Members of the Society for the Protection of Clichés (SPOC) are planning to disrupt the ribbon cutting ceremony marking the official opening of the new Route 44.
SPOC members believe that with the ability to travel quickly from Plymouth to Middleboro, residents of our historic community are perilously close to being able to ‘get there from here’, casting doubt on the veracity of one our regions most famous clichés and, possibly, endangering our very way of life.
“Our quaint customs and cultural eccentricities provide the rest of the nation with some important comic relief,” SPOC President Homer Kingsbury told this reporter last week. “But behind every joke, there’s a kernel of truth. And the truth here is that we New Englanders treasure our isolation.”
“Efficient highways and mass transit are the enemies of that isolation”, Kingsbury continued, “and that’s why we feel it necessary to take this unprecedented action.”
Despite the signs, no one –not even the SPOC, thought this day would ever arrive.
The New Route 44 has been in the planning stages for the last 300 years but, until this century, had never actually progressed beyond vague suggestions and election promises.
Even when the first section was finished several years ago, the delay in completing the connecting roadway was widely assumed to be proof of that famous old adage’s ‘truth’.
Besides, local wits had argued, the real reason the first section of the road was constructed, was so that Wal-Mart could have its own thirty million dollar exit ramp.
At this moment Exit 7 off the Expressway remains a glorified driveway – where wayward commuters find they are limited to a choice of a trip to the Super-Duper Wal-Mart, several gravel operations, the Independence Mall, or an endless, giddy loop de loop between each.
It appears that this circus ride is finally about to come to an end- but questions remain.
Will faster translate in to an improved quality of life?
Will Carver finally get their share of parking lots and abandoned strip malls?
Will this just be another excuse for building another dozen Dunkin Donuts?
And more importantly, shouldn’t Monopoly games have a Cement Truck along with the sports car, top hat, and battleship?
Speaking of Top Hats, on the press release listing the dignitaries expected for the upcoming ribbon cutting ceremony, representatives of Wal-Mart are conspicuously absent. This seems to lend credence to the rumor that, given that they no longer have a ‘captive audience’, plans are already underway to abandon the new super-sized Wal-Mart for Clark Island, which corporate officials allegedly have purchased and renamed Sam’s Island.
Rumors aside, now that the old ‘new’ 44 is about to open, a new problem has emerged: what should they call the old new road, and/or how should we refer to the new ‘old’ 44?
To local residents who have experienced the epic saga of Route 44 firsthand, what the new and old roads are called is a critical issue. They know that the so-called New 44 is actually not so new, having been conceived during the Revolutionary War, designed during the Eisenhower administration, and finally completed a millennium later.
The new 44 will connect to a not-as-new section that runs from Carver to Middleboro, an even older segment that runs from Middleboro to Taunton, and a road that is 44 by name only, meandering from Taunton to Providence without rhyme or reason.
Taking all of this history into account, I feel the old new section should be called The Billington Highway, in honor of the two Billington brothers -passengers on the Mayflower, who became famous for their complete lack of a sense of direction
I would also suggest that the new old section – the quaint, dangerous roadway that still winds past an endless series of cemeteries, ponds and campgrounds through West Plymouth into North Carver, also be called The Billington Highway.
Calling both roads by the same name would create confusion as to how you actually get ‘there from here’ or ‘here from there’, allaying the fears of SPOC members.
Deliberately confusing travelers from outside of the area, would also ensure that at least a modicum of tourists become lost, and are forced to stop at Billington Highway’s famous used book and cranberry gift shops, to ask for directions.
Confused?
Lost?
Looking for the going out of business sale at the old new Super-Sized Wal-Mart?
At least the price of gas is coming down.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Saturday, December 10, 2005
By the Numbers
Did you get yours?
I got mine.
Well, actually, I got it but I left it out, where it lay, in the driveway: as a kind of warning to anyone else who might try to give me another one.
To be honest, I didn’t see it at first, lying there, in the leaves, in its little plastic bag.
And when I recognized what it was, and that it was too heavy for the wind to blow away, I went into denial.
It can’t be that time again, I thought: didn’t we just get another one last month? I looked on top of my refrigerator, where we keep ours, and sure enough there were at least three or four big, bright yellow ones, still in their packages, gathering dust.
Time is certainly flying by, I thought.
But I let it lie there another few days more, anyway.
I was worried I’d throw my back out if I tried to pick it up.
Were they always this big?
My eyes aren’t all that bad, but they’re bad enough to make reading it pretty difficult. Not that I read it very often.
And when I do have a reason to consult ‘it’, I never know which one to use first. Besides the 30-pounder that we got last week, there’s a few ten pounders as well, and even a few minnows.
I’d like to throw them all back.
Isn’t there a pocket-sized, digital, voice activated IPod version? Really, aren’t all these phone books already obsolete?
Somewhere in this country, there has to be a house made of phone books. They use particle board to build some houses, why not the yellow pages instead.
I’ll bet if we gathered all the phone books delivered last month we would have enough to build a nice single family house. And we could donate it Habitat for Humanity. I’m not being disrespectful, but it just seems such a waste of paper, and space.
I don’t want anyone to lose their jobs over this, so maybe we could have the people who deliver these, trained to memorize every name in the book – or at least the number of every restaurant in the area. Then they could walk down the street like Town Criers: need a number, they’d recite it for you, and then you could tip them.
They wouldn’t have to know too many other numbers, besides restaurants. I have the number of my Well Guy memorized.
Maybe we could use digital technology to create personalized phone books, with only the numbers you want in them?
Maybe those civil war re-enactors could use them to shoot from their cannons: God knows that they’re as heavy as lead and nearly as deadly.
Can you opt out?
I have a feeling that if I told the mysterious them that I didn’t want any more phone books, my name would go on a list of what the frightening they refer to these days as, ‘persons of interest’. Then again, I am probably already on that list.
What about a directory of ‘rabble rousers’: I’d use that book!
Remember when it was considered unusual to have an unlisted phone number? Now most people think that it’s unusual to list your number, or foolish, or risky. Who are those people then, in page after page of residential listings? I’ll bet if you chose names from these books at random to call, half of the people selected would have their answering machines on, anyway.
Maybe they should have a separate book for people with listed phone numbers that you can be sure will not answer when you call?
Speaking of not answering, did you hear about the latest ‘offer’ from the big retail chains: they used it for the After Thanksgiving Day Sales? If you sign up, and give them your number, they will call to remind you of a big sale. Target customers could even specify what celebrity voice they’d wanted to hear.
It was sad to hear that Kermit the Frog had sunk so low. Then again, maybe that’s where the phone book people should direct their attention. How heavy would the phone book be that had only the names of those foolish enough to respond to phone solicitations?
Five pounds, ten, twenty?
Maybe this new book really has some interesting things in it?
Maybe I really can’t live without it?
Maybe it is made from vegetables and is 100% edible?
Maybe it burns clean, and produces a beautiful, long-lasting flame?
Maybe there are secret messages hidden in the lists of names that, if decoded, would show the location of a fabulous treasure or give you Brittney’s personal cell phone number?
Maybe I should rescue it from my driveway before the first big snow?
I got mine.
Well, actually, I got it but I left it out, where it lay, in the driveway: as a kind of warning to anyone else who might try to give me another one.
To be honest, I didn’t see it at first, lying there, in the leaves, in its little plastic bag.
And when I recognized what it was, and that it was too heavy for the wind to blow away, I went into denial.
It can’t be that time again, I thought: didn’t we just get another one last month? I looked on top of my refrigerator, where we keep ours, and sure enough there were at least three or four big, bright yellow ones, still in their packages, gathering dust.
Time is certainly flying by, I thought.
But I let it lie there another few days more, anyway.
I was worried I’d throw my back out if I tried to pick it up.
Were they always this big?
My eyes aren’t all that bad, but they’re bad enough to make reading it pretty difficult. Not that I read it very often.
And when I do have a reason to consult ‘it’, I never know which one to use first. Besides the 30-pounder that we got last week, there’s a few ten pounders as well, and even a few minnows.
I’d like to throw them all back.
Isn’t there a pocket-sized, digital, voice activated IPod version? Really, aren’t all these phone books already obsolete?
Somewhere in this country, there has to be a house made of phone books. They use particle board to build some houses, why not the yellow pages instead.
I’ll bet if we gathered all the phone books delivered last month we would have enough to build a nice single family house. And we could donate it Habitat for Humanity. I’m not being disrespectful, but it just seems such a waste of paper, and space.
I don’t want anyone to lose their jobs over this, so maybe we could have the people who deliver these, trained to memorize every name in the book – or at least the number of every restaurant in the area. Then they could walk down the street like Town Criers: need a number, they’d recite it for you, and then you could tip them.
They wouldn’t have to know too many other numbers, besides restaurants. I have the number of my Well Guy memorized.
Maybe we could use digital technology to create personalized phone books, with only the numbers you want in them?
Maybe those civil war re-enactors could use them to shoot from their cannons: God knows that they’re as heavy as lead and nearly as deadly.
Can you opt out?
I have a feeling that if I told the mysterious them that I didn’t want any more phone books, my name would go on a list of what the frightening they refer to these days as, ‘persons of interest’. Then again, I am probably already on that list.
What about a directory of ‘rabble rousers’: I’d use that book!
Remember when it was considered unusual to have an unlisted phone number? Now most people think that it’s unusual to list your number, or foolish, or risky. Who are those people then, in page after page of residential listings? I’ll bet if you chose names from these books at random to call, half of the people selected would have their answering machines on, anyway.
Maybe they should have a separate book for people with listed phone numbers that you can be sure will not answer when you call?
Speaking of not answering, did you hear about the latest ‘offer’ from the big retail chains: they used it for the After Thanksgiving Day Sales? If you sign up, and give them your number, they will call to remind you of a big sale. Target customers could even specify what celebrity voice they’d wanted to hear.
It was sad to hear that Kermit the Frog had sunk so low. Then again, maybe that’s where the phone book people should direct their attention. How heavy would the phone book be that had only the names of those foolish enough to respond to phone solicitations?
Five pounds, ten, twenty?
Maybe this new book really has some interesting things in it?
Maybe I really can’t live without it?
Maybe it is made from vegetables and is 100% edible?
Maybe it burns clean, and produces a beautiful, long-lasting flame?
Maybe there are secret messages hidden in the lists of names that, if decoded, would show the location of a fabulous treasure or give you Brittney’s personal cell phone number?
Maybe I should rescue it from my driveway before the first big snow?
Saturday, December 03, 2005
White Space
Don’t be mad at me, for saying it, but I want snow for Christmas. I don’t care if it doesn’t snow again, but on Christmas day I like the white.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a light coating year round. It covers up a multitude of sins: fills in the places on the shutters where the paint has cracked and peeled; evens out the lumps in the lawn; covers over the un-raked leaves; makes our undulating driveway look like something out of a poem by Frost.
Even squirrels look good in the snow: their tracks are intriguing, mysterious, nothing like the little beasts themselves.
All tracks in the snow, whether from cars or people, deer or dogs, seem to suggest something better passed this way.
Even the rain dripping off the telephone lines, criss-crossing our driveway, leaves tracks in the snow.
And just a light coating of snow softens the world in so many other ways.
Cars crunch by, a bit louder perhaps but sounding very similar to the sound the snow makes when you are rolling up the first scoops of a snowman.
The harsh sounds that we normally make when we speak to one another, just seem to come out of your mouth and lie there, at your feet, when there’s snow.
Even the shape of the world is changed, after just an hour of two of steady snowfall.
One car looks just like another.
Mailboxes wear hats.
The leaves in the gutter look like Frosted Flakes.
Our Weber grill looks like a poached egg waiting for a spoon.
It makes you want to explore areas that, just an hour or two before, you couldn’t be bothered to look at as you passed.
It makes you want to visit friends, who though they live right up the street, you haven’t seen in months. Arriving at someone’s doorstep in the snow, makes you feel as if you are as bright and capricious as the weather.
Some friends are snow friends, aren’t they? There are some people that you can’t imagine visiting, surprising, in the snow. But there are others who seem to be waiting for just such as occasion.
Dan and Sally are just such friends. Friends I always wait too long to see. The last time I visited them was, when the Tiki torches were lit, I think? Or was it the Halloween I dressed up as the ‘Undecided Voter’: that was spooky!
I bet it will snow when they read this column.
Maybe I should just leave the rest of this column blank: leave a little white space.
Maybe if you are quiet, and wait, and watch, this column will begin to fill up with white.
It will be indiscernible at first, filling the margins that are already blank, but then beginning to cover up the words, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, until all that remains showing is the first line: “Don’t be mad at me for saying it, but I want snow for Christmas. I don’t care if it doesn’t snow again, but on Christmas day I like..
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a light coating year round. It covers up a multitude of sins: fills in the places on the shutters where the paint has cracked and peeled; evens out the lumps in the lawn; covers over the un-raked leaves; makes our undulating driveway look like something out of a poem by Frost.
Even squirrels look good in the snow: their tracks are intriguing, mysterious, nothing like the little beasts themselves.
All tracks in the snow, whether from cars or people, deer or dogs, seem to suggest something better passed this way.
Even the rain dripping off the telephone lines, criss-crossing our driveway, leaves tracks in the snow.
And just a light coating of snow softens the world in so many other ways.
Cars crunch by, a bit louder perhaps but sounding very similar to the sound the snow makes when you are rolling up the first scoops of a snowman.
The harsh sounds that we normally make when we speak to one another, just seem to come out of your mouth and lie there, at your feet, when there’s snow.
Even the shape of the world is changed, after just an hour of two of steady snowfall.
One car looks just like another.
Mailboxes wear hats.
The leaves in the gutter look like Frosted Flakes.
Our Weber grill looks like a poached egg waiting for a spoon.
It makes you want to explore areas that, just an hour or two before, you couldn’t be bothered to look at as you passed.
It makes you want to visit friends, who though they live right up the street, you haven’t seen in months. Arriving at someone’s doorstep in the snow, makes you feel as if you are as bright and capricious as the weather.
Some friends are snow friends, aren’t they? There are some people that you can’t imagine visiting, surprising, in the snow. But there are others who seem to be waiting for just such as occasion.
Dan and Sally are just such friends. Friends I always wait too long to see. The last time I visited them was, when the Tiki torches were lit, I think? Or was it the Halloween I dressed up as the ‘Undecided Voter’: that was spooky!
I bet it will snow when they read this column.
Maybe I should just leave the rest of this column blank: leave a little white space.
Maybe if you are quiet, and wait, and watch, this column will begin to fill up with white.
It will be indiscernible at first, filling the margins that are already blank, but then beginning to cover up the words, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, until all that remains showing is the first line: “Don’t be mad at me for saying it, but I want snow for Christmas. I don’t care if it doesn’t snow again, but on Christmas day I like..
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Pillar Fight
Georgie is at it again: I suppose we should be happy that at least he's come out of his hole, even if its only so that he could tell us how hard he's been working.
And what has he been working on - why Victory in Iraq, don't you know: a detailed (as far as he will go at least), three-pronged strategy for defeating the terrorists, re-building the country, and spreading democracy. Kind of like a series of fertilizer treatments, to kill the crab grass, encourage the good grass to grow, and make the lawn nice and green so it fits in with the neighbor's lawns.
The 38 page report that they distributed today, concludes with several pages of what they call "The Strategic Pillars":
The first pillar is "Defeat the Terrorists and Neutralize the Insurgency", which even I think is an improvement on their previous strategy of attracting terrorists and ignoring the insurgency. Of course they just kind of ignore their past mistakes, and hope no one notices. "Heck," their spokesmen say, "this has been the plan all along. Honest!".
The second pillar is "Transition Iraq to Security Self-Reliance", which is a hoot: kind of like saying, 'transition the junkie to a drug-free mobile home park'. Easier said than done. And what happened to those hordes of well wishers that were going to greet our troops like Jesus on his way into Jerusalem? And you know how that turned out.
The third pillar is "Help Iraqis Form a National Compact for Democratic Government", which is awkwardly put, but I think means that we are going to lead the horse to water, and then make him drink, as soon that is, as we get the water running again, and the oil, and electricity. Once the lights stay on, Democracy is a cinch.
Pillar Five is "Help Iraq Strengthen its Economy", which is something I think we should have thought of before we bombed the crap out of every major city in Iraq. But hey, its kind of what the new owners of a sports franchise would do after paying the big bucks for the team: raise ticket prices, knock down the old stadium, and build a new one with taxpayers money, being sure to add plenty of sky boxes for rich sponsors. Right now they're negotiating with a major corporation for naming rights: not for a stadium, for the whole country. They were all set to go with Enronia, but that pillar of society had its own problems.
Pillar Six is "Help Iraq Strengthen the Rule of Law and Promote Civil Rights" and after they're sure that this pillar is up, they're going to try and do the same here in America. It's going to be difficult though, what with the way George has been dissing the Geneva Convention, arguing for the right to torture prisoners, laughing at the world court, hiding prisoners all around the world and letting the local Taliban screw with everybody.
And then on the same day that they offer up Pillar Seven -"Increase International Support for Iraq", it's revealed they've been paying millions to a contractor who pays Iraqi journalists to slip in propaganda pieces into Iraqi newspapers. Oh well, at least they're trying. And anyway, after Abu Ghraib and the discovery of the secret torture prisons run by our favorite Iraqis, I don't think they are really serious, or care, about their reputations.
And this was always, the report insists, part of their master plan all along. Even that 'Mission Accomplished" banner and George posing in San Diego harbor, were part of their brilliant plan for victory in Iraq.
"You see I was pretendin," George seems to be saying, winking and grinnin, and squinting at the teleprompter. "I was pretendin we had already won, to fool the terrorists in to thinkin they had already lost, to lull them into a false sense of security, so we could sneak up on em and hit them with this big plan here, and these pillars.."
"And lord knows in a pillar fight -at least the kind like me and Condi have down in Crawford after the misses is asleep, the guy with the biggest pillar wins every time.
And what has he been working on - why Victory in Iraq, don't you know: a detailed (as far as he will go at least), three-pronged strategy for defeating the terrorists, re-building the country, and spreading democracy. Kind of like a series of fertilizer treatments, to kill the crab grass, encourage the good grass to grow, and make the lawn nice and green so it fits in with the neighbor's lawns.
The 38 page report that they distributed today, concludes with several pages of what they call "The Strategic Pillars":
The first pillar is "Defeat the Terrorists and Neutralize the Insurgency", which even I think is an improvement on their previous strategy of attracting terrorists and ignoring the insurgency. Of course they just kind of ignore their past mistakes, and hope no one notices. "Heck," their spokesmen say, "this has been the plan all along. Honest!".
The second pillar is "Transition Iraq to Security Self-Reliance", which is a hoot: kind of like saying, 'transition the junkie to a drug-free mobile home park'. Easier said than done. And what happened to those hordes of well wishers that were going to greet our troops like Jesus on his way into Jerusalem? And you know how that turned out.
The third pillar is "Help Iraqis Form a National Compact for Democratic Government", which is awkwardly put, but I think means that we are going to lead the horse to water, and then make him drink, as soon that is, as we get the water running again, and the oil, and electricity. Once the lights stay on, Democracy is a cinch.
Pillar Five is "Help Iraq Strengthen its Economy", which is something I think we should have thought of before we bombed the crap out of every major city in Iraq. But hey, its kind of what the new owners of a sports franchise would do after paying the big bucks for the team: raise ticket prices, knock down the old stadium, and build a new one with taxpayers money, being sure to add plenty of sky boxes for rich sponsors. Right now they're negotiating with a major corporation for naming rights: not for a stadium, for the whole country. They were all set to go with Enronia, but that pillar of society had its own problems.
Pillar Six is "Help Iraq Strengthen the Rule of Law and Promote Civil Rights" and after they're sure that this pillar is up, they're going to try and do the same here in America. It's going to be difficult though, what with the way George has been dissing the Geneva Convention, arguing for the right to torture prisoners, laughing at the world court, hiding prisoners all around the world and letting the local Taliban screw with everybody.
And then on the same day that they offer up Pillar Seven -"Increase International Support for Iraq", it's revealed they've been paying millions to a contractor who pays Iraqi journalists to slip in propaganda pieces into Iraqi newspapers. Oh well, at least they're trying. And anyway, after Abu Ghraib and the discovery of the secret torture prisons run by our favorite Iraqis, I don't think they are really serious, or care, about their reputations.
And this was always, the report insists, part of their master plan all along. Even that 'Mission Accomplished" banner and George posing in San Diego harbor, were part of their brilliant plan for victory in Iraq.
"You see I was pretendin," George seems to be saying, winking and grinnin, and squinting at the teleprompter. "I was pretendin we had already won, to fool the terrorists in to thinkin they had already lost, to lull them into a false sense of security, so we could sneak up on em and hit them with this big plan here, and these pillars.."
"And lord knows in a pillar fight -at least the kind like me and Condi have down in Crawford after the misses is asleep, the guy with the biggest pillar wins every time.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Limited Edition Aged Turkey Day Corn Chowder Recipe
Okay, I give in: here’s the recipe for my famous Turkey Day Corn Chowder. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
• Thanksgiving Day
That’s right, this must only be served on Thanksgiving Day, preferably in the morning, before the fog has burned off, and well in advance of the big meal of the day.
• A parking lot
You can’t serve this chowder indoors: it tastes best ladled out of a big pot sitting in the trunk. Given that you also need to serve this on Thanksgiving Day, you will need to search for your location well in advance. I serve this in the parking lot behind Burial Hill in Plymouth, across from the old Police Station. One alternative location might be a lot by the football field where the local game is played.
• Seasonal weather
Some chowders work well in any season, but this nuclear fuel is best served outdoors, at temperatures between 10 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Close friends (4 or more)
This is a critical component, for a variety of reasons. First, who loves you enough to taste, let alone eat this cholesterol-loving power chowder? Good friends at least feel obligated to give it a try. Second, why risk this on family members?
• Bacon
¾ pound of it, cut up in to ½ inch size pieces and barely browned in a big pot. If you are a vegetarian you are out of luck. If you just read Charlotte’s Web you may shed a tear. If you just listened to Aaron Copeland’s ‘Rodeo’ and you are already salivating, go ahead and add the remaining ¼ pound of bacon.
• Did I mention rain?
The worse the weather, the better the taste: in fact, the colder the better. Cold and rainy is perfect; though do try to keep the trunk half-shut to keep the chowder from becoming diluted.
• Onion
A nice, mild, medium size onion, diced and placed in the pot with the bacon just before it browns, giving it just enough time to tenderize.
• Weight conscious guests
For dramatic effect, it helps if your guests are watching their weight, and their cholesterol, and perhaps even complaining of chest pains just prior to you serving up big heaping steaming helpings of this chowder, and exclaiming as you do, “Don’t worry, it’s only 1000 calories per ‘serving’.”
• Cream
The main reason for the calories: a quart of heavy cream, or more. If you want the ‘mouth feel’ that tells your brain that all is right with the world, real cream is a clear requirement. If you want a chowder that is a powder keg of flavor, pour on the cream. If you want to strike fear in your middle-aged friends, when they ask you why it tastes so good, just wink and say: ‘nothing that tastes this good can be good for you’.
• Burial Hill
I’ve changed my mind about the football field. That’s a chef’s prerogative. This chowder was created for, and has only been served on Burial Hill on Thanksgiving Day morning, and that’s the way I want it to stay. If you need something warm at the big game, stop by Dunkin Donuts. If you want to join us Thanksgiving Day morning, you’re welcome to stop by. But bring your own chowder.
I mean, come on: can anything top having an al fresco brunch on Burial Hill on this holiday morning, well before the big meal of the day? We have champagne mimosas, pumpkin bread, pastries, coffee and corn chowder, and then head up over the hill to watch the Pilgrim’s Progress.
It’s amazing: the whole country is celebrating this holiday, but only a few dozen people manage to make it to this spot, stand on the historic hill overlooking an often mist-covered Plymouth harbor, and listen to costumed descendants perform a line reading of psalms that the pilgrims themselves may have sung nearly 400 years ago.
• Potatoes
6-8 medium sized potatoes, of any variety, depending on your sense of how the chowder should look, and sound.
I like to use Yukon Jack, for their color and flavor, but also for this variety’s ability to retain its shape over 24 hours of slow cooking. Out of the ladle or the thermos my chowder gurgles and glugs and drops noisily into the bowl. You may prefer a different spud that dissolves into the mixture as it slowly cooks, creating a very thick but smooth soup.
• White Shoepeg Corn
No substitutions here, and this may prove the most difficult of the ingredients to find. The Shoepeg variety is not common, and goes quickly at this time of year. But other varieties are not as tart, and not as sturdy.
In the end, despite the long, slow cook process, each of the ingredients needs to retain its identity or what you have is lovely, warm, baby food.
• Old Friends
We have been meeting on Burial Hill Thanksgiving Day morning for 25 years, and every year though we get older, the chowder gets better. Or at least, it seems better. Or so I am told. It may not be the taste. No one lies better than friends who love you.
• Tradition
Traditions are the tried and true spices of life: the ingredients with which we slowly and inevitably bring out the rich flavors of the everyday.
Oh, and don’t forget to season (garlic, salt, pepper) the chowder as it cooks, to taste.
If you give this chowder the care it deserves, the time it requires, and the ingredients I have listed, you’re sure to really have something special, in ten years or so.
• Thanksgiving Day
That’s right, this must only be served on Thanksgiving Day, preferably in the morning, before the fog has burned off, and well in advance of the big meal of the day.
• A parking lot
You can’t serve this chowder indoors: it tastes best ladled out of a big pot sitting in the trunk. Given that you also need to serve this on Thanksgiving Day, you will need to search for your location well in advance. I serve this in the parking lot behind Burial Hill in Plymouth, across from the old Police Station. One alternative location might be a lot by the football field where the local game is played.
• Seasonal weather
Some chowders work well in any season, but this nuclear fuel is best served outdoors, at temperatures between 10 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Close friends (4 or more)
This is a critical component, for a variety of reasons. First, who loves you enough to taste, let alone eat this cholesterol-loving power chowder? Good friends at least feel obligated to give it a try. Second, why risk this on family members?
• Bacon
¾ pound of it, cut up in to ½ inch size pieces and barely browned in a big pot. If you are a vegetarian you are out of luck. If you just read Charlotte’s Web you may shed a tear. If you just listened to Aaron Copeland’s ‘Rodeo’ and you are already salivating, go ahead and add the remaining ¼ pound of bacon.
• Did I mention rain?
The worse the weather, the better the taste: in fact, the colder the better. Cold and rainy is perfect; though do try to keep the trunk half-shut to keep the chowder from becoming diluted.
• Onion
A nice, mild, medium size onion, diced and placed in the pot with the bacon just before it browns, giving it just enough time to tenderize.
• Weight conscious guests
For dramatic effect, it helps if your guests are watching their weight, and their cholesterol, and perhaps even complaining of chest pains just prior to you serving up big heaping steaming helpings of this chowder, and exclaiming as you do, “Don’t worry, it’s only 1000 calories per ‘serving’.”
• Cream
The main reason for the calories: a quart of heavy cream, or more. If you want the ‘mouth feel’ that tells your brain that all is right with the world, real cream is a clear requirement. If you want a chowder that is a powder keg of flavor, pour on the cream. If you want to strike fear in your middle-aged friends, when they ask you why it tastes so good, just wink and say: ‘nothing that tastes this good can be good for you’.
• Burial Hill
I’ve changed my mind about the football field. That’s a chef’s prerogative. This chowder was created for, and has only been served on Burial Hill on Thanksgiving Day morning, and that’s the way I want it to stay. If you need something warm at the big game, stop by Dunkin Donuts. If you want to join us Thanksgiving Day morning, you’re welcome to stop by. But bring your own chowder.
I mean, come on: can anything top having an al fresco brunch on Burial Hill on this holiday morning, well before the big meal of the day? We have champagne mimosas, pumpkin bread, pastries, coffee and corn chowder, and then head up over the hill to watch the Pilgrim’s Progress.
It’s amazing: the whole country is celebrating this holiday, but only a few dozen people manage to make it to this spot, stand on the historic hill overlooking an often mist-covered Plymouth harbor, and listen to costumed descendants perform a line reading of psalms that the pilgrims themselves may have sung nearly 400 years ago.
• Potatoes
6-8 medium sized potatoes, of any variety, depending on your sense of how the chowder should look, and sound.
I like to use Yukon Jack, for their color and flavor, but also for this variety’s ability to retain its shape over 24 hours of slow cooking. Out of the ladle or the thermos my chowder gurgles and glugs and drops noisily into the bowl. You may prefer a different spud that dissolves into the mixture as it slowly cooks, creating a very thick but smooth soup.
• White Shoepeg Corn
No substitutions here, and this may prove the most difficult of the ingredients to find. The Shoepeg variety is not common, and goes quickly at this time of year. But other varieties are not as tart, and not as sturdy.
In the end, despite the long, slow cook process, each of the ingredients needs to retain its identity or what you have is lovely, warm, baby food.
• Old Friends
We have been meeting on Burial Hill Thanksgiving Day morning for 25 years, and every year though we get older, the chowder gets better. Or at least, it seems better. Or so I am told. It may not be the taste. No one lies better than friends who love you.
• Tradition
Traditions are the tried and true spices of life: the ingredients with which we slowly and inevitably bring out the rich flavors of the everyday.
Oh, and don’t forget to season (garlic, salt, pepper) the chowder as it cooks, to taste.
If you give this chowder the care it deserves, the time it requires, and the ingredients I have listed, you’re sure to really have something special, in ten years or so.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Freebies!
This is my first annual Plymouth Freebies Award column.
I thought it was about time to recognize the generosity –if that’s what it really is, of those in our community who give out free things.
Of course Plymouth is not unique in this regard: almost everywhere you go in this country, people are promising ‘free stuff’. But I am only concerned with those free things that I can get my hands on without too much trouble.
And you know me (a little, I think): I am not really interested in really free things, but instead, in those things that they tell us are free but are actually something else. I am interested in the way ‘free’, usually means anything but.
So let’s dispose of the really free right off.
The best really free thing in Plymouth is, tah dah -The Plimoth Plantation.
If you actually live in town, you get in free. That can save you hundreds of dollars, especially if you’re like my wife and I, and use the Plantation as our own personal Nanny. Whenever we want to go out for some ‘adult time’, we take the kids to the Plantation and leave them there for a few hours.
We don’t just drop them off though: we’ve figured out that it works best if they blend in, so we had a few child-size Pilgrim costumes made up. Several times they’ve even come home with tips!
I would also be remiss (and would have missed a chance to kiss up to the boss, big time) if I didn’t mention the Bulletin. It’s free too! Most of you knew that, but let me take this opportunity to apologize to a few of my neighbors to whom I sold trial subscriptions at a very reasonable rate before the first issue came out. The bad news is that I already spent the money. The good news is that, hey what do you know, the paper is actually free!
Okay, I think that takes care of the free stuff that is actually free. Now let’s move on to the free that ain’t.
As I see it, there are three basic categories of free stuff: the Come On, the Come In, and the Come Off It!
I put the free water test offers that I find hanging from my mailbox several times a year, in the Come On category. Most people are not going to consider spending a few hundred dollars to have their water tested – but if it’s free, well that’s a horse of a different color. Of course, you have to wonder what kinds of rigorous scientific evaluations they do for free – but on the other hand, you get to keep those cute little plastic bottles.
In the same vein are the free soil tests in spring, free assessments of the value of your property, and a seventh beer with every six pack purchase(I can dream, can’t I?). I guess as free stuff goes, the Come On kind are kind of boring.
The Come In variety of free stuff is my favorite. It’s an offer used to get customers in the door, but once you’re in you can take control.
Free Salsa with Chips at Sam Diego’s tops my list in this area.
When we drop the little Pilgrims off at the Plantation we usually head right over to Sam Diego’s. We go to the top floor, and find a small table in a corner where we won’t be pestered by waiters.
If we’re on top of our game we also remember to ask the person seating us for free crayons and a coloring book for our patient pilgrim. The coloring book also helps delay the inevitable (they keep waiting for the kid to show): but when management is finally alerted and we are asked to leave it’s just a short walk around the corner to the British Beer for pretzels, and a few free shot-glass samples of their great selection of imported beers.
After that it becomes more difficult to decide where we’ll get our next fix of free, but oftentimes we head over towards Route 44 and one of the many local car dealers offering that staple of American automotive marketing – the free test drive. Some dealers will even let you keep the car overnight, in which case we usually head over to the Radisson and crash a wedding reception or two. Besides the free meal, Mary loves the centerpieces that they give away –some of which are nice enough to sell on EBay!
Oh heck, I’ve already used an entire column without even getting to the Come Off It variety of freebies.
Hey, what do you want: it’s free!
I thought it was about time to recognize the generosity –if that’s what it really is, of those in our community who give out free things.
Of course Plymouth is not unique in this regard: almost everywhere you go in this country, people are promising ‘free stuff’. But I am only concerned with those free things that I can get my hands on without too much trouble.
And you know me (a little, I think): I am not really interested in really free things, but instead, in those things that they tell us are free but are actually something else. I am interested in the way ‘free’, usually means anything but.
So let’s dispose of the really free right off.
The best really free thing in Plymouth is, tah dah -The Plimoth Plantation.
If you actually live in town, you get in free. That can save you hundreds of dollars, especially if you’re like my wife and I, and use the Plantation as our own personal Nanny. Whenever we want to go out for some ‘adult time’, we take the kids to the Plantation and leave them there for a few hours.
We don’t just drop them off though: we’ve figured out that it works best if they blend in, so we had a few child-size Pilgrim costumes made up. Several times they’ve even come home with tips!
I would also be remiss (and would have missed a chance to kiss up to the boss, big time) if I didn’t mention the Bulletin. It’s free too! Most of you knew that, but let me take this opportunity to apologize to a few of my neighbors to whom I sold trial subscriptions at a very reasonable rate before the first issue came out. The bad news is that I already spent the money. The good news is that, hey what do you know, the paper is actually free!
Okay, I think that takes care of the free stuff that is actually free. Now let’s move on to the free that ain’t.
As I see it, there are three basic categories of free stuff: the Come On, the Come In, and the Come Off It!
I put the free water test offers that I find hanging from my mailbox several times a year, in the Come On category. Most people are not going to consider spending a few hundred dollars to have their water tested – but if it’s free, well that’s a horse of a different color. Of course, you have to wonder what kinds of rigorous scientific evaluations they do for free – but on the other hand, you get to keep those cute little plastic bottles.
In the same vein are the free soil tests in spring, free assessments of the value of your property, and a seventh beer with every six pack purchase(I can dream, can’t I?). I guess as free stuff goes, the Come On kind are kind of boring.
The Come In variety of free stuff is my favorite. It’s an offer used to get customers in the door, but once you’re in you can take control.
Free Salsa with Chips at Sam Diego’s tops my list in this area.
When we drop the little Pilgrims off at the Plantation we usually head right over to Sam Diego’s. We go to the top floor, and find a small table in a corner where we won’t be pestered by waiters.
If we’re on top of our game we also remember to ask the person seating us for free crayons and a coloring book for our patient pilgrim. The coloring book also helps delay the inevitable (they keep waiting for the kid to show): but when management is finally alerted and we are asked to leave it’s just a short walk around the corner to the British Beer for pretzels, and a few free shot-glass samples of their great selection of imported beers.
After that it becomes more difficult to decide where we’ll get our next fix of free, but oftentimes we head over towards Route 44 and one of the many local car dealers offering that staple of American automotive marketing – the free test drive. Some dealers will even let you keep the car overnight, in which case we usually head over to the Radisson and crash a wedding reception or two. Besides the free meal, Mary loves the centerpieces that they give away –some of which are nice enough to sell on EBay!
Oh heck, I’ve already used an entire column without even getting to the Come Off It variety of freebies.
Hey, what do you want: it’s free!
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Un-American Activity
Is the silence growing?
Plymouth residents Ted and Grace Curtin have been actively working for Peace for decades. They’ve been through some noisy times, but now they’ve taken a quieter path.
There was a time, not too long ago, when the word ‘peace’ itself was almost always followed by ‘demonstrations’: a time when hundreds of thousands of rowdy youth took over the streets of Washington D.C., blocking traffic, confronting the police.
It was a time of conflict, both between political foes, and philosophical concepts.
Is that changing?
Certainly there are those who still feel that the end to war, any war, will not come without action, without force, without conflict.
But there are also more and more people who believe that Peace can only be accomplished through peaceful means.
It certainly is a difficult, and an almost un-American approach: stay quiet, stand your ground, don’t argue.
The Curtins have helped to organize the local Plymouth Peace Vigil, and that group’s standing orders are to process in silence through downtown Plymouth, every Wednesday night.
Of course sometimes participants in the vigil do speak, spontaneously, forgetting themselves in the excitement of being with others who share the same perspective on the war.
Other times participants simply react to the comments –good and bad, from passerby.
Every week they are confronted by a group supporting the Iraq war, and who want nothing more than to ‘discuss’ the issues: the louder the better.
The local vigil organizers have gone out of their way to stay out of the way of those others.
As more and more people join in their vigil, it will become more and difficult to avoid clashes between those with opposing views; more difficult to hold their tongues, and to refrain from arguments.
And perhaps more and more important, that they do.
I have tried it myself; have participated in these weekly vigils. On those occasions the Curtins have always stressed the need to remain silent, and quietly scolded those who forget.
I have used the time, and the silence, to take a closer look around at my surroundings, at this historic part of town.
Ironically, where the vigil participants gather before processing -a small island between the Church of the Pilgrimage and the Court Museum, there is a stark reminder of our national inclinations: a plaque installed by Native Americans.
The plaque recounts how after an Indian insurrection was put down, its leader Metacomet –a son of Massasoit, was murdered, and his rotting head publicly displayed in Plymouth for over 20 years.
The vigil procession goes from the churches of Leyden Street, to the corner at Court, then slowly down the western side of the road until the intersection with North Street. There, on the eastern side of the street, the group takes up positions along the road.
It’s about 6:40 by then so, at this time of the year, it’s already dark: dark and quiet, save for the sound of street and the occasional heckler.
I find it relaxing: standing there, focusing on one simple if abstract thought.
It’s amazing how powerful the silence feels.
To those who oppose the vigil effort, even the silence is provocative. To those who are unsure where they stand, the silence is thought-provoking.
To those standing there, with their heads up, clutching signs or holding candles, the silence provides a kind of fleeting clarity.
You see the beauty of the area, the cobblestones, and the spreading limbs of the trees overhead. You note that almost every other driver going by has a cell phone stuck to their ear. You smell curry, and hoisin, and peanut oil-fried scrod. You hear the faint music of Ipods, the throbbing subwoofers of expensive car sound systems, the skitter and clack of skateboarders trying out new tricks and then, at 7, clock towers chiming the hour.
Time to move on, up the street.
“Ssssh!”: Grace Curtin reminds you.
By 7:15 back at Leyden again and the vigil is over, the quiet time ends.
Some move indoors for coffee, while others return to their homes and their usual noisy routine.
For those who stay for coffee the talk turns immediately to future actions, the next vigil, or the latest political news.
There is often a discussion of the reception that the vigil received that particular night: vague estimates of smiles, of upturned thumbs, peace signs flashed.
But it is impossible to gauge what effect this vigil, and others like it around the country, are having.
Peace is not something you can predict with a poll. Peace is a goal, an elusive, fluttering thing that seems to always remain just out of reach: something Ted and Grace have been chasing for nearly 40 years.
It’s frustrating for some: it feels, again, almost un-American.
We are a country that demands immediate results. We watch political conflicts like baseball standings: always checking to see who’s in first.
Is the silence growing?
Plymouth residents Ted and Grace Curtin have been actively working for Peace for decades. They’ve been through some noisy times, but now they’ve taken a quieter path.
There was a time, not too long ago, when the word ‘peace’ itself was almost always followed by ‘demonstrations’: a time when hundreds of thousands of rowdy youth took over the streets of Washington D.C., blocking traffic, confronting the police.
It was a time of conflict, both between political foes, and philosophical concepts.
Is that changing?
Certainly there are those who still feel that the end to war, any war, will not come without action, without force, without conflict.
But there are also more and more people who believe that Peace can only be accomplished through peaceful means.
It certainly is a difficult, and an almost un-American approach: stay quiet, stand your ground, don’t argue.
The Curtins have helped to organize the local Plymouth Peace Vigil, and that group’s standing orders are to process in silence through downtown Plymouth, every Wednesday night.
Of course sometimes participants in the vigil do speak, spontaneously, forgetting themselves in the excitement of being with others who share the same perspective on the war.
Other times participants simply react to the comments –good and bad, from passerby.
Every week they are confronted by a group supporting the Iraq war, and who want nothing more than to ‘discuss’ the issues: the louder the better.
The local vigil organizers have gone out of their way to stay out of the way of those others.
As more and more people join in their vigil, it will become more and difficult to avoid clashes between those with opposing views; more difficult to hold their tongues, and to refrain from arguments.
And perhaps more and more important, that they do.
I have tried it myself; have participated in these weekly vigils. On those occasions the Curtins have always stressed the need to remain silent, and quietly scolded those who forget.
I have used the time, and the silence, to take a closer look around at my surroundings, at this historic part of town.
Ironically, where the vigil participants gather before processing -a small island between the Church of the Pilgrimage and the Court Museum, there is a stark reminder of our national inclinations: a plaque installed by Native Americans.
The plaque recounts how after an Indian insurrection was put down, its leader Metacomet –a son of Massasoit, was murdered, and his rotting head publicly displayed in Plymouth for over 20 years.
The vigil procession goes from the churches of Leyden Street, to the corner at Court, then slowly down the western side of the road until the intersection with North Street. There, on the eastern side of the street, the group takes up positions along the road.
It’s about 6:40 by then so, at this time of the year, it’s already dark: dark and quiet, save for the sound of street and the occasional heckler.
I find it relaxing: standing there, focusing on one simple if abstract thought.
It’s amazing how powerful the silence feels.
To those who oppose the vigil effort, even the silence is provocative. To those who are unsure where they stand, the silence is thought-provoking.
To those standing there, with their heads up, clutching signs or holding candles, the silence provides a kind of fleeting clarity.
You see the beauty of the area, the cobblestones, and the spreading limbs of the trees overhead. You note that almost every other driver going by has a cell phone stuck to their ear. You smell curry, and hoisin, and peanut oil-fried scrod. You hear the faint music of Ipods, the throbbing subwoofers of expensive car sound systems, the skitter and clack of skateboarders trying out new tricks and then, at 7, clock towers chiming the hour.
Time to move on, up the street.
“Ssssh!”: Grace Curtin reminds you.
By 7:15 back at Leyden again and the vigil is over, the quiet time ends.
Some move indoors for coffee, while others return to their homes and their usual noisy routine.
For those who stay for coffee the talk turns immediately to future actions, the next vigil, or the latest political news.
There is often a discussion of the reception that the vigil received that particular night: vague estimates of smiles, of upturned thumbs, peace signs flashed.
But it is impossible to gauge what effect this vigil, and others like it around the country, are having.
Peace is not something you can predict with a poll. Peace is a goal, an elusive, fluttering thing that seems to always remain just out of reach: something Ted and Grace have been chasing for nearly 40 years.
It’s frustrating for some: it feels, again, almost un-American.
We are a country that demands immediate results. We watch political conflicts like baseball standings: always checking to see who’s in first.
Is the silence growing?
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Sweet and Sour
The thing I most worried about when the Red Sox waltzed over the Cardinals in four straight to win the World Series last year, were the grapes.
Not those fancy, imported grapes they use to make the expensive champagne they pour all over each other in the clubhouse on such occasions. No, the cheap, uncultivated, tough-skinned red variety that had been ripening in the basement of our psyches for the past 86 years.
You know, the ‘Sour Grapes’.
Red Sox fans have, over the 86 years we were marooned on Loser Island, developed a remarkably sensitive palate when it comes to the taste of sour grapes: a talent that has allowed us to take a ridiculous amount of satisfaction from the misfortune of our enemies, long after the Sox were ‘out of it’.
That is no mean feat, and it has meant, in practical terms, sold out games, year after year, whatever the last season’s team’s record.
Has there ever been a more successful group of losers than the Boston Red Sox from 1919 to 2003?
Fenway Park too –in the blurred vision of a populace drunk on the wine of failure, has been transformed from a rusting relic with seats too small for the average 21st Century cheeks, to something regarded the way travelers view the Roman Coliseum.
Tourists (most likely disguised fans from the far reaches of New England who can’t afford tickets to a real game) actually pay to take guided walks through Fenway during the off-season.
If Rome had fallen short as many times as the Red Sox have over the last 87 years, their coliseum would have been reduced to a pile of sand. But Fenway Park, even before last year’s uncharacteristic string of successes, has been treated like a 300 year old Plymouth saltbox: reinvigorated with new technology, without tampering with its ‘historical’ design.
You know that if it is ever decided to build a new stadium, Fenway won’t be torn down: rather it will be disassembled and moved piece by piece –like London Bridge, to some tourist-starved city in the desert, or to a massive amusement park.
And all of this because Bostonians have been unwilling or unable to admit defeat, again and again and again, and again.
But now what, I wondered, before the fans had even left the field in St. Louis last October? Would this happy state of befuddlement, this appreciation for the fine taste of failure fade away as October turned to November, and November to a holiday season awash in World Series trinkets?
Nah!
Never fear: it will take a hundred more gentle springs, sultry summers, and bountiful Octobers to red-direct the gnarled and twisted trunk of our Red Sox tree. Last year was just an aberration, a lovely, giddy aberration; the exception that proves the rule.
I came to this conclusion only recently though, weeks after what some are still arguing was a successful season.
I had noted that the usual angst that descends at the conclusion of the baseball season did not seem to be present this year.
I had taken some satisfaction in the elimination of the Yankees from the playoffs, but not nearly as much as I had in the past.
In the past in fact, after the Red Sox had been eliminated, I often found it too painful to watch the playoffs. But there I was watching, with relative disinterest, the Houston Astros on the verge of going to their first-ever World Series.
“It looks like the Astros are going to their first World Series,” I remarked blandly to my wife.
If I had really cared, I might have noticed that the Astros might also be on the verge of something else, something especially familiar to Red Sox fans.
In a luxury box behind home plate, the cameras panned to former Astro great Nolan Ryan watching the game attentively.
In the bullpen in the outfield Astro relievers were jumping about, unable to contain themselves.
In the clubhouse Astro personnel were busy preparing the champagne, placing plastic wrap over the lockers to protect them from the bubbly, setting up the platform where the trophy presentation would take place.
There were none on, two out, and two strikes on the Cardinal’s David Eckstein.
If the Cardinals lost demolition teams were set to begin to level old Bush Stadium in St. Louis.
Then the Astros World Series hopes broke open like a Piñata, and their guts spilled all over the field.
When Cardinal’s slugger Albert Pujols three-run shot finally came to rest on beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, Mary and I looked at each other.
“Sweet”, we both said, in unison.
But what we really meant was ‘sour’.
The sweet taste of sour.
There’s nothing like it.
Not those fancy, imported grapes they use to make the expensive champagne they pour all over each other in the clubhouse on such occasions. No, the cheap, uncultivated, tough-skinned red variety that had been ripening in the basement of our psyches for the past 86 years.
You know, the ‘Sour Grapes’.
Red Sox fans have, over the 86 years we were marooned on Loser Island, developed a remarkably sensitive palate when it comes to the taste of sour grapes: a talent that has allowed us to take a ridiculous amount of satisfaction from the misfortune of our enemies, long after the Sox were ‘out of it’.
That is no mean feat, and it has meant, in practical terms, sold out games, year after year, whatever the last season’s team’s record.
Has there ever been a more successful group of losers than the Boston Red Sox from 1919 to 2003?
Fenway Park too –in the blurred vision of a populace drunk on the wine of failure, has been transformed from a rusting relic with seats too small for the average 21st Century cheeks, to something regarded the way travelers view the Roman Coliseum.
Tourists (most likely disguised fans from the far reaches of New England who can’t afford tickets to a real game) actually pay to take guided walks through Fenway during the off-season.
If Rome had fallen short as many times as the Red Sox have over the last 87 years, their coliseum would have been reduced to a pile of sand. But Fenway Park, even before last year’s uncharacteristic string of successes, has been treated like a 300 year old Plymouth saltbox: reinvigorated with new technology, without tampering with its ‘historical’ design.
You know that if it is ever decided to build a new stadium, Fenway won’t be torn down: rather it will be disassembled and moved piece by piece –like London Bridge, to some tourist-starved city in the desert, or to a massive amusement park.
And all of this because Bostonians have been unwilling or unable to admit defeat, again and again and again, and again.
But now what, I wondered, before the fans had even left the field in St. Louis last October? Would this happy state of befuddlement, this appreciation for the fine taste of failure fade away as October turned to November, and November to a holiday season awash in World Series trinkets?
Nah!
Never fear: it will take a hundred more gentle springs, sultry summers, and bountiful Octobers to red-direct the gnarled and twisted trunk of our Red Sox tree. Last year was just an aberration, a lovely, giddy aberration; the exception that proves the rule.
I came to this conclusion only recently though, weeks after what some are still arguing was a successful season.
I had noted that the usual angst that descends at the conclusion of the baseball season did not seem to be present this year.
I had taken some satisfaction in the elimination of the Yankees from the playoffs, but not nearly as much as I had in the past.
In the past in fact, after the Red Sox had been eliminated, I often found it too painful to watch the playoffs. But there I was watching, with relative disinterest, the Houston Astros on the verge of going to their first-ever World Series.
“It looks like the Astros are going to their first World Series,” I remarked blandly to my wife.
If I had really cared, I might have noticed that the Astros might also be on the verge of something else, something especially familiar to Red Sox fans.
In a luxury box behind home plate, the cameras panned to former Astro great Nolan Ryan watching the game attentively.
In the bullpen in the outfield Astro relievers were jumping about, unable to contain themselves.
In the clubhouse Astro personnel were busy preparing the champagne, placing plastic wrap over the lockers to protect them from the bubbly, setting up the platform where the trophy presentation would take place.
There were none on, two out, and two strikes on the Cardinal’s David Eckstein.
If the Cardinals lost demolition teams were set to begin to level old Bush Stadium in St. Louis.
Then the Astros World Series hopes broke open like a Piñata, and their guts spilled all over the field.
When Cardinal’s slugger Albert Pujols three-run shot finally came to rest on beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, Mary and I looked at each other.
“Sweet”, we both said, in unison.
But what we really meant was ‘sour’.
The sweet taste of sour.
There’s nothing like it.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Totally Dis-Custard!
I’ve got my big inflatable Jack-O-Lantern pumped up, my cassette of classic movie screams cued, and my otherwise unkempt lawn covered in cardboard tombstones. All I need is a few hundred trick or treaters and I’ll be in business.
But I’m worried.
My source at the Family Kloset says there’s been a big run on ghoul costumes, and that spells trouble.
It’s trouble for costume businesses because ghouls are a rather vaguely defined creature with no particular look. To pull it off all you need are ragged clothes, an ashen face, dark patches of skin under the eyes and around the mouth, and nervous, darting eyes. Sound familiar?
It’s trouble for homeowners who love this holiday because, strictly speaking, ghouls are the stay at home type of monster.
In past years I’ve seen plenty of the standard sorts of evil trick or treater, and I expect we’ll see quite a few of those beasts again this year.
You know the names: Freddie, from Nightmare on Elm Street, Jason wearing his goalie mask and carrying his machete, vampires and axe murderers, mummies and devils. No doubt the usual suspects will be coming up your driveway again, stalking with pride.
My own seven year old has opted for the classic blood sucker ensemble: black cape, white shirt, pointy fangs.
That’s the positive side of evil, as portrayed on Halloween: Freddie and Jason and Count Dracula and their close fiends are all aggressive, confident monsters. And the psychology of the child who chooses one of these ‘costumes’ is obvious: the best way to fight the fear, is to be the creature itself.
But the psychology of the ghoul is very different. Ghouls and their kind are timid, skulking creatures, flitting from shadow to shadow. They move in packs, feed on rotting bones.
Ghouls are afraid of everything – and the only thing you are saying when you choose to be a ghoul is, yes, I am afraid.
It’s all about the fear.
I’ve noticed the same trend on television.
If it worked in the election, the TV executives must have reasoned, it will work in the new Fall schedule.
Whatever your fear, they’ve got a show for you!
Are your parents divorced, always working, living in a trailer in Hurricane Land, and dating an alien? Then you’ll love Invasion.
Have you avoided swimming in the ocean since you first saw Jaws 30 years ago? We’re you traumatized by the death of a pet Poodle when you were seven? Have you been unable to speak with women since your sister showed certain baby pictures to her friends when you were twelve? Your show is Surface!
Then there’s Threshold, which also has ocean-based creatures I think, who turn into humanoid aliens, build mosques, import Chinese textiles, sneak illegal immigrants over the border, and are secretly buying up all the world’s dictionaries so they can pencil in a new definition for marriage.
And of course there’s Lost, where a group of average low-lifes are subjected to a veritable top ten list of modern day fears: plane crash, toxic time bombs, evil foreigners, child abduction, obsessive lovers. You name the fear, this island’s got it (or will in Season Two!) And if you still are considering dressing up as a ghoul this Halloween, any member of the Lost cast will do.
The one thing all these shows have in common is that they are not about one particular monster, disease, natural disaster or Al Qaeda operative, they are about them all.
It’s all about the fear!
I am reminded of the time my old pal Dave had a theme party for Halloween: everyone had to come dressed up as their favorite emotion.
At 7:30 the first guest arrived, wearing a red body suit, and with every other part of his body painted red.
“Oh great, great,” Dave said, “you’re anger: come on in.
At 7:35 another guest arrived, this time completely dressed in green, from head to toe.
“Welcome Mr. Jealousy,” Dave said excitedly, “come on in.”
At 7:40 the doorbell rang and when Dave answered the door there was a naked man sitting in a giant bowl, literally swimming in a thick, lumpy, pale yellow substance.
“You’re here for the party,” Dave asked, politely?
“Dats right” the man replied.
“The emotion party,” Dave asked, more specifically?
“Dat’s right” he said again, nodding enthusiastically.
“But I don’t get it,” Dave admitted, “what emotion are you supposed to be?”
“I am,” the man in the giant bowl answered, wiping some of the curds off his face, “I am totally dis custard.”
Happy Halloween!
But I’m worried.
My source at the Family Kloset says there’s been a big run on ghoul costumes, and that spells trouble.
It’s trouble for costume businesses because ghouls are a rather vaguely defined creature with no particular look. To pull it off all you need are ragged clothes, an ashen face, dark patches of skin under the eyes and around the mouth, and nervous, darting eyes. Sound familiar?
It’s trouble for homeowners who love this holiday because, strictly speaking, ghouls are the stay at home type of monster.
In past years I’ve seen plenty of the standard sorts of evil trick or treater, and I expect we’ll see quite a few of those beasts again this year.
You know the names: Freddie, from Nightmare on Elm Street, Jason wearing his goalie mask and carrying his machete, vampires and axe murderers, mummies and devils. No doubt the usual suspects will be coming up your driveway again, stalking with pride.
My own seven year old has opted for the classic blood sucker ensemble: black cape, white shirt, pointy fangs.
That’s the positive side of evil, as portrayed on Halloween: Freddie and Jason and Count Dracula and their close fiends are all aggressive, confident monsters. And the psychology of the child who chooses one of these ‘costumes’ is obvious: the best way to fight the fear, is to be the creature itself.
But the psychology of the ghoul is very different. Ghouls and their kind are timid, skulking creatures, flitting from shadow to shadow. They move in packs, feed on rotting bones.
Ghouls are afraid of everything – and the only thing you are saying when you choose to be a ghoul is, yes, I am afraid.
It’s all about the fear.
I’ve noticed the same trend on television.
If it worked in the election, the TV executives must have reasoned, it will work in the new Fall schedule.
Whatever your fear, they’ve got a show for you!
Are your parents divorced, always working, living in a trailer in Hurricane Land, and dating an alien? Then you’ll love Invasion.
Have you avoided swimming in the ocean since you first saw Jaws 30 years ago? We’re you traumatized by the death of a pet Poodle when you were seven? Have you been unable to speak with women since your sister showed certain baby pictures to her friends when you were twelve? Your show is Surface!
Then there’s Threshold, which also has ocean-based creatures I think, who turn into humanoid aliens, build mosques, import Chinese textiles, sneak illegal immigrants over the border, and are secretly buying up all the world’s dictionaries so they can pencil in a new definition for marriage.
And of course there’s Lost, where a group of average low-lifes are subjected to a veritable top ten list of modern day fears: plane crash, toxic time bombs, evil foreigners, child abduction, obsessive lovers. You name the fear, this island’s got it (or will in Season Two!) And if you still are considering dressing up as a ghoul this Halloween, any member of the Lost cast will do.
The one thing all these shows have in common is that they are not about one particular monster, disease, natural disaster or Al Qaeda operative, they are about them all.
It’s all about the fear!
I am reminded of the time my old pal Dave had a theme party for Halloween: everyone had to come dressed up as their favorite emotion.
At 7:30 the first guest arrived, wearing a red body suit, and with every other part of his body painted red.
“Oh great, great,” Dave said, “you’re anger: come on in.
At 7:35 another guest arrived, this time completely dressed in green, from head to toe.
“Welcome Mr. Jealousy,” Dave said excitedly, “come on in.”
At 7:40 the doorbell rang and when Dave answered the door there was a naked man sitting in a giant bowl, literally swimming in a thick, lumpy, pale yellow substance.
“You’re here for the party,” Dave asked, politely?
“Dats right” the man replied.
“The emotion party,” Dave asked, more specifically?
“Dat’s right” he said again, nodding enthusiastically.
“But I don’t get it,” Dave admitted, “what emotion are you supposed to be?”
“I am,” the man in the giant bowl answered, wiping some of the curds off his face, “I am totally dis custard.”
Happy Halloween!
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Free with Fee and Fee with Free
Take note: from this day forward this column will be an official fee-free zone.
No matter how tough things get for me, NML readers will not be required to pay service fees, late fees, user fees, or ink fees.*
It is not that I’m an especially caring guy; it’s just that I am hoping for a little reciprocity. I scratch your back, you lay off the fees.
It used to be just the government that required fees, but when businesses saw how a few fees here and there could improve their bottom line, they got on board, big time. You can owe five cents to the shoe repairmen but if you are late paying, he adds a $25 fee. You can have six bucks in your checking account but when they take out your seven dollar monthly fee you’re overdrawn, so they add on a 25-dollar fee.
It’s easy to see how lucrative the fee business is, and easy to understand how everybody wants to get their share.
My friend Dan is a real hospitable guy. You can drop by his house any time of the day or night and he’ll be slapping you on the back, offering you a beer and a slice of cold pizza. I used to drop by quite often too, until he instituted his hospitality fee.
“Don’t worry about it,” he assured me when I called the other week, concerned: “you’re always welcome in our house. It’s just that having a relaxed attitude and an open door has its costs, and we need to recoup some of those costs.”
To his credit, Dan was up front about his new fees, or at least as up front as anyone is when it comes to fees. He pointed out to me that on the same door mat that you step on as you enter his front door, right under the big bold embroidered “Welcome”, is a hand-stitched, single-thread of red that spells out his new fees.
The kid who used to mow my lawn has gotten in to the act too. He used to charge me $35 to cut my grass once a month. But when I got his last bill he had added a $5 fee to cover the cost of dumping the grass, a fee of $5 per hour for pollution control, a $5 surcharge for accidental death or dismemberment insurance, and a gasoline usage fee of $12.75.
Then, when I balked at the bill, he added a late fee.
That used to be my biggest gripe about fees – that they were a dishonest way of adding to the stated costs of products and services. I like to know the price of things, up front, so when mysterious fees and surcharges start showing up, it irks me.
But it’s gotten to the point where there are so many additional fees and hidden charges that it’s no longer an issue of fairness – now it’s about real money.
In Plymouth alone you pay fees to swim, to burn, and for your children to take the bus to school. Then you pay a fee to park, to ride, and to take your trash to the dump.
You want to build a deck –there’s a fee.
Want to tear it down and try again, pay a fee.
Want to hire someone who knows what they’re doing: pay another fee.
You pay the state a fee to register your car, a fee for a license plate, an excise tax (oh my Lord, what honesty, they call it a tax!) on the same car, and a fee for satellite radio so that when you’re burning up that expensive gas you are not commercially interrupted.
Now there’s a fee I am willing to pay. When I’m whining out loud in my car the last thing I want is to have to listen to someone else’s whining.
So where was I? Oh, whining about fees..
You pay fees if you’re late. You pay fees if you’re early.
You pay fees if you’re local, and fees if you’re from out of state.
If there’s anything you enjoy that you get for free, don’t blink because when you open your eyes again you’ll have to pay a fee.
Remember when television was free?
Remember when you could just drive to the beach and swim, for free?
Even things that are supposedly free are not free of fees.
Today the dictionary definition of free should be, ‘Free with Purchase’, or ‘Free with Fee’, or ‘Free after Rebate’.
*Oh, by the way: you can read this for free, and feel free to make copies (feel free but remember there’s a fee for each one).
No matter how tough things get for me, NML readers will not be required to pay service fees, late fees, user fees, or ink fees.*
It is not that I’m an especially caring guy; it’s just that I am hoping for a little reciprocity. I scratch your back, you lay off the fees.
It used to be just the government that required fees, but when businesses saw how a few fees here and there could improve their bottom line, they got on board, big time. You can owe five cents to the shoe repairmen but if you are late paying, he adds a $25 fee. You can have six bucks in your checking account but when they take out your seven dollar monthly fee you’re overdrawn, so they add on a 25-dollar fee.
It’s easy to see how lucrative the fee business is, and easy to understand how everybody wants to get their share.
My friend Dan is a real hospitable guy. You can drop by his house any time of the day or night and he’ll be slapping you on the back, offering you a beer and a slice of cold pizza. I used to drop by quite often too, until he instituted his hospitality fee.
“Don’t worry about it,” he assured me when I called the other week, concerned: “you’re always welcome in our house. It’s just that having a relaxed attitude and an open door has its costs, and we need to recoup some of those costs.”
To his credit, Dan was up front about his new fees, or at least as up front as anyone is when it comes to fees. He pointed out to me that on the same door mat that you step on as you enter his front door, right under the big bold embroidered “Welcome”, is a hand-stitched, single-thread of red that spells out his new fees.
The kid who used to mow my lawn has gotten in to the act too. He used to charge me $35 to cut my grass once a month. But when I got his last bill he had added a $5 fee to cover the cost of dumping the grass, a fee of $5 per hour for pollution control, a $5 surcharge for accidental death or dismemberment insurance, and a gasoline usage fee of $12.75.
Then, when I balked at the bill, he added a late fee.
That used to be my biggest gripe about fees – that they were a dishonest way of adding to the stated costs of products and services. I like to know the price of things, up front, so when mysterious fees and surcharges start showing up, it irks me.
But it’s gotten to the point where there are so many additional fees and hidden charges that it’s no longer an issue of fairness – now it’s about real money.
In Plymouth alone you pay fees to swim, to burn, and for your children to take the bus to school. Then you pay a fee to park, to ride, and to take your trash to the dump.
You want to build a deck –there’s a fee.
Want to tear it down and try again, pay a fee.
Want to hire someone who knows what they’re doing: pay another fee.
You pay the state a fee to register your car, a fee for a license plate, an excise tax (oh my Lord, what honesty, they call it a tax!) on the same car, and a fee for satellite radio so that when you’re burning up that expensive gas you are not commercially interrupted.
Now there’s a fee I am willing to pay. When I’m whining out loud in my car the last thing I want is to have to listen to someone else’s whining.
So where was I? Oh, whining about fees..
You pay fees if you’re late. You pay fees if you’re early.
You pay fees if you’re local, and fees if you’re from out of state.
If there’s anything you enjoy that you get for free, don’t blink because when you open your eyes again you’ll have to pay a fee.
Remember when television was free?
Remember when you could just drive to the beach and swim, for free?
Even things that are supposedly free are not free of fees.
Today the dictionary definition of free should be, ‘Free with Purchase’, or ‘Free with Fee’, or ‘Free after Rebate’.
*Oh, by the way: you can read this for free, and feel free to make copies (feel free but remember there’s a fee for each one).
Sunday, October 09, 2005
The Secrets of Youth Hockey, Revealed!
I was passing by Armstrong Rink on Long Pond Road the other day and for some reason was compelled to look over at its entrance, just as an unsuspecting young family was going in.
I watched, with dread, as the father opened the glass door and a jet of cold rink air shot out, mixed with the warm air of the waning summer afternoon, and enveloped his entire family in a thick, impenetrable fog.
And when it had cleared, they were all gone!
16 years ago, this month, my wife Mary and I stood at that same door: young, naïve, not so much interested in hockey as in the opportunity for our four year old son Bobby to learn to skate, improve his coordination, and maybe make a few friends; you know, the usual reasons that parents venture out into the unknown.
And it all seemed so innocent, at first, even amusing.
For several weeks we watched Bobby awkwardly maneuvering his way over the ice, clutching an orange cone tightly to his chest. He never really progressed much beyond that during this first autumn at the rink, so we were surprised when we were encouraged to enroll him in the next phase.
“But he’s really not a very good skater,” Mary told the eager youth hockey administrator, “do you think he’s really ready for hockey?”
“Oh sure,” Mr. Deval said, “by next Christmas he’ll be able to skate, to shoot, and even score!” As he said the word ‘score’ a loud air horn went off, a jet black Zamboni went careening by, and a naked bulb in a metal fixture overhead exploded, showering us with confetti-sized shards of glass.
That was 1990.
Ten years later Mary and I were jerked back to consciousness by the unmistakable pong of a sweat-soaked hockey bag simmering somewhere nearby.
For a moment we were unsure where we were, and then we recognized the all too familiar décor of the Holiday Inn in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts.
Another hockey tournament.
A knock on our door was followed immediately by the door opening, and that same eager hockey administrator –a bit grayer in the temples, stuck his grinning face into our room to announce that we should probably start thinking about heading over to the rink.
“It’s too late for that,” Mary said, “we had our chance, and we blew it.”
Hockey is a great sport, and the children that devote themselves to it are often rewarded with exciting competition, physical strength, and enduring friendships. It’s a tempting alternative to many of the passive recreations that our children gravitate to today: the video games and online activities that leave them mentally wired and physically flabby.
But beware the fine print.
Part of the problem is the youth of the participants: the parents, not the kids. With good intentions young parents involve themselves in a variety of activities, without really knowing what they are getting themselves into.
Here are the important numbers:
9 months every year. With try-outs, practices, games and a variety of post-season skill camps, youth hockey players often put in more time on the ice than the pros.
32 thermoses. The average youth hockey family goes through 32 insulated coffee thermoses from the time their little darling first embraces the orange cones of learn-to-skate month, to their final tournament in Tyngsboro. Some of these thermoses are lost, some are stolen, but most are knocked over by fist-pumping mothers celebrating a vicious check or a winning goal.
7 Caribbean Cruises. These aren’t cruises you take, rather they are the cruises you missed, the cruises you could have taken had you not been obligated to spend every February or April school vacation for a decade at a youth hockey tournament in Tyngsboro, or Marlboro, or any of a dozen frozen boros with their own rink and a nearby Holiday Inn.
Then there are the 13 pairs of skates, over 10 years, ranging in price from $60 a pair when they are cute and clutching cones, to the $250 pair they demand when they are pimply, hormonal adolescents.
Not to mention the neck pads you buy twice a year so your child isn’t beheaded, or the $75 leather gloves so they keep all their digits, or the Hartford Whalers official NHL replica jersey so they look good in practice, or the forest of imported, fire-treated, Mark Messier-approved hockey sticks that they turn to kindling playing street hockey.
And if the worse should happen - if some well-intentioned coach decides your child is a natural born goalie, the cost of goalie pads and mask are only exceeded by the cost of family therapy sessions for the foreseeable future.
But it’s not just the cost, in cold cash or lost time, it’s the life you give up.
The world turns, Presidents are elected, WMDS are lost and found and lost again, but you never know because all your free time is spent in a place where the seasons never change, the scenery never varies, the lakes are always frozen.
Youth hockey in Massachusetts isn’t a sport, it’s a cult!
Yes, it’s that time of the year again, when hordes of cute little young parents head over to the rink, cameras in hand, to record their children’s first moments on the ice.
It’s so cute. It’s so sweet. It’s so hard to resist.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
I watched, with dread, as the father opened the glass door and a jet of cold rink air shot out, mixed with the warm air of the waning summer afternoon, and enveloped his entire family in a thick, impenetrable fog.
And when it had cleared, they were all gone!
16 years ago, this month, my wife Mary and I stood at that same door: young, naïve, not so much interested in hockey as in the opportunity for our four year old son Bobby to learn to skate, improve his coordination, and maybe make a few friends; you know, the usual reasons that parents venture out into the unknown.
And it all seemed so innocent, at first, even amusing.
For several weeks we watched Bobby awkwardly maneuvering his way over the ice, clutching an orange cone tightly to his chest. He never really progressed much beyond that during this first autumn at the rink, so we were surprised when we were encouraged to enroll him in the next phase.
“But he’s really not a very good skater,” Mary told the eager youth hockey administrator, “do you think he’s really ready for hockey?”
“Oh sure,” Mr. Deval said, “by next Christmas he’ll be able to skate, to shoot, and even score!” As he said the word ‘score’ a loud air horn went off, a jet black Zamboni went careening by, and a naked bulb in a metal fixture overhead exploded, showering us with confetti-sized shards of glass.
That was 1990.
Ten years later Mary and I were jerked back to consciousness by the unmistakable pong of a sweat-soaked hockey bag simmering somewhere nearby.
For a moment we were unsure where we were, and then we recognized the all too familiar décor of the Holiday Inn in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts.
Another hockey tournament.
A knock on our door was followed immediately by the door opening, and that same eager hockey administrator –a bit grayer in the temples, stuck his grinning face into our room to announce that we should probably start thinking about heading over to the rink.
“It’s too late for that,” Mary said, “we had our chance, and we blew it.”
Hockey is a great sport, and the children that devote themselves to it are often rewarded with exciting competition, physical strength, and enduring friendships. It’s a tempting alternative to many of the passive recreations that our children gravitate to today: the video games and online activities that leave them mentally wired and physically flabby.
But beware the fine print.
Part of the problem is the youth of the participants: the parents, not the kids. With good intentions young parents involve themselves in a variety of activities, without really knowing what they are getting themselves into.
Here are the important numbers:
9 months every year. With try-outs, practices, games and a variety of post-season skill camps, youth hockey players often put in more time on the ice than the pros.
32 thermoses. The average youth hockey family goes through 32 insulated coffee thermoses from the time their little darling first embraces the orange cones of learn-to-skate month, to their final tournament in Tyngsboro. Some of these thermoses are lost, some are stolen, but most are knocked over by fist-pumping mothers celebrating a vicious check or a winning goal.
7 Caribbean Cruises. These aren’t cruises you take, rather they are the cruises you missed, the cruises you could have taken had you not been obligated to spend every February or April school vacation for a decade at a youth hockey tournament in Tyngsboro, or Marlboro, or any of a dozen frozen boros with their own rink and a nearby Holiday Inn.
Then there are the 13 pairs of skates, over 10 years, ranging in price from $60 a pair when they are cute and clutching cones, to the $250 pair they demand when they are pimply, hormonal adolescents.
Not to mention the neck pads you buy twice a year so your child isn’t beheaded, or the $75 leather gloves so they keep all their digits, or the Hartford Whalers official NHL replica jersey so they look good in practice, or the forest of imported, fire-treated, Mark Messier-approved hockey sticks that they turn to kindling playing street hockey.
And if the worse should happen - if some well-intentioned coach decides your child is a natural born goalie, the cost of goalie pads and mask are only exceeded by the cost of family therapy sessions for the foreseeable future.
But it’s not just the cost, in cold cash or lost time, it’s the life you give up.
The world turns, Presidents are elected, WMDS are lost and found and lost again, but you never know because all your free time is spent in a place where the seasons never change, the scenery never varies, the lakes are always frozen.
Youth hockey in Massachusetts isn’t a sport, it’s a cult!
Yes, it’s that time of the year again, when hordes of cute little young parents head over to the rink, cameras in hand, to record their children’s first moments on the ice.
It’s so cute. It’s so sweet. It’s so hard to resist.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Sour 'Mash'
I have been receiving anonymous reports of so-called ‘technical difficulties’ at the Plymouth Area Community Television studios off Court Street.
According to my sources a fifteen year old volunteer, thinking he was a hip-hop VJ, used digital editing equipment to ‘mash’ many of the station’s regular line-up of shows together, creating some very odd, and oftentimes surprisingly compelling television.
Here then, is a run down of this week’s mutated weekday schedule:
8:00-8:30 a.m.
PSYCHIC SOFTBALL
The Brockton Rox Baseball Update, which was scheduled to start the week off Monday morning, was mixed up with the regularly scheduled episode of Psychic Encyclopedia, resulting in several Rox players hearing ghostly voices telling them they had no future in baseball.
8:30-9:00 a.m.
PORTU-PARTY
The latest segments of the popular Portuguese Around Us, and the high-decibel, youth-oriented Metal Storm, were also intermingled, and a new band, Death by Linguica, looks likely to be a hit with both audiences.
9:00-10:00 a.m.
WRESTLING WITH DEMOCRACY
The never-ending, epic-length, Japanese Wrestling review, Toukon Retsuden, was accidentally combined with recent political commentary from The Good, The Bad, and the Uugly, and in their combined episodes’ feature match it appears that Uugly co-host Karen Buechs has pinned the entire Plymouth Board of Selectmen to the mat. (I say ‘appears’ because when these two tapes were mixed the voices of the Uugly hosts were not in sync with the wrestler’s lips).
In addition, sources within the Uugly production team say Buechs is still refusing to get off the Selectman’s backs until they say ‘Uncle’, or agree to support her candidacy for Queen of the Cranberry Festival.
10:00-12:00 Noon
VACATIONS FROM HELL
Episodes of three separately produced shows -Shadows of the Paranormal, Allen’s African Adventures, and Practical Theology, combined to create the riveting, sure to be Emmy-nominated story of a Baptist Minister called upon to exorcise a demon from a young Hippopotamus.
12:00-1:00 p.m.
CALLING ON CARL
Episode #847 of Carl Pratt’s Video Sports Page was somehow overlaid on to a vintage Senior Health Today tape, producing the Plymouth South Girls Rugby Team’s first victory in years.
1:00-1:15 p.m.
YOU ESSAYS
Separate, half-hour episodes of Americans Speak Out, Americans are America, Freedom’s Voice, and American’s Speak Out –Live! when spliced together, resulted in a single episode only fifteen minutes long.
1:15-2:00 p.m.
SILLY NIGHTS, SILLY STREETS
The video monologues of Marvel Comics action hero and former simultaneous candidate for Selectman and School Committee Member Mark Lord were, apparently, unaffected.
1:15-3:00 p.m.
COOKING, WITH GAS
The accidental mixture of video tape from the award-winning Plymouth Profiles, with new episodes of Cooking with Georgia, resulted in a potent recipe for southern fried baked beans, which the Health Board is asking residents not to attempt at home without professional supervision.
3:00-5:00 p.m.
WELCOME BACK, CARTER
State Representative Vinny DeMacedo’s regular episode of Beacon Hill Forum was merged with the syndicated progressive talk show, Democracy Now, resulting in a nostalgic situation comedy featuring former President Jimmy Carter as a high school teacher in Iraq, and Representative DeMacedo as one of his wise-cracking students.
In related news:
Citing concern for the safety of all elected officials, the entire week’s schedule of governmental meetings has been cancelled and the Town Manager’s office has issued a statement indicating that no new meetings will be scheduled until after next week’s Cranberry Festival.
PACTV officials have announced that they are still planning to provide live coverage of the Cranberry Festival parade, contingent upon receiving legal permission from the Japanese Professional Wrestling Association.
If permission is not received by show time, PACTV will substitute a 24-hour marathon of Introduction to Tai Chi episodes, which were somehow combined with Car Care 101, creating a feature length advertisement that has been tentatively titled, Ernie Boch’s Feng Shui Auto Body Repair Shop.
More than ever, PACTV is not responsible for the content of these shows.
According to my sources a fifteen year old volunteer, thinking he was a hip-hop VJ, used digital editing equipment to ‘mash’ many of the station’s regular line-up of shows together, creating some very odd, and oftentimes surprisingly compelling television.
Here then, is a run down of this week’s mutated weekday schedule:
8:00-8:30 a.m.
PSYCHIC SOFTBALL
The Brockton Rox Baseball Update, which was scheduled to start the week off Monday morning, was mixed up with the regularly scheduled episode of Psychic Encyclopedia, resulting in several Rox players hearing ghostly voices telling them they had no future in baseball.
8:30-9:00 a.m.
PORTU-PARTY
The latest segments of the popular Portuguese Around Us, and the high-decibel, youth-oriented Metal Storm, were also intermingled, and a new band, Death by Linguica, looks likely to be a hit with both audiences.
9:00-10:00 a.m.
WRESTLING WITH DEMOCRACY
The never-ending, epic-length, Japanese Wrestling review, Toukon Retsuden, was accidentally combined with recent political commentary from The Good, The Bad, and the Uugly, and in their combined episodes’ feature match it appears that Uugly co-host Karen Buechs has pinned the entire Plymouth Board of Selectmen to the mat. (I say ‘appears’ because when these two tapes were mixed the voices of the Uugly hosts were not in sync with the wrestler’s lips).
In addition, sources within the Uugly production team say Buechs is still refusing to get off the Selectman’s backs until they say ‘Uncle’, or agree to support her candidacy for Queen of the Cranberry Festival.
10:00-12:00 Noon
VACATIONS FROM HELL
Episodes of three separately produced shows -Shadows of the Paranormal, Allen’s African Adventures, and Practical Theology, combined to create the riveting, sure to be Emmy-nominated story of a Baptist Minister called upon to exorcise a demon from a young Hippopotamus.
12:00-1:00 p.m.
CALLING ON CARL
Episode #847 of Carl Pratt’s Video Sports Page was somehow overlaid on to a vintage Senior Health Today tape, producing the Plymouth South Girls Rugby Team’s first victory in years.
1:00-1:15 p.m.
YOU ESSAYS
Separate, half-hour episodes of Americans Speak Out, Americans are America, Freedom’s Voice, and American’s Speak Out –Live! when spliced together, resulted in a single episode only fifteen minutes long.
1:15-2:00 p.m.
SILLY NIGHTS, SILLY STREETS
The video monologues of Marvel Comics action hero and former simultaneous candidate for Selectman and School Committee Member Mark Lord were, apparently, unaffected.
1:15-3:00 p.m.
COOKING, WITH GAS
The accidental mixture of video tape from the award-winning Plymouth Profiles, with new episodes of Cooking with Georgia, resulted in a potent recipe for southern fried baked beans, which the Health Board is asking residents not to attempt at home without professional supervision.
3:00-5:00 p.m.
WELCOME BACK, CARTER
State Representative Vinny DeMacedo’s regular episode of Beacon Hill Forum was merged with the syndicated progressive talk show, Democracy Now, resulting in a nostalgic situation comedy featuring former President Jimmy Carter as a high school teacher in Iraq, and Representative DeMacedo as one of his wise-cracking students.
In related news:
Citing concern for the safety of all elected officials, the entire week’s schedule of governmental meetings has been cancelled and the Town Manager’s office has issued a statement indicating that no new meetings will be scheduled until after next week’s Cranberry Festival.
PACTV officials have announced that they are still planning to provide live coverage of the Cranberry Festival parade, contingent upon receiving legal permission from the Japanese Professional Wrestling Association.
If permission is not received by show time, PACTV will substitute a 24-hour marathon of Introduction to Tai Chi episodes, which were somehow combined with Car Care 101, creating a feature length advertisement that has been tentatively titled, Ernie Boch’s Feng Shui Auto Body Repair Shop.
More than ever, PACTV is not responsible for the content of these shows.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Ah, Wilderness
I was out hiking in Plymouth with my family the other day and after about four hours of grueling shopping we set up camp in an isolated parking space, somewhere between the towering new Mega Mega Giganto Walmart and the majestic Sam’s Club.
We utilized our wilderness survival training to build a fire out of discarded sales circulars and, once the flames had died down, roasted several hundred marshmallows –barely putting a dent in the super-sized twenty pound ‘family’ package we had purchased during a previous hike in the BJ’s.
After the pain of consuming so many flaming bits of spun corn syrup had subsided, we climbed into our shopping carts to watch the sun setting behind Circuit City. It was an awe-inspiring site, filling me with nostalgia, when suddenly I realized that this was not the Plymouth of my youth.
A moment later my wife reminded me that I had not actually grown up in Plymouth, so it could never have been the Plymouth of my youth: but then, this was not even the Plymouth of last year.
Historic Plymouth was disappearing before my very eyes!
Luckily for me the Olde Towne Trollee was passing by on its historic tour just then, so I jumped on board: much to the dismay of my family, who were all snuggled deep down into their carts.
If there was anyone in town that knew the true story of historic Plymouth, I thought, it was those darn Trolley drivers.
The first tour stop, as it turned out, was an old hang-out of mine: the big rest stop and commuter parking lot at Exit 5 on the Expressway.
“Once upon a time”, the driver began, “this was the site of an information center, where visitors to Plymouth could find pamphlets on all the historical sites and attractions, but nothing else: no donuts, no burgers and fries, nothing!”
A shudder went through the half-empty trolley.
Before the shock of the first stop had subsided, we rolled up to a quaint brick building, no more than 100,000 square feet in size, but now as empty as the Shops at Five.
“Just a few weeks ago this building,” the driver informed his incredulous audience, “was a fully functioning, if undersized Walmart”.
Further down the road we came upon another artifact of a simpler age: what had once been called -it was hard to believe, a ‘Super’ Stop & Shop.
All of these buildings were remarkably well-preserved, and the average visitor would probably not have realized their antiquity, save for the placard that was affixed near the front doors of each building, indicating their last week of occupancy.
The next stop was a fabled Giant K-Mart, last occupied according to its placard, in 2002. Here the trolley pulled over so that we could disembark and take a brief tour.
It was marvelous: the local historical society operated the building as a living museum, staffing the facility with actors portraying the stock boys and cashiers of its Blue Light-lit past. You could talk with these dedicated volunteers, but no matter how hard you tried they never came out of character.
The tour continued, passing strip malls with insufficient parking, lone auto dealerships, and high schools with barely more than a thousand students. It was so reassuring to see that the Plymouth of yesterday (literally yesterday) had not been completely obliterated to make way for the Plymouth of a few hours later.
When the trolley finally circled back around to our campsite, the sun had set behind the stores and the sky was filled with the mysterious lights of the Aurora Storealis.
I got off and rejoined my family, entranced by the neon lights, and filled with a newfound confidence in the future of our community.
“It’s not how big the store is,” I blurted out to my wife and children, “it’s how big the people in the big store are:” or words to that effect.
Then we began packing up our gear in preparation for the long hike down in to the residentially zoned foothills.
“Can we go camp-shopping again soon,” my youngest son asked, unaware of the state of my credit?
“Why not” I promised: “we still have about fifteen pounds of marshmallows left, and empty parking spaces for as far as the eye can see!”
We utilized our wilderness survival training to build a fire out of discarded sales circulars and, once the flames had died down, roasted several hundred marshmallows –barely putting a dent in the super-sized twenty pound ‘family’ package we had purchased during a previous hike in the BJ’s.
After the pain of consuming so many flaming bits of spun corn syrup had subsided, we climbed into our shopping carts to watch the sun setting behind Circuit City. It was an awe-inspiring site, filling me with nostalgia, when suddenly I realized that this was not the Plymouth of my youth.
A moment later my wife reminded me that I had not actually grown up in Plymouth, so it could never have been the Plymouth of my youth: but then, this was not even the Plymouth of last year.
Historic Plymouth was disappearing before my very eyes!
Luckily for me the Olde Towne Trollee was passing by on its historic tour just then, so I jumped on board: much to the dismay of my family, who were all snuggled deep down into their carts.
If there was anyone in town that knew the true story of historic Plymouth, I thought, it was those darn Trolley drivers.
The first tour stop, as it turned out, was an old hang-out of mine: the big rest stop and commuter parking lot at Exit 5 on the Expressway.
“Once upon a time”, the driver began, “this was the site of an information center, where visitors to Plymouth could find pamphlets on all the historical sites and attractions, but nothing else: no donuts, no burgers and fries, nothing!”
A shudder went through the half-empty trolley.
Before the shock of the first stop had subsided, we rolled up to a quaint brick building, no more than 100,000 square feet in size, but now as empty as the Shops at Five.
“Just a few weeks ago this building,” the driver informed his incredulous audience, “was a fully functioning, if undersized Walmart”.
Further down the road we came upon another artifact of a simpler age: what had once been called -it was hard to believe, a ‘Super’ Stop & Shop.
All of these buildings were remarkably well-preserved, and the average visitor would probably not have realized their antiquity, save for the placard that was affixed near the front doors of each building, indicating their last week of occupancy.
The next stop was a fabled Giant K-Mart, last occupied according to its placard, in 2002. Here the trolley pulled over so that we could disembark and take a brief tour.
It was marvelous: the local historical society operated the building as a living museum, staffing the facility with actors portraying the stock boys and cashiers of its Blue Light-lit past. You could talk with these dedicated volunteers, but no matter how hard you tried they never came out of character.
The tour continued, passing strip malls with insufficient parking, lone auto dealerships, and high schools with barely more than a thousand students. It was so reassuring to see that the Plymouth of yesterday (literally yesterday) had not been completely obliterated to make way for the Plymouth of a few hours later.
When the trolley finally circled back around to our campsite, the sun had set behind the stores and the sky was filled with the mysterious lights of the Aurora Storealis.
I got off and rejoined my family, entranced by the neon lights, and filled with a newfound confidence in the future of our community.
“It’s not how big the store is,” I blurted out to my wife and children, “it’s how big the people in the big store are:” or words to that effect.
Then we began packing up our gear in preparation for the long hike down in to the residentially zoned foothills.
“Can we go camp-shopping again soon,” my youngest son asked, unaware of the state of my credit?
“Why not” I promised: “we still have about fifteen pounds of marshmallows left, and empty parking spaces for as far as the eye can see!”
Monday, September 19, 2005
Help Wanted!
It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure! Remember that?
If that appeals to you, how about this: your own staff of 20, near-dictatorial powers, and ultimate responsibility for upwards of 750 very eager ‘employees’.
Enjoy the outdoors?
Like to get a little dirty, now and then?
No, I’m not talking about heading up FEMA or any disaster agency, but you’re getting warmer.
How are you at handling an irate parent, or two, or three, a week?
And of course the pay is, well, to be honest there is no pay.
Ready to sign up? Sorry, it’s not as easy as that. Though there are an enormous set of responsibilities, no pay, long hours and a lot of grief, you also have to be loved and respected by the staff or you’ll never get the job in the first place.
Pope!
You’ve got it, sort of.
I am talking about a once-in-a-lifetime job opening (when you retire you’ll feel like you died and went to heaven) that has just opened up and if you act fast you may have a shot.
El Presidente of the South Plymouth Little League!
I just received an email from South Plymouth Little League saying that resumes are now being accepted, and listing the following percs:
-Free Life Insurance!
-Body guards that travel with you, field to field.
-Cheeze-whiz on your hot dog at no additional cost!
Carpentry experience desirable, but not required.
Public speaking is part of the job, but eloquence is optional.
A big ego is mandatory, but don’t expect that it will get you anywhere.
Little League is full of big egos, and fragile egos and, of course, with hundreds and hundreds of egos that have just hatched and need nurturing.
Strangely enough, you don’t have to know a lot about baseball. You should love the game –the way kids play it, but you don’t have to be a walking encyclopedia of baseball lore, or a former high school star (there are plenty of those guys coaching teams).
No, the main attribute required in a President of a local Little League is a kind of naiveté: you have to believe, no matter how many ‘more-experienced’ staff members tell you otherwise, that you can make the experience more enjoyable for the kids.
That’s the constant struggle –as I see it: to keep it about the kids.
I know a little about the subject. I was Pope Francis the First, back when the League encompassed only about 600 players divided into about 40 teams. Now there’s upwards of 800 players, and something like 60 teams.
When I was the Big Dude of local Little League (there were other titles I heard muttered) the pay was not so good. Today, taking in to account inflation, the pay is the same.
When I was El Presidente I earned the title of ‘The Human Rain Delay” because of a mistake I made with our newfangled sprinkler system. Today there are new fields, new fences, remote-controlled scoreboards, and Cheeze-whiz dispensers to play with.
It’s not really about baseball.
It’s not really about the rules.
It’s definitely not about the parents and their needs.
No, if you want to be the President of the local Little League you have to be a bit of a fool, or willing to act the part at least.
Ideally, a twelve-year-old would make a good Little League President, but they’re usually too busy playing games to take on the job.
If a big piece of that twelve-year-old kid you once were, is still available –maybe forgotten in the glove compartment of your new pick-up truck, you’re a likely candidate.
If you’re a salesman who can set his own hours, or employed locally so you can get away at a moment’s notice, or even if you are temporarily out of work, you’re looking even better.
Do people often scratch their heads and mutter, ‘that’s one crazy SOB” when you speak?
Congratulations, Mr. President.
If that appeals to you, how about this: your own staff of 20, near-dictatorial powers, and ultimate responsibility for upwards of 750 very eager ‘employees’.
Enjoy the outdoors?
Like to get a little dirty, now and then?
No, I’m not talking about heading up FEMA or any disaster agency, but you’re getting warmer.
How are you at handling an irate parent, or two, or three, a week?
And of course the pay is, well, to be honest there is no pay.
Ready to sign up? Sorry, it’s not as easy as that. Though there are an enormous set of responsibilities, no pay, long hours and a lot of grief, you also have to be loved and respected by the staff or you’ll never get the job in the first place.
Pope!
You’ve got it, sort of.
I am talking about a once-in-a-lifetime job opening (when you retire you’ll feel like you died and went to heaven) that has just opened up and if you act fast you may have a shot.
El Presidente of the South Plymouth Little League!
I just received an email from South Plymouth Little League saying that resumes are now being accepted, and listing the following percs:
-Free Life Insurance!
-Body guards that travel with you, field to field.
-Cheeze-whiz on your hot dog at no additional cost!
Carpentry experience desirable, but not required.
Public speaking is part of the job, but eloquence is optional.
A big ego is mandatory, but don’t expect that it will get you anywhere.
Little League is full of big egos, and fragile egos and, of course, with hundreds and hundreds of egos that have just hatched and need nurturing.
Strangely enough, you don’t have to know a lot about baseball. You should love the game –the way kids play it, but you don’t have to be a walking encyclopedia of baseball lore, or a former high school star (there are plenty of those guys coaching teams).
No, the main attribute required in a President of a local Little League is a kind of naiveté: you have to believe, no matter how many ‘more-experienced’ staff members tell you otherwise, that you can make the experience more enjoyable for the kids.
That’s the constant struggle –as I see it: to keep it about the kids.
I know a little about the subject. I was Pope Francis the First, back when the League encompassed only about 600 players divided into about 40 teams. Now there’s upwards of 800 players, and something like 60 teams.
When I was the Big Dude of local Little League (there were other titles I heard muttered) the pay was not so good. Today, taking in to account inflation, the pay is the same.
When I was El Presidente I earned the title of ‘The Human Rain Delay” because of a mistake I made with our newfangled sprinkler system. Today there are new fields, new fences, remote-controlled scoreboards, and Cheeze-whiz dispensers to play with.
It’s not really about baseball.
It’s not really about the rules.
It’s definitely not about the parents and their needs.
No, if you want to be the President of the local Little League you have to be a bit of a fool, or willing to act the part at least.
Ideally, a twelve-year-old would make a good Little League President, but they’re usually too busy playing games to take on the job.
If a big piece of that twelve-year-old kid you once were, is still available –maybe forgotten in the glove compartment of your new pick-up truck, you’re a likely candidate.
If you’re a salesman who can set his own hours, or employed locally so you can get away at a moment’s notice, or even if you are temporarily out of work, you’re looking even better.
Do people often scratch their heads and mutter, ‘that’s one crazy SOB” when you speak?
Congratulations, Mr. President.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
The Well Guy
The Well Guy is mad at me.
We came home from a long weekend in the mountains and noticed some rusty-looking water in the toilets.
Mary looked at me in that way of hers.
“What, what,” I said, “what did I do now?”
“Maybe it’s what you didn’t do,” she said, cryptically, but I knew what she meant.
Later that night she got up to use the bathroom and when she got back in bed she elbowed me awake.
‘What, what,” I said, still half asleep: “what did I do now?” But I knew.
I had been lying there dreading what was about to happen.
She handed me a flashlight. “Maybe it’s not too late,” she said, pulling the covers off me, and using the cold soles of her feet to propel me out of bed.
Our well pit is just off to the side of the front lawn. I put on my slippers and an old gray robe and trundled out the front door, flashlight in hand. When I reached the well pit, I put down the flashlight and heaved off the concrete cover.
A belch of overheated, yet still damp air came whooshing out of the concrete room, followed moments later by the reassuring, repetitive sound of our 7-year old jet pump going about its business. There was hope yet, I thought...
Carefully I got down on all fours and, inching my head out over the pit opening, flashed the light down into the dark, cylindrical chamber.
The beam landed first on the big red pump, then found a large gray tank, reflected off the shiny backs of a variety of tiny bugs and slimy looking lizards, followed a coil of heavy black hose leading from ground to pump to tank and then back into the ground –but no little yellow man.
‘Darn!” I said out loud, too loud: for my voice bounced round the dank tube and came tooting out like a Tugboat’s horn.
When I was a kid we traveled a lot, but that never seemed to simplify the routine that we had to follow before we could actually leave the house.
Before you could go anywhere there was a list of duties you had to perform. You had to turn off the heat, unplug appliances, go to the post office and discontinue your mail. Then you had to tell the milkman not to deliver, the relatives not to call, get someone to feed the parrot, and make sure you left a few boxes of pizza crusts and a carton or two of sour milk for the Well Guy.
Boy, have things changed. Today people think nothing of just dropping everything and taking off: often forgetting though, that while they are away the Well Guy will play.
Come on: you wouldn’t just leave your teenage boys home alone while you went on vacation, would you? The Well Guy deserves at least as much attention as teenagers, maybe more.
Oh, you say you don’t have a Well Guy: in fact you don’t even have a well. Sure, fine, you can believe what you want. But tell me why is it that whenever you go away, or whenever the checkbook gets particularly thin, or whenever you think you’ve got this homeowner thing licked something always goes wrong –something expensive?
No matter how modern your home is there is always something that you depend on that you just don’t have a clue how to fix: your car, or the lawnmower, or the refrigerator, or the air-conditioner, or the well.
Call him by any name that you feel comfortable with: the Well Guy, Troll, Gremlin, but just admit that whatever his name, he’s down there in the dark, waiting.
Think about it: out there in a dark, cold hole in the ground is a little yellow guy who asks nothing more than that you spare him a few scraps now and then. And in exchange for those meager scraps he is going to make sure that pump keeps pumping and water keeps flowing to the tub and the shower and the toilets, day after day, month after month, and year after year.
You know you can’t do it all on your own.
You know that even the best well drilling companies are going to charge you an arm and a leg every time they pay you a visit. Look at the trucks they drive around in: mini-derricks with which they plumb the very depths of the earth for that most precious of fluids: and it’s water, not gas!
It never fails though: a few weeks go by without a major disaster or a faulty appliance and we have ourselves convinced that we are on top of these things. After all, we bought the latest equipment, we have insurance on our insurance. What could go wrong?
Suddenly somebody’s elbowing us in the middle of the night because there is nothing but air coming out of the spigot.
Is there a more pitiable sound than the death rattle of air through a faucet?
How long can you go without a shower?
How long can you go without a glass of water?
How long can you go without that miracle of modern life –the flush toilet?
Now matter how long you can go, the Well Guy can go longer!
Take it from somebody who knows.
We came home from a long weekend in the mountains and noticed some rusty-looking water in the toilets.
Mary looked at me in that way of hers.
“What, what,” I said, “what did I do now?”
“Maybe it’s what you didn’t do,” she said, cryptically, but I knew what she meant.
Later that night she got up to use the bathroom and when she got back in bed she elbowed me awake.
‘What, what,” I said, still half asleep: “what did I do now?” But I knew.
I had been lying there dreading what was about to happen.
She handed me a flashlight. “Maybe it’s not too late,” she said, pulling the covers off me, and using the cold soles of her feet to propel me out of bed.
Our well pit is just off to the side of the front lawn. I put on my slippers and an old gray robe and trundled out the front door, flashlight in hand. When I reached the well pit, I put down the flashlight and heaved off the concrete cover.
A belch of overheated, yet still damp air came whooshing out of the concrete room, followed moments later by the reassuring, repetitive sound of our 7-year old jet pump going about its business. There was hope yet, I thought...
Carefully I got down on all fours and, inching my head out over the pit opening, flashed the light down into the dark, cylindrical chamber.
The beam landed first on the big red pump, then found a large gray tank, reflected off the shiny backs of a variety of tiny bugs and slimy looking lizards, followed a coil of heavy black hose leading from ground to pump to tank and then back into the ground –but no little yellow man.
‘Darn!” I said out loud, too loud: for my voice bounced round the dank tube and came tooting out like a Tugboat’s horn.
When I was a kid we traveled a lot, but that never seemed to simplify the routine that we had to follow before we could actually leave the house.
Before you could go anywhere there was a list of duties you had to perform. You had to turn off the heat, unplug appliances, go to the post office and discontinue your mail. Then you had to tell the milkman not to deliver, the relatives not to call, get someone to feed the parrot, and make sure you left a few boxes of pizza crusts and a carton or two of sour milk for the Well Guy.
Boy, have things changed. Today people think nothing of just dropping everything and taking off: often forgetting though, that while they are away the Well Guy will play.
Come on: you wouldn’t just leave your teenage boys home alone while you went on vacation, would you? The Well Guy deserves at least as much attention as teenagers, maybe more.
Oh, you say you don’t have a Well Guy: in fact you don’t even have a well. Sure, fine, you can believe what you want. But tell me why is it that whenever you go away, or whenever the checkbook gets particularly thin, or whenever you think you’ve got this homeowner thing licked something always goes wrong –something expensive?
No matter how modern your home is there is always something that you depend on that you just don’t have a clue how to fix: your car, or the lawnmower, or the refrigerator, or the air-conditioner, or the well.
Call him by any name that you feel comfortable with: the Well Guy, Troll, Gremlin, but just admit that whatever his name, he’s down there in the dark, waiting.
Think about it: out there in a dark, cold hole in the ground is a little yellow guy who asks nothing more than that you spare him a few scraps now and then. And in exchange for those meager scraps he is going to make sure that pump keeps pumping and water keeps flowing to the tub and the shower and the toilets, day after day, month after month, and year after year.
You know you can’t do it all on your own.
You know that even the best well drilling companies are going to charge you an arm and a leg every time they pay you a visit. Look at the trucks they drive around in: mini-derricks with which they plumb the very depths of the earth for that most precious of fluids: and it’s water, not gas!
It never fails though: a few weeks go by without a major disaster or a faulty appliance and we have ourselves convinced that we are on top of these things. After all, we bought the latest equipment, we have insurance on our insurance. What could go wrong?
Suddenly somebody’s elbowing us in the middle of the night because there is nothing but air coming out of the spigot.
Is there a more pitiable sound than the death rattle of air through a faucet?
How long can you go without a shower?
How long can you go without a glass of water?
How long can you go without that miracle of modern life –the flush toilet?
Now matter how long you can go, the Well Guy can go longer!
Take it from somebody who knows.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Institutional Racism
It seems clear, to me at least, that the best argument for the existence of institutional racism in this country, is now on display in coastal Louisiana and Mississippi.
The racial epithets and Jim Crow segregation of the distant past are now shown, I believe, to pale in significance when compared with the centuries of economic neglect that have eroded the very foundations of our so-called civilization.
Hurricane Katrina, and a FEMA decimated by a government of ideologues who considered that organization a wasteful outgrowth of discredited New Deal democracy, produced twin storm surges that no levee could ever withstand.
Is there a stronger argument for the role of a truly compassionate government in the lives of its citizens? And can there be a clearer warning of the danger of a goverment -and a judiciary, content with Constitutional abstractions?
Now is not the time for political expediency: an appointee to the agency responsible for protecting Americans against the ravages of huricanes or earthquakes or tornadoes must be an expert in the field, not an old friend from Houston. And similarly, the nominee to lead the highest court in the land, no matter how well educated and telegenic, cannot be considered qualified without any actual Supreme Court experience.
The Bush administration has been remarkably well focused on the goal of removing the vestiges of FDR's 'New Deal', especially those policies and programs which directly support the individual in times of need. Their main weapon in this attack has been the placement of what can only be called 'Fifth Columnists': appointees who are either so inept that they simply stand-by in silence while their departments are taken apart, or so opposed to the work of the departments that they are selected to lead, that they obstruct the work themselves.
I am very concerned that 'Mr. Roberts' is yet another political appointee, such as the last two heads of FEMA and a hundred other Bush appointees, who has been chosen not for what he may accomplish, but for what he will impede; not for what he believes, but for what he opposes; not for what he is willing to say, but for what he is willing to hide.
In the wake of the twin storms of Katrina and FEMA, can we afford to believe anything else?
The racial epithets and Jim Crow segregation of the distant past are now shown, I believe, to pale in significance when compared with the centuries of economic neglect that have eroded the very foundations of our so-called civilization.
Hurricane Katrina, and a FEMA decimated by a government of ideologues who considered that organization a wasteful outgrowth of discredited New Deal democracy, produced twin storm surges that no levee could ever withstand.
Is there a stronger argument for the role of a truly compassionate government in the lives of its citizens? And can there be a clearer warning of the danger of a goverment -and a judiciary, content with Constitutional abstractions?
Now is not the time for political expediency: an appointee to the agency responsible for protecting Americans against the ravages of huricanes or earthquakes or tornadoes must be an expert in the field, not an old friend from Houston. And similarly, the nominee to lead the highest court in the land, no matter how well educated and telegenic, cannot be considered qualified without any actual Supreme Court experience.
The Bush administration has been remarkably well focused on the goal of removing the vestiges of FDR's 'New Deal', especially those policies and programs which directly support the individual in times of need. Their main weapon in this attack has been the placement of what can only be called 'Fifth Columnists': appointees who are either so inept that they simply stand-by in silence while their departments are taken apart, or so opposed to the work of the departments that they are selected to lead, that they obstruct the work themselves.
I am very concerned that 'Mr. Roberts' is yet another political appointee, such as the last two heads of FEMA and a hundred other Bush appointees, who has been chosen not for what he may accomplish, but for what he will impede; not for what he believes, but for what he opposes; not for what he is willing to say, but for what he is willing to hide.
In the wake of the twin storms of Katrina and FEMA, can we afford to believe anything else?
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Quiet!
The creak of trees leaning against trees: like a child’s first violin lesson.
The occasional, unhurried trill of birds: laughing?
The wind playing in the Notch like a jazz drummers brush on stretched skins: unhurried, yet capricious.
Finally, after a four hour drive, a night in a Motor-Inn, and a long hike along the 19-Mile Brook Trail, we had shed the sounds of so-called civilization and all we could hear was the hush of breathing: the earth’s and ours.
Much is made of the sights of nature. We travel hard and long to change our points of view: to gaze out on a pristine beach and a flat ocean, or a craggy peak dappled with granite, covered in deep green. But we receive greater benefits, I believe, from the change in our aural world: from exchanging the coarse sounds of our everyday existence for an encounter with silence.
It may be as well, that silence is a far more precious, and rare commodity than simple visual beauty.
Our home town Plymouth does not suffer from a lack of scenery. People travel from great distances to ‘see’ our antiquities, recline on our beaches, take in our sights. These scenes are a special benefit for the year-round residents of the town as well, and are a large part of the appeal of living in Plymouth.
My own home, though modest by most standards, has a wealth of relative privacy. Set back from the road, surrounded by woods, shielded for the most part from the lights of passing vehicles.
I have often simply stood in my yard and enjoyed the stars, or basked in the moonlight, while doing my best to ignore the echoing engines of cars on the street, trucks on the highway, helicopters and planes passing overhead.
There is no ignoring however, certain other industrial sounds, such as the exaggerated bass produced by modern automobile sound systems: a sound you feel more than you hear. And almost every home you enter offers a subtle cacophony of beeps and boings and clicks and whistles.
Can you even imagine back to the day when a family fell asleep to the simple sound of a fire’s embers settling, the restless voices of horses, the occasional coyote, and the crescendo of crickets? Now add to those natural sounds the water pump engaging, the air conditioner’s rush, the television’s din, and the computer and a host of other electronic devices calling out like lost sheep.
You have to go a long way, make a special effort, to shed these sounds. I am not sure if such quiet is available anyplace in Plymouth: perhaps in the heart of Myles Standish State Forest –but then its popularity and ease of access work against that; maybe along the coast, or out along the beaches of Saquish –but even there you often hear the sounds of motor boats and the nearby restaurants and night spots with their late night revelers.
Even in the White Mountains of New Hampshire –where we traveled, quiet is not something the loveliest Inn or Bed and Breakfast can guarantee their guests. The night before our recent trek we stayed just a few miles away from the trailhead, in a town that can boast no more than a few hundred residents. Despite this relative isolation every few minutes the ground rumbled and the air resounded from the sounds of logging trucks going through their gears. And in our room itself, the well-intentioned innkeepers had placed air conditioners which produced a commotion equal to a 747 passing over Nahant.
It is not that I cannot abide any of the sounds of the civilized world. I love the reverberation of a well-tuned motorcycle dropping into gear and accelerating. The raucous kalimba-like play of boat riggings in a crowded harbor can be music to the ear. Even the thunderous chords that leak through the windows of a passing car (yes, I mean you Matt) can make me smile, remembering the decibel levels of my youth.
But I have come to realize how precious the quiet is, how elusive it can be, and how hard I am willing to work to find the places where it can still be found, in its natural state. For silence, I think, cannot be manufactured. Quiet, I believe, is not the result of things being blocked out. Stillness, I have found, is not the absence of activity, but rather a kind of harmony of unhurried actions.
It’s just that I take pleasure in things that, just a few years ago, I hardly knew existed.
The occasional, unhurried trill of birds: laughing?
The wind playing in the Notch like a jazz drummers brush on stretched skins: unhurried, yet capricious.
Finally, after a four hour drive, a night in a Motor-Inn, and a long hike along the 19-Mile Brook Trail, we had shed the sounds of so-called civilization and all we could hear was the hush of breathing: the earth’s and ours.
Much is made of the sights of nature. We travel hard and long to change our points of view: to gaze out on a pristine beach and a flat ocean, or a craggy peak dappled with granite, covered in deep green. But we receive greater benefits, I believe, from the change in our aural world: from exchanging the coarse sounds of our everyday existence for an encounter with silence.
It may be as well, that silence is a far more precious, and rare commodity than simple visual beauty.
Our home town Plymouth does not suffer from a lack of scenery. People travel from great distances to ‘see’ our antiquities, recline on our beaches, take in our sights. These scenes are a special benefit for the year-round residents of the town as well, and are a large part of the appeal of living in Plymouth.
My own home, though modest by most standards, has a wealth of relative privacy. Set back from the road, surrounded by woods, shielded for the most part from the lights of passing vehicles.
I have often simply stood in my yard and enjoyed the stars, or basked in the moonlight, while doing my best to ignore the echoing engines of cars on the street, trucks on the highway, helicopters and planes passing overhead.
There is no ignoring however, certain other industrial sounds, such as the exaggerated bass produced by modern automobile sound systems: a sound you feel more than you hear. And almost every home you enter offers a subtle cacophony of beeps and boings and clicks and whistles.
Can you even imagine back to the day when a family fell asleep to the simple sound of a fire’s embers settling, the restless voices of horses, the occasional coyote, and the crescendo of crickets? Now add to those natural sounds the water pump engaging, the air conditioner’s rush, the television’s din, and the computer and a host of other electronic devices calling out like lost sheep.
You have to go a long way, make a special effort, to shed these sounds. I am not sure if such quiet is available anyplace in Plymouth: perhaps in the heart of Myles Standish State Forest –but then its popularity and ease of access work against that; maybe along the coast, or out along the beaches of Saquish –but even there you often hear the sounds of motor boats and the nearby restaurants and night spots with their late night revelers.
Even in the White Mountains of New Hampshire –where we traveled, quiet is not something the loveliest Inn or Bed and Breakfast can guarantee their guests. The night before our recent trek we stayed just a few miles away from the trailhead, in a town that can boast no more than a few hundred residents. Despite this relative isolation every few minutes the ground rumbled and the air resounded from the sounds of logging trucks going through their gears. And in our room itself, the well-intentioned innkeepers had placed air conditioners which produced a commotion equal to a 747 passing over Nahant.
It is not that I cannot abide any of the sounds of the civilized world. I love the reverberation of a well-tuned motorcycle dropping into gear and accelerating. The raucous kalimba-like play of boat riggings in a crowded harbor can be music to the ear. Even the thunderous chords that leak through the windows of a passing car (yes, I mean you Matt) can make me smile, remembering the decibel levels of my youth.
But I have come to realize how precious the quiet is, how elusive it can be, and how hard I am willing to work to find the places where it can still be found, in its natural state. For silence, I think, cannot be manufactured. Quiet, I believe, is not the result of things being blocked out. Stillness, I have found, is not the absence of activity, but rather a kind of harmony of unhurried actions.
It’s just that I take pleasure in things that, just a few years ago, I hardly knew existed.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Enisketomp
They are going to move the Forefathers Monument, did you hear? In its present location on Allerton it is missed by 90% of the tourists who go looking for it, and most town residents couldn’t tell you where it is either.
They’re going to move it, piece by piece, stone by stone, to the rest stop at Exit 5: there it will be given a position of prominence, directly off the highway and in front of the McDonalds.
Customers at the McDonald’s drive-thru will be able to order commemorative Forefathers’ Fries during the re-construction process.
Okay now wait a few seconds and let that sink in…
Preposterous? You bet. Thank goodness it’s not true. But the idea is not any more ridiculous than what they have actually done to the 35 foot wooden Enisketomp that sits there now.
Enisketomp, if you didn’t know, is the name of the wooden sculpture donated to the town by the artist Peter ‘Wolf’ Toth.
Toth, in an effort to raise awareness of the important contributions of Native Americans, carved and placed massive wooden sculptures depicting Native Americans icons in all fifty states, and every Canadian province. All told he has created over 70 sculptures, and has already replaced a number of those that through neglect or accident had fallen into disrepair over the years since he began his quest.
Fortunately, since its creation, Enisketomp –which loosely translated means ‘human being’, has been cared for by the Massachusetts Highway Department. They placed it on the concrete block it still rests on, grounded it with metal bar and wire to protect against lightning strikes, and regularly treat it to protect against rot or infestation.
What they have been unable to do, however, is protect it against the rising tide of commercialization, a phenomena that threatens to rob us all of our right to spaces that are out of reach of the corporations –places where we can actually think for ourselves, without commercial interruptions..
I never liked that they placed Enisketomp at the rest stop at exit 5 in the first place: I thought it smacked of the days when impoverished Native American’s were forced to sell their trinkets along the nation’s highways.
But I understood that the location had a certain prominence – would be seen by millions, even if they were just rushing by. Originally that location at Exit 5 also featured an information center –not a fast food restaurant.
But I think you know what happened. The information center was leveled, in favor of a McDonalds and, at present, Honey Dew Donut. And now Enisketomp is just a decoration –like the super-sized inflatable coffee cup and donut that was placed there last week.
Of course what has been done to Enisketomp is not out of the ordinary these days: I don’t assert that the artist, his sculpture, or Native American’s overall have been singled out for this treatment. Rather I believe the insult is directed at us all.
More and more the interests of business are given preference over the rights of the individual.
Bankruptcy laws are revised to favor the creditors. Medicare is revised to favor the pharmaceutical companies. Workers pensions are jettisoned for the sake of the ‘life’ of the corporation.
Along our highways the beautiful trees that used to stretch for miles, and served as a buffer between the roadway and development along its path, are being cut away so that we can be sure to have a clear view of the car dealers and home improvement stores.
This stretch of our lives sponsored by the highest bidder.
A plastic Enisketomp with every Happy Meal.
What would they pay, I wonder, to put a logo on Plymouth Rock?
They’re going to move it, piece by piece, stone by stone, to the rest stop at Exit 5: there it will be given a position of prominence, directly off the highway and in front of the McDonalds.
Customers at the McDonald’s drive-thru will be able to order commemorative Forefathers’ Fries during the re-construction process.
Okay now wait a few seconds and let that sink in…
Preposterous? You bet. Thank goodness it’s not true. But the idea is not any more ridiculous than what they have actually done to the 35 foot wooden Enisketomp that sits there now.
Enisketomp, if you didn’t know, is the name of the wooden sculpture donated to the town by the artist Peter ‘Wolf’ Toth.
Toth, in an effort to raise awareness of the important contributions of Native Americans, carved and placed massive wooden sculptures depicting Native Americans icons in all fifty states, and every Canadian province. All told he has created over 70 sculptures, and has already replaced a number of those that through neglect or accident had fallen into disrepair over the years since he began his quest.
Fortunately, since its creation, Enisketomp –which loosely translated means ‘human being’, has been cared for by the Massachusetts Highway Department. They placed it on the concrete block it still rests on, grounded it with metal bar and wire to protect against lightning strikes, and regularly treat it to protect against rot or infestation.
What they have been unable to do, however, is protect it against the rising tide of commercialization, a phenomena that threatens to rob us all of our right to spaces that are out of reach of the corporations –places where we can actually think for ourselves, without commercial interruptions..
I never liked that they placed Enisketomp at the rest stop at exit 5 in the first place: I thought it smacked of the days when impoverished Native American’s were forced to sell their trinkets along the nation’s highways.
But I understood that the location had a certain prominence – would be seen by millions, even if they were just rushing by. Originally that location at Exit 5 also featured an information center –not a fast food restaurant.
But I think you know what happened. The information center was leveled, in favor of a McDonalds and, at present, Honey Dew Donut. And now Enisketomp is just a decoration –like the super-sized inflatable coffee cup and donut that was placed there last week.
Of course what has been done to Enisketomp is not out of the ordinary these days: I don’t assert that the artist, his sculpture, or Native American’s overall have been singled out for this treatment. Rather I believe the insult is directed at us all.
More and more the interests of business are given preference over the rights of the individual.
Bankruptcy laws are revised to favor the creditors. Medicare is revised to favor the pharmaceutical companies. Workers pensions are jettisoned for the sake of the ‘life’ of the corporation.
Along our highways the beautiful trees that used to stretch for miles, and served as a buffer between the roadway and development along its path, are being cut away so that we can be sure to have a clear view of the car dealers and home improvement stores.
This stretch of our lives sponsored by the highest bidder.
A plastic Enisketomp with every Happy Meal.
What would they pay, I wonder, to put a logo on Plymouth Rock?
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Vacationing on the Big Island
Greenland, that’s a new one on me.
I am used to being told ‘off’ – and have had numerous destinations suggested, but never Greenland.
But that’s where I should move, according to one reader.
When I was a few years younger my father would regularly tell me ‘go to your room’, which was not too hard to take: that’s where all my ‘albums’ were. Exile to ‘Yaroom’ usually consisted of a few hours listening to music with those great old ear-muff style headphones on: the kind that not only produced great sound, but blocked out the rest of the world.
I’ve also had many people tell me to ‘get out of their face’, which I always took to mean out of their heads, or out of their sight: though lately I’ve reassessed that, as people tell me I am a close talker.
Maybe I actually was ‘in their face’.
‘Take a hike’ is one of my personal favorites: there is a certain civility to that expression. The speaker is suggesting, I believe, that after some vigorous exercise I may reconsider my position.
The next time I have the chance to take a long hike I promise that I will use that opportunity to fully consider the merits of re-locating to Greenland.
‘Take a Flying Leap’ is another wonderfully description travel recommendation Twenty years or so ago, when hang-gliding was all the rage, there were thousands of people who took that advice seriously. I am not by nature a timid soul, and if the opportunity had presented itself, I might also have taken ‘wing’ – were it not for the lesson provided by my neighbor Dan.
Dan actually took hang-gliding lessons, somewhere in the mountains of Vermont, I think. He got as far as lesson 3 of 5, where they have you literally take ‘a flying leap’. In lesson three you are supposed to jog down a small hill with the glider on your back, hopping up and down like the Wright Brothers early experiments at Kitty Hawk. But Dan got a little more air than he or the instructor expected: in fact his glider caught a good gust of wind and swooped up about 25 feet in the air, then plummeted to earth like a stone. I didn’t actually see it happen, but I heard Dan tell the story as he sat on his couch with his right leg extended and resting on a pillow. His exposed knee, as I remember it, was as big as a basketball.
Despite Dan’s painful experience ‘The Flying Leap’ does at least offer the hope of survival, even of flight, whereas ‘Go Jump In a Lake’, ‘Take a Long Walk off a Short Pier’, ‘Get Lost’ and others of its kind seem to offer no hope at.
My mother tried hard to be constructive when she was frustrated with me. She wasn’t content just to have me leave her sight, but would suggest that during my absence I seek out assistance. ‘Tell It to the Marines’, she’d say, pointing toward the door. At the time though, this advice confused me, as my father was a ‘lifer’ in the Air Force, and for most of my youth we lived on air bases where Marines were hard to find.
I wonder though, if there are any Marines on Greenland?
My father was once stationed on Greenland, and was issued this fantastic coat with a hood that totally encased your head in wolverine fur (or so I imagined). Years later, when he was stationed at the Pentagon, I would often ‘borrow’ that coat when the temperature got below 40 where we lived in Maryland (which was a deep freeze there) and whatever fur that collar was made of, it would drive the local dogs crazy.
You know, now that I think of it, the only way to get to Greenland these days is to take a flying leap, and if you jump in a lake there, chances are that you will have a very hard landing –on ice.
If you take a hike in Greenland you need the usual outdoor gear, plus an expensive sled and a team of dogs. And with all of the effort you have to give to avoiding polar bears and cracks in the ice, there would be very little time left for pondering the great questions of our time.
No, I’ve decided, I am not going to Greenland.
Sorry to disappoint.
But to show my readers I’m not a bad guy, I am going to meet them half way: I am going to go directly to my room and put on my headphones. I’ve got this great new CD of Inuit Love Songs that I can’t wait to listen to.
One man’s exile is another man’s dream vacation.
I am used to being told ‘off’ – and have had numerous destinations suggested, but never Greenland.
But that’s where I should move, according to one reader.
When I was a few years younger my father would regularly tell me ‘go to your room’, which was not too hard to take: that’s where all my ‘albums’ were. Exile to ‘Yaroom’ usually consisted of a few hours listening to music with those great old ear-muff style headphones on: the kind that not only produced great sound, but blocked out the rest of the world.
I’ve also had many people tell me to ‘get out of their face’, which I always took to mean out of their heads, or out of their sight: though lately I’ve reassessed that, as people tell me I am a close talker.
Maybe I actually was ‘in their face’.
‘Take a hike’ is one of my personal favorites: there is a certain civility to that expression. The speaker is suggesting, I believe, that after some vigorous exercise I may reconsider my position.
The next time I have the chance to take a long hike I promise that I will use that opportunity to fully consider the merits of re-locating to Greenland.
‘Take a Flying Leap’ is another wonderfully description travel recommendation Twenty years or so ago, when hang-gliding was all the rage, there were thousands of people who took that advice seriously. I am not by nature a timid soul, and if the opportunity had presented itself, I might also have taken ‘wing’ – were it not for the lesson provided by my neighbor Dan.
Dan actually took hang-gliding lessons, somewhere in the mountains of Vermont, I think. He got as far as lesson 3 of 5, where they have you literally take ‘a flying leap’. In lesson three you are supposed to jog down a small hill with the glider on your back, hopping up and down like the Wright Brothers early experiments at Kitty Hawk. But Dan got a little more air than he or the instructor expected: in fact his glider caught a good gust of wind and swooped up about 25 feet in the air, then plummeted to earth like a stone. I didn’t actually see it happen, but I heard Dan tell the story as he sat on his couch with his right leg extended and resting on a pillow. His exposed knee, as I remember it, was as big as a basketball.
Despite Dan’s painful experience ‘The Flying Leap’ does at least offer the hope of survival, even of flight, whereas ‘Go Jump In a Lake’, ‘Take a Long Walk off a Short Pier’, ‘Get Lost’ and others of its kind seem to offer no hope at.
My mother tried hard to be constructive when she was frustrated with me. She wasn’t content just to have me leave her sight, but would suggest that during my absence I seek out assistance. ‘Tell It to the Marines’, she’d say, pointing toward the door. At the time though, this advice confused me, as my father was a ‘lifer’ in the Air Force, and for most of my youth we lived on air bases where Marines were hard to find.
I wonder though, if there are any Marines on Greenland?
My father was once stationed on Greenland, and was issued this fantastic coat with a hood that totally encased your head in wolverine fur (or so I imagined). Years later, when he was stationed at the Pentagon, I would often ‘borrow’ that coat when the temperature got below 40 where we lived in Maryland (which was a deep freeze there) and whatever fur that collar was made of, it would drive the local dogs crazy.
You know, now that I think of it, the only way to get to Greenland these days is to take a flying leap, and if you jump in a lake there, chances are that you will have a very hard landing –on ice.
If you take a hike in Greenland you need the usual outdoor gear, plus an expensive sled and a team of dogs. And with all of the effort you have to give to avoiding polar bears and cracks in the ice, there would be very little time left for pondering the great questions of our time.
No, I’ve decided, I am not going to Greenland.
Sorry to disappoint.
But to show my readers I’m not a bad guy, I am going to meet them half way: I am going to go directly to my room and put on my headphones. I’ve got this great new CD of Inuit Love Songs that I can’t wait to listen to.
One man’s exile is another man’s dream vacation.
Fly Paper
Americans are great at names –names that bring to mind all sorts of futuristic, utopian images and advancements. And it seems it really doesn’t matter how large the gap is, between the name and reality.
Take the Sagamore ‘Fly-Over’, for example.
My day job takes me over the Sagamore Bridge several times a week, but despite all the construction going on, the old Escort’s wheel’s haven’t come close to leaving the ground.
In my humble opinion it’s more a ‘Swerve Around’ than a Fly-Over.
Maybe that’s a good thing though. From what I have seen, drivers headed to the Cape are having a lot of trouble with the new swerving over. If their vehicles actually went airborne there’s no telling how bad it could get.
Part of the problem is that they have yet to take the rotary out of the equation –which I thought was suppose to be the whole point. But whatever they are doing traffic is already much worse than before.
Before they began the construction, drivers knew what to expect and could mentally prepare for the rotary for a few hundred yards: as they neared the bridge, drivers would go slower and slower and finally, at the edge of the rotary, they’d come to a complete stop.
Many then had a very difficult time starting up again, and merging in to the rotary traffic. On weekends and holidays traffic often wouldn’t move at all but –on the positive side, with nobody going anyplace accidents were few and far between.
With the new construction however, you don’t have the time to ponder what lies ahead. You’re doing the limit (about 75) when suddenly you run into construction, then encounter a few odd international signs, then the big swerve over, and right after that you run smack-dab in to the rotary.
I’m not showing off my extensive vocabulary here: smack-dab is exactly the right term. Cars slow, swerve, merge and then –smack-dab the car ahead of them, and smack-dab the cars to their right and left.
Smack-dab, smack-dab, smack-dab, screeunch!
Maybe they call it a fly-over because every Friday night the choppers are flying over the scene.
“This is Chip Chapstick high over Three in LiveFiveChopperOne reporting that there’s been another accident at the Sagamore Smack-Dab that has traffic backed up to Portland, Maine”.
I think they should have left well enough alone.
The rotary was working just fine thank you.
For hotel owners the existence of the rotary meant that tourists wouldn’t risk being late and losing their reservations and so would confirm ahead of time.
For permanent residents of the Cape the rotary meant that only so many of those so called ‘summer people’ could actually make it over the bridge every day. And that doesn’t even count the number of people who avoided the Cape altogether because they couldn’t deal with the rotary in the first place.
Let’s be honest: it’s a well known fact that rotary’s scare people in to taking alternative routes. A local member of the Thatched Roof Party has told me on super secret double background that the government is secretly exploring the possibility of using traffic rotaries in southern border states to reduce the amount of illegal immigrants.
Sooner or later though, the ‘Fly-Over’will be completed. They have to finish: the construction company has already spent the money from this job on their next big project – finishing Route 44.
When they do finish though, don’t expect any tangible improvements: because of the elimination of the rotary and all the publicity about this ‘Fly Over’ I predict that even more people are going to drive to the Cape, just to experience the thrill.
Instead of choosing the Cape for their vacation because of its quaint charms and beautiful beaches, they’ll choose to come just to experience the amazing ‘Fly-Over’.
And then Cape businesses will get on board, and begin promoting the Cape like it’s an amusement park.
“This summer”, a dramatic new ad campaign will begin, “don’t just drive to your vacation. FLY-OVER!”
Soon thereafter traffic trying to get to the Cape will become unbearable again, necessitating the creation of more rotaries to scare folks away, followed shortly by more Swerve-Overs to slow them down, more Smack-Dabs for the sake of the local auto body repair shops, and a dramatic increase in Helicopter traffic.
In fact government employment statistics predict that there will be a dramatic need for traffic copter pilots and copter personalities in the next decade, especially on the Cape.
When that happens I am going to bite the bullet and dish out the cash for a tunnel pass. It’s either that or stay on this side of the bridge and amuse myself by watching the tourists taking off and landing.
Take the Sagamore ‘Fly-Over’, for example.
My day job takes me over the Sagamore Bridge several times a week, but despite all the construction going on, the old Escort’s wheel’s haven’t come close to leaving the ground.
In my humble opinion it’s more a ‘Swerve Around’ than a Fly-Over.
Maybe that’s a good thing though. From what I have seen, drivers headed to the Cape are having a lot of trouble with the new swerving over. If their vehicles actually went airborne there’s no telling how bad it could get.
Part of the problem is that they have yet to take the rotary out of the equation –which I thought was suppose to be the whole point. But whatever they are doing traffic is already much worse than before.
Before they began the construction, drivers knew what to expect and could mentally prepare for the rotary for a few hundred yards: as they neared the bridge, drivers would go slower and slower and finally, at the edge of the rotary, they’d come to a complete stop.
Many then had a very difficult time starting up again, and merging in to the rotary traffic. On weekends and holidays traffic often wouldn’t move at all but –on the positive side, with nobody going anyplace accidents were few and far between.
With the new construction however, you don’t have the time to ponder what lies ahead. You’re doing the limit (about 75) when suddenly you run into construction, then encounter a few odd international signs, then the big swerve over, and right after that you run smack-dab in to the rotary.
I’m not showing off my extensive vocabulary here: smack-dab is exactly the right term. Cars slow, swerve, merge and then –smack-dab the car ahead of them, and smack-dab the cars to their right and left.
Smack-dab, smack-dab, smack-dab, screeunch!
Maybe they call it a fly-over because every Friday night the choppers are flying over the scene.
“This is Chip Chapstick high over Three in LiveFiveChopperOne reporting that there’s been another accident at the Sagamore Smack-Dab that has traffic backed up to Portland, Maine”.
I think they should have left well enough alone.
The rotary was working just fine thank you.
For hotel owners the existence of the rotary meant that tourists wouldn’t risk being late and losing their reservations and so would confirm ahead of time.
For permanent residents of the Cape the rotary meant that only so many of those so called ‘summer people’ could actually make it over the bridge every day. And that doesn’t even count the number of people who avoided the Cape altogether because they couldn’t deal with the rotary in the first place.
Let’s be honest: it’s a well known fact that rotary’s scare people in to taking alternative routes. A local member of the Thatched Roof Party has told me on super secret double background that the government is secretly exploring the possibility of using traffic rotaries in southern border states to reduce the amount of illegal immigrants.
Sooner or later though, the ‘Fly-Over’will be completed. They have to finish: the construction company has already spent the money from this job on their next big project – finishing Route 44.
When they do finish though, don’t expect any tangible improvements: because of the elimination of the rotary and all the publicity about this ‘Fly Over’ I predict that even more people are going to drive to the Cape, just to experience the thrill.
Instead of choosing the Cape for their vacation because of its quaint charms and beautiful beaches, they’ll choose to come just to experience the amazing ‘Fly-Over’.
And then Cape businesses will get on board, and begin promoting the Cape like it’s an amusement park.
“This summer”, a dramatic new ad campaign will begin, “don’t just drive to your vacation. FLY-OVER!”
Soon thereafter traffic trying to get to the Cape will become unbearable again, necessitating the creation of more rotaries to scare folks away, followed shortly by more Swerve-Overs to slow them down, more Smack-Dabs for the sake of the local auto body repair shops, and a dramatic increase in Helicopter traffic.
In fact government employment statistics predict that there will be a dramatic need for traffic copter pilots and copter personalities in the next decade, especially on the Cape.
When that happens I am going to bite the bullet and dish out the cash for a tunnel pass. It’s either that or stay on this side of the bridge and amuse myself by watching the tourists taking off and landing.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
A Leak on the Mayflower
Help me out here: I want more than anything to write about Karl Rove, but I can’t figure out how to make it relate to life in Plymouth.
Sure, I know, my columns are only loosely connected to Plymouth in the first place, but I have to try.
Did you hear the one about Karl Rove on the Mayflower?
Yeah, he was coming over from England in 1620 and the ship sprang a leak.
Karl had nothing to do with it!
Myles Standish was there though too, and said if anyone on his ship was involved in the leak, he’d personally throw them overboard.
John Billington, spokesperson for Myles Standish, calmed the crew down by assuring them that he had specifically spoken with Karl about the leak and had been assured that Rove knew nothing about it whatsoever.
Besides, Billington said, the ship itself was not exactly new, not what you would normally think of as ‘seaworthy’, and was leaking like a sieve before this latest leak was noticed.
Selectperson-in-Waiting William Bradford wrote in his journal that the whole leak business was the fabrication of a group of disgruntled indentured servants who wanted their own plots of land in the New World. “That”, he wrote, “and the usual kind of hi-jinks you can expect when you’re cooped up for an extended period of time on a floating cesspool”.
Bradford also argued that Rove never really did anything specifically illegal.
Marine Law is very clear about people who deliberately cause a boat to leak: to be thrown overboard for leaking, the law states that you need to deliberately cause the leak, know that the leak will likely cause the boat to sink, and not care.
“How could Karl not care if the boat sank,” Bradford asked, rhetorically. “He was on the boat in the middle of the ocean, he had to care. Therefore even if he had inadvertently caused the leak he should not be thrown overboard.”
When later investigations revealed that Rove had in fact been at least aware of the leak, and had said nothing about it, Standish-spokesperson Billington told the crew that awareness of a leak and responsibility for a leak, were not the same thing.
Asked if Rove would now be thrown overboard, because he had at the very least been ‘involved’ with the leak, Billington said that he could not comment.
“We have ongoing leak here”, Billington angrily replied, “and it would inappropriate of me to comment on the seriousness of this leak until the boat sinks, or the leaking stops.”
At a later meeting with the indentured servants on Social Security, Standish himself, when asked, clarified his position, stating that anyone responsible for sinking the Mayflower would be removed from the Mayflower, provided of course that it was physically possible to remove someone if and when the ship was underwater.
“In my experience it is rare to find anyone on a ship that has already sunk,” Standish said in his matter-of-fact way, and flashing his famous grin. “Generally everyone gets off the boat while it is sinking, and some –following the rodent model, long before that.”
“But let me assure the future American people that, if and when the leaking is completed,” Standish continued, “and the ship is completely underwater, anyone still on board, and found guilty of a crime, will not be allowed to stay.”
So you see, it’s hopeless: big time politics and small-town life just don’t mix.
I wish they did: Plymouth can be so provincial.
Sure, I know, my columns are only loosely connected to Plymouth in the first place, but I have to try.
Did you hear the one about Karl Rove on the Mayflower?
Yeah, he was coming over from England in 1620 and the ship sprang a leak.
Karl had nothing to do with it!
Myles Standish was there though too, and said if anyone on his ship was involved in the leak, he’d personally throw them overboard.
John Billington, spokesperson for Myles Standish, calmed the crew down by assuring them that he had specifically spoken with Karl about the leak and had been assured that Rove knew nothing about it whatsoever.
Besides, Billington said, the ship itself was not exactly new, not what you would normally think of as ‘seaworthy’, and was leaking like a sieve before this latest leak was noticed.
Selectperson-in-Waiting William Bradford wrote in his journal that the whole leak business was the fabrication of a group of disgruntled indentured servants who wanted their own plots of land in the New World. “That”, he wrote, “and the usual kind of hi-jinks you can expect when you’re cooped up for an extended period of time on a floating cesspool”.
Bradford also argued that Rove never really did anything specifically illegal.
Marine Law is very clear about people who deliberately cause a boat to leak: to be thrown overboard for leaking, the law states that you need to deliberately cause the leak, know that the leak will likely cause the boat to sink, and not care.
“How could Karl not care if the boat sank,” Bradford asked, rhetorically. “He was on the boat in the middle of the ocean, he had to care. Therefore even if he had inadvertently caused the leak he should not be thrown overboard.”
When later investigations revealed that Rove had in fact been at least aware of the leak, and had said nothing about it, Standish-spokesperson Billington told the crew that awareness of a leak and responsibility for a leak, were not the same thing.
Asked if Rove would now be thrown overboard, because he had at the very least been ‘involved’ with the leak, Billington said that he could not comment.
“We have ongoing leak here”, Billington angrily replied, “and it would inappropriate of me to comment on the seriousness of this leak until the boat sinks, or the leaking stops.”
At a later meeting with the indentured servants on Social Security, Standish himself, when asked, clarified his position, stating that anyone responsible for sinking the Mayflower would be removed from the Mayflower, provided of course that it was physically possible to remove someone if and when the ship was underwater.
“In my experience it is rare to find anyone on a ship that has already sunk,” Standish said in his matter-of-fact way, and flashing his famous grin. “Generally everyone gets off the boat while it is sinking, and some –following the rodent model, long before that.”
“But let me assure the future American people that, if and when the leaking is completed,” Standish continued, “and the ship is completely underwater, anyone still on board, and found guilty of a crime, will not be allowed to stay.”
So you see, it’s hopeless: big time politics and small-town life just don’t mix.
I wish they did: Plymouth can be so provincial.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Weather Mand
Can anyone tell me what the weather is like around here?
I’m not kidding: I’ve forgotten what it is supposed to be like.
I remember as a kid spending time in Holyoke, thinking the weather there was perfect in the summer.
My grandfather was a supervisor in the Water Department in Holyoke: it was largely a ceremonial role, I believe, giving him the authority to take my brother and me fishing in the town’s reservoir whenever he wanted.
Maybe I am mistaken, but as I remember it Indian Summer lasted all summer long then: warm days, dry and deliciously cool nights.
I also remember swimming all day, eating at least a dozen ears of corn at one sitting, and then sitting on my grandparents’ screened porch and playing Scrabble until every word in the dictionary had been used and we all just sat there in the early evening light, speechless.
Now that was weather!
I guess I always believed that New England –from one end to the other, was just like that.
But we didn’t really live in New England then – we were just visiting.
Remember when local newspapers would print who was on vacation, and who had relatives visiting? Were we actually that safe then, or just a little more naive?
I was actually born in Massachusetts, in Chicopee Falls ( a pretty name, but Westover Air Force Base in point of fact), and later lived for two years in Bangor, Maine. While my memory of the Connecticut River Valley is idyllic, my memories of Bangor winters are different, so I don’t think I am simply being nostalgic.
And both western Massachusetts and Bangor had what I remember as predictable climates.
I have lived here in Plymouth for over twenty years now, and I have no sense of what the weather is supposed to be like, season to season.
Is that because here on the coast we don’t –and never have, had consistent weather?
I get the sense it’s something else: not exactly what you might think of as the effect of Global Warming, but maybe part of that phenomena.
My wife came home a few hours after sunset the other day –during this recent stretch of brutal humidity, and when she got out of her air-conditioned car she looked like something out of a Charlie Chan movie: her glasses were completely fogged over.
Inscrutable, was the word the war-time movie propagandists used to describe the impending ‘yellow peril’.
This weather is inscrutable.
This oppressive humidity reminds me of the kind of weather I got used to, growing up in the Washington D.C. area. The summers in Washington are consistently hot and humid –double nineties are not unusual: but because it is so predictably uncomfortable from June to September every building is fully air-conditioned.
In July in the D.C. area it can be 77 by 7, 88 by 8, and in the nineties by the time the sweating, aluminum-clad snack trucks begin arriving at construction sites.
But you can learn to live with anything, if you know what to expect.
Here, though the coastal waters often moderate the cold, the homes are still built to withstand the temperatures and cost of winter: the houses insulated so well that, when we get this kind of humidity, traditional colonial-style, wooden homes are swollen with the heat that can’t escape.
If this continues, and the wood keeps swelling up, you could see dozens of gray and white gambrels break free of their foundations and float off, east, like Dorothy headed for Oz.
Actually I don’t think I would mind that. It’s probably a bit cooler, up a few thousand feet.
It’s so humid the fireflies can’t light their little torches.
It’s so humid the mosquitoes can’t hold on long enough to bite.
It’s so humid you can put a teabag in an empty cup and, in an hour or two, voila!
It’s so humid I can’t remember what the weather is supposed to be like ‘round here’.
I’m not kidding: I’ve forgotten what it is supposed to be like.
I remember as a kid spending time in Holyoke, thinking the weather there was perfect in the summer.
My grandfather was a supervisor in the Water Department in Holyoke: it was largely a ceremonial role, I believe, giving him the authority to take my brother and me fishing in the town’s reservoir whenever he wanted.
Maybe I am mistaken, but as I remember it Indian Summer lasted all summer long then: warm days, dry and deliciously cool nights.
I also remember swimming all day, eating at least a dozen ears of corn at one sitting, and then sitting on my grandparents’ screened porch and playing Scrabble until every word in the dictionary had been used and we all just sat there in the early evening light, speechless.
Now that was weather!
I guess I always believed that New England –from one end to the other, was just like that.
But we didn’t really live in New England then – we were just visiting.
Remember when local newspapers would print who was on vacation, and who had relatives visiting? Were we actually that safe then, or just a little more naive?
I was actually born in Massachusetts, in Chicopee Falls ( a pretty name, but Westover Air Force Base in point of fact), and later lived for two years in Bangor, Maine. While my memory of the Connecticut River Valley is idyllic, my memories of Bangor winters are different, so I don’t think I am simply being nostalgic.
And both western Massachusetts and Bangor had what I remember as predictable climates.
I have lived here in Plymouth for over twenty years now, and I have no sense of what the weather is supposed to be like, season to season.
Is that because here on the coast we don’t –and never have, had consistent weather?
I get the sense it’s something else: not exactly what you might think of as the effect of Global Warming, but maybe part of that phenomena.
My wife came home a few hours after sunset the other day –during this recent stretch of brutal humidity, and when she got out of her air-conditioned car she looked like something out of a Charlie Chan movie: her glasses were completely fogged over.
Inscrutable, was the word the war-time movie propagandists used to describe the impending ‘yellow peril’.
This weather is inscrutable.
This oppressive humidity reminds me of the kind of weather I got used to, growing up in the Washington D.C. area. The summers in Washington are consistently hot and humid –double nineties are not unusual: but because it is so predictably uncomfortable from June to September every building is fully air-conditioned.
In July in the D.C. area it can be 77 by 7, 88 by 8, and in the nineties by the time the sweating, aluminum-clad snack trucks begin arriving at construction sites.
But you can learn to live with anything, if you know what to expect.
Here, though the coastal waters often moderate the cold, the homes are still built to withstand the temperatures and cost of winter: the houses insulated so well that, when we get this kind of humidity, traditional colonial-style, wooden homes are swollen with the heat that can’t escape.
If this continues, and the wood keeps swelling up, you could see dozens of gray and white gambrels break free of their foundations and float off, east, like Dorothy headed for Oz.
Actually I don’t think I would mind that. It’s probably a bit cooler, up a few thousand feet.
It’s so humid the fireflies can’t light their little torches.
It’s so humid the mosquitoes can’t hold on long enough to bite.
It’s so humid you can put a teabag in an empty cup and, in an hour or two, voila!
It’s so humid I can’t remember what the weather is supposed to be like ‘round here’.
Friday, July 22, 2005
All in the Family?
It’s no secret that my employment history is a bit –as they say, checkered. And that’s one of the reasons I got so excited when the world’s largest corporation recently made me an offer...
It wasn’t a job offer, not exactly: even better, they offered to treat me like one of the family.
Instead of $47,503 for their Andes Vista-Cruiser SUV with full Red-State Option Package (protruding chromed grille, ski-rack, tow-package and over-sized fluorescent ‘W” sticker) my ‘employee price’ would be $41,222.
I don’t know where you come from, but around here when somebody offers to give you $6,000, that deserves a hug!
I went down to my local Massive Auto Company dealership and –except for a few skittish guys from the service department, managed to give every one of their actual employees a big squeeze.
I had to pass on the vehicle though.
Despite all the love my checking account still can’t absorb another $500 a month in auto payments, plus the $100 or so more in insurance costs, or even the cost of fueling that baby up for a trip to the gas station and back.
But in the glow of an emotional high I started to think that maybe there was something here that we could all share in –whatever our automotive needs or financial wherewithal.
Why can’t we all get employee prices, on everything?
Cars are, for better or worse, an inescapable part of our lives. In Plymouth most especially, transportation is always an issue. So the idea of being treated as one of the family by an auto manufacturer really hits home.
But there are other things that hit home too, and in the wallet. Take electricity for example.
We are one of those modern Plymouth families who moved in to a home that old Thomas Alva would have loved: it’s 100% electric.
Our heat is electric, our stove is electric, and our electricity is electric. When the lines go down –from weather or accident, nothing works, not even the toilets (the well water is pumped up by an electric motor). Imagine that: every time I flush the toilet I am literally flushing nickels and dimes down the drain.
What, I wonder, is the employee price for electricity? What do Mr. and Mrs. NStar and their family of employees pay for each of their kilowatts?
A little love from that power-couple would go a long way.
And speaking of power couples, what’s up with Mr. and Mrs. Exxon-Mobil?
I sent them a nice card when they first announced their engagement a few years back, but I never got as much as a thank-you.
Now that they’re officially a couple they’re sending me cards and letters too, and calling night and day.
If anyone can afford to share the love, it’s the Exxon-Mobil family.
I’m not asking for my gas free, just at the price that good friends of the family pay.
At the store where I work they give employees a 25% discount. If you took 25% off my gasoline bill each month and I could almost afford to pay my electricity bill!
I have a little more empathy for the Adelphia family: they’ve had their own financial troubles of late. Things got so bad a few years back that even they had to take advantage of the family discount themselves –only they chose the wrong family.
According to the authorities they were acting as if they were the Royal House of Windsor, using a few hundred million of the company’s money like it was their own.
Still, gas and electricity are one thing –access to the internet, email, or cable television are quite another. One is a necessity, the other supposedly a luxury.
But with electricity bills going up, gas bills higher than ever, and a host of other rising costs cable television is –for many, a necessary refuge from the harsh financial realities.
Not that I need a refuge from reality –but others might.
By the way, if you can already afford the Andes Vista Cruiser with Optional Red-State Option Package than you already have a refuge from reality, don’t you?
I don’t know: maybe I am being unrealistic if I expect Mr. And Mrs. Exxon-Mobil, the NStar family, and the Duke and Duchess of Adelphia to share the wealth.
If every one of us got the ‘family’ price on electricity, the employee price on cars, a barrel or two of gift gasoline, a Royal freebie of cable television and other perks, than those corporations sharing the love probably couldn’t afford the lobbyists they need to convince the politicians we elect to keep the regulators off their backs.
And where would be then?
It wasn’t a job offer, not exactly: even better, they offered to treat me like one of the family.
Instead of $47,503 for their Andes Vista-Cruiser SUV with full Red-State Option Package (protruding chromed grille, ski-rack, tow-package and over-sized fluorescent ‘W” sticker) my ‘employee price’ would be $41,222.
I don’t know where you come from, but around here when somebody offers to give you $6,000, that deserves a hug!
I went down to my local Massive Auto Company dealership and –except for a few skittish guys from the service department, managed to give every one of their actual employees a big squeeze.
I had to pass on the vehicle though.
Despite all the love my checking account still can’t absorb another $500 a month in auto payments, plus the $100 or so more in insurance costs, or even the cost of fueling that baby up for a trip to the gas station and back.
But in the glow of an emotional high I started to think that maybe there was something here that we could all share in –whatever our automotive needs or financial wherewithal.
Why can’t we all get employee prices, on everything?
Cars are, for better or worse, an inescapable part of our lives. In Plymouth most especially, transportation is always an issue. So the idea of being treated as one of the family by an auto manufacturer really hits home.
But there are other things that hit home too, and in the wallet. Take electricity for example.
We are one of those modern Plymouth families who moved in to a home that old Thomas Alva would have loved: it’s 100% electric.
Our heat is electric, our stove is electric, and our electricity is electric. When the lines go down –from weather or accident, nothing works, not even the toilets (the well water is pumped up by an electric motor). Imagine that: every time I flush the toilet I am literally flushing nickels and dimes down the drain.
What, I wonder, is the employee price for electricity? What do Mr. and Mrs. NStar and their family of employees pay for each of their kilowatts?
A little love from that power-couple would go a long way.
And speaking of power couples, what’s up with Mr. and Mrs. Exxon-Mobil?
I sent them a nice card when they first announced their engagement a few years back, but I never got as much as a thank-you.
Now that they’re officially a couple they’re sending me cards and letters too, and calling night and day.
If anyone can afford to share the love, it’s the Exxon-Mobil family.
I’m not asking for my gas free, just at the price that good friends of the family pay.
At the store where I work they give employees a 25% discount. If you took 25% off my gasoline bill each month and I could almost afford to pay my electricity bill!
I have a little more empathy for the Adelphia family: they’ve had their own financial troubles of late. Things got so bad a few years back that even they had to take advantage of the family discount themselves –only they chose the wrong family.
According to the authorities they were acting as if they were the Royal House of Windsor, using a few hundred million of the company’s money like it was their own.
Still, gas and electricity are one thing –access to the internet, email, or cable television are quite another. One is a necessity, the other supposedly a luxury.
But with electricity bills going up, gas bills higher than ever, and a host of other rising costs cable television is –for many, a necessary refuge from the harsh financial realities.
Not that I need a refuge from reality –but others might.
By the way, if you can already afford the Andes Vista Cruiser with Optional Red-State Option Package than you already have a refuge from reality, don’t you?
I don’t know: maybe I am being unrealistic if I expect Mr. And Mrs. Exxon-Mobil, the NStar family, and the Duke and Duchess of Adelphia to share the wealth.
If every one of us got the ‘family’ price on electricity, the employee price on cars, a barrel or two of gift gasoline, a Royal freebie of cable television and other perks, than those corporations sharing the love probably couldn’t afford the lobbyists they need to convince the politicians we elect to keep the regulators off their backs.
And where would be then?
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Oh Say Can You See?
As I write this my South Plymouth neighborhood is popping like a bag of Orville Reddenbacher in the microwave: supposedly you can’t buy fireworks in Massachusetts but I guess you can lease them for the evening.
Farther off more serious, and possibly even legal explosions, seem to mimic a line of thunderstorms approaching: or perhaps more accurately, the sounds recall the sonic booms of my youth.
That’s no metaphor: my father was a ‘lifer’ in the Air Force and when I was a boy it was not unusual to first feel, and then hear the sounds of military jets breaking the sound barrier over the base.
That was the first bit of science that really caught my attention. The idea that objects could travel faster than the sounds they made was intriguing. Seeing the silver jets at air shows go flashing by just a few dozen feet off the ground, followed moments later by their sounds, was exhilarating.
Later I learned that light also had a speed: that the stars in the sky that you watched on your back on a warm summer night, might not actually be there at all anymore: that what you were seeing was in fact ‘old’ light.
Somewhere in the same dark sky where lightning bugs and imported bottle rockets are obscuring the stars on this Independence Day night– but far over the western horizon, another display of pyrotechnics is underway: a $300 million dollar display in fact.
They call it ‘Deep Impact’, hoping I think to get some of the same kind of attention that a recent movie of the same name attracted.
But there’s the problem as well. In order to keep the public’s attention NASA and others in the business of science and space exploration need to please both the public and their peers.
The scientists justified this mission in terms of the potential for uncovering the raw materials of creation –believing that comets represent the primordial play-doh that our solar systems began with. But they also made sure that this mission went off with a ‘bang’ on July 4th: packing their craft with an eight-hundred pound slug of pure copper that they hoped –and publicized, would create a spectacular display in the night sky.
To their credit their aim was true, their copper slug brutally efficient, and the show a perfect coming attraction of the film that would play at 11: fireworks over the water to the sound of the 1812 Overture.
But the thrill is gone – at least for me.
The timpani drum roll that Air Force jets used to produce in my stomach now comes buffered by the disquieting knowledge that the United States spends more of its wealth on weaponry than any other country.
The amazing designs that fireworks experts can produce from canisters of gunpowder fade in the light of the truth that we are the only country in the world that could but does not provide health care for all of its citizens.
The brilliance of the engineers and scientists who managed to build the Deep Impact craft, and hit that far away, moving target does still not justify, in my opinion, the enormous expenditure of time, money, and most importantly, imagination.
Couldn’t our scientists have imagined a way to create ‘energy independence’ without despoiling the arctic wilderness?
Couldn’t our politicians have imagined a way of spreading democracy without destroying a country’s infrastructure and killing thousands?
We bicker amongst ourselves over the cost of educating our children, while we allow $300 million to be spent to take a pot shot at a rock in the sky.
When I was a child sonic booms convinced me that man could move faster than sound.
When I was a young man the idea that it was theoretically possible to move faster than light fascinated me.
Now I see much of science as a kind of acceptable perversion –focusing far too much of its time devising ways to produce perpetually youthful skin (or its illusion), end erectile dysfunction, or set off galactic fireworks displays.
Here on earth, in Plymouth, I am only interested in the speed at which wisdom travels, and I am finding it very difficult to wait even one more star-spangled night.
Farther off more serious, and possibly even legal explosions, seem to mimic a line of thunderstorms approaching: or perhaps more accurately, the sounds recall the sonic booms of my youth.
That’s no metaphor: my father was a ‘lifer’ in the Air Force and when I was a boy it was not unusual to first feel, and then hear the sounds of military jets breaking the sound barrier over the base.
That was the first bit of science that really caught my attention. The idea that objects could travel faster than the sounds they made was intriguing. Seeing the silver jets at air shows go flashing by just a few dozen feet off the ground, followed moments later by their sounds, was exhilarating.
Later I learned that light also had a speed: that the stars in the sky that you watched on your back on a warm summer night, might not actually be there at all anymore: that what you were seeing was in fact ‘old’ light.
Somewhere in the same dark sky where lightning bugs and imported bottle rockets are obscuring the stars on this Independence Day night– but far over the western horizon, another display of pyrotechnics is underway: a $300 million dollar display in fact.
They call it ‘Deep Impact’, hoping I think to get some of the same kind of attention that a recent movie of the same name attracted.
But there’s the problem as well. In order to keep the public’s attention NASA and others in the business of science and space exploration need to please both the public and their peers.
The scientists justified this mission in terms of the potential for uncovering the raw materials of creation –believing that comets represent the primordial play-doh that our solar systems began with. But they also made sure that this mission went off with a ‘bang’ on July 4th: packing their craft with an eight-hundred pound slug of pure copper that they hoped –and publicized, would create a spectacular display in the night sky.
To their credit their aim was true, their copper slug brutally efficient, and the show a perfect coming attraction of the film that would play at 11: fireworks over the water to the sound of the 1812 Overture.
But the thrill is gone – at least for me.
The timpani drum roll that Air Force jets used to produce in my stomach now comes buffered by the disquieting knowledge that the United States spends more of its wealth on weaponry than any other country.
The amazing designs that fireworks experts can produce from canisters of gunpowder fade in the light of the truth that we are the only country in the world that could but does not provide health care for all of its citizens.
The brilliance of the engineers and scientists who managed to build the Deep Impact craft, and hit that far away, moving target does still not justify, in my opinion, the enormous expenditure of time, money, and most importantly, imagination.
Couldn’t our scientists have imagined a way to create ‘energy independence’ without despoiling the arctic wilderness?
Couldn’t our politicians have imagined a way of spreading democracy without destroying a country’s infrastructure and killing thousands?
We bicker amongst ourselves over the cost of educating our children, while we allow $300 million to be spent to take a pot shot at a rock in the sky.
When I was a child sonic booms convinced me that man could move faster than sound.
When I was a young man the idea that it was theoretically possible to move faster than light fascinated me.
Now I see much of science as a kind of acceptable perversion –focusing far too much of its time devising ways to produce perpetually youthful skin (or its illusion), end erectile dysfunction, or set off galactic fireworks displays.
Here on earth, in Plymouth, I am only interested in the speed at which wisdom travels, and I am finding it very difficult to wait even one more star-spangled night.
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