reshapes Cape Cod

The "Shoulder Season" that was reshaped by Bob

 Peter Robbins took the photos above right after Bob stopped blowing.

When travel stories became travel advisories

On this day in 1991, potential visitors to Cape Cod were warned about the after effects of Hurricane Bob which hit the area the previous week.

The result was a huge drop in visitors during the so-called fall "shoulder season" since the hurricane hit the Cape the week before Labor Day in 1991.

Coastal communities bore the brunt of the storm, with sustained winds between 83 to 107 mph (172 km/h). Peak wind gusts to 125 mph (201 km/h) were recorded on Cape Cod in the towns of Brewster and Truro. The highest sustained wind of 100 mph (160 km/h), was recorded in North Truro.

Here is the start of a newspaper story that day:

TRAVEL ADVISORY

Hurricane Reshapes Cape Cod

As Bob became a hurricane, it began to move to the northeast and accelerated. By August 19, the storm was located 30-35 miles (50-55 km) to the east of Cape Hatteras, and was at its peak intensity of 115 mph (185 km/h). As the storm moved quickly northeast, it began to weaken over the colder waters. Hurricane Bob then made landfall twice on Rhode Island: at 1:30 p.m. on Block Island, then at 2 p.m. over Newport.  The storm cut a path across southeastern Massachusetts and then into the Gulf of Maine.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Bob on Cape Cod, visitors who head down the Mid-Cape Highway this fall will be struck by a dramatically altered landscape. An early fall has struck, with shriveled brown leaves beginning to drift from trees and shrubs -- the result of the fierce, salt-drenched winds.

Along Route 6 in Eastham the scale of the forests seems lower. Many of the fast-growing, shallow-rooted locusts planted in groves 60 or 70 years ago have been uprooted while the frail survivors dangle overhead; groves of oak, maple and pine have been "pruned by nature," as the professionals put it. Many Cape Codders are left with unaccustomed sunlight and a decade's worth of firewood.

Naturalists say that the defoliation will prove to be a boon for birders this fall. "The warblers were starting to leave in mid-August because they had come north early during the warm spring," said Robert Prescott, director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. "But the storm delayed the wave of migrants by a week or so. Now, September should be a fine month for warblers, and, as a benefit to birders, they will be able to see species more easily through the barer branches."

Mr. Prescott leads frequent trips to Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, a wilderness area off the coast of Chatham consisting of two main islands that serve as a major landfall for migratory species.

"Most of the trees will recover in the spring unless heavily saturated with salt," said Susan Lundquist, director of the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster. April Phillips, park ranger for interpretation, Cape Cod National Seashore, said non-native species like locusts and cherry trees fared worst.

1991: Storm waves worse than a hurricane

Storm's Huge Waves Make Hurricane Seem Tame on Massachusetts Coast

Waves breaking over the top of Minot's Light, a 100-foot-tall stone lighthouse off Scituate.

Peter Montgomery knew the storm was bad when he looked out his window Wednesday and saw waves breaking over the top of Minot's Light, a 100-foot-tall stone lighthouse that is a landmark of the Massachusetts coast.

The old gray shingled house where Mr. Montgomery lives, a mile from the lighthouse on a spit of land that juts out into Massachusetts Bay, was also being pounded by the raging northeaster. "Every time a wave hit the building, you could feel it -- va boom! -- the whole house shook," said Mr. Montgomery, a caretaker for a group of summer residents.

Mr. Montgomery and his wife wanted to evacuate, but when he stepped out the back door, a wave came crashing over the top of the three-story building, sending him scurrying back inside. By his calculation, the wave must have been at least 50 feet above the normal high demarcation...

Cape among hardest hit

Parts of Cape Cod were among the hardest-hit areas, especially those facing east and north along the outer Cape from Chatham at the elbow to Provincetown at the tip. "There are some places on the outer Cape where the beach is completely gone," said Tony Bonanno, the chief ranger at the Cape Cod National Seashore. Surprise Lobster Dinner

On Nantucket Island, just south of the Cape, a number of residential areas remained under three to four feet of water today, and several stores were flattened by the pounding waves... NY Times.

Anniversary Valentine

To a beautiful wife

More than Steve Jobs loves his iPad,
I love you more, I'm happy to add,
More than than Lakshmi loved her Rama,
I love my blond and blue-eyed Mama.

More than McDonald loves Big Mac,
More than cyper-geeks love to hack,
More than lug-nuts love a jack,
For you I've got a heart attack.

More than Coke-heads love their pipe,
More than women love to gripe,
More than Groupers loves their gill.
Of you, I never get my fill.

More than Will loves his cars,
More than alkies love their bars,
More than Maggie loves her Droid,
Without you babe, my life's a void.

More than a Lobstah loves his claw,
Or a pitcher loves his ball,
More than policemen love the law,
Here's my love - please take it all.

Way more than McCain loves Sarah Palin,
My love for you is never failin',
More than a vintner loves his vat,
More than that, I love you Pat.

More than a Hindu loves his curry,
My love grows fast - it's in a hurry.
More than a boozer loves his suds,
More than a heifer loves his cuds,

More than Winter loves the Spring,
More that bumblebees love to sting,
More than Irish love the 'tater,
My love for you is even greater.

More than a stoner loves his pot,
Or Donald Trump, the dough he's got,
More than a sleeper loves his cot,
That's how much love for you, I've got.

More than a hangman loves his noose,
More than a pederast loves child abuse,
More than a copper loves a clue,
That, my dear, is how I love you.

More than Marina loves to shop,
More than a bunny loves to hop,
More than some housewives like to mop,
'Cause you're my bottom and my top.

More than Hindus love Ganisha,
As we say 'round here, "You're a real pissa,"
When you're not near I always miss ya,
You are my pumpkin-angel, Patricia.

It's hopeless to try not to laugh in the presence of two kittens

The Happy-Sad Highly Improbable Tail Tale of a Little Girl and her Smelly Kitten

Marina and her brother Will really wanted a pet. I mean they REALLY wanted a pet.

But their dad and mom said,

"No. Dogs are smelly, and you'll both will forget to feed it,
   and the poor thing with shrivel up, turn into a dust ball and die."

Marina and Will had always been told to obey their parents, and of course they did.

They went to the Animal Rescue League and only looked at the cats.

It took them quite a long time.

The animal shelter had four thousand, eight hundred and twenty-seven cats.

But the shelter only had two kittens.

They were named Koko and Simba.

Koko was a gray and white, short haired Oriental with a wedge head and huge ears, and her brother kitten was named Simba.

He was yellow and white.

The days are numbered for Koko

But Koko the kitten was about to be "put down".

You know, done away with, eradicated, erased, executed, exterminated, ejected to kitty heaven, finished off, immolated, liquidated, obliterated, offed, polished off, put away, rubbed out, slaughtered, slain, snuffed, wasted, wiped out, zapped because no one wanted to take her home with them.

The people didn't take her be because they all said she smelled bad.

Not just bad - REALLY bad.

They called Koko a Poo-Poo-Pussy.

In a word, she stank.

Koko had an unpleasant aroma, a base bouquet, an icky emanation, an unpleasant essence, foul fragrance, retched redolence, snarky scent, stink... the kitten smelled to high heaven because the kitten FARTED.

Simba, on the other paw, was quite normal - like any boy, a little dim but lots of fun.

Marina and Will told the animal shelter that their parents were olfactory deprived (i.e. they couldn't smell anything), and they had sent them to select a pet.

Marina ddn't think that was lie, exactly. Her parents hadn't said not to get a kitten, and it was really only a "white lie", or at least a "gray and white" lie.

Home is where the fart is

They came home with Koko the Poo Poo Pussy and her brother Simba.

The first thing their father did was make them both sit in the corner for seven years with only bread and water.

After fifteen minutes, however, their mother needed someone to take out the garbage, so they were both put on parole.

Her mother thought it was the garbage which was making the house smell so bad.

It wasn't the garbage.

It was Koko the Farting Cat.

Because when the garbage pail was empty, the whole house still smelled.

Marina's daddy said, "that kitten stinks."

But Marina said it was her brother Will who smelled, not little Koko.

She called him Will the Farting Brother.

That's when Will became the hero of the 'hood.

Brother Will loved the little kitten so much that he immediately ate fourteen cans of B & M Baked Beans and trained himself to fart every time Koko cut a juicy one.

So life went on with the parents clipping clothe pins on their noses to avoid the smell.

After all, a kitten they could get rid of, but not their son Will who by all reports was the best boy this side of the Bass River.

The local town Board of Bad Smells however got involved.

Neighbors began to complain of the smell emanating from Marina and Will's house.

The board placed an article in the warrant for the next Town Meeting which required Marina and Will to place warning signs on the street 100 yards either side of their home.

And now for the best of the story

Life went on until finally, after 45 years, a cure was discovered for farting cats, and Will could finally stop eating beans every hour.

But the medicine made Koko sick to her stomach.

Every time she had a  dose of the anti-farting medicine, she would throw up. She would barf, be nauseous, be sick, blow grits, blow lunch, disgorge, gag, heave, pray to the porcelain god, puke, regurgitate, retch, spew, spit up, toss one's cookies, upchuck, urp, vomit.

But Marina's daddy said the puke smelled a lot better than the farts, and Koko lived happily ever after watching birds she would like to taste from Marina's window.

The morale of the story: In the immortal words of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.,
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."

In praise of postprandial naps

There ain't nothing like a nap with two cats on your lap
At desk, floor, anywhere, even Python's "comfy chair"

I managed to survive for five decades before I discovered the post prandial nap. That's an "after-meal" nap, and for me, the best time is after lunch.

The Comfy Chair used by Monty Python.

Luckily I can sleep anywhere, and I mean anywhere. The floor will do in a pinch, and a comfy-chair (as Monty Python's Grand Inquisitors used to call it) is beyond compare.

For me the ideal length of nap is between eight and ten minutes, and I don't need an alarm because I always re-awake in that time frame.

Good enough for DaVinci

My sainted mother-in-law, Margaret Teresa Twite, nee Gerrity,  thought naps where the devil's handwork for damning miscreants like myself, but luckily around 1988 I read that Leonardo DaVinci always took a nap after lunch.

DaVinci (April 15, 1452 - May 2, 1519) didn't own a wristwatch (1920-present) because they weren't invented until Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos Dumont asked his friend Louis Cartier around 1906 to come up with an alternative that would allow him to keep both hands on the controls while timing his performances during flight.

DaVinci he used his drawing tool which held held in his hand as he napped at this chair. As his hand relaxed with sleep, the drawing instrument fell, and the sound of it rattling on the stone floor awoke the snoozing genius.

Eight minutes = eight hours

"I can resist anything except temptation." - Oscar Wilde

I do not exaggerate when I say that after an eight minute nap I feel as refreshed as I do after eight hours of sleep.

While it may be excessive to take a second nap, I must admit there have been rainy Saturdays when I succumb to the temptation and take a post-postprandial nap as well. As Wilde said, "I can resist anything except temptation."

And napping is a high art in some cultures where there is no shame attached to it. It's even good for your health, as a recent study from Greece indicates. Here's what a story in the New York Times said about napping:

You know the feeling - your screen starts to blur, your eyelids become heavy, your mouth feels cottony, and you would give back all the perks of adulthood to be able to curl up on the floor.

Now out of Greece, comes permission to do exactly that. A study of more than 23,000 adults shows that those who napped for about 30 minutes each week had a 37 percent lower risk of dying from a heart attack than those who did not.This is hardly the first study showing that sleep is more than simply time when we really should be at work. Other studies, though few as extensive as the Greek research, show that short periods of sleep during the day increase productivity and creativity while reducing stress. And even without surveys, we know this from experience.

When you need a nap, you need a nap. Nothing - not caffeine, not a chocolate bar, not a pill - recharges the battery in the same way.

Which is why so many of us have been sneaking naps at work for years. Mark Lipschutz, a computer specialist in Philadelphia, for one, acknowledges disappearing out to the company parking lot when the need hits. There he reclines the front seat of his car, sets the alarm on his mobile phone, puts on the eyeshade he carries for just this purpose and sacks out. Eight or 10 minutes are often enough. More than 20 and he wakes up groggy.

Some Doctors disagree

The medical profession has not always agreed with me. A Dr Andrew Boorde (on right in an old woodcut obviously about to take a nap), writing in his Dyetary of Helth in 1542, said "Whole men of what age or complexion soever they be of, should take their natural rest and sleep in the night, and to eschew all meridial sleep. But, an need shall compel man to sleep upon his meat, let him make a pause, and then let him stand, and lean and sleep against a cupboard."

In the other hand, John Ponet, bishop of Winchester relates as matter of common knowledge that in 1547 Doctor Boord was convicted in Winchester of keeping in his house three loose women. For this offence, apparently, he was imprisoned in the Fleet, where he made his will on 9 April 1549. It was proved on the 25th of the same month. Thomas Hearne (Benedictus Abbas, i. p. 52) says that he went round like a quack doctor to country fairs, and therefore rashly supposed him to have been the original merry-andrew.

I rest my case, and my head... it's nap time.

My cataract operation

Ten minutes to change your eyesight for the better
Some patients even throw out their glasses after surgery

By Walter Brooks

The video is a dramatization of what actually happens.

I have been taking eye-drops for a decade or longer to impede the development of glaucoma in both my eyes.

When I recently visited Dr. Paul Ciaccio in Orleans for a new prescription for my glasses, Paul looked at the medication I was using, and instead of giving me an eyesight exam, suggested I might be a candidate for cataract surgery which often has the added benefit of lessening the pressure which causes Glaucoma while replacing a damaged cataract with a Silicon lens.

When I moved to Cape Cod 45 years ago, the level of all professionals here was like that of any other bucolic backwater, marginal at best. So it is quite amazing what a couple hundred thousand extra residents has done for medicine here. Until recently, I would not have dreamed of opting for a local surgeon.

What a difference a couple hundred thousand extra residents makes

But Paul Ciaccio recommended that I see Dr. Bradford Shingleton who Paul said was a leader in cataract, glaucoma and laser surgery. In fact Dr. Shingleton does more cataract and glaucoma surgery than any other ophthalmologist in New England and has performed over 40,000 cataract, glaucoma and laser operations. He treats a worldwide clientele at his practice at Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston. In addition, he has a highly respected international reputation as a lecturer and clinical researcher in the field of ophthalmology. Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston has a surgical facility in Sandwich as well as offices in Yarmouth just off Exit 7.

Shingleton is an Associate Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and a Clinical Instructor at Tufts University School of Medicine and has been President of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.

The results after operation #1

I had my right eye operated on two weeks ago today. It is routine in these operations, which have become commonplace, to choose a lens to replace your own which will either give you near perfect distance vision, or near perfect near vision.

I decided it was best to choose distance (for driving and seeing the saw-toothed tiger in time to protect the family) and after the operation use glasses for reading.

A week after my surgery I discovered that I could easily read without any glasses and still had excellent distance vision.

I eagerly look forward to my next operation for my left eye in two weeks. You can view a facsimile of my operation above, and you can even video your own at Bradford Shingleton's Sandwich surgery where he performed 32 of these operations two weeks ago when I had mine.