Will The Geese Get Gone?

Duck, duck, goose.

Five years ago I talked Barb into leaving our home of 25 years and doing a bit of downsizing, shrinking both our square footage and my daily commute. Barb’s biggest must-have was a spot with some visual interest; something like a house on a pond.

We found the pond, we bought our lot, we built our house. All has gone swimmingly. But the beautiful, calm, relaxing pond is also the source of our biggest annoyance. As a kid I loved Garfield Goose; as a senior, I hate all geese.

Migrating geese have always made their summer home in the area. The Homeowners Association rents pairs of swans for each of the subdivision’s three ponds, in an attempt to keep the geese away. And through the years the swans have been moderately successful in their task.

This summer has been different. Our swan pair did not breed, and since they have no cygnets to protect, they have minimal interest in keeping the geese at bay. In fact, the swans’ performance has been downright lackadaisical. I am giving a thumbs down for this years’ Swan Lake.

And without the Swan Police, the geese have been having their most prolific season ever. Three brooding pairs with a total of 15 goslings, none name Ryan, reside around our house.

So 21 geese in total, the babies now as big as their parents. The geese block traffic. The geese honk. And the geese poop. Oh lord, how they poop. Viscous, lumpy, black, green, and white poop. All over our lawn. All over our driveway. I am so ready to foie gras those damn pests.

Barb and I hose down the driveway five or six times a day, and within 20 minutes the geese have reloaded it. They tend to scatter when Cooper our labradoodle is out, but they return as soon as he disappears into the house. And when Cooper is outside he loves eating all that poop. Don’t ask me to describe what it does to his GI system.

I have been scouring the Internet and the aisles of Home Depot and Menards looking for the best goose repellant. Lots of geese-ridding chemicals are advertised, but the reviews say they don’t work, and who wants to use more toxic, staining, chemicals anyhow. Solar-powered strobe lights and electronic bird noises are sold as deterrents, but the lights are too intrusive and the noises too eerie.

After weeks of suffering, I found a product I am willing to take a chance on. Dog Decoys. Silhouettes of dogs, life-sized, meant to be loosely anchored to wooden stakes and allowed to rock’n’roll in the breeze, are advertised to scare away the geese. They are a counterpart of the blow-up owls many neighbors hang from their eaves to chase away woodpeckers.

I ordered two, and they arrived yesterday. I hammered their posts into the ground, said a little Bracha over them, and hopefully, said goodbye to Cooper’s goose-poop-smorgasbord.

Will this work? Day one has been a success. Our driveway is clean and shiny. But is this a long-term solution? I don’t know, but I promise to pass the word when I find out!

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No Points For You! The People Have Spoken.

You may recall my previous post asking whether I should have claimed Frequent Dining Points for a meal that I did not pay for.

The responses have come in by the pasta bowl full. And your opinion is a decisive “NO.”

To recap, we were invited by visiting out-of-town friends to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants. The restaurant gives points that can add up to free meals to their “members,” and since our out-of-town hosts would have not had any use for the points, I pondered whether I should have asked our hosts if I could claim them.

As I said in the previous blog, I did not try to claim the points and asked if I should have. About 90% of you agree with my decision. Though almost all of our readers felt there would have been no harm in kindly asking our hosts if they minded my snatching the points (and some of you suggested clever ways of broaching the topic) most of you thought that it was just a wee bit tacky to do so.

And as one of you pointed out in an email, what about the third couple that dined with us? Maybe, the email asked, they were also Frequent Dining members and would have liked the points. (In fact, the third couple, lovely people, are wall plaque members–if you frequent the restaurant I am sure you know what I mean.) Surely they had just as much right to those dining points as Barb and I did. That is just another reason why it was good and fair that I passed up the opportunity to add to my points collection.

If you know us you are probably asking what Barb’s opinion is on the matter. Barb, the best arbiter of all things proper and my guiding light, had a very simple, very direct, one-word online reply: NO.

Man, I am glad I didn’t screw this one up!

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This Dining Dilemma Points To You. What would you do?

Wildfire, Lincolnshire. The place where it happened!

You have helped me negotiate modern ethics before. You all gave me permission to accept a prize for being a top fundraiser for the annual SEABlue Prostate Awareness run*. Barb appreciates the very high-powered cordless electric broom. So I am hoping you all can help me out one more time.

As COVID and its aftermath have collapsed everyone’s world our dining-out choices have become more limited. A quick perusal of my credit card charges confirms that about 90% of our dining-out dollars are spent at one or another of Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises’ many restaurants.

And that is OK with us. Wildfire has been one of our favorite restaurants for years. Di Pescara and Saranello’s are just minutes away for tempting fish and Italian fare. I even chose to celebrate my last birthday at L Woods, the Lettuce restaurant a short hop down the Eden’s Expressway. I considered it a tribute to my late parents, who loved Sunday family dinners at Bones, the LEYE restaurant that preceded L Woods in that Lincolnwood location.

And…drumroll…Lettuce Entertain You restaurants give points. Their Frequent Diner Club awards bonus points for every dollar spent. Sometimes special deals award double points or more. Points add up to dollars off future visits. I usually accumulate enough points for a few macadamia nut-crusted halibut and horseradish-crusted filet dinners a year. Yum.

Which leads to my social dilemma. Some dear Florida friends of ours are spending the summer in Chicago and invited us out for dinner. The little celebration was a thank-you for Barb’s assistance in setting up our friend’s Chicago residence. A second helpful couple was also invited.

Our host’s restaurant choice for the evening? Wildfire.

It was a lovely evening. And as our hosts paid the substantial bill, I realized that being out-of-towners, they were not Frequent Diner members. All I could think about was those potential points floating away into the kitchen miasma!

I knew Lettuce is usually very lenient about letting anyone in the dining party claim the points. I knew all I would have had to do to get those award dollars would have been to ask our hosts if they minded my putting in a claim. But… I froze–I couldn’t do it.

So my question to you, my knowledgable readers–if I had asked for the Frequent Diner points to be credited to my account, even though I did not pay for the meal, would have I been committing a major social faux-pas? Or would it have been absolutely fine after a relaxed dinner with great friends? Yes, I know it is a typical “first world problem.” But I want the answer!

Let me know your thoughts–leave a comment here, or email me at les.raff@post.com.

Your voices have spoken! Follow up here.

——————-

*more on this year’s run here.

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Branson, Bezos, and I are Flying High

Fly me to the moon,
I want to join that great space race,
And since I’m not a billionaire
I’ll do it all with grace.
In other words, shoot me high.
In other words, let me fly.

Branson has the early lead
Jeff Bezos comes on strong
Where are Cook and Zuckerberg?
I guess it won’t be long.
In other words, it’s July.
In other words, earth good-bye.

Who cares what it costs
It’s only money after all,
Those guys have a ton of it.
Enough for the long haul.
In other words, satisfy.
In other words, don’t justify.

Soaring through the air
It really seems like so much fun.
Who cares what we leave behind
We’re heading for the sun.
In other words, I’m the guy.
In other words, let me try.

Fly me to the moon,
I think there’s just one hitch
I get really motion sick.
And altitudes a bitch.
In other words, with a sigh.
In other words, I won’t try.

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FACT: I DO Like the Beatles!

The most famous album cover of all time?

OK, boomers. I admit it. I blew it. I didn’t exactly diss the Beatles, I just said I couldn’t name a favorite song. Boy, did that piss some of you off!

I heard it from old friends, new friends, unaffiliated blog readers, and even my wife Barb, whom I thought only musically cared about Neil Diamond. “What do you mean you don’t like the Beatles????”

I do like the Beatles.

Fact: I have always preferred the Beatles to the Rolling Stones. Although I do love the Stones jam at the end of Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.

Fact: A Hard Day’s Night is right next to Goldfinger as my favorite movie of 1964.

Fact: I am not a CD collector but I do own one Beatles CD. In fact, the name of the CD is One. That’s only three less than the four U2 CDs I treasure.

Fact: Instead of watching Paul Konerko hit a grand slam in Game 2 of the White Sox sweep of the Astros in the 2005 World Series, I was sitting at a Paul McCartney concert in Milwaukee.

Fact: I saw Paul McCartney a second time, on a rainy evening at Wrigley Field. Believe me, it takes something special to get this Sox fan into the North Side’s Friendly Confines.

So I apologize to all of you Beatles ~~snowflakes~~ fans whom I might have offended. I promise to listen to Hey Jude, Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, I Saw Her Standing There, and all the other songs you guys and gals recommended as the greatest Beatle song of all time. I am sure I will love each and every one of them.

As someone (I can’t remember who) once said, “in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

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I Have A Beatles Dilemma. How About You?

The Beatles in the early days. Photo courtesy Chicago Tribune.

Ask me what I think about the Beatles and I will give the standard answer of my generation. They are the greatest band that ever lived, they revolutionized music, they mean the world to me. OK boomer, now ask me which of their songs I would put on my all-time, continuos loop, soundtrack of my life music stream.

And that’s where the dilemma lies. From the harmonies of I Want to Hold Your Hand, through the opening chord of A Hard Days Night to the final yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah of The Long and Winding Road, I like a lot of Beatle songs, but I don’t love any of them. Sort of like my relationship to Superdawg french fries. I like them but I don’t love them.

It’s not the same with the other artists that are constantly playing on my radio in the lab or the Pandora station in my headphones at the fitness center. If I’ve got favorite bands, I’ve got favorite songs to go with them.

U2? The bang-bang-bang opening of the Joshua Tree album–Where the Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, and With or Without You introduced me to the band more than 30 years ago and have been my favorites ever since.

With Steely Dan, my favorite songs come from the end of their career, or at least the end of their career’s first chapter (I ignored the second chapter.) Aja, the title track of their 6th album, is sublimely mellow and mind-expanding and the same album’s Deacon Blue makes a wistful cry out to mid-life crises.

When Fleetwood Mac changed their personnel and music style in the mid-70’s they probably lost a few thousand fans but gained a few million more. It was that flip that led to Go Your Own Way, the best power-pop song of all time. And I love the more pensive Over My Head just as much. Easy to add to my jukebox of greats.

What Eagles songs are on that Love Those Songs jukebox? Give me the original Hotel California and then follow it up with the Hell Freezes Over version of…Hotel California. Sometimes you feel like acoustic, sometimes you don’t.

The longings of youth. Has anyone made them seem more desperate than Bruce Springsteen in Thunder Road or made them sound more fun than in the Boss’s Rosalita?

While Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is my top-ranked album, I prefer not to think about individual songs from it — everything blends so seamlessly together. On the other hand, Wish You Were Here, the title cut and final track from the Floyd’s 1975 album stands alone as the perfect paean to loss of love, loss of a bandmate, loss of sanity. And the guitar solos in Comfortably Numb make me feel…comfortable.

But back to the Beatles. I am ok with the silly love songs, I enjoy the goofiness of Yellow Submarine and Octopuses Garden, and I can play air guitar to The End. But where is the song I could listen to over and over and over again? Where is their Hotel California? If Rocky Racoon put a gun to my head and made me choose one song, today it would be While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Tomorrow it would probably be something else. Like but never love.

And that is my dilemma with the Beatles.

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Tribune, Won’t You Make Me, Your New Columnist (with apologies to Janis Joplin)

“Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz”

Tribune, won’t you make me
Your new columnist.
The old ones are quitting
Or getting dismissed.
I’ll write for a dollar
You’ve got a tight fist.
Tribune, won’t you make me
Your new columnist.

Tribune, won’t you put me
Up on Page Two
John Kass used to get it
Until his miscue.
I’ll write real good headlines
I won’t stir the stew.
Tribune, won’t you put me
Up on Page Two.

Tribune, I can be your
New Schmich and your Zorn.
I’ll send a swell headshot
My page to adorn.
I’ll do lots of tweeting,
I won’t be a bore.
Tribune, I can be your
New Schmich and your Zorn.

Tribune, I don’t need my
Own office space.
I’ll write from my kitchen
It’s my favorite place.
I’ll write about music,
‘Bout health and ‘bout waste.
Tribune, I don’t need my
Own office space.

Tribune, I remember
When Royko was king.
He wrote about Daley,
It was his Boss thing.
I’ll write about Lightfoot
And go Pritzkering.
Tribune, I remember
When Royko was king.

Tribune, if you like me,
Just drop me a line.
I’ve done lots of blogging,
It’s finally my time.
You won’t last forever,
On Alden’s thin dime.
Tribune, if you like me,
Just drop me a line.

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Do You Remember These Chicago Name Changes?DuSable Drive will be just one more.

Chicago Name Changes. Photos Courtesy of Chicago Tribune

My family always called it the Outer Drive. As a five-year-old, I remember the traffic jam around the S-curve as my uncle swore his way to Hyde Park for a Passover Seder as the Palmolive Building beacon glowed on us.

Aliotta, Haynes, Jeremiah romanticized it and immortalized it–there ain’t no road just like it…slippin’ by on LSD.

And if it changes–if it becomes DuSable Drive, c’est la vie. I will learn to live with it. After all, it is not the first landmark in Chicagoland to endure a name change, and it will not be the last.

Here, in no particular order, are 10 more-or-less successful name changes in our history.

First, the boomerang: The above mentioned Palmolive Building was renamed Playboy Tower in 1965, but is back as Palmolive since about 2001.
The AON Building, that drab white tower downtown? It started life as the Standard Oil Building, and was AMOCO for awhile, too!
Guaranteed Rate Field, quite a mouthful, was originally New Comiskey Park, but is most fondly remembered as The Cell (U.S. Cellular Field,) home to the World Champion White Sox of 2005.
One exception to c’est la vie. Willis Tower will be Sears Tower FOREVER. ‘Nuf said.
Wonder why O’Hare International Airport’s designation is ORD? Goes back to humble origins as Orchard Field. Though shouldn’t that have made it ORC?
What exactly did Mayor Jane Byrne do to justify renaming the Circle Interchange as the Jane Byrne Interchange. Perhaps she could look down on the jammed junction during the month she “lived” in Cabrini-Green.
Northwestern University’s Dyche Stadium, named in perpetuity for the Dyche family, is now Ryan Field. Go ‘Cats!
Will Boystown really become Northalsted? I’m not betting on it.
Been to 875 N. Michigan Ave lately? What a naming comedown for the late John Hancock Building. Why not talk to Lin-Manuel Miranda and sell him the naming rights to Hamilton Tower?
Drive down Pulaski Avenue much. That was once Crawford, a name it retains as it goes through the northern suburbs.

Names come and go. I won’t fret about another name change in the City of Big Shoulders, Windy City, Second City. It’s how you live it, not what you call it.

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