Category: Rev. Joe Dirt’s Ramblings

The unsolicited, unreasoned, uninformed, unapologetic opinions of Rev. Joe Dirt

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Southpaw – I never knew

Once again during my regular regal ruminations I was perusing the book, Dictionary of Word Origins by Jordan Almond when I came across an entry for Southpaw:

“All major league baseball diamonds are laid out so that the batter will face east, thus putting the afternoon sun behind his back and making it easier for him to see the ball. Therefore, when the pitcher faces the batter he’s facing west and his left arm is to the south. So if he pitches left-handed, he’s pitching with his ‘south paw.'”

It makes sense that they would construct ball parks this way – aligned with the compass, but I had never thought about it before.  I had never really considered why left-handed pitchers are called south paws.  I had just heard it all my life and accepted it without thought.

As my son-in-law has informed me a couple times ( I had forgotten the answer from the first time I asked him) that the stadium space in center field without seats, and usually green, is to help the batters see the ball also.

Don’t you feel so  much smarter now…

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #3,726

yeah I know you did not ask!

File this under ironic.

When I first moved in with Señora around 2012 in this St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield (population 49,703), there was a big discussion going on in the media about racial profiling, The city of Chesterfield was listed as one of the most egregious cities in Missouri for profiling of black drivers. A quick search on Google did not bring up any current articles, however.  Chesterfield is 77% white, 13% Asian, and only 3.5% black. Hispanics are 2.9% and the rest vary.

Continuing through the pandemic until now, home deliveries of whatever has become and remains massively popular.  There seems to be delivery vans constantly driving down our street.

The ironic part… the vast majority of the folks driving these vans are exactly the type of persons that the Chesterfield PD was accused of profiling a decade ago. Apparently it is okay if these folks are delivering your goodies and wearing a corporate uniform.

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The Year I Almost Went to The Masters

When I moved back to Oklahoma from Rhode Island I went to work for Coburn Optical.  Their main line of business is the manufacturing of the machines that other companies use to modify lenses to mount in eye glasses.  They also have a division that takes orders to modify and mount lenses.  I was young, still working on my education, and my work experience had been in restaurants, factories and warehouses.  I was a warehouseman there.  I worked there from 1973 to 1976, leaving to move to Oklahoma City to pursue my educational goals.

My father had left his position with Kaman Aerospace and moved back to Muskogee, OK where my mother had been living for a while.  Looking around for a job he found one with Coburn and started there shortly after I left.  He moved up rapidly and after a while was managing the division that prepared lenses for other companies.  Part of his responsibilities involved making Continue reading “The Year I Almost Went to The Masters”

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Día de la Diversidad Cultural 

Columbus Day is still a Federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the Monday closest to the 12th of October.  However, many states are renaming it, terming it Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and rightly so. If you have read the history of Christopher Columbus he was not a moral person. His treatment of indigenous people and people of color in general was abhorrent.  Normally, I try to understand historical figures in Continue reading “Día de la Diversidad Cultural “

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Just call me Dr. Frankenstein

Señora and I went for a short stay a Pere Marquette Lodge to celebrate the February triplet of her birthday, Valentine’s Day and the anniversary of when we met, all happening within five days of each other.

Dr. Frankenstein’s Most Current Operation

For reasons inexplicable, early in this couple’s fiesta I related to Señora a behavior my ex developed late in Continue reading “Just call me Dr. Frankenstein”

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #8,069

yeah I know you did not ask!

As you surely know, the primary sensory input for canines is the sense of smell. Our particular canine, Princess Lily, has the common but  troubling habit of rolling in whatever odoriferous substance she can find. This seems to be some sort of bold statement for dogs – here I am, I know you can smell me now.

Of course, this results in Señora giving The Wee Dog frequent baths. Lily tolerates these baths, but just barely. But she is so happy when they are over that she runs around the house crazily for five minutes. Señora being Señora, chases the ecstatic Lily and everyone is having a good time.

Thinking about this other day I came to the conclusion that if our precious little dog was human she would  dress in wild, bold, colorful clothes that would generate jokes about needing sunglasses.

Loud smells, loud clothes, all in the same ballpark… smell me, look at me!

And so it goes

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Señora

I love this picture of Señora. It was taken in 2008 on the occasion of a group of us going skydiving. After jumping out of a semi-good airplane she has been ready for any adventure… including yours truly.  What a trooper!

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Mama Carr’s Poke Bonnet

The book, Dictionary of Word Origins by Jordan Almond, magically appeared in the downstairs throne room. Knowing my propensity to read during my regular regal ruminations, knowing my love of words,  Señora finding the book at an estate sale,  bought it and placed it in the throne room.

This morning I came across the following entry:

Poke bonnet: This bonnet got its name from the fact that the front of it “poked out” far beyond the face. A bonnet that didn’t do so was called a “kiss-me-quick”.

I cannot think of my mother’s mother, my grandmother, who the whole world called Mama Carr, without picturing her wearing her poke bonnet.  While she did not wear it on her occasional trips to downtown Checotah, with chickens to care for, a garden to look after and a cow to milk, she was routinely outside, putting on her bonnet if it was the less bit sunny. Surprisingly, when I looked through Continue reading “Mama Carr’s Poke Bonnet”

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #1,560

yeah I know you did not ask!

I wonder if at the various universities and colleges that teach Internet technologies if there are special writing classes, perhaps in the Marketing Department under Internet.

There seems to a certain, very common style of article on many websites.  There is a teaser headline that grabs your attention, so you open the article. You then start reading or perhaps scanning to through the article to find the tidbit that attracted you, but it is not readily apparent. So you scroll, and scroll some more trying to find it.  As you do so you go past one advertisement after another.  If you are exceedingly lucky you find the tidbit towards the end of the article, but it frequently has an O. Henry twist to it.  Not uncommonly, however, there is nothing in article that relates to the teaser.

It is amazing what we humans are willing to do to other humans in the endeavor to extract money from them.

And so it should not go.

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Interesting Cultural Difference

In my Spanish class this morning we were practicing the grammatical structure used in Spanish when talking about hypothetical situations.  My teacher kept pushing me for more examples, and I was struggling to come with some after the first rush of inspiration.  So I made up one about growing horns and chasing Señora around the house…thinking I was talking about being a bit randy (or horny, if you prefer) which, lamentably, is occasionally hypothetical as I continue this head long rush of aging.

“Oh Señor, I am so sorry,” my teacher said to me.  Apparently in Mexico and probably other Hispanic countries when they say a man has grown horns it means his woman is running around on him behind his back aka he is being cuckolded.  But it can apply to the woman too.  He showed me a painting by the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, of herself,  as a deer, with a huge rack of antlers and her  body pierced by many arrows.    Her husband, the Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera, was famously a less than faithful spouse.

Vive les différences culturelles.