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Show A2 The Emery County Review, Tuesday, July 22, 2008 The News Off The Beaten Path MUG SHOT D E DA Z LIGHTER SIDE Camping is a Dirty Job Not Now, I’m Eating Fourteen-month-old Zachary Jones is thrilled to discover that if you sit on the curb in Emery Town, people will drive by and throw candy at you, especially if there happens to be a parade in progress. Zachary, his father and mother, Russell and Nikki Jones, and grandmother Sue Jones, were waiting for Zachary’s great grandfather, Wayne Staley to drive by. Staley was grand marshall in the Emery Town parade. James L. Davis Camping is not a spectator sport. I know because I have tried. You have to get in there and you have to be willing to get a little dirty if you’re going to have any fun. There are those who might say that camping is not a sport at all and for those who might say such a thing, I would say you are sadly mistaken. If you are one of those campers who take a trailer or RV that is larger than my first two apartments put together with you when you camp, I hate to tell you but that is not camping. I know this because my children have told me so and why would they lie? You are visiting nature in a mobile, sterile environment, which is not camping. Nature is not in any way a sterile environment. Nature is dirty, messy and if you play your cars right, muddy, which makes it a lot of fun. Up until this summer, whenever I have been camping it has been without a camper. OK, I take that back, I have been camping in a camper, but it was a 1954 camper that was shaped like an egg and had a bed in it. Other than that it had little similarity to the campers you see nowadays. If you are camping in one of today’s massive moving mansions and you become bored with nature, you can always go inside and play a game of basketball on your indoor, regulation court. We only used the 1954 camper, that we affectionately called “The Egg” a couple of times and then parked it in the back yard. We parked it because our 1954 camper was still rolling on 1954 tires and I was entirely too cheep to buy new ones. While my kids thought “The Egg” was cool, they did not want to camp in it because camping on a bed was not camping at all. They wanted to camp on the ground, preferably without a tent, or a sleeping bag. They wanted to lie on the dirt, use a rock for a pillow and have me throw a blanket over them as they nodded off. Not a clean blanket either, it had to be a dirty blanket, one that perhaps had been slept on my small animals for long periods of time. I have no idea why my children were this way and it certainly wasn’t something that I taught them. I don’t think. But whenever they mentioned camping, that is the kind of camping they wanted to do, which is why we didn’t camp nearly as much as we probably could have when they were younger. But now that they are older their ideas about camping have changed a little bit, which is why we have a new camper. It is still a camper that is older than my children by a couple of decades, but it does have indoor plumbing, lights and a working sink. You can even plug a generator into it if you want to, and my children did want to. My son wanted power so we could gather together in the great outdoors and watch a movie together, or perhaps play a video game. My daughter was glad to have a generator because it allowed her to bring the necessary items with her when she camped, namely a hair dryer. I tried to get my wife to convince her not to bring the hair dryer but she was on my daughter’s side. Apparently a hair dryer is almost as important when camping as food, perhaps more so. Which I find a little odd only in that when we camp it is my youngest daughter who still maintains some semblance of the wild creature that used to go camping and wanted to sleep on the ground with a rock for a pillow. Shortly after arriving at the campsite and some time before she feels any need to use her hair dryer, my daughter will say quite loudly that we have arrived at camp site and therefore it is time to get muddy. She prefers to get muddy while riding a 4-wheeler, but in the absence of a 4-wheeler she will happily jump in mud all by herself. While she is jumping in the mud, my youngest son will stand by and complain that his clothes are getting dusty on the trail. The reason that he does this is because his sister is intent on getting dirty, so he is intent on staying clean. In this manner they can have something to disagree about when they aren’t drying their hair or playing video games while communing with nature. While my children are alternately attempting to get dirty and stay clean, I prefer to sit on a camp chair and watch as mosquitoes drain the life from my body one drop at a time. I do this because as the mosquitoes are biting me, I can fondly recall that my father absolutely hates camping. He doesn’t see the need for it and doesn’t understand why anyone would leave their perfectly comfortable home to sleep on the ground with a rock for a pillow. Now that I am a little older I am beginning to see the wisdom of my father in regards to camping. If you’re going to do it, you may as well camp from something as comfortable as your house. Photo by James L. Davis Chuck Shepherd Lead Story While Iran’s leaders saberrattle and quote the Quran, the country’s multitudes of young adults are embracing New Age self-help, as exemplified by the best-selling books and sold-out seminars of motivational guru Alireza Azmandian, according to a June Wall Street Journal dispatch from Tehran. Though young adults in Turkey and Egypt have stepped up their religious fervor, that is not so in Iran. Said a 25-year-old aerospace engineer: “Religion doesn’t offer me answers anymore,” but “(Azmandian’s) seminar changed my life.” The Oprah Winfrey-touted book “The Secret” is in its 10th printing in Farsi; yoga and meditation are big; and advertising abounds on the virtues of feng shui and financial management. The Continuing Crisis -- Randall Popkes, 41, and his son Joshua Williams, 22, were arrested in West Des Moines, Iowa, in May and charged with an attempted safecracking at the Des Moines Golf and Country Club. A security officer had noted their license plate as they sped away after a frustrating session in which they had cut into the safe but could not open it. In fact, they had left behind a note for management, according to the Des Moines Register: “(Expletive) you and your safe.” -- At press time, a court in Athens, Greece, was considering a challenge brought by three residents of the island of Lesbos in the Aegian Sea to prevent a Greek gay and lesbian organization from referring to homosexual women as lesbians, arguing that such usage insults their heritage, since Lesbos residents have traditionally been called “Lesbians.” On the other hand, Lesbos was also the birthplace of the poet Sappho, a heroic woman among gays and lesbians for her early references to her love of other women. Yikes! -- The Panda Chinese Restaurant in York, Pa., was already in trouble in an early June city sanitation inspection, with demerits piling The Duplex NEWS OF THE WEIRD up because of accumulated grease, insects in the seating area and rotting lettuce, according to a York Daily Record report. Then, in the middle of an inspector’s visit, he came upon a live snapping turtle in the restaurant’s main sink. Said the inspector, “I had to sit down and gather myself before I could speak.” The manager said he had seen the turtle outside and had brought it in for safety: “It was wrong that we put it in the sink.” -- Oops! (1) A June accident with nitric acid at the Albion Chemicals plant in Belfast, Northern Ireland, caused the release of an ominous cloud, but authorities said it was predominantly nitrous oxide, otherwise known as “laughing gas.” An Associated Press dispatch reported no unusual “giggling” in the area. (2) A scheduling accident at the Eagle Trace Golf Course in Broomfield, Colo., in June caused insufficient time between the end of an early morning junior golf association event (kids age 7 to 12) and a noontime charity tournament sponsored by Shotgun Willie’s strip club, with scantily clad dancers cavorting around the course. One mother told WUSA-TV that her little golfer asked, “Mom, why is she only wearing underwear?” Family Values -- Spare the Gun (Hammer), Spoil the Child: (1) Darrell Walker, 30, was arrested in Bartlesville, Okla., in May after his 8-year-old son told police that his dad routinely shoots him (and his younger sister) in the leg with a BB gun if they misbehave. (2) Robert Cisero, 46, was arrested in Medford, Ore., in June after (according to police) he hit his teenage daughter in the ankle with a hammer to feign a “skating” injury, for which she could get a prescription for pain medication, which he then commandeered. -- The New York Daily News reported in June that members of gangs such as the Bloods and the Latin Kings, who become parents, are routinely having their babies “blessed” into their gangs in religious ceremonies in which the swaddling clothes are the gang’s colors. (The Bloods call such babies “Blood drops” or “Blood stains.”) The Daily News described the parents “teaching chubby little fingers to (make) gang signs” even before the toddlers learn to talk. One Episcopal priest said he has “blessed in” about 300 such kids to two gangs. Wedgies in the News (1) In July, the Utah Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Erik Low, now 40, ruling that a jury should have considered the possibility of a lesser crime than manslaughter in the 2003 shooting death of a man who had just 15 seconds earlier during a fight given Low what was described as a violent wedgie. (2) In June, a 20-year-old window cleaner on Australia’s Gold Coast survived a nine-story plunge, suffering only a broken arm and, from falling on his harness, a super wedgie. User-Friendly Research Projects (1) In May, NASA sought subjects for a study into the effects of microgravity on the human body and offered each participant $17,000 to lie in bed for 90 straight days. (2) In April, England’s University of East Anglia advertised for subjects for a study of whether a natural compound found in cocoa could cut the risk of heart disease among diabetic women; the participants must be willing to eat chocolates every day for a year. People Different From Us (1) In Augusta, Maine, in June, Marshall Crandall IV, 39, was sentenced to serve nine months in jail for violating a domestic protection order by reuniting with his girlfriend, even though the woman pleaded with the judge, arguing that the altercations were mutual and that it could just have well been she who was charged with assault that night. Said she, “I picked him up three or four times and slammed him on the ground.” (2) Scott Sullivan, 35, was arrested in Van Buren, Ark., in June and charged with kidnapping and assaulting his mother. He told police that he got upset when he learned that her dog had killed his pet skunk. Least Competent Crimi- nals Not Ready for Prime Time: According to police in Canton, Mich., Joseph Webster, 54, walked into a Comerica bank in June, gave the teller a robbery note and claimed he had a bomb strapped to his body. A nearby customer overheard, pulled out his licensed 9 mm handgun and told Webster: “You are not robbing this bank.” Webster insisted: “But I have a bomb.” The customer: “I don’t care.” Webster then quietly sat down in a chair, where he remained until police arrived. Update Artist Martin Creed won Britain’s 2001 Turner Prize for his highly acclaimed installation of a lightbulb going off and on indefinitely in an otherwise-empty room. His latest exhibition (“Work No. 850”), at the Tate Britain in July, consists of a runner sprinting through one of the galleries every 30 seconds. The museum’s director described Work No. 850 as a “compelling,” “lyrical” piece that “upsets any preconceived ideas” of moving through an art space. News of the Weird’s most recent encounter with Creed came in 1996 when he released his “Sick Film,” consisting only of shots of people vomiting on camera, and at the time, he said he was considering a similar s-word film, to consist only of people performing an even less tasteful bodily function on camera. Fine Points of the Law The U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed in June that defendants have a constitutional right to cross-examine witnesses against them and must get a new trial if denied that right. The challenger was Dwayne Giles, who had tried during his trial to keep incriminating statements by his girlfriend out of court, in that she was not available for him to cross-examine. The reason for her unavailability was that she is dead, and Giles was being tried for her murder. Hence, her statements suggesting Giles’ motive cannot be used in court. (Copyright 2008 Chuck Shepherd. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate) By Glenn McCoy |
