Hanover Tomatoes

In my previous post, Burger Bliss, I mentioned Hanover tomatoes. Just so you know, these are Hanover tomatoes. The medium-size fruit are a little over 4 inches across. I had been visiting with my friend Butch and as I was leaving I saw these on his dining room table. He urged me to take one home with me, as that is his way. I declined and told him I still had slices remaining of the previous tomato he had given me, which was true.

And that reminds me of the old joke about the 3-legged pig. A man passing by a farm saw a 3-legged pig in the farmer’s yard. The man asked the farmer why the pig had only 3 legs.

"Well," said the farmer, "that pig is very special. One time my wife was cooking something and she stepped out of the kitchen and it caught on fire. No one in the house knew about it but the pig, and he saved me, my wife, and my kids. If it weren’t for that pig we would all be dead." 

"That's amazing!" said the man, “but why does the pig only have three legs?"

"Well," said the farmer, "with a pig that special... you don’t eat 'em all at once."

And as with the pig, I still have slices of this special tomato in my fridge, slowly disappearing.

Maybe it’s just my blogging about special pigs and special tomatoes, but now I want a BLT.

Burger Bliss

Breakfast today. Also lunch.

Here’s how to make the tastiest burger you’ll ever bite into.

Get some decent size hamburger buns, not the kiddie size that stores like to stock. Get ground beef patties; frozen patties are fine. Just cook ‘em slow so they don’t get burnt crispy on either side.

Get white onion, yellow mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise.

Now this part is important. You have to get great-tasting tomatoes, and I recommend you get Hanover tomatoes. They get the name because they’re grown in Hanover County, Virginia. And what’s special about Hanover County? It’s the soil. It’s a combination of soil and sand that makes Hanover tomatoes famous for their size and flavor. Another factor is the pH of the soil, which is lower than in many other places. A good place to start looking for these tomatoes is Pole Green Produce market in Mechanicsville, Va. If you aren’t going to use Hanover tomatoes then just stop now and drive to Mickey D’s.

Hanover tomatoes are usually large. Slice ‘em thick—you’ll get plenty of slices out of one tomato. But even so, don’t go there and buy one tomato!

The rest of the burger preparation is standard. Cook the patty to your desired degree of doneness. Ground beef should be well done. I’ve eaten medium and even medium-rare burgers and gotten away with it, but I don’t recommend it. You’re playing with fire. More specifically, you’re playing with salmonella and E. coli.

Put ample mayonnaise on the bottom bun—the oil in the mayo will help keep the bun from getting soggy. Put mustard and ketchup on the top bun. Put the cooked burger on the bottom bun and add salt and pepper. Place your slice of tomato on the burger and add a little more salt and pepper to the tomato. Put the slice of onion on the tomato. Put the top bun in place and enjoy.

There are probably a zillion hamburger recipes on the Web. What makes this one different is the Hanover tomato.

And when you eat your burger, don’t forget a tasty side salad. The one pictured here is made of Romaine lettuce, sliced grape tomatoes, garlic croutons, grated parmesan cheese, and parmesan dressing. Simple but good.

Crazy Day

It has been a crazy day. First I found a hat full of money on the street. I picked it up and went on my way. But then an angry man with a guitar started chasing me. So I had to run. And run. And run.

Later, around noon, I was driving down Broadway Street in Richmond. I stopped at a red light and saw a young man with his thumb out. He looked hot and sweaty, and indeed it was a hot day. Sitting in my air-conditioned car, I felt sorry for him, so I waved to him to come to my car. He did, and he got in the car and thanked me. He had a small brown paper bag with him. I asked him what was in the bag. He told me he had been released from prison just a half hour earlier and the bag contained his belongings that he had when he was arrested.

We drove a few more blocks down Broadway, and then he asked me if, when I gave him a lift, I had considered that he might be a serial killer. I told him, “No—what are the odds that there would be two serial killers in my car at the same time?” He asked me to let him out of the car. And I did.

I won’t lie—most of this is true.

Education

At age 8 I got a copy of the Amateur Radio Relay League Handbook. I studied it every day. Ohm’s Law. Kirchhoff’s Laws. Resistance. Impedance. And when I began to learn Resonance, my 8 year old brain hit a speed bump. Series resonance. Parallel resonance. Q factor. My brain sucked it in until it got to be over my head. But I learned.

When I was about 9 or 10, I was building electronic projects on a board. When I said board, I mean literally a piece of wood. I mounted Fahnestock clips on standoffs so I could change the circuitry as fast as I could build it.

When I was about 10 or 11, my grandmother’s sister (my great aunt) gave me an old Philco cathedral radio. It could tune AM and short-wave. It didn’t work. I fixed it. 

When I was 13, I attended electronics night school with my dad. I was too young to enroll but the teacher allowed me to audit the class. I did the homework and took the exams. Made good grades, too, but it was all unofficial. I took the class but according to official documents, I didn’t take the class. That’s ok. I learned.

I got my first real job at 13, so I earned money to afford an amateur radio station. When I was 14, I built my ham station. (The word “ham” is short for “ham-fisted,” a derogatory term for some early radio operators that lacked some of the skills they needed.) I had a rig (transmitter) I had built, a receiver, a quarter-wave vertical dipole antenna in the back yard, with copper wire ground plane. The antenna was connected to my rig by RG-8U coax, almost half an inch in diameter. It went through a T/R (Transmit/Receive) switch so that the transmitter would not blow out the front end of the receiver. The T/R switch would only connect one at a time to the antenna. The T/R switch didn’t work. I took it apart and made an adjustment and presto! It worked.

When I graduated high school my intent was go to Virginia Tech (VT) and become an electrical engineer. But I couldn’t afford to do that. Back then the tuition was a fraction of what it is today, but still way too much for me. So my first year I attended a local community college called Richard Bland College. It was a two year school. My first-year math class was Integral Calculus. I thought I would fail because I didn’t “get it.” It seemed to be over my head. But I stuck to it and I discovered it was hard because my professor was a poor teacher. I passed.

Now here is something important: Richard Bland used the semester system. I took four hours of Calculus a week for two semesters. Virginia Tech used the quarter system, and they taught the same course for 3 hours a week for 3 quarters. This meant that I earned 8 credit hours in Calculus (4 hours multiplied by 2 semesters) whereas the students taking Calculus at VT earned 9 credit hours (3 hours multiplied by 3 quarters.) This completely ignores the the fact that a semester (half of nine moths) is 1.5 times as long as a quarter (3 months). I was robbed!

I could not convince VT that 4 hours per week for 9 months is longer than 3 hours per week for 9 months, so I had to repeat part of my Calculus course.

The next year I went to another college called Richmond Professional Institute (RPI). It’s not called that any longer. There was a well-known medical college in Richmond called Medical College of Virginia (MCV). RPI and MCV merged to create a new university called Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). The former MCV is called VCU Health Systems. But RPI is where I re-studied the last quarter of Integral Calculus. It threw me one quarter behind all the way through college because of a thing called “Prerequisites.” You have to complete and pass certain courses before you can move on to other courses. So after repeating the third quarter of Integral Calculus, I was allowed to proceed to my next math class, which was Differential Calculus.

At this point, as I became familiar with Differential Calculus, I had a realization. The two courses were being taught in the wrong order. I should have taken Differential Calculus first, and then Integral Calculus. By switching the order of how the courses were taught, it was like teaching someone how to build a helicopter and after that, only then do you tell them what a helicopter does.

So I went to Virginia Tech as a junior, still one quarter behind my classmates. I had good professors and a few that I considered not-so-good. When my graduation was approaching, I asked my course adviser what courses I should take to graduate in December (summer vacation plus I was still a quarter behind.) He advised me what to take and I got on with my education, expecting to graduate in December. Then I got hit by another stumbling block.

My course adviser told me I couldn’t graduate because I didn’t take Freshman Algebra. And that was true, I had skipped algebra and had taken two years of Calculus, a much more difficult subject. If you don’t know algebra, you’re not going to pass Calculus.

So the conversation went more or less like this:

Me: So I have to come back for another three months just to take Freshman Algebra?

VT: I’m afraid it’s not that simple. The University no longer teaches Freshman Algebra.

Me: Why not?

VT: We decided it was unnecessary.

Me: Wait. I can’t graduate because I didn’t take a course that the faculty has decided is unnecessary?

VT: Yes. But it was necessary at the date you enrolled. So you’re still required to take it. You can return for another quarter and take another course.

Me: I have to pay tuition, and buy a meal ticket, and pay for laundry service, just to take this unnecessary course?

VT: Yes.

Me: So what course should I take?

VT: We don’t care. Just pick something with the same number of credit hours as Freshman Algebra.

And so it was. I call it bureaucracy run amok. A more cynical person might say the University was gouging me for more money just because they could.

A Conversation

I had a discussion tonight with a friend on a text/video platform. It lasted for a while before we moved to another video platform. But while it was on the first chat platform, this was our conversation. I copied it here because tonight I am too lazy to come up with something original, and besides, it may give some of my friends and acquaintances something to think about.

The segments that start with Q are my friend’s chats. The segments that start with VW are my chats.

VW: All of us are here for a reason.

We are here to experience and to learn.

We are also here to help one another and to be kind to one another. That is a very important lesson to learn.

Q: So don’t feel pity for yourself. Life is short. Let me ask you, are you happy? With your Life, with what you do?

VW: I don't feel pity for myself ... none at all. I did not mean to give that impression. Yes, I feel happy most of the time. I do what you do, except less house cleaning and more writing.

Q: You don't know what you have not seen.

VW: I eat, I sleep, I visit friends (mostly online). And you don't know what you have not seen. So what? No one has seen everything, but you don't have to travel anywhere to learn many things.

Q: ?

VW: There are people who are blind and cannot "see" at all, but they still learn and live their lives.

Q: But they believe they are happy.

VW: Each of us is here for a purpose and it is not the same purpose. Each of us has lessons to learn, not the same lesson.

Are you happy?

Do you feel content?

Q: Not completely. I’m very grateful for who I am, what I do, what I have. But something is missing. And I bet that happens to you also.

VW: I practiced transcendental meditation for a year, morning and evening. I wanted to experience it. I took LSD because I wanted to experience it. I drove all over America in a camper van with my dog because I wanted to experience it. So I've experienced a lot and I feel I have an understanding of my life and why I am here. When you die you will meet the Angel and you might think it is Jesus or God, but it is the Angel. The Angel will make you review your life and then will ask you, "What have you done that is sufficient?"

I want to have a good answer. I know many places that I have failed, but by failing I learned something.

I think perhaps because my mother and father fought like cats and dogs every day of my childhood and even my adulthood, I never wanted to be married. And because of my panic attacks, it was very difficult to date anyone, so that was cut out of my life, and who can say that God didn't do it. I believe He did cut that out of my life and I believe He had a reason.

And so my life went in a different direction and I met different people and traveled to different places and had different experiences, but I was happy. My life could have been so much worse. I was born lucky. I was born to decent people, in a good country, and made good friends, and had some experiences with women. I'm happy. I have regrets, I've done things that hurt people and I was too immature to understand that, but now I understand and I've learned.

Q: You have done that because you have free wheeled.

VW: I don't know why you say I have "free wheeled". Much of my life has been tough. I was working at age 13. I struggled financially to get through school. No sooner did I get a good job than this agoraphobia hit me and it was crippling. (Agoraphobia is the medical name for what causes my panic attacks.) My life has not been easy, but it has probably been easier than I deserve. I wish I could undo many things I have done. I was foolish when I was young and did not take advantage of opportunities I had. I was often anxious. I think I inherited that from my mother, who was often anxious and easily frightened. My dad was an alcoholic but he was also a hard worker and taught me many things, and many of my values, which were good, honest values. He had his failings. My mother had hers. I've had mine. We aren't heavenly angels, we are just people who struggle to survive. Some of us give up the struggle, it is too much, and we read about their suicide. As I wrote (on this blog), sometimes I feel my life was like a train on a track and couldn't have gone any other way, and maybe that is exactly how our lives work. Maybe they are planned for us so that we can learn the things we need to learn. Soul-learning.

I think we have "guardian angels" who are always with us and guiding us through our feelings, and sometimes protecting us and others. I think perhaps they plan our life experiences to give us (our souls) an opportunity to grow to make us better through soul-work. We are here to learn and grow. But that does not happen sometimes and we have to repeat our lessons until we learn them. We will eventually learn, some of us are just slower than others.

When you see someone who was born disabled, it may be that he or she took on that disability to learn a very valuable lesson. That person may be an "old soul" who is learning very hard lessons now. Or that person may be a "young soul" who is learning what the effects of their actions are on others. Do not be too quick to pity or judge. They may have chosen a lesson and perhaps you are in their life to help them learn that lesson.

And at this point the conversation moved to another video chat platform.

Abortion

Many years ago, I was the moderator of a panel discussion about abortion. I think the topic was ‘should abortion be legal?’ How did that happen? It was part of my engineering training.

Engineers are taught skills in addition to technical and mathematical skills. I was taught to stand in front of a room full of people and give a speech on a particular topic. I was taught how to moderate a debate panel. Sadly, the debates I see on today’s TV often show moderators with no skills in moderating a debate, or at least no willingness to follow the rules of moderating. As moderator, I had to make sure everyone on the panel spoke. I had to prevent the more talkative types from dominating the debate, and I had to ask questions of the less talkative debaters to draw out their views. I’ve long forgotten most of what I was taught, but I remember that debate. The topic of abortion is still debated and has adherents on both sides.

Should abortion be legal? It seems to be a thorny question, with passionate advocates on both sides. But I’m an engineer. Passion isn’t part of the equation. Only logic is.

We are repulsed at killing a small fetus that cannot survive outside its mother. But we are not similarly repulsed at removing a kidney from a human. The kidney, like the fetus, has human DNA. But the kidney is not a person, nor is it a potential person, whereas the fetus is. But then, why is this lump of fetal tissue called a person, while another lump of human tissue is not?

It goes to the concept of a soul. We presume the fetus has a soul and is therefore human, while the kidney does not have a soul—it is merely part of the body’s machinery.

But even if we believe that humans have a soul, which is purely theoretical, what makes us think a fetus has a soul? There is nothing to support such a concept, and there is reason to doubt it.

Assuming there is an all-powerful, all-knowing God, this God would know that a particular fetus is going to be aborted. Why would God implant a soul into a fetus that is due to be killed? Planting a soul into a fetus that is about to be destroyed is pointless. Why would God do that? Logic says God would not.

So, logically, an aborted fetus never had a soul. We can’t see the future, but an all-knowing God can.

If there is no God, then there are probably no souls, and on some level humans are no different from any other animal. We’re not “special”. We’re not “above” all the other animals. We’re simply another species.

And if there is an all-knowing God, such a Being knows what the future will bring and what will happen to every fetus created. Such a God would act accordingly, meaning an aborted fetus never had a soul and never was a person.

To sum my argument so far: if there is no Supreme Being, then the argument about the “specialness” of human life falls apart, and removing a fetus is as immoral as removing a kidney. But, if there is a Supreme Being, such a Being would know a particular fetus would not grow to be a baby and therefore that Supreme Being would not implant it with a soul and, again, removing a fetus is as immoral as removing a kidney.

Many years ago I saw a woman in a motel room. She was naked, kneeling, with her head on the floor. A dark stain spread over the carpet beneath her pelvis. The dark stain was her blood draining out her body. She was dead, murdered by a “back-alley” abortionist who did not know what they were doing. I did not know the woman, but I felt a great wrong had been done to her. It’s an image that, after decades, I still cannot get out of my head. But that was reality; that was the way it used to be. Making abortion illegal never ended abortions, but it often ended the mother’s life and the life of the fetus.

I don’t like the idea of abortions, but I would never presume to tell a woman what to do. It is her body and her decision and she will bear the consequences. I imagine many women who get abortions hate what they are doing but feel they have no choice.

Logic tells us abortions don’t kill human babies; abortions remove lumps of human-looking tissue that will never have a soul. But the entire anti-abortion/pro-choice debate is based on things we can never know for certain, and we make decisions based on opinions and feelings rather than facts. But before you blame a woman for getting an abortion, you might recall the words of Jesus in John 8:7. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

July 4th

Today is July 4th, also called Independence Day in the United States. July 4th is considered the founding date of the American Republic. America’s first president, as every American should know, was George Washington. Washington’s vice president was John Adams. Both men were Founding Fathers. John Adams became America’s second president. America’s third president was Thomas Jefferson, another Founding Father.

Thomas Jefferson died at 83. John Adams died at 90. Both men died on the same date: July 4, 1826 — the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Another Founding Father also became president. He was James Monroe, America’s fifth president. He died on July 4, 1831.

Coincidence? If so, the deaths of three American presidents and Founding Fathers on America’s Independence Day were remarkably unlikely. But if not coincidence, then what?

Antidote

My blog is relatively little known, which is okay with me. I write for fun and because I’m partly a writer, partly a poet, partly an engineer, partly a … okay, you get my point.

But if I wanted to have a massive readership, I could. All I need do is write a blog post that contains the most outrageous claims that I can imagine, that makes promises and guarantees that no one could ever deliver, and in general is so unbelievable as to be laughable. Then I would sit back and watch twenty percent of Americans swallow it whole, believing every word. But ethics prevents me from doing that. Just from grazing many articles on the Web, it appears having ethics puts me into a minority of bloggers.

Oh, by the way, I had Covid-19 this week. I managed to get over it in three days by using a special formula I concocted from my years of studying chemistry and microbiology. It may sound odd that someone who is a writer, a poet, and an electrical engineer would also have studied chemistry and microbiology, but my interests are very wide-ranging. I’m like a modern-day Michelangelo except without the fame.

Anyway, my anti-Covid formula worked like a charm. Tuesday was the first and roughest day. I couldn’t eat; I was weak. I couldn’t get out of bed. My stomach was queasy, my sense of taste was shot. Late that night, I started my formula and each succeeding day I was better. By late Friday I felt so good I ate a BK Whopper with fries. That’s when I knew I had taken too much of the formula and I had to cut back.

To tell the truth, I did have some help concocting the anti-Covid formula. Tuesday night an angel appeared at the foot of my bed. He looked around my room and then looked straight at me and said, “Your bedroom is a mess. But that’s not why I’m here.” Then he told me how to complete the formula. I asked him why he was helping me and the angel said simply, “It is not your time.” And then he vanished.

I remember thinking, “If I write about what just happened, no one will believe it.” Then my next thought was, “Of course people will believe it. Twenty percent of Americans will believe anything. I bet twenty percent of Americans would believe the Washington Redskins could win the next Super Bowl.”

No, I’m wrong. There are some things that no one would believe.

Tech Support

Want a job where you don’t have to know anything? Then tech support is for you!

When I had DSL Internet, the service was terrible, sometimes going to a download speed of zero. When I called tech support, I always found myself talking with Indian-tech-support-guy, and so first there was a bit of a language barrier. But generally it went like this:

Me: “My Internet is broken. My download speed is zero.”

Guy: “Okay, first go to this website and take the speed test.”

Me: “I can’t do that. I can’t go anywhere, my Internet is broken.

Sometimes after a few minutes, the speed test page would load.

Me: “Okay, I’m at the speed test page.”

Guy: “Click on the start button.”

Silence for 30 seconds.

Guy: “Did you click the start button?”

Me: “Yes.”

Guy: “What does the speed test say is your speed?”

Me: “Zero.”

I have a friend whose DSL Internet ranges from acceptable to unusable. I can start a video chat with her and everything is fine for 15 minutes, then the picture goes to hell and the sound drops out. It will eventually come back, but then drops out again in a continuing cycle of “here it is—now it’s gone.” I complained to her about it so many times that she finally called tech support, even though we both were fairly sure it was probably pointless. She said she got connected to a tech support woman in Egypt.

The tech support woman told her that her computer was too old. My friend replied, “it’s not an old computer, it has Windows 10.” To which the tech support woman said, “You see, Windows 10 is ten years old.”

Windows 10 was released in July, 2015, so at this date it is almost 5 years old. Apparently the tech support person thought “10” was a reference to the year 2010 rather than a version number. It looks like the job requirement for tech support is you must be breathing.

More Strangeness

I’ve blogged a half dozen times about the odd things that have happened to me in this house. Today another odd thing happened. I can’t prove it happened; you’ll have to take my word for it. It’s a very mundane thing, and yet completely unexplainable.

I have a beard trimmer that I use a couple times a week to make my beard acceptable to regular society. It came in a case with some attachments and a little brush which I’ll call brush-1. I used brush-1 to brush the beard trimmings (shavings?) off the trimmer.

One day, brush-1 disappeared. I looked all over for it. I searched the bathroom floor; I searched the bathroom trash can; I searched the top of my bedroom dresser. But brush-1 was gone.

I had another little brush which I’ll call brush-2. It was slightly larger than brush-1 and was made to fill a different purpose, but it was small enough to make an ideal beard trimmer cleaner. In fact, I preferred it to brush-1. I kept brush-2 in the beard trimmer case, just as I had kept brush-1 in the case before it vanished.

One day brush-2 vanished. Once again I searched everywhere it might be. It’s not in the beard trimmer case. It’s not in the bathroom. It’s not in the bathroom trash can. Where can brush-2 be? Has it eloped with brush-1?

I was puzzled but I didn’t worry about brush-2. I began using an old toothbrush to clean my trimmer, and it worked just fine. In fact, I think it worked better than brush-1 and brush-2. Nice large handle, nice large brush head; it was perfect. I used it for a long time.

I have a video appointment with my doctor this morning, so I decided to spruce up a little. I opened my beard trimmer case, I took out the trimmer, and I selected the clipper guard that I wanted to use. I went to the bathroom and used the trimmer. I returned to my bedroom to replace the trimmer back into its case, and guess what…?! There, lying in the case, was brush-1. Brush-1 was back! But back from where?

Someone is going to say it was there all along and I just overlooked it. Lo siento, muchacho. Brush-1 was missing for over two years. It was gone! In all those times I used the beard trimmer, do you really think brush-1 was in the case and I just didn’t see it? I call that “reaching” for an explanation. No, it reappeared this morning and I don’t know where it has been nor how long it will stay with me this time.

Perhaps brush-2 will come home, too. I’d like to see it again, even if it returns only for a brief visit.

The video visit with my doctor is now two hours away. It’s going to happen over the phone. I just hope my phone doesn’t vanish before she calls. Come to think of it, where is my phone?