I suspect that each of us has a number of activities which we secretly feel are not valid if they are easy. The results of our labors are valuable only if producing them is difficult, painful, or otherwise mildly unpleasant. Here’s one of mine.

This is the way Christmas shopping used to be:

First you went out shopping at the local stores. Sometimes you knew what you wanted to buy, and sometimes you went out there counting on divine intervention. Once you had purchased the gifts, you took them home to wrap. It was a bonus if they came already boxed; but many gifts, notably clothes and toys, arrived home scrunched up in the bottom of a shopping bag. Most basements featured a pile of boxes suitable for gifts because they were clean, presentable, and didn’t smell bad. None of them, of course, was the right size or shape for the just-purchased gifts, but you could usually find some that were pretty close.

Then it was time to wrap the gifts. You got out the wrapping paper, ribbon, cellophane tape, and gift tags. The dining table had to be cleared, because there were invariably some big packages. And no matter how you planned and cut, there were always several pieces of wrapping paper left over too small to wrap anything and too big to throw away. I always wrapped them back around the roll they had come from, confident that next year I would have a tiny package just exactly the right size for that 4-by-6-inch piece of paper.

Once the gifts were wrapped, some of them had to be mailed. Back to the basement you went, to the other pile of boxes – the mailing boxes. It was a sure bet that not one of them was the right size and shape for what you wanted to mail, so you had a choice – you could either pick one way too big and stuff the extra space with newspaper, or you could cut one down to the right size. Either way, the USPS expected you to show up with your package wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string. The brown paper and string were in the basement somewhere over there with the mailing boxes.

All this had to be done by December 10 to ensure safe arrival by Christmas.

This is the way Christmas shopping is now:

Go to the website, pull up recipient’s wish list, choose something in your price range, click on it, choose to have it gift wrapped, enter recipient’s address and your credit card number, click “submit.” You can do that as late as December 23 if you’re willing to pay a lot for shipping.

It’s the easiest thing in the world, and the recipient gets what he or she wants.

So why do I feel so guilty?

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Several nights ago, having fallen asleep trying to watch television, I was awakened by a raucous commercial. A young, attractive couple had rushed into a pharmacy frantically looking for a specific sort of condom. They were breathlessly demanding that the pharmacist tell them where it was so that they could buy some and hurry home.

They were not in such a hurry that they couldn’t explain why it’s so wonderful. Apparently, “his side” and “her side” are coated with different chemicals, and they…well, I don’t know what they do. I was still partly asleep, although waking up rapidly.

So here’s my question.

If the condom comes rolled up in its wrapper, don’t the chemicals on “his side” and “her side” get all mixed together?

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October 8, 2009
To the Editor
Topeka Capital-Journal

I’d like to comment on Don Baldwin’s letter in the October 8 issue of the Topeka Capital-Journal.

While there is merit in much of what Mr. Baldwin says, he is mistaken on one important point. He states that the “Constitution clearly states that the majority rules,” then goes on to decry the fact that we “don’t live in a democracy anymore.”

A democracy is arguably one of the worst forms of government imaginable. In a true democracy, every person votes on every issue, and the majority rules. In a true democracy, the majority can dictate every detail of your life, including where you work, where you live, and even the name of your next child. It’s called “Tyranny of the Majority,” and has been explored by many writers over the past several hundred years.

In a constitutional rebublic such as ours, the voters elect people to vote for them on state and national issues, and the Constitution specifies what items the elected representatives can control — national defense, treaties with other nations, regulation of interstate commerce and the like. Our tenth amendment makes it quite clear that every power not specifically granted to the federal government is reserved to the states or to the people. Echoing that, the Kansas state constitution leaves to the people all powers not specifically granted to the state government.

In other words, you control every aspect of your life, even if you are a minority of one, except for those very few functions specifically granted to the government by the Constitution.

Sharon DuBois

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I have figured it out.

I am NOT overweight!

I have been using a shampoo that claims it will provide “more body.” Now, when I rinse my hair in the shower, the shampoo flows down all over me, and I am convinced that it is just living up to its advertised promise.

No, really. When I was a young woman, I always washed my hair over the sink and the shampoo never touched anything but my head. And I didn’t have anywhere near this much body.

This is not my fault! Blame the shampoo industry!

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In 2007, a tornado wiped out Greensburg, Kansas.

This past Labor Day weekend, more than 20 Greensburg residents were part of a team helping to rebuild a Boy Scout camp in Little Sioux, Iowa, that had been damaged by a tornado this past June.

Nice.

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Here is my article for the July-August issue of TK Magazine
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Okay, okay, this is not the biggest problem facing our nation and our world right now. It is, however, something I’ve been wondering about for a while.

Whatever are we going to call the year that begins next January?

Approaching the millennium, I often wondered how we would name the years of its first decade. Two-thousand-four? Twenty-oh-four? People living exactly a hundred years ago would have typically referred to their year as “aught nine.” Fans of movie musicals might remember Professor Harold Hill, the Music Man, boasting that he was an alumnus of the Gary Conservatory of Music, Gold Medal class of aught five. But the word “aught” as a synonym for “zero” has, alas, pretty much disappeared.

In any case, we seem to have all agreed on two-thousand-whatever as the preferred form for naming the years in our current decade.

Ah, but what will we do in January? Will we continue as before and say “two-thousand-ten?” Or will we revert to the pattern of the last century, and say “twenty-ten?”

I’m even concerned about what we are to call this decade. We really do need names for them, you know. Otherwise we can’t say things like “Yes I made some foolish choices. But it was the 60s, after all.” Professor Hill’s “aught five” notwithstanding, I have no idea what that decade was called, nor what we will call the one we’re living in now. The Aughts? The Ohs?

And what will we call the decade coming up? The Teens?

I even came up with a pretty good pun about naming years. I decided 2002 should have been named the Year of Obligation. Aught two. Ought to. Har. Unfortunately, I didn’t think of it until about the middle of 2004.

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Here is my article for the May-June 2009 issue of TK Magazine
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A few minutes ago, as I sat down to write my column for this month’s issue of TK Magazine, the phone rang.

Well, the subject I had in mind will just have to wait for the next issue, because now I am mad, and you’re going to hear all about it.

My caller was a solicitor. He wanted me to donate money to a charity that had (probably) hired him to call me. And boy, was he insistent. Oh, he started out nice enough – wanted to know if I’m “gettin’ along okay,” and if I have any family members or friends with the specific problem helped by his charity.

No, I don’t. I’m very fortunate.

When he started into his pitch for a donation, I interrupted him to say that I have a policy not to make a commitment over the phone. If he would send me the information by mail, I would take a look at it.

What I did not want to take the time to tell him was that, the last time I successfully talked a charity into sending me their solicitation by mail, I looked them up on one of the many excellent web sites devoted to policing organizations that claim to help those less fortunate. What I found was that they had an absolutely dismal record. Some 93 percent of their proceeds are spent on administration and fund raising. A paltry seven cents out of every dollar donated goes to help the unfortunate people so pitiably shown in their literature. I printed out the information, added a handwritten note explaining that the enclosed explained why I was refusing to give them money, and sent it back in their own envelope.

After that, I will never again give anyone money without the opportunity to check them out.

But back to my caller. It was about then that he stopped trying to pretend he was my new best friend. He informed me that their mailings included a tax receipt, and it was against the law to send them out blank. Could he just put down a minimum amount, say $15.

No, I will not make a commitment over the phone.

Well, he had my record right there in front of him, and I had given $50 dollars last time.

I seriously doubt that. In any case, my policy is now that I will not make a commitment over the phone.

“Are you going to help these people or not?” he asked, loudly and rudely. “’Cause I can’t send this to you if you won’t promise at least a small amount.”

No, I will not make a commitment over the phone.

“Well, then I’m not sending this to you, ’cause we don’t want to lose two dollars of the transaction.”

And he hung up on me.

As a female child raised in the 1950s, I was taught that being nice was a great virtue, that cheerfully and selflessly acceding to other peoples’ requests would make me a good woman. So this sort of exchange upsets me a great deal, and produces large amounts of guilt. I think that’s what they’re counting on.

Believe me, I’m getting over it.

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 Here is my article from the March – April issue of TK Magazine

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April is coming. Income Tax. Oh, goody.

As a dedicated Libertarian I have many complaints about the IRS and the Income Tax, and its intrinsic invasiveness is right up there at the top of my list. Like the frog in the pot of water that gets hotter and hotter, humans seem to be able to get used to the most appalling conditions. We have become so accustomed to being required by law to hand over private information about our income, medical expenses, charitable giving, and investments that we see it as acceptable, even desirable. It’s not, folks. It’s just plain wrong.

As bad an idea as the Income Tax is as a means of collecting revenue for the government, it has become something worse: It has become a means of manipulating behavior. No matter what you, personally, may consider admirable behavior, your government has specified what actions it believes to be so special that they are deserving of financial favors. Charitable giving is one. Buying certain kinds of bonds will get you a tax break, as will adopting a baby. It’s not that we are not all better off because you donated to the Rescue Mission or took a child into your home – I truly believe we are. It’s just that the IRS list of commendable behavior is not exhaustive, and I resent my government trying to coerce me (or you) into doing something very specific by dangling money in front of our noses.

James Madison wrote:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood….

And yet there is a thriving industry, headed by tax lawyers and tax accountants and software publishers and lots of companies advertising on television right now, that owes its existence to the fact that the average intelligent, educated citizen cannot figure out what her government wants from her in the way of income tax. These companies compete with each other by claiming they can find you more deductions than the other guy. The laws are so convoluted that their competitor can’t possibly understand them. And, of course, neither can you. This is just plain wrong, folks.

I learned something new when I filed my 2007 income tax. I got a letter from the Kansas Department of Revenue that began, “The Kansas Department of Revenue has determined that your estimated tax or withholding tax payments were below the level required by law…. Therefore, you are being assessed a penalty…”

In other words, I was being assessed a penalty not because I didn’t pay my taxes, and not because they were late (that was another issue), and not because I didn’t pay enough. I was being assessed a penalty because I didn’t pay enough AHEAD OF THE APRIL 15 DUE DATE. If my taxes are due on a specific date, I should be able to pay the whole amount on that date and not a minute before if that’s what I choose to do. Apparently the state DOR doesn’t see it that way.

And that is just plain wrong, folks.

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My article for the January-February issue of TK Magazine
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I have very recently begun my 66th year. A 65th birthday has great societal significance in our culture. I guess I am officially an elder now.

• There is, apparently, a great data base of people’s birthdays out there. I don’t know where it is or how to access it, but insurance people are well acquainted with it. During the 4 months or so before my birthday, I received literature and phone calls from just about every agent on this continent telling me of the marvelous things they could do for me when I enrolled in Medicare. I dutifully created a file and tucked it all away with the best intentions of studying it carefully. Two weeks before my birthday, having read several novels during what should have been my studying time, I called the company which has been handling my health insurance for the past ten years, and told them to send me whatever I needed to sign.
• It won’t be long now before they will have to send my all my Social Security payments, no matter how much I earn.
• The political, ethical, and social ramifications of a Libertarian collecting Social Security and Medicare are staggering, but that’s an entire column in itself. One which I will almost certainly never write.
• I can remember clearly my thoughts the first time it occurred to me that I might live to the year 2000. I was probably 8, and it went something like this: I’ll be – let’s see – fifty six years old! Older than my parents are now. Maybe even older than my grandparents! Does anyone really live that long? Will I still be able to move around? See? Hear? Will I be a grandmother? Me? (Answers to younger self: Yes. Pretty much. Yes and yes, for which you will be ever so grateful. Not right then, but soon after. Yes, kid, you.)
• Had I lived 200 years ago, statistics say I would have had a slim chance of living this long. If I had, I would have been considered really old, and would almost certainly have been toothless, crippled with arthritis and old injuries and hard physical work, and in pain a great deal of the time. As it is, I consider myself middle aged (no matter what anyone else thinks), and I feel pretty good most of the time.
• My dentist credits our increase in longevity to modern dental care. If you can’t chew your food properly, he contends, nutrition becomes problematic, and health declines rapidly. I know he’s biased, but he probably has a point.
• Bill Clinton’s inauguration marked the first time I was older than the President of the United States. In 2009, both my kids will be constitutionally old enough to be elected President.
• This is a great time of life to take a look at what you have been incubating, perhaps unbeknownst even to you, below the surface. My degree is in mathematics, after all. The first time I wrote anything of consequence, beyond a classroom assignment, was less than five years ago.

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The word “solstice” comes from the Latin sol, sun, and sistere, to stand. It is the time when the sun appears to stand still for a day or two in its relentless pacing from north to south and back again, the time when it pauses before turning to retrace the path it has been following as long as there has been an earth.

At the two equinoxes, the sun’s rising and setting place moves very fast across the horizon. But for a day or two on either side of June 21st and December 21st, it’s hard to tell that the spot has moved at all.

I sometimes speculate on how our ancestors must have felt as they watched their one source of warmth and light moving inexorably away, as the days grew shorter and colder. According to the elders, it had always come back before; but what if this time it just kept on going? Small wonder that December 25th, the first day the keenest-eyed member of the group could say for sure the sun had decided to return, has long been associated with joy, celebration, hope, and light.

The winter solstice, of course, marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. It is the official beginning of winter. For those of you who, like me, enjoy geometry, I offer my favorite definition: The winter solstice is the time at which the angle between the earth’s axis of rotation and the line connecting the South Pole to the center of the sun reaches its greatest value and begins decreasing again.

However you commemorate (or define) the season of the winter solstice, I wish you joy, celebration, and warmth.

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