McAvoy Layne

I glanced up from my paper this morning to see a news alert: "Hammerin' Hank Aaron Dies at 86!" Oh, no! My memory raced away, back to 1974, where in the face of numerous death threats, Hank went after the Babe's revered homerun record, and smashed it. I wish I could have known him.

Like Will Rogers, I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm an OLTACer, as in Old Lake Tahoe Athletic Club, "Old" being the operative word. Yes, we are 10 members strong, and our good-natured motto is, "I don't give a (fill in the blank with your own inappropriate word) what you think."

It has become my obsession over the past 10 months to ascertain exactly how little or next to nothing I can do, and still be counted as, "amongst the living." This act of social downsizing has taken me all the way down to the examination of lullabies.

One of the most overlooked pieces of noteworthy scientific advancement buried by the pandemic of 2020 occurred in Uruguay. Yes, right out of Ripley's Believe It or Not, a group of Uruguayan scientists announced that they had successfully modified the genetic makeup of a group of sheep to make them glow in the dark.

Most of us might agree, 2020 was the annus horribilis of our lifetime. But just as the darkest cloud has a silver lining, 2020 has offered one thing about which we can all brag and be proud. I can't think of what that one thing might be just now, though it does occur to me that learning how to cut our own hair might be a thing to celebrate and be genuinely proud, unless of course you're a barber.

This time of year I always think about Cappy. In charge of Ski Incline in the early days, Cappy Cook was a hail-fellow-well-met, on and off the slopes. He played in the Rose Bowl for Stanford in '52, ran a packing outfit in Yosemite, coached our Junior National Ski Team, and his handshake would leave me crippled for days, so of course I never ventured to give him a hug.

Science has always been a passion of mine, partly because I flunked science in high school and have never understood why. But I stumbled upon a gemstone of science the other day that would make the most lettered academic in the world smile.

When Bobby Kennedy was tragically shot and killed in 1968, his killer was set upon and wrestled to the ground by Rafer Johnson. For those too young to remember, Rafer Johnson was the first black captain of a United States Olympic Team, and was crowned the best all-around athlete in the world when he won the decathlon in the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.

The Carson City Symphony has completed "The Hank Monk Schottische" project, which organizers undertook because the pandemic has limited the Symphony's usual interactions with each other and the public.

Most of us have long known from personal experience that humor, laughter and smiling are good for us. So it is reassuring to read Doctor Miller's assessment: “Heightened stress magnifies the risk of cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes. Having a good sense of humor is an excellent way to relieve stress and anxiety and bring back a sense of normalcy during these turbulent times."

The prevailing belief amongst leaders of nine nuclear powers is that Weapons of Mass Destruction are a deterrent. So far so good. However, there is also a belief simmering in the minds of a few revanchists, that WMDs might be useful in exacting retaliation or retribution for various grievances.

Miramonte High School didn’t have a swimming pool, so we students got together and dug one, well, we collected enough money from the community to dig one, and the entire village turned out for the dedication.

Hobbes was wrong. Life is not nasty, brutish and short. Life is nasty, and brutish, but long enough to embrace civic grace, public good and a life of purpose. By coming together in 2021 we can turn a horse chestnut into a chestnut horse, and join Dinah Washington in singing, "This bitter earth may not be so bitter after all."

Phunny, the things our minds turn to when left to daydreaming in the midst of a pandemic. At times we torture ourselves with guilt over the slightest of grievances. Today, for me, it was my little brother, Luigi. His real name was Larry, but along the way, for some reason, I don't know why, we started calling him Luigi.

I have a Huckleberry friend who has kept me humored during the pandemic. Huck is a Steller's jay, his species is named for an 18th century German naturalist, but his name comes from a boy who had some adventures out on the Mississippi River in the 19th century, as immortalized by Mark Twain.

It was a stroke of luck that Sam Clemens happened to hear a stump speech, satirize it, and send it over to the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, as that speech, and the letter it fostered, would trail blaze the literary birth of Mark Twain.

This Saturday I will drive a good friend with 93 years of knowledge to our voting place where we will cancel each other out. It's the American way. Voting is the most American thing we do. My mother and father took great delight in canceling each other every four years without damaging their sweet relationship in the least.

Ms. Moser. What a great lady. She knew what was happening in every time zone, and she understood adolescents better than any adult back when I was an incorrigible adolescent myself. She was our speech teacher in high school when I was deathly afraid of public speaking. I would rather have a coyote gnaw on my arm than to have to speak in public.

The Carson City Symphony, directed by David Bugli, will open its 37th season with a virtual community music and dance project celebrating Carson City history, the “Hank Monk Schottische” virtual performance project. Instrumental musicians and dancers of all ages are invited to participate.

We have a new skateboard shop here in the village, and a few of our finest teens hang out there to swap stories and Tony Hawk trading cards. Today, as I was passing by, one of them shouted, "Mark Twain!"

So I pulled on my mask and wandered over, bearing in mind that these kids have already had to endure the aftermath of 9-11, the 2008 recession and a pandemic.

Glen Lucky was born on Sept. 27, 1952, down in Coronado, Calif. He was like many other boys, cute, smart, happy to arrive, however, he was diagnosed with a birth defect, cerebral palsy, and his parents were advised he might not live to see 15. But Glen did live to see 15. He started riding a bike at 15, and 16 and 17. Glen turns 68 on Sunday.

This morning I read a most compelling article in the New York Times by one of my favorite journalists, Helene Cooper. Customarily, as the Times' Pentagon correspondent, Ms. Cooper writes about guns and butter, but knowing she was on a team awarded a Pulitzer for coverage of the Ebola epidemic, her piece of today (Sept. 12, 2020) carried much weight with me.

I've been compiling a list of memorable things people have had to say about Mark Twain for 30 years now, and most of them are from Twain scholars, but a few might surprise you, as being from folks you might recognize.

Solitude is an essential component to good health and well-being, so they say, but too much solitude, let me tell you, can be burdensome. I cite solitary confinement as the cruelest of punishments. Washing ashore onto deserted Island is considered by most to be an unfortunate turn of fate. But pandemic solitude has its own unique personality.

To my mind there are at least four ways to ponder religion, you can believe in God, you can not believe in God, you can wonder if there is a God, or you can believe God & Mother Nature are different words for the same thing. I happen to fall into the last camp, though I would never try to persuade anybody to come over to my way of thinking.

Just for fun I decided to write a short story and preview it here in this fine family journal. It's called, A Pictorial Story Of One Long Party On The Tropical Island Of Maui '73-'83, and it's a true story, mostly.

Five months of daily communication with 'Huckleberry' has paid dividends. We are now fast friends. Huck was born a couple years ago right here on my deck, and in fact, he fledged straight into a sleeping bag I placed for him on the driveway below.

What might Mark Twain say about a serious proposal in China to allow for two husbands? First let us take a look at the proposal, recommended by a professor of economics at Fudan University in this summer of 2020.

Hello, if I may introduce myself, my name is Ovi, I'm a Covid virus who has learned English and am about to publish a tell-all book about my life as a Covid virus who has gone to the other side. Humans think we don't have brains, but we do. We disguise our brains as effluent, and with the help of 20-200 vision, we can spot a impaired immune system from across a crowded room.

Don't you love pithy quotes? Me too. I have a plug hat full of them, and I pull one out every now and again to give myself a lift. So I thought I'd share a few of them with you here today in this fine family journal, and hope that one of them might give you a lift too.