Corporate hyperbole: "Strike Anywhere Matches"

“Diamond Strike Anywhere Matches”
“Lights Quickly and Easily”

Hah! in our just finished box of matches the tips scrape off, the sticks break, and often it takes two or more matches before one lights.  And forget striking anywhere; nothing happens when I scrape one on our fireplace rim.

They may be made from “responsibly managed forests” but using three matches when one should need only one doesn’t seem responsible.  Granted two extra matches isn’t going to decimate any forest, but it certainly decimates my patience.

Seeing the corporate layers listed on the box (see labels below), I can easily imagine those who wrote the slogans for the box rarely if ever use the matches to light a fire.

Hey!  On the plus side they have firelogs made from recycled coffee grounds.  Ah, but that takes all the fun and exercise out of cutting one’s own trees, cutting them to lengths, and splitting the lengths.

Another independent loses to the chains

All but one or two independent pharmacies are left in Duluth,  all the others have closed in the face of Walgreens, Target, Wal-Mart, and other big box stores.

Happily, local breweries are flourishing.

Sadly, there is only one independent new-books bookstore left, all the others are used books only.

Happily, independent restaurants seem to be popping up and flourishing.

Sadly, independent coffee shops are losing to the chains.  The latest is Bixby’s in the Mount Royal Shopping Center.  It had been around before we moved to Duluth in 1999.  This fall, the latest owners were featured in a neighborhood newspaper.  The owners were optimistic even with a Caribou and a Starbucks within five minutes walk away.

Today, when I went to Bixby’s, there was a sign on the counter that it would close on January 1.  Although the staff was being cheerful to the customers, I think I heard a bit of sobbing from at least one of them.  Consider that the staff were mostly college students who had to work to keep up with their bills.  Losing a job in the middle of the school year is a bit hard to take.

I could go to a coffee shop/restaurant on our block, but that doesn’t give me much of a walk.  I could go to an independent pizza shop/restaurant in the same building as Bixby’s for coffee, but it just doesn’t seem like a coffee shop.  I don’t think it would be a place where we would stop for coffee for the trip to Brimson.

I guess I can’t complain too much because I didn’t go to Bixby’s as much as I used to.  Two of my coffee buddies died and the other moved out of town.  Plus, as I’ve gotten older I’ve walked the mile to Bixby’s less frequently, often wimping out because of rain or snow.  I didn’t drive there much either because the whole point was the exercise and the comradary.

Big-ga boxes, big-ga boxes, all made of ticky-tacky, all-a look the same!

I was right to be positive about a negative

This morning my urologist called me.  He was pleased to tell me that there was no sign of cancer in the biopsies of my prostate.  See "The Impatient Outpatient".  However, he wants to see me again next February and his staff called me back with a specific date.

Where are my get-young pills?

Ah, this is a good place to stick in my notes about Ponce de León and the Fountain of Youth.  Ponce did not discover Florida.  "By 1513, when Ponce de Léon first arrived, so many Europeans had visited Florida that some Indians greeted him in Spanish."  The fountain of youth at St. Augustine was concocted by Washington Irving over 300 years later.  See "Ponce de León, Exposed", T. Allman, New York Times, 2013-04-01.

About the only Fountains of Youth are to pick long-lived grandparents, don't smoke, drink moderately, eat your vegetables, and exercise regularly.  I've failed at some time or another on all five, but I have followed the second for over 30 years and I try to follow the last three every day.  Plus I have Magree's push-up rule of longevity - you'll live as many years more as you can do pushups.  I have been doing between 22 and 26 most mornings.  See "The Magree Inexpensive Heart Stress Test".

Cancer, diet, exercise, and hoaxes

A relative posted an article on Facebook supposedly from Johns Hopkins saying that diet is better than chemotherapy and surgery for countering cancer.  I do believe that diet and exercise are important parts of preventing cancer or recovering from it, but this sounded "too good to be true".

Sure enough, a search for "Johns Hopkins", cancer, diet, and radiation turned up "Cancer Update Email -- It's a Hoax" from The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center of Johns Hopkins Medicine rebutting much of what it was in the email.

Emails such as this are a cancer themselves.  The Johns Hopkins article was last updated April 2009!! But the cancer of false information lives on.

A hidden cost of health insurance "efficiency"

As regular readers know, I take a dim view of those who tout efficiency because they use it as a code for lower obvious costs.  They ignore that lowering costs may reduce effectiveness or may increase costs elsewhere.

A recent case was that someone thought that Medicare Advantage participants getting health club memberships was a cost that could be eliminated.  I'm sorry that I didn't note where I read it.

However, a health club membership can cut costs elsewhere.  Granted that not everyone who has such membership gets any real gain.  Some show up for the sauna or the hot tub and get no real exercise.  Probably sufficient numbers show up and do exercises that increase bone mass, muscle tone, and cardio-vascular function so that they will be less likely to be hospitalized than those who don't show up.  In other words, the cost of the health club membership can offset the costs of major medical intervention.

Two entries - better late than never

I've had two blog entries in my head since April, but I never found a round tuit to write them.  Even though they may not be timely, you might find them interesting.

An April Fool's joke

On 1 April my wife was standing in the kitchen after breakfast musing about something.  I said, "Your shoes are untied."  She looked down at her slip-ons and said, "Oh, that's a good one!"

Who am I to complain?

For years when it's not ski season, I've gone downtown for coffee, then to the library, and then maybe to lunch.

At first, I went to a coffee shop owned by some friends.  When they retired, I went to a coffee shop nearby instead.  Besides the good coffee, I appreciated the classical music from public radio.

Then government budget cuts hit the library and it was no longer open on Monday mornings.  So, I went to the fitness center instead.  Maybe afterward I would walk to the library.

This spring when the ski slope closed, I went back to the coffee shop.  Instead of classical music on public radio there was pop music on commercial radio.  I mentioned it to a barista; he said the owner changed the station because some of the regulars complained that the classical music put them to sleep.  They came to the coffee shop to wake up.

The pop music was not overly loud but the commercials were and set my teeth on edge.  I never went back.

Who am I to complain?  I went there once a week for nine months of the year.  The regulars were there every weekday twelve months a year.

I went to another nearby coffee shop twice but the coffee was so weak that I decided not to go back.

I could have gone to another coffee shop (locally owned) but it was farther from the bus stop and over a windy bridge.

So, I've stopped going downtown on a regular basis altogether.  Maybe I'm saving money but I miss dropping in on a few shopkeepers.  And I've stopped reading the variety of magazines at the library.

The real downside is I've stopped walking so much.  It has to be a nice day with no special errands for me to walk the mile to a local coffee shop twice a week.

"I took the [road] less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost

Why do I go to the fitness center?

I go so I have energy to shovel snow.

Why do I stop shoveling snow? So I have energy to go to the fitness center.