When you can’t sleep, you can still wramble
Don’t miss the Genesee Valley Chorus on December 15 in Wellsville !
By Chuck Wiser, I write the words to share what my eyes see and my heart feels
Today’s title morphed just moments ago as my leading topic was going to include an “above the fold” story but was delayed about twenty minutes as I couldn’t “unfold.” My lead topic was going to be an early alert to the upcoming Genesee Valley Chorus (GVC), concert and I was going to make it my “above the fold” topic. As often happens, more and more lately I couldn’t get to sleep Wednesday (last) night as I had topics and writing ideas swirling in my head. So, once again, I got up instead of fighting sleeplessness planning on grabbing my laptop to commence writing. As I bent to retrieve my weapon of “mass discussion” I was hit with a severe leg cramp. Good news or bad news of which I’m not exactly sure, but at least this time I was already awake when it happened. Only those with the mis-fortune of having suffered a nocturnal leg cramp can fully understand and probably even sympathize. All too frequently they often wake me in the middle of the night. In that case I can generally roll out of bed struggling to get to a standing position so I can then relax the leg muscle to get the cramp to release its hold. I keep a bottle of leg cramp “fast acting pills” in the headboard compartment of the bed for quick access. These are indeed relatively fast acting as you place one under your tongue to dissolve. In literally just moments the cramp relief begins nearly immediately. I have a similar medicine that I keep in a cupboard with my regular medications that I can take if I’ve had a relatively minor “tweaking” of a muscle, and which will generally ward off a more severe episode. Last night, I was caught in between, and it took about 10 minutes to be able to straighten my leg and another 5 minutes for it to bear my weight so I could get to one of my leg cramp pill locations. I won’t go into detail as to the causes or treatments as you might better look them up with Mr. Google yourself for more in-depth analysis in case you are prone to these adventures. They are often, although not exclusively, nocturnal.
My earlier phrasing of “above the fold” is an old journalist or news publishing characteristic of publishing a piece in the most prominent and noticeable location of a newspaper, that being the upper half of the front page. As the papers are generally folded in half, the upper front half would be most visible and where the editors would want to capture your attention to draw you into further perusal of the writings contained therein.
My original headliner was to give advance notice of the annual Winter-Christmas season concert to be performed by the Genesee Valley Chorus Sunday, December 15th, 2024, at 2:00 PM at the Immaculate Conception Church, 6 Maple Street in Wellsville, NY. Matthew Purks-Morris is the Director and JoAnn Brown is the Accompanist. The “slightly edited” poster illustration will be added at the end of this Wrambling. The concert will feature typical Holiday Season music including some old standards, and a few more contemporary pieces. One new wrinkle this year will include a couple of songs sung in the Barbershop style performed by a Holiday Quartet.
In addition to the membership dues paid by the chorus members, the chorus expenses, including salaries and the ability to purchase new music for your listening pleasure, are subsidized by free-will donations typically made at the concert. Donations, of course, are welcome at any time. Refreshments will be served at a reception following the concert.
As I embark on this next section of my Wramblings I am going to “tip toe past,” “stick my toe in the water,” or “hint at,” a number of loosely bundled topics that are all present and no less controversial than ever. I try to write about current issues without showing bias, or closely held personal feelings, as that is the job of other pundits of political, social or religious journalism. Therein I managed to bring in some “old school” phraseology, grammar or personal characterizations, which are among my favorite writing techniques. When I joined the US Navy at the ripe old age of 17 years, the first thing they taught us, or hammered into our heads, (sometimes literally) was that conversational items including Race, Religion and Family were taboo and discussion in such areas was strictly or religiously followed.
That makes complete sense when you consider the feelings that we “civilians” now share and express today. On board the ship, in the Navy, we were often contained like sardines to the confines of a large steel vessel. The ship, our Navy home, was inhabited by a fairly small, but diverse group of people, all with their personal backgrounds and history. This includes the innate beliefs related to those items of “non-discussion.” Those are the traits we all possess, and it continues to amaze me, as to why everyone doesn’t feel or think the same way I do (Sarcasm).
I think that the next four years at least, is going to challenge us all, but in my heart, I believe that we can “rise up” and meet that challenge. Music helps to soothe the angry soul.
One of the “hot ticket” items concerns Immigration. That topic was recalled recently as I traveled to the “Reservation” in Cuba for a gas fill-up taking advantage of the 5₵ off gas savings. The practice of supposedly “tax free” commercial opportunities is one of those locally controversial topics. Some people feel very strongly about this “benefit” to a segment of our population. If you back away from the issue and consider the fact that technically WE are, or at least at one time were, “immigrants” to the lands of the United States then you might feel differently, I recently saw a posting, on Facebook I believe, that showed a map of our pre-ownership or citizenship of the lands we now live on. At one time this country was all Native American. If you contemplate and understand the term Native that says it all.
That last “paragraphicable” topic was “brought to mind” yesterday when I traveled to Olean to do some shopping and happened to need a gas “fill-up.” Even at the 5₵ off price point I paid $3.12 per gallon which is only five cents cheaper than the current $3.17 gas price at local Allegany County retail gas establishments. Olean is still hovering in the $3.39 range. How can our retailers sell at the price point only slightly higher than the cost at the “tax free” establishments. The last time I witnessed a gas delivery tanker at the reservation it was owned by none other than Shorts Oil Company, a retail distributor located in Allegany County. Why is Cattaraugus County still priced at the significantly higher gas price, and I’m including the Reservation in with the Olean area due to its demographic proximity?
Now, if you can’t picture that last discussion as pure exposé, what is it?
Switching to a Grammar Groan of sorts I have struggled more with the pronunciation of words with “poly” as a prefix. If you pronounce the first two syllables as you would the name “Polly” then the pronunciation of the rest of the word becomes awkward.
Try pronouncing “polygamy” with the “Polly” sound and it doesn’t work. “Polly-gamey,” just sounds terrible. You need to pronounce the “Y” as a “soft vowel” with the “ih” sound rather than with the “Why” sound. The letter Y is an immigrant to the set of vowels we learned as it is included as “sometimes Y” in the often taught, “A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y.” Given the challenges offered up to the last generation or so of students I’m not sure how or if they teach the basics anymore, much less any more.
Using “Any More” out of context challenged “Autodefect” as to which one to suggest changing. I believe the intention of the creators of that intrusive feature of word processing was designed to minimize the number of words used and to try and disrupt writing in a “conversational” mode. I tend to write as I would conversationally speak and Autodefect doesn’t like it. They often suggest to me that I be “more concise.” Hell…that would take the fun out of written communication. I’m not writing a “newspaper column,” I’m writing a social exposé…”. I tried to type that last word “exposé” into my writing, but couldn’t figure out how to get the accent mark above the last “e” to give it the “ay” sound. Challenged to figure out how to do it, I gave up and went to Google and searched for: “how do you spell ex-pose-ay?” and it gave me the accent letter I wanted, so good old copy/paste filled the need.
A couple more Wrambling tidbits and I’ll leave you with the GVC poster graphic.
- I was discussing my “memory” issues with my wife the other day and apologized for my short-comings saying: “I would forget my shadow if it wasn’t following me.”
- If you have and use a “key fob,” in particular with your vehicle, have you noticed that with most there are two different tones when you use it to “Lock” or “Unlock” your doors. The Lock “chime” rings once. The Unlock “chime” rings twice? I had an epiphany the other day that one ding, versus two dings reflected the one syllable of “Lock” vs the two syllables in “Unlock.” I Never really paid much attention to that, until I did.
- English was my favorite subject in school just barely beating out math. The English language is filled with some very challenging terminology. For the life of me I could not remember what a “dangling participle” is. By definition it is the “use of an adjective that unintentionally modifies the wrong noun (word) in a sentence. An example used by Google is the sentence; “Walking into the kitchen the smoke alarm was going off.” That implies that the smoke alarm was walking into the kitchen. Sorry…poor example but I “stoled” it. Here’s a late note, just now discovering while “Proofing.” There is a dangling participle in the very first paragraph of this Wrambling.
- Lastly, I recently used the word/term “Bi-directionally,” saying: “I amaze myself bidirectionally.” What I meant was sometimes I do something good or right, and sometimes it’s the opposite, but it’s always amazing.
- Last minute Flash, read to me by my wife as I write this. Apparently the Quicklees and Tim Horton’s will not be residing in Wellsville any time soon.
And so, I now leave you with the invitation to join me and the Genesee Valley Chorus on December 15th as noted on the illustration. If you have any comments, cares, concerns, or questions please email me at IM.Wiserdad@gmail as I would love to hear from you.
