The Trailing Edge

It started on May 1st. In a hospital, in Seattle, in the middle of the night, a baby girl lay in her bassinet playing with her toes. She was quiet and had a smile on her face. Her name was Sheryl in honor of her mother’s mother. The doctors declared Sheryl a normal healthy newborn and they were right except that now she floated in the air two inches off the bassinet's mattress. There were nine hundred and fifty-six floating babies born that year.  Mysteriously, all babies were in the United States, in famous places as New York City, Los Angeles, Nashville, and little known places as Forney, Texas and Beach City, Ohio. The Parents, while changing diapers, discovered their beloved babies floating mid-air. An alarm ensued. The parents called their doctors, who called the University hospitals, who called the Center for Disease Control, who called the Army, who called the President, who called Congress, who, having no one to call, set up an Oversight Committee. Fear, inspi...

“ Hey, look! Windmills," shouted Emily as she bounced up and down in her seat and pointed out the bus window. The Eiger family, Winston, Jennifer, and their young daughter Emily, were touring the Midlands. The tour bus arrived at Windmill Alley, so named by the Tourist Board since it was a mile long row of medieval windmills straddling the Ghrent Canal. The tour was a multi-cultural program sponsored by the Ministry of Magic. Impressed with the view, Jennifer turned to her daughter, "Can you tell me why non-magical people built windmills?" Emily scrunched her face and after a moment, shook her head, "no Mommy." "Well, it gets very hot here in the summer and in the ancient times, there was no air conditioning. So the non-magical people living here built windmills to cool the farmers working in the fields. Windmills are giant fans," said Jennifer, nodding and thinking of her Non-Magical-People Anthropology training. "Wow," replie...

I fell victim to a scam this week. Several days ago I responded to an ad on Indeed.com, as I have been doing since being laid off in August. The company I thought I'd applied to responded back, saying I was "shortlisted" for the position and that I should forward my resume and contact information to someone named George Crockett. Well, the "crock" part was right... Mr. Crockett responded with a friendly email, describing himself as "53 years young" and with a hearing impairment, which necessitated him communicating by email and text. He was traveling extensively and did not yet have an office, so all my assignments would be long-distance until he had an office to work from. This should have been a red flag and will be from now on, even though I've pretty much declared myself retired and stopped actively searching for work.  He said my weekly pay for the "odd jobs" he'd require would be $500. Good enough, I thought. He mention...

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