Cows in the Mist

I am not a father. I have no children. Not even a goldfish. I am, however, an observer. A good friend of mine, who is a father, recently said about a compliment he’d received that he would “save that one for someday when I’m feeling more useless than usual.”

In watching the men around me be and become fathers (to be sure, the constant and faithful act of fathering both requires and encourages manhood), it seems one of the burdens of fatherhood is the vast stretch of years when one feels “more useless than usual,” punctuated by moments when it becomes clear that your children simply could not make it without you.

What more rewarding and frustrating effort could there be than this child, who is your responsibility, which both rejects and demands your help, by turns loves and nearly hates you, and in the end is so completely of and for you that you cannot but stand strongly through the years for those moments when that constant strength is needed?

What man can ever say he is ready for this?

Need a great dinner in ten minutes flat? (OK, prep time makes it 15 minutes.) Here’s what I threw together after a long, exhausting day of hiking:

• 1 pound heirloom tomatoes
  • Diced and dressed w/ olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pepper, and a little salt
• Orzo
  • Tossed with basil, oregano, and rosemary
  • Sprinkled with fresh reggiano
• Fresh sweet corn
  • Boil some water, toss in the corn, turn off the water and let it all sit for five minutes
• Pea salad
  • OK, I cheated and bought it from PCC, but it’s good!
• Italian chicken sausages (only 1.5 grams of fat per juicy, tasty sausage!)
  • Grilled to something loosely resembling perfection
• A glass of (red, of course) wine
  • To make you forget that you bought the pea salad already prepared

I got kudos from my lovely dinner parter, which is really all I need. Thanks, honey!

I just happened across an NYT article by Paul Schneider, author of The Adirondacks: A History of America’s First Wilderness. Writing about the just-opened Northern Forest Canoe Trail, he pens lovingly of its southern terminus, Adirondack Park, “a place bigger than the entire state of Massachusetts where ‘forever wild’ forests range over high and low peaks and right down to the water’s edge in the form of great gnarled giants clinging by serpentine roots to boulders left by long gone glaciers” (NYTimes.com Sep. 11, 2006).

This is how English should be used.

NOTE: Since the direct link to the article will expire, I’ve included only a reference to the New York Times website, above. A search of the archives will turn up the article.

I’ve been getting calls from this number for the past few days. I finally picked one up, knowing pretty darn well what I’d hear. “Marcus? Hi, I’m calling from VISA about your credit card number ending in XXXX [like I'm going to post it here]. Because you’ve been such a good customer, we’d like to offer you. . .” and that’s when I knew that, once again, a scammer was calling. No business in their right mind would offer me a $1,000 “free online shopping spree” or even a “forty-dollar gas card.” Not to mention that the card he quoted me is a debit card, not a credit card.

I did a quick google search, and discovered that according to the rest of the blogosphere, at least, this is a scam. Typical phone-phishing, it appears. I’ve had this sort of call before, and the pattern is the same. An odd number that you probably don’t recognize, and if you answer, somebody who claims officialdom offers you a better-than-free “reward” package for having been such a great customer, and you only have to confirm a few things, one of which is that you assent to the one-time fee for the 30-day evaluation and confirm the last four digits of your credit card number.

Because of the particular “last four digits” the caller quoted me, I’m assuming this is the result of online purchasing and some website either selling that information unscrupulously or having poor information security practices (most likely the latter) which haven’t been disclosed via the media.

What should you do, if anything?

For starters, use a credit card (never a debit card) for online purchases, and make sure it has a low spending limit. Also, make sure to research online vendors through a third party rating service of some kind like BizRate or PriceGrabber, but be warned about the accuracy and source of ratings.

And watch your bank/credit statements very carefully!