Have you ever known Lincoln-haters and Churchill-haters? I have. And this is the subject of the opening note in my Impromptus today. I also have notes on language, sports, etc.
Maybe we could have some reader mail of a lightish variety. I have mail on grave subjects: North Korea, Ukraine, and so on. But maybe we can walk on the lighter side just now.
A reader says,
On tour in Norway, Jay, I saw a dairy-processing plant that had a sign reading “Melk.” As my fellow speaker of perfect, unaccented Midwestern American English, you will agree that someone finally got the spelling right!
Yes, I agree. Many Michiganders order a “vanella melkshake.”
(In my Impromptus today, I speak of the word “heighth” — you know: “length,” “width,” “breadth,” “heighth.” Comes natural.)
Last week, I had a post in which I said,
Once upon a time, I thought of Europe as an uptight nanny state, while America was the home of rugged individualism and “Don’t Tread on Me,” appropriate to our wide-open spaces.
But often, I’ll be in Europe, going down some treacherous staircase or something, and I’ll think, “They let you do this? Where the hell is OSHA? We could use a little nannyism just now, please.”
A reader writes,
“They let you do this?” You’ve reminded me of visiting Lahti, Finland, in 2000. We were in Moscow around this time, and everyone was worried about Y2K — especially in Russia! So we bundled up our three girls and headed to Lahti by train and car for the New Year. (A story in itself.)
One night we wander over to the famous Lahti triple ski jumps. We go to the base of the tallest and the door is open. We enter expecting to see some attendants. There is no one in sight, so we take the elevator to the top. At the top there is a large room where athletes wait before their jumps. It turns out the door to the ski run is open and we step out where we can look down the run.
This whole time we never saw another person. I remember thinking, “They let you do this?!?!” This, and many experiences in Russia, gave me a better appreciation of OSHA and lawyers!
In an Oslo journal, I wrote,
I don’t recall seeing pay toilets in America (maybe I’m forgetting). I’ve been seeing them — and using them — in Europe since the ’80s. You know what is new? The possibility to use a credit card. You used to search frantically for change (in a currency not your own). What a blessed development . . .
For sure. Anyway, a reader writes,
Jay,
You don’t recall pay toilets in America because you grew up in Michigan. This was one of the states that banned pay toilets in the 1960s. They banned them on grounds of humanitarianism, essentially.
On the other hand, when I went to Seattle for graduate school in 1976, I was confronted with a major problem in the men’s room at Sea-Tac [the airport]. While the urinals were free, all but one of the stalls containing a commode required a dime. Thankfully that is no longer the case.
I’ll be darned. Thank you, to one and all.