November 4, 2016
Dear Everyone:
I spent Halloween
at “Jeannie’s” place this year.
Last year I had two
Jack-o'-Lanterns and a big bag of candy and got all of about three
Trick-or-Treaters.
“Jeannie” always got a lot more.
So this year I packed my custom-made
Little-Red-Riding-Hood outfit, three bags of candy, a lighted orange
kettle and some snacks and drove up to
Concord.
One of the nice things about being
retired is not
having to wait until after work to do things.
“Jeannie” dressed as a “witch”,
all in black with elements pulled from her well-stocked closet and set
off with a conical hat festooned with black feathers.
She and her neighbors set up a table and chairs in one of the
driveways and someone even hung a ghost from a tree with a rope that she
could pull on to make the ghost make ghostly noises.
We were all set when the first group showed up.
Everyone got candy and remembered to say “Trick or Treat!” and
“Thank you!”
What I quickly noticed was that nearly all the little “Tricksters” were
actually very little kids.
Toddlers even. With parents
on hand, of course. But the
kids weren’t really sure what was going on.
“Say ‘Trick or Treat’!” advised one parent.
“Hold out your bucket!”
“Say ‘Thank you’!”
When I was a kid (back in the Stone Age), you had to wait until you were
five-years-old to go Trick-or-Treating.
It was a Rite of Passage, like starting school.
Older and wiser children (six and seven-year-olds) had already
explained all the intricacies to you.
There weren’t any parents.
Older kids chaperoned the younger ones.
These days it’s all parents and only very young children.
I suspect that Trick-or-Treat is more for the adults than the
kids now, with the parents reliving the glory of
all-the-candy-you-can-eat at a time when candy was king.
I wonder how much longer it will last.
In other news…
It’s not just the down-and-dirty, knock-down-drag-out brouhaha going on
at the national level. It’s
also the seventeen (17!)
ballot measures, plus two (2)
don’t-you-want-to-pay-higher-taxes-for-you-know-whatever efforts here in
California and
the Bay
Area. The official Voter
Guide was larger than some telephone directories.
The first was a state-wide
school bond issue.
I agree with our late mother:
Always vote in favor of schools because good schools attract the
best people. Likewise the
one that looks to “soak the rich” for even more money for education,
plus healthcare.
Then there are not one, but two, measures to either get rid of plastic
bags for groceries and things, or allow them and require the stores
charge the customer for each bag and
should-the-proceeds-go-to-the-store-or-the-state?
That would be a “No!” vote until it includes the best
alternative. True, I always
bring reusable bags with me, but sometimes that’s not quite enough.
There’s one proposition to limit the cost of
prescription
drugs in California.
Sounds good until you realize that the big pharmaceutical companies
would just stop selling in the state and presto!
Black Market.
The usual
Let’s-Put-a-Stop-to-Political-Campaign-Spending!
And while you’re at it, bring back
unicorns.
Additional taxes on
tobacco
products.
Death penalty:
Either get rid of it or set a limit to how long the appeal
process can go on. Or, how
about both?
And there’s the downright silliness, like requiring all Legislation to
be put on hold until it’s been on the Internet for an arbitrarily-chosen
time limit. And bring back
bilingual
teaching in schools that have “non-English learners”.
Are there any schools that don’t have any “non-English learners”?
And how about putting all state projects over a certain amount of money
in limbo until the voters “approve” them?
You can’t get three people on a committee to agree on something.
Do you really want to leave that big improvement project hanging
while the voters mull over it?
That’s like the time some chucklehead tried to get people to vote to
change the name of
Mount Diablo to “Mount
Reagan” on the
grounds that the original name “encouraged
devil worship”.
Luckily, I don’t live in either
San Francisco
or Oakland,
where there are
attempts to
punish the beverage industry for overweight children.
Just out of curiosity I did a little research.
Coca-Cola
was first introduced in the late 1880’s.
That’s right, sugary soft drinks have been around for over a
century. So how come all
those children didn’t start getting fat, and possibly developing
juvenile diabetes, back then?
Two reasons: One, their
parents didn’t waste money on liquid candy; two, the kids burned off the
calories working in the fields or factories, or at least playing in the
back yard. Even one of the
commercials in favor of the propositions features a
pediatrician
bemoaning the fact that the immediate problem started showing up about
20 years ago.
So what changed about two decades ago?
Not the formula for Coca-Cola.
Game Boys.
Video games.
Computers.
Cable and/or
satellite
TV with literally hundreds of channels to watch.
While sitting on their duffs.
And, sadly, housing developments that don’t include yards because
real estate is too expensive in the Bay Area.
Not to mention parents who don’t chase the kids outside, or take
them to the park to get some real exercise.
And finally, a measure to legalize recreational use of the dreaded weed,
marijuana.
So all those people who can’t get overpriced drugs can
self-prescribe on their own and enrich the public coffers with even more
tax money.
So I’ve done all my voting already, took the sealed envelope down to
City Hall and dropped it in the box.
And the
Chicago Cubs won the
World Series
for the first time since Coca-Cola barely two decades old.
What could be better than that?
Love, as always,
Pete
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