The Importance Of Being Organized

When I was a kid, my uncles took Grampa to a football game. I asked him what he thought of it.


"Man blow leetle whistle. Ev'body fall down!"

This forever distinguished football from the other American sport, baseball, in which a ball is beaten into the sky with a club, and completed my education.  Life is simplified by good education. It is also simplified by simplification. Consider Quercus Suber, or Cork Oak. Cork Oak has a corky bark which is harvested for the manufacture of cork. Doesn't get simpler than that, but it is my heritage. As a result, I became a very simple mechanism.  One is nourished spiritually by ethnic tradition, and physically by whatever --Sopas, Linguica, Morcela and Chourico, which I believe are deviled barnacles-- things one is given, but the heart thrives on love.

Here is a picture of Norma reaching down to lovingly unfold my ear after it got inside out from sleeping wrong. She came to find out why I was barking. I was glad she did because I was in the wheelbarrow dreaming about Uncle Sam.

This is Uncle Sam:

I've seen this poster all my life, especially in the 1960s, then in the '80s and '90s when my children had to register with the Selective Service System.  Uncle Sam always looked like he disapproved of me.  I preferred my real uncles, the ones who took Grampa to a football game.

"Man blow leetle whistle. Ev'body fall down!"