Notes From A Bear's Journey

   Unlike the verb version of bartering, the noun version of bargain comes down to being defined as a good deal, whether it's a discounted price on a vacation or on a clearance item at a store; but in general we all tend to love getting a bargain (conversely, we resent it when we discover that we didn't do our homework and find out that our "bargain" was anything but).  Perhaps my recent bargains have come from my library which is reducing their inventory by closing out their extra movies, music, and books...in the summer everything was just five cents, and now with the arrival of winter (and perhaps inflation) everything has jumped to a quarter.  Still, picking up a double disc set of David Bowie or a 9-disc audio book for 25 cents is almost too good to pass up.  Which of course only adds to my clutter which drives my wife crazy, for try as I might to "catch up," the items seem to keep coming in which she is quick to point out --along with the almost OCD Ma

   There are many things in life (and especially science) which I don't understand which is often reflected when telling my friends that I would be a poor hostage for aliens, especially if they were looking for answers to many of humanity's questions.  What do you know about things beyond your cosmos?  Uh, nothing.  What do you know about how your nerves or cells work?  Uh, nothing.  What do you know about how your cell phone or streaming services work?  Uh, nothing.  Can you fix this coffee maker?  Uh, no.  Do you know what a gathering of badgers is called?  Uh... yes (but I had only just seen it the other day so it was somewhat of a cheat).  In other words, I am drawn to those "dummy" sort of books which attempt to explain things in a simplified manner...such as working on the faucet in my sink.  It should have been a small problem, one solved by looking at one of a zillion You Tube videos on a zillion subjects, each instructional video quite well-intentioned but e

   Lonely, I'm Mr. Lonely.  Some of you may be old enough to remember Bobby Vinton (who wrote and sang that song but should not to be confused with Bobby Darin of "Mack the Knife" fame), a tenor along the lines of Justin Timberlake but not the almost soprano-like voice of Frankie Valli.  Still alive today, Bobby Vinton had quite the life: a chaplain in the Army, a player of a variety of instruments, a composer proud of his Polish heritage, and a grounded benefactor (when his local town wanted to erect a statue in his honor, he denied the offer and told them to spend the $100,000 on helping other causes in need).  It would seem that he was anything but lonely.  Which brings me to Alexa, that automated voice which joins Siri and Google's Assistant and answers just about anything from homework questions to the weather conditions in some distant land...Alexa, come to find out, also received over 1,000,000 marriage proposals in 2017 (Google and Apple haven't release

   It's a word not heard much these days, that of tragedy.  It's a word almost diminished in its meaning as if almost now relegated back to the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans when plays were comedies or tragedies; hearing one say "that's tragic" in today's world makes the word seem to have lost some of its impact, its meaning.  But the weeks that led up to the start of the new year brought to mind that word with governments partially shutting down (although federal workers so affected are required to keep working without pay, even as their insurance lapses and goes unpaid; Congress meanwhile, which sets it own increases in pay, continues to get paid regardless of whether the government is operating or not*); market economies continue to roil up and down and the future may be once again looking recessionary (the Bank of England issued its worst case scenario for the upcoming Brexit with predictions of the pound falling below the dollar and housing prices

  Back in the days Hollywood marketers were determined to create stars and part of that usually involved giving up your name and creating a new one. More commonly known were the transitions of Norma Jean Baker becoming Marilyn Monroe and Bernie Schwartz becoming Tony Curtis.  But what to do about Leonard Slye or William Henry Pratt or Dino Crocetti? (they were turned into Roy Rogers, Boris Karloff and Dean Martin, respectively).  Or Nathan Birnbaum, Joseph Yule, Jr., Archie Leach, Marion Morrison, and Frederick Austerlitz, actors whose birth names were forgettable but destined to be remembered only by their stage names of George Burns, Mickey Rooney, Cary Grant, John Wayne and Fred Astaire.  Many, such as Leslie Hope and Harry Crosby only had to change part of their names, while others such as England's James Stewart found their name already taken (he soon changed his name to Stewart Granger).  Others were simply too complicated to pronounce: Tula Ellice Finklea (Cyd Cherisse), Iss