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.



 



A note or two about my little town

Sometimes, most of the time in fact, I really love the town in which I live. It has been my intention to start writing a bit about it and telling a few of its stories.

Just yesterday, for instance, I started the day by hosting a Friday morning radio show on our all volunteer community radio station. Most of the two hour time slot was spent in a free wheeling discussion with Daryl Pillsbury, who works nights on the maintenance staff at our local hospital. I first met Daryl when he was the sole voice for the working class on the Selectboard which manages our town. He later spent 8 years as our county's representative in our State Government. Several years ago, he and another local citizen created the Heat Fund, a non-profit (no one gets paid a cent) which raises money to provide emergency fuel assistance in our county.  He'd come in after getting off work to promote the Heat Fund; we also talked politics and his work for the Marijuana Resolve (which he helped start) whose goal is to end the legal insanity and attendant costs of criminalizing pot smokers. By 9am I was training a new radio station participant, an older man who has spent years as a local realtor, whose show mixes advice on real estate with 1950's and 1960's rock and roll. As each song plays, he makes hand gestures as though he were performing the choreography of a doo-wop group. As I made my way to the post office, I ran into two different friends, both requiring stops for quick discussions. After running other errands, I attended the kick off of our holiday season at the tree lighting in the center of town. The tree is in a "vest pocket" park, which is a story or two in itself. Santa was there. As was a young father with his 3 or 4 year old son, both on Dad's bicycle standing off to one side. The Dad asked his son if he wanted to go over and meet Santa. The boy hid behind his Dad's legs and confessed that Santa Claus scared him. The park sits at the main intersection in town, in front of a Thai restaurant. By the time I made my way home, I'd had another training for another new DJ (Friday is our most difficult day to fill and it is filling up). Today, Santa will arrive via tractor, a yearly event in which he is, I believe, accompanied by Alfred, our local black drag queen (well, the famous one, anyway) who will be dressed as an elf. The annual sing-in of Handel's Messiah also takes place this afternoon. It has professional soloists, but those attending get to sing all the choral parts. There's lots else going on today - all in a town of 12,000 people. Well, it is the third largest town in the state.

Lest you think that I am joking about the Messiah Sing-In, here's an odd bit of video from You Tube. At the beginning of the video, there is a brief shot of the interior of the Centre Congregationalist Church where the event takes place. The church used to be on our town common, but was moved to Main Street and rebuilt close to the center of town back in 1843.



As I was starting the preparations for my regular radio show this week, I was thinking that I might use some of my research for a post. It was quite a surprise, therefore, to find that Laura over at the Austanspace blog had written about our Community Radio Station. As a part of my show, which covers the big band era, vocalists, songwriters, etc. I usually finish with a 15 minute or half hour broadcast from that era which is from the roughly the same week we are in, just a different year. As part of the set up to that finale, I read the news from the local paper published that day. As enjoyable and oddly familiar as the news might be, I think I get my biggest kick from the old advertisements. Here's a few examples from the paper of December 2nd, 1938:

This ad (above) was on the bottom of the front page!

The above ad was from one of the three movie theatres in town in 1938, the Latchis. 

It is part of the Latchis Hotel, one of the few art deco buildings in the entire state of Vermont.

The Latchis in 1938, the year it opened.

The opening was delayed due to the Hurricane that October, which hit the area pretty hard.

Above is the auditorium as it appears today, barely changed from the days when there were weekend stage shows (usually 5 acts of vaudeville) along with the movie. Many years ago I was successful in getting a series of Sunday matinees of classic movies played there. But the story of the Latchis, and my little part in its history, are stories for another day. In the meantime, I have a radio show to put together, and a gentle snow, the first able to leave a bit of accumulation on the ground, is falling. I must make coffee and stare out the window for a bit. 

My patience, like autumn, is fleeting...

Two and a half weeks. Every few minutes I tell myself, it will all be better in two and a half weeks. In two and a half weeks, the elections will be over. With any luck, the Democrats will then stop sending me twenty plus emails a day begging for money. Some of their emails show the level of my contributions - which are nil. I have explained to them on multiple occasions that the economy, reluctance to hire older workers, and the lack of decent jobs in my area have all conspired to leave me unable to contribute to the obscene amount of money they have collected and spent already. I guess they are trying to shame me into a donation. Better yet, in two and a half weeks, on November the 10th, I will become officially retired. I will be living in genteel poverty, but hell, I've been doing that for quite awhile, and I will actually have a better income than I have now from my place of employment after 5 years of subservience. (I'm not joking about that - one of the first things they do is make a name-tag for you, which you must wear, which uses your first name so that people may address you as though you were the stable boy or the scullery maid.)

(Not quite) soon enough it will all be over. Although the election is troubling - it turns out that the company which makes the voting machines in the make or break state of Ohio is owned by a company with heavy investment by Romney's son Tagg (the one who wanted to "take a swing" at Obama). Who names their kid Tagg? Well, today I suppose that is a conservative name.

With the day off, I started digging to find those photos of Newfane in autumn that I promised to scan. The first box I picked up had its bottom give way just shy of where I was going to put it. Most of the photos in it were ones that I was looking for last Spring. I didn't find the Newfane shots, but I did find a few others that I took some years back. So here, from two different scanners, two 35mm cameras and one low price digital camera, are a few pics of autumn in New England. (note- Blogger is acting up and not putting the photos where I want them. With any luck, I can still make this make a little bit of sense....)

 Taken by the side of the road at a Gentleman's Farm in Rhode Island

The next Gentlemen's Farm down the road....

Another farm in Rhode Island - okay not especially autumnal,
but I liked these Scottish Highland wooly cows - this guy came over to check me out.

When I had a car, I used to go visit an old friend - meaning a friend who has known me for a very long time (although he is now getting along in years just like myself), who lives just over the Vermont border in New York State. On the way to his town, this old diner sits abandoned by the road. I love diners, so I had to take and share this picture, oaky?

On the way back from the above visit... I just liked this scene - it cried out to be photographed.

I used to live in Boston, so it's only fair that I post one of two pics from there.

The above was taken in the Back Bay Fens. On the other side of that bridge are the old Victory Gardens.
Across the street to the left of the photo is Fenway Park, the home of the Red Sox.

I can remember taking this in a Boston park, but I can't remember which one ---
I think it was the Esplanade  but it looks more like the Arnold Arboretum. 

Just a short train ride from Boston in Concord, Mass.

Monument Mountain in western Mass., near the spot where Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville had a picnic with friends (which I seem to recall included Thoreau) - and  let me tell you, those Victorians had to be pretty damn hardy to carry a full picnic up to this spot.

Just a little south of the above, across the border into Connecticut. I used a version of this shot with people in it (towards the left) so there is a reference point for the scale of this waterfall.

Somewhere around the Mass/Ct. border.

I don't remember where I took this -
I thought it was near the Wachusetts Reservoir in MA,
but I could be wrong about that.

A "Kodak moment" by the woolen mill in (upstate) Johnson, Vermont

The Cemetery in (upstate) Hyde Park, Vermont

Now, I do have a thing for cemeteries - particularly New England cemeteries in autumn. The tombstones in Vermont's "Northeast Kingdom" are especially wonderful - Italian stone cutters were brought over to work the granite quarries, and they carved wonderful monuments. Here's an example from the town of Hardwick:

The Hardwick cemetery is situated on a hill. As I walked up the hill to take the photo above, I saw one large headstone, which was very plain. The husband's name was on the left, and the wife's name was on the right. As I passed the stone, I noticed something carved on the thickness of the right hand side:

I walked around the headstone to the husband's side.

And  there I discovered this:

Lucious Lucius

As I started to read the news via the internet this morning, my wandering eye first caught the story of a bartender at the Playboy Club in London who had created a cocktail costing $8,824.00. My first thought was that it must have a 150 year old absinthe in it. As it turns out, I had guessed partly right - it is made of a 1778 Clos de Griffier vieux cognac, a 1770 Kummel liqueur, a circa 1860 Dubb orange Curacao and two dashes of Angostura bitters dating from around 1900. Now personally, I think wealth is great (although the wealthy should damn well pay an equitable share of taxes). Even at my age, I still have aspirations, although no expectations - if you know what I mean. But a cocktail whose cost is more than half a year of my current income? Before taxes? Even when I wasn't working poverty level jobs, that one drink would have cost close to a third of my yearly salary. This is truly disgusting and outrageous ostentatiousness. It is the kind of thing which would have been appreciated - and roundly skewered - by once noted and now sadly forgotten, bon vivant and writer Lucius Beebe. It was Beebe who, when confronted by a table of rare wines which had been festooned with orchids, cried out, ""Throw wide the windows! Air the rooms! Is the bouquet of my wines to have to conflict with these stinking flowers?"

Somewhere, if I haven't sold it to make ends meet, I may still have my copy Beebe's wonderful tome, "The Big Spenders - The Epic Story of the Rich Rich, the Grandees of America and the Magnificoes, and How They Spent Their Fortunes". It tells the story of a time before income tax, when the rich freely spent their wealth - occasionally in grand gestures of public good. A copy of it on Amazon will run you $125.00. I got it through the Book of the Month Club, to which I belonged when I was 15.

Charles Clegg

Much of Beebe's affectionate skewering of the wealthy was co-authored and illustrated with photographs taken by Beebe's long time partner Charles Clegg. Beebe was open about his relationship with Clegg in a time before it was acceptable. They were both from wealthy New England families. The rich, after all, have always enjoyed a morality not permitted to the poor, the middle classes, or to those who are merely well-off.

Beebe's first photographer/partner (during the 1930's) was Jerome Zerbe (also wealthy), one of the inventors of what became the genre of celebrity and society photography (now relegated to the paparazzi - although Zerbe would have been horrified at the ambush tactics so popular today). Zerbe is also credited with the invention of the vodka martini. It was Zerbe who, being a friendly insider, was was allowed to take photographs of Cary Grant and Randolph Scott during their years together.

above, and on the right,
"Cary and Randy" at home
from a series of photographs taken for
"Modern Screen" magazine in 1933.

Beebe and his two partners chronicled "cafe society" (a term invented by Beebe) for New York City newspapers from the early 1930's through the 1940's. Of those days, Beebe remarked, "I considered my function that of a connoisseur of the preposterous... I did have a fabulous time. I did drink more champagne and get to more dinner parties and general jollification than I would have in almost any other profession."It was Beebe who wrote one of my favorite descriptions of New York City as "Babylon-on-the-Hudson, sinful, extravagant, full of the nervous hilarity of the doomed".

Walter Winchell, a rival society columnist, often snippily called him "Luscious Lucius". During their time together Beebe made so many flattering remarks about Zerbe in his column that Winchell wrote that Zerbe should change his name to "Jerome Never Looked Lovelier."

When it was  noted that the possible election to the presidency of Republican Thomas Dewey would set the country back 50 years, Beebe immediately replied, "And what was wrong with 1898?"

In 1950, Beebe and Clegg set out for the once grand mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, where they renovated an old mansion, resurrected a once famous newspaper that had given early employment to Mark Twain, and began restoring old railroad cars. For one, the "Virginia City", Beebe brought in a friend who was a Hollywood set decorator to redesign the car in what he called "Venetian Renaissance Baroque". They used it for their travels.

Clegg and Beebe in their private railroad car, the "Virginia City".

Beebe and Clegg eventually retired to the San Francisco area. As he aged, Beebe wrote, "High blood pressure, cheeriness at breakfast, a mellowing political philosophy, and an inability to drink more than half a bottle of proof spirits at cocktail time without falling over the fire irons all suggest dark wings hovering overhead and the impending midnight croak of the raven." Beebe passed away in 1966 at the age of 63. Clegg committed suicide in 1979, on the day he reached the age at which Beebe had died.

Beebe once wrote, "If anything is worth doing it is worth doing in style, and on your own terms, and nobody's Goddamned else's!". He and his era are gone, and I often think that we are the poorer for it. There are still a few people around with style - but almost none of them seem to be rich folk. The rich of our day are of a different coarser breed. $8,824.00 for a cocktail is practically an obscenity. Lucius Beebe would have had a good comment about it.

"All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that left"

                                                                              -attributed to Lucius Beebe

Mama, Look Sharp

In Congress, July 4th...

The Fourth of July has always been special to me. When I was young, growing up in a small town in the southern part of New Jersey in the 1950's, it meant parades and fireworks. I was in the parade once or twice, marching with the cub scouts back in the days when they still had such parades.

For awhile there, the cub scouts used to go off to the roller rink over in Delmar about once a month. I loved going, even though I was never very good at it; my coordination lacked, well, coordination. Once, our roller rink was going to be closed for a private party. So we all piled into the bus and drove over to Delaware to a rink there. I remember how we waited on the bus. It was hot and uncomfortable. I remember the adults conferring up at the front of the bus. And we waited and waited. We never went in. Instead, the bus took us back home. It was many years before I found out what had happened. One of the cub scouts was a kid named Bruce. We were friends from school. The rink's owners had told the adults that we could go into the rink only if Bruce, who was black, stayed on the bus. The man who argued that we either all went in or none of us went in was my father. The rights of Americans, it seemed, didn't apply to all Americans. That new thing called the TV showed the lie, and the 1960's were born.

In the late 60's as I stepped out into the world on my own, the lie being exposed on TV was the Vietnam War. On October 15th, 1969 there was a worldwide Moratorium to End the War. People either stayed home from work or left their jobs to attend massive protests. I went to the one in New York City. It was a Wednesday, matinee day on Broadway, and the cast of several shows spoke at their curtain calls and invited the audience to attend the next rally with them. The cast of "1776" was there; Howard DiSilva, an actor who had once been blacklisted and who played Benjamin Franklin in that show, and I somehow fell into a great conversation about war, our times, and our country.

"1776" was a very different kind of musical. It concerned the creation and signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. Philly was the big city near my hometown, an hour away. I had, of course, been to the old State House where the events took place. As a kid in the area, you went to such places. I also remember a trip to the old barracks in Trenton. The show was a huge success. At the 1969 Tony Awards, the number used to represent the show was one involving none of the principal performers. In it, a young messenger tells of seeing his two best friends shot and killed at Lexington green. The story is barely remembered and rarely told, but that morning most of the Minutemen had left town to defend the colonist's cache of arms in nearby Concord. When the British reached Lexington, its defenders were largely old men and teenagers.

(Video from YouTube of "Momma, Look Sharp", a song from the stage musical 1776, as performed on tv during the 1976 Tony Award Broadcast, was ordered removed by Google due to a copyright claim from SONY, whose Columbia Pictures company owns the movie, but not the musical itself, nor the Tony Awards. I tried to write Google about this at the address they gave me, but  that address turned out to not exist. Since I do not have the money to hire a lawyer in case of further actions should I repost this, I have removed it. So much for freedoms in a corporate controlled environment. If you wish to follow the wishes of the author of this post and watch this video at this point as intended, it is still available on YouTube at the following link: http://youtu.be/lYtbKXCaQx4 ) 


Three generations of my family fought in the Revolution as soldiers of the 26th Massachusetts Regiment under Colonel Baldwin. The Regiment was involved in the siege of Boston, and distinguished itself at the battle at Throg's Neck NY where, wildly outnumbered, they managed to hold off the British until General Washington and his troops could escape to White Plains, NY. They were involved in the battle there, and were with Washington when he crossed the Delaware. They would have been billeted at the barracks in Trenton. Of my three family members there, I think it was my great-great-great grandfather Hiram, who was a teenager at the time.

My post on this blog last year told how, during one particular July 4th during my years in New York City, I began to be uncomfortable in crowds. That post has this link, which still works, to the great Jean Shepherd radio broadcast which tells the 4th of July story of Ludlow Kissell and the Dago Bomb That Stuck Back. When you can, take the 42 or so minutes to listen to a master storyteller, please. You'll be glad you did.

The best July 4th celebrations I know are held every year in Boston. I was somewhat skittish about being in large crowds by the time I lived in Boston, but in 1989 I went downtown to the oldest part of town and took a few pictures of the events of the day. It is on July 4th every year that the USS Constitution, anchored in Boston harbor, is taken out into the bay. The yearly trip is required to keep the ships' commission. The ship is better known as "Old Ironsides".

Every year, there is a small parade which winds its way through the old streets, pausing briefly at sites such as the Granary Burial Grounds, which is the final resting place of three signers of the Declaration of Independence (Sam Adams, Robert Treat Paine, and John Hancock), a number of Revolutionary era patriots including Paul Revere, the victims of the Boston Massacre, and Mary "Mother" Goose (yes, really!). The parade stops again at the Old State House. It was there that the Boston Massacre took place, where British troops opened fire on protesting colonists. The pavement there is marked with a circle of granite where the first American to die for the cause of independency, an escaped slave named Crispus Attucks, fell dead.

It was from the balcony of the Old State House that the Declaration of Independence was first read to the people of the United states. It is read aloud there every year on the 4th. Being asked to do so used to be one of the greatest of honors in Boston.

The parade ends at Faneuil Hall, now better known as the Boston Market. The hall is upstairs; many a debate and meeting held there laid the groundwork for the Revolution. When I lived in Boston, every year on the 4th of July a topic of current public interest would be presented and debated there.
The old Boston and Quincy markets are now a tourist attraction. It was the first such historical place redeveloped by the Rouse Corporation, a creator of indoor shopping malls.

Back at the Old State House, there was a special ceremony that July 4th of 1989. A reproduction of the Liberty Statue that had been in Tiananmen Square in China that June was brought in. It was in Tiananmen Square that a large scale people's protest demanding freedoms was put down by massacring the protesters. I moved closer to get a better look. There standing on the spot where the Boston Massacre had taken place, was Ray Flynn, the mayor of Boston, and Shen Tong, one of the student leaders of the Tiananmen protests.

Mr. Shen had managed to escape the massacre and evaded the manhunt for his arrest. He simply boarded a plane out of China. No one stopped him. He was a hero. He was in his last days of being a teenager at the time.

Brattleboro used to have wonderful 4th of July parades. A friend and I used to drive out from Boston to attend them. Some years back, a local group whose mission was to shut down the local "Yankee" nuclear plant, was told it could no longer participate in the parade; marchers were no longer to protest anything at all, they were only allowed to celebrate our freedoms, thank you very much. The parade was largely financed by the nuclear power plant. People began to stay away. And although in subsequent years the protests were allowed to resume, the parade never really regained its footing nor did it ever regain the crowds that used to attend.

After the Columbia/TriStar office in which I worked in Boston was closed, I moved here. I was in my later 40's and worked three low wage jobs to pay the basic bills. I eventually ended up working for a co-operative organic food wholesaler. After a number of good years, the company went public and was bought (a behind the scenes deal) and I was out of work again. It was a year later before I found work as a clerk in a video store. By the following year, I was managing the store and ordering all the retail goods for both of the stores belonging to the owner. I eventually took over all of the owners work, ordering all of the rental titles for both stores. I worked about 15 hours a day and averaged about two days off a month. After a full year of such work, the owner took me out to lunch. He proceeded to tell me everything he thought I had been doing wrong for the last year. I asked when I was going to get the raise he had promised me over 6 months before. A few days later, he gave me work to do that meant I had to be in the store on the Fourth of July, which was to be my first day off in over a month. I was exhausted and dispirited. The job had taken over my life, most of my friends had fallen away as I no longer had time for them, and had offended some of them unintentionally and unknowingly. My health had suffered, I injured my knee and exacerbated the arthritis there, my skin condition started, and my weight ballooned. That July the 4th, I quit. That decision probably saved my health and mind. But it ruined me financially and spiritually. I could not find work. It was 2008 and the Great Recession had begun.

Now, a few months shy of 62 and early retirement, I usually end up working my low wage job on July the 4th. With reduced hours, standard now for two and a half years, I can barely afford rent and food. The date no longer gives me much of a thrill. That dream is gone. I work with a number of teenagers. I look at them, and realize that they live in a world that is so different from mine, at least the one in my head. America is no longer a moral force in the world. We no longer work for the common good. They either accept, or don't care, or don't feel there is anything they can do that we are now a country that tortures prisoners and marches off to preventative wars. That corporations own and cheapen everything that isn't reserved for the economic ruling class. That extraordinary amounts of money are spent in attempts to purchase the Presidency to the benefit of competing business interests. That unions are said to have almost destroyed the well being of our economy. They think it is right to give up liberty in order to preserve it. Their popular culture is as manufactured and crass as their music and the news they get from television, much of the internet, and the costly remaining newspapers. Their media and their television doesn't expose the lie, it is the lie. They spend their work breaks texting local friends or playing games on their cell phones. They have been fattened on processed chemicals instead of real whole foods, which are only for the well off now. I think about the social progress of the last few years, anti-bullying, obtaining basic rights for gay people, the first steps to getting healthcare for everyone. And it seems to me that these are battles largely being waged by the last remnants of the generations who came of age in the the tumult of the 1960's and 70's. I search the faces around me, but I see few who might become heroes of liberty. July the Fourth is now a day to work, get drunk, set off illegal fireworks, go shopping, and barbecue ever more expensive foodstuffs. The battles in which three generations of my forefathers fought are longer remembered. The ideals and progress built up in this country for the everyday citizen are being forgotten; they are becoming passe. I wonder if our teens would risk their lives for liberty? I look around me, and the only thought I have is, Momma, look sharp.

My best wishes for the Fourth to all those who remember, and still care.

Happiness and Moments of Pleasure

As difficult as it sometimes can be, identifying, noting, and remembering moments of happiness and pleasure in our lives is of great importance. Over the years, I've found that documenting such moments helps. How many sunrises or sunsets have you watched whose beauty astounded you, which filled you with moments of peace and happiness you thought you would always remember? How many do you actually remember? When I had money to afford a decent camera and pursue my photographic interests, I took occasional pictures of sunsets. Finding them 20 some years later (how have so many years passed?) I stare at them blankly for a moment, and wonder why I took that particular picture? Was it the sunset, was I there with someone 'special', was I experimenting with low light photography? Here's an example - I took this at the beach in Provincetown, MA in October of 1989 (really, can it really be so long ago? Did I really take it in September and just didn't get it developed until October?). I should also note that my scanner seems to have a bad case of dust that won't dust off of the glass plate. I suppose I shall have to take it apart and clean the underside.

Text can capture such moments to preserve as well. Thus it is that I must note that yesterday, upon returning to my little hovel after my less than rewarding and almost completely energy debilitating employment of 10am to 6pm, I found that my new coffee maker had arrived. It took a couple of hours before I had a moment to open the package. I had guessed right - its coffee grounds receptacle was a cone, not a basket. I smiled that little happiness smile.

This morning (work today is noon to 8pm) I am happily in the process of cleaning it for its first use. The instruction manual which came with it offers specific instructions for this process. It suggests two full "brews" using just water to clean out the system. The instructions further tell me to "see 'Brewing Instructions' on p. 7." There is no page 7. Actually, there is a page 7 if one continues into the instructions in Spanish and turns the booklet upside down in order to read them. And my gosh, the 'Brewing Instructions" are there as "Instrucciones De Uso". In case you are wondering, the English version of those instructions are right under the "Before You Use Your Coffeemaker" section on the first page of text. By the way, the English instructions note that after brewing the first cup of water, one should turn off the machine and let it cool for 10 minutes. In the Spanish version, it notes that one should let the machine cool for 15 minutes. I guess time is different in Spanish speaking countries. Which could, of course, be a sort of proof for Einstein's theory that time is relative.

Time with the internet is relative, too. I started this post early this morning. I should have started it last night (I was too tired after I got home from work) and wished austanspace a Happy Birthday. While constructing it, I've done a few hours of work on stuff for the radio station, and finally had that first cup of coffee from the new machine. It's good. Not quite as good as the old machine with the built up years of coffee residue in the reusable and washable filter, but it's good. And I smile. Then I notice the time and how late I am to start getting ready for work and I panic...