Dispatch

So here I am, 62 years old, writing from the front lines of early retirement on Memorial Day. But it's not the real Memorial Day. I'm old enough that I remember when Memorial Day was on May the 30th. That was before the United States Congress changed it to a 3 day weekend shopping extravaganza intended to kick off the summer vacation spending season.

I've lived in New England for over a quarter of a century now. Here, the summer season used to be July 4th to Labor Day in September (that's the phony Labor Day; the one the rest of the world celebrates is on May the 1st and honors events that happened here in the U.S. of A., which big money interests don't want people to know about let alone remember). With the change in the weather the summer season starts earlier here now. This year has been a little more like the old days, with the result that newscasts bemoaned the rainy and cool weather we had Saturday and Sunday - so many open campsites, so many unused barbeques.

Memorial Day started when the widows of the Civil War (or the "War of the Insurrection of the Southern States" as it used to be known in these parts) brought flowers of remembrance to decorate the graves of soldiers, "Decoration Day". After other wars it became "Memorial Day". There used to be parades; people used to display the flag. When I was a kid, it was a mixture of honor to the fallen and patriotism with the jingoistic flavor of the Post World War II era.

By the time I was a teenager, the War in Vietnam was oh so au currant. But just as television and its news programs had shown the lies of prosperous equality versus the malarkey we were fed through civics classes and entertainment, it also told uncomfortable truths about Vietnam. It became more and more difficult for me to accept the unquestioning flag waving exemplified by a mirror I found in 1969 with a painting on it of Stephen Decatur with the Carl Schurz quote (attributed to Decatur), "My Country right or wrong, My Country!"

The other day, I found a movie coming attractions trailer on the internet which I decided to play. One of its stars is a young man whose career choices have interested me more than any talent he has displayed (which is considerable). He played Harry Potter in a stage musical he co-wrote and co-produced in his teens. He showed up on the tv show "Glee", playing a gay teenager in his first relationship - it is a main story thread. Such things were unthinkable once. Anyway, as the trailer played there was one quick shot that made me pause it. I was right, it was the boardwalk of my once beloved Ocean City, NJ where summers started on Memorial Day weekend.

There's a "Subway" on the boardwalk now. A chain store. When I lived there, chain stores had names like A & P, or Dairy Queen. And they weren't on the Boardwalk. And now there's junky signs. It's actually worse than how it looks in the frame grab. Here's another contemporary view:


























Back when I lived there, back before there were giant cheap backlit plastic signs, back before there were BigBucksMarts, before there were chains of inedible overblown thin hamburger patty plastic arches, back when gaudy wasn't acceptable unless you were whoring on 8th Avenue in New York City, back when Memorial Day had just been changed to a Monday, it looked more like this:

The last picture is a little out of focus, like so many memories tend to be. But you can see that the hard sell isn't there, signs are on a human scale. By today's standards you might say it's 'quaint'.

 

In the 1970's or so, Memorial Day Weekend became the opening of the Hollywood extravaganza season. When I was in the business, a few of us used to say that a good picture would play in any season. When one studio dared to open a big budget picture at the beginning of May, the other studios thought they were crazy. It played. The old patterns (which had been new patterns maybe a decade before) started changing. Now it seems like almost every movie has a budget well over one hundred million dollars - and that's before advertising. Twenty years ago, an extremely successful movie might gross one hundred million dollars. "Iron Man 3" opened 3 weekends ago and has already grossed $1.15 Billion worldwide. And that's before cable, tv, DVD, Blue-Ray and streaming internet sales, before merchandising tie-ins. It's a live action cartoon. They all seem to be live action cartoons anymore. Well, this year there was a new adaptation of "The Great Gatsby", which has grossed over 100 million domestically, but in Brattleboro it was pushed off screen after two weeks to make way for "Fast and Furious 6" and "The Hangover Part whatever". Basically, live action cartoons. Don't get me wrong, I like live action cartoons. And these are usually very well made special effect bonanza live action cartoons. I can't often afford to part with close to ten dollars to go see one, though. And here it's not even in 3-D. But what happened to the other movies, you know, the ones that just told stories and attempted to uplift the spirits? Oh, we get the occasional art film about 90 year olds facing death with dignity, but that's not what I mean. We just don't live in a world where they make beach party movies with guest musical stars anymore. They don't even make suggestively dance your asses off in the Catskills summer movies anymore. Unless the dancers have superpowers and their pasodoble is used to kick the villains into the stratosphere.

 

A news article I read this morning reported on a study which revealed that the IQ's of people in western civilizations have declined by an average of 14 points since the Victorian era. That would include the Civil War, the Insurrection of the Southern States against the idea of Union.

 

And that brings my little roundelay back to Memorial Day. I don't like standing armies. I don't like the idea of conscription. Just today, in a guest editorial in the New York Times, a writer called for a return to the draft. The aftermath of the Vietnam War left us with a volunteer army. There are now army families. It's a job. It's a job the undereducated and the underclass can get. It's a profession-al army. If another marine holds an umbrella over the President, will Fox news call them the Praetorian Guard? Will the Fox News readers even know what the Praetorian Guard was?

 

I dislike the world we got, for which the honored dead allegedly fought. There is no real depth to it, it's a plastic chain store corrupted cartoon version of the American Dream. Which we once tried to sell as part of our presence in that miserable war in Vietnam. There was a summer movie I saw with friends here in Brattleboro the summer before I moved here called, "Forrest Gump". When the movie was over, one could have easily thought we'd won in Vietnam. A friend who was with me leaned against the Latchis' old outdoor box office and said, "We're getting ready for war again, aren't we?" Is that the real American Dream?

 

 

Over the years, I've made my peace with this day. I memorialize the very honored dead who fought the wars of government. Wars against evil. Wars of conquest. Wars of expansion and corruption. Wars of greedily grasping corporations hungry for oil. I also honor those who fought and those who died in our other wars. Economic Wars - the fight for the 8 hour workday, the end of child labor, the minimum wage, the end of hunger, health care. There are martyrs there too, non-military soldiers who fought on at the Haymarket, at the Hoovervilles, at the mills. Not all were killed - Inez Milholland collapsed and died of pernicious anemia at the age of 30 while giving a speech. Her last words were, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?" That was in 1916. And then there is Charlie Howard, who has been forgotten. He was killed, martyred, in the late 1980's in Bangor, Maine by teenagers who threw him over a bridge into a river because he was gay and walking alongside his boyfriend. He was 23 years old. Or Matthew Shepherd who was literally crucified on a split rail fence because he was gay. Or any of the unknown soldiers of this nasty little war - did you miss the news story in April of three teens who were tortured and killed at a "camp" to turn them into "men"? Oh, that's right the camp was in South Africa, so who cares? Who cares about the gay dead in Uganda and the gay dead and women dead in various Muslim countries? Who cares about Bradley Manning? It's been a long war, this war for simple human dignity. Times are changing. They always are. But now there's a President who is African American, women have rights if not yet equal pay, and there is a tv show with two main characters who are gay male teenagers who kissed right there in front of all America. Imagine. And so, on Memorial Day, the soldiers whose memory I honor are more varied than most might accept. The world, the changes, the Dream they fought and died for wasn't and isn't a plastic cartoon. These are the people I choose to remember. These are the soldiers I honor.

 

Requiescat in Pace.



 



Emma Smith

April the 3rd was a Tuesday that year. The banks had been closed the day before as part of Easter Holiday. People had a little extra money on them. It was an old neighborhood, the large houses the main remnant of the days when it had been fashionable. The French who had built them had moved out to the country. The Irish had come, and then the Jews. The jobs had gone. The big old houses built by and for wealthy merchants had been carved up into rooms.

In the early hours of the morning, Emma Elizabeth Smith was assaulted and robbed on the corner of Osborn Street and Brick Lane. No one knew much about her. There was something in the way she talked that hinted at a cultured and educated life; she might have once been well off. Someone said that she had two children, a son and a daughter who lived in another part of town. Even though she had been injured, she managed to walk the block to her rooming house at 18 George Street. She told Mary Russell that she had been attacked by three men, one a teenager. With the help of another tenant, Annie Lee, Russell took Smith to hospital where she was treated by surgeon George Haslip. Smith fell into a coma and died the next morning.

Two days went by before the police were notified. At the inquest, Dr. G. H. Hiller found that she had  been brutally raped  with a blunt object which ruptured several internal organs. The police report described her clothing as being comprised of rags so dirty that it was impossible to tell if there had been fresh tears in them. The official cause of death was listed as peritonitis. The police investigation noted that though she was poor and friendless, every effort was taken to find her assailant. Smith and been a prostitute. She was most likely attacked by her pimp or a gang of pimps as intimidation or for refusing to follow orders, they decided.

Several months later detective Walter Dew developed another theory. On the 7th of August, the day after another bank holiday, Martha Tabram was murdered in the same neighborhood. She was a prostitute and had been stabbed many times. At the end of that month, Mary Ann Nichols was murdered. A reporter from the Star may have talked to Walter Dew for the paper soon began to note theories similar to his: all three women had been prostitutes, all in their mid 40's, all from the same area, their murders thought to be the work of gangs of pimps. Perhaps the deaths were the work of the same person.

It was 1888, and in the slums of London, the legend of Jack the Ripper was born.

The Spring Bulb Show

It's that time of year.

The clocks have sprung ahead by an hour and nothing seems quite right yet. There were two surprisingly sunny days which warmed into the low 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I was too busy to truly enjoy either of them. Saturday was spent working on my radio show. The first 'official' broadcast of my program was on March the 11th, 2000. I'll tell that story another day, maybe tomorrow. You have been warned. Sunday morning was spent working on setting up the handicapped accessible production room for the station. I'll probably get around to that story, too. Why do I think of all these when I haven't had an idea for weeks and I've already decided upon this entry into the blog? Probably because it's that time of year.

See, here in New England, and especially here in my little corner of Vermont, the skies turn gray in October. And it lasts until April, sometimes May. Over the last week or so, the odor of skunk has reappeared, a sure sign the mating rituals are on - Spring is coming. Unwanted email advertising messages, blessedly filtered out by Norton, have returned in quantity so reminiscent of pre-Easter bunny rabbit litters that one checks to make sure that anti-spam programs and firewalls are still active. At the moment, offers to help me spend monies to be garnered from my new improved credit rating are slightly outnumbered by offers to help in the bankruptcy sure to be caused by my suddenly lowered credit rating. At this time of year, the itchiness rises. Cabin Fever sets in. Meek little housewives finger the carving knife while studying their husband's necks - oh, wait that's hot dry Santa Annas. Sorry 'bout that Raymond Chandler. The where are the snows of yesteryear begin to vanish exposing brown or green grass like so much promise of a smile on a summer night, or the whisper of a "yes". But the promise is as yet unfulfilled. The chalice has been raised but the miracle has not yet happened. "Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate".

One of my coping mechanisms is to go off to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Every year around the first two weeks of March, the horticulture department uses the first two rooms of the college's 118 year old Lyman conservatory for a display of tulips, daffodils, and other bulbs which can be tricked into early bloom. There are other rooms to explore, devoted to plants from cool temperate climates, the palm house, a room of succulents, etc.

The Lyman Conservatory (and a late snow covered magnolia) from a picture I took so long ago I don't remember the year. The magnolia is gone now. 

When you enter the Conservatory, it is through a brick visitor's entrance. Admission is free, but a $2.00 donation is requested. The door to the greenhouse complex leads you into a riot of color and scent. Nearing the end of a New England winter, the perfume of daffodils and tulips upon entry is so overwhelming I can easily imagine being knocked over backwards by its force.

You have to wait a bit, or be exceptionally lucky, to be able to get a shot of the first two rooms (i.e. the bulb show) without people crowding the aisles. Over the years I've been there at various times of day, and I have never entered into an empty room. You might think that since these are very old greenhouse rooms, they aren't all that big. Which, I suppose, is true. But one does not notice as the senses take awhile to recover from the effect of entry; after a Brattleboro winter, the experience approaches lush decadence. The right hand side of the entry way is, in itself, a start down a primrose path...

Once you recover your bearings, you begin to notice that there are wonderful details everywhere. It is easy to once again become overwhelmed. There is so much to see, and so many people you worry there won't be time. Really. We have only taken a few steps inside. Take a few more steps, and the view changes:

The other rooms of the conservatory are also worth every moment one can spend there:

If you wander down the short path in the Cool Temperature Plant Room, there is a waterfall:

I could use a nice sit on the bench across from that waterfall just now. This post is in its second day. To post to the blog, I use the Chrome browser after Blogger decided it did not wish to work with my usual browser. There was a potential security issue with Java, so I updated. The browser now frequently freezes. I've re-installed it twice to no avail. This morning, there was a new version of my usual browser (Explorer) available, so I downloaded and installed it. It opened, but refused to load any pages. Normally, I'd check for reviews and reactions before downloading something important. I guess it was the heady onrush of the promise of Spring that unhinged me so that I took such leave of my normal procedures. Perhaps a visit to the Tropical Room will help.

The following is from my last visit to the Spring Bulb show, back on March the 12th of 2006. The bananas hadn't started ripening yet this year...

There are still other rooms to visit:

This year the hallway of orchids didn't have its usual display, so I've reached back to 2006 for this one:

The hallway did have a few things in it, though:

Of course, the only way to exit all of this is to retrace your steps and go back through the bulb rooms (and see everything you missed the first time).

Well, the parking meters near the college only last two hours, so it was time to leave and go off for lunch. Which, by my 'breath of spring' ritual is at the nearby Miss Florence diner.

On my last visit there in 2006, I was sitting in one of the booths when I realized that my my little digital camera had fallen out of my pocket. I left my contact information with the owner just in case, retraced the days path to the greenhouses, all to no avail. Three days later, I got a call from the diner's owner. He'd been moving the wooden booth seats to clean, and there was my camera! It was picked up by a friend and returned to Brattleboro, as I didn't have a car at the time. I've also been without a car for the past few years; my trip to the bulb show was made on both occasions with my friend, driver, and camera rescuer Ralph Kunkel. Ralph has a great show on our Community Radio Station, "And How That Rhythm", every Sunday morning from 10am until noon. He's very good, by the way, at stepping out of a picture in that moment between pressing the camera button and the movement of the shutter. Still, I did manage to get one taken. Thanks for the excursion, Ralph!

Fruitcake Weather

Sometimes in life there are unexpected consequences, or in this particular case, unexpected benefits. I haven't had tv since last February - a little matter of the cable bill. Where I live, there is no tv without cable. And even though there is a wealth of it on the internet and dvd, it somehow isn't the same when one is not partaking of the communion simultaneously with millions of our mass media brothers and sisters. The benefits include missing out on the incessant frenzied hyperbolic chatter when there is nothing new to report on an inane topic of intense focus, as well as missing out on the barrage of post Labor Day vulgar corporate Chri$tma$ hucksterism.


There is far less tension and anxiety in my world as a result. And now that I am retired, I will not have to spend the next 30 some days in a constant state of aural fear as the overproduced humbug of alleged holiday music is blared at one and all to further engender that holiday shopping urge - in a food store. It makes me wonder if we are being prepared for the day when an appropriate gift will be a can of genetically modified vegetables in a sauce of  tasty chemical additives. Oh, wait...

It was all so much simpler when I was young.

Every generation gets to say that, and for just about every generation, there is much truth in the statement. When I was young, it was considered unseemly to use advertising to implant Christmas desires before Thanksgiving. Holiday music was written by people who knew how to write real songs, and performed by people who could actually sing - and wasn't played until about two weeks before The Day. Christmas Holiday cheer was saved until Christmas was nigh. 

Last year, I discovered that most of the old Christmas specials and tv show episodes - the ones that could actually bring a bit of the spirit of joy and sharing into our lives, were either played continually on cable channels, or (for the better shows) available only on pay per view. The programs on pay per view were originally broadcast for free - or the price of watching a commercial. It tells you something about our modern world that the current corporate owners of those programs keep them unavailable until they are paid by each viewer for each viewing over a closed wire system which must also be paid for. 

And, sadly, some of the best programs have gone missing for one reason or another. I still have fond memories of a muppet Christmas special which had only one human character - Santa Claus, as played by Art Carney. I seem to recall it was rather sad, and I've never heard of it again. I thought I was imagining it until Laura over at Austanspace told me she remembered it too. Carney, by the way, was absolutely great as the Santa in the Twilight Zone episode, "Night of the Meek".

But the special I want most to see again was an ABC Stage 67 program, "A Christmas Memory". It was adapted from a Truman Capote short story by Eleanor Perry and Capote, who narrated it. It won Emmys for Geraldine Page and for the script. It also won a Peabody award. There is a multi-part post of it on You Tube, but it is in black and white. There is a good, clear print of it in color, but it is variously reported as missing, destroyed, or tied up in rights. It's complicated.

The story begins on a crisp cold morning in late November as... well, here, let Mr. Capote tell it:

" ...she is sixty-something, We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together—well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880's, when she was still a child. She is still a child.... It's always the same: a morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: "It's fruitcake weather!"

Thanksgiving is tomorrow. The current version of holiday madness is about to begin in earnest. I try to find joy in the sheer vulgarity of it all, the overwhelming garishness of the decorations, the frenzied mobs I try to avoid, the steep prices that will be reduced the day after The Day, but it gets harder every year.

But there is something about Thanksgiving that gets us.  Everyone seems to celebrate it, friends and families draw together, and every year it seems like we have to triumph over ever increasing odds just to do it. But we do it. Even though it is mostly ritual now, often devoid of meaning, we still do it. There is something in us that understands. It is more than just a day of thanks giving. It is the start of a time which exhilarates our imaginations, and fuels the blaze in our hearts. And it always starts the same, on a cold morning in November, when it's fruitcake weather...

Uncle Oscar

Today is the birthday of our dear Uncle Oscar.

Oscar was brilliant, but had a bit of unpleasantness in his life after he became involved with a member of the Douglas family. Everyone knew the Douglas clan was a bit well, off-kilter. I mean really, the young man in question, 21 at the time he met Uncle Oscar, was nicknamed "Bosie" by his own mother! Bosie's father was pugilistically inclined and often threatened to beat people with a horse whip (and probably did), his Uncle was in love with his twin sister and after she married someone else kidnapped a young woman, another aunt was a suffragette, oh, the things that went on in that family!


At any rate, his relationship with Bosie proved to be Uncle Oscar's undoing. Uncle was packed off for two years of hard labor which basically destroyed him. Just three years after his time away, Uncle Oscar died in Paris, destitute, at the age of 46.

It was all so sad, Uncle had been such a brave man - he was the only well known author to sign George Bernard Shaw's petition to pardon the anarchists who had been arrested and were being being blamed for a riot in Chicago's Haymarket Square (they were later executed).

In his day, he was a well known author, playwright, poet, and lecturer (according to reports, he was particularly well received by cowboys in the old American West!)

I've collected just a few of my favorites of Uncle Oscar's comments as my way of remembering him today. Sadly, I've no time to do this right as I must go off to toil in the fields of Mammon.


It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.
-- “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.
-- Letter from Paris, dated May 1900

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
-- “Lord Arthur Savile's Crime”

Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot.
-- “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
--  "An Ideal husband"

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
-- "Lady Windermere's Fan"

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

I can resist anything but temptation.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

I am not young enough to know everything.


I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Uncle's friend Bosie

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Wisdom comes with winters.

Happy Birthday, Unc !

The rising this time

The stress levels are rising again. 

Where is it written that some of us shan't have a few moments, days, weeks, months of peace? Look, I know that just isn't the way (at least my and probably your) life works. But that doesn't mean that I don't want those moments. There isn't time to photograph and/or write notes to the self about everything good and or bad that one wishes to remember, savor, or encourage to recede into memory and or forgetfulness. Even for the moments I'd like to revisit again someday, where and or when does one really get the chance?

Thanks to computers, we now have the ability to alter and fix up some of our mementos. For instance many years ago now, when I lived in Boston, there were any number of things I photographed. One or two hundred dozen pictures have always been a little better as I prefer to remember them, not as they are. Case in point:

The above picture was taken on the first "Victorian Day" at the Boston Public Garden in May of 1989. Sadly, it was never held again as far as I know. A number of people with an interest in historical couture dressed in restored Victorian era clothing and took a leisurely stroll around an appropriate period setting. It was over in a few minutes. Now, in my mind's eye, the above picture looks a little more like this:

Please understand that I really do prefer the color picture. But the way my mind wants to remember the photo is without the woman in the 1940's blue skirt, and as something I took in a moment when I had become unstuck in time. A few minutes later, I happened to notice a couple dressed all in black, as though they were some kind of Victorian punk rockers. I immediately raised my camera. They paused in their stroll for the briefest moment, just long enough to take one picture.

The problem I have with the photo is the two people on either side whose modern garb quite ruins the perception of an antique hand colored photo of Edgar Allan Poe and the Mrs. It doesn't matter that Poe only lived in his nearby birthplace as an infant, and certainly didn't live there with his child bride cousin (she was 13 when they married) who died of consumption. In our modern world, I can now use fancy computer programs once the province of Hollywood special effect departments to eliminate the folks in the photo who spoil the illusion. Except that the best program to use to accomplish that costs over $180 for the basic version (and that -is- a discounted price) to well over $340.00 for the more complete version. (In my experience, basic versions give you enough of the program to become extremely frustrated at its limitations which force you to buy the full featured version.) And then there are add on packages costing close to $100.00 each. As it happens, there is a "free ware" program which I downloaded which is said to be a near equivalent of the fancy schmancy program. The only problem is finding the time to learn how to use it to see if it is up to the computing task. Until that time, the picture is best observed from my frustrated director's memory, edited to my specifications. Then I can enjoy the moment the way I want.

Sadly, I can't seem to get to a place where I can edit my life to be the picture I want. A quick perusal of the morning news leaves me saddened and a bit depressed. Iran has publicly trumpeted its ability to get some kind of sea going vessel to within 3 miles of the US - perfect for missile launching. It doesn't matter whether or not they are just making gaseous noises. It doesn't matter whether or not someone over there actually said this. What matters is that it has been reported and that it is a threat and that the threat will be used as another notch in the buildup to a potential preemptive military action. Or perhaps that is the anxiety some set of forces in motion from God knows where wants us to have. The Governor of the US State of Maine, a place heretofore thought of as a potential Stevil haven from the masses, has accused his states' governmental workers of corruption, clarified to note only some workers who have been corrupted by union leaders. Considering that this same man had a mural depicting Maine's labor history removed from his state's Department of Labor building, discerning a message there isn't terribly difficult. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, in addressing the current economic climate. has just urged young people to go into debt and start businesses - by, say, borrowing $20,000 dollars from their parents. My father earned a decent income, and we were, for a number of years, financially comfortable. Until it came time for me to go to college, an endeavor he had implied he would finance. A few months before I was to begin my studies, he asked me where I was going to get the money. Fair enough - my life, my responsibility, changed circumstances, whatever. But if someone solidly in the middle class in 1968 couldn't afford to send his child to college, who can afford to "loan" their offspring twenty thousand these days? I sell food to senior citizens, people solidly middle class, and people on welfare who often can't afford their bill and who have to have items removed from their purchases. Or who note that the money for this week's food was the money saved to fix their car. Or who spend considerable time going through every pocket counting out several dollars in change. This kind of stuff just makes me crazy. Sometimes, it is best to avoid the news. How do I avoid reality?

There are problems at work. There are always problems at work. Two weeks ago (the properly allotted advance notice), I put in specific requests regarding portions of two days for this upcoming week in which I needed to be elsewhere. On Thursday morning, I am to be a guest on a local commercial radio station program to talk about getting our non-profit community station back up and running. I could work the four hour morning shift they often give me, or I could work in the afternoon. On Friday evening, as our Community station will be having an open house, I asked to be done for the day in time to catch the 4:30pm bus into town. The result was to be given those two days off "by request", and have other days in which I will work until 8 and 9pm - when no buses run and I will have a 45 minute walk home (I need a cane to walk) on a highway at night. This sort of thing has happened just about every time I have put in a specific request to not work at a given time due to a doctor's appointment, etc. Considering the regularity with which this happens (and not just to my less than humble self) it is difficult to see it as anything other than punishment for asking for the benefit of a flexible schedule - one of the touted lures used to snare one into employment there. I made comments to other staff about this. Within a couple of hours, I was taken off register for a minute, and told by the bookkeeper that I had rung up a customer's red grapes as green grapes. The red grapes are on sale. The customer complained and the grapes had to be given away for free, plus one dollar as per company policy. I had cost the company $3.40. They have been noticing such errors creeping into my work, and I was being notified about this as a courtesy before the matter was "out of their hands". Was this real? Was it just to induce under the thumb anxiety as payback for an intemperate remark? Has the campaign to remove me from employment there (as the last person in my "part time" category of 20 to 38.5 hours) resumed? Is that campaign real? In my minds eye, the way I perceive it, the poverty level exploited worker is being crushed for having spoken a totally obvious truth.

Yesterday, someone posted a comment to an article on this blog from last September. The comment reads, "Good bye, considerate soul mate :) ". What to make of it? Is it from someone who is pondering an end to life either naturally or by their own hands? I certainly know people who live in great pain who might fit either description. But the two visitors late that night who could have left such a comment were not from Canada where the most likely suspect lives. Who then? Was it someone who managed to log onto my blog without leaving an electronic trail? Was it just someone reading my blog and saying goodnight? And who considers me a "soul mate"? Why don't I know about this? A soul mate? Really? The smiley face lets me live with the note, but the "Good bye" still leaves me with a sense of unease. Why can't life have editing software?

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Coffee - check. Nosh - check - cranberry English muffins, 6 pack averaging 50 cents each muffin, cost of butter additional. Muffins, like last year, start out large and full of cranberries but by Thanksgiving are small with one cranberry each - Thomas' should be ashamed of itself. Fond memories of visiting the family at Thanksgiving emerge, if only because my father and stepmother could afford bacon with breakfast. I give Thanks that I once had a job where I made enough to afford bacon and can remember how much I liked it. Naturally, I have my own happy Thanksgiving breakfast, which includes Irish steel cut oatmeal. I still have a can, a couple of years old now. I no longer make it, not because it takes about 45 minutes, but because I like it with maple syrup drizzled over it, and maple syrup has been too expensive for a few years now. Even grade B. The first boil of maple sap produces that clear light brown color. That's for tourists. Real folks know to go for Grade B, it has all the flavor.



I just spent a few minutes sipping coffee and re-reading last year's Thanksgiving posts. I'd forgotten all about having the collection of Victorian Thanksgiving cards. And the memories of the holiday season kickoff. And having a family that actually spoke to each other and spent time together. Even if Aunt Lorraine wanted me to call her "Mommy". What did I care? My own mother had left (or was thrown out) before I was even six months old. Even still, I just couldn't do it. So what if that meant another beating?

And then there was Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother's. My grandfather had died of a massive heart attack two years before I was born. Almost to the day. I suppose that might have had something to do with my father's attitude about me. She had remarried and now lived in the next town down the road. Her second husband had a couple of grandkids, too. There would be a special table just for us kids. The special china and silverware would be brought out, the extra leaf would be put into the dining room table. The extra mat would be put in, the big good tablecloth would be spread over it, and enough food to feed all the starving children in Europe (and then some) would appear. Turkey. Stuffing. Gravy. Cranberry sauce (this was before people served chunky cranberry sauce - it just wasn't available). Mashed potatoes. Peas. Succotash. Candied yams. Green beans. Glasses of water (it was still drinkable then). Glasses of iced tea. Who found the wishbone???

Around that table you'd find my great grand parents Wilbur and Laura, my Grandmother Helen and her second husband Mahlon, her three children - all boys. Uncle Bob and Aunt Lorraine. Dad. Uncle Harold and his meet the family date who would become Aunt Mary. Mahlon's son Jan and his wife Sue. Around the kid's table my brother Lewis, Jan's kids Ricky and Bonnie and the youngest, still a baby, whose name escapes me at the moment. Sorry kid. My cousins, Uncle Harold's children Patricia and Harold Michael hadn't come along yet. I just tried to type "Uncle Harold's kids" but couldn't. Mary had raised holy hell because I once called them 'kids'. Her children were not goats, thank you. She told my father I sassed her, even though I hadn't. I got beat. Fond memories.

Macy's parade has started. Kickoff has a horrible attempt at a musical number. No one seems to be able to write special material anymore. "Time for celebratin', Santa Claus' is waitin'". (I shudder quite involuntarily.) Chorus kids dressed to look like little nerd boys and girls, as though they were popular and not outcasts. Something which passes for choreography that involves jumping up and down, arms akimbo. The first balloon goes by, but Al Roker is too busy talking to notice. It's low to the ground and it's Sonic the Hedgehog, who or what ever that is. Now we're getting a preview of a new Disney show based on their 20 year old movie "Newsies". Someone should tell the casting director and costume designer that what are supposed to be pre teen newsboys aren't supposed to be ripped with muscles rivaling weightlifter competitions.

Another musical number - the cast of "Sister Act", another show based on a movie. Wait, didn't it used to work the other way around? The woman in the Whoppi Goldberg part dances on in the most robotic performance I've seen since Hal refused to open the pod bay doors.

There's a big balloon they are saying is Mickey. As in Mouse, maybe? Al Roker runs (not something you want to see) to talk to one of the handlers. The cameraman forgets to pan up so we can see the balloon. We do see the bottom of it, all yellow. A color not used for Mickey Mouse.

Now there's a musical number from "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying". Harry Potter, minus his glasses, seems to be growing into the role since the bit they showed last June on the Tony Awards show. Except he still looks terrified that he's going to forget the next step. It's the "Brotherhood of Man" number. The female solo has so much vibrato I can barely understand a word she sings.

Now it's a musical number from "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", based on another movie. Using songs from the Disco era. They're singing "I will survive" while two of the drag queens show off while dressed as turkeys.

Al Roker (why is this guy popular?) is interviewing two tv show actors who just happen to be sitting together on a nearby bleacher. What are they doing for Thanksgiving? One is going to his wife's family out in Far Rockaway Queens. The other merely smiles and says "Lower East Side for me". After all these years he still isn't allowed to say "My boyfriend's place".

More Al Roker interviews. Two other people I've barely heard of have replaced the two actors on the bench full of people.

Now it's a musical number from Spiderman, Turn Off the Dark. Based on a comic book. And a movie. Wait, isn't the stunt dancer Spiderman supposed to be the same size as the guy who turns into Spidey? The Green Goblin sings, "I'm the new Coney Island and all the rides are free." Now there's eight spidermen, but their synchronized routine isn't. Don't they have a PSM calling this?

Now there's a commerical for an insurance company and it's using the "Everybody knows your name" song from Cheers.

I don't know if I can last long enough to see the parade. At least, I think there's a parade there.

Jeez. Even the Rockettes' visual lines are sloppy. And in closeup they look more like drag queens than the cast of Priscilla. 31 supposed genetic females in New York City. Two are black. One appears Hispanic.

The parade finally starts after an hour of other things. As Matt Lauer says "The first of our marchers arriving on 34th Street...." we see cops on motorcycles. There's a turkey float which stops to let Avril Levine (sp?) sing something that is supposed to be a song. Yah, yah, yah, wish I had you here, here, here, near, near, near.

Wow. There's a band marching/playing so fast they look like they're running bomb squad members. Maybe they have the right idea.

Now there an "Ocean Spray" float (which has nothing to do with their product) with some country singer I've never heard of "makes me want to take the back road, park the truck where it gets hot". Huh? The camera catches a young black woman on the float trying to figure out how to dance to this crap. She tries a chorus girl move from a 1930's movie. It is oddly enderaing.

There's a Sesame Street float with performance of a song so bad everyone on the float is having to jump up and down and clap their hands trying to sell it. There is only one Sesame Street character visible. I suddenly recognize one of the guys trying to pretend to be "up" and "happy", and he looks soooo old. He's also at least 20 years younger than I am. I sink far down into my chair, then shift my position so I can't see any reflective surfaces.

Now there is a float from Hamburger Helper. I'm not making this up.

I think I've had enough. I try to tear myself away, but it's like the proverbial train wreck. Which I think is the next float, right after the rapping AFLAC balloon.

But first, a "balloon-icle" pitcher of koolaid. It looks suspiciously like grape. I reach out my hand to pour some. Seems like a good idea.

 

Happy Thanksgiving Day, folks.

November 24 is the 328th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 394 days remaining until the end of time.

Trick or Treat for UNICEF?

Back when I was about 4 and 5 years old, when we kids went out on Halloween, many of us also held up a donation box while asking, "Trick or treat for UNICEF"? The idea originated with the wife of a Presbyterian minister from nearby Philadelphia.  Mary Emma Allison had seen a UNICEF booth collecting funds to send powdered milk to children in need around the world. WWII had been over for 5 years when she started with her own children and little Presbyterian Sunday School kids from her hubby's congregation. At the time , children were starving in Europe. They remained so until I was at least 8 years old. But by that time, I'd long stopped raising coin for my fellow less fortunate children. After all, it turned out that UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) was a Communist front. Oh, the shame of my earlier wicked ways.

It was a year or two after the UNICEF fiasco that I was warned by Aunt Lorraine to go through my trick or treat haul carefully. There had been a story on the news that someone had put razor blades into an apple. You just couldn't trust people anymore. What was this world coming to?

One year, after Dad had the house on Lakeview Drive built, it was my turn to host the Halloween Party. I have a little bit of it on 8mm film. I really must try to get that stuff digitized... In the home movie, you can see us marching around (musical chairs, maybe?), bobbing for apples, drinking cider,. Oh, my God, cider. I just loved apple cider. One of the villages north of Swedesboro (which was the "big" town where the farmers market - a commercial enterprise - was located). Swedesboro had had the post war population boom and finally made it to 2,000 people - which officially put us on the map as a 'town'. Anyway, just north of Swedesboro on Kings Highway (the King of Sweden actually had marched down Main Street - but that's another story) was Mickleton. In the center of the village was a blinking yellow light at the only intersection around. If you turned right and drove about 100 feet, you'd be right at Mrs. McCaffrey's cider mill. Attached to the main house was a side barn area. Inside was a giant round wooden cider press. You could smell fermenting apples as you marched up to a spigot, held your glass gallon bottle to the tap, and let it go. Ahhh, the pleasure of it all. By local standards of the time, it was practically a hedonistic experience. And this was real cider. Take it home, put in a cool place, and if you don't get to it within a couple of days, "mother" would start rising. It was becoming hard cider, on its way to vinegar. You don't see gallon glass jugs much anymore. But on the rare occasion I do, I'm right back at McCaffrey's usually on the days I got to see them turn the mill press, powered by a configuration of rope attached to a small horse, walking in circles around the vat.  It's all gone now. I think the apple orchard was plowed over for housing. I heard that the mill itself was sold and has been rebuilt elsewhere. Ah, well.