It was 19 months ago, following the embarrassing spectacle in the Oval Office in which Donald Trump and his then-equally tubby vice president ambushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that I said in this space that it had become clear that Trump was on Russia’s side in its invasion of Ukraine.
If everything worked as well as the product called Evapo-Rust, the world would be a much better place.
That’s just one of the many lessons learned during my recent — successful! — project to transform my old, nonfunctioning gasoline-powered generator into something much better.
My grandparents, whose little farm was next door to ours so my sisters and I grew up effectively with two houses and two very different sets of parents, were lovely people.
My friends Pat and Bobby visited briefly over the weekend.
I met them when Pat and I were in ninth grade and we both shot Miranda cameras. The last time I saw Pat, George W. Bush was president; the last time I saw Robert, Richard Nixon was. Pat now lives in Lithuania. Bobby doesn’t.
A long time ago I was assigned the task of tracking down a guy named Guido Franch, who had some pills or pellets or something that he said would turn water into gasoline.
People I know who have Wen-brand home generators seem to like them, which is part of the reason I decided to purchase one. The rest of the reason is that it had the features I sought at a price I was willing to pay.
If the cheerful Pollyanna were given the task of comparing the manufacturers’ claims about electrical power supplies, and power-using devices, to measurable reality, by day’s end she would have hardened into a cynic and by week’s end might well have become a heavy drinker.
The word hadn’t entered my mind for at least half a century and I have no idea why it did the other day. It’s an odd word, one most people don’t hear often if ever. I wondered if it were some made-up family thing. It had daily use (well, nightly use) in our house as I was growing up.
It was six months ago today that I first plugged my computer into the Starlink router, connected to the standard-sized Starlink “dish” (it’s a panel) that was flopped down haphazardly in my back yard.
If you were a teenager in 1970 and were beginning to become skeptical of the promise of the space age, beyond “Tang instant breakfast drink” and Velcro, there’s a small chance that you saw a movie, “Colossus: The Forbin Project.” Dozens did. I was among them.