No Mand's Land

Withdrawal, Snobbery, and The Road

2009-11-10T22:38:00.000-05:00

In late August and September I experienced a flurry of acting activity - beginning with extra work on films in Lowell and the North Shore, punctuated by Zombie work for Rock Media's Longwalls Zombie video, and brought to a fever pitch by six weeks of Kevin Lasit's advanced acting lab. The inevitable crash probably would have come earlier, but anticipation of the premiere of the video kept me from realizing that for the first time in over ninety days there was nothing on the horizon.. Not that I don't have other things to do, but the demands and disciplines of acting are stimulating, and prolonged exposure can be addicting.

So that's what I am feeling now, withdrawal. I check the various casting agencies daily. Boston Casting has put out several appeals for a variety of roles - but none have been a good fit (of course I have applied anyway, but was never asked to come in). In the back of my mind is a vague desire to create - with the aid of some of the talented people I have come to know, a black box experience: theatrical dramas stripped down to their essentials.. I am, to be blunt, somewhat snobbish about local theatre in general. I think that almost invariable these productions try for too much, and so sacrifice all.

I am anxious - if that's the right word, to see what they have done to Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'. This is fiction (that reads like a prose poem) that is completely unsuited to film. It is a dark, grieving meditation on futility. It is not post-apocalypic because McCarthy's takes you into the very heart of an apocalypse in progress. This is a book to read aloud over the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. But there are no scenes, to speak of in its pages: instead there is a smouldering fire that is always just about to re-ignite. There are no gratuitous scenes of familiar landmarks laid to waste. There is wasteland, and through it a dying father and his son scurry like cockroaches across the linoleum. Every page you expect the boot to come down. I am anxious because I feel protective of this book: it is a crushed and crumbling flower within the pages of the book of the dead and I worry that a film will try and give it life. 'The Road' I think, would make a wonderfully brutal play. "o-u-t-c-a-s-t.. outcast!' is the memorable refrain from Dicken's Nicholas Nickelby. We are all outcasts, McCarthy says. Life sucks, and then you die.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille..

Revenge is Sweet!

2009-11-06T15:12:00.004-05:00

     In most cases the prevailing wisdom suggests that beggars can’t be choosers. Or to trot out another cliché, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
     But this is Halloween (or was). On Halloween the tables are turned, black is white and - as I remember it at least, if you don’t come up with the ‘treats’ you have only yourself to blame for what happens next.
     What used to happen – if you didn’t treat the tricksters well, was that your house might be ‘TPd’ (toilet papered), or your car egged, or some other relatively harmless but clearly punitive measures taken.
     So what are we going to do with the folks who give out pretzels – you know who you are! I am sure you rationalize that you have the dental health of the children in mind – but that’s no excuse.
     And what to do with those who dispense obviously dated, stale, job lot candy? These are certainly tough economic times, but there are other options available: inexpensive hard candies, homemade treats (popcorn balls).
     Use your imagination!
     And what about the folks that just close down early for the night: shut off the lights, skulk around their homes, pretending they’ve gone out?
     Or just as evil – in my book, those that can’t be bothered to greet the ghouls: leaving an unattended basket of candy with a note (Help Yourself).
     What fate awaits these unsavory souls? It’s become a strangely popular, strangely tame holiday, hasn’t it? The numbers are up, but the fun is fading fast.
     It’s become an industrial holiday of sorts – like all the others: a holiday that has lost its roots. I guess it just can’t compare with Hollywood’s horrific realism, or even with the Nightly News. We hear of so many horrors these days – in such gruesome detail, that I suppose that Halloween just can’t compete.
     Certainly the little candy companies can’t compete – with the big boys that is.
     My annual candy count confirms that Halloween has become a kind of clearance sale for the big three confection companies: Hershey’s, Nestles, and Mars.
     Unless you’re earning a few billion a year, the other candy companies can’t afford to cut their prices low enough to match the mass marketed confections of these three global sweeties.
     So – though most of the old brands are available online for their diehard fans, the wide variety of unique confections that used to be handed out on All Hallow’s Eve, has dwindled down to a handful of mass-marketed mouthfuls.
     Off the top of my head (while my hands sift through the bootie collected by my son) I can think of dozens of spook night staples that in recent years have – dramatic pause, disappeared!

Sugar Daddy – and his kids the Sugar Babies, have melted away.
Clark Bar and his cartoon co-star Zagnut have had their series cancelled.
Boston Baked Beans (that lovely burnt flavor), Chuckles, Walnettos, and Rolo are not part of the food pyramid in these parts anymore.
Mr. Goodbar, Milky Way, Mallo Cup, and Moon Pie are missing in action.
Atomic Fireballs, Charleston Chews, Mary Janes and.. what were they called: oh yeah, Whatchamacallits, have dropped out of sight.
Wax Lips, York, and Zotz are missing from the end of the all-sugar alphabet.And taking the place of all these unusual and unique candy creations is a remarkably homogenous and limited selection.

In the bloody butcher’s bag this year there were at least ten pieces of ten specific brands of candy, including 24 Hershey’s Chocolate bars, 10 Hershey’s Malted Milk Balls, 13 Hershey’s Kit Kats, and 15 Hershey’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Here are this years’ unrefined numbers:

Trickster: Patrick ‘Too Cool to Ghoul’ Mand
Treat Area Covered: From Bay Farm Drive, to Sandra Way, Dorothy Drive, Maureen Drive, and down Justine Avenue.
Costume: Deli Counter Butcher with Bloody Cleaver
Elapsed Time: 3 Hours, 11 Minutes, 43 seconds
Pounds of Candy Collected: 7.01
Total Pieces: 216
Residences Visited: 78
Average Piece per Residence: 2.99
Brand Leader: Hershey’s Chocolate Bar (24)
Top Mfr: Hershey’s (73)

     The total elapsed time – went up by a few minutes, but all of the other numbers were at record levels.
     Average piece per residence visited went up dramatically- though a dear friend who dumped an entire basket of candy into our collectors’ bag may have been responsible for at least part of that increase.
     The clearest trend was again, the move toward total corporate consolidation of the candy industry.
          o 83% of collected candy (178/216 pieces) came from either Hershey’s (73), Nestles (71), or Mars (34).

     A distant fourth again this year was Tootsie Roll, Inc., whose 9 pieces were comprised completely of the famous Tootsie Roll. Absent this year however, was that company’s ‘cool and refreshing’ Junior Mints.
     Cadbury, the English confection giant – contributed only three items out of 216 – and not any of their famous milk chocolates (just two bags of Swedish Fish, and one of Sour Patch Kids).
     The famous regional confection company now based in Revere – NECCO (New England Confection Company), was spotted only once: a half-opened half-roll of its historic wafers in such bad shape (soggy wafers) that they had to be immediately jettisoned.
     There was again this year – as I noted earlier, one lonely bag of Utz Halloween Pretzels.
     The Ohio-based confection company Spangler, was represented by a few Dum Dums.
     And there were also two small rolls of Smarties – manufactured in Canada for the Ce De candy company of Union, New Jersey.
     The only truly unusual treats that were discovered in Patrick’s bag this past Saturday night were: a box of “Monopoly” candy, and a ghoulish, edible necklace and charms from the Oriental Trading Company.
     The necklace looked to be a tooth cracker, so we did not allow our trick or treater to try his luck on it. Still we were impressed with its purple and blue hard candy charms in the shape of a skull, a pumpkin, and a bat. Low marks for flavor – high marks for novelty.
     And we were pleasantly perplexed at the existence and oddity of Monopoly candy – a small box which when opened turned out to contain a clear bag holding ten tiny race cars in blue, and ten tiny terriers in pink: allegedly edible versions of the Monopoly tokens used to mark your place on the game board.
     Were we really supposed to eat these ‘tokens’? It was hard to tell. The box prominently declared that Hasbro had the copyright, that the candy itself was made in China, and that the Frankford Candy and Chocolate Company of Philadelphia was responsible for distributing this promotional confection. That was just more info than we could chew at one time, so these tokens too went into the trash.

     That’s the 2009 Candy Count (and Commentary).
     The numbers are up, the quality down – and the competition almost non-existent.
     Beggars aren’t supposed to be choosers but remember – especially on Halloween, revenge is sweet!

Lincoln Navigator Blues

2009-10-20T09:05:00.003-05:00

It began – for me at least, with a phone message: Tiffany from the “Prize Fulfillment Center” calling to give me the good news. You have won a Lincoln Navigator or, her voice dipped dramatically here, one of our four top prizes. This is not, Tiffany stressed, telemarketing (which could be illegal) or a come-on for a time-share resort. I would not, Tiffany assured me, have to sign or join anything. This offer was, however, ‘time-sensitive’. So all right: I did not just roll of the turnip-truck. I didn’t just get off the ferry from Foolsville. I wasn’t born yesterday. I may be stupid but I’m not ignorant (or is it the other way around?) I’m not a hayseed, or a hick from French Lick, or a rube, or a boob, or a hockey puck or.. (fill in with your favorite expression here). I’m not your average idiot, right? I knew that Tiffany was simply spreading some carefully seasoned manure in the hopes that something green would sprout from some small patch of credulity. I knew that she lived in Bizarro World, where everything was the opposite: knew that despite her assertions to the contrary that it was telemarketing, would be about a time share or something like it, that I certainly would be asked to both sign and join something, and that of the four top prizes it was a million to one that I would end up with a so-called ‘free’ vacation. And yet, ‘Dear God forgive me’, I was interested.Well, maybe not exactly interested in Tiffany’s offer but rather, interested in this kind of offer, this type of business, and in the people who are so desperate in these sour economic times that they convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with doing a job that begins with deceit, passes through confusion, and quickly lands in the country of ‘hard-sell’Interested because you see - as incredible as this may sound, just a few minutes before reviewing my phone messages I had received a call from the editor of the local paper asking me if I might be interested in a little investigative story. We’ve been getting calls, she explained, from Plymouth residents, complaining about the sales tactics of a local travel agency, by the name of Only Way to 2 Go Travel.. Was this an eerie coincidence? Were the stars aligned? Was there really a Lincoln Navigator with my name on it? Well, no, probably not. More likely the fact that I too had received the ‘good news’ indicated that the folks at Only Way2GoTravel were (naughty, naughty) working their way through the local phone book. So I called Tiffany back and, for the most part, she stuck to her story. I had won, definitely, one of their four top prizes: a Lincoln Navigator (or its cash equivalent), a 32” Flat Screen TV, $2500 cash, or 3-day two night vacation in Mexico or Las Vegas. But then, of course, it got a bit more complicated. I couldn’t come in alone: I had to come in with my spouse. We had to have an annual income of $50,000 or more. We also had to have a Major Credit card and show it to them when we arrived for our short 90-minute presentation on the ‘history’ of OnlyWay2GoTravel. I wondered why it would take 90 minutes to recount the history of this agency, since Tiffany also described the event I would attending as a ‘Grand-Opening Celebration’, the purpose of which, she explained, was to acquaint my wife and I with OnlyWay2GoTravel so that, in the future, we would consider allowing them to handle our travel arrangements. Tiffany reassured me that no one would try to take down any credit card numbers. And she told me again that ‘this was not telemarketing, not about time-share resorts’. So, with malice aforethought, I made arrangements to pick up my ‘winnings’. So okay, this story is short on drama. You will not be surprised to hear that I am not driving a 2010 Navigator. My main form of transportation is still my 1986 Camry. I didn’t even get a coupon good for two nights in a hotel room in Las Vegas. The truth is that my wife said, ‘no way’, when I tried to entice her into coming with me. I went anyway but they rejected me at the door. I did however see that the place was packed with prospective winners. Were you there? Did you get my Navigator? I know I should know better but I have this horrible feeling that if I been less cynical, a bit more naïve, a few inches taller, and drove maybe a 1999 Subaru, that they would have let me in anyway and that my winning entry code – which Tiffany said was MCG589, would really have been my lucky number. I know its illogical, but I am an American: I don’t trust the government, or the police, or even the guy at the McDonald’s take-out window, but I have a sneaking suspicion that a stranger on the telephone named Tiffany has my best interests at heart. Go figure!

On the overpass at Exit 3

2009-08-29T13:30:00.001-05:00

I happened to be coming south on Route 3, after a morning spent at the dentist in Boston, and noticed the traffic becoming surprisingly sluggish around 1 p.m., as I passed through Norwell, over the North River and into Marshfield.At Exit 12 I saw what I thought was the reason, an accident of some sort on the other side of the highway. I muttered to myself ‘just a bunch of rubber-neckers’, and I pressed down involuntarily on the gas. But then it hit me: those cars in the grass of the cloverleaf, at Exit 11, were too orderly. There were more than a half dozen and instead, of facing north, as you might expect after a fender bender, they were fully in the grass and pointed out, towards the roadway. And – what the heck, some of the people were sitting in chairs, and clutching small American flags.I had an excuse: Novocain, in large quantities, was still affecting my mouth and lip and, apparently, my brain. But the reality finally made it through. The motorcade with Senator Kennedy and his family, coming from Hyannis port, must have been due to pass by, on its way to Boston.Still feeling a feint throbbing in my gums however, I dismissed the idea of stopping myself. All I wanted to do was get home, take a few more pills, and tune out. But as I drove south the crowds were building, on the overpasses, filling the access road that wraps around the McDonalds at Exit 5, and in most other places with a good vantage point from which to watch. By the time I reached my exit – three, I felt it would have been disrespectful to ignore this historic gathering.It was about 1:10 then, and already the overpass at Exit 3 was crowded with cars and people. For some reason though, one space was left – practically right in the middle of the bridge, and I parked right there and joined the crowd. Part of the reason for the space was that a large white banner put there by local resident Jessica Laverty – that read, “Thank you Senator Kennedy”, blocked the view of the highway below.Nearby a portable radio relayed the not unexpected news that the procession had yet to leave the Senators’ Hyannis port home. Scheduled for 1 p.m., it was probably closer to 2:30 before they actually departed.In the meantime, waiting on the bridge with a crowd that grew larger with every minute, I tried to get a sense of the mood of the crowd. Maureen Bradley had driven over from her home in Middleboro. Though the new Route 44 would have been the easiest route for her, she opted to work her way through Carver and into Myles Standish State Forest, then onto Long Pond Road – guessing correctly that the nearby overpass at Exit 3 would present a good vantage point to watch the Senator go by on his way to Boston, and to the Kennedy Museum.“The Senator has been a part of my life, of all our lives,” Maureen responded, when asked why she was standing on the overpass on this day. “I’ve been a Massachusetts resident all of my life, and I can hardly remember when Senator Kennedy was not my Senator.”Hollis Phillips was there, with her brother Chris (both from West Plymouth), and with her sister Barbara (Kunit) who happened to be visiting from her home in New York, and like many others on the overpass, she admitted to feeling a close connection with Senator Kennedy.“My dad (longtime Bourne Democrat William Phillips) actually worked on several of Senator Kennedy’s campaigns,” Phillips remembered, adding, “and he’s been my Senator for my entire life.”Her father didn’t approve of her registering as an Independent, she remarked, but “he would definitely be happy that I’m here today.”She remembered a day long ago when she and her sister Barbara were on a swing set in Marston Mills, when the Secret Service told them they had to move. Seems the swing set overlooked a paddock where Caroline Kennedy – the President’s daughter, boarded her horse.“It’s the end of an era,” Hollis said wistfully.Frank Ridge was there on the bridge, with his wife Lois, having driven the short distance from their home in the Pinehills. When asked why he had stopped, Ridge first pointed to his baseball cap, which displayed the insignia of the famed U.S. Army’ First Calvary division.“I was in Vietnam with the First, in ’68 and ’69,” Ridge said. But then he went on to recount several personal memories of the Senator, beginning in the early Sixties when he was President of the Senior Class of Sacred Heart High School in Weymouth. They visited Washington D.C. and the Senator joined them for a picture.“Because I was President of my class, I got to stand right next to him,” Ridge fondly remembers.Later Ridge and his wife were given a special tour of the Capitol, had lunch in the Senate dining room, and were escorted into the Senate itself when, unexpectedly, Kennedy surprised everyone by coming on to the floor and delivering a rousing speech.“The Restaurant lobby wanted a new regulation that would have reclassified short order cooks under the same category as chefs,” Ridge remembered. “That sounds good, but that would have made them management, and therefore, ineligible for overtime pay. Senator Kennedy got up and literally roared his opposition.”Ridge said he was afraid that Ted Kennedy was the last of his kind. “This is a tremendous loss for all of us. Now I don’t know who is left there that’s going to speak for the little guy.” Beneath the bridge latecomers had found their own vantage point – the highway itself. And when tag-teams of motorcycle police closed down the highway at the ramps, they began to move toward the center of the road, forming almost a gauntlet of well wishers.Then, just minutes before the hearse and a dozen or so assorted vehicles – including one Peter Pan bus appeared, a final squad of State Troopers forced those along the highway to retreat to the other side of the guard rails. Then, under a steady rain of applause and the unremarkable ticking of digital cameras, the Senator - as if headed to one of his favorite restaurants in Boston one last time, passed underneath Clark Road with his family in tow.

Cushy

2009-08-09T10:03:00.002-05:00

That aint working, that’s the way you do it.
Get your money for nothing, get your chicks for free
-“Money for Nothing”, Dire Straights

‘Cushy’ is the old term used to denigrate public employees: they have (we are told time and time again) ‘cushy jobs’.
But what’s the real meaning of ‘cushy’?
According to many reliable dictionaries, it’s supposed to have a Indo-Aryan origin. The suggestion is that the Hindi word for pleasant, ‘khush’, was picked up by British colonial soldiers and the ‘y’ added on – as in the word ‘mush’ made into ‘mushy’.
I don’t think that likely. Rather, I hold with those who think there’s a far simpler explanation.
It’s cushion – with the ‘y’ ending.
A cushy job is then, just what it sounds like: a job where you sit around all day, on your posterior – and count your money. A job where you get paid to do nothing. “Government work” – people will say, and think that sufficient explanation.
But is government work really that cushy?
Consider the town employee whose salary is posted in the paper every year. Consider the government worker whose necessity is debated on live television. Would you want those jobs?
Generally public employees have a certain level of job security – for which they exchange privacy and pay. The average teacher has several advanced degrees and earns about half of what someone with the same education, longevity, and experience would in the private sector.
Which brings me to the cushy County jobs that have been in the news so often in the last year.
If the jobs at the County offices are so cushy, then why is everyone exchanging them so often?
Just last week, the Commissioners approved several new positions – but they weren’t actually new positions, they were just old people in positions that were new to them. Technically they were new appointments. Do you think these experienced County employees who, because of recent layoffs and/or retirements, had to switch jobs to save their jobs, think their new jobs are cushy?
What about the Administrative Clerk who was moved to the Switchboard? What about the Switchboard Operator who is now an Administrative Clerk? Or the woman hired six months ago who is now unemployed? What about the dozens of employees who were furloughed for months in the last few years, losing thousand of dollars and, eventually, losing their jobs altogether?
It’s a game of ‘Musical Chairs’, and none of the remaining seats are cushy. Some of the chairs are metal. Some are more like stools: hard and unsteady. Some people end up on the floor.
Is the floor ‘cushy’?
Sure, there are cushy jobs out there. The kind of job where you get a bonus even though the company is bankrupt, now that’s a cushy job. The job of Princess seems, for the most part, pretty cushy. I knew a guy in Jamaica who spent the day strolling the white sands of Negril with a few coconuts, a machete, and a bottle of Appleton Rum. Now that was a cushy job.
That was a cushy beach.
That was a cushy week… but I digress.
For the most part – from what I have seen, public employees do thankless jobs, for reasonable pay, and take an unreasonable amount of abuse regardless. Like everyone else, some are good at their jobs. Like everyone else, some are pleasant to work with. For the most part though, their jobs are not cushy.
I don’t think we should be inordinately concerned for their fate: we all have our share of troubles these days. But I do think we need to lighten up a bit. These days even the guy with the upholstered leather recliner in his office is afraid to relax. These days we’re all checking to see if someone slipped a whoopee cushy onto our chairs as we start to sit down.

Pigging Out!

2009-05-01T22:13:00.001-05:00

Remain calm.
The first thing I want to say is that there is no reason for alarm.
I want to reassure you, the public, that there is no reason for panic.
Don’t panic.
This is just Step 47, in a 66 Step Public Health Pandemic Program.
Step 47 is the ‘There’s No Reason for Alarm, but If Oprah’s Talking About It We Might as Well Get In on the Action’ phase.
At Step 48 we will begin to remove all copies of Steven King’s The Stand, from bookstores, public libraries, and the bookcases in the common room at the local Bed & Breakfast.
But relax: we are a long way from Step 48.
Ironically, we are closer to Step 57, than we are to Step 48.
At Step 57 masks are issued: not to the public, but to talk show hosts, news anchors, and that crazy guy on public access television.
Step 57 recognizes the need to shut these people up, while admitting that by that Step it may be too late.
Right now though, it’s not too late, I mean to shut these people up.
Right now there are about 100-reported cases of Swine Flu in the US, and one death.
Normally you can expect about 35,000 deaths annually from the usual strains of influenza.
But this is not a usual strain. This is – at least as far as we know, an unknown but relatively mild strain. So without really very much bad news to report, the traditional media approach is to dramatize its long-term potential, give hourly updates, and offer elaborate worst-case scenarios.
You know the drill: its kind of like the way the news channels predict drought every year, based on ten days when it doesn’t rain in the spring. They show pictures of the reservoirs at low levels, and theorize how – if it doesn’t rain for another 100 consecutive days, there will be a drought. Shortly thereafter we get about 5 inches of rain, the reservoirs fill up, and the drought watch is over.
They can’t help themselves. News of a Pandemic – real or imagined, is impossible to resist.
The other day I heard a reporter tease an upcoming swine flu story by saying that – in one particular state, the infection rate had doubled overnight.
‘More after the break’.
When she gave the details later in the hour, it turned out that the cases in that particular state had gone from two to four – overnight!
Whoopee!
Did you ever play that game where you place your hands – palms down, over your opponent’s hands (both upturned)? Then the opponent tries to pull his or her hands out and slap your hands before you can pull them away.
After you get your hands slapped a few times, you are quick to pull them away. But if you flinch, or pull them away too early, the rules say your opponent gets a free slap.
That’s kind of how I see this pandemic story going.
They keep tickling our palms, as if we are about to get slapped, but then they say – don’t worry, stay calm, there is nothing to be alarmed about. And when we flinch, we get our hands slapped.
They interrupted a talk show the other morning to cover a press conference in Lowell.
In Lowell!
OMG, they had two confirmed cases: two boys who had recently been in Mexico.
The Mayor and the School Superintendent – and someone acting as a kind of MC, and various other town officials, crowded onto the steps of the Town Hall, to tell the public that there was… no reason to panic.
All across the country similar ‘Don’t Panic’ rallies were held.
The last I heard this ‘non-emergency’ had spread, to You Tube, Twitter, and beyond.
I hate to say it - because it’s a bad pun, but the swine flu has gone ‘viral’.
At least when its time to panic we should be well prepared.

Over, and Over

2009-04-14T22:39:00.001-05:00

Did you hear the news?
I’ve been fired.
They’re not saying that of course, because that would open up a real can of worms, maybe even a lawsuit or two (Is there such a thing, by the way, as a ‘fake’ can of worms?).
But I want you – my fanatical readers and occasional stalkers, to know the truth.
The cover story is that the newspaper business is going through tough times and they need to shut down the entire paper (yeah, right!) by the end of the month.
Can you imagine that: just to get rid of me, to shut me up, they’re going to shut down the whole paper, lay off thousands.
In the last two issues I’m going to reveal the real story, the cover-up, the uugly truth (hint, hint), so stay tuned. But for now, in this the first of my last three columns, I’m just going to gloat.
Of course you’re wondering how can I gloat when I know that - in just two weeks, I will be losing my last connection to reality, my reason for being, my outlet, my vent, my last shot at local fame and fortune.
Easy. You see I know something that they don’t…
First, a little background:
Three years ago when I was hired to write a weekly column for what was then an important new addition to the Gatehouse news empire (they were actually going to call the new paper The New Edition, but I told them there was already a boy band by that name) I was promised the moon: syndication, a weekly radio show, the profits of sales of mugs with my mug on them, a barge trip on the Seine, a gold-capped tooth.
The list went on and on.
Very early on though, they began to renege on their promises, one by one.
Instead of an expense account, they issued me a Dunkin Donuts gift card.
Instead of my own radio show I got a transistor radio.
Instead of a gold-capped tooth and discount dental plan, I got a coupon good for a nipple piercing at the Pin Cushion on Court Street.
What could I do though? Their promises had all been verbal, sealed with a wink and a handshake. They knew I desperately wanted to maintain my cult status in town and they were right.
But I fought back, in my own subtle, passive-aggressive, wimpy way.
First of all there were the coded messages to my old girlfriend in Chicago that I slipped into each column: provocative, off-color remarks and double-entendre printed right alongside stories of all the good things that the Plymouth Rock studio people are doing for local residents.
Then there was my secret agreement with certain despised town officials, consignment store owners, and the local plumber’s union to subvert the cause of democracy and make Mark Lord the next Mayor of Plymouth.
Our efforts failed, but we definitely sowed the seeds of dissent.
And then there was The Five.
Though my column has appeared in this paper over 150 times, in reality it was always the same five columns, over and over.
Sometimes I changed the names. Sometimes I changed the names of places. Sometimes I changed the critters seen in those same well-known places. But every one of the columns I wrote, and they paid for (including this one) was based on five basic columns.
Check it out.
Remember the column about the caterpillars leaving their pajamas hanging from threads while they ran around the neighborhood naked? That was the same column as the one about my pet Penguin, Duke.
Remember the column about George Bush on the aircraft carrier, and George Bush on the Mayflower, and George Bush and the emotion party? Yep, just one column.
Then there was the column about the Billington Brothers, and the one about the Doobie Brothers, and the one about the Brothers Karamazov.
I actually wrote 23 columns about the ponds of Plymouth and no one – not my readers or the editors ever noticed.
The Bulletin Boys thought they were pulling a fast one by paying me only $1.79 per column. It was supposed to be $100 a week but, after they deducted for home delivery (do they still do that?), dark blue ink (it’s hard to tell the difference but I’m told the blue is more reassuring), press charges, the dental plan, piercing insurance, and the monthly conferences in Taunton on the future of newspapers, my weekly check never came to more than $2.
As I see it, since I really only wrote five columns, I was actually paid over $50 per column.
So who’s laughing now? Huh?
Well, actually, I’m not laughing. Being a ‘columnist’ was always good for a free appetizer at Unos on Free Appetizer Wednesdays, and got me a good seat at the back of Memorial Hall during Town Meetings, and – if anyone asked me what I ‘did’ I could puff up my chest and say that I was a writer.
And now – if I’m honest, I’ll have to admit that I am in fact, a balloon animal squeaker. Not that I am embarrassed by making balloon animals for a living. I actually make more in tips on a good day of balloon twisting than I make in a year of columnizing. But I don’t have to wear the striped socks, funny hat and oversized sunglasses when I am writing my column. And if someone asks me for ID lots of little orange and blue and red and green rubber snakes don’t fall out of my pocket. And writing is much easier on the ears than balloon squeaking (as those in the trade refer to it).
The truth is – though I think I have been ridiculously underpaid, totally unappreciated, and largely ignored by those I sought to communicate with, I am going to miss writing these five columns, over and over.

Going, going..

2009-04-10T10:23:00.002-05:00

Got word this week that the Plymouth Bulletin will be ending operations at the end of this month - the final issue to be April 30th, 2009. Can't say I'm surprised - given the predicament of many more well known, long-running papers across the country. This won't be the end of this blog however, in fact it will free me from having to write (occasionally) about the town itself - so perhaps my columns will have a more national relevance. I have always thought though, that Plymouth's travails had wider relevance, and freed from the need to respond to local issues I may - paradoxically, be able to enhance that aspect of my writing. Certainly I will not hesitate to write about my life in this historic community: the day to day absurdity, the everyday annoyances, the beautiful and the bizarre. Perhaps now that your comments or criticisms will not be published in the paper, or on the official newspaper blog, you (dear reader) will feel more inclined to let me know what you think. Regardless, I will write on: it is not that I have anything important to say, it is simply that I need to express myself.

Ding Dong

2009-04-10T10:15:00.003-05:00

How do I feel?
Yippie!
Like Snoopy with his nose in the air, his ears in the sky, up on his hind paws doing a dance, while his pal Woodstock flitters excitedly about him.
Woo-hoo!
Like the guy in the clichéd slow-mo scene of the couple on the beach, or at the airport, or on the train platform – running headlong into each other’s arms.
Yeah, Baybee!
Like the two-year old in his high chair doing a face-plant in his birthday cake.
Or like Carlton Fisk hopping up the first base line, using every inch of body English that he has to psychically alter the path of his rising line drive in Game Six of the 75 World Series and then, when the signal is given, hardly touching the ground as he circles the bases.
Curley of the Three Stooges, on his side, rotating round and round: nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
Pete Townsend, windmilling giant power chords in front of a crowd of thousands.
Or Chuck Berry duck walking across the stage while playing Maybelline.
George Bailey strolling down Main Street in the snow on Christmas Eve.
It is, after all, a wonderful life.
Ding Dong the Mayor is Dead.

Okay, maybe I’m overdoing it a bit.
I know that there is a 100% chance that the Charter-changers will soon be launching a petition drive, and holding a bake sale, and hiring a voodoo doctor, and a priest, and adding to their hit list (and hiring a hit man), and looking up to heaven, beating their breasts and claiming they have been wronged.
I know there is a high likelihood that certain fanatical Charter-heads will succeed once again to – at the very least, muddy the waters, create a stink, turn over a few stones and - when a worm or two is discovered, express their righteous indignation like Jimmy Swaggart after a big night on the town.
I know that Saturday’s vote was in many ways, too good to be true. But I will not have my sunny disposition sullied by what may or may not happen in the coming weeks.
I will not read the comments posted to this online, or the outraged letters to the editor written in blood. And I promise that, under pain of expulsion from the ever-expanding secret cabal of know-it-alls, ambulance chasers, cultists and town meeting members, I will not at any time in the next six months pause in my cable wanderings to listen to.. well, you know who.
I want this feeling to last.
And did you notice? As soon as the vote was concluded Saturday, the sun came out, the birds began to sing, and that long-deferred spring we’ve been aching for, burst forth.
Sunday was an actual sun day.
Monday was Opening Day at Fenway.
Little Leaguers are taking to the fields.
The North Koreans sent up a celebratory rocket.
Metallica was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“Oh frabjous day, Callooh, Callay”.
Ding Dong, the Mayor is Dead.

(Note: For those of you not here, in America's Home Town, this post may be difficult to relate to. But know this - Plymouth has been in existence for just shy of 400 years, and through all those years it has been governed by a town meeting form of government - with an elected Board of Selectman and annual meetings at which a representative body deliberates on the expenditures for the coming year. Over the last ten years that form of government has been under attack by fans of alleged 'efficiencies'. The recent defeat of the third or fourth attempt to switch to a Mayoral form of government is what prompted this article. Though forward thinking in many ways, I strongly believe that the more people involved in governance, the better, and that especially in this historic community we need to do everything we can to keep the town meeting form of government intact and effective.)

Looking for Spring

2009-03-31T11:38:00.004-05:00

Ellisville Harbor parking lot: 12:40 p.m.
I’ve never been ‘here’ before.
I’ve been by here a hundred, maybe a thousand times.
It’s human nature. If I had been on vacation I certainly would have stopped, looked, maybe even gotten out of my car and explored this historic site. But because I live close by, I just drive on by.
Until today.
I’m making a point of walking all of Plymouth’s parks and conservation lands this year. I started in late December with a few visits to the Eel River Preserve off Long Pond Road, then had a wonderful afternoon tramping through fresh-fallen snow on New Years’ Day on the Gramp’s Loop trail off Mast Road. But then this recently concluded roller coaster of a winter interceded, with snow falling almost every week, ice everywhere, frost heaves and tortured trees. It was all I could do to make it out of my driveway, much less find time for a leisurely stroll through the woods.
I couldn’t wait any longer though.

I needed to get away. I needed to get out. I needed to replenish.
Not that I expected Ellisville Harbor to do all of that – but I thought it would be a step in the right direction.
Right away I am disappointed.
It’s too close to the road, and to Cedarville. On a gray Wednesday afternoon there are five cars in the small lot – most with people sitting in them, eating their lunch. I don’t begrudge them the view or the time off, but I was hoping to be alone. I was hoping to be able to get out of my car, take a few steps down a path, turn a corner, and be completely alone.
Instead there is society to deal with: mostly workers taking a break, but a dog walker and a couple, arm in arm, that I see heading into the woods.
Through the trees bordering the lot I see a rusted old piece of farm equipment: I suppose it has been left as a reminder of the history of the family farm that once thrived here, but on this misty afternoon it simply looks like junk.
I get out, and move to a display where there is history of the site, and a rather vague map.
Stop critiquing, I tell myself. Just shut up and walk.
The path is wide, graveled, easy to follow. Too easy, I think. Shut up and start walking.
To the right of the path the old salt pond is visible through the still bare trees, a hundred yards or so below, and beyond that steel gray water.
My sense is that things should be greener, warmer, brighter by this time of year, but that the repeated blows this past winter rained down on us, have taken a toll.
The forecast was for sun, and temperatures well above 50. Instead it is overcast, misty, and a strong, cold wind cuts right through my jean jacket.

Stop whining, I tell myself. But in the woods and farther below in the pond, geese, grackle, and smaller, unseen birds, seem to squawk in agreement.
I look around for something aesthetically pleasing. I try taking a few pictures with the small digital camera I take everywhere I go – looking down the hill through the trees, toward the water. But the pond and ocean - which the brain easily discerns through the gaps, don’t stand out in the lens of my camera.
I walk on and the path remains too wide, too easy to follow, too public.
To the left there are dry, dead meadows with clusters of crumbling trees. I notice a dog walker has taken that direction. I guess that these so-called meadows must be minefields of uncollected droppings.
In the midst of a clearing a rusted wellhead surfaces like some strange religious totem. Ahead a few tall cypress punctuate overgrown rhododendron bushes. It doesn’t feel natural. It doesn’t feel alive. The trees are not in bud. Almost every limb is dotted with one or two brown stragglers: shriveled leaves that have refused to let go, even after so many limb-bending bouts with ice and snow.
Instead of finding myself deep in dark woods, closer to silence, and alone – as I would have hoped, the path winds back toward an unpaved public street – Gracie’s Road, and passes over the driveway of a shingled, nondescript home used – I think, by State Park employees during the warmer months.
With little additional effort I come to the point where the path angles sharply to the right, abutting a private home, narrows, then descends downhill before ending at a twisted, suspect staircase to the beach.
On the beach at first I sense only the disarray. It’s a lost and found of ocean items.
But as I walk slowly over the sand and stone and wind-scalded seaweed, gazing down at each arrangement of cast away ocean plunder, I find I am pleasantly distracted by the subtle varieties of seaweed, stone, and trash available, and impressed by the casual indifference with which the beach has been decorated.
The rockweed’s pods have as much variety and color as gemstones: in places they are pink, in others gray, black cherry, or blue-green.
A scroll of serpent green kelp is tangled and twisted, half-submerged in the sand like wet knee socks discarded by a skinny dipper.
A thick ribbon of – what I take to be gray polyester insulation, has somehow been looped like a holiday bow in and out of a mound of green weed.
Brown and white and green and amber, even pale pink, coin-sized stones are clustered together at a rise in the sand, licked by the foaming tide, forming an accidental Apian Way that stretches the length of the beach, leading the eye toward the distant stack of the power station at the canal.
A jogger suddenly streaks by behind me – and I jerk back to attention.
I maneuver back up the Escher-like staircase back to the pathway and, this time, meander purposefully into the dead brown meadow. In its midst, at a distance, I notice a cluster of short, wire-limbed trees, their highest branches pleading with the gray sky.
I move into their midst and find that they are all dead: the last bits of clinging bark slipping from their ivory limbs like sleeves that have lost all elastic.
I empathize with these trees.
It has been a long winter. My unused limbs seem to have lost their elastic as well. It would not surprise me if my skin sloughed to the ground, leaving me with just the husk.
At least the calendar tells me its spring.

Get Your Goat!

2009-03-31T11:36:00.001-05:00

We need a bigger goat.
Much bigger.
We need an oversized patsy, a certified whipping boy, a forty-foot fall guy.
Any suggestions?
Sorry, local officials won’t do this time. You can only get so much mileage out of taking pot shots at poor Dicky Quintal, or demeaning Larry Rosenblum, or adding snide comments about any elected official whose name appears online.
Local Government as a whole is the proverbial broad side of the barn: hard to miss but in the end, not quite what the people require at this historic moment.
AIG?
Sure, Aiggie and its stooges - and the other oversized financial institutions as well, are an ever bigger, fatter target. But personally I can’t relate to a trillion dollar company and its billion dollar blues. And then there’s the sad fact that we need AIG, and Wall Street, and all those banks. So to make financial institutions the sole target of our anger and frustration is just, well, spitting into the wind.
What about the Commander in Chief? The President always makes a nice fall guy. But this guy Obama has the unusual habit (for a politician) of apologizing when he makes a mistake. It took the last guy six years to even admit to making any mistakes at all.
And speaking of the ‘last guy’, let’s get it out the way: we can’t blame him either. It would be giving him more credit than he deserves to say he was personally responsible for our present state of affairs. In eight years he really didn’t do much of anything, except flash that famous grin as the world around him went to hell.
Okay, so where was I? Oh yeah, looking for that oversized goat.
Did you know the term ‘scapegoat’ comes from the tradition, in Biblical times, of driving off a goat with the sins of the world loaded (symbolically) on to its back? The ‘escape’ goat or, "scapegoat" is now understood to mean a person, often innocent, who is punished for the sins of others (usually as a way of distracting attention from the real causes.)
Whatever happened to the Red Chinese anyway?
When I was a boy you could always blame the Red Chinese or the Soviets if you were feeling a little anxious. In my Dad’s time they had the Rosenbergs. In my grandfather’s time there was Sacco and Vanzetti. Say what you will, but I don’t think that Tim Geithner measures up against those great goats of the past.
Still I would agree that a good show trial might make us feel better, for a time. We could put Dick ‘Chainsaw’ Cheney in charge: he’s just the man if you’re planning to burn someone at the stake.
But even if we waterboarded a few Wall Street execs, put a little buckshot in the behinds of a select group of politicians, and tarred and feathered anyone suspected of eating imported pistachios, the effects would be short-lived. And we still wouldn’t be able to rid ourselves of the nagging suspicion that it was – not AIG or Notorious B.I.G., it was you and me who were responsible for this fall from grace.
That’s the secret of successful scapegoating too: it’s got to be our apathy, our sloth, our sins that are offloaded onto something or someone else in order to achieve the full effect. Most of your modern scapegoats - even Dick Darth Cheney, just don’t have enough trunk space to accommodate all of that.
Remember, we’re not talking about the sins of a few; we’re talking about, like Mikey Jackson used to sing, “the man in the mirror”.
We were the ones that were too complacent to fight against the waste of Iraq. We were the ones who were too busy fishing from our new boats – bought with a little ol’ equity loan on our overvalued homes, to get out and vote. We were the ones who were too fat and happy to care that our country was being split down the middle into the haves and the have-just-enough-not-to-cares. And heck, let’s not be chauvinistic about this: our friends in Europe and Asia had their own personal Ponzi schemes too.
Even those among us whose heads weren’t completely buried in the sand for the last decade, usually had them buried someplace else. Can we be forgiven for the hours and hours, and hours spent role-playing in World of Warcraft, or fine-tuning our MySpace pages, and text messaging our friends while the walls crumbled around us?
Nero may have fiddled while Rome burned, but a lot of us Twittered while America tottered.
So if we all have played a part in this debacle - and it’s not just the fault of some remote corporation or government official or Brittany, we need a scapegoat the likes of which has not been seen for years.
And come to think of it, I know just the guy: that is, I know just the goat.
There is one all-purpose, super-sized, professional, time-tested, certified scapegoat who has the ability to take on all of our guilt and anger and frustration and blame, and do so without complaint.
Yes, I know it sounds blasphemous, but I think we really need to make a big sacrifice if we are going to get out of this hole we’re in without tearing each other to pieces.
Let the call go out.
Billy Buckner, we need you again!

Tweedle Dee and Twitter Dumb

2009-03-31T11:34:00.001-05:00

Tweet!
I'm writing a column about Twitter.
10:49 AM Mar 14th from web

I’m Twittering as we speak.
I’m writing about Twitter and Twittering about writing about Twitter.
I’ve linked my Twitter account to the blog for this column. As I write about Twitter, and Twitter about Twitter, my ‘tweets’ automatically appear on my blog.
I think, to be fair, that I should also blog about Twittering. Twitter only gives you 140 characters at a time, so I could use the extra space on my blog to expand on my thoughts about Twitter.
Of course I could have used this column to expand on my thoughts about Twitter, but I thought it would be more amusing to use this column to write about how amusing it is to, well, try and explain what Twitter is.
I am not going to email anyone, however, about my column about Twitter, or my Twittering on my blog: unless, of course, someone emails me and asks me about it.
And that’s final.

Tweet!
I'm still writing.. well, I took a few breaks: just got back from Staples.
3:23 PM Mar 14th from web

They call people who sign up on Twitter, and then agree to follow other peoples’ Twittering, Followers.
Real imaginative, huh?
You can follow me on Twitter.
Yeah, you’re right: I’m not sure why you would either, unless of course you want more of the same material, in smaller, byte-size pieces. Then again, as Lotus founder Mitchell Kapor once wrote, ”Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” So maybe there is something to be said for getting your information from Twitter’s ‘bubbler’.
There are other Twits though, that you really might want to follow, regardless of what they have to say.
But you have to be signed up on Twitter to follow the Twits on Twitter: unless of course you’re following me, and then you can just read this.
Are you following me?
There’s actually someone on Twitter who goes by the name, Hitler, and he or she has quite a few Followers.
There’s a Mussolini too.
And of course, Mickey Mouse is well represented (he and Minnie have been expressing themselves in less than 140K for years).

Tweet!
I'm revising the Twitter piece: usually get it in to the paper Sunday night.
About to sit down to Nana's Chicken: an old family recipe.
6:49 PM Mar 14th from web

There are even quite a few Senators and Congressmen who Twitter.
When Obama was giving his first television address to Congress, a lot of those Twits were Twittering while he spoke (or they had their aids Twitter for them). That’s rude behavior in the real world, but in the world of Twitter it’s like saying ‘gesundheit’ when somebody sneezes. It’s the natural thing to do!
I think it would be strange to have my own Followers.
Then again, if my Followers were just friends, it wouldn’t be so strange. But then would be they be Followers, or Friends?
Mostly people on Twitter who follow at all, follow famous Twits. They get to hear what this famous Twit had for lunch, or that famous Twit thinks of Obama, or how this other famous Twit has a new book, or an upcoming show, or a tee shirt for sale.
In the real world I think they call that stalking.

Tweet!
I've given up on that first version. Going to start over.
It's already Monday morning. What the hell is Twitter anyway?
00:17 AM Mar 15th from web

I probably got into Twittering a bit too late.
I missed the Golden Age of Twittering, when there was a real spirit of idealism.
Rumor has it that for just under seven days - sometime in 2007, all Twitterers were expressing their innermost thoughts, revealing their hopes and dreams, and offering their prayers up like a burnt offering to the gods: a small, 140-byte burnt offering, but a sincere one.
But on the day I signed up a girl, or a company, or a Twit called Scandalouswoman signed on as my Follower right away, then offered me her link.
And besides Hitler and Mussolini, I noticed that my fellow Twits also included radio stations and grocery stores and pizza parlors. all of whom had their own Twitter IDs and their own Followers.
I got the impression that Twitter was a kind of mall of the mind: there are some nice things if your credit is still good, but mostly it’s pushy Eastern European immigrants trying to sell you cosmetics from their overstuffed carts.
Or maybe Twitter was like the kid with Tourettes: you know sooner or later he’s just going to blurt it all out.
Or Twitter was like one of those scrolling message marquees that they put in store windows, except this one is strapped to your head and lit up 24/7.
Hell, I really don’t know what Twitter is. Give me a few more weeks.
And yet somehow, miraculously, I am Twittering as we speak!

Tweet!
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” - Arthur C. Clarke
7:25 AM – from the web

Clockenspiel

2009-03-13T06:54:00.000-05:00

Start now!
Okay, no matter where you are, and what time you think it is, while you’re reading this it’s Hammer Time.
No, not M.C. Hammer, - the guy with the harem pants who was secretly funded by the Ritalin Manufacturers of America, but instead, an actual hammer. A hammer with a wooden handle and a metal head to be gripped firmly and brought down like Thor’s Hammer on any and all clocks in the room, the house, the neighborhood.
In my personal time zone where I am writing this right now, the glass and plastic opaque faces of three alarm clocks are in pieces on the floor. In this region, 21 hands, representing seven analog timepieces – hours, minutes, seconds, have been broken off and piled like kindling in the fireplace. In each of three computers, the prying eyes of digital time have been banished from the screen.
I’ve had all I can take and I just can’t take it anymore.
While you’re reading this the moments that you are wasting cannot be catalogued under Eastern Standard or Rocky Mountain or Greenwich Mean or any government controlled time.
This is my time.
I’ve got all the time in the world.
This is my world.
And you are free now - while you read this, to count off the moments on your own. How long have you been reading this now? Sixty seconds? Are you beginning to feel a little skittish? Do you feel the pressure of Big Brother’s time, weighing on you?
Relax. If you are usually bound, which most of you usually are – like the White Rabbit by his Red Queen, know that here and now the Queen is dead.
If last Saturday night you dutifully switched all your clocks one hour forward or two hours back, or stood on your hands or your head, or barked at the moon because that’s what the weatherman said you should do, know that this is a duty free zone.
That sound you hear is not a bomb about to go off, or a race about to begin, or a life about to end. That sound is the ticking of your own heart. You can move to its beat, you know. You don’t need to jump up at the alarm, make a mad dash to fit the train schedule, eat your lunch within the time that other’s prescribe for you, or take your week’s vacation at the same time every year: is there even such a thing as the same time every year?
And God knows you don’t need to save any daylight.
The sad truth Chuckles, is that you can’t save any daylight: never could. It is a ruse, a game, a joke on you my friend. It was originally the Kaiser’s bright idea, don’t you know: a way for the Prussians to put one over on the French. They wanted a little extra time to blow each other into eternity (now that’s my idea of daylight savings time). Daylight Savings was and is an absurdity worthy of Dr. Seuss – like the Butter Battle game. And now, war or not, it is a joke played on you to demonstrate how gullible you are – and always will be.
They move the clock forward, they move the clock backward, and you go right along with it like the life-sized figures that dance under the Glockenspiel on the Munich Rathaus tower.
Today the Kaiser and his descendants are sitting up there in their Dirigible Pilots Men’s Club drawing room on the uppitiest floor of the emptiest building on Wall Street, clinking glasses and having a laugh at your expense.
And do you think for a moment that these Helium-voiced lords abide by the conventions of time that they have you dancing to? Of course not. They are floating on the ether, far above the clouds, eating bonbons and petit fours, drinking absinthe and peering out the window at the peons far below. The faster they make you run, the more time they have to kill.
But at least here, and now – within the white spaces between each word you are free to spend your time any way you choose. You don’t have to spend it all.
I personally prefer to use a stopwatch, letting out only as much time as I need for the things that I love.
My time is my own.
I will not, under any circumstances, bend my time to suit your schedule.
I will not rise a moment earlier or go to bed a moment later.
I refuse to save time, or Leap years, or celebrate any of their fabricated holidays.
I can spare only so much.
And guess what: your time is up.

Wampum's War

2009-03-13T06:52:00.001-05:00

I’m not surprised that many residents of Plymouth are convinced that there is a cancer in our ‘body politick’, a malignancy that needs to rooted out, and that only a wholesale change in our form of government will do the trick.
Plymouth’s history is filled with instances of paranoia, of intolerance, and fear mongering.
Like most people who have, at one time or another, been treated unjustly because of how they looked, what language they spoke, or what religion they practiced, given the opportunity the original settlers of this community transitioned quickly from being oppressed, to repressing others.
For decades after the original landing in 1620, it was illegal to bring ‘outsiders’ to Plymouth, or for recently freed servants or even single people to build their own homes, without the knowledge and consent of the local government, and to do so could earn you a time in the stocks, a hefty fine, or even expulsion from the community.
In the latter part of the 17th century residents were forbidden to even ‘entertain’ Quakers, three of whom were actually hung in Boston at the peak of the anti-Friends hysteria.
And when the revolution against England began, there were numerous instances where otherwise upstanding citizens with long, respected histories of service and loyalty to the community, were tarred and feathered, hoisted to the tops of polls, beaten and otherwise abused for expressing the belief that the colonies should retain their allegiance to England.
And of course all this was in addition to the dismissive attitudes, disenfranchising ordinances, and outright injustices experienced by native peoples.
The paranoia and xenophobia of locals came to its dramatic, and somewhat comical climax on March 30, 1741, when Joseph Wampum – a native who then lived in what is now known as Manomet, told churchgoers gathered in Plymouth that day that he had been visited in his home the previous night by eight Spaniards.
He might as well have said that devils had descended from the sky. England was at the time, officially at war with Spain so – despite their philosophical and physical separation from the motherland; Wampum’s words became the spark that ignited the tinder of the community’s fears of all things foreign and unusual.
Bells were rung, and drums sounded to alert the populace, and the militia gathered in full regalia in the town square, awaiting instructions, ready for war. Don’t scratch your head and tickle your chin, trying to coax forth some lost elementary school lesson describing the carnage that followed, for your instincts are correct this time: there was no war.
Despite a century of, often-justified paranoia, the colonists were able to keep their ‘powder dry’. The hardships they had endured had done something more than filled them with fear: it had given them a deep respect for pragmatism and rationality.
They did not immediately launch their boats, or march off in search of a fight.
No one was strung up.
No one was taken off to Clark’s island for interrogation.
And the government and rules that had governed their lives for the last 120 years were not suddenly abandoned, and martial law put in its place.
They waited, watched and, when no confirmation of the Spanish Armada’s approach was received, no smoke seen on the horizon, and no sign of troops descending over the Pine Hills was detected – they unbuckled their swords and went back home and had something warm to eat.
The event itself was known from that day on as, ‘Wampum’s War’.
And that is how I choose to think of the decade of whining, personal attacks, and fear mongering that is coming to a climax now, in present day Plymouth, with the latest call to throw out our historic and – by objective standards, effective form of government.
This is just another Wampum’s War.
If the rumors and whispered innuendos – the alleged ‘talk of the town’ were true, an army of volunteers, board members, and town government employees should already have come screaming over Cole’s Hill, looking for our scalps.
If even a small portion of the dire predictions of the fear mongers had come to pass, Plymouth should already be a smoldering ruin.
And yet, even in these grim economic times, the schools remain intact, the lights are still on, and the Mayflower is still afloat in the harbor.
Still, maybe it is a good thing, this irrational fear. Maybe it is a natural phenomenon.
Perhaps we need to be brought to the brink of disaster every generation or so, so we can look out over the harbor, up into the Pine Hills, and over the State Forest and take note of… the absence of an enemy.
Perhaps Wampum was just giving the colonists what - though they didn’t realize it themselves, they most wanted in their lives – drama! There were many accounts during the first hundred years of the Plymouth colony, of the native inhabitants deliberately lying to locals for effect. Wampum’s warning may have been one of those. On another occasion natives informed the Pilgrims that Edward Winslow had died of fever, while on a mission to Connecticut. When he arrived in good health a few days later, the natives were surprised that the Pilgrims were angry with them for their ‘little lie’. After all, had not the Pilgrim’s joy at seeing Winslow alive, been all the more sweet for their sorrow at his supposed passing?
I believe that the natives realized that feelings like fear and sorrow were the kind of emotional seasoning favored by the ‘English’, and they knew that salty tears bring out the flavors of life that we often take for granted.
Certainly we can now see more clearly – as we consider this momentous change in our historic government, that Plymouth is a community that has been blessed in many ways.
Certainly now, with the cries of those who claim our community is in disarray still reverberating in our ears, we can see that few if any other towns can boast of so many recreational opportunities, so many natural wonders, so rich and authentic a history – and how few of us take advantage of all that this town has to offer.
And certainly now, we can grudgingly admit that despite their lack of perfection as both individuals and administrators, those who have served as members of elected boards and committees in the past 10, 20, even 100 years, have done a remarkable job of preserving our resources. Just look around, for comparison, at the untidy sprawl of the communities that we are supposed to emulate, Braintree, Weymouth, and Taunton.
But the alarm has been sounded, and sounded, and sounded again.
And certain militias have been assembled and waiting in the town square for nearly a decade.
We have to put someone in the stocks, don’t we? We have to burn a witch or two, right?
If, as we have been told time and time again, our demise is imminent and inescapable, we need to root out the infidels amongst us and institute a kind of permanent martial law: government by the fewest, for the loudest!
Then again, considering that there are really no devils on Lincoln Street, maybe we should just unbuckle our swords and go home.

Vocabulary Lesson

2009-02-26T16:29:00.001-05:00

I made the mistake of loudly smacking my lips and licking my fingers as I devoured Cormac McCarthy’s devastating novel The Road, last spring.
I’ve always told friends and family ‘you can’t afford what I want’, when they query me on my Christmas wish list. So last year they were able to take a kind of revenge, confidently gifting me with almost everything written by that Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist.
I am only now beginning to dig myself out of this self-imposed prison of words.
Most recently I finished McCarthy’s 1979 opus, Suttree, the story of a debauched, usually drunken, mystical apologist for the South-that-never-was.
It is not an easy read. The novel begins with a kind of bio-sociological incantation, and ends with an amusing near-death experience. In between there are drownings, murders, the accidental death of children, police beatings, bewitchments, a great deal of sewerage, and characters who if not fully etched, are completely wretched.
If pressed I would have to say I was disappointed: it was not as satisfying a read as The Road, written twenty years after Suttree.
But on another level, it was magnificent. I have never read a book that had more words that I didn’t understand or couldn’t immediately suss out from the context. It was two books in one: the novel and the vocabulary lesson.

Gout, from the archaic ‘gutta’, meaning drops but in modern usage specifically crystals: crystals of uric acid in the blood that lead to painful swelling of the extremities, the knees, the elbows. We hear ‘gout’ and we think of wigged men in satin knickers mincing about to baroque music while, unbeknownst to them, their hostess with the hair piled high has ducked out for a rendezvous with Errol Flynn.
In Suttree though, it is apparently gout in that first, archaic sense, of a drop, or a droplet, of a spray of rain and blood and other biological fluids and even – on page 27, spiked clumps of sawdust bursting through the torn stitches in the belly of a stuffed lynx.
Sere. Where withered might have done admirably, perhaps substituted by McCarthy because of its homonymic association with seer - someone who prophesies, foreshadowing Suttree’s failed attempts to establish any kind of life. He is a failed fisherman, husband, father, son, friend, lover, pimp, Catholic, and auto enthusiast. He fails at everything.
At first I failed as well, to find a ‘sere’ in my Oxford Annotated. But then I looked under ‘sear’ – to burn into, and found the archaic spelling and secondary definition that McCarthy uses to describe bones, claws, flowers, foliage, hopes, and lives, all withering or dead on the vine.
Knacker: a slaughterer of spent or sickly animals. A writer might be said to be a kind of knacker: a re-processor of useless ideas, unusual words. The Knoxville that McCarthy depicts is certainly a slaughterhouse, and the characters that McCarthy invents create what lives they have, out of the waste. Most have built their homes from flotsam and jetsam. There, along the river, under the bridges, in the caves, they sleep in abandoned vehicles, in cast off rail cars, in boats made of old signage. They are the wretched refuse, washed upon the shore. Suttree is a knacker’s dream: literally crammed with the abandoned, the maimed, the mad, and the delusional. On page 457, in the last fits and fantasies of a typhoid coma, Suttree’s alter ego reads from an imagined indictment in which he accuses himself of consorting with..

“thieves, derelicts, miscreants, pariahs, poltroons, spallpeens, curmudgeons, clotpolls, murderers, gamblers, bawds, whores, trulls, brigands, topers, tosspots, sots, and archsots, lobcocks, smellsmocks, runagates, rakes and other associated felonious debauchees.”

Tellurian. You and I, as it turns out, are Tellurians, which simply means ‘of the earth’. There is though, a hint in its root, which suggests that McCarthy meant to imply someone not simply of this earth, but bounded by it, restricted to it, even imprisoned within it. For the root word is ‘telo’, meaning flat. Flat earth?
The list – kept in my everyday journal, went on and on: Concatenate, talus, warfarined (poisoned by a water soluble rat poison), dishabille, sacerdotal (the Jesuit schooled boy must have slept late that morning), cataphracted, crepuscular, spalls (just chips), purlieu, quoits, ‘breeks of kingscord’ (corduroy pants!), and triturations.
At first I just wrote down these mysterious words. Then, when the definition was not immediately available, or did nothing to help me understand usage, I began to write down the page number. Then I included the sentence in which the word was found. In most cases I had to have my Oxford annotated open on my lap, the novel in my hand, and my notebook at the ready, before I was satisfied I had a reasonable understanding of what the author intended.
Soricine. In the context in which I found this word - within a description of a wizened black Geechee witch preparing and administering a potion, I assumed it was a variation on sorcerer, or sorceress. But still unsure, I noted it in my journal. That evening I quickly found that soricine simply meant ‘shrew-like’. I thought back to the many instances in which McCarthy describes the reliance of those living in and along the river – the lower reaches of Knoxville, on the animals and fishes at the lower end of the chain. They ate roots, rabbits, rodents, bats, pigeons, turtles, shellfish, and often resembled the same.
Spelaean. I dug deep for this one and came up – if not empty handed, unsure of what I may have grasped in the darkness. I came up with ‘spae’, a wonderful Scottish word with Norse roots, which may be the root of our own word ‘spy’. A spae-wife is, in Scottish, a sorceress, or fortune teller, and I suppose I wanted this to be the correct inference. The reference itself in the book is to a ‘spelaen darkness’ which could – in the context of this novel, fit. But in the light of day I saw the root I was digging for was not ‘spae’, but rather spelae. So down I went again, and after a while uncovered ‘spalax’, which is the Latin term for a mole rat. As the chapter concerned a certain rat-like character spelunking beneath Knoxville, this seemed a quite plausible solution.
Perhaps ‘spelaen’ might also describe the process of reading: that is, a burrowing through the darkness and a grasping for meaning.
I can’t think of a better way to spend these last drab days of winter, than burrowing through this spelaean darkness. But then, that’s just me.

Fry Baby

2009-02-22T22:39:00.001-05:00

Lipstick is up.
Chewing gum is through the roof!
Whittling is making a comeback, especially now that chances are good that your local hospital has someone on staff that can reattach a finger or two.
When we can’t afford to waste our money on the supposed finer things, we return – like the Prodigal Son, to those tried and true, simple, straightforward pleasures of life: corn on the cob, a long walk through the woods or, in my case, the French fry.
To be honest, I’ve always thought that a good French fry was one of the finer things, but was hesitant to admit it. After all, its basic components are on the list of politically incorrect ingredients: oil, potato, salt!
Yes, there are alleged French fries that are made without one or more of those ingredients, but what they actually are is really anybody’s guess.
And now I am going to admit a belief that may remove what last remnant of respect you had for me:
The greatest French fry in the world is the McDonald’s French Fry!
That said, I should note that not even McDonald’s can make a great French fry on a consistent basis.
I actually remember my first McDonald’s fry. We had just returned from Berlin – where my father was stationed, and like a kid on Christmas morning ‘the Colonel’ scooted us around metropolitan Washington D.C. eager to show us all of the innovations we had missed living overseas. There were Mustang convertibles, Boeing 747s rising up over the Potomac from National Airport, and – on the Baltimore-Washington Expressway just south of Beltsville, an odd, rectangular glass building with ‘Golden Arches’.
There were no drive-thrus then, but neither were there long lines, and with its limited menu fast food could also mean hot food- including those remarkable fries.
Timing is everything. In the last 20 years I would estimate that - out of 2000 visits, I have tasted properly cooked and served McDonald’s French Fries at most three or four times. You see, to wring the perfect flavor out of those emaciated strips of pale yellow tuber everything has to be perfect. They have to be cooked in the hot oil for exactly the right amount of time: no more, no less. They have to be immediately removed from the oil and, after a cursory rapping of the metal basket to remove excess grease, scattered in a thin layer over the serving area. And they have to be quickly and thoroughly doused with salt so that the tiny crystals adhere to the remaining patina of oil.
And then of course – perhaps most importantly, you have to place your order just in time to have those perfectly prepared fries scooped up and served to you – as the old saying goes, ‘piping hot’.
You eat these fries with your teeth – not your mouth, breaking each tiny shaft open with a kind of Irish step dance: quick jabs with the heels of your incisors, releasing the captured steam, crunching the salt, savoring their ephemeral vinegary tartness, and noting the remarkable balance of flavor that is possible in a simple recipe.
You need to eat these miniature two-by-fours quickly too. They should always be the first item out of the bag, beginning before you have even left the parking area, using your fingers like chopsticks to clutch a half dozen or so at a time and shoveling them quickly into your open mouth.
It’s like walking on hot coals: a potentially spiritual experience but, he who hesitates is lost. If these fries cool they are better used to build a miniature yellow picket fence round the houses on your train set in the basement. Once cooled these fries are like the trilobite uncovered by an archaeologist: fossilized fodder for the scientist to examine and file away. Not food at all.
But don’t get all exited. As I said, chances are that they – the fries themselves, will never have a chance to devolve from a perfect state.
Everything is working against you.
If you are in a long line, or the fries have languished under their tanning lights for more than a moment, or they have lain a few seconds too long in the hot oil or – and this happens very frequently, the salt has either been niggardly applied or not at all, then perfection will never pass through your lips.
There are probably hundreds of thousands of people who – though regular customers of Mickey D’s, have never tasted these fries at the peak of their potential.
When they are good they are emblematic of the majesty of simplicity – in all things.
And when they are not, they are like most of life: disappointing.
Yes, there are other fries, some with highly desirable qualities.
I remember fries from the base PX in Berlin. They served them fresh from the fryolator, dripping with grease, dropped them right into a plastic bag and – after I first pumped a good portion of vinegary catsup right into the bag, I would ride my bike home in the dark, one eye on the road, the other in the bag with my cheek and mouth.
I remember as well, Thrashers, in Ocean City, Maryland. On the boardwalk there they serve only one item: Large, roughly cut, always freshly cooked French-fries in several sizes, with salt and vinegar the only available condiments.
Trashers' fries were – as I remember them, like the big brother of the McDonald’s Fry, though far more consistently produced, far more substantial. I think they were great fries, but I have to admit that my memory of their flavor is hopelessly entangled in the smell of the ocean, the creak of boardwalk, and the hormones of youth.
Still, you can’t help but be impressed by Thrasher’s dedication to the fry: despite 80 years of success, they have never added additional items to their menu: they have never had to ask, ‘you want fries with that?’
I think that if McDonalds wants to expand – in recognition of the power of their small fry and, acknowledging the need for simple, less costly diversions in this economic environment, they’d devise little kiosks for the beach, or the boardwalk, or along the popular streets of picturesque tourist towns, where a single, apron-ed huckster would serve only French fries: fresh, hot, always overflowing their paper holster whatever the serving size.
Simplicity is clarity.
Simplicity is honesty.
Simplicity can help us survive the tough times ahead. That, and a belly full of hot, salty fries!

Heave, Ho

2009-02-13T10:28:00.001-05:00

It’s like the baby alien, bursting out of John Hurt’s abdomen – smiling for the cameras, then high-tailing it for the bowels of the Nostromo.
I’m talking about frost heaves.
Frost heaves are just the symptom though, of a deeper, and more disturbing phenomena.
No, I’m just kidding.
Frost heaves are actually alien cocoons, deposited by visitors from outer space billions of years ago, and timed to hatch just prior to their next visit: high-tech locusts, of sorts.
Nah, I’m just kidding again.
Frost heaves are really just the Earth’s version of adolescent acne. Our Earth is younger than it looks, and is actually going through puberty right now. Because of our recent economic woes, we can’t afford the eight billion dollars worth of Pro-Activ that it would take to be acne free.
Today, as I drove along Halfway Pond Road, rocking back and forth and up and down as if I was on a small ship on a stormy sea, I started to see ‘frost heaves’ in everything, from my personal life, to the universe.
There are scientists who believe that the universe began with a big frost heave: first there was nothingness, then the nothingness started to swell, and bubble, crack and distend and – in a blinding flash of light..
Others - with less education, believe that our universe was a kind of small car cruising down an alternative route in an alternative universe, when the pavement cracked open, and a pothole as big and deep as a black hole, swallowed that fuel-efficient universe entirely.
Certain religious fundamentalists hold that the world could have been created in six days, but frost heaves delayed the delivery of certain animals.
Still others believe that frost heaves are like Beano, held every Wednesday night in the basement of the French-American Club in Jay, Maine.
I actually met a guy named Jo, from Jay, who said he was the state record holder for heaving frosts. I think he might have meant heaving frosties, which is less impressive by far, but which proves (I think) that we have nothing to fear from frost heaves. If Jo from Jay in Maine – where they claim to have invented the Frost Heave, isn’t worried, why should we be?
Personally, I love the frost heave. It reminds me of, well me.
I was born in a little wooden shack, on a lake in northern Minnesota. My mother was an avid ice-fisherperson and, though she was in her eighth month, off she went to Lake Wherethehellarewe to get her weekly quota of Northern Pike. Overnight the weather changed, and when she woke up she was adrift on a large ice flow. Maybe it was the weather, but I was born that same day. My father used fishing line to yank me out. They were going to rescue us, but several days later the weather changed again and the lake was frozen over and - after a few more days of ice fishing, we drove the Winnebago home over some pretty rough roads.
Was that believable?
No? Well actually I was born in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, on land, on a seasonably warm late spring day. But I really do relate to frost heaves. My head is filled with bumps and cracks and evidence of unseasonable weather. My face was once pocked with pustules and now bears the tiny scars of a tumultuous teenage-hood. And I have that flushed, phlegmatic look that seems to portend future eruptions.
You too?
I think we all carry the seasons around with us: the warm and the cold, the wet and the dry, the confident and the neurotic, the plausible and the fantastic. I think we all recognize – even though we may not publicly admit it, that the seasons of our souls are not nearly as predictable, as consistent, as the seasons of the Earth – however much we’d like them to be. So to see the roads erupting – like an adolescent’s once unblemished skin, is comforting. To see the ground bubble and burst through the tar is to realize that our own neuroses and uneven-ness, are as natural and normal as the allegedly more predictable seasons we pass through.
The lesson of frost heaves might be that, no matter how hard we try to pave over it, the core of our being is defiantly irregular, consistently unpredictable.
We are all little baby aliens, chewing through the ice, pushing through the tar, anxious for the winter to end, so we can head to the beach and heave a few frosties.

Mission Central

2009-01-29T08:53:00.001-05:00

When did we become a fit meal for missionary zeal? I ask this now, having been visited this week by two handsome, respectful, earnest young Latter Day Saints.

I wondered, later, if it didn’t have something to do with my driveway?

I know what it’s like to have a mission, of sorts, a door-to-door mission, and to be confronted by what might be a ready excuse: a long, winding driveway that disappears into the woods before it reaches a visible destination; a barking dog, or worse, signs warning thereof; and the lack of any apparent point of entrance or exit.

To the pollster, the census taker or even for your average campaign worker these traditional impediments are sufficient rationale for moving on to the next number on the list.

But these two young men – Johnny Cashed all in black – might have unconsciously considered my Bering Strait of a driveway an easy way to confirm, to themselves, their zeal. That is, this is not Botswana or Turkmenistan. In general, the audience here is, relatively speaking, understanding of their purpose. It’s easy to knock on the doors of the houses on the street, with their short little driveways and their obvious front doors. But to walk through the woods, over the hill, across an ice-bound creek, up an overgrown path to a darkly shingled gray gambrel, well, that’s dedication, faith and youthfulness, or a combination thereof!

But I’ve already strayed from my original point, or question. Why us? That is, apart from the challenge of my driveway, why the challenge of my town, my state, our East Coast intellectual position on the theo-political map.
Are we so wayward?
Are we so out of the way-ward?

Are we in some not altogether obvious manner depraved, or deprived?
Is it a general malaise that they seek to address?

Is it simply a matter of sect? Is it our sectual proclivities: the likelihood that, left to our own pseudo-religious devices, we would in all probability end up in a traditional steepled structure, surrounded by traditionally steepled people (here is the church, here is the steeple)? Are we on the list to be saved simply because of our Catholic-ness, our Presbyterianism, our Unitarianosity?
Is that really it?

I raised this question, sort of, with the two nice young men who came to my door. Actually, I asked if their appearance was reflective of a change in the world that I was not aware of.

I remembered, I told them, that when I was a boy you didn’t see men-in-black bicycling about American suburbia. In my old neighborhood (Colesville, in the White Oak section of the city of Silver Spring, in the state of Maryland) there was a Mormon Temple with golden spires and a sizable selection of Latter Day-ers. But,when the young men from that Temple missionaried, they did so overseas.

They didn’t answer the question, not directly. I don’t think they knew, or cared. They had a live one on the hook, at least metaphysically speaking, and were intent on getting in their pitch (though I barely gave them enough time to clear their throats).

I came to the door a bit breathless, having just come in from my driveway moments before they arrived, having just moments before that been pulverizing the larger driveway bergs that blocked passage, with a 30-pound sledge. My pants were spattered with pongy driveway water, my hair a bit wilder than usual. I may have startled them by my openness, my frenetic manner, and by how close I came to them, moving out onto our small, porch-like wooden front steps, closing the door behind me and immediately breaking into a mad ramble about the driveway, poetry, my lapsed but intransigent Catholicity and then, as I said, indirectly asking why they had been posted to Pilgrim land, and not a more traditional den of heathenism.
And then I gave them my bible – John Berrymans’ 67 Dream Songs.

No, I didn’t. But now I think that I might, that I could, maybe even that I should. I could make up my own book, and a summary of that book, with questions and answers about the origins of my agnosticism, and have it ready to give it out when missionaries knock. Certainly there can be nothing wrong with proselytizing those who come to my door.

But I’m not looking for an argument. And when I am visited by such as these – be they Java Witnesses, Jack Conwayites, or Latter Day Country Western singers, I am almost always polite, deferential, complimentary.

God, they were nice young men: healthy and upright, well dressed and well spoken, and not at all zealous in their manner.

I couldn’t help but love their obvious goodness. I loved their idealism, too.

I felt a little like the witch living in the house made out of candy. They were so young and sincere and good that I, by comparison, felt a bit wicked, a bit dangerous (a bit envious, too).

I wished, for a moment, that I were so young and bright and energetic.

I wished, at that moment, that everyone should have a chance at their age, to work for some idealistic goal – perhaps not as lofty as the salvation of souls, but in that direction.

We need to have our growth directed at the earliest possible age toward the welfare of others so that, when the other tropisms we encounter begin to yank us in more selfish directions we will know, or feel, or have at least a vague remembrance that our roots were once grounded in concern for humanity.

Maybe the presence of these young men in our town is simply a sign of the abundance of idealism, still out there.

Perhaps Mormons are simply multiplying at a rate sufficient to have enough to go around, enough for each poor country abroad and for each of our isolated, suburban, sometimes soul-less little towns as well.

When I finally shut up they said what they needed to say and went on their way, though first gifting me with a densely worded book, and a pamphlet summarizing the book.

I told them their gospel was, perhaps, wasted on me, but they insisted I keep it, said they had plenty.

As they navigated their way out, I called out a friendly warning. Be careful, I said, many a missionary has come up my driveway and lost sight of the road. It has subtle twists and turns, and the branches from the encroaching trees are known to consume an occasional side-view mirror. And then there are the thorns, like tiny serrated teeth along lengths of tangled, wispy, evergreen vines, almost invisible, dangling from the trees, eager to nibble at the apple of a rosy cheek, or pluck the sleep from the folds of an unsuspecting eye.

Weather Tip: How Not to Go Arse Over Teakettle

2009-01-29T08:50:00.001-05:00

Shoes. Don’t put them on. Stay inside. Look out the window and say, “Holy mudhead, mackerel, the whole finger-lickin’ world is one big sheet of ice!”

Downhill. Ice makes everything downhill, including uphill. With that in mind, if you really have to go outside walk with your legs spread preposterously wide, and lift and place one foot at a time like some tipsy Sumo wrestler.

Rails, bars, limbs, fence posts, parked cars… Find something, anything to hold onto (preferably things that are set permanently into the ground). Do not under any circumstances get into your car without a firm grasp of the car door, itself, so that when, inevitably, your feet come out from under you, you don’t end up wedged half-way underneath.

All fours, as in “down on all fours,” as in “you don’t see dogs slipping on the ice, do you?” But, actually, if you were foolish enough to take your dog out on the ice both Fido and you would soon be doing the Electric Slide. Consider, instead, getting down on all fours like a turtle. A turtle might not make much headway, but it isn’t likely to go arse over teakettle either.

Swimming. You might even consider “swimming” (on your belly on the ice, like a turtle without a shell) to the mailbox, or the shed, or to the aide of someone who has already fallen. It may be cold but your fall will be much shorter if you are already on the ground.

Pedestrians. Steer clear of them. If at all possible, don’t go out on the street, or onto a sidewalk, or anywhere outside when there are any other people in your vicinity. If you do, no matter how level your stance, how flat your feet, and how slowly you move, a less careful pedestrian is going to lose their balance and after pin-balling off a few parked cars, fire hydrants and other pedestrians, will find you and knock you down.

Crunch. The sound underfoot is a good indication of the degree of danger of slipping. You are safe if, when you walk, you hear a “ca-runch.” A slight “ca-rinkle” is indicative of a relatively high degree of traction. A “ca-rink” without the “ul” is potential trouble. A straightforward “reenk”, without an initial “ca” is the sound of a large amount of down insulation about to go airborne. A “reenk,” followed by a “yikes,” and ending with an “oof,” is the sound of someone with a large butt landing on same. A “reenk” followed by a sharp “crack” is generally followed by an ambulance.

Flight. Birds aren’t particularly bothered by ice. I’ve never heard of the air being slippery. So, if you can, get airborne until the neighborhood thaws out. Or, if you can afford it, have somebody carry you to your car, drive you to the airport, and fly you someplace that doesn’t have any ice, someplace where, coincidentally, you don’t need any shoes.

Kat Hair

2009-01-22T10:22:00.000-05:00

I’m looking for Kat. I’m pretty confident she spells her name that way, though it could be spelled with a ‘C’. I called the place where she worked a week or so before Christmas, and they told me she no longer worked there. I asked, politely, if they could tell me where she had gone but they were – at least to my ear, less than friendly.
They don’t know and, it’s obvious, they don’t care.
My sense is that this is not unusual, in the salon business. Stylists are independent contractors, and if they get a better offer, off they go. Still, it was a shock to me. I’ve been getting my hair cut – off and on, for over 50 years, and Kat is the best I ever had. I foolishly thought she would be around, when I needed her.
Have you seen her?
I’ve reached a point in life when I can take or leave most things: including my hair. If I can’t have it cut by someone I trust, I just won’t have it cut at all. I’ll leave it to its own devices, which is a bit like knowing a hurricane is headed your way but refusing to evacuate.
It wasn’t always this way. There are pictures that suggest that for the first few years of my life my hair was tame, shiny, and – as the commercials say, ‘easy to manage’. And, like most two year olds, I could care less.
I remember though, when I first cared, or was aware, of my hair. Pants that year were bell-bottomed, belts were preposterously wide, the Stone’s “19th Nervous Breakdown” was echoing out from the youth center at Ramstein, and I wanted my hair just a little longer. Those details would place this epiphany somewhere around 1965. Unfortunately my father – the Colonel, and the barbers ‘on base’ had a secret pact to deny me even that small sign of independence.
Remember the old electric clippers – the way they hissed and popped like a snake in the grass?
Remember the look and smell of the old barbershops, with their shiny checkerboard tile floors, seats that came out of Dr. Frankenstein’s ‘Catalogue of Surgical Apparatus’, and the barbers themselves out of American International (the film studio responsible for wonderfully awful movie versions of Edgar Allan Poe’s more gruesome stories)?
Those barbers were circus lion tamers, going after every follicle with a whip and a chair, and a cap gun.
A good haircut then was the one you avoided.
Nothing much changed until the late sixties, early seventies when the crew cut prisoners were released and the barbershop morphed overnight into a unisex salon. Barbers didn’t do this willingly: they were forced by economic realities. Young men had learned to avoid them for months, even years. I had personally let “my freak flag fly” for over a year by the spring of 1970 but Holly – my girlfriend at the time, loved Rod Stewart and was doing everything she could to make me over in his image. Under her tutelage I acquired tall, lace-up black boots, a short suede jacket, and a variety of oddly colored corduroys. All that remained (besides plastic surgery) was to get the ‘shag’ haircut.
For Holly’s sake, and believing that stylists were different from barbers, I made an appointment; only to discover that the White-Smocked Meanies I had known as a child were still there – in disguise. They had longer hair themselves, but the same barely repressed anger. They served beer, had art on the walls, but they took a razor to your hair – often leaving it looking like something that should be on the floor, underfoot.
Gradually it became less and less about the style, and more and more about the stylist. When you’d first meet a new stylist they’d ask you a series of perfunctory questions - implying they were interested in your opinion, but when the smoke cleared, your hair looked suspiciously like theirs.
My favorite stylist of this period was Henny, as in ‘Henny color’ (an old Stooges joke).
Everything about Henny was on the cutting edge. His body was tattooed from head to toe, his face (and other regions) were liberally pierced, and his tri-color hair held about a pound and a half of ‘product’ - which actually made his head list a little to the left.
Henny - no surprise, thought I should try a little product too, and a little color, and have my upper lip stapled to my forehead. Over the course of a year, and perhaps seven or eight visits, I tried several variations on his theme and, well, let’s just say it never took. I wasn’t Henny, and Henny wasn’t actually himself. I needed a haircut that didn’t require product, or prep-work, or a bi-weekly visits for minor adjustments.
I needed a haircut that let my freak flag fly, without getting in my eyes or taking up too much time. That wasn’t much to ask, but still between 1966 and 2006 I probably had two haircuts I actually liked.
And then I met Kat.
Kat used to come into a cafe that I did some freelance marketing work for. I liked hanging out there: they let me make a few lattes for customers who couldn’t tell the difference, have my fill of espresso and - if they were busy, even work the register.
Kat came in to get their famous triple mocha lattes for the crew back at the salon, and let slip that she cut the hair of every one of the cafes’ workers too – except mine.
Why not, I thought: how bad could it be. Besides, at that point I had a lot of material to work with: I’d been avoiding scissors for over a year by then and my hair was halfway to the Cape.
So I let Kat at it.
I’m not exactly sure how she did it. I know she washed my hair, but that’s not unusual. I know she gave me a quick massage, fingering the back of my neck, the top of my spine: sort of the way that lobsters are hypnotized. After that it got kind of hazy. I know I must have gone from the shampoo station to her chair, and I do have vague recollections of a conversation, and of the monotonous sound of hairs being snipped. But that’s about all I can recall. All I really know is that, when I came back to full consciousness, it was me I saw in the mirror: not a mini-me version of the stylist, or a motif out of stylist school. Me.
. For over forty years I left the barbers’ chair hair feeling – at best, as if an uneasy calm had descended over a battleground, as if a truce had been declared between my hair and head, a temporary end to hostilities.
All that changed, with Kat.
And now she’s gone and I’m holding out again. Now my hair is headed south, again. Now Mary is threatening to send me to the lion tamers.
If you seek Kat, let her know I’m looking for her.

Parting Shot

2009-01-14T14:12:00.001-05:00

It’s disgusting, but fitting, that in the last days of the Bush Administration, another Middle East country should be pre-emptively invaded.
It is surprising that Sarah Palin didn’t know how to accurately describe the so-called Bush Doctrine, because it can be summed up with the kind of bumper sticker wisdom that she loved: Sh-- Happens.
Don’t tell me that the U.S. had nothing to do with this latest misadventure. Don’t be so naïve as to believe that Israel didn’t act now, because otherwise they would have had to deal with a new administration, and a new President who may not have been so willing to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to another dose of ‘shock and awe’.
Neither am I so naïve as to believe that the soon-to-be Obama Administration isn’t relieved that they won’t have to take the blame for allowing this to happen on their watch. And I am not happy that President-elect Obama has not condemned this escalation of the Palestinian conflict: instead he has played the cynical political game of ‘deniability’.
But as ‘W’ goes out the door – looking much the worse for wear, let’s be clear: this invasion was another – hopefully the last, in a series of so-called policy decisions (never mind that it was yet another decision to do nothing) of the Decider, and an administration that almost always placed ideology above the welfare of the individual.
The people of Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the entire Muslim world – in the eyes of the Bush Administration, don’t deserve basic human rights.
The people of New Orleans – in the minds of the kinds of conservatives that ‘W’ placed in key roles in FEMA and in many other government agencies critical to the welfare of less fortunate Americans, got what they deserved.
The people of California lost billions of dollars to piratical entities like Enron, because the Bush Administration believed in letting the chips fall where they may (never mind that the game was played with your money).
Tens of millions of retirees saw their pensions destroyed in a matter of weeks, because the Bush administration believed that everyone should have an equal chance to be screwed by the corporation of their own choosing.
Exxon-Mobil and their cronies claimed they could do nothing to slow rising gas prices – asserting that it takes months for changes in production to affect costs. But did you notice that when the American people began to drive less, the price came down immediately?
The Bush Administration could have stopped the invasion of Gaza, but why would they? The invasion of Gaza is Iraq in miniature. Our intervention in Gaza is why Hamas took power there in the first place. It was the Bush administrations’ hypocritical embrace of ‘democracy’ that helped bring about the elections there. And then, when Hamas was the surprise winner of that election, Bush’ alleged love of democracy was unmasked as political cynicism, pure and simple, and the Bush Administration tried to starve Hamas into submission. When that didn’t work, ‘W’ turned to his second favorite foreign policy tactic: he put his head in the sand and hoped that when he next looked up the world would have changed. Instead, of course, without an ongoing, constructive effort on the part of America in the area, the situation deteriorated.
As the dust begins to clear in Iraq, we are looking at nearly a decade of conflict, hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqi dead, over a trillion dollars spent, a more powerful Iran, and a Middle East as fragile as we found it.
When the bombs stop falling on Gaza there will be probably about a thousand more Palestinians (and a few dozen Israeli) dead, several thousand wounded and – much worse, a city of over a million already desperate people without electricity, water, homes, schools, medicine, food, and with even less hope for the future than they had one month ago.
In such an environment only radicalism can flourish. After such an episode, the prospects for peace will have been pushed back, once again.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Are the Israelis so stupid as to repeat both theirs, and our, recent history: believing they can conduct war on a timetable, believing their bombs are so smart they can pick and choose who they kill?
The Intifadah. The Insurgency. The Taliban. Ramallah, Fallujah, and soon, Kabul?
The only thing missing is George W. in a leather aviator jacket, standing on an aircraft carrier, with a giant banner proclaiming, “Oops, I did it again.”
Goodbye George, and good riddance

A Perfect Tree

2008-12-25T21:29:00.002-05:00

I should have just kept last year’s tree.

What do you think?

If you took a ruler to this one, measured its height, its width, its weight, I’m sure I’m off by no more than an inch or two, an ounce or so.

Douglas Fir, Fraser, Blue Spruce?

I don’t know.

I’m not a Christmas tree snob.

I know what I like. I cut right to the chase. It’s a scene from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: I go right up to the first one that catches my eye, put my arms around it, give it a hug, lift it off the ground, (measuring, approximating, inhaling the aroma), and if it feels right I take it home with me.

And after all the lights and 30 years worth of ornaments have been applied, damn if it doesn’t look just like last year’s tree!

I’m not complaining, but it’s eerie. It’s like there is some kind of relationship, some kind of connection, some inner design I am working to. Has there been building in the cave of my brain all year – ever since we took the last one down, another perfect, platonic Christmas tree?

I don’t give it any thought, but I know it when I put my arms around it.

Of course, the tree has got to fit into a particular space, in a room with a specific ceiling height, allow just enough room for, at most, eight people who’ll sit around it on Christmas morning.

How does that tree feel, among all the other trees? Like the ugly girl, the awkward boy, sitting on folding chairs at the edge of the dance floor hoping for an invitation?

Or is it like Vertigo, to cite another favorite film of mine, when Jimmy Stewart dresses up Kim Novak to look like the woman he loved and lost, only it turns out he’s dressing Kim to look like Kim. The joke’s on him.

Is last year’s tree playing a joke on me?

Clearly, the intent is to make this year’s tree look like last year’s tree, and the one before, and the one before that. We have an idea, and everything we do is calculated to achieve that effect.

I guess I should feel a bit more empathy for the tree. We make a big show of the selection but, ironically, we don’t respect its individuality. Then again, is it really another, different tree? Is it the ghost of Christmas trees past? And what of the rejects cast to the side, too large or too small, too thick or too dry?

This, at least, is a better fate than theirs. This one, at least, was not cut from the soil and strapped to a truck and driven 500 miles for naught.

At least this tree was chosen.

Look at it now, standing there in the corner, all dressed up in tiny lights and handmade ornaments. It knows the truth, but it is content to allow us our illusion.

Our illusion?

What year is this?

1980?

1990?

If you’re not careful you can lose control, be sucked back a dozen years or more, forever trapped in a Christmas or Christmases past.

Christmas trees are time machines!

If I look carefully, I can tell the year, or come darn close. But usually you don’t look too closely at a Christmas tree. Usually, when the tree is done, you allow your eyes to go out of focus, allow your mind to drift.

But there, that ornament of a hockey player made from dough, I could swear we got that in1992, when Bobby was on his first traveling team. That February the parents and players went to Canada by bus. That was the first of several successive school vacations spent, for the most part, in a hockey rink.

And there, those faded blue and green balls, with the gold tracery, those were Mary’s parents’ ornaments, on their tree, and the year is 1949.

The shuttle craft? Press the top and Spock says “Live long and prosper”. That’s only, what, 20 years old or so? It’s amazing that it has lasted, and prospered, for so long.

Now I remember: We haven’t always had our tree in the same spot in the house. It used to be in front of the slider, before the desk went in there. Once it was in the other corner of this room, and there’s the hole from the screw we put in the wall – where we ran a wire to the trunk of the tree, to keep it from falling over again.

I guess there have been a few mistakes made, a few trees that were too tall, or too wide, or whose trunks were too thick to fit into the stand. But even if we choose poorly, we can always add an extra layer of ornaments, or turn the tree so that its bad side is facing the wall, or squint our eyes a little more tightly, fracture the light, bend the shadow, give ourselves up to the overwhelming urge to forget.

Right now, staring at this tree, I’m having a hard time remembering any bad sides, any bad decisions, any bad Christmases.

It seems that somehow, whatever is going on in the world or in our lives, we manage to make it to that place where by unanimous consent, everything’s just fine the way it is.

Maybe it is an illusion. Maybe underneath the lights and the bulbs is an ugly, twisted, corpse of a tree.

But maybe just this once, at this time of year, we just have to blink our eyes a few times and let it be.

So, how’d I do this year?

Isn’t it a perfect tree?

$19.95

2008-12-18T00:17:00.000-05:00

I’ve got this gift-giving thing down.
I’m getting my older brother, the Baconwave.
Just $19.95.
It makes perfect bacon, in the microwave.
It’s a joke, of sorts. Bob lives down in Florida, and has been on this health kick lately. He says he’s given up the Guinness, and the fried Ring Dings. He runs now, in the mornings – and pumps iron when he gets home from work. He looks ten years younger, says he feels great.
I guess I’m being mean.
For Dad, it’s the Forearm Forklift Strap Set, just $19.95.
Dad’s 85, in great shape – and with absolutely no interest, or need, for moving or mowing or doing much of anything, except traveling. I tell him not to, but he sends me his itineraries. I don’t care to know the exact time and location of the good times he is having. I think he does it to irk me.
Not that he ever will, but with the Forearm Forklift Strap Set now - if he wanted, he could move a dresser or a refrigerator all by himself.
Hell, he never likes what I get him anyway. He doesn’t really need anything. I guess it’s a kind of sarcastic gift – if gifts can be sarcastic.
I guess I just have the holiday spirit. Well, maybe not the holiday spirit, but one of the holiday spirits. Grumpy? Sneezy? Doc?
I’m getting Dave, down the street, the Weed Thrasher: mainly because I like the name. It sounds like something you beat the weeds up with: give those nasty dandelions a thrashing.
Just $19.95, too.
Dave has no lawn, or yard, to speak of. He’s got concrete, and mulch, and that faux granite tile that’s suppose to last a thousand years, around his in-ground pool. If a stray leaf wanders onto his property, he pays someone to immediately Hoover it off.
Do you sense a pattern here?
I like to give people useless gifts, especially if the price is right.
Maybe I’m angry because – as a child, I never really got what I wanted. My parents could never get it just right: it was always the wrong brand, or wrong color, or the wrong size. And when that happens you have to smile and, with a super-human effort, stop yourself from turning immediately back to your pile and frantically ripping into what’s left.
All these gifts that I’m considering giving, are items that I’ve seen on TV too: odd items from late night television that I considered buying for myself. Eventually though, I fought off the urge and, instead, bought them for friends and family.
I am also intrigued that everything is $19.95.
I think it’s a conspiracy of some kind.
I get the feeling that they (the same ‘they‘as always) have figured out that $19.95 is the perfect price. It sounds nice to say. It tricks your mouth into mimicking a smile. You can’t say ‘nineteen ninety-five’ without grinning: try it. It’s also a price just high enough to allow you believe that you have a chance of getting something that actually does what it is advertised to do, and just low enough not to care too much if it does not.
It’s the magic number. Repeat after me: just $19.95.
Just $19.95.
Just $19.95.
Just $19.95.
Just $19.95.
Someone told me it’s the As Seen on TV Index.
When the economy is strong, the ASOT Index goes up. Just last Christmas it was at $24.95. Since then though, it’s dropped like a stone.
Whatever it is, it’s working.
If it’s $19.95 I go right for my credit card.
I’m seriously considering getting the Ding King for myself. It’s this little contraption with thumb screws and suction cups that you place over the little dings you get on your car, and just by tightening the thumb screws – the ding pops out.
Just $19.95.
Not that I have a car worth taking the time to make cosmetic repairs to: I mean, the old Camry could benefit from an extended Ding King session, if I could get the sap off it first. But why bother: we don’t have a garage, so if I clean the sap off the car it would soon be covered again. And in a year or two it will be completely encased in sap, like a bug in amber.
I’m thinking about getting Mary a Snuggie.
You guessed it: just $19.95.
It’s just a big blanket, with sleeves.
She’s worried about work, about the economy, about me – so when she gets home she usually just curls up into a ball, on the couch, and passes out until it’s time to go to sleep. With the Snuggie she can be transferred directly from the couch to the bed.
I might get Riddex Plus, too: just $19.95.
I think we have mice in the attic, or the eaves or somewhere in the walls. They sound like they’re skating: pushing a puck in front of them. You just plug in the little Riddex box in any outlet, and the ultrasonic sound waves – they promise, drive the mice away (or distract them long enough to keep them from scoring).
There’s so much more, so many odd, unusual inventions: so many labor saving devices for just $19.95. The Girl Crush Jewelry Maker. The Ultrasonic Jewelry Cleaner. The Blendy Pen. Ambervision. Mighty Putty. Save-A-Blade. The Big City Slider Station? The Auto Vent SPV. Doggy Steps for aged pets. The list just goes on and on.
I think they should offer a mystery gift, filled with a random assortment of five or six of these odd devices, for just $19.95.
Is that possible?
Sure, why not. They don’t really cost $19.95. That’s just the magic number. They could sell them for a buck, or twenty dollars, or $3.99. But they’ve figured out they’ll sell the most if they price them at the magic number.
I might just go down the list and buy everything they have for $19.95. Then, when everything arrives, cover everything up in the cheapest wrapping paper I can find, load it all into the Camry’s sap-encased trunk, and go around town passing out gifts, pretending I’m the As Seen on TV Santa.
It’s not the holiday spirit. But what do you want, for $19.95?

I'm Not Counting

2008-12-11T08:08:00.001-05:00

“Will the days fly by?” my youngest son asked me, early this morning.
Christmas, of course, was what was on his mind.
‘That depends’, I mumbled, trudging down the stairs. ‘That depends,’ I said, but it felt like a lie.
We certainly help create the illusion that the days are hurtling toward us, like snowflakes sucked into our high beams on the highway. But if we were to slow, then stop – get out of the car, turn our heads to the stars, we might find the flakes falling like, well, like snowflakes fall, so slowly to the ground.
I’m sure the single flake once it lands, looks back at the sky, and sighs.
‘I wish’, it probably says in a whisper, in that ever so low snowflake hushed tone, ‘I wish that I could feel what it’s like to fall through the sky, to float through the air, to have that feeling just one more time’.
It does no good to console the flake with references to the water cycle (but of course I make a pathetic try).
“It’s like the rain,” I say to my son over a hurried breakfast, “it falls to earth and then, fills the rivers, and then, well you know – ends up back in the sky.”
He gets what I am saying, smiles, and then to my magic ointment adds his fly.
“But what if I can’t wait, to evaporate?”
“You have no choice,” I say, impatiently, watching the minutes go by: “we are either too early, or too late”.
Even as I say that, though I won’t publicly admit it - I reject that fate.
I too hope for a moment eternal: in Christmas everyday, in Leap Year, and Un-Birthdays.
Everything I write I want to be poetry.
Every bite I take, I am hoping will taste of ecstasy.
Every breath I take.
Will the days fly by?
I suppose what I want to say – to live, is a life of days indistinguishable from one another. Not indistinguishable because they are so drab and gray and uneventful that they all blur into one groaning mass. But indistinguishable because each has a subtle, unique beauty, a beauty hiding, like a drop of rain in a swollen river.
I think what I mean to say, is that we do not need to speed up or slow down these days. We simply need to take the time – there is time, to consider, to touch, to remark on each one.
Today the sun was in my eyes as I drove my son to the Middle School.
The bearded traffic warden was his usual impatient self, frenetically conducting the cacophonous traffic: the yellow bus bassoons, the reedy SUVs, the breathless flutes of four-cylinder youth.
I merged into the traffic, split off from the high school stream, leaped over the confluence of high and middle schools, looped around the future movie studio lot, dropped off my snowflake and didn’t look back.
I know he will make it back home, this afternoon.
I know the day will fly by and he will once again drop down out of the sky, sigh, and say to me, “how many days before Christmas, Dad?”
And I will lie, and say “I’m not counting.”

Pilgrim Labor Crisis

2008-12-11T08:05:00.001-05:00

The Plimoth Plantation, the nation’s leading producer of 17th Century Impersonators, announced this month that – in the face of dramatic drops in attendance and revenue at its ‘theme park’, and following on the announced layoffs of experienced staff members, that it is considering several dramatic new business strategies, up to and including changing centuries.
The following is a list – obtained from a former Lieutenant Governor of the Plymouth Colony who wishes to remain anachronistic, of the key strategies being considered by Plantation leadership.

The 20th Century:
Instead of Plymouth in its infancy (circa 1627), the Plantation is considering shifting its focus to the Plantation in its infancy – namely, the Plantation in the mid 20th Century (circa 1968), when it served the community as a kind of de-facto commune, getting the region’s long-hairs off the streets. (Ironically, ‘coole’ and ‘far oute’ were expressions used in both of these historic periods.)

1610
Ten years before the Pilgrim’s landed, the Wampanoag village of Pawtuxet flourished. A focus on that year would allow for the layoff of the entire impersonator staff, the refinancing of every unoccupied home on Leyden Street, the installation of basic utilities (specifically, flush toilets), and the addition to the town’s low income housing, of 11 desirable units.

Pilgrim FX
For this approach, the impersonators remain faithful to the historical record BUT, sophisticated digital technologies and effects are utilized to create horrifically realistic portrayals of the more bloody (and therefore crowd-pleasing) moments in the Pilgrim story, including:
§ The beheading of King Phillip.
§ The drowning of Dorothy Bradford.
§ The big splinter that John Billington had removed from his butt.
§ And the last big layoff (2001) of 17th Century Impersonators.

The Mayflower III Paddlewheel Plymouth Harbor Booze Cruise
Three times a day, five times on weekends, the Mayflower – equipped with it’s own working Paddlewheel, would offer mini-historic-booze-cruises of the harbor during which costumed impersonators - confined to cages on deck, could be taunted and teased by the paying customers.

The Haunting of Burial Hill House
Requiring no Pilgrim impersonators at all, the 17th Century Pilgrim Settlement would instead, be transformed into a first-rate haunted house

The Pilgrim Improv Troupe?
You buy a ticket and we make it up as we go.

Timeshare Anyone?
Imagine spending a week in your own 17th century home, eating gruel, fending off pesky savages, and – helping to keep the towns’ rapidly rising number of wild turkeys in check. For just $10,000 you could spend one week every year in one of the world’s most famous single family homes (the first to order will have their choice of the Bradford, Winslow, or Standish units) – or, exchange your unit for a fortnight in a 9thth Century British hovel (eating gruel, fending off pesky Vikings) or a long weekend in 3rd Century Rome (eating gruel, fending off pesky barbarians).

Seven Flags, Plymouth
You want rides? We got rides! Well, one at least. The Mayflower Experience: a sort of roller coaster with only one large car – in which up to a hundred ticket holders are forced together, doused with saltwater, subjected to nasty smells, tumbled like clothes in the dryer, blasted with pre-recorded religious aphorisms, then left to fend for themselves somewhere else.
Want to go again?

Alternative History?
What if?
What if little Johnny Billington had actually discovered the Pacific Ocean (and not the pond that now bears his name) settled in California, planted a vineyard, developed the famous ‘Pilgrim Pub & Grub’ chain, eventually moving their massive World headquarters (designed to look like a big glass hamburger) to Plymouth’s non-historic, honky-tonk waterfront?
What if?
What if the term ‘Pilgrim’ were synonymous with ‘party animal.’
What if?
What if Squanto’s plan was to wait until he had earned the confidence of the Pilgrims then, when they were all asleep...

Let The Inmates Run the Asylum!
What if, instead of cutting middle management and asking the indentured servants (impersonators) to do more with less, we get rid of ourselves (the high-priced upper management, museum types, Mayflower descendants, retailers) and instead, really, honestly, obsessively, focus on creating an actual working, 17th Century settlement.
Hire dozens of additional impersonators and have them actually on site, all the time.
Instead of giving into today’s economic realities, fully embrace the 17th Century’s realities. Live off the corn we grow, the livestock we raise, and the beer we brew. Have perhaps, two or three sets of impersonators for each historic personage.
Script an entire year – and give visitors a chance to travel back in time – to a specific day, happening in real time.
Now that would be exciting.
That would be a reality worth paying for.
Let the Pilgrims actually run Pilgrim Town!
What a concept!

Ye Olde Story

2008-12-08T13:06:00.001-05:00

There are quite a few places in Plymouth that proudly wear the “Ye’.
There are also a great many businesses and tourist attractions that claim to be olde, with the extra ‘e’, which is either an outright affectation, or an implication that the business in question is in part – or whole, really, really old. (An olde, but goode?)
There are also businesses that come right out and slap the word ‘Pilgrim’ onto their store front, the sides of delivery vans, brochures, business cards, web sites and the like – regardless of whether their buildings are olde, their ancestors came off the Mayflower, or they specialize in Pilgrim kitsch.
But there are only a handful of businesses in this historic community that can claim all three.
I call it, The Plyfecta!
And then there is my favorite Laundromat.
I probably shouldn’t say it’s my favorite, because that implies I’ve tried many and prefer one: actually I only recently visited this particular Laundromat, when our dryer kicked ye olde bucket.
But when I realized I had to find a Laundromat, I knew just where I would go.
Not only is the place where I chose to dry my delicates a certified Ye, and an olde but goode, and features ‘Pilgrim’ in its business name, but the wash and fold folks on Sandwich Street take it one big affectated step further - featuring a wishing well – one of America’s most endearing faux lawn decorations, in their name.
Ye Olde Pilgrim Washing Well Laundromat!
If you’re looking for a Laundromat, how can you top that?
Well, how about with the words of Mary Elizabeth Dibley, the Plymouth colony’s first washerwoman, from her historic diary, entitled “Of Plimoth Laundree”.

“Being thus arrived in a good harbore and brought safe to lande, we felle upon our knees &, what do thee knowe, but founde we were knee deepe in a small brooke of pleasante waters and, the thoughte came to me – well, actuallethly, the smell came to me, and I remarked to Goodman Bradford that he was ripe in age and stench and that I would, for less than he might imagineth, undertake to wash his doublet right then and there. Blessed be ye God of heaven, who had brought us over ye vast & furious ocean, and delivered us from all ye periles & miseries therof, againe to set our feete on ye firme and stable earth, their proper elemente and, despite all that, left both man and woman with an all too earthly odor and a chance to make a bucke”

Unbelievable!
Yeah, you’re right, it is unbelievable. Not the Laundromat – no, that exists, but Mary Dibley – ye olde Pilgrim Washer-woman: I made her up. I got carried away by the Ye, and the Olde, and the whole Pilgrim shtick. But can you blame me? Whether its trinkets or toiletries or auto parts, history is good for the bottom line. Heck, even the movie folks got into the act (rumor has it, that their first idea was to call their venture, Ye Olde Pilgrim Celluloid Companie).
On one hand, it’s silly. On the other hand, it associates your business with people who were adventurous, brave, hard working and – most importantly, successful.
At its worse, Ye Olde Pilgrim Washing Well Laundromat is just that – a Laundromat.
At its best, washing your clothes in the waters of Ye Olde Pilgrim Washing Well Laundromat might somehow imbue them with the spirit and vitality of our stalwart Pilgrim forbears.
Plymouth was the first town in America where someone casually remarked to someone else – (and someone else wrote it down) ‘there’s something in the water’. And if its ‘in the water’, the implication is clear, it could get ‘in the clothes’!
Its possible!
I should make it clear though that, the owners of Ye Olde Wash and Fold, are not making that kind of claim: not specifically, not outright. The only claim they make – as far I can tell, is that they are not responsible for lost or stolen items.
The attendants, I should inform you, do not wear traditional Pilgrim garb.
And the workers don’t look puzzled when you ask them where you might get an espresso while your doublet is drying.
Though directly across the street is the Jabez Howland home – an actual 1667 saltbox style, cedar shingled structure with leaded windows and tours available – the building that the Laundromat occupies seems to have had almost all vestiges of its past put through the rinse cycle.
Instead of the wide plank floors that tourists might envision, there are only the remnants of artificial floor coverings and, beneath that, what appears to be plywood.
Instead of traditional clapboard there is aluminum siding, and a giant flap on the southern side of the building that – when opened, allows the servicing of the washing machines from the outside of the building.
Inside pop music plays from a few small speakers, and two large ceiling fans turn counter-clockwise while several dozen washers and dryers roll monotonously forward.
It is definitely cleaner than your typical Pilgrim household.
It’s definitely warmer than your typical Pilgrim home.
But hey, whadda ya want: this is America!
We like to associate ourselves with the best of our past, but if the history actually shows through - if the old beams haven’t been plastered over and the wide plank floors haven’t been hidden under at least two coats of linoleum, something must be wrong.
Which is not to say that Ye Olde Pilgrim Washing Well can’t do the job.
If your clothes need washing but history bores you, rest assured – you won’t have to use a washboard: there is an abundance of late model Maytag machines.
Don’t be confused: the pilgrims did not come over on the Maytag – though if they had they would have arrived with brighter whites, and more vibrant colors.
Ye Olde Pilgrim Washing Well is, in the end, just a Laundromat.
If you’re planning a visit, bring something good to read.
Bring quarters too: the machines don’t take shillings, or pence, or Canadian coins.
Bring a basket or two of Ye and Olde, and maybe a pint of Olde Grand Dad. After an hour or so taking it all in, who knows how bright your whites might be?

Uncle Bob's

2007-10-16T16:02:00.000-05:00

I must be getting old.
In fact, I know I’m getting old.
We’re all getting old – or at least older, and there’s nothing we can do about it – except give in.
I’m giving in, and the evidence of that is in the stuff I am willing to give out – or give away.
I’m letting the stuff go.
A sure sign of advanced years, I think, is the ability to let go of stuff – all kinds of stuff.
When you’re young, you like stuff, but you’re too busy testing out your own stuff (strutting your stuff) to worry about acquiring other stuff. Consequently, though you’re pretty fussy about the stuff you have – or want, relatively speaking you don’t have much stuff at all.
I used to drag around a trunk full of LPs (large pizza-size black platters on which music had been recorded – for those of you under 40), along with a suitcase with two pairs of jeans and 40 tee shirts, and I thought I was weighed down by my possessions. I had no clue how much stuff I would eventually be able to carry around on my back - like the giant tortoise primitive people believed carried the world on its shell.
The truth is, or was – that, 30 years ago I hardly had any stuff at all.
So where did it all come from?
When you reach a certain age, you don’t suddenly have a lot of stuff: stuff doesn’t start erupting from the floor like zits on your forehead.
It’s not that you have more zits as you get older, it’s that you have more forehead: more space for the stuff.
You get your first car and, you soon discover, a car is just space to put stuff.
You get your first apartment and – though you were hoping it would prove a ‘babe’ magnet, it turns out that it’s a stuff magnet.
Your first house? Oh my gosh, a house is like some Criss Angel ‘Mind-Freak’ magic trick in which – one moment you have all these empty rooms, shiny wooden floors, clean carpets and unblemished walls, and then Criss throws a blanket over it – tosses his carefully jelled unkempt hair back and – voila, the place is full of stuff: crammed with stuff; stuffed with stuff; choking on stuff.
Of course you could just get rid of the stuff, couldn’t you?
Hah, that’s a laugh. I still have that trunk full of LPs.
Have you ever seen Criss Angel’s basement? It’s crammed with old guillotines, elephants he teleported, lots and lots of mirrors, and case after case of hair gel.
Scientists will tell you that human beings are genetically linked to squirrels: no matter how many nuts we have, we’re going to keep cramming them down the trunk of our tree until it splits in half. Heck, I carry around a year’s worth of acorns in my mouth.
So what do you do?
Well, when you’re young, you think it’s simple: just get more space, for the stuff.
Maybe you start off storing stuff in the basement. Then you buy some of those closet organizers. Closet organizers are like accountants on a battlefield: useless, except to keep count of the carnage.
Did you ever go to a house and – seeing how neat and uncluttered it was, wonder where they were hiding all their stuff?
My friend Dan super-glued some of his stuff to the ceiling.
I have another friend who put those torpedo-shaped containers that you usually see on the roofs of SUVs – on the roof of his house: he keeps his LPs in them.
I myself have 3 ½ tool sheds, spread about the back yard – and my tools are still somewhere in the basement.
So I was somewhat taken aback, when my wife announced last week that there was going to be a new addition to our family. She wasn’t pregnant – she was just trying to tell me in the nicest way possible that she had agreed to take a few pieces of furniture from her father’s old apartment. It was her way of saying, you can either help me move his stuff in, or you can move yourself out.
I took it surprisingly well, I think. I do take up a lot of space that could otherwise be taken up by three boxes of old photographs, or an old KayPro computer, or one of those budget size 48-roll bundles of paper towels that you can get at Sam’s Club.
That’s another thing about all this stuff: we have so much of it that we spend half our lives moving it from one room to another, one house to another. Forget weddings and funerals: the only time the family ever gets together is when somebody is moving in or moving out. I found out my son had become a Zoroastrian during a conversation we had from opposite ends of a couch we were carrying up two flights of stairs to his new apartment…
So, anyway, I gave in, and paid a visit to Uncle Bob.
Did I tell you about Uncle Bob? He’s not really my Uncle, but I was attracted to the name, and there was a local franchise right down the street from our stuff, I mean, from our house.
Uncle Bob’s is what they call, a self-storage center.
Uncle Bob’s was a revelation, to me at least.
I’ve heard of doggie heaven, and cat heaven, and the like – the places that our pets go after they die. But I never knew there was a stuff heaven. That’s what Uncle Bob’s is: acres and acres of cute little metal houses where the stuff you never thought you could live without, spends its golden years.
Oh, so you’re not impressed. That’s because you’re still young. You still think that there will always be space for your stuff, right at home. You swear you will never give your stuff away or – heaven forbid, store it someplace.
Maybe you’re right. Or maybe you’re just young.
As you get older you don’t love your stuff any less, you just start to realize that not too far down the road, somebody’s going to have to figure out what to do with your stuff.
I’m not waiting. I’m taking a sofa bed and my old trunk of LPs, and moving into a 5x10 at Uncle Bob’s.
Forget the stuff. I need a place of my own.

Time Travel, Rotaries, Convenience Stores..

2007-10-16T16:01:00.001-05:00

The trouble with time travel – I have always argued, is that if we could actually travel through time, time wouldn’t be time, anymore.
I mean, time is predictable, inexorable (look it up), unyielding, and monotonous (not to mention, redundant): if it were not all those things, it would not be time.
Understand?
The same might be said for traffic (in fact, I just said it) – and historically, efforts to manage traffic have been as pathetic as the efforts to manage time. That is to say, the idea that we can manage traffic is, largely, science fiction – that is, except for the exploits our own Billington Brothers.
The Billington Brothers, in case you’re new to town – were Plymouth’s own time travelers. No, I’m sorry – I meant to say, Plymouth’s own traffic engineers. In fact, you might say that the Billington Brothers were America’s first traffic engineers.
Way back before there was traffic in America (a long, long time ago), the Billington Brothers were managing it.
Before there was a need to find a quick way to Middleboro – before Old 44 and way before the New 44, and actually before Middleboro itself, Francis Billington went looking for a short cut.
He actually found it – the short cut that is, but as there was no where to cut shortly to – save for the 3000 or so miles between here and the Pacific Ocean, Francis might still be headed west if he did not run smack dab into a Native American all-natural rotary. Some historians have cynically concluded that Francis was actually lost, but I think we have all seen our share of out-of-state drivers who knew right where they were, but could not extricate themselves from a rotary.
I could go on – making a kind of literary rotary out of this, but unlike those aforementioned drivers, I know that to get out of this. I simply need to use, what my first English teacher told me, was a transitional device.
300 years after Francis Billington got caught in that magic circle of bent birch trees, his descendant, Tiki Manoogian, is one of the regulars at the very popular collection of shops and automobile service operations on South Street, known as the Mayflower Convenience Store.
Actually, until I told him, Tiki didn’t even realize that his favorite store sits on the site of that prehistoric rotary.
Until I convinced him, Tiki didn’t even know that he was a descendant of Francis Billington.
But after experiencing the mystery and magic of the maze of roads and parking spaces that have been woven from the 100 square miles of pungent tar that encircles the Mayflower complex, Tiki was ready to let me put words in his mouth.
“I used to believe that there was no more confounding web of roadway in the world than the paths that bind the acres of our own Myles Standish State Forest together,” Tiki repeated for me, adding “To enter the Myles Standish without an experienced guide or a detailed map is to experience a true Hansel & Gretel moment.”
But the mystical power of the Mayflower Convenience stores much smaller footprint, may be derived from its very compactness. And it is far more frightening to become lost in the Mayflower’s parking lots, than it is to be lost in Myles Standish – because it just does not seem possible. One moment you are at the self-service gas pump, watching and waving to friends driving by, and the next you are banging on the window of their own Dunkin Donut franchise – desperately asking for directions.
Tiki swears he’s not benefiting from the confusion – though he understands the financial rewards of stranding motorists at that location. All credit Tiki says, is owed the Planning Board – which designed the traffic flow. And judging from some of their other work around town – the Planning Board’s involvement does seem likely.
No matter who gets credit, the Mayflower Convenience Store parking lot is a marvel of traffic flow dis-engineering.
When you leave the pumps, you can’t go left – though South Street is just a few feet away. The arrows – like bread crumbs left by a lost child, turn you to the right. If you thought then, to pick up a cruller and regular Joe to go, again you can’t go left and park in the spaces in front of DoubleD, but instead you’re directed right - along the front of the store.
Careful, the old dead-end that led to the cute little gingerbread ATM is still there, but different. The road now passes the ATM, and descends down a floodlit hill that you never knew existed, complete with speed bumps, traffic lights, past a grove of ancient, gnarled birch trees (the original Billington Rotary I’m told by local psychic historian Dee Jonson) before circling around the back of the compound.
By that point though, panic has set in, and you just want out. Brilliantly, you can’t ask directions at the take-out window of the Dunkin Donuts, unless you have previously ordered at the remote ordering pylon, which you have probably already passed. If you really want a donut, you’re going to have to go around again, and if you just want to get directions, you’re going to have to order first, after you go around again. If you give up, and want to go downtown - toward the waterfront, you are in luck – because you are now in line for a right turn only ramp. But if you give up and want to go west – toward Home Depot, you can’t take the obvious route to South Street - because that’s a right turn only. Instead, again, you’ll have to pass by the front of the convenience/deli/liquor store.
After doing this a few times, the subliminal low-frequency radio broadcasts emanating from the store take effect, and before you leave you will have purchased – at the very least, a lottery ticket, two donuts, coffee, a new oil filter, and a GPS unit. Or, you may become like Tiki, a permanent resident.
Yes, there are many other magical traffic experiences in Plymouth: the blind intersection of Long Pond and Ship Pond Roads; the mayhem that will ensue when the drive thru at the new Mary Lou's backs up onto Hedges Pond Road; the late afternoon sun that blinds you on Route 80; and the dead-ends, bridge-outs, frost-heaves and nameless ponds of Myles Standish, to name just a few. But I feel safe in predicting that – a thousand years from now, visitors from outer space will be bending time in order to experience the mind-altering, suspension-twisting, one-way, no way, wrong way weirdness of the Billington’s own Mayflower Convenience Store.

Ballast

2007-10-16T15:59:00.003-05:00

Ode to a cheese curl.
Oh lovely, crunchy, neon orange waste of a dozen calories. When the day is done you are the only thing that remains with me: glowing from the tips of each finger like radioactive waste; gummed up along the crevices of my molars; stuck to my shirt like late spring snowflakes.
Whenever I become excessively pompous, whenever I go on too long about the symbolism of the Thunderbird in “Thelma & Louise”, nothing brings me down to earth faster than a handful of your hollow fingers.
Is there anything more normal, more everyday, more matter of fact than your obscenely inflated carbohydrates?
Is there anything more accessible, more available, more capable of inking over the aggravating details of existence, than your sold by volume not by weight insubstantiality?
Yeah, I guess there is.
A good hot dog, for one. The first juicy clamp down on a sugar-fed Double Bubble.
Hell, there are probably a hundred economical antidotes to my middle-age onset addiction to the pompous and/or unnecessarily complex.
Pardon me, but I’ve just come to the realization that along with my Silver Patron Tequila, and the anniversary edition of Mile’s Kind of Blue, the poetry of Russell Hoban, the blogs and the journals and the saxophone and a thousand other subtly intoxicating substances and services that I have become philosophically and/or physically addicted to, that I crave the everyday too: I need the average as well, as much, to be happy.
Those guys in the clown outfits that ride the tall unicycles while playing Yankee Doodle Dandy on the fife in the July 4th Parade – they aren’t still out there, are they?
No, I didn’t think so.
You can only balance on one wheel and play the fife and wear the clown makeup for so long – before you go arse over teakettle. Sooner, not later, you have to put the training wheels back on.
Even blimp pilots go on vacations.
And let me tell you, when a blimp pilot takes her vacation she sticks close to the ground: seventy-two percent of blimp pilots are avid spelunkers (I made that up.)
But seriously, what I am babbling about is balance. Not Yin and Yang – those are two sides of the same coin. No, the kind of balance that a ship needs to keep from floundering at sea – balance from ballast: from forty-thousand pounds of cobblestones in its belly (40,000 pounds of cheese curls would do too).
I remember an afternoon playing so-called touch football with some overgrown, underage hard-asses some twenty years ago, and getting carried away with the contact – with rushing the quarterback, with smacking into the oversized yoot left behind to block for the opposition and, though afterwards I could hardly walk, feeling almost high from the contact, the physicality, the total abandonment of intellect.
(I also remember the sound of my bones collapsing like cheese curls under the existential jaw of age).
Touch football is the cheese curl of athletic endeavors.
I love the relative mindless-ness of hiking in the White Mountains too, where, for most of the time, there are no sights at all to see, just branches to avoid, boulders to scale, slopes to scramble up and where – before you know it, your worries are far behind. I think it must be far more tiring to hike out west, where you are often moving across open glades with too much to see, too much time to think.
But then, of late, I haven’t had the time to hike at all.
This year my hikes have consisted of going from the phone, to the computer, to the phone, to the TV, to bed.
Lately life has been like a ride up old Route 1, from Peabody to Medford, with never a break between one oversized array of blinking lights to the next; no exits except those that just turn you around and send you back down the other side like a gerbil on the wheel.
Simply put, I am in need of simplicity.
I could use a bowl of Gram Tobin’s rice pudding.
I’d like to get my hands around one or two of those grenade-sized Rolling Rocks.
I could use a fast drive through the North Woods, with the windows down and the lights out.
I’m searching the dial for a static-free AM station.
This blimp pilot needs a vacation.
Another bowl of cheese curls, please.

(Photo courtesy of Cinemaben)

A War of Our Own

2007-10-16T15:58:00.001-05:00

We deserve it and, finally, we’re going to get it.
In a little more than a year they’re going to start delivering the remains to us.
Credit where credit is due.
We went along with it, when it was first announced.
We re-elected Bush, even after it was clear that he didn’t know what he was doing.
And we’ve done everything we can to ignore what is going on, over there, for almost five years.
So now we can relax and enjoy the fruits of our inaction, while the war drags on and our poor excuse for a President limps into history.
Oh sure, there are those who want to give all the credit to Congress. In the beginning the Republicans gave us a new reason getting into the war every week, proclaimed victory ever few months, and devised a new winning strategy before every election. And when the Democrats took power they showed just as much imagination devising excuses as to why we can’t get out.
But it’s not up to them: never was.
They’re our representatives.
It’s our fault.
It’s amazing what you can accomplish, without trying.
We’re probably going to have a casino in Middleboro before we have all of our soldiers back from Iraq.
Over a billion ribbon decals have been sold.
We’ve probably spent more on cheap American flags than we have donated to the effort to end the war.
We support the troops in every way possible, except of course, by getting them out of harm’s way
What’s Iraq to us? Most of us don’t have anyone close, serving over there. And unless you’re in the National Guard, you don’t have to worry about being ‘called up’.
It’s an easy war to ignore.
Sure, there have been hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed. So what.
We just don’t care. And we have plenty of company.
I remember the old poster – from the sixties, which was captioned, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”
Today we could say that about protests.
Most protests today, look like excursions from a senior citizen center. The average age of a war protester is about 60.
And even when there is a well-attended protest – the media doesn’t cover it. Why? Because they know we don’t care. Or rather, they know we’d rather watch celebrity mud wrestling.
They know they can get away with it.
Here’s a poster caption for this generation: “What if they spent a trillion dollars and nobody cared?”
Or, “What if they maimed twenty thousand soldiers and nobody noticed?”
Or, “Are we going to let this President get away with passing on this bloody stupid war to us? Or are we going to hold him accountable, end it now, and as a final act, kick his sorry ass out of Washington D.C.?”
Are we?
No we aren’t!
We’re going to let him take the Marine helicopter from the White House lawn, with what’s left of the NeoCons waiving goodbye.
Did you ever play that game with the toy bomb that you wind up and toss from person to person, to see who is left holding it when it goes off – bang! It’s just a toy, but it makes an aggravatingly loud noise. It’s just a game, but you still don’t want to be the last one holding it when the ticking stops.
Iraq is no toy. But don’t look now, George has that silly grin on his face and he’s about to drop the whole damn war right in our laps.
It’s just what we have been asking for.
It’s just what we deserve.

Spider Surge

2007-10-16T15:56:00.000-05:00

Like Fifth Columnists, tiny spiders are coming through the living room window, under cover of ladybugs.
There’s an untidy garden of flowers, a pear tree sapling, and a weed pretending to be a bush on the other side of that window, so we are used to seeing small dark, wing-ed specks come through the tattered mesh screen.
The baby spiders are just about the same size as the ladybugs so, in the corner of your eye they don’t arouse suspicion. Until that is, the mother ships arrive.
I’ve heard that this is Spider Season, whatever that means. I suppose that’s at least a hopeful designation, suggesting that most of these spiders are vacationing, or taking short-term leases – and should be headed back ‘home’ once the cooler weather gets a firm hold.
Still, some of these spiders are not as well-mannered as you might expect, of tourists.
There are the 101st Airborne Spiders (my designation for them, not an official scientific term), who drop down in front of the TV while you are watching, unconcerned that they are interrupting your show.
Then there are those Arachis who spin webs, overnight, in public places. On door knobs, or across hallways, or from bedpost to bedpost. Maybe I’m wrong, but I always thought that there were certain, semi-officially designated, acceptable places for house spiders to engineer their webs – and the spicket in the bathroom was never one of them.
It may be me, but I have the sense that spiders – as a species, are becoming more and more aggressive.
Even cockroaches show more sensitivity – coming out only under cover of darkness, and then scurrying for cover if the lights come on unexpectedly.
But the modern day house spider often insolently parades over the living room rug in the middle of the day, in the middle of Oprah for god’s sake – and only scurries for cover when you have a rolled magazine poised above them.
In the past I attributed the fat, swollen, itchy lumps that appeared on my arms and legs, between my toes, on the back of my neck and elsewhere at this time of year, to a wide variety of ointments, water treatments, ants, fleas, tics and such, which have in common a certain occult nature. But today I’m fairly certain that spiders are the cause.
I’ve counted seven varieties on our first floor alone.
Did you ever notice how everyone exaggerates the size of a spider? When you hear a description of a spider it is never less than an inch long, always hairy, and usually said to have strange stripes and spots and, I’ve also heard people say, speech impediments.
I saw one of those the other day – a big, hairy, spotted and striped spider with a pronounced lisp, in the family room, and before I could squash it with my foot, it leaped into the air, yelled out ‘thufferin thuccoatash”, and traveled about a yard before landing – purposefully I believe, smack dab in the middle of an oriental rug. (Did you ever notice how I use the phrase, ‘smack dab’ at least once in every column?)
Once on the Oriental it was effectively camouflaged – so I had to throw the whole rug away.
According to my research, it was actually either a Wolf Spider, or a Traveling Salesman Spider. It all happened very quickly, but I did think I got a glimpse of a small leather valise held by one of its eight hairy legs.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh, that’s right: in the last three weeks I’ve recorded definitive sightings of eleven separate species of spider, on our first floor alone.
A Jumping Spider was easily identified, when it jumped into a cup of coffee that I had just put down on the little display table in the middle of the room. Jumping Spiders look like little fuzzy legged spiders carrying school rings but, as I discovered when I poured the coffee out onto a ball of wadded paper towels, that school ring is actually their colorful abdomen.
I also easily identified a Nursery Web Spider – which is also called a Fishing Spider, when I chased it out the house and into the neighbor’s yard where – faced with a choice of either a boot wielding madman or a dip in the neighbors pool, it jumped in and submerged itself.
I’m afraid of pool water, so I thought nothing of it until a week later when my neighbor had a pool party and I suddenly heard the scream of an arachnophobic woman who decided to take a late night dip.
By the way, isn’t the notion of arachnophobia silly? I mean, who isn’t afraid of spiders? Just like you can’t tell me that when you swim in the ocean – somewhere in the back of your mind you aren’t thinking, shark! People with phobias are supposedly mentally unstable, and unreasonably obsessive: but isn’t it stranger not to be afraid of spiders, or sharks, or clowns?
Anyway, after a brief conversation with my neighbor, I realized that I had correctly identified that speedy, three-inch, hairy-legged creature as a Pool Party Spider.
And speaking of clowns, I also identified another spider that had been lurking in the basement – based on the red nose, the large feet, and the tiny little car that it drove around in (and an abdomen shaped like a seltzer bottle), as a Clown Spider.
Anyway, you get my point – I think, that there is something odd going on, in terms of spiders, at least in my house.
I know it’s Spider Season, but I’m kind of worried that Labor Day has come and gone and these guys are still hanging around.
I’m thinking this is a Spider Surge and, if so, I’m going to have to get used to the idea of spiders in the house for years to come.

The Wave

2007-10-16T15:55:00.000-05:00

I hate The Wave.
Life is short, and tickets are hard to get.
But when you go to the game, instead of focusing on the field, you get caught up in The Wave.
You hardly have a choice. You hear the squeals around you – a sound like seagulls over the dump, and then you see it undulating toward you. You could ignore it – turn your nose up into the air, but you’ll still be drenched by the spray as it passes over you.
I try to be philosophical – or at least, to hide my disdain for those who ‘join in’. I tell myself that it’s hard not to be distracted by the noisemakers – hard to keep from joining in, despite our better judgment, even when something special is going on.
But life is what we miss while we are busy waving our arms and making silly noises.
Our children are growing up. Our friends are getting older. The ground is cracking open, belching smoke. The end of the world is close at hand, but we are too busy to notice, playing in The Wave.
At least, at the ballpark, it’s a clear choice.
At the ballpark, there are those who know what is going on – and those who don’t care. Not that it makes much difference. Even the purists can get caught up in the spray and foam – belatedly discovering that they have missed an ‘at bat’ or two.
Fenway Park - and the fans that you find there, are no different.
The new, improved Fenway, for all of its amenities, has little to do with baseball. The new Fenway openly acknowledges that, even in a bastion of alleged baseball purity, the so-called fans care little for the game itself.
Every minute before the actual game begins, is scheduled – with wave after wave of deliberate distractions: promotional events, special appearances, autograph sessions, oompah band oomphing.
There is a tacit understanding that baseball is boring. But isn’t baseball, as the purists used to proclaim on their tee-shirts, “life”?
Is life boring?
Boredom’s simply a loss of attention: there is always something wonderful going on, right in front of us – but rather than focus in on what is right there, we search the horizon for the obvious.
I am reminded of the opening sequence of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet”: an ordinary, almost clichéd middle American street – firefighters driving by waving from the truck, children jumping rope, stunningly bright white picket fences, sprinklers hypnotically sprinkling and then, almost unnoticed at first, the camera literally begins to dig into the grass and dive down into the dirt, uncovering an unseemly world teeming with frenetic insects.
When we are young, we seem distracted – but in fact we are focused on the world around us, on the moment. We seem distracted because we are overwhelmed by the splendid, complex, unfathomable creation that we have literally just discovered.
As we get older we become selective – perhaps too selective: many of us simply block the world out and interpret everything through the clouded prism of our petty personal concerns and hungers.
You’d think that, when somehow you manage to score those hard-to-get tickets, you’d actually watch the game.
You’d hope that, when the country goes to war, people would pay attention.
You believe that, as the ice caps melt, we’d stop buying disposable plastic water bottles.
But it doesn’t work that way.
My older son and I happened to be at the no-hitter at Fenway, September 1st.
It was a beautiful day, full of natural and man-made distractions. A cloudless sky. 70 degrees. Oompah bands. Sausage and onions. Yawkey Way.
So of course, The Wave started early.
It didn’t matter that the Hose were on the skids – had lost four in a row.
Our seats were great: reached by a special elevator, at the end of a row, in a section with its own concession stands, looking right down onto the third base line and across toward Back Bay where – at game time, the setting sun had already begun to glaze the glass and burnish the golden rooftops of the city’s historic skyline.
There was, in the air, the expectation of pleasure – a feeling as palpable as the smell of sausages venting over the ballpark’s flat green rooftop.
All that could get in the way of a perfect evening, was baseball.
Though Orioles rookie pitcher – Garrett Olson, had previously lost to the Sox, and had an ERA of over 7, Boston’s lineup was stymied early on. Meanwhile, Boston rookie pitcher Clay Buchholz seemed only marginally better.
By the bottom of the second The Wave was disorganized, but gaining strength.
In the fourth Big Papi stroked a wall-scraping double and the drinking light was lit.
When the Orioles couldn’t muster any offense in the top of the fifth, less committed fans began looking at their watches, pondering an early exit. I was admittedly, thinking of another visit to the concession stand but before I could stir myself out of my seat, I was confronted by a strange look on my son’s face. He was hinting – while trying hard not to risk offending the gremlins of baseball, that there was something else going on. He gestured toward the scoreboard above the bleachers. We were halfway through the game and the Orioles had yet to… I don’t want to say it, even now.
But at that moment I laughed him off. The chances were against it. The likelihood slim. There were still twelve outs to go and, anything could happen.
Just then I heard the squeals and saw, on the other side of the park, the un-mistakable signs of an entire bleacher section’s worth of humans about to breach.
A full scale Wave was just a few batters away.
It was touch and go.
We were either headed toward history, or to another day at the beach.
With every pitch that Buchholz threw a thousand more disinterested fans joined The Wave. But with every inning that the Orioles remained hitless, three thousand joined the game.
From that first full-fledged roar of undulating fans just after the fourth inning ended, each successive attempt to start a Wave grew a little smaller, quieter. By the top of the seventh, the sea of fans was amazingly calm: hardly a ripple on the surface.
It‘s normal to lose a few thousand fans by the seventh – whatever the score, but on this cool evening the crowd stayed in their seats, even seemed to grow larger. In some cases, well-to-do fans that had spent the first few innings dining inside one of the private clubs, were lured back out into the open air.
Instead of the squeal of gulls, a sound not unlike the song of whales was heard – and not just from one section of the park, but emanating from deep within the whole. You could feel the excitement growing. As the last batter took a called strike three, it was the actual game that had our full attention.
When it was over – when that perfect moment had passed, the crowed refused to leave.
36,000 people living entirely in the moment.
And then the squealing started up again.

Hamburger with Unions

2007-10-16T15:52:00.001-05:00

How’d the strike go?
The slow-down?
The walk-out?
How is that old union of yours? I forget, what’s it called: the United Barbeque Grillers? Or is it the Amalgamated Association of Vacation Home-Owners?
It’s wonderful, isn’t it, to have a holiday all our own: a day dedicated to the former workers of America.
Most people don’t know – and would never suspect, that this cocktail party we call Labor Day was born in bloodshed and turmoil.
When the 12,000 troops called out to break the Pullman strike in the late 1890’s, shot several protesters, President Grover Cleveland felt his chances of re-election were in jeopardy, so he threw a bone to the labor movement which had been lobbying for their own holiday for years.
From the moment the first newspaper account of the tragedy hit the streets, it took only six days for the Congress to push the legislation establishing Labor Day through both houses.
President Cleveland eagerly signed it into law, and a few months later lost the election.
Labor Day was originally envisioned by socialist leaders as both a day of rest, and a chance for workers to unite, and march through small-town America, shoulder to shoulder. On this Labor Day just past most American workers were shoulder to shoulder all right, soaking up the sun on beaches coast to coast.
Today Labor Day is considered the last best chance for a family barbeque, the last gasp of the summer vacation, and the last time this year that you will be able to breeze through the city before the traffic returns to its regular weekday slog and we go about our business – without any sense of renewed camaraderie with the guy in the cubicle next to us.
At its peak though, over 50% of American workers belonged to a Union.
Today it’s one in ten.
So I suppose we can excuse what we have done to what was supposed to be a celebration of the dignity of work. Compared to Christmas, Labor Day is not so bad: that is, the celebration of the birth of Christ – as practiced in these United States, often has more in common with carnival time in Rio, than it does with the origins of the day. Americans have a particular talent for turning every holiday – regardless of its origins, into The Feast of the Miraculous Consumption. From that perspective Labor Day is almost a sacred celebration – reverently observed with closed eyes and a cold beer.
You can also argue that we live in a changed world where, perhaps, it is not as important that we have the kinds of protections that Unions once provided: especially considering that many of those same protections are now embodied in the law.
We should also acknowledge that the work force has changed dramatically – in the last 100 years, both as to the kinds of labor we perform, and the nature of our employers. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of people who work for themselves – part and full time. In large part the physical labor that many Americans were required to do – 50 years ago, has been relegated to workers in other countries (or from other countries) where, ironically, most do not have the protection of a Union. If they had more unions in China, you wouldn’t be able to buy that molded plastic dish tray for $1.99. But then again, if China had more unions, maybe America would be able to compete in areas that we have largely given up on – like steel production, computers, television and soon, cars.
Would you pay $200 more for your new flat screen television, if it meant that America had 100,000 more high paying jobs in that industry?
Would you pay $5 more for a wise-cracking President Elmo doll, to make sure that assembly line workers at the Chinese toy plant can’t be fired to make room for the plant owner’s cousins?
Then again, maybe we just can’t be bothered. Maybe we are content with our lives, with our cars, our boats, and our weekends at Foxwoods. Maybe the past successes of unions have made our lives too easy.
But are you confident that it will all be there, tomorrow?
How much of your confidence, is based on the bloated value of your home?
How much of your confidence is based on the fact that both you and your wife work? When the unions were strong, it took only one wage earner to support a family.
And for all of your things, how much time do you have to enjoy life?
Perhaps white collar workers in their glass towers need unions too?
Maybe the independent, entrepreneur working in his basement, is entitled to certain protections as well.
“Know your rights”, the Clash sang a few years back.
You have the right, they implied to metallic guitar chords, to affordable health care.
You have the right – they seemed to suggest, to reasonably priced gasoline.
You have the right, they sang, to clean air.
And privacy.
Most of us don’t worry about receiving a beating from our supervisor, or being forced to work 12 hours a day, or being locked into an unventilated room and chained to a sewing machine – and in large part unions are responsible for ending those kinds of indignities in the United States.
But many of us worry that if our parents become ill, everything they worked for will be sacrificed to pay for their care. And many of us pay half of our income for heat and gas for our cars. And every day corporations and/or the government intrude farther and farther into our private lives.
There is nothing wrong with celebrating Labor Day by lounging by the poolside, or flipping burgers, or getting that toll booth tan on the way home from the mountains. But perhaps the time has come again to remember the other part of the celebration, to remember the power that we have when we come together to protect one another.
Maybe next year Labor Day will be a day on which we actually work to ensure our rights – as worker, citizen, and inhabitant of the planet.

Memories of Saigon

2007-10-16T15:51:00.000-05:00

Did you hear what the President said last week?
I heard him say that we didn’t kill enough of the enemy in Vietnam.
We didn’t burn enough of their jungles. We didn’t bomb enough of their cities. We didn’t turn enough of their women into whores, their children into orphans, our children into orphans, our soldiers into junkies.
We should have stayed, and killed more.
We should have leveled that country.
We had the opportunity.
We had the weapons.
We were just too timid.
If we had done what we had promised to do, President Bush implied, Vietnam would still be the oppressed colonial possession that it had been for decades before us.
It would only have taken a few more political assassinations.
It would only have taken a few tactical nuclear weapons.
We had the draft, so it would have been easy to add a few hundred thousand troops more, to the half million we had ‘in country’ at one time.
We could have easily added another ‘wing’ to the Vietnam memorial.
But we lost the will to win – at least according to the President, and he should know, because he was one of the first to feel that ‘will’ slipping away. He was a trained fighter pilot in 1970, but instead of fighting in Vietnam.. well, really no one knows what he did in those critical years: his records have been ‘misplaced.
But we do know that President Bush came of age, during that time, so he can speak somewhat authoritatively about how close we were to accomplishing our mission there. And the President knows that with victory come the spoils. With the defeat of the North Vietnamese Army would have come an extended guerilla war – with our troops remaining in Vietnam for years, even decades. And with America’s victory, and the necessity of fighting an insurgency in Vietnam for decades, the Vietnamese would have not been able to make the economic gains that they have made since we left. And with American troops stationed in Hanoi, China would have retained a sufficient level of paranoia about America’s intentions to justify keeping their Maoist form of government – which would have slowed their economic growth, kept Wal-Mart from having a source of cheap toys, and preserved American jobs.
Thirty years after our defeat in Southeast Asia we have to face the grim reality that Vietnam is now an economic power, a tourist destination, and that the so-called Domino Effect was real, in economic terms. Yes, with the loss in Vietnam one Southeast Asian country after another fell – like dominoes, fell to the scourge of capitalism.
That, I think, is what President Bush is warning us about: once we leave Iraq there’ll be regional turmoil, the Ahmadinejad government will lose the support of the Iranian people, and in a decade or so the oil will flow, the people will prosper, and Halliburton’s stock price will plummet.
And once we leave Iraq we will be free to focus our attention on the idiots who lied to get us into this war, didn’t plan beyond the first thirty days, and fought like hell to keep anyone from figuring out what was really going on.
Just like Vietnam, soon after we get our last troops out of there, we’ll get rid of a weak President and the Berlin Wall will fall. No, I’m sorry, I’m told that the Berlin wall is already gone: so maybe it will be the wall we’re building along the Mexican border.
In any case, you can see why President Bush wants to stay in Iraq, for as long as he can: as long as we stay the course, we can’t really get on his case.
So I have a compromise solution: let him run for office again, in Iraq.
George Bush would make a hell of an Iraqi Prime Minister: tough, resolute, and desperately in need of the American voter to keep him and his band of loonies in office.
And with George in office, in Iraq, he could say that he honored his commitment, that he didn’t ‘cut and run’, and that our boys (he could bring a few friends to ‘administrate’) are still there. And George could stay as long as he likes. They’ve got miles and miles of open space, and plenty of brush to cut. It would be like being back in Texas, and this time he might even find a little oil.
Did you hear what the President said?
People say I’ve become too cynical, but I think I heard words of encouragement, where others only heard more babbling.

A Presidential Intervention

2007-10-16T15:50:00.001-05:00

Dubya, we want you to know that you’re among friends, and that we are gathered here today, not out of anger, but out of concern for your well being.
We want to say, up front, that no one here is talking impeachment. Yes – let’s be honest, there have been those who have used that word, but we here today are all agreed that impeachment is neither an appropriate, nor a constructive option.
You’re a good person.
You’re a loving father.
Everything you have done, all the damage that has been done in your name, during your administration, we believe, has been as a result of your addiction to Presidential authority.
This then is an intervention, not an impeachment. We do not want you removed from office – we simply want to provide a place for you to spend the final months of your Presidency, where you will be cared for, and where you will not have easy access to the authority that has caused your family, friends, and the American people, so much harm over the last six years.
We are ready to send you there.
We have a room reserved for you.
We have all chipped in, and this will not cost you a cent. And in terms of the American people, overall, we’ll save billions.
Ultimately though, this has to be your decision – your final decision as Commander in Chief. But before you make up your mind, there are a few people who have expressed a desire to let you know how they feel.
First, we’re going to hear from your former rival, the man who should have been declared President in 2000, Al Gore.

“I’m going to get right to the point, Dubya old friend. Take a good look around you – at this beautiful country of ours. Record temperatures, drought, floods, New Orleans: do I have to say more? I think you mean well, old friend. You talked a good game – back in 2000: Compassionate Conservatism, you called it. Face it, friend, you need help.”

Thanks Al. Now George, we’re going to hear from your old friend and confidant, the Reverend Billy Graham.

“George. I’ve advised world leaders since the days of old Ike Eisenhauer, who by the way was nearly as thick as you – and in all that time I’ve never met a King or a Prime Minister or a President as stubborn as you, son. In six years, despite debacle after debacle, you have never admitted to one mistake. Oh sure, you said you regretted the words you used, on occasion. But it’s not the words son – it’s the deeds. Your deeds give the lie to your words, son.“

Thanks Reverend Graham. Now George we’re going to hear from a surprise guest, your father, #41, George the First.

“What the hell is going on, Georgie? I didn’t go into Baghdad, so you had to? You had to show me that you were smarter, right? Heck son, you were President of the Texas Rangers and look how well they’ve done. You ‘d do as well to put a Major League team in Iraq. Who wants to sit out in the middle of the desert, baking in the Arlington sun, and watch the Rangers lose? I really don’t think you were ever qualified to be President son. I didn’t say it at the time, well, because I thought that boy Karl could turn a turnip into a President. But really son, you were unprepared. Being Governor of Texas is like being Sheriff of Tombstone: you arrest the drunks and let the bad guys fight it out in the streets. Hell son, you’d have made a damn good Mayor of Baghdad with your experience: just smile and pass the hookah hose - but President of the United States? What are you, on crack? You want to stay in Iraq because otherwise it will be like Vietnam? You been to Vietnam lately, son? The best thing we did for them was get the heck out of Dodge. We killed a million Vietnamese. Should we have stayed and killed more, lost more of our own? I don’t get it son. You’re not making any sense. You’re still a Texas Turnip son, you’ve just been boiled and mashed.”

Thank you Mr. President. And now.. Mr. President, your wife wants to say a few words.

“George, look at me, I’m talking to you! George, you know I’m thankful for our life together, our two beautiful girls. When I met you I was a school teacher, and I have to thank God – and you George, that I am not still a school teacher, forced to spend the whole year teaching to the No Child Left Behind test, for a salary that first year college graduates would turn their noses up at. George, I have to say that you are the most anti-intellectual person I have ever known. You reject what your scientific advisers tell you, what your medical advisers tell you, what your foreign policy experts tell you, and instead you rely on what you are told by preachers, pollsters, professional bureaucrats, and angry old ideologues. You don’t have an administration George, you have a gang, and frankly, dear, they’re making a fool of you. They’ll all just fade away and write books in the next year or two – leave you hanging. You need to go away too George, you need to get away from all the bad influences in your life. Please, George, please, go away now.

Thank you Laura. And now George, it’s decision time. Are you ready to get the help you need, and by doing so, help your fellow Americans. Or are you going to stumble your way through another 18 months, pretending to have a plan – trying desperately to pass off your screw-ups on the next administration. What’s it going to be George? There’s still time to do what’s right. There’s still time to see the light. What’s it going to be?

Dolores, in Space

2007-10-16T15:48:00.000-05:00

I’m not sure if I’ve told, you, but I’m a big fan of junkers – which I define as a car that costs less than $1000, has at least 125,000 miles that the previous owner admits to, and emits a combination of sounds that – altogether, are like the sound of a moose in heat.
I haven’t owned a new car for over twenty years and, honestly, I don’t know if I could. I don’t think I could bring myself to spending that kind of cash – even if I had bundles of it, after so many cheap rides.
My present transportation is a ’93 aquamarine Ford Escort wagon, with over 150K on the odometer, a permanent puddle of rust-colored water where the spare should be, and air vents that have some kind of lockjaw: the heat and AC actually work, but the air can’t make it through and when I try, it makes a sound not unlike my first saxophone lesson. Overall the sound of this car rolling down the highway is a combination of whistling, groaning, creaking, and muffler-about-to-go kind of croak that my wife can hear – and recognize, from so far away that she has time to cook my favorite meal before I get home. (She has time, I said, but that doesn’t mean she cooks it).
As junkers go, Dolores (I name all my junkers) is a ‘beaut’. I’ve had her for going on three years now and – though I haven’t put any serious new mileage on it – I did take it to the White Mountains a few years back without incident. I have replaced the alternator, purchased a few tires, and changed the oil twice. The grand total that I have spent on the maintenance of Dolores – after almost three years, is under $250, which although it represents a full quarter of her purchase price, is less than some people spend on gas in a month.
When I see a new car pass me by on the road – the word that first comes to mind is – ‘suckers’.
I see no reason at all for ever purchasing a new car.
I see very little reason for ever purchasing what they like to call a ‘previously owned vehicle’.
I would be hard pressed to buy a used car off a dealer’s lot.
I believe that junkers are the answer to my needs – both personal and scientific.
All of which is why I am especially concerned about Dolores’ final days.
I have to face it – she is already, by definition, driving on borrowed time. If a certified mechanic was to take a good, close look under her hood, they would be ethically bound to have me restrained while Dolores was humanely ‘put down’.
I expect the worse – but then again, that’s part of the real pleasure of driving a junker: anything and everything could and should go wrong – so why worry.
When you buy a new car, part of the justification for the ridiculous amount of money you spend, is that you are officially assured that nothing will go wrong – at least for a year or so. But you know, from experience, that something will – and even if it doesn’t happen right away, you have spent so much that even the lack of perfection is annoying.
You paid, on average, $30,000 for that new car, so what the heck is making that annoying noise?
I paid $1000 for mine, so I expect and even take comfort in Dolores’ annoying noises.
You are on the hook for monthly payments for five years, so why couldn’t they give you a real spare tire – instead of a donut?
Dolores actually has donuts on all four wheels, and does just fine with them.
Anyway, the point is that I want to do right by Dolores, in the end, so I am not going to abandon her by the side of the road in Maine, or add her to the automotive sculpture that I am erecting – by default, in my backyard.
Instead I am going to donate her to charity.
And there’s my dilemma: which charity do I choose? Which charity would be a fitting, if figurative tombstone for dear Dolores?
They’re all in the act now, you’ve probably noticed: you can donate your old car to Muscular Dystrophy, Public Radio, the American Cancer Society, and just about every non-profit you can think of.
I’ve tried them all – over the years, and though the guy who comes to pick them up to take them to the big smelter in Taunton, always looks the same, it feels a little different every time.
What I was really hoping is that I could donate Dolores to NASA. Clearly, they need the money but, more importantly, they seem to have the most respect for the concept of the junker. Most government agencies get their executives new vehicles every year – but NASA seems committed to keeping their old vehicles running year after year.
They’ve had their share of breakdowns, malfunctions, and outright disasters too – but that hasn’t stopped them from slapping on a coat of paint, replacing a tire or two, and getting those old shuttles back ‘on the road’, so to speak.
NASA’s not embarrassed by a few dings here and there, a missing tile, or an astronaut or two that don’t make it back. They know that – if they had to go to Congress for the cash for a new vehicle, they’d face some tough questions, so like me they’ve figured it’s easier just to keep the old fleet running.
I think Dolores would be happy there.
I think it would be a fitting end to her ‘time on Earth’.
I’d get a real kick out of lying back on my hammock, looking up at the stars, and imagining that little speck of light moving across the dark heavens is in fact – in some small way, part Dolores. And if I close my eyes and listen, I might even be able to hear the inimitable sound of a junker in orbit.

Ugly, The Sequel

2007-10-16T15:47:00.000-05:00

I’m stuck on ugly.
A person can be ugly, a crowd can turn ugly, even a cow – according to the American Heritage Dictionary, can behave ugly.
Plymouth is, in civic terms, ugly.
How can you not love ugly?
Actually, I think you can – love ugly: I’d even venture to say that Americans make ugly love every day.
So in the positive spirit of ugly I am going to spend my words this week on a description of what I think are the ugliest buildings in town.
Come on, you know you have your favorites.
Let’s start off in the eastern part of town – the Far Eastern.
A little bit of old Beijing, in Cedarville: that’s my impression of the new MRI facility in Cedarville.
For weeks I held off making a final judgment, as this behemoth rose in to the air on a hill off Hedges Pond Road.
I tried to guess what it was going to be. The location seemed odd for your typical strip mall. The height seemed all wrong for a restaurant. The Qing Dynasty had ended in 1911.
I would never have guessed that we were getting our very own magnetic marvel. No wonder my fillings ache every time I drive by!
The only thing keeping this building from being certifiably ugly is that it’s out of the way. If you don’t see the ugly, how ugly can it be?
The John Carver Hotel is another story altogether: another two or three stories, actually.
The entrance to the John Carver – with its 30 foot white faux columns, is the pseudo-colonial equivalent of the Hilltop restaurant’s giant cactus on Route 1 in Saugus. But whereas the kitsch of the cactus and the herd of plastic cattle at the Hilltop fit in with the rest of Route 1’s over-the-top Americana, The Carver’s massive columns are preposterously out of proportion to its surroundings, not to mention our historical milieu.
But are they – the columns, really ugly?
Historically, yes. Architecturally, definitely. Taken out of context, probably not.
The same might be said of another hotel – the Governor Bradford on the waterfront.
I studied this building for quite a while, and was not quite able to figure out what the architect was trying to say. I definitely see the influence of the Swiss Chalet style of hotel design, a trace of Tudor, a hint of colonial clapboard and.. then there’s a lattice-work brick wall culminating in a turreted hot dog stand.
Maybe they had big plans, and a small budget. The structure does remind me of the David Lynch film, Dune. Up to a point, Dune had some great effects – but then the money ran out and the penultimate scenes of the Fremen riding the giant spice worms look preposterous.
(Then again, dignified giant worm wrangling might just be an impossible feat for any director, at any price.)
If the Pilgrims had seen the Bradford when they first came in to the harbor, they would have dog-paddled back to Britain.
And what do you think of the latest restaurant to stake a claim in the economically muddy waters of Court Street – T-Bones Roadhouse?
Within a block of Burial Hill, and practically overlooking the Plymouth Rock, T-Bones built a steel metal store front with a giant letter slot facing the street.
On the hot summer night that I first saw T-Bones I felt it looked like a garage for a hovercraft, or something you’d stick on top of the Enron headquarters in Texas. I’d say it doesn’t really fit in with the historic architecture of Court Street, but then again - architecturally speaking, Court Street lost its way long before T-Bones rock and rolled into town. And on a second drive-by on a cold, wet day, I discovered that they could cover that mail slot with a large metal shutter that has the appearance of a traditional paned window – a much more appropriate look for Court Street.
Whatever seasons we are in, I don’t want to single out T-Bones. There have been many pseudo-modern store fronts downtown on Court Street in the last 25 years – CVS and Puritan Clothing to name two that come to mind. And I could come up with many more structures – both modern and faux colonial, that I believe should never have been built in historic Plymouth, like Jordan Hospital’s Pop-Art Concrete Slabs and the Fire Department’s Headquarters on Sandwich Street. I think it’s a shame that when tourists first reach the historic intersection of Old 44 and 3A that they are greeted by your standard, out of the box, pump and run Gulf and Mobil Service Stations. And if you came from Mars and landed in the middle of any one of our new ‘retail prairie towns’ off Long Pond Road and Commerce Way, you wouldn’t know if you were in Indiana, Arizona, or Maine. Massachusetts? Impossible!
In a forest of ugly trees, which ones do you take the axe to first?
I could go on, but I don’t want to seem mean spirited. And I have to hold back a few of my favorites for Ugly, Part 3. So let me be constructive. My sense is that we desperately need an Ugly Planning Board, or at least a subcommittee dedicated to either bringing a consistency to the ugliness around us, or eliminating it altogether.
I thought we had that covered.
I had assumed that there must be an adjunct committee of some board that was supposed to safeguard the town’s image.
Maybe Mayor Buechs will beautify things.
Or maybe we should just accept that – with a few notable exceptions, architecturally at least we are Weymouth-bound.
And anyway, who am I to talk: I’m stuck on ugly.

It's Getting Ugly Out There

2007-10-16T15:44:00.000-05:00

I’m trying to figure out the best adjective for Plymouth: trying to come up with one term that sums up the look and the feel of life in this community, today.
Everybody’s talking about what the town used to be like, or what they think the town could be, tomorrow – but I am not sure we have a clear sense of what Plymouth is like, right now.
According to Bucci’s List of Civic Stereotypes – the bible of travel writers, a town can be Scary, One-Horse, Rustic, Sleepy, Picturesque, Out of the Way, Rural, Quaint, Provincial, Ugly, Charming, Tony, Bustling, or Weymouth-like.
I know that there quite a few people in town who aspire to ‘Weymouth-like, but I haven’t made a final decision.
Right now I’m leaning toward Ugly.
Ugly is a great word, a powerful word – a word that has somehow maintained its ragged, rusty, nasty edge in this age of the dull and the pointless.
Ugly is just short of profanity – just shy of offensive, and if properly expressed, contains trace amounts of grudging appreciation: you know, the kind of appreciation you express when someone lands a great belly flop in the backyard pool.
“Oooh,” the onlookers exclaim, as the sound of that belly slapping the water reverberates around them, “that was ugly!”
There is even another definition of ugly –according to the American Heritage Dictionary, a definition peculiar to New England: ugly, as in ‘Unmanageable: applied to animals, especially cows or horses.’
In this case I am not applying it to cows or horses, but to the town as a whole.
Plymouth is a great big, unmanageable, out of control belly-flop of a community.
How’s that sound?
Again, I don’t mean to imply that Plymouth is ugly to look at. Plymouth is in fact, still pretty, in places. Ugly, according to Bucci’s, refers to that state of socio-economic being that falls somewhere between ‘quaint’ and ‘bustling’.
Some towns manage to skip over ugly entirely. Some towns go from ‘one-horse’, to ‘charming’ in one easy step.
Duxbury started off like Plymouth – with a few pilgrims, some boat building, farmers, and tradesman, but seems to have gone straight to charming. Then again, I’ve heard other adjectives applied to Duxbury.
For most communities though, the changes are painful, and there is no skipping over any of the stages.
In terms of these stages, I believe that the progression goes something like this:
Most towns start off as Scary. A Scary town is usually comprised of a few, apparently abandoned homes that rumor suggests were built by unknown individuals who made pacts with the devil, but perished nonetheless. In some cases these abandoned buildings have become video rental stores.
Carver is an example of a Scary town.
The next stage is often called the ‘One-Horse’, or its updated version, the ‘One Traffic Light’ town.
If a town persists too long in the one-horse state, it often moves involuntarily into ‘rustic’. Rustic is a dangerous condition. A town that is said to be rustic, is in a kind of holding pattern. A rustic town can only go in one of two ways – toward decrepit, or toward picturesque.
According to my sources, Plympton is an officially ‘Rustic’ community.
Plymouth itself was once officially rustic, in the late 1700’s, but owing largely to its historical significance, moved into a picturesque phase somewhere around 1805.
Most towns however – Plymouth included, are unable to hold on to the picturesque phase for very long. When a town is known to be picturesque otherwise well-meaning people move into town, build authentic imitation salt boxes and/or California Ranch-style homes, and become town meeting members.
At this point I think we need to differentiate between two civic phases that are often lumped together, but are in fact worlds apart: quaint and charming.
Quaint, is a classic ‘damn with faint praise’ adjective. By calling a town quaint we are suggesting that, though at one time it was picturesque, most of the older homes have been converted to funeral homes, real estate offices, or pizza parlors, mainly through the addition of colorful awnings. The dictionary definition of quaint is, “having an old-fashioned attractiveness or charm; oddly picturesque”. The emphasis here, I would say, should be on the odd. And the oddness is derived, I would further suggest, from the illusion that we are referring to a small town. You wouldn’t call Boston or Providence quaint, but oftentimes a large town or small city insists that it still qualifies for quaint-ness.
A quaint old town is actually a fairly heavily populated town, with most of the growth occurring outside the old town center – creating a built-in conflict between the image and reality of the community, and between the newcomers and the townies. To be quaint, I believe, is to be confused.
Kingston is very quaint.
The charming community is very different indeed.
The charming community is one that has, in large part, evolved as a whole. It need not be picturesque. It need not be well-to-do. It need only have a certain, undeniable charm.
According to recent census data, there are only three officially charming towns in all of Massachusetts: Woods Hole, Cummington, and Sterling.
There are however, 87 towns in Massachusetts that think they are charming.
When a quaint town thinks it is a charming town, and holds fast to that illusion, it is official designated ‘provincial’ – that is, ‘having or showing the manners, viewpoints, etc., considered characteristic of unsophisticated inhabitants of a province.’
Believing that you are charming, when you are not, is like believing that you are ‘good looking’ when you are not: like the middle-aged guy at the bar who, after a few drinks, starts to flirt with the waitresses. Pretty soon, things start to get Ugly.
And it’s only a 30 minute drive from Ugly to Weymouth.
Next week: The Ugliest Buildings in Town!

Hollyweird in the Home Town

2007-10-16T15:42:00.000-05:00

9:25 a.m.: arrest, 23-year-old man
arrested on warrant for charges including
assault with a dangerous weapon.

The film folks have left town, and just in time. We wouldn’t want any professionals horning in on our new, home-town reality series.
This is a casting call for Hollyweird in the Home Town.
Here’s the premise: despite the country’s obsession with the hi-jinks of the honeys of the Hollywood Hills, ‘folks round here’ are just as messed up.
We may be pulled over by the police while driving an old Escort Wagon, or a rusted-out Ford F150 though Manomet, instead of a Porsche or a Lotus through Malibu - but we’re just as high, just as arrogant, just as likely to get off with a slap on the wrist as our role models out there in La-La-Land.

12:10 p.m.: arrest, 21-year-old Plymouth man
arrested on warrant for charge of assault and battery
with a dangerous weapon, Manomet Point Road

The premise of our show is that this is La-La-Land too.
So we are looking for act-a-likes. We don’t care if you look like Lindsey or Nicole, and we certainly don’t expect you to have their cash. But if you have that same, perpetual ‘I could have had a V-8’ expression on your face, have “Rip Tides RIP” tattooed just above the crack of your ass, think your poop smells like pop-tarts, and have been chosen to be a spokes model for Breathalyzer, we want you!
We can’t pay much but, if selected, you will receive your own faux-police dossier with full color mug shots.
We can’t guarantee you the cover of Weekly World News, but you are sure to have your face plastered all across the local papers, and be featured prominently in the local police log.

1:15 p.m.: arrest, 19-year-old Plymouth man
charged with simple possession of Class D substance

The structure of our reality program won’t be anything out of the ordinary: just another pointless competition meant to bring out the worst from a dozen or so local yahoos – but with a grand prize of a 30 day stay at one of the country’s leading rehab centers.
Each week contestants chosen from the local police log will be given $10 and left off at a pre-selected bar or local party with no ID, no credit cards, and the goal of becoming legally intoxicated, borrowing a friends car, and driving themselves to the police station to ask for directions to the nearest McDonalds – and all within four hours.
In the end five finalists will be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, DUI, possession of a Class D Substance, and assigned a local lawyer .
The finalist who receives the lightest sentence will be declared the winner.

8:01 p.m.: arrest, 39-year-old Plymouth woman charged with
simple possession of Class B substance, simple possession of
Class D substance and possession of Class B substance with
intent to distribute

Don’t sneeze at the prize: the winner may not be cured of their behaviors at the rehab center, but their room will have a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean, and the food there is to die for.
More importantly though, this reality series will awaken Americans to the fact that no one area of the country has a monopoly on spoiled, irresponsible young adults, whacked out judges, or absentee parents.
I firmly believe that if we are going to lock up young actresses for reckless behavior, we need to lock up young convenience store employees too.
If we are going to put the mug shots of drunken actors on the nightly news, then we should be putting the mug shots of our own friends and family on public access television.
And I believe there should be financial parity as well. If Nicole Ritchie has to pay $500,000 to some pathetic, overdressed lawyer to get her sentence reduced to three weeks of home confinement, than our kids should pay no less than $5000 to the guy who hangs out at the local court house and claims he has a law degree, or the guy who handled your mortgage settlement, or your friend who says the Internet is all that you need.

12:40 a.m.: arrest, 23-year-old Plymouth man arrested
on warrant for charges of unlicensed bath house,
keeping a disorderly house and sexual conduct for a fee

Even if you have gotten your act together, and don’t qualify for our show, what about your brother: didn’t I see his name in the Police Log last week? Or how about your wife: she may have fooled the local cops, but she didn’t fool you when you found that six pack in her bowling bag.
Isn’t it about time that the local dumb-ass, hot head, or Hezbollah member got the same attention as their counterpart in Southern Kalifornia?
I think so.
And I am sure that America thinks so, too.
The real crime is wasting so much time on those rich kids.
Sign up now for Hollyweird in the Home Town, or just give your real name the next time they pull you over.

In Defense of Darkness

2007-10-16T15:41:00.001-05:00

The darkness is not as.. well, dark, as it used to be.
There was always something special about being up late on a hot summer’s evening, when everyone else was asleep, and with the windows wide open: sitting there literally bathing in the cool, black night.
There was a special quiet at that end of the day, a quiet almost as appealing as the stillness of the early morning – a respite from the din of a summer’s day that was almost as rejuvenating as the restful sleep that could then follow.
In the summer I often cannot sleep, or at least sleep well, if I have not prefaced my rest with at least an hour’s swim in that deep, black pool.
But lately that darkness, like a shallow pond after a long stretch of unusually hot days, has become rather tepid.
The darkness is punctuated now, pierced by dozens of tiny eyes. Red and green and blue and yellow points of light appear in our home, at night: some blinking, some cascading, others seeming to stare obliviously across the room.
Tiny lights that say “My power is on..”
Orange spots that boast, “I’m ready!”.
Computer lights that seem to brag, “You may think I’m turned off, but don’t be surprised if I am up to something...”
Wireless routers twiddling their tiny green thumbs.
Phones charging.
Printers standing by.
Digital clocks digitally snoring.
Refrigerators making ice.
We take these lights for granted, in the light of day. The machines which they adorn seem sterile and subservient, when the sun is up. But in the evening they suddenly seem to conspire. When they think they are alone, they begin communicating with one another.
And if you happen to be up late, too, they shatter the once solid darkness with their tiny beacons - like gravel from a semi-truck bouncing off your windshield.
These gadgets and gizmos are the ultimate insomniacs, and they seem to like nothing better than to have you up late with them, to share their neurotic, late night thoughts.
So much for a dip in the black water: so much for a respite from the frantic day.
Then again, you know me: I believe problems only exist so that I can propose bizarre solutions for them: and, of course, I have such a solution.
Despite these noisy chinks of light, clattering against my peripheral vision, I still find the night stimulating, and right now as I write this – in the wee hours of morning, I am imagining a few small changes that could make all the difference.
Do you remember the late-night approach of the aliens to the Midwestern home in the film, “Close Encounters”? The home depicted was – courtesy of Steven Spielberg, dramatically dappled with starlight and – as the aliens drew near, it seemed as if the light of those innumerable specks of light had seeped into every toy in the house. Toy police cars and fire engines and space ships suddenly began to whir and whiz and wheel about the house – making all sorts of Christmas morning music, waking the wide-eyed child who lived there, luring him to the window, pulling him toward those same specks of light..
That’s what I would do to all of these gadgets found around our homes today: transform them into toys.
Instead of a few tiny LED’s – as they call them, I’d make it a requirement that every household gadget emit a variety of pleasing beams of light. I’d make it mandatory that every so-called high tech piece of equipment whir and whiz and – whatever else they are supposed to do, have the ability to shower the floor with harmless sparks.
Instead of giving over my home to them, I’d keep them all in a mysterious room in the attic, or put them away in a giant trunk when I was finished playing with them. Toys are meant to awaken the imagination, not replace it.
I guess the problem is not really there lights – most of which are hardly bigger than a cricket’s eye, but rather the prominence we have given the gadgets behind them – in our homes and in our lives.
When it comes down to it, no laptop computer or flat screen television can compare with a shooting star, or the sound of the breeze in the trees, or the way simple darkness can soothe the brain after a long, bright day. And yet we act as if they do. Instead of letting the darkness come to us, we curl up in an office chair and stare at harshly lit screens for hour after hour.
No wonder they stare back at us.
No wonder they conspire.
Maybe they are waiting for the moment when they can make their own escape: turn off their lights and finally grab a little of that precious darkness for themselves?
It is precious, too, this darkness.
The night is not as dark as it used to be.

Natalie and Me

2007-10-16T06:10:00.000-05:00

Wanted: Priest. Must have a natural air of superiority, a glint in the eye that suggests certain arcane knowledge, be fluent in an impractical foreign language, soft-spoken, imperturbable, mysterious and yet, readily available to quell riots, guide small children, and oversee community barbeques. Religious affiliation immaterial. Gender not an issue. Sexual orientation irrelevant. Must have reliable transportation. Weed free lawn a plus. Applications being taken at local Cable Access Television studios.

Any takers?
Plenty of wannabees.
Very few qualified applicants.
Priests are like white Bengal Tigers: rarely seen, except in captivity; on the endangered species list, and going fast.
What we have today – in large part, is a priestless society. What we have, instead of priests, are tribes, where behavior is dictated by what the group decides, not by the example or teachings – or fear of, any one individual.
It wasn’t that long ago, though, that there were priests on every corner.
When I was a boy fathers were the priests of the family: they didn’t have to explain themselves, what they said was law. Of course what many of them said was, to put it nicely, rubbish – but fathers were given a great deal of slack.
Little League coaches. When I played for Lyons Nursery way back in the sixties (the 1960’s, wise guy) we called our coach, Mister, Sir, or a combination thereof, and though he hardly said a word to any of us, we were under his power. I still repeat the few instructions he gave me, as if they had been inscribed into a stone tablet by the finger of God: ‘when the ball is hit, your first step is always backward; your hands are faster than the ball – stay back and wait on it, then explode; I don’t care how hot it is, keep that shirt tucked in!’
In my youth it seems we had more than our fair share of priests. Back then, believe it or not, even priests were actually considered.. well, priests. TV announcers were priests too. Gas station attendants. Teachers. Policemen. Even the milkman – in his white suit, gave you the impression that he knew something you did not (what exactly Half and Half is).
Musicians were priests too, in a way, back then. Can anyone imagine Fifty Cent or Jon Bon Jovi stopping a riot today? But in 1968 that’s exactly what James Brown did in Boston.
Forty years later even the church doesn’t have enough priests to go around, and the riots are outside the church itself.
Maybe it was just plain ignorance, on our part. Priests have always depended on the ignorance of others, for their positions of power. In the early days of Christianity, priests – or monks, had secret knowledge no one else possessed, and they weren’t about to share it either.
The 21st Century might be called the Age of the Revealed Secret. Want to build a nuclear bomb, cook like Julia Child, or chart a hurricane’s path – Google it.
The 21st Century might also be called The Age of the Defrocked Priest. Today, what our society outwardly raises up, it simultaneously brings down. We pay millions to create celebrities, it seems, solely for the privilege of ridiculing them. We flock to massive church stadiums, hoping to be told that we are god-like. We elect individuals to positions of great power, than quickly dismiss them for their revealed humanity.
In the absence of true priests though, we are confronted by a kind of cosmological anarchy. In the absence of a tribal leader, primitive man could look to the sun and the moon as figures of authority, but today – one by one, even the heavenly bodies are being devalued. Pluto – God of Underworld, is not even a planet anymore. The moon – long thought to be the main source of madness or inspiration, is now our solar system’s local landfill.
I guess what I really mean to say, is that I am going to miss Natalie.
We all knew it was coming but it was still a shock when she made the announcement last week. Natalie Jacobsen was – and in some way, still is an authentic priestess.
Sure, she had lost some of her power, in recent years: she had divorced from Chet; been given a lesser role at Channel Five; gotten older, grayer, and was not sufficiently glib for modern television journalism’s 15 second stories - but she still possessed that priest-like combination of wisdom, empathy, and authority.
Her departure has a tinge of irony, in that what this new world of bloggers and cable access action heroes aspire to - IMO, is membership in the same secret society that Natalie recently belonged to. Today, instead of a few hundred high priests, we have a few million priests-in-training, and no guarantee of graduation day.
The plain truth is that we don’t have enough time to listen to a million sermons, or enough shelf space for a million bobble-headed heroes. We need our Natalies, if just to have time left over to mow the lawn and shoo the turkeys away.
And we need our Natalies if just to keep the sound of opinions down to a roar. In the absence of a priestly class, the noise of the masses is deafening, as each tries to shout over the other.
As for me, though I am going to miss Natalie, I don’t feel it’s the end of the world. My life goes on. I still have my Latin lessons, my Peace studies, and my regular neighborhood barbeque to keep me busy. I also work as an umpire for the local Little League, and am taking the Dr. Phil Relationship Mediation Correspondence Course. Oh, and I have this pulpit, that is, this column too: every week I have the opportunity to share my concerns with you in a quiet, dignified manner. We may not always agree, but I think we respect one another.
Now if I can only find myself a cool uniform.

Follow Your Nose

2007-10-16T06:09:00.001-05:00

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4

Surprise! I am not going to write about President Bush’s decision to spare his dear friend and colleague ‘Scooter’ Libby, from jail, by commuting his sentence.
Come on, admit it: you had me figured as one of those knee-jerk liberals, who can’t pass up an opportunity to ridicule our Commander-in-Chief.
But whatever my political leanings, first and foremost I am an opportunist. For me there is no difference between stories about Anna Nicole, Brittany Spears, or Double-yew Bush. I judge the potential news value of a story - first, by how embarrassing it was for the individual involved; secondly, by how embarrassed they look on camera, and finally, by where Fox News places the story in their nightly broadcast.
In other words, I follow my nose.
On the night that the news of Libby’s commutation (does that make him a commu-tist?) first broke, the local Fox News channel was more interested in promoting their story on the Star Spangled Sweepstakes lottery ticket scandal, than the President’s historic commutation. And so I seriously considered writing my next column about the lottery. At least that story would have had a ‘local angle’. Plymouthians – and Americans in general I think, care more about their lotteries than their politics. And where was the drama in the Scooter story? Everyone knew he would never do any jail time. No one seriously expected the President to go against the wishes of his daddy dearest, Dick Cheney. I even give the President points for consistency: after all, he appointed Paul Wolfowitz - one of the architects of our failed Iraq Strategy, to the Presidency of the World Bank, and selected both General Tommy Franks – who bungled the war on the ground, and CIA head George Tent - who bungled the WMD investigation, to receive the nation’s highest honor - the Medal of Freedom. The least he could do for Libby was give him a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.
When you have lived for seven years with a President who can’t think of any mistakes he might have made – except perhaps for errors of pronunciation, and with an administration that places politics above every other consideration, word that they have closed ranks again to protect one of their own – is not news at all!
Luckily for me though, there was a bigger stink that same day – news that was perfect material for one of my snide, sarcastic, opinionated and none-too-original columns. At almost the same time the President was holding his nose and announcing that he had commuted Scooter’s sentence, in a University of North Carolina greenhouse the Voodoo Lily – otherwise known as the Corpse Flower, began to bloom.
Corpse Flowers only bloom once in every six or seven years, and when they do they emit an odor that has been described as similar to the smell of spoiled meat, bad eggs, and rotting vegetables – all rolled into one. People come from all over just to see – and smell, these huge, foul-smelling flowers. They’re the perfect feature story too, combining embarrassing smells, horticultural education, and freakish, sci-fi sensibilities all in one.
Of course when the University of North Carolina’s Voodoo Lily bloomed at almost the exact same time that President Bush commuted Libby’s sentence, radio show hosts across the country were quick to suggest that it was a liberal conspiracy – that perhaps the lily’s nauseous flowering was a not-too-subtle commentary on the news of the day. But according to horticulturists, the mechanisms that trigger the rare flower to unfold from its tree-sized stem are largely unknown to science, and impossible to predict.
The UNC’s horticulture department – which has a half-dozen Voodoo Lilies, had never had one bloom before.
Before the UNC Voodoo Lily stank up the place, the last one to flower in the United States was in New Orleans, in September of 2005 – ironically, just days after President Bush visited the city following Hurricane Katrina. The exact date of that flowering is unclear, because the location of the New Orleans Voodoo Lilly was in a greenhouse operated by Tulane University, which had been abandoned during the storm.
“We smelled something awful”, a city official told the local press, “but we thought it was due to the storm surge, not the Corpse Flower, or the President’s visit.”
In May of 2003 an indoor exhibit of rare tropical plants and animals – located within the San Diego Zoo, experienced their own Corpse Flower blooming – and had to be shut down for several days until the revolting smell dissipated. Coincidentally, President Bush was in the city that same week, announcing the end of ‘major combat operations in Iraq’ aboard an aircraft carrier in the harbor.
And finally, the only other known blooming of a Voodoo Lily in the United States this century, occurred at the National Arboretum in Washington D.C., in January of 2001. Two days later, as fate would have it, President Bush was inaugurated.
So, what’s the real story here? It can be confusing.
Is there really such a thing as a ‘Corpse Flower’, and does it really smell that bad? Did President Bush have any other motive in commuting Scooter’s sentence? Does the President bloom only once every four years, and does that explain his re-election? Did Fox News deliberately downplay the Libby commutation story, or do they really believe there is a liberal conspiracy to deny the people their lottery rights?
I guess you’ll just have to trust your own senses, this time.

Keeping it Real!

2007-10-16T06:05:00.001-05:00

I rant, therefore I am.
Or, to put it another way, I’m keeping it real – by railing against the forces of unreality.
Apologies to the poor clerks at Borders. I understand that you just work there.
I wasn’t there this past weekend to make a fuss: I was there buying a book – the subject of which is irrelevant. As I went from aisle to aisle though, I couldn’t help but listen to the music they were playing.
They were promoting a new CD that is both a tribute to John Lennon, and a fundraiser for the efforts to bring peace to Darfur.
Being a child of Lennon’s era, I recognized the songs immediately, and was appalled.
If anyone knew how to keep it real, it was John Lennon. Lennon, in a real sense, sacrificed his life in order to have a life: living the life of a family man in the midst of one of the world’s most populous, and dangerous cities. Lennon, in his own words, had gotten off the merry-go-round of fame: “I just had to let it go”, he sings on “Watching the Wheels”, a song recorded just days before he was murdered on the streets of New York by a deranged fan.
So Lennon is not here to defend himself as his life is put back on the merry-go-round: not here to defend himself as – over and over again, he is made one of the lesser ingredients in another guilt-free, low-cost, tee-shirt and wrist-band is all that we ask of you cause.
Sure the cause is good, just, worthy, but that does not mean that Lennon is represented well by this ‘tribute’. In fact I believe that Lennon’s music – standing on its own, is far more effective at moving people to action, than when it is reconstituted and sprinkled on the latest brand of breakfast cereal.
The final straw (one of a hundred annual final straws), for me, was the contribution to this CD from the collaboration of Christina Aguilera and the faux-goth band Bigelf: the two recorded a version of Lennon’s nearly psychotic, primal scream session, sung to his parents and simply entitled “Mother”.
There is no song in recorded history more ‘real’ or as raw as Lennon’s recording of “Mother”: it is a wrenching, riveting – and completely personal cry of an abandoned child and in my opinion, the Aguilera-Elf rendition has all the depth of a Hanna Montana pre-teen angst ballad.
All this was bubbling in my brain as I walked around Borders, and when the cashier offered me her obligatory check-out remarks, I just couldn’t let it go.
“They play a lot of bad music” was her instinctive, CYA response.
She didn’t care, one way or the other. And you don’t care, either – at least about my opinion of John Lennon’s music.
But it wasn’t really the music I was complaining about, it was the unreality I had been involuntarily subjected to: it was, it is, the layers of plastic that we are all forced to dig through in order to get to the object of our desire. It is the distance we are all forced to travel to uncover – often not what we are looking for, but whether what we are being sold is what we thought we were looking for.
I think that we all want, crave – indeed need, something real.
Whether it is the food that we eat, or the music that we listen to, or the affection that we crave from other people, we need the real thing.
Too often, instead, we are offered substitutes, imitations, associations, approximations.
And I guess what I want to say is that it is not only alright, it is necessary for our sanity, that every so often we simply spit out the crap we are sold, spit it out onto the floor, in front of everyone.

· Walk out of the bad movie. If both of your butt cheeks die before you can figure out who’s who, it ain’t worth it.
· Spit the food back on to your plate. If in the middle of a mouthful, you realize you don’t remember what you ordered, give your stomach a break.
· Scream at the gas pump. The worse thing about self-service gas stations is the lack of someone there to blame.
· Call your Congressman. Find their name, their number, and ask the lackey who answers their phone if you can scream at them in person.
· Return the CD you bought. Instead of not listening to it ever again, get your money back and give it to an organization that buys food for refugees.
· Burn your Walkathon Tee Shirts: unless you promise to make a new donation every time you wear them.
· Tell your doctor he’s an ass. If they can’t treat you with respect, let them at least remember your name.
· Stop putting up with mediocrity. (that’s a career)
· Stop eating mush. (hype has no flavor)
· Stop paying for hype. (mush is mush)
· Stop swallowing your pride. (unless you’re a mush manufacturer)
· Speak up. Spit it out. Spill the beans.
· Don’t accept the half-assed, the half-hearted or the half-cooked.
· Take a deep breath.
There now: doesn’t that feel better already?

Givin in to the 'bim'

2007-10-16T06:03:00.000-05:00

The Chinese have their ‘chi’, the Japanese their ‘Zen’. But we westerners have our own unseen power, controlling our lives, dominating the airwaves.
I’m giving in to the ‘bim’.
One of my favorite sayings – stolen from the sixties comedy group Firesign Theatre, is “well, it’s a little like bees living in your head but, there they are.”
It is a little like having bees living in your head though, isn’t it? But instead of bees, it’s bimbos. There are swarms of bimbos buzzing ‘round our heads, bimbos buzzing on every channel, everywhere you click.
For some reason I think I would feel better if their names all began with B: Brittany, Baris, Banana Nicole.
Anyway, instead of fighting against their power, I’m abandoning my worn out principles and accepting the inevitable. Instead of arguing for a volunteer ban on bimbos in the news, I’m embracing Banana Nicole and her band of brainless, bra-less, beauties. Instead of asking for anti-bimbo legislation, I now believe that we should all do everything we can to bring all these Bambis into the mainstream.
Let’s stop the fruitless arguments as to their importance: clearly, they are the most important cultural phenomenon of this century.
Let’s stop criticizing their B-havior: obviously, our uncontrollable obsession with everything they do and say reveals our deep-seated envy of everything about them.
So, where do we start?
Despite the importance of Bimbos in our society, we still like to pretend that what they do and say is, well, ridiculous. So it is going to be difficult for people to publicly admit the truth: that our devotion to them is at least as silly as they are.
I propose that first, we change our calendar.
I’m not asking that we adopt a certain style of dress (we already conform to their fashion norms), or learn to speak a new language (the official language of the United States is already ‘bimboese’). No, I simply propose changing calendars, and then maybe the clocks, and go from there.
It has always seemed strange to me that we honor dead Romans and their gods – for the most part, by naming the months of the year after them. When was the last time you saw a video of Caesar Augustus getting out of his chariot, obviously intoxicated, on YouTube?
So, instead of Janus, I propose re-naming the first month of the year, Marilyn, for the goddess of Bimbos, Marilyn Monroe.
Yes, yes, I know, Marilyn was more than just a bimbo: but to her devotees she is the origin, the source, the fountainhead of all bimbolisciousness.
February I’d propose re-naming for Helen of Troy.
Okay, so I’m back pedaling a bit. Helen of Troy doesn’t have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, though their standards seemed to have slipped a bit of late. But the ideas on which our society are based, originated - in large part, with the Greeks. And there was no bigger bimbo in all of Greek literature than Helen.
And speaking of the month of Helen, I think we need to address this 28 day except on Leap Year thing. To make it easier on the Bimbawannabees out there, all the months of Bimbo should be 28 days long.
Is there anything more painful than watching the expression on a bimbos face when they try to figure things out: things like how many days in the month, what to tip the bouncer, and where they left their panties?
And with the 29 days left over every year, we can establish an entire invisible month during which Bimbos – and those with the necessary resources, can go into rehab, no questions asked.
The only real problem I foresee is naming the remaining months. You can’t just use any bimbo: these have to be the very cream of the crop, not just the flavor of the month. Baris, I mean Paris, seems a natural – now: but when she gets out of jail – will we still care? Britanny once seemed a classic bimbo: but of late she seems a bit desperate to make the grade. And what about what Seinfeld liked to call “Mimbos” - male bimbos: what about a month, for example, named for Elvis? He was one of the first, and greatest, male bimbos – though he lived at a time when the press didn’t stalk people the way they do today. And what about our old pal Bill, Clinton that is: I don’t think the fact that he’s intelligent, rules him out. But then again, Bill’s gotten too damned serious of late. Then again, he is the only Presidential Bimbo in history - unless you count Kennedy, or Herbert Hoover, or Van Heflin.
Okay, instead of March, the third month will be named for Elvis, and April will now be called Bubba. And what the heck – Banana Nicole just couldn’t help herself, so let’s name May, Banana.
Madonna? No, everything that happened to Madonna was planned – by Madonna. That’s Brittany’s problem of late too, as I see it. Britanny should just let it happen. Angelina was on the right track – for a while, but as soon as she and Brad got together, she started saving the world, adopting children, and getting all serious.
Maybe I’m still missing the point too. Maybe I need to loosen up. Instead of establishing regular bimbo months, perhaps we should just declare the month for a particular bimbo, after the fact: kind of like player of the month. In that case, I guess we’ve got to go with Paris this month – no matter how her last days in jail go.
Yeah, that’s the ticket: the Bimbo of the Month will be chosen at the end of every month – depending on who gets the most press coverage in the previous month.
Can you handle it? Can you keep up with it? You certainly can’t escape it, so why don’t you just give in to the bim?
You can search CNN, and MSNBC, and even CSPAN for the news, but sooner or later you’re going to have to admit, this is the Age of the Bimbo.

A Four Letter Word

2007-10-16T06:00:00.001-05:00

As part of the ongoing celebrations commemorating my 100th No Mand’s Land column, I am going to list – in no particular order, 100 things I actually like about Plymouth and its inhabitants.
1. First, I like that my devoted readers (all three of them) are incredulous that there are 100 things I admit I like about Plymouth.
2. I also like that though I’ve lived here for nearly 25 years, I can still get lost in Myles Standish State Forest.
3. I like the old Court House too. It’s like something out of a Spenser for Hire novel: a grandiose exterior that belies a maze-like interior filled with narrow, dimly lit hallways full of suspicious characters, over-sized cops, and lawyers that look as if they are being asked to verify that the milk has gone sour.
4. Gellar’s aluminum ice cream cone. When they tear Gellars down to make way for the new combination Museum of Manomet Life and Dunkin Donuts, I’ve got dibs on the cone.
5. The nauseating color scheme at Town Hall: it’s guaranteed to ward off evil, keep board members awake, and agitate ‘certain others’.
6. Japanese ‘Professional’ Wrestling on Cable Access: where else can you watch reruns of men in tights, watching reruns of men in tights, watching reruns.
7. That in a one minute stroll down Court Street, I can have a taco, a curry, moo shi, sushi, sax lessons, a slice of cake, and a pint of Meade (and the stomach pumping people of Jordan Hospital are just a three-minute ambulance ride away!)
8. Enisketomp: when they demolish the McDonalds at Exit 5 to make room for a retention pond, I’ve got dibs on Enisketomp.
9. Bloody Pond. An English tourist named this pond, after getting lost in Myles Standish State Forest.
10. The Billington Sea.
11. The Billington Brothers. If I had a band, that’s what I’d call it (dibs!).
12. The New Brewster Gardens.
13. White Horse Beach in winter.
14. The abandoned train station at the abandoned Wal-Mart at The Latest Attempt to Make Something Out of Cordage Park Commerce Center
15. Bug Light.
16. Clark’s Island: actually, I’ve never been to Clark’s Island, but I’ve heard some great stories.
17. Mosquitoes as big as turkeys and not half as bright. (Oh, I am informed that those are actually swarms of turkeys)
18. Plimoth Plantation (Oh, I am informed that it is now called PineHills)
19. Caterpillar Season.
20. The Saturday Peace Vigil
21. The trolley driver who is always ‘gesturing’ at the participants in the Peace Vigil.
22. The Karen Buechs All-Star Review and Moot Court Team: check the court house schedule for their next live appearance.
23. Burial Hill.
24. Town Meeting.
25. Free coffee and home-made baked goods at the Church of the Pilgrimage on Thanksgiving morning.
26. That a blind-folded foreigner, parachuting randomly anywhere within the town limits, would take only 37 seconds to stumble into a drive-thru lane at a Dunkin Donuts (unless they are impaled on the Gellar’s Ice Cream Cone).
27. That there are almost as many golf carts as Hummers, registered in the town.
28. The “No Surfing” signs at the giant retention ponds on the New 44.
29. The contest to name the giant retention ponds along the New 44 (Rusty Pond? Rubber Pond? Wal-Mart Pond?)
30. The folks who want to stock the giant retention ponds on the New 44 with brown trout and wide-mouth bass.
31. Olde 44
32. The Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes
33. City Lights, City Streets
34. The BBC on Middle Street
35. The Old Colony Club
36. Emerson Field on White Horse Beach Road
37. The dozen or so local guys who coach Little League, Youth Basketball, Youth Football, umpire, referee, play golf regularly, have fabulous lawns, nice kids, are somehow still married, and haven’t spontaneously burst into flames.
38. People who drive five MPG, ten-ton, tinted window, black SUVs that seat sixteen and have a bumper sticker that reads, “Piping Plover – Tastes Like Chicken”.
39. Anything cooked by Martha Stone.
40. The smoked eel at Asian Essence.
41. The Pad Thai at Star of Siam.
42. The Weber Grill in My Backyard.

Honestly, I have at least 58 more things that I like about Plymouth, but I’ve run out of space. I’ll save the rest for my 200th column, provided of course that the Bulletin offices have not been sold by then to make room for another Dunkin Donuts, or a retention pond, or a turkey meat processing plant.

George Figures it Out

2007-10-16T05:59:00.001-05:00

Don’t look now but, George W. just dropped a GW bomb!
Make the children leave the room.
We’re talking (right-wing reactionary fundies close your ears)… Global Warming, no less.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Global Warming supposed to be a left-wing, Harvard-type, New York Intellectual, gay lesbian socialist worker fantasy of the first degree?
Didn’t that crew-cut, barking hyena on CNN just have his own special news report revealing that Global Warming was a thinly veiled attempt to make San Francisco the de facto capital of the United Fakes?
Yet there was the big GW this past week – in front of the cameras, openly talking about his own global warming initiative, explaining how he’s going to stop using his brush hog for entertainment during those long weekends at the ranch, switch the Marine helicopters he uses over to biofuels, and the twins over to grain alcohol based intoxicants.
Wubudahwubudhahwubudah what the heck happened here?
Has George been born again, again?
Did he take a turn at the pump during a photo opp, and see how the average Joe’s gas dollars have jumped?
Or maybe his old pal Putin clued him in, after a few Vodka Collins?
And it’s not just GW wising up to GW: there are other signs of the apocalypse too!
George II is also speaking - out loud, about Darfur.
They used to snicker behind his back, call him ‘Darfur Duck’, but not now. Now he’s using that tried and true axis of evil, hunt you down and slap you silly talk that served him so well back in the good old days of his oddministration.
He’s mad as hell, and he ain’t going to take it no more.
We’re going to put the squeeze on the Sudanese.
And no, gosh darn it, it has nothing to do with his so called legacy, or the lack thereof – or so we’re told. It has nothing to do with the trouble there having over there in the Mideast, Mideast Texas that is: where word is, money for the Big Dubya Ranch and Presidential Library has just about dried up.
The truth is that - when it comes to old George, it just takes a bit longer for the news to sink in.
Emphasize the first syllable, in the duh-b-ya.
For a Texas boy, GWB was surprisingly slow on the draw. It took longer for him to figure out that he should drop “My Pet Goat” and get his butt onto Air Force One. It took longer for him to figure out that New Orleans was underwater and make his sympathetic, ‘I see y'all down there’ flyover. And it took longer for him to realize there tweren’t no WMD. In fact, I think somebody better go round to the ranch and remind him that, nope – they haven’t found any Big Bads in Baghdad, yet.
Granted, he did seem to jump the gun a bit, as regards the end of the Iraq War. But, what we’re just now finding out is that he was actually reacting to the end of the first Gulf War, when he had his little shindig on the aircraft carrier. When it comes to the latest Gulf War, his timing is perfect: it won’t be over for a long time, and he’s the only one that knows it, or will, eventually.
George W. Bush is leading the way, in terms of, well, not leading the way.
They should tack on an entire wing at the future Big Dubya Ranch and Presidential Library for accomplishments ‘yet to be determined’: kind of like those signs you see on the highway, for “Future Exits”.
The historians are sure that at some point in the future, George W. Bush is going to become one of our greatest presidents. You can count on it.
Heck, look what they did for that semi-pro actor – Ronnie Reagan. He left office babbling, and now he’s practically a saint. They’re naming mountains after him.
George II is not there yet but, give him time.
Better give him extra time.
Then, when you have about given up hope, give him a bit more time.
They say once you retire, you’ve got all the time that you need.
Count on George to figure it out – in the end.

The Third Degree

2007-10-16T05:57:00.000-05:00

I think my oldest son graduated from college this past weekend, but I’m not absolutely sure.
I’m sure he had what it takes, did what it took, and took what they had: but I am still not convinced that the desired transformation took place.
You would think they would have it all worked out by now. You would think that there would be a book – one slim but definitive volume that you could follow, step by step and, at the end, POOF: the transformation would be easily discerned.
You’d think with the cost of college these days, they could give you some kind of guarantee.
It would help if – at the appropriate time, the student changed colors, or grew wings, or spoke in tongues. Instead, underneath the black satin muumuu they all wear for the final act, is much the same kid you sent on their way four years back.
In fact the youth I sent off to college four years ago, wore pants and shoes and a shirt, and the graduate that we un-robed a few days ago wore only shorts and flip-flops and a look of relief.
We sent off a fully dressed kid and got back something, in some ways, less.
That’s a transformation alright, just not the one I was looking for.
Not that I am now looking for someone to blame. No, if mistakes were made, look no further than yours truly.
I can honestly say that when I supposedly graduated over 25 years ago, somebody messed up.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know where I was going.
I received a degree in Elaborate Excuses, with a minor in Extra-curricular Activities, and before the ink had dried on my sheepskin I had my very own undergraduate and was dispensing educational advice to him with the ease of a bartender.
I told him he could pretend to drink without actually drinking.
I told him to take Chinese.
If I was to sum up the advice I gave my son as he headed off to college, it would be, ‘don’t smack your lips while you’re eating’, metaphorically speaking. I thought it was that simple. I thought the only thing he had to worry about was overdoing it.
Overdoing it was the only thing I had done well during my college days.
That was one reason I sent my son to a small, prestigious eastern college, instead of the enormous prestigious college I attended. I thought he would have fewer opportunities to overdo it.
And I felt that if anyone could produce an actual graduate – with an actual degree, they could.
I have to say that I am happy with the effort: theirs, not his.
The recent graduation weekend was one long ‘David Copperfield Makes the Statue of Liberty Disappear’ extravaganza.
Nothing that might have contributed to a successful matriculation – as they call it, was left out.
He had several Benedictions recited over him.
They had a Baccalaureate ceremony during which a traditional Sanskrit Hymn was played by a Master Sarod Player and accompanists.
There were a half-dozen Processions in his – and a few hundred other pupils, honor.
I counted at least two or three solemn Invocations.
There were endless speeches, honorary degrees, dire warnings about nuclear proliferation, and a parade of professors in medieval costumes.
They had a Lobster Bake and beer on tap.
They recited a lot of poetry too.
Poetry is a sure sign that someone is attempting to create graduates somewhere nearby.
If my son had suddenly begun to recite poetry, that would have convinced me.
Didn’t happen.
There were also speeches in Latin.
If my son had suddenly started to sign the new song by Maroon 5 – in Latin, that would have convinced me.
Didn’t happen.
Still, according to a translation of one of the Latin speeches recited by the school’s President, my son was no longer a pupil, “but a colleague”, and “all that your instructors have been able to do has been done.”
But that last phrase sounds suspiciously like the small print on a box of cereal: “Sold by weight, not by volume. Some settling of the contents may have taken place.”
That was what I think happened to me, during my college days: I didn’t get any smarter, I just had what I already knew, rearranged.
It also reminds me of the time I was not born again.
A few years after my ‘failed’ graduation I tried for another transformation: I wanted to be born again.
I attended the proper service, waited for the proper moment, raised my hand and asked to be born again.
But it didn’t take.
I told the people at the evangelical church that I didn’t think it had taken, but at first they didn’t believe me.
Just wait they said.
Wait a little longer, they said.
Just a few more days, they promised.
That was in 1985.
Maybe it’s the tassel.
Maybe the difference between a graduate on paper, and someone who really feels as if they have had an educational transformation, is the tassel. 25 years ago I may have forgotten to flip it from one side of my ‘mortar board’, to the other.
Or maybe I flipped it to the wrong side.
At my son’s small, expensive, fabulously landscaped college though, they had all the bases covered. They actually had someone assigned just to make sure all tassels were correctly flipped at the penultimate moment.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s my faith that’s lacking, not his.
Perhaps parents are physically unable to see what’s plain to everyone else.
After all, it’s in the book. It’s printed on paper. Soon it will be published in a local newspaper.
Maybe the kid actually did it.
All hail the college graduate!

Toe Tingling Tales

2007-10-16T05:55:00.001-05:00

The end is near. Or rather, the end is obvious. That is, I now can see where the end begins, and it is a surprise, of sorts: not the end I thought it would be.
Most people expect the end will begin near the top, and work its way down. Those ends get all the publicity these days – and a large portion of our health care dollar. But for me, and countless others I suspect, it all begins –or ends, with the feet: the toes to be specific.
You begin to get careless, with your feet.
Not that any of us was ever were really careful with our feet: but then, we didn’t have to be. When I was a careless yoot - which is to say, by definition, “footloose and fancy free”, I went around barefoot all the time and, as a consequence, my feet took a real hammering - and it showed.
But those frequent stubs, whacks, smashes and crushings did not seem to merit any special attention, then. It didn’t seem to matter that, by the time I was fifteen, each big toe was already headed in opposite directions: it didn’t seem to have any effect on me at all (what does, at that age?).
I suppose if I had been a World Class Sprinter, or a toe model, or a ballet dancer, the effect of years of toe neglect might have been more apparent, a more serious matter. But for me, and most – the feet are simply transportation. No one looks too closely at the train they boarded at the station - until and unless it breaks down.
And even when a bus or a train, or a car breaks down – it doesn’t necessarily change our lives: it is usually a minor inconvenience, a temporary delay.
Ah but when the feet start to go, to really go, well, everything else follows quickly – no pun intended (well maybe a little pun intended).

This is not some abstract observation: it is difficult to observe the feet abstractly. Besides, any objectivity I might have possessed regarding my feet was lost, when I smashed the older brother of the pinkie toe on my right foot the other evening.
It’s a pathetic, but I am sure, familiar story.
I had stayed up late, watching some gruesome remake of a gruesome but technically unsophisticated B-Movie of the 50’s, and had fallen asleep on the couch. When I woke and turned off the television, I was surprised to find the entire first floor in darkness. I was still in that happy state of couch-bound semi-consciousness though, so I didn’t bother to turn on any lights. Instead, I shuffled robotically from the room, heading for the stairs, hoping to quickly regain full unconsciousness as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I never made it that far.
In my diminished state I forgot about the new bookcase around the darkened corner – an impediment which I had purchased some six months before just to have someplace to store excess stuff over Christmas. And though I seemed to be moving at a snail-like pace, I somehow managed to get every ounce of my 200-plus pounds behind that aforementioned toe as it slammed squarely in to the bottom of that faux-wooden furniture – hollow, lightweight furniture made deadly heavy by all of the weighty tomes that secured it to the earth.
It was a perfect shot.
A slam dunk.
If I had been hitting a golf ball off a tee with my toe, it would have gone 300 yards. Instead, that same energy shot out of that tiny appendage and then – having no place to go, rebounded directly into that same toe, crumbling its tiny little bones and producing the sound that a cheese curl makes when an eight year old boy is savoring its flavor.
I won’t bore you with the details.
I won’t describe for you the progression of colors and inflammation: how the toe blackened, the blood curdled at the juncture of toe and foot, the nail withered, and the other toes seemed to cringe in terror at the sight of their crumpled comrade.
The details of this specific toe’s demise in fact, matter very little. It is the resulting chain of events where your attention should be focused. Because, the lack of a toe – for all intents and purposes, created a series of related issues that far outweighed any pain that the actual broken toe produced.
You see, what you can’t do any more in the middle ages – or not nearly as efficiently as before – is compensate. I should say what “I can’t do anymore’.
Youth can be defined, accurately I think, as a kind of ‘compensation’ for what follows.
We are no more coordinated, or intelligent, or attractive than at any other time in our life when we are young – but we are able to compensate for our failings, and fallings. We say something stupid, and feign ignorance. We do something stupid, and feign ignorance.
The older person however, cannot compensate.
The wood has dried out.
The flexibility is gone.
We cannot take the day off, or sleep in.
Ignorance is no longer a valid excuse.
So from this toe bone turned to sawdust an army of ailments soon descended.
First, there was soreness in strange places.
Then twinges in odd places.
Then – like the sounds of far off celebrations on July 4th, small cannons and crackling strings of firecrackers could be heard going off.
My hips clicked.
My ankles popped.
My vertebrae jawed at one another.
It’s as if I was a plastic action figure that some sadistic kid had taken apart – arm by arm, leg by leg, and now someone had the unenviable task of putting me back together again.
It was all supposed to go together, but none of it seemed to fit.
It was all supposed to fit, but none of it seemed to go together.
For the lack of a toe the entire flesh-covered superstructure began to waver and wobble, and just staying upright became a challenge.
You know that song that goes, “the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone”, and so on? It should be rewritten to include the lynch pin of our entire ‘wouldn’t it be cool to walk upright’ facade: the toe bone!
For without the support of that peanut sized “falangeal” appendage there is additional strain on the calves, greater difficulty in balancing, additional twisting of the hips, and a host of otherwise insignificant muscles yanking on your back so that eventually the tension reaches all the way up from the hollow fold of skin that once housed a stout toe and pulls the chain on your skull.
Your head is the clapper in a giant bell.
It feels as if your brain is about to be sling-shot over the rooftops.
The end is near, and from what you can see it’s black and blue and curled up like Alladin’s favorite slippers.
What a way to go!

Don't Drink the Water

2007-05-18T11:42:00.000-05:00

The old-timers wink at one another and mutter something about the water. There’s something in the water.
But in Plymouth, that doesn’t seem to hold up.
What water are we talking about: saltwater, well water, town water? Clearly – in Plymouth at least, it’s not the water.
Maybe it’s something in the air.
Maybe it’s the nukes?
What can explain it?
What explanation is there – to cite just one example, for Selectperson Jean Loewenberg – a corporate attorney and otherwise intelligent woman, running around in the dark, uprooting political signs and tossing them into the woods?
Never mind that these signs were illegally placed on town property.
Never mind that every year for every local election the majority of political signs seemed to be placed on town, or state property.
Loewenberg must have known, in the corporate side of her brain, that what she was doing was bone-headed at best: but she could not control herself.
But what about the other local politicians – and/or their lackeys, who repeatedly ignore the town law regulating the placement of these signs?
You are only supposed to place signs on private property – with the permission of the property owners. This can be a laborious process – but, if followed, the end result would indicate actual support of a candidate.
As it is, if median strips could vote we’d have record turnouts!
But the abuse of the political sign bylaws is only one of many signs of the madness that affects Plymouth in the spring.
What about Karen Buechs?
What is it that induces Karen to run and run and run?
Honestly, I thought this was Karen’s year. I expected that – with no ballot issues to lure the locals away from their precious weekend barbeques and lawn work, Karen’s dedicated cadre of ‘Don’t Tread on Me” Anti-Tax, Pro-Mayor, semi-pro election workers would win the day.
She had quite a few signs, in more than one color (I think she may even have recycled some of her old signs, from previous campaigns).
Ms. Buechs even had several television shows on the local cable access channel, which she either produced or directed – on which normally self-absorbed hosts repeatedly urged people to vote for her.
But Plymouth has spoken, and once again they spoke a blend of Mandarin, Hip-Hop and Portuguese.
Karen is out, but Kenny is in?
Former Selectman Ken Tavares was ousted last year in the same election in which Ms. Buech’s efforts to move the town toward Mayoral government, were overwhelmingly repudiated at the polls.
And - in that same election, Tavares lost to an inexperienced candidate supported by Buechs.
That was of course, Sean Dodgson, who served only a few months on the board before he was arrested for – what he has said was, his own private investigation of online sexual predators.
Maybe that’s it – the source of this strange behavior: perhaps it’s not the water but, instead, our Internet stream that’s tainted with some kind of virus.
So last year Dodgson took Tavares’ seat on the board, and the ‘Open” slate (who Tavares strongly supported) was elected and – this year, Buechs is out and Tavares is back in?
Tavares actually received more votes than anyone running for a contested office this year, and will now occupy what will forever be known as the SDS (the Sean Dodgson Seat).
I’m confused but, in general, I think I’m happy with the results.
I didn’t really follow the campaigns of any of the candidates, so my votes were based on bias and political signs alone.
I was a big supporter of Mr. Luscz, largely because I couldn’t pronounce his name – at first. Driving through town, reading the signs out loud, I guessed it was ‘loots’ or ‘luge’ or ‘lux’. But then I received some of his campaign literature in the mail. On one of his cards it said, “How Duscz Pronounce His Name?”.
How can you not vote for a guy who says his name rhymes with fuzzy?
So Fuzzy Luscz got my vote – and lost.
I was generally unfamiliar with the candidates for School Committee, and hoped that inspiration would strike. In the booth I saw that Amy Heine’s full name – listed on the ballot, was Amy “Little” Heine.
I voted for Little Heine, and she lost too.
Beyond that I didn’t have much to go on.
Butch Machado seemed to have more signs than anyone else –at least in my neck of the woods, but I’d heard people say his candidacy was “Much Ado” about nothing. I didn’t vote for Butch – and he won.
The big winner, of the losers that is, was Jeffrey Simpson.
I don’t think he had any signs.
I don’t think he had any literature.
I didn’t vote for him and yet, somehow, he still lost, big.
With just 264 votes Mr. Simpson was the lowest vote getter of any candidate for any office.
I expect big things from Jeffrey.
Next year he’ll probably have signs on the highway, at the Pet Cemetery, on the roof of Wal-Mart and beyond.
And after that, who knows?
No one knows.
Isn’t it great!

Belated Anniversary Wishes

2007-05-18T11:40:00.000-05:00

I forgot. Another anniversary has come and gone without my acknowledgement.
I try to remember – honest I do, but there’s something wrong with me: something missing from my brain, when it comes to birthdays, anniversaries and such.
I should also admit that I have a convenient philosophical objection, to what I think is the endless marketing of anniversaries to sell everything from candy to cars.
Anyway, that’s my excuse.
What’s yours?
From what I can tell, you missed it too.
And I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that this was really more your anniversary than mine.
It was you that made such a big deal of it in the first place.
It was you, wasn’t it, who put up those flags on the overpass?
It was you who overwhelmingly, unabashedly, unreservedly approved of the invasion of Iraq, right?
Surely you couldn’t have forgotten, so soon, this important anniversary?
The end of the war in Iraq!
It’s been four years now, since ‘major combat operations’ ceased.
Don’t give me that sheepish grin.
You can pretend you missed the anniversary, but you can’t have forgotten that first celebration, four years ago, on an aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego.
Banners waving, flags flying, the President dressed down in his flight suit.
A dictatorship overthrown, an army defeated, an historic capital city captured, weapons of mass destruction, democracy, shock and awe, salutes and speeches, yadda yadda yadda.
And it only took a few billion dollars and a little more than a hundred American lives.
A bargain!
There hasn’t been an occasion like that – excluding of course Jerry Bruckheimer’s blockbuster production of Pearl Harbor - for more than four years.
So how did you forget it?
Where were you May 1st?
There were no parades, or solemn invocations – at least none that I heard of.
The day passed without fanfare, though later that same evening the President did make an appearance to talk about victory in Iraq, again.
Major combat operations ceased four years ago and, according to the President – any day now, victory will be in sight. In sight like the light at the end of the tunnel, I guess - a railway tunnel. Like a train bearing down on us.
I never thought that you could be nostalgic about war: but I really miss those days, those early days of peace in Iraq.
I miss all the fresh hype, the purple prose, the Country & Western Pop Star Propaganda. I miss the boyish antics of the President. The trips to the United Nations. The charts and graphs. The film footage of troops practicing getting into their biological warfare suits.
It was our own, 21st Century version of ‘duck and cover’.
Remember the ‘Axis of Evil’?
Remember ‘You can run, but you cannot hide’?
No, of course not: you’re quick on the draw, but a bit slow when it comes to the historical facts.
The Axis of Evil was Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, remember?
Today, after four years of what they are defining as ‘minor combat operations’, that Axis has grown.
What we have now, I suppose you might say, are Axes of Evil: a spider web of nations including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Indonesia, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Ethiopia, and a burgeoning terrorist underground.
A week doesn’t go by without a report – usually false, of a major Al Qaeda leader having been captured or killed. We used to have just ‘America’s Most Wanted” to look forward to: now we have “Today’s Top Ten Terrorists”.
A day doesn’t go by without reports of a car bomb, or a suicide bomber.
They have beheadings on YouTube and IED explosions on the Nightly News.
And a minute doesn’t go by without another government official admitting that the case for war was inflated, exaggerated, distorted or invented.
So, again, how could you have forgotten?
Where were you last Tuesday?
You didn’t even send a card, and they have such cute ones these days: cards for every occasion.
Here’s a few from the ‘Humorous Notes for the President’ section:
• “I know I said ‘Give Peace a Chance’”, written on the outside and, inside: “but I didn’t mean just one.”
• Or how about... “I believed you when you said, ‘Major Combat Operations have Ceased!” on the outside, and inside, “April Fools!”
• Or, “You’re not getting older” on the outside, and inside, “you’re just not as good a liar.”
• Or, “Let’s make it official”, on the outside, and inside, “you blew it.”
• Or just a simple “Belated Best Wishes on the Anniversary of the End of Major Combat Operations” on the outside. And inside a date that you can change to match the actual end of major combat operations.
Pick one out. Send it in.
It’s never too late to say you’re sorry.

A Bucket of Soldiers

2007-05-18T11:38:00.000-05:00

I need to have more faith in my children, and their world.
I need to believe that they too, will overcome the crap – there is no other word for it: the effluvia, the waste, the trash, the sugar-dipped, deep-fat fried flotsam and jetsam that is spewed their way by our pay-as-you-go society.
I think – to be fair, that they are entitled to more time, to get down to ‘brass tacks’ as my parents might have said.
We don’t come to responsibility – naturally: it has to be grafted onto our genetic predisposition to flee from danger.
Primitive man formed the original habit – run or be eaten, and then added on other reasons for moving on: drought, fire, pestilence, greener pastures, wanderlust, and the cute girls in the tribe just over the hill. And so on.
Thousands of years later we still instinctively follow the path of least resistance: but thousands of years later it is not necessarily in our best interest to do so.
Travel is nice, but it does not necessarily make you a better person.
What we all need – is real experience. We need challenges. We need situations in which we have to – to use another cliché, ‘put up or shut up’. But nowadays it is far harder to find those kinds of experiences.
So we send our kids to camp, or sign them up for football, or make them mow the lawn – and are surprised when, at 18, or 20, or 25, they still seem clueless as to what it takes to make their own way in life.
And seeing that lack of maturity, we over-react – I think, to the elements of their existence that we find most alien to our generation. We scapegoat television and video games, and the toys that – in the absence of real responsibility, take up so much of their lives.
That’s where this diatribe comes from, by the way – from trying to understand what it is about today’s toys that our children find so appealing.
This column comes out of a few minutes before bedtime spent listening to my son excitedly tell me about Decepticons and Autobots.
Otherwise known as, the Transformers!
I didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
From my adult perspective, they seemed a complete waste of time, and money.
I thought I knew all the relevant information: which is that Transformers are large, often expensive, very complicated toys that ‘transform’ back and forth between machine and humanoid.
To put it briefly: the Autobots are good, the Decepticons (deceivers?) bad.
It began with a few simple Transformers - originally introduced over 30 years ago, and since that time has grown into a literal empire of toys.
What really bothers me about Transformers, and many of the other toys sold to our children today, is the ‘back-story’ that they all come with. To justify each and every new Transformer that comes onto the market, the manufacturers have created an elaborate fictional universe.
Though usually you also have to buy the book, batteries, and take adult education classes in electrical engineering to put them together, the modern toy does not require imagination: it comes complete with its own universe, its own heroes and villains.
Transformers are not just a series of toys, but a toy religion.
When you purchase these toys, in a real sense, you are asked to believe, to buy in to their often stilted, illogical, violent world views.
That’s a far cry – I thought at first, from the simple toys I had as a child. Those toys didn’t usually come with elaborate stories, invented universes, or their own television shows and feature films. They came in buckets, or boxes, with little if any instructions.
You took them out, set them up, and used them until they wore out or you lost interest in them.
But then again, thinking of the buckets of toy soldiers I owned as a child – I wonder if it wasn’t the same challenge?
Though you could buy toy solders by the thousands, and set them up anyway you liked, perhaps the rules of play that we were supposed to abide by were not so different, and were equally as confining, as modern toys.
While the Transformers creators spent a great deal of time and effort – and money, to establish a story line for their toys, the manufacturers of the toys of my childhood simply took their ‘story lines’ for granted.
Boys played war games – tossing clods of dirt at opposing armies, or gunning down ‘Indians’. Girls were given far less exciting toys to play with – and almost all of them focused on the domestic environment that it was assumed lay ahead for them.
In many ways the ‘story lines’ of the toys of my youth were as stifling to the imagination as those of today’s toy companies – or worse.
And didn’t we overcome those assumptions?
It’s a question worth asking.
I’d like to think that, despite all the time I spent digging in the dirt, positioning my tanks and bazooka-men for the big battle, that I was able to imagine a world without constant warfare.
I’d like to think that despite my love for the simple game of marbles, that I am able to handle the complexities of the real world.
There is very little about Transformers, or many of the similar toys and games that occupy so much of our children’s lives, that I find appealing. They are wonderfully engineered, but that’s about it.
I would rather my son do a hundred other things with his time, before he gets out his Cybertrons, or his Pokemon cards, or his Game Boy.
I will do anything, and everything I can, to make sure he knows he has other options, options that won’t just eat up the hours and ruin his eyesight.
But I need to have more faith that, in the end – given time and patience, he will be able to overcome the artificial, be able to see through the superficial, understand that there are better things to do with his time, better ways to live his life.
Maybe that’s how Transformers work.
After all the time spent putting the things together, snapping in the batteries, and reading the instruction you find yourself looking for better ways to help your children play, learn, and mature.
Cool!

Don't Mention It

2007-05-18T11:37:00.000-05:00

“All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences, and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.” The Plague, by Albert Camus

The Egyptians may have had it right.
If Pharaoh, or anyone of prominence in ancient Egypt, did something really stupid – all record of their existence was obliterated.
Whether their name had been inscribed on a hundred granite obelisks, or a forty foot likeness had been carved into a cliff of stone, certain deeds were punished by absolute, eternal obscurity.
Their names were rubbed out.
Their statues toppled.
Their tombs filled with sand.
Of course eternal obscurity is not something you cannot guarantee. Historians and archaeologists have managed to piece together the names – and stories, of those the ancients tried to obscure.
But still, I think they had the right idea – and it wasn’t the obscure notion of a ancient culture: it was a basic emotional instinct that, I think, needs to be re-awoken in so-called modern man.
We have got to stop erecting monuments to evil.
Of course we don’t have obelisks, anymore – at least no one in my circle of friends does: but we do have many new ways in which notoriety is achieved.
The digital world is a kind of earth-sized board game, where with a roll of the electronic dice, it seems, anything can happen.
You Tube, Face Book, blogs, and the traditional media serve as a kind of fractured magic mirror in which our bloated vanity is reflected – though often it is only ourselves who care to look.
Still, there is at least the illusion of a digital democracy – and, as a result, the widespread fantasy that what is most often bad poetry, or amateur photography, or misbegotten philosophy, exists on the same level as that of the famous poet, the brilliant photographer, and the renowned philosopher.
And, at most, it is simply that – an illusion, or perhaps, a personal delusion: pathetic perhaps, but usually harmless.
Harmless, that is, until the kid with the cell phone, or the untalented starlet, or the so-called radio personality steps over the line. At which time their questionable beliefs and talent-free creations are metaphorically attached to a cable, pulled aloft, and dragged across the horizon where they cannot be ignored.
Stupidity, brutality, vanity: instead of guaranteeing obscurity, for those that perform an action that contains an over-abundance of any one of those attributes, they can expect fame and even fortune, instead.
The worse the action – the larger the monument we erect.
We have got things bass ackward!
I’m not suggesting we create laws which re-institute the digital equivalents of the stocks, or flogging, or corporal punishment, to try and impede certain behavior. But I am saying that we have to do more than ‘understand’ (as some media giants offer up as an excuse) that notoriety is a real reward, a real motivation.
Anna Nicole was a lousy mother, whose ditzy, drugged out behavior was rewarded time and time again, and who – when she died of an overdose of every pill she could lay her hands on, was turned into a Movie of the Week!
Cross her out!
Imus was a foul-mouthed, ex-drug addict, talk show host whose only excuse was that he was an equal-opportunity offender.
Turn him off!
And now the mentally ill man at Virginia Tech – whose name I refuse to mention, who lived only as long as it took him to plan and execute his media extravaganza.
Erase his name!
Stop giving these pathetic individuals attention.
Stop giving these idiots hours and hours of so-called ‘news coverage’.
Don’t put their faces on magazine covers.
Delete their web sites.
Don’t pay people who knew them, for telling us what they were like before they made the big time.
The only reasonable, human reaction to the murder of nearly three dozen members of the Virginia Tech community, was stunned shock.
The only reason for television cameras on the Virginia Tech campus after this crime, was to witness the grief.
The only commentary that we should have heard from the talking heads that flocked to Blacksburg like vultures to a carcass, was silence.
The first thing we need to do is expunge every public mention of the sad little man who wanted so badly for someone to notice him.
Let the historians have him. Let the psychologists have him.
But for the rest of us, erase him from the papers, the television, and the internet. To do otherwise is to trivialize tragedy, and encourage imitation.
To do otherwise is to build another monument to evil.

Spring Fever, 2007

2007-05-18T11:36:00.000-05:00

Forget NASCAR.
Forget the Kentucky Derby.
Forget the Sadie Hawkins Day Race.
Forget the rush to the hardware store for plywood and duct tape when the weatherman says a hurricane is headed your way.
The camera crews may miss it, and it rarely makes the nightly news, but there is no greater mad dash in America than that which takes place in New England when we get a sunny Saturday in April.
April showers bring May flowers is a cute little weather cliché that does little to mask the madness that spreads like a brushfire when we get one good day out of 30 at this time of year.
You would think we would know what’s coming by now, and organize ourselves ahead of time. There are those among us who have their mowers tuned up, their fertilizer bags stacked, and the Tiki lamps fueled and at the ready well before the end of March – but they are still not immune to the fever.
It seems to sneak up on us, every year.
Leading up to this past Saturday, April had been typically murky. The drabness of the weather even seemed bearable, especially in consideration of the way the recently departed winter had wimped out – at least ‘round here.
But make no mistake, the cold, the gray, and the occasional snow had still taken a toll, psychologically, on all of us, and we were more than ready - in fact well beyond eager - we were actually chomping at the bit (or on the remote control if a bit wasn’t readily available) for a chance get off the couch and do something, anything, as long as we were doing it under a shining sun.
And then of course – perfect timing, a massive storm began moving through the country – left to right, with the weathermen gleefully promising that we would soon be swimming in it, literally, for days.
If you had forgotten, you realized then that April showers, in fact, bring flooded basements, turn charming country roads into boulevards of mud, and seem to carry with them more than their fair share of viruses that had – my theory, lay dormant in the cold soil until this time of the year.
And so – along with the normal chorus of sneezes and sniffles, a wave of panic swept from house to house, from Bangor to Hartford, as everyone realized at the same time that “this might be the last sunny Saturday for weeks!”
The race was on!
At Lowes and Home Depot the stainless steel gas barbeques were lined up like storm troopers, for as far as the eye could see – and soon began boarding a thousand oversized SUVS.
At a dozen or so lawn and garden stores, endless trays of flowers were teased into bloom and pushed out the door faster than burgers at a fast food joint.
That vibration you felt underfoot as you tentatively tread your soggy lawn for the first time in several months, wasn’t a minor earthquake, it was Roto-Tillers by the hundreds, turning the earth inside out.
That buzzing sound you heard wasn’t the long awaited Killer Bees, finally moving north from Texas; it was fertilizer companies in their cute little pastel trucks, swarming into your suburban enclave.
Were there games being played at the town’s ballfields? Not really. But the recreations areas were crowded with aspiring Little League coaches who sought to prove their mettle by wheeling load after load of loam onto the ballfields, which the weather, a day or so later, licked off the base paths like frosting off a cake.
According to statistics gathered by my crack team of crank callers:
1673 new mailboxes were installed on this sunny Saturday.
45,555 pounds of weed and feed were spread, in clumps and clods and the occasional fine spray of pellets.
Though there was no precipitation it still rained - buckets of mulch.
1104 moldy plastic pieces of deck furniture were rescued from sheds, carefully evaluated, and then taken to the dump.
1773 new pieces of plastic deck furniture were rapidly purchased and promptly put on the deck where the expected rainfall would soon begin to lay the foundation for new mold and mildew.
Enough charcoal was sold to power the space shuttle, and men braver than me stood out in the cold that evening, in short sleeves, talking to themselves, waving tongs and knives in the air, under the delusion that they were having a summer barbeque.
Liquor stores reported that beer purchases were way, way, up, but – according to my friend Dan, with temperatures in the high 40’s consumption lagged.
Baseball gloves sold like hotcakes, while hotcake sales were slow.
In order to accommodate the madness, the Cape Cod Tunnel was open to all, and the Red Sox played with the dome open.
Rome wasn’t built in a day – the saying goes, but New Englanders took their best shot at it this past Saturday.

Celebrity Cannibal

2007-05-18T11:34:00.000-05:00

At bath time, for no particularly reason, we used to tell my youngest son the story of Virgil the Worm, who ate his entire family.
It wasn’t a Jeffery Dahmer tale, full of ghastly, ghoulish monsters.
It was just your usual, harmless child’s fable – with cannibals and frightening metamorphoses.
One day, the story goes, Virgil went to kindergarten and the teacher, somewhat insensitively, remarked on his diminutive stature.
Actually, when you tell this story you’re supposed to say that the teacher said – in a kind of childish, toothless voice, “Virgil, how come you’re so small?”
In the story Virgil just shrugs, indifferent to his stature at first. But on the way home that day he starts to think about the teacher’s comment and, before the bus arrives at his stop, he vows to grow by any means necessary: (there is no dialogue to that effect, but it is implied by the action that follows).
The next day Virgil goes to school again - a changed worm, and the teacher remarks, “Virgil, how’d you get so big?”
While you’re telling this, you use your hands to indicate that Virgil is now, ‘this much bigger’.
And Virgil replies: “I ate my little sister.”
Suffice it to say that each day Virgil gets bigger, as he eats his way through his entire family: little sister, little brother, big sister, big brother, and so on and so on.
You can make the story as long as you like: just add or delete family members on the way.
The punch line, of a sort, is that after eating his mother and father and growing to over a yard in length (‘this big!’), the very next day Virgil shows up at school at his original, puny, inch and three-quarters length.
And when his teacher asks him what happened, he replied… “I burped”.
My God, Bobby loved that story.
I am not sure if it was the notion of eating all available relatives, rapid growth, or the slapstick image of Virgil ‘burping’ up his entire clan, but when the punch line was delivered he would practically go limp with laughter, sliding down into the tub like a trained seal.
I started thinking about that old story this week, when I heard the latest Keith Richard’s fable.
‘Keef’, the story goes, snorted his father’s ashes – mixed in, of course, with a little of the old Kickapoo Joy Juice.
I don’t believe the story and, in fact, Keef now denies it too. It seems he was having a bit of fun with journalists who would like nothing better than for him to admit such things.
People are going to make these things up about him anyway, so why not get in on the action. It is almost an obligation of the famous, to regularly astound us with their normalcy – which is, to say, their stupidity.
‘Keef’, the eager journalist asks, ‘where’d you learn to play guitar’?
“I snorted Chuck Berry”.
‘Keef’, the next in line queries, ‘where’d you learn to play that lick’?
“I snorted Jimi Hendrix”.
It’s nice, isn’t it, to have celebrities around to ridicule, when we’re feeling blue, but the truth, I think, is that WE are the cannibals. We are the ones who, given the opportunity, would snort up starlets and sports stars and anyone who was somehow famous, and do it without any kind of ‘chaser’. We are the ones, who everyday arrive at school, or work, wearing the designated designer clothes of our favorite soap store, the baseball caps of our famous team, the tee shirt with our favorite band’s logo, the tattoos that reveal our desired tribal affiliation.
Whatever happened to, so-called, individuality?
At one time, in the not too distant past – there was at least a token nod given to being an individual – with all of the quirks and eccentricities that come with going your own way. But perhaps it was naive to think that individuality stood a chance in this, or any age.
And perhaps our worship – our devouring of everything allegedly famous, is our last gasp attempt to be unique, by being anything but who we are.
You might argue that individuality today, is the sum of our desires.
And that may work - for now at least.
But as we watch, science is bridging the gap between who we desire to be, and who we appear to be.
In a few years (I Predict!) celebrity body parts are going to be big, huge, humongous, and mostly importantly - affordable!
Apart from the obvious desire for certain starlets’ partlets, I think the cloning industry will concentrate on those parts that they can reproduce in quantity, cost effectively.
A celebrity breast cloning and transfer, for example, would require a complex, relatively slow, and medically dangerous series of procedures.
If you want Brittney’s Best, it could cost you a fortune, so why not just go with the artificial.
But what about buying some famous somebody’s lips, or lobes, or nails?
How about Beyonce’s lashes?
What if you could grow a movie star’s hair in the privacy of your own home?
Scented soap will be made from the cloned bones of the beautiful people.
Jennifer Lopez – so well preserved after all these years, will have a designer line of genetic knock-offs.
And when this happens the only thing that will separate one clone from another, will be their credit card numbers.
I don’t mean to preach, it just comes out that way. I am not immune to this celebrity fever. To be imperfectly honest, I once worked at Mass General’s laboratories in Charlestown, where I had access to the early research in this area. And they were only too happy to let me – and any other cash-starved youth, volunteer for product testing.
You sign a waiver, you let them inject you, you get a check.
In this case though, I also acquired great personal beauty.
For a time I had Robert Plant’s voice.
For a while, I had Mick Jagger’s lips.
For several years, I had Roger Daltrey’s hair.
I became addicted to celebrity parts, which I just kept adding one after the other until no one recognized me, though everyone said I looked ‘very familiar’.
And then one day it all went away.
One day I was cool, young, hip, and handsome.
And the next day I had the puffer fish face I was born with.
You know the story.
You know what happened.
I burped.

The Headless Woman, and Other Stories..

2007-05-18T11:33:00.000-05:00

I heard that there is a native tribe in Arizona building an elaborate diving board on the edge of the eastern edge of the Grand Canyon.
I’m told they see it as the final solution to the problem of the White Man, and as a convenient, if ironic method for raising funds for the tribe’s own social service programs.
It’s not the horseshoe shape of the viewing platform that their brothers on the far side of the Canyon recently finished – it is, as I said, a diving board: a narrow rectangle that sticks out over the edge of the canyon.
“You get a great last look” one of the tribal elders allegedly said, “from a series of rapidly different perspectives.”
“Go west young man” a member of the tribe supposedly interjected, and the others tittered nervously.
The diving board to eternity won’t be finished for 18 months, but I hear they already have thousands of reservations.
I’m not surprised.
We have been in such a hurry since we came to this continent.
It’s been as if Filene’s Basement held their wedding gown sale every day for 400 years running.
As soon as the doors opened the brides-to-be rushed in, grabbing land, claiming mineral rights, building factories, and taking no prisoners as they marched from sea to shining sea in search of a better quality of life.
What exactly quality of life consists of however, has evolved, over the years.
At first, it was simply surviving.
Then it was owning – the water, the woods, other humans.
Then we got the notion that quality of life had something to do with personal freedom – so, after killing each other by the hundreds of thousands, we decreed that whatever an individual believed quality of life was, that individual had to respect the lives of other humans.
Unless Congress said so.
Eventually in our search for a better quality of life we reached the end of the continent, divvied up the remaining resources, let everyone vote, and realized that the only thing that was left to fight for – was life itself.
And so we demanded more time to figure things out.
…
I went to a side show at a county fair years ago, and saw The Headless Woman.
She’d been decapitated in a freak car accident – a man in a white smock solemnly explained, but an enterprising young man who happened upon her body moments after the accident, was able to preserve her.
So there she sat, a perfect specimen - save for the absence of her head.
Plastic tubes – allegedly providing a gas that supposedly provided nutrients and kept her skin supple and pinkish, came out of her neck.
Volunteers – the smocked pseudo-scientist called for: anyone who wished could ‘step right up’ and pinch the flesh of her calf, thereby assuring themselves of her reality.
I stepped forward then, and in a sense that is what I am doing here now: stepping forward and giving a philosophical pinch to our society’s obsession with extended life for its own sake.
The reality is – as I see it, is that too many of us live beyond our physical abilities.
The sad truth is, more and more of us live well beyond our mental ability to take care of ourselves in old age.
The hard truth is that we are extending life beyond our ability to afford it.
We simply live too long.
There are tubes coming out of the place where our head should be.
…
Then there’s the joke about the Englishman, the Mexican, and the Texan, flying home from a vacation in Hawaii, when the one of their plane’s two engines breaks.
We need two volunteers, the Captain comes over the intercom, saying: unless two passengers are ejected, the whole plane will crash into the sea.
“God Save the Queen,” the Englishman yells, and leaps out of the plane.
“Remember the Alamo”, the Texan yells, and throws out the Mexican.
No, I am not volunteering. I am not interested in seeing the Grand Canyon, up close and personal, not yet at least.
I’m part of the problem, and I know it.
I can see the end coming, but the closer it gets the more reasons I can find for avoiding it.
I am young – relatively speaking, but I am already sure that when I am in my eighties or nineties, I will be the exception to the rule.
One of the fastest growing age groups – at least in this country, are those between 65 and 80, and that age group requires more and more of society’s resources to support them, or should I say – to resuscitate them.
With rare exceptions, if you live beyond your seventies you will need to go back to the factory for repairs, replacements, lube jobs and such.
New knees, new hips, new teeth, new hair – and that is just for starters.
And for the most part they can make you ‘like new’.
But I am not sure I want to be a collector’s item.
Is the car that is kept in a garage all year long, still a car?
There is something to be said for the dignity of the rusted out old Buick, sitting in the weeds on the side of the road, where it finally broke down.
But I don’t have an answer, or a solution.
I just see the problem, see it growing, and see it affecting everyone, of every age.
My father is 85, and obnoxiously healthy. But other family members are near permanent residents of the nearby hospitals and rehabilitation centers.
We have learned to survive, well beyond our natural years.
It may take centuries, for understanding to catch up.

Leaving Room for Hunger

2007-03-31T11:10:00.000-05:00

If you believe the critics, public schools can’t teach the ABC’s because of the Killer B’s: bullies, bureaucrats, and broken-down buildings.
I worry more about efficiency.
Today’s public school is a marvel of modern organization: a beehive of activity.
But where are they hiding the honey?
In my elementary days, things weren’t nearly as neat and tidy.
I remember, as a child, arriving at school everyday with a delicious sense of dread. I remember hushed accounts of spanking machines, and teachers that were odd, unusual, even spooky – at least to my literally untutored eyes. I will never forget one particularly sweet matron – a third grade teacher who honestly, earnestly believed in elves. So maybe I am romanticizing a time that was not exactly the golden age of education.
Perhaps.
Certainly today’s teachers are better educated than ever before, and deserve to be considered ‘professionals’, and paid accordingly.
But I am worried that we are squandering their skill, and surrendering our children to – heaven forbid, the statisticians!

A week ago Wednesday was my son’s first experience with that sausage-maker known in Massachusetts as the THE MCAS – and, coincidentally, was also the last day of his first journey through The Lord of the Rings.
Mary read the entire Lord of the Rings to him, out loud, every night (for the most part) over more than 100 days.
Nothing, I think, could be more stimulating to his brain, and important to his ‘development’, than to go along on that Journey with Tolkien.
At times he was exhilarated.
At times he was in tears.
There were occasions when he was angry, with the author and the world.
Who was this man called Strider?
Who were those dark riders?
Why did Sam choose to stay in the shire, while Bilbo and Sam and Gandalf, sailed away to the Havens?
But then, you may never have had the pleasure of reading The Lord of the Rings. Certainly though, you have felt the thrill that great writing, or travel, or a chance encounter can produce: that jolt of current down your spine?
It is the intensity of our experiences, I believe, that forge our character – not the accumulation of information.
You want facts, try a phone book.
A phone book is an efficient transmitter of facts.
A phone book however, does not have complexity, and is short on emotion. A phone book offers little in the way of adventure, and requires absolutely no imagination.
Like the MCAS.
I’m concerned that the MCAS getting in the way of our children’s education.
Are we forgetting about the joy of learning because the focus is on developing the skill of testing?
Is the entire educational experience being slowly boiled down to a series of rubbery, tasteless, tests?
Try and imagine your favorite book, reduced to a list of names of characters, incidents of plot, and other abstract facts. That would be like coming home from a cross-country trip, with nothing but snapshots of highway signs to tell the story.
Exit 3, Tom Bombadil.
Exit 7, The Orcs
Exit 17: The Eye of Sauron.
That is what I fear our focus on testing, our obsession with grades, and our panic about college admissions, is attempting to do: reduce the educational experience to its least common denominator.
I don’t fault the teachers.
The teachers I know are valiantly trying to fight the power. If they had their way their classrooms would be colorful, vibrant places full of mystery and magic, and adventure.
But they are up against a society that is content to feed their children, calorie-free canned experiences – and then expects teachers to somehow fill in the blanks.
It’s impossible.
I think we need to choose. Either school should be an enriching experience that awakens young minds to the possibilities of the world – and trusts them to choose their own path in their own time, or it can be a training camp – a rehearsal for the drudgery that awaits them.
I am, of course, using a thick, broad brush to make a point.
Drudgery doesn’t necessarily await all those who attend public schools – far from it.
The MCAS is not the Eye of Sauron, keeping an unblinking watch on the slaves of public education.
But at the very least the eye of the student is being jaundiced by our focus on what we like to call ‘results’.
If we train their minds, but fail to exercise their emotional musculature, we should not be surprised when they perform well on the standardized tests, but collapse at their first encounter with the unpredictable world that awaits them.

When the last words of The Lord of the Rings were left dangling in the air, Patrick was not happy. He couldn’t understand why the ‘Fellowship’ could not stay together. He yearned for a sugary ending but was given - even in this epic fantasy, something bittersweet instead.
Evil was defeated, for now, but the Shire did not escape unscathed.
Lives were lost, and even for those that survived there were scars, aches, and remorse that would not fade with time.
In the end Patrick didn’t have pictures.
In the end, he didn’t have any so-called facts.
When the story was over, he didn’t even receive a fancy certificate.
After 1100 pages all Patrick had was an unrecognized hunger: an emptiness in his gut that could not be satisfied by any standard fare.
I just hope that all of this testing, leaves some room for that.

A Homely Refresher

2007-03-31T11:09:00.000-05:00

Paranoia is, of course, our most valuable natural resource.

Without paranoia we would be Switzerland.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Switzerland.
Paranoia fueled our western expansion.
Paranoia sunk the Maine!
And paranoia, for the most part, re-elected a President who wasn’t qualified to manage the local Burger King, much less a country.
Not that there’s anything wrong with managing a Burger King.
Just that I think I should be pre-excused for saying that the end is near, and China is its name.
I’d like a pre-emptive pardon for my paranoid ramblings.
Need more evidence of paranoid delusions before you let me off the patriotic hook?
How about this: I like the idea of America in the Avis spot: you know, we’re number two, so we try harder.
I’m not a hater, I love America. But I think I’d even like it too, if we showed a bit of humility.
Even if you think we’re still sitting pretty, you have to admit that it’s hard being the leader of the free world, the richest nation, and the inventors of both baseball and Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.
I think it’s about time someone else stepped up to the plate: and who better than the Chinese?
Walmart had their chance, and they blew it.
India has potential but is – I will come right out and say it, too English.
Australia has the right attitude, but that’s about all.
China’s got it all.
They’ve got more Walmarts than, well, Walmart.
They’ve got more potential mall rats than India.
They’ve got more attitude than Australia too – but they keep it to themselves.
And most importantly, the Chinese want it too – they want it real bad.
They’ve got an ancient porcelain chip on their shoulder.
At one time – a few thousand years ago, China had the title but, ironically, no one outside of China had a clue.
You’ve got to feel for all those old empires, don’t you: the Persians, the Macedonians, the Egyptians - and the Chinese? They all had their turn at ruling the world, but that was long before the World Wide Web – so who knew.
And there was something about that old title too, ‘Ruler of the Known World’: it had a kind of built-in asterisk; kind of like adding, ‘relatively speaking’ to every compliment.
You’re damn good looking – relatively speaking.
Your breath’s not bad – relatively speaking.
You rule – relatively speaking.
Today, America still is the Undisputed World Champion – and we’ve got the Gold Nuclear Warheads to prove it. But our time is running out.
We’re doing the Ali rope-a-dope, but taking shots in all hemispheres.
If this were baseball, we’d be the Yankees: a lot of trophies in the case, but with a bloated payroll full of overblown egos.
The other nations respect us sure, and hate us at the same time.
But they won’t have America to kick around, for too much longer.
The handwriting – or should I say, calligraphy, is on the wall.
Green Tea is the key.
At least Green Tea is the source of my paranoia.
Not the tea itself, but the secret message on the packet the tea comes in.
Remember when we used to laugh at the silly misspellings that the Japanese would make, on the packages their cute little transistor radios came in?
Remember when anything cheap, brightly colored, and plastic had a ‘Made in China’ imprint, somewhere underneath?
Today, Pacific Rim countries, like China and Japan, provide us with most of our cars, most of our electronics, most of our dishes, most of our take-out food, and – for me, nearly all of my daily required dosage of paranoia.
You would think that they could afford to pay someone to learn to speak and write English – so that they could correct the silly misspellings and odd phrases that appear on products made there, and sold here.
Actually, they can afford it.
American businesses now spend millions training their employees on their culture – so that we can sell more to them.
The difference is that we’re concerned that we will be left out of their markets, and they aren’t – concerned that is.
How do I know this?
Paranoia, pure and simple.
I know because the nice people at the new Chinese restaurant told me.
Well, they didn’t exactly sit me down and lecture me on international business, but they might as well have.
On the packet of green tea that was dropped into the bottom of my take-out order were a series of Chinese calligraphic symbols, and underneath, a translation - of sorts.
Green Tea, the label suggested, has a “Fragrant Aroma”.
Green Tea is also, the translation noted, a “Valuable Gift”.
Green Tea has - a third phrase promised, a “Mellow Taste”.
And finally, Green Tea is, the packet concludes, a “Homely Refresher”.
I laughed at that final attribute.
I laughed first because, at least in part, the phrase was silly: an obvious mistake.
I laughed as well at the oddity of the phrase, ‘homely refresher’.
I kidded my wife: “you”, I said to Mary, “are a homely refresher”.
“You’re refreshingly homely”, she countered.
We both laughed, but then it hit me.
“Homely Refresher” was not a mistake.
It was purposefully left as is, as a message to all Chinese that, economically at least, they don’t have to care anymore.
Now they can act like Americans have, for the last fifty years.
We don’t bother to learn other languages – we expect them to learn ours!
We never could bother to learn their customs and traditions – we expected them to know ours!
But the worm has turned.
Now they have the numbers, the cash, and a culture that we are scrambling to understand.
China - FYI, has a history that goes back before the Yankees won their first pennant.
China had immigration problems before we had people on this continent.
The Chinese actually managed to build a giant wall at their border – three thousand years before we started ours, to keep out undocumented Mongolian farm workers.
It didn’t work either, but it’s a big tourist attraction today.
And word is that they’ve been working on that old wall, working on it at night: adding steel reinforcement bars, infra-red surveillance cameras, razor wire, and more.
When asked what they were up to, a Chinese official said that these were just ‘aesthetic improvements’. Pressed further, he said that they were just addressing some ‘safety concerns’. Put on the spot, he acknowledged that it was part of a national plan to modernize China, to be more competitive in the world economy.
The plan was called, he said, “A Homely Refresher”
Hey, even paranoid people are right – some of the time..

Daylight Spending

2007-03-31T11:07:00.000-05:00

I don’t know about you, but I’ve already spent my extra daylight savings.

Tuesday was a bit gloomy, at least around here – and I wanted to go to the Cape to take some pictures: so I spent the whole wad that afternoon.
Easy come, easy go!
Spending that daylight, I was reminded of the big tax breaks we’ve all been receiving over the last four or five years.
It’s nice to get the check - $400 I think it was, last time: but if you blow a tire, or crack a filling, it goes pretty quick.
And you pay a pretty big price – all told, for your little check.
That is, to give back that extra $400 to everybody, the government has to make some serious cuts in their budget.
You get your filling replaced, but a school in Arkansas goes without a new roof, and a road in Maine is left unpaved, and an AIDS Clinic shuts down in Tucson.
Are the two – federal taxes and daylight savings, related?
Consider the source.
I tend to look at all of these governmental ‘gifts’, with a bit more than a dose of skepticism.
At best, I think, the government is guilty of a lack of imagination.
At worse, well, I’ll leave that to you.
Now my idea of daylight savings goes a bit further than the tinkering we are recovering from this week.
This is the computer age: everything –from battleships to stuffed animals, uses computer chips today.
With all that digital technology it seems both possible, and preferable, for time to be measured in relation to the actual amount of sunlight available to – not rationed out in bits and pieces.
First of all, and to avoid confusion, my idea is to have two different kinds of time (at least at first): Schedule Time, and Experiential Time.
Schedule Time would be the same, everywhere, for everyone – though allowing of course, for differences based on time zones: so planes could schedule their trips, and buses could be there to meet them, and people could make reservations at restaurants and then break them.
That’s Schedule Time.
But then there’d be Experiential Time – which would be based on the way that we experience time.
In Experiential Time (ET) high noon would always be in the exact middle of the ‘day’ – when the sun is directly overhead, and the number of minutes of so-called daylight before and after noon would be based on the number of minutes of daylight actually available to you at that longitude, at that time of year.
In the winter the days would actually be shorter.
In the summer the days would actually be longer.
An hour of day in the summer might be 65 minutes long.
An hour of day in the winter might be 55 minutes long.
Experiential time would not be measured at night – that is, after the sun sets and before the sun rises. The overall length of night would be all that matters – and that would change, depending on the usual factors.
My sense is that once adopted – in no time at all, experiential time would be the only time.
And from there we could move on, to better uses of the time available to us.
We could, for example, have an official ratings potential for days, based on the expected weather, the amount of sunlight, and other seasonal and/or cultural details.
If the forecast called for a highly rated day, with perfect temperatures, low pollen counts, a sky with only the occasional wandering cloud - and this happened to be the time of year that wild strawberries were ripening in the fields – both work and school would be cancelled.
If the forecast called for a reasonably good day – by most measurements, and this was the anniversary of the day you got your first tattoo – take the day off!
Instead of notices of cancellations scrolling by at the bottom of your television, there would simply be a short note: take tomorrow off, and enjoy!
If, on the other hand, a day was expected to be particularly bleak - regardless of what day of the week or time of year, or even if it was your 50th anniversary, school would be in session, and everyone would have to go to work.
Of course there would always be the possibility of the odd, unexpectedly good day – which we would miss out on, but that would be unavoidable.
This wouldn’t simply change sleeping habits, it would change lives.
There would be no summer vacation because people would be enjoying themselves throughout the year.
Of course there would be those who try and take advantage of the situation – working on days that everyone has off. But there would be ways of dealing with these anti-social types.
Pay rates – for example, would be pro-rated based on the quality of the day.
Those working on good days would receive far less than those working on gloomy days.
It’s just common sense – and it would be infectious.
Instead of giving people meaningless tax breaks, maybe we’d give them the things they need to enjoy life, and go from there.
Health Care would be free.
Gasoline would be free.
Education would be free.
Electricity would be free.
The things we need simply to survive – the government would provide: isn’t that the way it is supposed to be?
In turn we would work hard – on those less than perfect days, and with no worries, we’d probably be more creative, more productive and - as a nation, a lot easier to get along with.
Have you noticed? Lately we’ve been pretty cranky – nationally speaking.
I don’t think that – as a nation, we’re getting enough sleep.
I don’t think that, nationally speaking again, we have enough time off.
Sorry Ben, Daylight Savings Time – no matter how much you tinker with it, doesn’t really do much of anything for anybody.
If we’re going to save daylight – or cut taxes, let’s make it worthwhile.
Not just a few minutes, here or there.
Not just a few dollars – tossed at us from Air Force One.
Otherwise, what’s the point?

Chump Change

2007-03-31T11:03:00.002-05:00

You heard the news?
Yes, it’s true.
I appreciate the advice, but I already have a plan.
Sure, $287 million is a lot of money, but it’s just money: I won’t have any trouble spending it.
I’ll do things my way though, and start off slow.
Everybody runs off and buys a half-dozen cars, a new house or two, a boat – stuff like that.
But I’ll start with the things that are really important.
The things that really separate us from the rich.
Like drips.
The first thing I am going to do is have a plumber in to fix the drips.
Where the other half lives – or so I am told, it’s very quiet.
Mostly because they don’t have drips.
A bigger well too.
A sure sign of my middle class status is the well pump coming on, every time someone flushes the toilet.
From now on, whenever anybody ‘goes’, no one will know.
I guess that means more toilets, too.
And showers: I want one of my own – just mine. And I know, from experience, the only way that you have something of your own, is when everyone else has their’s too.
Of course I’ll have to bring the plumbers in when it’s dark, in unmarked vans – which means overtime.
But I can’t risk anyone seeing a plumbing truck in my driveway for a month or so. That’s a sure sign that I won the lottery. And if anyone guesses, I’ll need another bathroom too, for guests.
So okay – what’s that come to? About $50,000?
Peanuts!
Next the house. Not a new house, an improved house.
I’ve still got the 10x12 deck that came with the house. It would be nice to have a new deck, a bit bigger, with some built in-amenities. Nothing too fancy, just a little more room to maneuver. In fact, I hate grass, so I think I’ll just surround the entire house with deck, maybe a few big flower pots, one of those all-season fireplaces, and a lap pool. No, not a lap pool, one of those tide pools, where you can practice surfing or being swept out to sea.
Nothing fancy, just a nice deck. About $75K.
Drop in the bucket!
And you know something – now that I can afford it, I want to invite those poor raccoons back in. Put a few doggie doors in both sides of the attic, and build them a little play area. Maybe some close circuit infra-red cameras so we can watch them at night
I’m sorry. Mary’s giving me a dirty look, and she’s right. I got carried away there. Forget the raccoons, at least for now.
What about a room of my own – or better yet, a little cabin out back, where I can work undisturbed (or not work, undisturbed). Nothing fancy, just a room, with a toilet and shower – nice sound system, satellite dish.
I can buy one of those pre-built garden shacks, and have it dressed up a bit: a little landscaping, a few shrubs for privacy, a nice stone walk. Then again, maybe it would be nice if it could be used by guests too: relatives we don’t like but can’t turn away.
Figure on about $100,000, give or take.
Chump change!
Mary’s signaling me from the couch, and she’s right again.
Before I go putting in a little shack in the backyard, I might want to address some of the other shortcomings of our present abode.
It would be nice to have a doorbell that works. Now we can afford to splurge on chimes that play ‘Satisfaction’.
We’re going to need a new roof, too. Now we can have any color we want.
Shingles. And not just the ones that need replacing – all of them!
A garage, where we can hide the cars that usually end up on blocks in the backyard.
Security system, to keep out the relatives.
A new refrigerator.
That’s another sign of real money – a fancy refrigerator. Rich folk always have oversized refrigerators, filled with fresh produce, a bottle or two of champagne, and space.
You know somebody is doing alright, when you look in their refrigerator and there’s space.
I want one of those oversized, silver ones, too big for the kitchen. I want one that dispenses water, and beer, and whipped cream.
And paint!
No, not a refrigerator that dispenses paint, just paint!
No, not just paint: an actual painter – a pro to go over all the places where I made a mess of things.
And new carpet too.
Not the durable kind that stands up to wear and tear – the fuzzy, thick, colorful kind that folks that really can’t afford it worry about staining.
Better yet, oriental rugs that you really shouldn’t walk on, and hardwood floors made from rare trees that you’re not supposed to cut down: a lot more not to worry about.
And a boat.
Not in the house.
And not to actually put in the water either: just for show. Something to stick alongside the garage, and annoy the neighbors. (Another place to stash the relatives, too!)
Sorry Mary.
But we haven’t even spent a million dollars.
At this rate we’ll never run out of money.
We could spend $2 million a year, for fifty years, and still have more money than most of our neighbors.
Okay, so maybe I will buy a car, or two.
I just want a Karman Ghia: probably can find a rebuilt one for $20,000.
Mary will probably get that BMW SUV.
I’ll get Bobby another one of those 79 Volvos that he used to drive, and just keep getting it fixed when it breaks down. Or maybe we can get him his own mechanic, so he doesn’t have to bug us every time he has a little accident.
Patrick won’t be driving for another 8 years, so he can have a horse.
The relatives?
We’ll get them all AAA Plus.
And we’ll get them other stuff, too. Or better yet, we’ll let them have our old stuff, every year. The old refrigerator. The old BMW. The old TV, and so on.
With our money it is almost an obligation to replace everything every year.
But I don’t want to go crazy.
I just want to smooth things out a bit.
Quiet things down.
Make things smell better.
Sleep a little later.
$287,000,000 should do the trick.

No Snow to Speak Of

2007-03-31T11:03:00.001-05:00

I’ve got nothing to say – and I blame it on the weather.

Not just any, or all weather – our weather: this half-assed excuse for a winter, specifically.
Don’t look surprised: I’m just like you. My thoughts are not my own. I am – as the psychics like to say, just the conduit.
Did you ever notice that the psychic channelers always seem to be channeling princes and emperors, great warriors or priests?
Did you ever notice that when, under hypnosis, people remember their past lives – there’s almost always a person of great wealth, rank, or significance in there someplace?
Not me.
When I channel for this column I usually bring forth news of squirrels in the attic – literally, or wells that won’t pump, or what kind of candy the kid brought home Halloween night.
I channel the average, everyday stuff that we all deal with – but hopefully with an interesting slant, a different perspective.
And what inspires me is the average and the everyday.
But not today.
Today, this week, this month, I have been suffering from poor reception, from a stuttering imagination, from a lack of inspiration because for the past thirty days the average and the everyday have been absent from these parts.
Maybe they’ve gone on vacation.
Look around you.
You call this weather?
Is there anything more inspiring to the imagination than a sudden blanket of white?
When the landscapes that we know so well suddenly disappear, and the background sounds that we expect to hear are muffled, and the schedules that we usually maintain are unavoidably altered, it shocks the system and stirs our thoughts.
And at a time of year when we instinctively crave anything that can awake us out of our stupor – weather is oftentimes our best and only friend.
But we haven’t had any – any weather that is.
At least not ‘round here.
Oh sure we’ve had a taste of rain, a snap of cold, a smattering of sleet, and a sheet or two of ice: but no snow to speak of.
The weather people would argue of course: they’d bring out their charts and cite the statistics.
According to the statistics we’ve had a few inches, here and there.
But that’s not snow, it’s the Dandruff of the Gods: and they’re not sure what’s going on either.
They’re up there, on Olympus, scratching their heads.
It’s not just me either – all of the so-called news has been affected.
People aren’t really interested in Anna Nicole Smith – they’ve just got nothing better to think about.
My youngest son is out there now – not in the Bahamas, in the backyard I mean: out back trying to scrape up enough of that dirty, crusty stuff to make a dandruff man.
“Can you come out and play in the snow with m”, he asked?
“If there was snow to play in, I would”, I promised, but I was not going to get down on the ground and grovel around, pretending.
Of course there are plenty who would.
Of course that’s what they’ve been doing down in Florida, and now in California, and soon in the Bahamas: groveling around in the dirt, trying to scrape up enough stuff to make a story.
Sad to say, the Anna Nicole story is like the weather we’ve been having: hardly enough news there to measure.
And now that the story – and the poor woman herself, have been lying around for more than a week, it’s gotten a bit dirty, a bit crusty too.
That’s the genius of Andy Rooney on Sixty Minutes: somehow he turns what annoys him, into the subject of his weekly ‘column’. Somehow what annoys him, amuses us.
But Andy’s secret is – I imagine, that he is amused by what annoys him too: he actually revels in his own annoyances.
I just can’t manage the same enthusiasm for what bores me.
I can’t manage to find inspiration, in its lack.
So, we’re moving.
Taking a vacation of sorts.
We’ve rented a house up near Syracuse, New York. The owners were left in the lurch, when the last tenants moved out giving no notice at all.
The house is fully furnished. The refrigerator is full. The previous tenants pre-paid for six months of satellite TV.
And they’ve got enough inspiration piled up, to last at least until June.
I’m bringing my own shovel: stay tuned.

Experienced Applicants Only

2007-02-26T20:46:00.000-05:00

It’s not Iraq, or Darfur, not the price of gas, or global warming: as we begin the last two years of the George W. Bush Presidency, the most important issue facing our country is the experience, or lack thereof, of our next President.

As I write this I am watching President Bush conduct a news conference and I am filled with conflicting emotions.
One part of me despairs at our President’s obvious inability – six years after his original election, to communicate clearly on the important issues of our time.
Another part of me cannot help but like the man – and sympathize with his predicament.
Asked to explain inconsistencies in the manner in which his administration is pursuing the war in Iraq, he stammers, fidgets, and seems about to drown in his own tormented rhetoric.
When no one throws him a life-line, like a student surprised by being called on by the teacher, he makes a joke: when that breaks the tension, he makes another. It’s the highlight of the news conference.
There was a movie, recently, about a comedian elected President: look for it soon, on DVD.
Unfortunately, the American people can’t do the same: its experiences like this, which make a Parliamentary system look very appealing.
But my point is not that we should remove him from office but, rather, that he never should have been elected in the first place.
Even President Bush’s most ardent opponents – myself included, would have to admit, by now, that he’s a nice guy. If a group of friends were arguing over what to do on a Saturday night, George would be the ‘decider’.
Even his most ardent supporters would have to admit – by now, that he doesn’t have what it takes to be President, and see that, after 9-11, his lack of experience made him an intellectual captive of his more experienced White House advisors.
It wasn’t just 9-11 either. It wasn’t just Iraq. On almost every serious issue that he has faced, President Bush’ lack of experience has cost us dearly.
Without a world view, he assessed Russian President Vladimir Putin on a personal basis, and concluded they could be ‘buds’. Today Putin rules Russia like a 13th Century Tsar, assassinating opponents, intimidating neighbors, and arming our adversaries.
With a misguided sense of where his personal and public lives could, or should intersect, he allowed religions zealots to suppress American scientific and medical research.
Most importantly, without real executive experience – and I am including his so-called ‘ownership’ of the Texas Rangers, and his several failed oil businesses, he was forced to rely for advice on Vice President Cheney.
Vice President Cheney may be the single strongest argument for making experience the greatest factor in choosing who is elected President.
No one votes for Vice President, the pundits say: but perhaps we all now understand that, when you vote for someone with little or no experience, you are in effect voting to give great power to those around them.
Very few Americans had even heard the names Pearle, Wolfowitz, Libby or Bolton before President Bush was elected. But they know them now, and regret having made their acquaintance.
It’s no excuse. Call him what you will - the ‘decider’, the ‘commander in chief’, W or Shrub, he may not know what he is doing, but he is the President.
He may not accept the buck, but it’s stuck to his desk.
And we elected him.
Senators and Congressmen have begun to call the Iraq War one of the greatest foreign policy blunders in the history of this country, but I think it pales in comparison to the blunder in 2000: President Bush’s election.
American’s are taught from childhood that ‘anyone’ can be President, but we need to realize that not everyone should have that opportunity.
Can we at least have some minimum standards?
Can those who seek the Presidency, at the very least, be able to say that they have dedicated their lives to the service of others: their lives, not the last two years, or a summer internship with one of dad’s contributors.
As young man – the record indicates, President Bush showed no interest in public service of any kind. He was ‘born again’ in religion, and in politics, and so came in to the White House with all the ignorance and fervor of the recently converted.
America cannot be governed by faith alone.
Lord knows they have tried, for six years, and it has been a disaster.
Would it really have been any different, if someone else were President?
Republicans like to ridicule Al Gore – but their attacks are usually based on personality, not capability.
Would an ‘official’ Gore Presidency have kept the planes from crashing in to the towers on September 11th? Probably not.
But there is a high likelihood that a Gore Presidency would have resulted in the defeat of the Taliban, and the capture or death of Osama.
Would a Gore Presidency have prevented the collapse of Enron and the loss of its employees’ retirement funds? Probably not.
But there is a high likelihood that it would have saved the American people the billions wasted on overpriced gasoline - because of a more stable oil market (with no Iraq war), and have put America far ahead in the research in to the causes and cures of Global warming.
Would a Gore Presidency have been able to end the suffering of the people of Darfur? Yes.
With America able to commit more resources, and unafraid to do so because it was not already spending half a trillion dollars, bogged down in Iraq, Darfur’s pleas for help would not have gone unanswered.
I am not announcing my support for Al Gore.
I am simply questioning the rationale that says that ‘anyone’ can be President.
I am questioning as well, assertions like Barack Obamas – whom I admire, that all you need is enough experience to know things must change.
You don’t have to be a Senator to know that.
Anyone can be a critic.
But it takes a mixture of superior intellectual skills, years of hands-on experience, and demonstrated commitment, to lead – at any level.
Shouldn’t our President have an excess of those qualities and experience?
Don’t you want a President who can both speak from the heart, and make himself understood?
Don’t you want a President who takes the job seriously, even before things go wrong?
Don’t you want a President who doesn’t need on the job training?
It’s not Iraq, or Darfur, not the price of gas, or global warming: the big issue facing America today is where to find someone who has what it takes to be President.

The Woman Who Fell to Earth

2007-02-16T17:02:00.000-05:00

Who do you love?
In Northern Italy, a short distance from Romeo & Juliet’s Verona, they have unearthed what they believe to be – or very much want to believe, to be, undying love.
In a grave, in the cold earth, they have found two skeletons that appear to be embracing: that they believe to have been locked in each others’ arms for five thousand years.
But they have to run a few tests, to be sure.
When pressed they admit they are not yet completely confident that the bones they have found, are of a man and a woman.
When not pressed their eyes shine as they describe the lovers.
The stories of the discovery give short shrift to the observation – usually buried far down on the page in the accounts that I have read, that ‘he’ has an arrow or two sticking into his back, and ‘she’ an arrowhead, lodged in her hip.
Yet still, somehow, for some irrational reason, the archaeologists believe this to be a couple, embracing – and not evidence of a primitive divorce.
I suppose archaeologists are, at heart, romantics.
They are, to be specific, people who have given their lives to a science – of sorts, that presupposes there is something of value to be found in what the world has chosen to discard, or nature swallowed whole. They believe that they can find, in a sense, meaning – simply by digging in the dirt.
They really believe they can see, in this tangle of bones, evidence of love.
Funny isn’t it, how love is easier to see in the past, or the future, than it is in the present.
Perhaps the distance in time allows us to make of these two piles of bones, what we will.
We cannot easily be envious of bones without flesh.
We cannot be angry at the unknown dead.
So instead we make lovers, fashioning them with the same sweet wistfulness that a child uses to sculpt a snowman, or a sandcastle, or a mud pie: with the same hopefulness with which a son or daughter presents their latest masterpiece for placement on the refrigerator door.
Here and now though, above ground, in our maturity, we are at best pragmatic when it comes to judging others.
Here in the 21st Century, we are not nearly as forgiving to those around us, who find themselves in difficulty.
In this here and now, the discovery of bones is at first, a crime scene, and the cry that goes out is not the sigh of love but, rather, the grating squeal of anger too long suppressed.
Here all missteps seem to fall into the category of crime and punishment – not necessarily in that order.
Here, at almost at the same time that these ancient lovers are being unearthed, we have the pitiful story of The Woman Who Fell to Earth.
Hers is a love story too, though, isn’t it? After all, what is it that could drive someone forward from childhood, despite all of the obstacles, toward the almost impossible goal of becoming a female astronaut, but love?
Maybe not romantic love, but love nonetheless: of the sky, of the stars, of reaching out to the heavens. And of course such a love was doomed to end in tragedy because, despite everything we have learned we will never learn to fly, on our own.
We begin life on the ground, and then instinct urges us forward, onto our feet and then, into the air.
What separates us is how high we can learn to jump.
What we all have in common is, the fall that must eventually come.
I don’t think you would argue that she had a greater distance to fall than most of us.
There are only so many ships to the stars, and only so many seats on those ships, and so many others waiting for their turn.
The heights that she strove for were finally achieved, but then what?
It is the old story of the aging athlete, or the has-been actor, or the strung-out musician, though the story is almost always about a man.
So why is there so little sympathy for her?
Instead the talking heads on television and radio – and their new cohorts on the blogs, sling arrows at this poor woman.
Instead of asking how this could have happened to her, we seem to be asking how this could have happened to us: we are insulted by her failure.
It seems unimaginable that she could have sunk so low, after flying so high.
There must be something wrong with NASA’s screening system, the pundits proclaim.
The only problem I see is that she was human.
I can imagine myself in her place.
Sure laugh, and say, ‘oh, so you wear diapers too when you go out to stalk someone’.
Go on, get it out of your system.
Get it out of your system and then try and imagine too – it’s not difficult, how you would fare if all that you had lived for suddenly evaporated – like early morning fog, and you stumbled and found yourself in a spiritual grave, alone.
Chilled to the bone.
Would you panic?
Would you grasp at any chance of escaping that pit, take any hand offered?
Who do you see in that pit, in that Italian grave?
What do you see in the shape of those bones?
Why can we find love in the dirt, and yet find it so difficult to shed a tear for a real, live woman?
Who do you love?
What will they say about your bones, in 5000 years?

I-Pod, Therefore, I Am

2007-02-09T16:22:00.000-05:00

I-Pod, therefore, I-Am?
I-m not sure.
I am sure that I am nothing if not an opportunist or, perhaps, an I-Opp.
I know, as Marvin Gaye sang, ‘what’s going on’.
I-do.
Or rather, my I-Know knows, what the download is, fo’ shizzle.
To put it bluntly: The Gadj rule - or rather, the I-Gadj rules.
Totally!
But knowing and, well - to be blunt, profiting, are totally di-fizzle.
And the I-Opportunist in me cannot sit I-diddly by, while others hi-diddle-diddle off with the jack.
So I have come up with my own line of I-Thangs, that an I-freak will not be able to do without.
Actually, just one I-Thang.
I call it, the I-Gone.
What’s it do?
Ah, there’s the rub. What sets the I-Gone apart from the other-I’s out there, is how little, I does.
When others are immin’ and textin, and uploadin, the I-Gone is, for all I-tents and purposes, silent.
When others are watching re-runs of movies that were made for a 400 square foot screen, were re-broadcast on a 30” screen – and are now showing on an eyeball distending 6” screen, the I-Gone is in a kind of permanent sleep mode.
When others are Blue-rayin’ and Berryin’ the Black, the I-Gone is far removed from your service area.
Actually, the real I-dea is that the I-Gone has no service area, or that – to put it in philosophical terms, every one else’s service area is outside of the I-Gone’s, and vice versa.
As they say in New England, you can’t get here, from there.
I-Gone.
Do you see the poss-I-bilities?
What would you pay for this one of a kind, revolutionary product?
$100, $500, $1000?
Wait, there’s more.
Only through advanced, evolutionary, genetic engineering was this non-technological breakthrough possible.
Thousands of years ago, humans were unable to remove themselves from the world in which they found themselves.
Thousands of years ago you were permanently, and irrevocably subject to the vagaries of your pathetic existence.
If a mammoth or a saber tooth or a six-foot mosquito dialed up your number, your number was up!
It took thousands of years for man to be able to remove himself physically, from those vagaries, and just when it was safe to take a quiet walk, alone, in the woods.. someone had to go and invent the cell phone.
Suddenly you could be reached, wherever you were, whatever you were doing.
The same cycle of invention and de-invention continued, for years.
As soon as someone invented Tivo - which allowed you to take back control of your life from the television, someone else invented a way to take television with you, everywhere you went.
Just when four-wheel drive seemed to liberate us from the constraints of the paved road, SUVs let everyone in on it.
But the I-Gone ends all that.
The I-Gone is the only gadj of its kind that has a built-in disconnect.
Got Bluetooth? Sorry, no connection.
Got USB? Sorry, there’s no place to stick it.
Gone infra-red? Whoops, the I-Gone is not visible to the naked or any other I.
It’s a proprietary technology I call, NoWhere KnowHow®.
I cannot be reached for comment.
I cannot be reached.
And even if I could, I would not.
I-Gone.

What would you pay?
Hell, you paid $50 for some damn, newfangled mop.
You pay $100 a month just so you can take out of focus pictures of your out of focus friends and transmit them back and forth to each other.
There’s a price to pay, alright, but I am not sure if anyone is willing to pay it.
I am not sure how many people there are anymore, who value privacy, who believe in the benefits of quiet, and who are confident that – left on their own, they will still have something to say.
We tend to see ourselves only in the context of who we know, what we own, and how many others we can boast about it to - with a click of the mouse.
The great fear today seems to be, fear of invisibility.
But, in a world where almost nothing is private, true invisibility may be the ultimate acquisition.
That’s what I’m selling.
A gadj or state of gadgetry that is rare, unique, and, until today, very elusive.
It’s all about the unknown.
It’s the evolution of the species.
T’s the latest and the greatest gadj of them all.
I-Gone.

(Due to forces outside of our control, I-Thang, Inc., has been unable to ship sufficient quantities of the I-Gone to meet demand. In fact, we have not been able to ship any at all. A small number of I-Gone may be available on unknown dates, at unspecified super stores, or not. When rumors arise, suggesting that the I-Gone will be available on certain dates at certain locations, we ask that potential customers do not camp out or otherwise secure their position outside the rumored venues more than 24 hours prior to the rumored availability. Customers interested in the I-Gone may purchase gift cards for the future purchase of an I-Gone, in any amount, but this in itself does not guarantee the consumer the right to purchase the I-Gone if and when it becomes available, nor does it ‘hold’ a position in a virtual waiting list if and when the I-Gone ships. I-Thangs Inc., does however encourage consumers to spread rumors of the availability of the I-Gone, as this is an inexpensive way for the company to advertise.

George Takes Us for a Ride

2007-02-09T16:21:00.000-05:00

Let’s bring Bush’s ‘New Way Forward’ down to a level that we can all understand.

Do your best to forget the talking heads with their expert analysis, the interviews with the man on the street, the Senators and their Presidential strategies.
Imagine this, instead…..
George Bush is your teenage son.
America is the family’s old, but reliable station wagon.
Remember when George first got his license?
Remember how he made you take a picture of him at the registry, in front of the car, with the big ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner?
It was a big day. He was so excited. And admit it, you got swept up in all the excitement too: so much so that, later that same evening when he came to you with those shining eyes - asking if he could take the car to the lake, you consented.
Well, maybe not right away. You went through the motions.
“Who are you going with”, you asked?
“The Coalition of the Willing”, he said.
“What are you going to do”, you inquired?
“Spread Democracy”, he replied, with barely a hint of sarcasm.
“When are you going to be home”, you queried?
Early, George insisted.
Okay, you’d done the responsible thing, acted the concerned parent. Permission granted.
Then the call came at, what was it now, 12:45 a.m?
You heard a familiar voice telling you that they (funny how when there’s a problem it’s always ‘they’) ran out of gas, somewhere near Fallujah.
No biggie.
Oh, and they’ve had a small accident.
Alright.
Nothing to worry about, George insisted: he was just calling to let you know that they were going to be home a little later – and cost a few billion more, than he expected.
How thoughtful of him.
No biggie, you said again - out loud this time: but then why did you tell a bit of a white lie to your wife? No sense worrying her, you rationalized. No sense losing any sleep over this.
Damn, you told yourself as you settled back down in bed, I am so reasonable, so calm, such a good Dad. This was, after all, to be expected. George had never taken the car out before, by himself.
Time passed quickly. The car was repaired: they even added sheet metal to the undercarriage to protect against IED. It drove like new.
Your little white lie succeeded and, as if on cue, George was back.
This time the shine was gone from his eyes, replaced it seemed, by a sense of entitlement.
He wasn’t asking for permission.
He had to have the car again because, well, they were all going on this trip – and they were depending on him.
George made it seem as if to deny him, was un-patriotic.
So off George goes again and, the next thing you know you’re being woken up again, a little later than the last time. Only it isn’t George on the phone, it was someone from the New York Times.
This time it’s more than a little fender bender. This time America is off the road, in a ditch, and two of the boys that were with him are in the hospital.
But George says it’s not his fault. There was a mystery car – came out of nowhere, crossed over into their lane, and would have killed them all if he hadn’t acted decisively. Not only is it not his fault, he is saying, he’s a hero.
The beer in the car? Not his.
The other guy? Didn’t stop.
The final tally? It could have been worse (something tells you it will be): $20 billion for the car repairs, $10 billion for the lawyer to keep his record clean, and an undisclosed donation to the Religious Right.
When the next request for the car comes, you tell yourself, you are going to be ready.
You have developed a few ground rules that will have to be followed: a time-table, benchmarks.
Where, by the way, you plan to ask, is the money Iraq was supposed to contribute to the cost of insurance, George?
But George is playing outside the lines.
Instead of asking you directly – he implements a new strategy. He goes to your wife, and plays on her fears. If he doesn’t get the car, he warns her, his social life will be ruined, he won’t be able to work, and he’ll be at the mercy of that French kid with the Citroen, whenever he needs a ride.
You know she doesn’t know half the story. You know she is basing her decision on information that she was either denied, or that has been modified because of what you might call, national security.
You really should tell her about the accidents and the injuries, and the beer in the car, but then it would become clear that you had been withholding certain facts all along.
So you shrug and turn away, and off George goes.
You’re damn lucky this time.
George is thrown clear of the accident, and has hardly a scratch on him. America though, is a wreck – and the insurance won’t cover the costs. Thank God George wasn’t at the wheel. At least he says he wasn’t driving. It was The Generals.
Whoever is responsible, there is a price to pay this time: George is grounded indefinitely, a lame duck. But he has at least two more years under your roof. Can you really keep him grounded for that entire time?
After only a few weeks, he comes to you, looking tired, sounding apologetic: you don’t know why, but he is making you nervous.
He makes a long and rambling speech, most of which you’ve heard before. He talks about the ‘others’, the ‘mystery driver’, the Generals, and his regret at what happened to the family car.
“Mistakes have been made”, he tells you, adding that he takes full responsibility.
Not legal responsibility. Not financial responsibility. Full responsibility?
He’s learned his lesson.
Not your lesson, his lesson.
“I’m a changed man,” he says, “with a brand new plan: A New Way Forward!”
Things will be different this time, George promises, keeping his head down but holding out his hand with the palm turned up.
He wants the keys.

In the Direction of the Spin

2007-02-09T16:18:00.000-05:00

There still doesn’t seem to be a sense of urgency, over here, with the war over there, in Iraq.
I suppose that’s just human nature, but it’s not justice.
Justice delayed, is justice denied.
Here, safe in our homes, we feel we have the time, if we wish, to look up that last quote.
We can take that last bite of egg, get up from the kitchen table, and wander off to the study – where we keep the book of quotations.
The change in routine arouses the suspicion of our spouse, but nothing more.
It is not a risky maneuver.
There are no snipers in the house.
Something the matter, she asks?
No, no, we reply, somewhat disingenuously, just wanted to look something up.
If only we could proceed at that pace, and accomplish something positive.
If only, as the car loses traction on the black ice, turns sideways, and hurtles toward the concrete abutment, we could open up the glove box, remove the informative booklet that the original manufacturer placed there – like the Gideon Bible in a hotel room, and leisurely thumb through its pages until we reach the section on how to handle a loss of traction on ice.
“Turn the wheel in the direction of the spin”.
Perhaps the State Police find the glove box open, the booklet open to the right page, lying on the roof of the overturned vehicle.
Perhaps two troopers make a macabre joke about ‘speed reading’.
Catholic philosopher’s believe that, even in a fatal car crash, the occupants are given one last chance to make their peace with God.
In the fraction of a second between the point at which the concrete pillar smashes through the metal door - and our life ends, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross taught that we can choose between good and evil.
Back at the breakfast table though, that decision is not as easy or, rather, not as urgent.
Death is either an abstract concept or a funny pages cartoon character, hooded, carrying an oversized scythe.
On the back of the newspaper there could be a full page advertisement, of sorts: a very large, bold headline, saying “Choose”, and beneath it, side by side, two boxes.
Underneath the first box, on the left, the word “Good”.
Under the second box, on the right, the word, “Evil”.
But there’s no rush.
We look around and, when there is no pencil or pen within reach, we simply turn the page, to the Sports section.
Through with the scores, we turn to the front page.
“President Ford died?” we exclaim, a bit too loudly.
Somehow we missed it.
The ceremony was held during the Meineke Car Care Bowl.
It was a busy week.
We had the family over on Christmas Eve.
We had our older son down from college, for a few days.
He’s a senior.
It’s hard to believe that four years have gone by already. In May he will graduate. The time has flown by or, rather, it has slipped away.
Disappeared.
I suppose, when you think you are doing the right thing, it is alright to let the time slip away: okay, to muse on the meaning of things.
But what if his dorm were on fire?
What if the people in Waterville were busy loading up their used cars with explosives?
You visit the campus during Parents Weekend and are amused at the students sleepwalking through the day: wearing their slippers to breakfast, hardly appearing to wake at all as they go to classes, to concerts, plays, hockey games.
What if the people of Waterville, wearing masks and dressed up as police, kidnapped entire classes of students, and took them off to the woods and beheaded them?
Would that catch our attention, create a sense of urgency?
You have to wonder.
The ‘shock and awe’ is over, and what remains is the clean-up.
We are not very good at the clean-up.
The President took his time too, cutting brush at the ranch, consulting with his advisors, reading his paper.
On TV the cameras caught him greeting the Iraqi Prime Minister. From a distance you could see his lips moving and you may have been able to make out the words: “turn the wheel in the direction of the spin”.
There was no time to waste before the war began, and now – well, now he’s got all the time in the world.
It’s sad.
I am reminded of the scenes from the film Woodstock, as the last revelers dragged themselves away, draped in mud-stained blankets, over a wasteland of trash, to the elegiac accompaniment of Jimi Hendrix’ Star Spangled Banner.
We start off so full of enthusiasm, but then we just seem to lose interest.
I think President Bush is counting on that.

Foaming at the Mouth

2007-02-09T16:16:00.000-05:00

There’s Soothing Aloe in my shaving cream, but I am not sure that I am getting the full effect.

I thought of leaving the shaving cream on for a few minutes, before I shaved – to let the Aloe do its thing, but I really haven’t got the time.
Besides, there’s nothing in the instructions, on the can, about giving the Aloe more time.
I’m worried, and not just about skin irritation.
I’m worried that the Aloe is hanging out with the wrong crowd.
I checked out the fine print: the Aloe is fifth in line, in its gang of ingredients.
Water is number one, followed by Stearic Acid, Triethanolamine (TEA), and Laureth-23.
Coincidentally, I used to date a girl named Laureth-23.
Anyway, in this particular can I am not sure if Aloe –even Soothing Aloe, feels comfortable speaking up.
When I was a lot younger, the guys I used to hang with were a bit uncomfortable with the soothing side of the emotional spectrum, especially in large groups.
It could also be that Stearic Acid, TEA, and Laureth, are simply not giving Aloe the opportunity to fully express herself.
When it comes to shaving cream – I am told, it’s all about the foam.
The Stearic Acid – a naturally occurring fat, is the foam’s foundation. The TEA whips it up. And Laureth-23 adds a final, if insincere touch.
Soothing Aloe?
My sense is that Soothing Aloe’s only real contribution - to this particular brand of shaving cream, is like that of an old jock selling insurance.
Hey, whether we want to admit it or not, fame is still a powerful tool in advertising’s arsenal.
There’s a reason why Buick pays Tiger, and Hanes pays Jordan.
The truth is that, if I had to choose whether to buy shaving cream from - say, my old girlfriend Laureth-23, or the well-known Soothing Aloe, it’s going to be Aloe almost every time.
That is of course, until it dawns on me that I am being taken for a ride, so to speak.
I don’t usually go around questioning the ingredients in the products I use. I take it for granted that they are there for a reason.
But if you can’t trust Soothing Aloe, it makes you think.
What ingredients can you trust?
Is there really any vanilla, in Vanilla Coke?
And even if Vanilla is there, is it just a token natural ingredient, there to give the others some cover: like Secretary of State Colin Powel, in the Bush Administration?
Or maybe I have the wrong metaphor in mind.
Maybe a product’s ingredients are like rabbits and flowers and silk handkerchiefs: the items hidden in the magician’s cloak, before he even starts the show.
Each ingredient has its own part in the show, and all contribute incrementally, to achieving the desired effect – to the magic.
Even so, given the way that it is billed on the can, Soothing Aloe is clearly supposed to be the big number, the rabbit out of the hat. So when the rabbit that emerges is a bit scraggly, or worse – the overall effect is less than stirring.
And when the magic is gone, you begin to question everything, even whether you are getting a good, close shave.
I am reminded of Rocky and Bullwinkle – a flying squirrel and a moose, respectively. They never had their own shaving cream, but they had their own show – a half hour cartoon, back when that was truly a radical idea.
They used to segue to commercial with a little 15-second cartoon, all its own.
“Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat,” Bullwinkle would say.
“Again?”, the flying squirrel would whine, with real exasperation.
And always - instead of a cute, harmless rabbit, an angry rhinoceros or a roaring lion would appear.
Rocky and Bullwinkle seemed to winking at the audience, saying, ‘we’re having fun now, sure, but sooner or later the fun has to end and accounts must be settled’.
Face up to it: everything, in our society, has a hidden price.
And that goes double for Soothing Aloe.

Column Ingredients:
Words: You know, words.
Laureth-23: 1. An emulsifier. The polyethylene glycol ether of lauryl alcohol. 2. An old girlfriend. Her family were abstract expressionists.
Soothing Aloe: A popular entertainer in 19th Century England, noted for her perfect complexion

TEA (Triethanolamine): Produced by ammonolysis of ethylene oxide. Neutralizes carbomer solutions to form gels. Neutralizes stearic acid to form anionic emulsions and acts as an alkalizing agent to control pH.
Stearic acid: A common, naturally occurring fatty acid, widely used as an inexpensive primary emulsifying agent. When neutralized with triethanolamine, it functions as a tremendous thickening agent. Its soap-like character enables it to penetrate the skin and to have emollient, skin-softening properties.
Sodium Laureth Suffate: 1. Laureth-23’s mother. 2. The sodium salt of sulfated ethoxylated lauryl alcohol. A high foaming, viscous surfactant, milder to the skin than sodium lauryl sulfate. Excellent cleansing agent for shampoos.
Original Humor: A short-lived froth that neutralizes old girlfriends, forms unattached emulsions, acts as a socializing agent.

Talking Through My Hat

2007-01-13T14:20:00.000-05:00

The days of the hat are numbered.

I say this not because I dislike hats but because, on the contrary, I realize that I have become a hat person.
I have, I was surprised to recently discover, at least 23 hats in my possession.
Let me tell you a little story. When I was a child I had a particularly traumatic experience that resulted in a day off from school, spent with my mother – shopping, in Berlin, Germany.
Don’t get the wrong impression. I am not a child of wealth. I was not flown to Germany for this occasion. My father was in the Air Force and we were ‘stationed’ there.
In any case, concerned with my emotional state, my mother asked me if there was anything I would like to buy, anything. This, you should know, was before the age of $1500 EBay offers for Playstation 3. There were very few toys, at that time, which required loan approval before purchasing.
Mom was not taking a big risk.
Still, I knew that this was in all likelihood a one-time offer, and that I should take full advantage of it.
“Anything”, I asked her, looking for a firm commitment?
“Anything”, she said.
“Beatle Boots”.
I wanted a pair of the black, boot-like shoes with the elastic uppers, which the Beatles wore in ‘Hard Day’s Night’.
So off we went, in search of Beatle Boots.
Do I need to tell you that there were no Beatle Boots in all of Berlin? Do I need to tell you that, in all likelihood, there were no Beatle Boots in all of Europe?
What I need to tell you – my point, is that I am not what the trend watchers would call ‘an early adopter’.
I am in fact, someone who is behind the curve, off the edge, a trend-ender.
Not that I care.
It’s a safe and secure feeling, to be out of the loop.
When you are a trend-setter, on the cutting edge, and in the loop, you take a lot of criticism.
When you always lag a few steps behind the latest and the greatest, on the other hand, you get treated with the kind of patience reserved for the very old, or for small pets.
A trend setter may be considered ‘odd’, a trend-ender only ‘quaint’.
And trend-enders tend to be loyal longer. That is, those who are obsessed with the latest, often are the first to abandon their ‘love’, while those who come to the appreciation of a thing after a long and slow courtship tend to be faithful.
I love my hats: not with the hot, obsessive fervor of youth, but with the warm, enduring love of maturity.
The trend-setter may have two or three audacious hats that he, or she, wore every day for a few months. But I – as I told you, have at least 23 hats, which I only don when the mood is just right.
One of my favorite hats is a dark blue, all wool Tibetan that can be collapsed in to an almost normal look, or expanded, straight up, for nearly a foot. It’s a winter hat though, and I refuse to put it on unless there’s snow on the ground or the Dali Lama is in town.
I also have a wide-brimmed straw hat which I acquired at Sturbridge Village that I have only worn once – to the great amusement of friends and family. This is a hat that will probably always be out of fashion – which suits me just fine.
I have a beret, somewhere, though I haven’t seen it in years.
I have a gray wool Kangol that I have had a hard time wearing since I let my hair grow long. It still fits, but all that hair sticking out from each side is hard to live up to.
Of course I also have a number of baseball caps. My favorite, I think, is the one I got at my son’s college. It is an all-wool, old-style ball cap with a white felt ‘C” sewn on the front and no other adornment. It is a bit worn though, and not exactly clean – but it is the kind of hat that you are supposed to wear out and wear down.
I refuse, by the way, to purchase a hat that has been ‘pre-distressed’. I prefer to take the time to pick out a hat I really like and actually wear it. For that reason many of my hats are ‘like new’, and should last until hats are have regained their currency.
I did however, recently acquire a Red Sox cap that is designed to look like the style Ted Williams wore in his rookie year, 1939.
I am not sure exactly why, but I believe that there is an ethical difference between trying to make something new look old, and buying a new version of an old style.
Then again, I went ballistic when I heard about people paying $100 and more for classic Rock & Roll tee shirts that had been ‘re-created’. I used to have an old black ‘Who’’ tee shirt that I wore until it evaporated.
It’s existentially ‘in bad faith’ to pretend you were part of a trend that, in a real sense, has not ever completely disappeared from the marketplace.
A trend should have to be dead and buried before it can be brought back again, at a significantly higher price. To wear a new version of that old Who tee today would seem to me, ghoulish.
It is issues like that which would prevent me from becoming an early adopter – even if I cared to join their ranks.
A trend-setter cannot analyze: he or she has to be like a hermit crab. When the new styles come out, they must immediately jettison the old shell and put on the new one.
I am like an old bear looking for a new cave: I am not too concerned about the style, or the amenities, or the neighborhood. But after a few months of hibernation, I tend to become attached to the cave I have chosen.
I have become attached to my hats.
Trend-setters take note!

In No Particular Order

2007-01-13T14:19:00.000-05:00

Every year at this time we (meaning the collective we, who allow our lives to be controlled by what other people (other than we?) appear to think) make up lists of things that are allegedly the best or most significant of the past year.

If that was going to be the subject of my column this week you’d have every right to stop reading right here. After all, in terms of other people (meaning the others who are or at some point were on somebody else’s list of significant people) I don’t really qualify as one of the better or most significant people who every year at this time make up those lists.
But I’m not going to do that – not exactly.
Instead I’m going to list those things, people, events, and random occurrences that during the past year (or whenever I feel like it) had meaning for ME – meaning the actual me, not a royal me, or an omniscient me. Just me: an admittedly egotistical me who’s annual lists of the best and worst don’t usually coincide with the other’s lists.

Person of the Year
It’s unanimous. Once again it’s Mary, my wife. The bread winner, the bread
maker, the shake your money maker. I could go on, but she would kill me.

Beer of the Year
The Old Speckled Hen. It comes in those cans that have a nitrogen dispenser built in to the bottom, so you get a real creamy head. Man that was good, Bob.

Year of the Year
I believe we’re on a 35 year cycle. That is, fashion – in music, clothes, and the arts, repeats itself every thirty five years. So this year was really 1971, which was a very significant year for me. I was 16, the Stone’s Exile on Main Street had just come out, and my dad was in Vietnam sending home articles about the dangers of marijuana use.

Sports Event of the Year
It has to have been my first round of golf in ten years. I went out with two brothers-in-law and a friend, and managed a very respectable 126 at Waverly Oaks. If I continue to play once every ten years, I know I can get it down to the high 110’s or so.

Gadget of the Year
Heelies. I know the school custodians don’t like them, but I see them as a kind of crowd control device. Did you ever notice how kids with heelies are quieter than other kids? I’d be in favor of building heelie parks, where large groups of pre-teens could glide silently back and forth for hours and hours while their parents golf. I wonder if someone could invent gloves that light up and quietly hum when you softly clap them together?

Fast Food of the Year
I haven’t had any, but I like the idea of those bowls that KFC offers, layered with just about everything they make. I have this idea for a restaurant chain called “Left Overs”, where everything on the menu is meant to taste like leftovers. Everything would be made in advance, and put together later. Our slogan would be ‘Not Just Comfort Food, Left Overs!’

Car of the Year
My vintage 93 Escort Wagon. The back left door doesn’t open, the trunk is a bowlful of rusted water, it doesn’t even have a cassette player, loses traction in a quarter inch of snow, makes a god-awful whining, grinding noise if you don’t give it an hour to warm up, and smells like the inside of a Clean Harbors truck - but it starts up every morning and takes me across the bridge to the sanitarium.
Our old Camry came in a close second: it looks better than the Escort and drives well, but cost me over two thousand to keep on the road this year.
If my well had wheels it would have been the runaway winner.

Movie of the Year
My movie rating system usually does not go beyond three levels. At the bottom with one kernel of unpopped popcorn is Not That Bad, followed by two kernels of unpopped popcorn which translates to A Waste of Time, followed by three kernels, which are only given out to films that reach the pinnacle of my diminished expectations – Remarkably Bad. This year the film Lady in the Water received an almost unheard of four kernels of unpopped popcorn. It was, truly, Worse than I Expected.

Song of the Year
My rating system for songs, is similar to my rating system for movies. I’m really only interested in talking about songs I dislike. If I like a song, I don’t want to talk about it, I want to listen to it.
That said, Death Cab for Cutie’s morose and melodic I’ll Follow You Into the Dark is a remarkably indulgent embrace of meaninglessness. For no particular reason, with a muddled philosophical perspective, and with bright and cheery acoustic guitar accompaniment, this song looks forward to the day when the singer will gladly join a generic ‘love’ when her cosmic GPS malfunctions and she ends up spending eternity at a rest stop on the Afterlife Interstate.
It’s a Rod McKuen meets the Grim Reaper kind of song: MacArthur Park on the Day of the Dead.

I could go on.
Lord knows I could go on and on.
But I know you probably need as much time as you can find, for the other lists that the others are asking you to consider at this time of year: the disaster lists, the war lists, the signs of the Apocalypse list, and so on.
Somebody should be put in charge of making an official master list of lists, that busy people like yourself could consult at their leisure.
After all, at some point, we’ve got to stop making and reading lists, and start living again.
Put that somewhere on your list.

First Footing

2007-01-13T14:17:00.000-05:00

• Fresh!
• Best Used by December 31, 2007.
• From Scratch.
• No fillers.
• Like new.
• No, actually new.
• Unheard of!
• Newly minted.
• Still warm.
• Off the top of my head?
• Out of thin air.
• Working without a net.
• A leap of faith.
• Boldly going where no one has gone before because, well, it wasn’t there yesterday.
• A shock to the senses.
• A break from the past.
• Startling.
• Un-nerving.
• Out of the ordinary.
Sounds expensive, doesn’t it?
Ah yes, the New Year holds such promise.
It’s a do-over, a cosmic Mulligan, a last minute reprieve from the ‘Governor’, a get-out-of-jail free card, a pass go and collect $200 and moon the ticket taker as you fly by kind of feeling.
• A Gold Card with no limit.
• The key, as Willie Dixon sings, to the highway.
Or it’s hell.
• The Highway to Hell.
• No Exit.
In the play by Sartre, the lesbian loves the woman who loves the man who loves the lesbian – and they have only each other, for an eternity of New Years.
• A vicious cycle.
• A closed loop.
• A windowless room.
• A revolving door.
• A bummer man!
• The same old same old.
• A nauseating ride on a Merry Go Round and Round and Round.
In Scotland the old folks take New Years very seriously. They have a holiday, of sorts, that they call ‘First Footing’.
You know how it goes: if you get off on the wrong foot, if you get out of bed on the wrong side, if you step on a crack it’s not just your mother who is going to pay.
I was once riding as a passenger in the front seat of a Plymouth Valiant that turned up a hill in Braintree in to the last rays of the setting sun and one spear of sunlight caught the windshield at precisely the right angle so that it seemed to snare itself on a small, almost imperceptible gouge in the glass – probably where a small stone had glanced off it some time before, and the gleam caught my eye and, before I knew what I was doing – like a bullfrog snapping at a shiny lure a sadistic boy had dropped in front of it, I tapped the illuminated spot lightly with just the tip of my right index finger and the crack made a high pitched moan and instantly spidered out across the entire windshield.
Know what I mean?
Have you ever run out onto an icy pond and realized, at the last moment, that the ice is a bit on the thin side?
Have you ever heard the ice singing, like whales sounding the deep, and realized that what you were hearing was the sound of gaps, fissures, and imperfections in what you thought was a solid mass: the sound of its slow, but inevitable destruction?
That’s what can happen, the old Scots believe, if you don’t treat the New Year with respect.
Those first few hours of the New Year are fragile.
In the first dawning of January reality has just come out of the oven of the universe and needs a few weeks to cool and set up properly.
• Disturb it before it has set and, nothing good can happen.
• Walk on it too soon, and it will give way.
• Laugh too loudly and your appliances will begin to fail, one by one.
• Your well will run dry.
• Your tires will all go flat.
And so these superstitious folk make special preparations for the New Year, and for the first visitors who come to call.
They may never entertain another soul the rest of the year but the first person to come through their door in the New Year is treated like the prodigal son: lavished with gifts, given the best whisky to drink, the chair by the fire, even allowed to hold the remote.
They err on the side of caution.
Even paranoid people are not wrong all of the time.
Who knows who this visitor really is?
That first friendly face may hide a demon, in disguise.
Or an angel on the lam.
A neighbor they want to impress.
Treat him or her or it right and everything that follows will be dewy and fresh and sparkling, and you will feel the same the entire year.
Slip up and those visitors may never leave.
Do you have a friend, or a family member who happened to show up on New Year’s Day and has never left?
Or a stray cat that wandered in that day?
• Squirrels in the attic?
• Turkeys in the yard?
Did you have a good year?
Make sure you get off on the right foot.

The American Wii

2007-01-13T14:16:00.000-05:00

I’ve got my Wii, but it wasn’t easy, or should I say, it wasn’t easii.

I struck out using the traditional methods of shopping – that is, going to the store and saying, ‘I’d like one of those, pliise’.
I’m pretty stubborn: I actually spent a week going from store to store, thinking that was how it was done.
The clerk at the Wal-Mart just laughed and turned awii.
The associate at Target actually looked a little perturbed.
The Geek at Best Buy looked furtively from side to side, and then gave me her business card.
“No problemii”, she whispered, then winked.
Humiliated and running low on gas, I gave up.
When I got home from my last attempt to physically shop, I went online and typed in the URL that the Geek had on her card.
A brand new Wii, in an unopened box, could be had for just $1100.
I passed.
The next morning I got up at dawn and drove Plymouth’s very own ‘Green Mile’: you know, the ten mile strip of national retail box stores that stretches from Long Pond Road, to Route 80, down Colony Place, and up to the Kingston border.
I was looking for the tell-tale signs that a Wii may have been spotted nearby.
The Five’s were totally Wii-less.
Circuit City and Wal-Mart were quiet, too quiet.
Best Buy was closed, but around the backside of the mall I found that Target was encircled by a long line of carefree teens, disoriented grandparents, and well meaning but late-arriving fathers – in that order.
Pathetically, I joined the line and waited for an hour until the official announcement that they had only 15 units to sell.
I felt like Marlon Brando in ‘On the Waterfront’: beaten down, left out in the cold, not even a contendah.
What’s a guy got to do to get one of those things?
Where was Karl Malden when you needed him?
I drove home and immediately called my Tech Guru, PeeVee: my sister’s thirteen year old son.
PeeVee was kind, though I sensed that he too was smirking, on the other end of the line.
Reluctantly, he told me about a special ‘bot’ that constantly scoured the Internet for Wii tracks, and reported every sighting via email.
“But you have to be quick,” he said, like a Vet delivering the bad news about old Fido, “or they’ll be gone.”
Despite PeeVee’s pessimism, I endeavored to persevere.
I logged on, signed up, and waited.
Five were spotted at Amazon.com, but before I could click on ‘Add to Cart’, that phrase disappeared, replaced momentarily (I swear) by “Too Slow, Old Fahrt”.
Seven were spotted at Best Buy’s Web Site, but when the page loaded the image wouldn’t click.
I rolled my mouse from top to bottom, hoping that they had left a minute section of the image clickable, but the pointer never changed.
Four were available on E-Bay, but the price was still above my pay grade.
After an hour of that particular torture, I was ready to give up.
A Playstation 2 could be had for cheap money, I told myself.
There were X-Boxes aplenty, stacked up behind the glass door.
Instead of giving up though, I made one last try.
I went on the ‘Black Net’, and used the illegal search engine “Gurgle”.
I typed in “Wii Wii Wii, All the Way Home”.
The screen went black, a synthesized fanfare sounded, and a web site that appeared to originate from Inner Mongolia appeared on the screen.
There was a picture of a Yurt – the round, portable home that nomadic Mongolians live in, and in the middle of the one big round room a family of five was playing video games.
…
So I got my Wii, but I think I got much more in the bargain.
It’s like I have a whole new familii.
I don’t see much of Lao-Tsi, his wife, or their three kids, but we stay in close touch as he travels the country, buying the hottest items.
I provide the cash, as needed.
He’s got it all over the competition – even well-to-do teens. He and his family can camp out for weeks, if need be, in their Yurt.
When the goods move to another store, or another mall, the Yurt and family pack up easily on to three ponies.
And with five family members, even being restricted to one Wii, or Playstation, or Elmo per customer, has no effect on our profitability.
I know a lot of people are upset that illegal immigrants are taking our jobs, using our services, crowding our schools.
But you’ve got to love a people willing to stand in line so you can stay home and play video games.
It’s the American wii.

All I Want for Christmas

2007-01-13T14:14:00.000-05:00

All I want for Christmas is, what: intellectual justifications, emotional rationalizations, and the big box of all-purpose excuses?

Those would be good, but I want more, a lot more.
I know, I know, I want too much. But what’s wrong with that?
Maybe if they had waited until Christmas to announce that Bolton was going to resign, that Rumsfeld was headed out the door, and that Frist’s Presidential campaign was over before it had begun, I might have been satisfied.
You know how it is with your kids: if you open up any presents early, they’re still going to want the same amount of presents under the tree. You’re not going to be able to argue with them reasonably, because the great gift of childhood is the absence of reason, or logic, from every facet of their lives.
And, to be perfectly frank, that’s what I really want for Christmas: that feeling that anything is possible, no matter what.
I want it not to matter whether I’ve been good or bad.
I want it not to matter if I’ve been naughty or nice.
And so it doesn’t really matter what I get: I just want the gift of feeling that I can ask for anything.

Okay, so I accept that this sounds a bit pathetic, a bit too much like the guy who suddenly wakes up on his fortieth birthday and has an uncontrollable desire for a Porsche. But I swear it’s not like that.
Maybe it’s like that new fangled laughter therapy.
I personally don’t think much of a bunch of middle aged people getting together on the beach and pretending to laugh.
I look at those people and think, laugh now, but as soon as you get home from your Laughter Course, the phone is going to ring and it’s going to be the police saying that your kid’s been picked up for speeding and..
I don’t think you can fake laughter.
I don’t think you can fake tears.
But you have to start somewhere.
For adults it’s easy to get out of the habit of laughing or crying, or asking for things we can’t afford.
But I think there’s a point in just asking.
I believe there is a value in understanding and then openly expressing your desires.
There may be nothing worse than losing touch with what you really want. Because if you do, and suddenly someone or something reminds you what it is you really want – you’re going to be angry and looking for someone to blame.

So I am going to make a point this year of asking - out loud, for things I really want: whether there’s any chance they’ll be in my stocking Christmas morning.
Ready?
I want a Karmann Ghia.
I once heard someone call it, the ‘poor man’s Porsche’.
But it’s less than that.
The Karmann Ghia is a kind of automotive transvestite.
It’s a Volkswagen Beetle trapped in a sport’s cards body.
It’s a slow, unsophisticated antique of a car, but I’ve always loved the way it looks. I like cheap things that are well made. Like a toy ray gun that makes a cool whirring noise and lights up: the Karmann Ghia is the toy raygun of cars.
I want to go to India – for at least a month.
Yes, it’s a mess of a country, with hundreds of millions of desperately poor people, a history so rich it makes ours look like the footnotes on a baseball card, and beauty that I fully expect would overwhelm me.
But I like being overwhelmed.
I’d like to record a blues album. I say this to my friends, fairly regularly, and they don’t take me seriously. But I have a feel for the blues, a passable voice, and friends that are musically gifted.
Instead of blowing a few hundred dollars on a few hours of golf, let’s get some studio time instead.
Which reminds me: I’d like to take saxophone lessons.
I once sat outside the Baltimore Civic Center and realized that the screech of tires that I heard echoing through the concrete city plaza where we were recovering from the intensity of the concert that had just finished, sounded very much like the notes that saxophonist Wayne Shorter had voiced earlier that evening.
The saxophone, I thought at that moment, was the voice of the world: it could sound like a woman in love, a man pretending not to be afraid, a car rounding a corner, or a distant rain cloud perforated by lightning.
Oh, and I’ll need a saxophone too.
Time Travel.
I want to go back in time to several places where I was not able to say just what I wanted, or express myself with sufficient clarity at a critical time: the places where I disappointed myself.
On the afternoon a few days before Christmas in 1975 - for example, when my mother first became sick and, lacking the proper words, I instead made her a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich that she promptly threw up;
On the day of my best friend Mike’s wedding when, as Best Man, I was supposed to say something meaningful;
In Chestnut Hill, when Mary and I first decided to get married and I just took it for granted we would.
I guess I am philosophical enough to accept that I was young and stupid – once, but I’d still like the ability to go back and, at the very least, apologize for my lack of eloquence.
It would be nice, too, to have a little shack out back, in the woods behind our house, where I could devote myself more seriously to asking for things.
I’d like to tell my friends Mike and Patty how much I love them,.
I’d like you to know how sweet my friends Dan and Sally are.
I’d like to be better father, a better husband, and have the time to hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.
Yeah, I know, I want a lot: but it feels good to want so much; it makes me feel like a kid, again.
Who could ask for anything more?