I have been receiving anonymous reports of so-called ‘technical difficulties’ at the Plymouth Area Community Television studios off Court Street.
According to my sources a fifteen year old volunteer, thinking he was a hip-hop VJ, used digital editing equipment to ‘mash’ many of the station’s regular line-up of shows together, creating some very odd, and oftentimes surprisingly compelling television.
Here then, is a run down of this week’s mutated weekday schedule:
8:00-8:30 a.m.
PSYCHIC SOFTBALL
The Brockton Rox Baseball Update, which was scheduled to start the week off Monday morning, was mixed up with the regularly scheduled episode of Psychic Encyclopedia, resulting in several Rox players hearing ghostly voices telling them they had no future in baseball.
8:30-9:00 a.m.
PORTU-PARTY
The latest segments of the popular Portuguese Around Us, and the high-decibel, youth-oriented Metal Storm, were also intermingled, and a new band, Death by Linguica, looks likely to be a hit with both audiences.
9:00-10:00 a.m.
WRESTLING WITH DEMOCRACY
The never-ending, epic-length, Japanese Wrestling review, Toukon Retsuden, was accidentally combined with recent political commentary from The Good, The Bad, and the Uugly, and in their combined episodes’ feature match it appears that Uugly co-host Karen Buechs has pinned the entire Plymouth Board of Selectmen to the mat. (I say ‘appears’ because when these two tapes were mixed the voices of the Uugly hosts were not in sync with the wrestler’s lips).
In addition, sources within the Uugly production team say Buechs is still refusing to get off the Selectman’s backs until they say ‘Uncle’, or agree to support her candidacy for Queen of the Cranberry Festival.
10:00-12:00 Noon
VACATIONS FROM HELL
Episodes of three separately produced shows -Shadows of the Paranormal, Allen’s African Adventures, and Practical Theology, combined to create the riveting, sure to be Emmy-nominated story of a Baptist Minister called upon to exorcise a demon from a young Hippopotamus.
12:00-1:00 p.m.
CALLING ON CARL
Episode #847 of Carl Pratt’s Video Sports Page was somehow overlaid on to a vintage Senior Health Today tape, producing the Plymouth South Girls Rugby Team’s first victory in years.
1:00-1:15 p.m.
YOU ESSAYS
Separate, half-hour episodes of Americans Speak Out, Americans are America, Freedom’s Voice, and American’s Speak Out –Live! when spliced together, resulted in a single episode only fifteen minutes long.
1:15-2:00 p.m.
SILLY NIGHTS, SILLY STREETS
The video monologues of Marvel Comics action hero and former simultaneous candidate for Selectman and School Committee Member Mark Lord were, apparently, unaffected.
1:15-3:00 p.m.
COOKING, WITH GAS
The accidental mixture of video tape from the award-winning Plymouth Profiles, with new episodes of Cooking with Georgia, resulted in a potent recipe for southern fried baked beans, which the Health Board is asking residents not to attempt at home without professional supervision.
3:00-5:00 p.m.
WELCOME BACK, CARTER
State Representative Vinny DeMacedo’s regular episode of Beacon Hill Forum was merged with the syndicated progressive talk show, Democracy Now, resulting in a nostalgic situation comedy featuring former President Jimmy Carter as a high school teacher in Iraq, and Representative DeMacedo as one of his wise-cracking students.
In related news:
Citing concern for the safety of all elected officials, the entire week’s schedule of governmental meetings has been cancelled and the Town Manager’s office has issued a statement indicating that no new meetings will be scheduled until after next week’s Cranberry Festival.
PACTV officials have announced that they are still planning to provide live coverage of the Cranberry Festival parade, contingent upon receiving legal permission from the Japanese Professional Wrestling Association.
If permission is not received by show time, PACTV will substitute a 24-hour marathon of Introduction to Tai Chi episodes, which were somehow combined with Car Care 101, creating a feature length advertisement that has been tentatively titled, Ernie Boch’s Feng Shui Auto Body Repair Shop.
More than ever, PACTV is not responsible for the content of these shows.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Friday, September 23, 2005
Ah, Wilderness
I was out hiking in Plymouth with my family the other day and after about four hours of grueling shopping we set up camp in an isolated parking space, somewhere between the towering new Mega Mega Giganto Walmart and the majestic Sam’s Club.
We utilized our wilderness survival training to build a fire out of discarded sales circulars and, once the flames had died down, roasted several hundred marshmallows –barely putting a dent in the super-sized twenty pound ‘family’ package we had purchased during a previous hike in the BJ’s.
After the pain of consuming so many flaming bits of spun corn syrup had subsided, we climbed into our shopping carts to watch the sun setting behind Circuit City. It was an awe-inspiring site, filling me with nostalgia, when suddenly I realized that this was not the Plymouth of my youth.
A moment later my wife reminded me that I had not actually grown up in Plymouth, so it could never have been the Plymouth of my youth: but then, this was not even the Plymouth of last year.
Historic Plymouth was disappearing before my very eyes!
Luckily for me the Olde Towne Trollee was passing by on its historic tour just then, so I jumped on board: much to the dismay of my family, who were all snuggled deep down into their carts.
If there was anyone in town that knew the true story of historic Plymouth, I thought, it was those darn Trolley drivers.
The first tour stop, as it turned out, was an old hang-out of mine: the big rest stop and commuter parking lot at Exit 5 on the Expressway.
“Once upon a time”, the driver began, “this was the site of an information center, where visitors to Plymouth could find pamphlets on all the historical sites and attractions, but nothing else: no donuts, no burgers and fries, nothing!”
A shudder went through the half-empty trolley.
Before the shock of the first stop had subsided, we rolled up to a quaint brick building, no more than 100,000 square feet in size, but now as empty as the Shops at Five.
“Just a few weeks ago this building,” the driver informed his incredulous audience, “was a fully functioning, if undersized Walmart”.
Further down the road we came upon another artifact of a simpler age: what had once been called -it was hard to believe, a ‘Super’ Stop & Shop.
All of these buildings were remarkably well-preserved, and the average visitor would probably not have realized their antiquity, save for the placard that was affixed near the front doors of each building, indicating their last week of occupancy.
The next stop was a fabled Giant K-Mart, last occupied according to its placard, in 2002. Here the trolley pulled over so that we could disembark and take a brief tour.
It was marvelous: the local historical society operated the building as a living museum, staffing the facility with actors portraying the stock boys and cashiers of its Blue Light-lit past. You could talk with these dedicated volunteers, but no matter how hard you tried they never came out of character.
The tour continued, passing strip malls with insufficient parking, lone auto dealerships, and high schools with barely more than a thousand students. It was so reassuring to see that the Plymouth of yesterday (literally yesterday) had not been completely obliterated to make way for the Plymouth of a few hours later.
When the trolley finally circled back around to our campsite, the sun had set behind the stores and the sky was filled with the mysterious lights of the Aurora Storealis.
I got off and rejoined my family, entranced by the neon lights, and filled with a newfound confidence in the future of our community.
“It’s not how big the store is,” I blurted out to my wife and children, “it’s how big the people in the big store are:” or words to that effect.
Then we began packing up our gear in preparation for the long hike down in to the residentially zoned foothills.
“Can we go camp-shopping again soon,” my youngest son asked, unaware of the state of my credit?
“Why not” I promised: “we still have about fifteen pounds of marshmallows left, and empty parking spaces for as far as the eye can see!”
We utilized our wilderness survival training to build a fire out of discarded sales circulars and, once the flames had died down, roasted several hundred marshmallows –barely putting a dent in the super-sized twenty pound ‘family’ package we had purchased during a previous hike in the BJ’s.
After the pain of consuming so many flaming bits of spun corn syrup had subsided, we climbed into our shopping carts to watch the sun setting behind Circuit City. It was an awe-inspiring site, filling me with nostalgia, when suddenly I realized that this was not the Plymouth of my youth.
A moment later my wife reminded me that I had not actually grown up in Plymouth, so it could never have been the Plymouth of my youth: but then, this was not even the Plymouth of last year.
Historic Plymouth was disappearing before my very eyes!
Luckily for me the Olde Towne Trollee was passing by on its historic tour just then, so I jumped on board: much to the dismay of my family, who were all snuggled deep down into their carts.
If there was anyone in town that knew the true story of historic Plymouth, I thought, it was those darn Trolley drivers.
The first tour stop, as it turned out, was an old hang-out of mine: the big rest stop and commuter parking lot at Exit 5 on the Expressway.
“Once upon a time”, the driver began, “this was the site of an information center, where visitors to Plymouth could find pamphlets on all the historical sites and attractions, but nothing else: no donuts, no burgers and fries, nothing!”
A shudder went through the half-empty trolley.
Before the shock of the first stop had subsided, we rolled up to a quaint brick building, no more than 100,000 square feet in size, but now as empty as the Shops at Five.
“Just a few weeks ago this building,” the driver informed his incredulous audience, “was a fully functioning, if undersized Walmart”.
Further down the road we came upon another artifact of a simpler age: what had once been called -it was hard to believe, a ‘Super’ Stop & Shop.
All of these buildings were remarkably well-preserved, and the average visitor would probably not have realized their antiquity, save for the placard that was affixed near the front doors of each building, indicating their last week of occupancy.
The next stop was a fabled Giant K-Mart, last occupied according to its placard, in 2002. Here the trolley pulled over so that we could disembark and take a brief tour.
It was marvelous: the local historical society operated the building as a living museum, staffing the facility with actors portraying the stock boys and cashiers of its Blue Light-lit past. You could talk with these dedicated volunteers, but no matter how hard you tried they never came out of character.
The tour continued, passing strip malls with insufficient parking, lone auto dealerships, and high schools with barely more than a thousand students. It was so reassuring to see that the Plymouth of yesterday (literally yesterday) had not been completely obliterated to make way for the Plymouth of a few hours later.
When the trolley finally circled back around to our campsite, the sun had set behind the stores and the sky was filled with the mysterious lights of the Aurora Storealis.
I got off and rejoined my family, entranced by the neon lights, and filled with a newfound confidence in the future of our community.
“It’s not how big the store is,” I blurted out to my wife and children, “it’s how big the people in the big store are:” or words to that effect.
Then we began packing up our gear in preparation for the long hike down in to the residentially zoned foothills.
“Can we go camp-shopping again soon,” my youngest son asked, unaware of the state of my credit?
“Why not” I promised: “we still have about fifteen pounds of marshmallows left, and empty parking spaces for as far as the eye can see!”
Monday, September 19, 2005
Help Wanted!
It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure! Remember that?
If that appeals to you, how about this: your own staff of 20, near-dictatorial powers, and ultimate responsibility for upwards of 750 very eager ‘employees’.
Enjoy the outdoors?
Like to get a little dirty, now and then?
No, I’m not talking about heading up FEMA or any disaster agency, but you’re getting warmer.
How are you at handling an irate parent, or two, or three, a week?
And of course the pay is, well, to be honest there is no pay.
Ready to sign up? Sorry, it’s not as easy as that. Though there are an enormous set of responsibilities, no pay, long hours and a lot of grief, you also have to be loved and respected by the staff or you’ll never get the job in the first place.
Pope!
You’ve got it, sort of.
I am talking about a once-in-a-lifetime job opening (when you retire you’ll feel like you died and went to heaven) that has just opened up and if you act fast you may have a shot.
El Presidente of the South Plymouth Little League!
I just received an email from South Plymouth Little League saying that resumes are now being accepted, and listing the following percs:
-Free Life Insurance!
-Body guards that travel with you, field to field.
-Cheeze-whiz on your hot dog at no additional cost!
Carpentry experience desirable, but not required.
Public speaking is part of the job, but eloquence is optional.
A big ego is mandatory, but don’t expect that it will get you anywhere.
Little League is full of big egos, and fragile egos and, of course, with hundreds and hundreds of egos that have just hatched and need nurturing.
Strangely enough, you don’t have to know a lot about baseball. You should love the game –the way kids play it, but you don’t have to be a walking encyclopedia of baseball lore, or a former high school star (there are plenty of those guys coaching teams).
No, the main attribute required in a President of a local Little League is a kind of naiveté: you have to believe, no matter how many ‘more-experienced’ staff members tell you otherwise, that you can make the experience more enjoyable for the kids.
That’s the constant struggle –as I see it: to keep it about the kids.
I know a little about the subject. I was Pope Francis the First, back when the League encompassed only about 600 players divided into about 40 teams. Now there’s upwards of 800 players, and something like 60 teams.
When I was the Big Dude of local Little League (there were other titles I heard muttered) the pay was not so good. Today, taking in to account inflation, the pay is the same.
When I was El Presidente I earned the title of ‘The Human Rain Delay” because of a mistake I made with our newfangled sprinkler system. Today there are new fields, new fences, remote-controlled scoreboards, and Cheeze-whiz dispensers to play with.
It’s not really about baseball.
It’s not really about the rules.
It’s definitely not about the parents and their needs.
No, if you want to be the President of the local Little League you have to be a bit of a fool, or willing to act the part at least.
Ideally, a twelve-year-old would make a good Little League President, but they’re usually too busy playing games to take on the job.
If a big piece of that twelve-year-old kid you once were, is still available –maybe forgotten in the glove compartment of your new pick-up truck, you’re a likely candidate.
If you’re a salesman who can set his own hours, or employed locally so you can get away at a moment’s notice, or even if you are temporarily out of work, you’re looking even better.
Do people often scratch their heads and mutter, ‘that’s one crazy SOB” when you speak?
Congratulations, Mr. President.
If that appeals to you, how about this: your own staff of 20, near-dictatorial powers, and ultimate responsibility for upwards of 750 very eager ‘employees’.
Enjoy the outdoors?
Like to get a little dirty, now and then?
No, I’m not talking about heading up FEMA or any disaster agency, but you’re getting warmer.
How are you at handling an irate parent, or two, or three, a week?
And of course the pay is, well, to be honest there is no pay.
Ready to sign up? Sorry, it’s not as easy as that. Though there are an enormous set of responsibilities, no pay, long hours and a lot of grief, you also have to be loved and respected by the staff or you’ll never get the job in the first place.
Pope!
You’ve got it, sort of.
I am talking about a once-in-a-lifetime job opening (when you retire you’ll feel like you died and went to heaven) that has just opened up and if you act fast you may have a shot.
El Presidente of the South Plymouth Little League!
I just received an email from South Plymouth Little League saying that resumes are now being accepted, and listing the following percs:
-Free Life Insurance!
-Body guards that travel with you, field to field.
-Cheeze-whiz on your hot dog at no additional cost!
Carpentry experience desirable, but not required.
Public speaking is part of the job, but eloquence is optional.
A big ego is mandatory, but don’t expect that it will get you anywhere.
Little League is full of big egos, and fragile egos and, of course, with hundreds and hundreds of egos that have just hatched and need nurturing.
Strangely enough, you don’t have to know a lot about baseball. You should love the game –the way kids play it, but you don’t have to be a walking encyclopedia of baseball lore, or a former high school star (there are plenty of those guys coaching teams).
No, the main attribute required in a President of a local Little League is a kind of naiveté: you have to believe, no matter how many ‘more-experienced’ staff members tell you otherwise, that you can make the experience more enjoyable for the kids.
That’s the constant struggle –as I see it: to keep it about the kids.
I know a little about the subject. I was Pope Francis the First, back when the League encompassed only about 600 players divided into about 40 teams. Now there’s upwards of 800 players, and something like 60 teams.
When I was the Big Dude of local Little League (there were other titles I heard muttered) the pay was not so good. Today, taking in to account inflation, the pay is the same.
When I was El Presidente I earned the title of ‘The Human Rain Delay” because of a mistake I made with our newfangled sprinkler system. Today there are new fields, new fences, remote-controlled scoreboards, and Cheeze-whiz dispensers to play with.
It’s not really about baseball.
It’s not really about the rules.
It’s definitely not about the parents and their needs.
No, if you want to be the President of the local Little League you have to be a bit of a fool, or willing to act the part at least.
Ideally, a twelve-year-old would make a good Little League President, but they’re usually too busy playing games to take on the job.
If a big piece of that twelve-year-old kid you once were, is still available –maybe forgotten in the glove compartment of your new pick-up truck, you’re a likely candidate.
If you’re a salesman who can set his own hours, or employed locally so you can get away at a moment’s notice, or even if you are temporarily out of work, you’re looking even better.
Do people often scratch their heads and mutter, ‘that’s one crazy SOB” when you speak?
Congratulations, Mr. President.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
The Well Guy
The Well Guy is mad at me.
We came home from a long weekend in the mountains and noticed some rusty-looking water in the toilets.
Mary looked at me in that way of hers.
“What, what,” I said, “what did I do now?”
“Maybe it’s what you didn’t do,” she said, cryptically, but I knew what she meant.
Later that night she got up to use the bathroom and when she got back in bed she elbowed me awake.
‘What, what,” I said, still half asleep: “what did I do now?” But I knew.
I had been lying there dreading what was about to happen.
She handed me a flashlight. “Maybe it’s not too late,” she said, pulling the covers off me, and using the cold soles of her feet to propel me out of bed.
Our well pit is just off to the side of the front lawn. I put on my slippers and an old gray robe and trundled out the front door, flashlight in hand. When I reached the well pit, I put down the flashlight and heaved off the concrete cover.
A belch of overheated, yet still damp air came whooshing out of the concrete room, followed moments later by the reassuring, repetitive sound of our 7-year old jet pump going about its business. There was hope yet, I thought...
Carefully I got down on all fours and, inching my head out over the pit opening, flashed the light down into the dark, cylindrical chamber.
The beam landed first on the big red pump, then found a large gray tank, reflected off the shiny backs of a variety of tiny bugs and slimy looking lizards, followed a coil of heavy black hose leading from ground to pump to tank and then back into the ground –but no little yellow man.
‘Darn!” I said out loud, too loud: for my voice bounced round the dank tube and came tooting out like a Tugboat’s horn.
When I was a kid we traveled a lot, but that never seemed to simplify the routine that we had to follow before we could actually leave the house.
Before you could go anywhere there was a list of duties you had to perform. You had to turn off the heat, unplug appliances, go to the post office and discontinue your mail. Then you had to tell the milkman not to deliver, the relatives not to call, get someone to feed the parrot, and make sure you left a few boxes of pizza crusts and a carton or two of sour milk for the Well Guy.
Boy, have things changed. Today people think nothing of just dropping everything and taking off: often forgetting though, that while they are away the Well Guy will play.
Come on: you wouldn’t just leave your teenage boys home alone while you went on vacation, would you? The Well Guy deserves at least as much attention as teenagers, maybe more.
Oh, you say you don’t have a Well Guy: in fact you don’t even have a well. Sure, fine, you can believe what you want. But tell me why is it that whenever you go away, or whenever the checkbook gets particularly thin, or whenever you think you’ve got this homeowner thing licked something always goes wrong –something expensive?
No matter how modern your home is there is always something that you depend on that you just don’t have a clue how to fix: your car, or the lawnmower, or the refrigerator, or the air-conditioner, or the well.
Call him by any name that you feel comfortable with: the Well Guy, Troll, Gremlin, but just admit that whatever his name, he’s down there in the dark, waiting.
Think about it: out there in a dark, cold hole in the ground is a little yellow guy who asks nothing more than that you spare him a few scraps now and then. And in exchange for those meager scraps he is going to make sure that pump keeps pumping and water keeps flowing to the tub and the shower and the toilets, day after day, month after month, and year after year.
You know you can’t do it all on your own.
You know that even the best well drilling companies are going to charge you an arm and a leg every time they pay you a visit. Look at the trucks they drive around in: mini-derricks with which they plumb the very depths of the earth for that most precious of fluids: and it’s water, not gas!
It never fails though: a few weeks go by without a major disaster or a faulty appliance and we have ourselves convinced that we are on top of these things. After all, we bought the latest equipment, we have insurance on our insurance. What could go wrong?
Suddenly somebody’s elbowing us in the middle of the night because there is nothing but air coming out of the spigot.
Is there a more pitiable sound than the death rattle of air through a faucet?
How long can you go without a shower?
How long can you go without a glass of water?
How long can you go without that miracle of modern life –the flush toilet?
Now matter how long you can go, the Well Guy can go longer!
Take it from somebody who knows.
We came home from a long weekend in the mountains and noticed some rusty-looking water in the toilets.
Mary looked at me in that way of hers.
“What, what,” I said, “what did I do now?”
“Maybe it’s what you didn’t do,” she said, cryptically, but I knew what she meant.
Later that night she got up to use the bathroom and when she got back in bed she elbowed me awake.
‘What, what,” I said, still half asleep: “what did I do now?” But I knew.
I had been lying there dreading what was about to happen.
She handed me a flashlight. “Maybe it’s not too late,” she said, pulling the covers off me, and using the cold soles of her feet to propel me out of bed.
Our well pit is just off to the side of the front lawn. I put on my slippers and an old gray robe and trundled out the front door, flashlight in hand. When I reached the well pit, I put down the flashlight and heaved off the concrete cover.
A belch of overheated, yet still damp air came whooshing out of the concrete room, followed moments later by the reassuring, repetitive sound of our 7-year old jet pump going about its business. There was hope yet, I thought...
Carefully I got down on all fours and, inching my head out over the pit opening, flashed the light down into the dark, cylindrical chamber.
The beam landed first on the big red pump, then found a large gray tank, reflected off the shiny backs of a variety of tiny bugs and slimy looking lizards, followed a coil of heavy black hose leading from ground to pump to tank and then back into the ground –but no little yellow man.
‘Darn!” I said out loud, too loud: for my voice bounced round the dank tube and came tooting out like a Tugboat’s horn.
When I was a kid we traveled a lot, but that never seemed to simplify the routine that we had to follow before we could actually leave the house.
Before you could go anywhere there was a list of duties you had to perform. You had to turn off the heat, unplug appliances, go to the post office and discontinue your mail. Then you had to tell the milkman not to deliver, the relatives not to call, get someone to feed the parrot, and make sure you left a few boxes of pizza crusts and a carton or two of sour milk for the Well Guy.
Boy, have things changed. Today people think nothing of just dropping everything and taking off: often forgetting though, that while they are away the Well Guy will play.
Come on: you wouldn’t just leave your teenage boys home alone while you went on vacation, would you? The Well Guy deserves at least as much attention as teenagers, maybe more.
Oh, you say you don’t have a Well Guy: in fact you don’t even have a well. Sure, fine, you can believe what you want. But tell me why is it that whenever you go away, or whenever the checkbook gets particularly thin, or whenever you think you’ve got this homeowner thing licked something always goes wrong –something expensive?
No matter how modern your home is there is always something that you depend on that you just don’t have a clue how to fix: your car, or the lawnmower, or the refrigerator, or the air-conditioner, or the well.
Call him by any name that you feel comfortable with: the Well Guy, Troll, Gremlin, but just admit that whatever his name, he’s down there in the dark, waiting.
Think about it: out there in a dark, cold hole in the ground is a little yellow guy who asks nothing more than that you spare him a few scraps now and then. And in exchange for those meager scraps he is going to make sure that pump keeps pumping and water keeps flowing to the tub and the shower and the toilets, day after day, month after month, and year after year.
You know you can’t do it all on your own.
You know that even the best well drilling companies are going to charge you an arm and a leg every time they pay you a visit. Look at the trucks they drive around in: mini-derricks with which they plumb the very depths of the earth for that most precious of fluids: and it’s water, not gas!
It never fails though: a few weeks go by without a major disaster or a faulty appliance and we have ourselves convinced that we are on top of these things. After all, we bought the latest equipment, we have insurance on our insurance. What could go wrong?
Suddenly somebody’s elbowing us in the middle of the night because there is nothing but air coming out of the spigot.
Is there a more pitiable sound than the death rattle of air through a faucet?
How long can you go without a shower?
How long can you go without a glass of water?
How long can you go without that miracle of modern life –the flush toilet?
Now matter how long you can go, the Well Guy can go longer!
Take it from somebody who knows.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Institutional Racism
It seems clear, to me at least, that the best argument for the existence of institutional racism in this country, is now on display in coastal Louisiana and Mississippi.
The racial epithets and Jim Crow segregation of the distant past are now shown, I believe, to pale in significance when compared with the centuries of economic neglect that have eroded the very foundations of our so-called civilization.
Hurricane Katrina, and a FEMA decimated by a government of ideologues who considered that organization a wasteful outgrowth of discredited New Deal democracy, produced twin storm surges that no levee could ever withstand.
Is there a stronger argument for the role of a truly compassionate government in the lives of its citizens? And can there be a clearer warning of the danger of a goverment -and a judiciary, content with Constitutional abstractions?
Now is not the time for political expediency: an appointee to the agency responsible for protecting Americans against the ravages of huricanes or earthquakes or tornadoes must be an expert in the field, not an old friend from Houston. And similarly, the nominee to lead the highest court in the land, no matter how well educated and telegenic, cannot be considered qualified without any actual Supreme Court experience.
The Bush administration has been remarkably well focused on the goal of removing the vestiges of FDR's 'New Deal', especially those policies and programs which directly support the individual in times of need. Their main weapon in this attack has been the placement of what can only be called 'Fifth Columnists': appointees who are either so inept that they simply stand-by in silence while their departments are taken apart, or so opposed to the work of the departments that they are selected to lead, that they obstruct the work themselves.
I am very concerned that 'Mr. Roberts' is yet another political appointee, such as the last two heads of FEMA and a hundred other Bush appointees, who has been chosen not for what he may accomplish, but for what he will impede; not for what he believes, but for what he opposes; not for what he is willing to say, but for what he is willing to hide.
In the wake of the twin storms of Katrina and FEMA, can we afford to believe anything else?
The racial epithets and Jim Crow segregation of the distant past are now shown, I believe, to pale in significance when compared with the centuries of economic neglect that have eroded the very foundations of our so-called civilization.
Hurricane Katrina, and a FEMA decimated by a government of ideologues who considered that organization a wasteful outgrowth of discredited New Deal democracy, produced twin storm surges that no levee could ever withstand.
Is there a stronger argument for the role of a truly compassionate government in the lives of its citizens? And can there be a clearer warning of the danger of a goverment -and a judiciary, content with Constitutional abstractions?
Now is not the time for political expediency: an appointee to the agency responsible for protecting Americans against the ravages of huricanes or earthquakes or tornadoes must be an expert in the field, not an old friend from Houston. And similarly, the nominee to lead the highest court in the land, no matter how well educated and telegenic, cannot be considered qualified without any actual Supreme Court experience.
The Bush administration has been remarkably well focused on the goal of removing the vestiges of FDR's 'New Deal', especially those policies and programs which directly support the individual in times of need. Their main weapon in this attack has been the placement of what can only be called 'Fifth Columnists': appointees who are either so inept that they simply stand-by in silence while their departments are taken apart, or so opposed to the work of the departments that they are selected to lead, that they obstruct the work themselves.
I am very concerned that 'Mr. Roberts' is yet another political appointee, such as the last two heads of FEMA and a hundred other Bush appointees, who has been chosen not for what he may accomplish, but for what he will impede; not for what he believes, but for what he opposes; not for what he is willing to say, but for what he is willing to hide.
In the wake of the twin storms of Katrina and FEMA, can we afford to believe anything else?
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Quiet!
The creak of trees leaning against trees: like a child’s first violin lesson.
The occasional, unhurried trill of birds: laughing?
The wind playing in the Notch like a jazz drummers brush on stretched skins: unhurried, yet capricious.
Finally, after a four hour drive, a night in a Motor-Inn, and a long hike along the 19-Mile Brook Trail, we had shed the sounds of so-called civilization and all we could hear was the hush of breathing: the earth’s and ours.
Much is made of the sights of nature. We travel hard and long to change our points of view: to gaze out on a pristine beach and a flat ocean, or a craggy peak dappled with granite, covered in deep green. But we receive greater benefits, I believe, from the change in our aural world: from exchanging the coarse sounds of our everyday existence for an encounter with silence.
It may be as well, that silence is a far more precious, and rare commodity than simple visual beauty.
Our home town Plymouth does not suffer from a lack of scenery. People travel from great distances to ‘see’ our antiquities, recline on our beaches, take in our sights. These scenes are a special benefit for the year-round residents of the town as well, and are a large part of the appeal of living in Plymouth.
My own home, though modest by most standards, has a wealth of relative privacy. Set back from the road, surrounded by woods, shielded for the most part from the lights of passing vehicles.
I have often simply stood in my yard and enjoyed the stars, or basked in the moonlight, while doing my best to ignore the echoing engines of cars on the street, trucks on the highway, helicopters and planes passing overhead.
There is no ignoring however, certain other industrial sounds, such as the exaggerated bass produced by modern automobile sound systems: a sound you feel more than you hear. And almost every home you enter offers a subtle cacophony of beeps and boings and clicks and whistles.
Can you even imagine back to the day when a family fell asleep to the simple sound of a fire’s embers settling, the restless voices of horses, the occasional coyote, and the crescendo of crickets? Now add to those natural sounds the water pump engaging, the air conditioner’s rush, the television’s din, and the computer and a host of other electronic devices calling out like lost sheep.
You have to go a long way, make a special effort, to shed these sounds. I am not sure if such quiet is available anyplace in Plymouth: perhaps in the heart of Myles Standish State Forest –but then its popularity and ease of access work against that; maybe along the coast, or out along the beaches of Saquish –but even there you often hear the sounds of motor boats and the nearby restaurants and night spots with their late night revelers.
Even in the White Mountains of New Hampshire –where we traveled, quiet is not something the loveliest Inn or Bed and Breakfast can guarantee their guests. The night before our recent trek we stayed just a few miles away from the trailhead, in a town that can boast no more than a few hundred residents. Despite this relative isolation every few minutes the ground rumbled and the air resounded from the sounds of logging trucks going through their gears. And in our room itself, the well-intentioned innkeepers had placed air conditioners which produced a commotion equal to a 747 passing over Nahant.
It is not that I cannot abide any of the sounds of the civilized world. I love the reverberation of a well-tuned motorcycle dropping into gear and accelerating. The raucous kalimba-like play of boat riggings in a crowded harbor can be music to the ear. Even the thunderous chords that leak through the windows of a passing car (yes, I mean you Matt) can make me smile, remembering the decibel levels of my youth.
But I have come to realize how precious the quiet is, how elusive it can be, and how hard I am willing to work to find the places where it can still be found, in its natural state. For silence, I think, cannot be manufactured. Quiet, I believe, is not the result of things being blocked out. Stillness, I have found, is not the absence of activity, but rather a kind of harmony of unhurried actions.
It’s just that I take pleasure in things that, just a few years ago, I hardly knew existed.
The occasional, unhurried trill of birds: laughing?
The wind playing in the Notch like a jazz drummers brush on stretched skins: unhurried, yet capricious.
Finally, after a four hour drive, a night in a Motor-Inn, and a long hike along the 19-Mile Brook Trail, we had shed the sounds of so-called civilization and all we could hear was the hush of breathing: the earth’s and ours.
Much is made of the sights of nature. We travel hard and long to change our points of view: to gaze out on a pristine beach and a flat ocean, or a craggy peak dappled with granite, covered in deep green. But we receive greater benefits, I believe, from the change in our aural world: from exchanging the coarse sounds of our everyday existence for an encounter with silence.
It may be as well, that silence is a far more precious, and rare commodity than simple visual beauty.
Our home town Plymouth does not suffer from a lack of scenery. People travel from great distances to ‘see’ our antiquities, recline on our beaches, take in our sights. These scenes are a special benefit for the year-round residents of the town as well, and are a large part of the appeal of living in Plymouth.
My own home, though modest by most standards, has a wealth of relative privacy. Set back from the road, surrounded by woods, shielded for the most part from the lights of passing vehicles.
I have often simply stood in my yard and enjoyed the stars, or basked in the moonlight, while doing my best to ignore the echoing engines of cars on the street, trucks on the highway, helicopters and planes passing overhead.
There is no ignoring however, certain other industrial sounds, such as the exaggerated bass produced by modern automobile sound systems: a sound you feel more than you hear. And almost every home you enter offers a subtle cacophony of beeps and boings and clicks and whistles.
Can you even imagine back to the day when a family fell asleep to the simple sound of a fire’s embers settling, the restless voices of horses, the occasional coyote, and the crescendo of crickets? Now add to those natural sounds the water pump engaging, the air conditioner’s rush, the television’s din, and the computer and a host of other electronic devices calling out like lost sheep.
You have to go a long way, make a special effort, to shed these sounds. I am not sure if such quiet is available anyplace in Plymouth: perhaps in the heart of Myles Standish State Forest –but then its popularity and ease of access work against that; maybe along the coast, or out along the beaches of Saquish –but even there you often hear the sounds of motor boats and the nearby restaurants and night spots with their late night revelers.
Even in the White Mountains of New Hampshire –where we traveled, quiet is not something the loveliest Inn or Bed and Breakfast can guarantee their guests. The night before our recent trek we stayed just a few miles away from the trailhead, in a town that can boast no more than a few hundred residents. Despite this relative isolation every few minutes the ground rumbled and the air resounded from the sounds of logging trucks going through their gears. And in our room itself, the well-intentioned innkeepers had placed air conditioners which produced a commotion equal to a 747 passing over Nahant.
It is not that I cannot abide any of the sounds of the civilized world. I love the reverberation of a well-tuned motorcycle dropping into gear and accelerating. The raucous kalimba-like play of boat riggings in a crowded harbor can be music to the ear. Even the thunderous chords that leak through the windows of a passing car (yes, I mean you Matt) can make me smile, remembering the decibel levels of my youth.
But I have come to realize how precious the quiet is, how elusive it can be, and how hard I am willing to work to find the places where it can still be found, in its natural state. For silence, I think, cannot be manufactured. Quiet, I believe, is not the result of things being blocked out. Stillness, I have found, is not the absence of activity, but rather a kind of harmony of unhurried actions.
It’s just that I take pleasure in things that, just a few years ago, I hardly knew existed.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Enisketomp
They are going to move the Forefathers Monument, did you hear? In its present location on Allerton it is missed by 90% of the tourists who go looking for it, and most town residents couldn’t tell you where it is either.
They’re going to move it, piece by piece, stone by stone, to the rest stop at Exit 5: there it will be given a position of prominence, directly off the highway and in front of the McDonalds.
Customers at the McDonald’s drive-thru will be able to order commemorative Forefathers’ Fries during the re-construction process.
Okay now wait a few seconds and let that sink in…
Preposterous? You bet. Thank goodness it’s not true. But the idea is not any more ridiculous than what they have actually done to the 35 foot wooden Enisketomp that sits there now.
Enisketomp, if you didn’t know, is the name of the wooden sculpture donated to the town by the artist Peter ‘Wolf’ Toth.
Toth, in an effort to raise awareness of the important contributions of Native Americans, carved and placed massive wooden sculptures depicting Native Americans icons in all fifty states, and every Canadian province. All told he has created over 70 sculptures, and has already replaced a number of those that through neglect or accident had fallen into disrepair over the years since he began his quest.
Fortunately, since its creation, Enisketomp –which loosely translated means ‘human being’, has been cared for by the Massachusetts Highway Department. They placed it on the concrete block it still rests on, grounded it with metal bar and wire to protect against lightning strikes, and regularly treat it to protect against rot or infestation.
What they have been unable to do, however, is protect it against the rising tide of commercialization, a phenomena that threatens to rob us all of our right to spaces that are out of reach of the corporations –places where we can actually think for ourselves, without commercial interruptions..
I never liked that they placed Enisketomp at the rest stop at exit 5 in the first place: I thought it smacked of the days when impoverished Native American’s were forced to sell their trinkets along the nation’s highways.
But I understood that the location had a certain prominence – would be seen by millions, even if they were just rushing by. Originally that location at Exit 5 also featured an information center –not a fast food restaurant.
But I think you know what happened. The information center was leveled, in favor of a McDonalds and, at present, Honey Dew Donut. And now Enisketomp is just a decoration –like the super-sized inflatable coffee cup and donut that was placed there last week.
Of course what has been done to Enisketomp is not out of the ordinary these days: I don’t assert that the artist, his sculpture, or Native American’s overall have been singled out for this treatment. Rather I believe the insult is directed at us all.
More and more the interests of business are given preference over the rights of the individual.
Bankruptcy laws are revised to favor the creditors. Medicare is revised to favor the pharmaceutical companies. Workers pensions are jettisoned for the sake of the ‘life’ of the corporation.
Along our highways the beautiful trees that used to stretch for miles, and served as a buffer between the roadway and development along its path, are being cut away so that we can be sure to have a clear view of the car dealers and home improvement stores.
This stretch of our lives sponsored by the highest bidder.
A plastic Enisketomp with every Happy Meal.
What would they pay, I wonder, to put a logo on Plymouth Rock?
They’re going to move it, piece by piece, stone by stone, to the rest stop at Exit 5: there it will be given a position of prominence, directly off the highway and in front of the McDonalds.
Customers at the McDonald’s drive-thru will be able to order commemorative Forefathers’ Fries during the re-construction process.
Okay now wait a few seconds and let that sink in…
Preposterous? You bet. Thank goodness it’s not true. But the idea is not any more ridiculous than what they have actually done to the 35 foot wooden Enisketomp that sits there now.
Enisketomp, if you didn’t know, is the name of the wooden sculpture donated to the town by the artist Peter ‘Wolf’ Toth.
Toth, in an effort to raise awareness of the important contributions of Native Americans, carved and placed massive wooden sculptures depicting Native Americans icons in all fifty states, and every Canadian province. All told he has created over 70 sculptures, and has already replaced a number of those that through neglect or accident had fallen into disrepair over the years since he began his quest.
Fortunately, since its creation, Enisketomp –which loosely translated means ‘human being’, has been cared for by the Massachusetts Highway Department. They placed it on the concrete block it still rests on, grounded it with metal bar and wire to protect against lightning strikes, and regularly treat it to protect against rot or infestation.
What they have been unable to do, however, is protect it against the rising tide of commercialization, a phenomena that threatens to rob us all of our right to spaces that are out of reach of the corporations –places where we can actually think for ourselves, without commercial interruptions..
I never liked that they placed Enisketomp at the rest stop at exit 5 in the first place: I thought it smacked of the days when impoverished Native American’s were forced to sell their trinkets along the nation’s highways.
But I understood that the location had a certain prominence – would be seen by millions, even if they were just rushing by. Originally that location at Exit 5 also featured an information center –not a fast food restaurant.
But I think you know what happened. The information center was leveled, in favor of a McDonalds and, at present, Honey Dew Donut. And now Enisketomp is just a decoration –like the super-sized inflatable coffee cup and donut that was placed there last week.
Of course what has been done to Enisketomp is not out of the ordinary these days: I don’t assert that the artist, his sculpture, or Native American’s overall have been singled out for this treatment. Rather I believe the insult is directed at us all.
More and more the interests of business are given preference over the rights of the individual.
Bankruptcy laws are revised to favor the creditors. Medicare is revised to favor the pharmaceutical companies. Workers pensions are jettisoned for the sake of the ‘life’ of the corporation.
Along our highways the beautiful trees that used to stretch for miles, and served as a buffer between the roadway and development along its path, are being cut away so that we can be sure to have a clear view of the car dealers and home improvement stores.
This stretch of our lives sponsored by the highest bidder.
A plastic Enisketomp with every Happy Meal.
What would they pay, I wonder, to put a logo on Plymouth Rock?
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Vacationing on the Big Island
Greenland, that’s a new one on me.
I am used to being told ‘off’ – and have had numerous destinations suggested, but never Greenland.
But that’s where I should move, according to one reader.
When I was a few years younger my father would regularly tell me ‘go to your room’, which was not too hard to take: that’s where all my ‘albums’ were. Exile to ‘Yaroom’ usually consisted of a few hours listening to music with those great old ear-muff style headphones on: the kind that not only produced great sound, but blocked out the rest of the world.
I’ve also had many people tell me to ‘get out of their face’, which I always took to mean out of their heads, or out of their sight: though lately I’ve reassessed that, as people tell me I am a close talker.
Maybe I actually was ‘in their face’.
‘Take a hike’ is one of my personal favorites: there is a certain civility to that expression. The speaker is suggesting, I believe, that after some vigorous exercise I may reconsider my position.
The next time I have the chance to take a long hike I promise that I will use that opportunity to fully consider the merits of re-locating to Greenland.
‘Take a Flying Leap’ is another wonderfully description travel recommendation Twenty years or so ago, when hang-gliding was all the rage, there were thousands of people who took that advice seriously. I am not by nature a timid soul, and if the opportunity had presented itself, I might also have taken ‘wing’ – were it not for the lesson provided by my neighbor Dan.
Dan actually took hang-gliding lessons, somewhere in the mountains of Vermont, I think. He got as far as lesson 3 of 5, where they have you literally take ‘a flying leap’. In lesson three you are supposed to jog down a small hill with the glider on your back, hopping up and down like the Wright Brothers early experiments at Kitty Hawk. But Dan got a little more air than he or the instructor expected: in fact his glider caught a good gust of wind and swooped up about 25 feet in the air, then plummeted to earth like a stone. I didn’t actually see it happen, but I heard Dan tell the story as he sat on his couch with his right leg extended and resting on a pillow. His exposed knee, as I remember it, was as big as a basketball.
Despite Dan’s painful experience ‘The Flying Leap’ does at least offer the hope of survival, even of flight, whereas ‘Go Jump In a Lake’, ‘Take a Long Walk off a Short Pier’, ‘Get Lost’ and others of its kind seem to offer no hope at.
My mother tried hard to be constructive when she was frustrated with me. She wasn’t content just to have me leave her sight, but would suggest that during my absence I seek out assistance. ‘Tell It to the Marines’, she’d say, pointing toward the door. At the time though, this advice confused me, as my father was a ‘lifer’ in the Air Force, and for most of my youth we lived on air bases where Marines were hard to find.
I wonder though, if there are any Marines on Greenland?
My father was once stationed on Greenland, and was issued this fantastic coat with a hood that totally encased your head in wolverine fur (or so I imagined). Years later, when he was stationed at the Pentagon, I would often ‘borrow’ that coat when the temperature got below 40 where we lived in Maryland (which was a deep freeze there) and whatever fur that collar was made of, it would drive the local dogs crazy.
You know, now that I think of it, the only way to get to Greenland these days is to take a flying leap, and if you jump in a lake there, chances are that you will have a very hard landing –on ice.
If you take a hike in Greenland you need the usual outdoor gear, plus an expensive sled and a team of dogs. And with all of the effort you have to give to avoiding polar bears and cracks in the ice, there would be very little time left for pondering the great questions of our time.
No, I’ve decided, I am not going to Greenland.
Sorry to disappoint.
But to show my readers I’m not a bad guy, I am going to meet them half way: I am going to go directly to my room and put on my headphones. I’ve got this great new CD of Inuit Love Songs that I can’t wait to listen to.
One man’s exile is another man’s dream vacation.
I am used to being told ‘off’ – and have had numerous destinations suggested, but never Greenland.
But that’s where I should move, according to one reader.
When I was a few years younger my father would regularly tell me ‘go to your room’, which was not too hard to take: that’s where all my ‘albums’ were. Exile to ‘Yaroom’ usually consisted of a few hours listening to music with those great old ear-muff style headphones on: the kind that not only produced great sound, but blocked out the rest of the world.
I’ve also had many people tell me to ‘get out of their face’, which I always took to mean out of their heads, or out of their sight: though lately I’ve reassessed that, as people tell me I am a close talker.
Maybe I actually was ‘in their face’.
‘Take a hike’ is one of my personal favorites: there is a certain civility to that expression. The speaker is suggesting, I believe, that after some vigorous exercise I may reconsider my position.
The next time I have the chance to take a long hike I promise that I will use that opportunity to fully consider the merits of re-locating to Greenland.
‘Take a Flying Leap’ is another wonderfully description travel recommendation Twenty years or so ago, when hang-gliding was all the rage, there were thousands of people who took that advice seriously. I am not by nature a timid soul, and if the opportunity had presented itself, I might also have taken ‘wing’ – were it not for the lesson provided by my neighbor Dan.
Dan actually took hang-gliding lessons, somewhere in the mountains of Vermont, I think. He got as far as lesson 3 of 5, where they have you literally take ‘a flying leap’. In lesson three you are supposed to jog down a small hill with the glider on your back, hopping up and down like the Wright Brothers early experiments at Kitty Hawk. But Dan got a little more air than he or the instructor expected: in fact his glider caught a good gust of wind and swooped up about 25 feet in the air, then plummeted to earth like a stone. I didn’t actually see it happen, but I heard Dan tell the story as he sat on his couch with his right leg extended and resting on a pillow. His exposed knee, as I remember it, was as big as a basketball.
Despite Dan’s painful experience ‘The Flying Leap’ does at least offer the hope of survival, even of flight, whereas ‘Go Jump In a Lake’, ‘Take a Long Walk off a Short Pier’, ‘Get Lost’ and others of its kind seem to offer no hope at.
My mother tried hard to be constructive when she was frustrated with me. She wasn’t content just to have me leave her sight, but would suggest that during my absence I seek out assistance. ‘Tell It to the Marines’, she’d say, pointing toward the door. At the time though, this advice confused me, as my father was a ‘lifer’ in the Air Force, and for most of my youth we lived on air bases where Marines were hard to find.
I wonder though, if there are any Marines on Greenland?
My father was once stationed on Greenland, and was issued this fantastic coat with a hood that totally encased your head in wolverine fur (or so I imagined). Years later, when he was stationed at the Pentagon, I would often ‘borrow’ that coat when the temperature got below 40 where we lived in Maryland (which was a deep freeze there) and whatever fur that collar was made of, it would drive the local dogs crazy.
You know, now that I think of it, the only way to get to Greenland these days is to take a flying leap, and if you jump in a lake there, chances are that you will have a very hard landing –on ice.
If you take a hike in Greenland you need the usual outdoor gear, plus an expensive sled and a team of dogs. And with all of the effort you have to give to avoiding polar bears and cracks in the ice, there would be very little time left for pondering the great questions of our time.
No, I’ve decided, I am not going to Greenland.
Sorry to disappoint.
But to show my readers I’m not a bad guy, I am going to meet them half way: I am going to go directly to my room and put on my headphones. I’ve got this great new CD of Inuit Love Songs that I can’t wait to listen to.
One man’s exile is another man’s dream vacation.
Fly Paper
Americans are great at names –names that bring to mind all sorts of futuristic, utopian images and advancements. And it seems it really doesn’t matter how large the gap is, between the name and reality.
Take the Sagamore ‘Fly-Over’, for example.
My day job takes me over the Sagamore Bridge several times a week, but despite all the construction going on, the old Escort’s wheel’s haven’t come close to leaving the ground.
In my humble opinion it’s more a ‘Swerve Around’ than a Fly-Over.
Maybe that’s a good thing though. From what I have seen, drivers headed to the Cape are having a lot of trouble with the new swerving over. If their vehicles actually went airborne there’s no telling how bad it could get.
Part of the problem is that they have yet to take the rotary out of the equation –which I thought was suppose to be the whole point. But whatever they are doing traffic is already much worse than before.
Before they began the construction, drivers knew what to expect and could mentally prepare for the rotary for a few hundred yards: as they neared the bridge, drivers would go slower and slower and finally, at the edge of the rotary, they’d come to a complete stop.
Many then had a very difficult time starting up again, and merging in to the rotary traffic. On weekends and holidays traffic often wouldn’t move at all but –on the positive side, with nobody going anyplace accidents were few and far between.
With the new construction however, you don’t have the time to ponder what lies ahead. You’re doing the limit (about 75) when suddenly you run into construction, then encounter a few odd international signs, then the big swerve over, and right after that you run smack-dab in to the rotary.
I’m not showing off my extensive vocabulary here: smack-dab is exactly the right term. Cars slow, swerve, merge and then –smack-dab the car ahead of them, and smack-dab the cars to their right and left.
Smack-dab, smack-dab, smack-dab, screeunch!
Maybe they call it a fly-over because every Friday night the choppers are flying over the scene.
“This is Chip Chapstick high over Three in LiveFiveChopperOne reporting that there’s been another accident at the Sagamore Smack-Dab that has traffic backed up to Portland, Maine”.
I think they should have left well enough alone.
The rotary was working just fine thank you.
For hotel owners the existence of the rotary meant that tourists wouldn’t risk being late and losing their reservations and so would confirm ahead of time.
For permanent residents of the Cape the rotary meant that only so many of those so called ‘summer people’ could actually make it over the bridge every day. And that doesn’t even count the number of people who avoided the Cape altogether because they couldn’t deal with the rotary in the first place.
Let’s be honest: it’s a well known fact that rotary’s scare people in to taking alternative routes. A local member of the Thatched Roof Party has told me on super secret double background that the government is secretly exploring the possibility of using traffic rotaries in southern border states to reduce the amount of illegal immigrants.
Sooner or later though, the ‘Fly-Over’will be completed. They have to finish: the construction company has already spent the money from this job on their next big project – finishing Route 44.
When they do finish though, don’t expect any tangible improvements: because of the elimination of the rotary and all the publicity about this ‘Fly Over’ I predict that even more people are going to drive to the Cape, just to experience the thrill.
Instead of choosing the Cape for their vacation because of its quaint charms and beautiful beaches, they’ll choose to come just to experience the amazing ‘Fly-Over’.
And then Cape businesses will get on board, and begin promoting the Cape like it’s an amusement park.
“This summer”, a dramatic new ad campaign will begin, “don’t just drive to your vacation. FLY-OVER!”
Soon thereafter traffic trying to get to the Cape will become unbearable again, necessitating the creation of more rotaries to scare folks away, followed shortly by more Swerve-Overs to slow them down, more Smack-Dabs for the sake of the local auto body repair shops, and a dramatic increase in Helicopter traffic.
In fact government employment statistics predict that there will be a dramatic need for traffic copter pilots and copter personalities in the next decade, especially on the Cape.
When that happens I am going to bite the bullet and dish out the cash for a tunnel pass. It’s either that or stay on this side of the bridge and amuse myself by watching the tourists taking off and landing.
Take the Sagamore ‘Fly-Over’, for example.
My day job takes me over the Sagamore Bridge several times a week, but despite all the construction going on, the old Escort’s wheel’s haven’t come close to leaving the ground.
In my humble opinion it’s more a ‘Swerve Around’ than a Fly-Over.
Maybe that’s a good thing though. From what I have seen, drivers headed to the Cape are having a lot of trouble with the new swerving over. If their vehicles actually went airborne there’s no telling how bad it could get.
Part of the problem is that they have yet to take the rotary out of the equation –which I thought was suppose to be the whole point. But whatever they are doing traffic is already much worse than before.
Before they began the construction, drivers knew what to expect and could mentally prepare for the rotary for a few hundred yards: as they neared the bridge, drivers would go slower and slower and finally, at the edge of the rotary, they’d come to a complete stop.
Many then had a very difficult time starting up again, and merging in to the rotary traffic. On weekends and holidays traffic often wouldn’t move at all but –on the positive side, with nobody going anyplace accidents were few and far between.
With the new construction however, you don’t have the time to ponder what lies ahead. You’re doing the limit (about 75) when suddenly you run into construction, then encounter a few odd international signs, then the big swerve over, and right after that you run smack-dab in to the rotary.
I’m not showing off my extensive vocabulary here: smack-dab is exactly the right term. Cars slow, swerve, merge and then –smack-dab the car ahead of them, and smack-dab the cars to their right and left.
Smack-dab, smack-dab, smack-dab, screeunch!
Maybe they call it a fly-over because every Friday night the choppers are flying over the scene.
“This is Chip Chapstick high over Three in LiveFiveChopperOne reporting that there’s been another accident at the Sagamore Smack-Dab that has traffic backed up to Portland, Maine”.
I think they should have left well enough alone.
The rotary was working just fine thank you.
For hotel owners the existence of the rotary meant that tourists wouldn’t risk being late and losing their reservations and so would confirm ahead of time.
For permanent residents of the Cape the rotary meant that only so many of those so called ‘summer people’ could actually make it over the bridge every day. And that doesn’t even count the number of people who avoided the Cape altogether because they couldn’t deal with the rotary in the first place.
Let’s be honest: it’s a well known fact that rotary’s scare people in to taking alternative routes. A local member of the Thatched Roof Party has told me on super secret double background that the government is secretly exploring the possibility of using traffic rotaries in southern border states to reduce the amount of illegal immigrants.
Sooner or later though, the ‘Fly-Over’will be completed. They have to finish: the construction company has already spent the money from this job on their next big project – finishing Route 44.
When they do finish though, don’t expect any tangible improvements: because of the elimination of the rotary and all the publicity about this ‘Fly Over’ I predict that even more people are going to drive to the Cape, just to experience the thrill.
Instead of choosing the Cape for their vacation because of its quaint charms and beautiful beaches, they’ll choose to come just to experience the amazing ‘Fly-Over’.
And then Cape businesses will get on board, and begin promoting the Cape like it’s an amusement park.
“This summer”, a dramatic new ad campaign will begin, “don’t just drive to your vacation. FLY-OVER!”
Soon thereafter traffic trying to get to the Cape will become unbearable again, necessitating the creation of more rotaries to scare folks away, followed shortly by more Swerve-Overs to slow them down, more Smack-Dabs for the sake of the local auto body repair shops, and a dramatic increase in Helicopter traffic.
In fact government employment statistics predict that there will be a dramatic need for traffic copter pilots and copter personalities in the next decade, especially on the Cape.
When that happens I am going to bite the bullet and dish out the cash for a tunnel pass. It’s either that or stay on this side of the bridge and amuse myself by watching the tourists taking off and landing.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
A Leak on the Mayflower
Help me out here: I want more than anything to write about Karl Rove, but I can’t figure out how to make it relate to life in Plymouth.
Sure, I know, my columns are only loosely connected to Plymouth in the first place, but I have to try.
Did you hear the one about Karl Rove on the Mayflower?
Yeah, he was coming over from England in 1620 and the ship sprang a leak.
Karl had nothing to do with it!
Myles Standish was there though too, and said if anyone on his ship was involved in the leak, he’d personally throw them overboard.
John Billington, spokesperson for Myles Standish, calmed the crew down by assuring them that he had specifically spoken with Karl about the leak and had been assured that Rove knew nothing about it whatsoever.
Besides, Billington said, the ship itself was not exactly new, not what you would normally think of as ‘seaworthy’, and was leaking like a sieve before this latest leak was noticed.
Selectperson-in-Waiting William Bradford wrote in his journal that the whole leak business was the fabrication of a group of disgruntled indentured servants who wanted their own plots of land in the New World. “That”, he wrote, “and the usual kind of hi-jinks you can expect when you’re cooped up for an extended period of time on a floating cesspool”.
Bradford also argued that Rove never really did anything specifically illegal.
Marine Law is very clear about people who deliberately cause a boat to leak: to be thrown overboard for leaking, the law states that you need to deliberately cause the leak, know that the leak will likely cause the boat to sink, and not care.
“How could Karl not care if the boat sank,” Bradford asked, rhetorically. “He was on the boat in the middle of the ocean, he had to care. Therefore even if he had inadvertently caused the leak he should not be thrown overboard.”
When later investigations revealed that Rove had in fact been at least aware of the leak, and had said nothing about it, Standish-spokesperson Billington told the crew that awareness of a leak and responsibility for a leak, were not the same thing.
Asked if Rove would now be thrown overboard, because he had at the very least been ‘involved’ with the leak, Billington said that he could not comment.
“We have ongoing leak here”, Billington angrily replied, “and it would inappropriate of me to comment on the seriousness of this leak until the boat sinks, or the leaking stops.”
At a later meeting with the indentured servants on Social Security, Standish himself, when asked, clarified his position, stating that anyone responsible for sinking the Mayflower would be removed from the Mayflower, provided of course that it was physically possible to remove someone if and when the ship was underwater.
“In my experience it is rare to find anyone on a ship that has already sunk,” Standish said in his matter-of-fact way, and flashing his famous grin. “Generally everyone gets off the boat while it is sinking, and some –following the rodent model, long before that.”
“But let me assure the future American people that, if and when the leaking is completed,” Standish continued, “and the ship is completely underwater, anyone still on board, and found guilty of a crime, will not be allowed to stay.”
So you see, it’s hopeless: big time politics and small-town life just don’t mix.
I wish they did: Plymouth can be so provincial.
Sure, I know, my columns are only loosely connected to Plymouth in the first place, but I have to try.
Did you hear the one about Karl Rove on the Mayflower?
Yeah, he was coming over from England in 1620 and the ship sprang a leak.
Karl had nothing to do with it!
Myles Standish was there though too, and said if anyone on his ship was involved in the leak, he’d personally throw them overboard.
John Billington, spokesperson for Myles Standish, calmed the crew down by assuring them that he had specifically spoken with Karl about the leak and had been assured that Rove knew nothing about it whatsoever.
Besides, Billington said, the ship itself was not exactly new, not what you would normally think of as ‘seaworthy’, and was leaking like a sieve before this latest leak was noticed.
Selectperson-in-Waiting William Bradford wrote in his journal that the whole leak business was the fabrication of a group of disgruntled indentured servants who wanted their own plots of land in the New World. “That”, he wrote, “and the usual kind of hi-jinks you can expect when you’re cooped up for an extended period of time on a floating cesspool”.
Bradford also argued that Rove never really did anything specifically illegal.
Marine Law is very clear about people who deliberately cause a boat to leak: to be thrown overboard for leaking, the law states that you need to deliberately cause the leak, know that the leak will likely cause the boat to sink, and not care.
“How could Karl not care if the boat sank,” Bradford asked, rhetorically. “He was on the boat in the middle of the ocean, he had to care. Therefore even if he had inadvertently caused the leak he should not be thrown overboard.”
When later investigations revealed that Rove had in fact been at least aware of the leak, and had said nothing about it, Standish-spokesperson Billington told the crew that awareness of a leak and responsibility for a leak, were not the same thing.
Asked if Rove would now be thrown overboard, because he had at the very least been ‘involved’ with the leak, Billington said that he could not comment.
“We have ongoing leak here”, Billington angrily replied, “and it would inappropriate of me to comment on the seriousness of this leak until the boat sinks, or the leaking stops.”
At a later meeting with the indentured servants on Social Security, Standish himself, when asked, clarified his position, stating that anyone responsible for sinking the Mayflower would be removed from the Mayflower, provided of course that it was physically possible to remove someone if and when the ship was underwater.
“In my experience it is rare to find anyone on a ship that has already sunk,” Standish said in his matter-of-fact way, and flashing his famous grin. “Generally everyone gets off the boat while it is sinking, and some –following the rodent model, long before that.”
“But let me assure the future American people that, if and when the leaking is completed,” Standish continued, “and the ship is completely underwater, anyone still on board, and found guilty of a crime, will not be allowed to stay.”
So you see, it’s hopeless: big time politics and small-town life just don’t mix.
I wish they did: Plymouth can be so provincial.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Weather Mand
Can anyone tell me what the weather is like around here?
I’m not kidding: I’ve forgotten what it is supposed to be like.
I remember as a kid spending time in Holyoke, thinking the weather there was perfect in the summer.
My grandfather was a supervisor in the Water Department in Holyoke: it was largely a ceremonial role, I believe, giving him the authority to take my brother and me fishing in the town’s reservoir whenever he wanted.
Maybe I am mistaken, but as I remember it Indian Summer lasted all summer long then: warm days, dry and deliciously cool nights.
I also remember swimming all day, eating at least a dozen ears of corn at one sitting, and then sitting on my grandparents’ screened porch and playing Scrabble until every word in the dictionary had been used and we all just sat there in the early evening light, speechless.
Now that was weather!
I guess I always believed that New England –from one end to the other, was just like that.
But we didn’t really live in New England then – we were just visiting.
Remember when local newspapers would print who was on vacation, and who had relatives visiting? Were we actually that safe then, or just a little more naive?
I was actually born in Massachusetts, in Chicopee Falls ( a pretty name, but Westover Air Force Base in point of fact), and later lived for two years in Bangor, Maine. While my memory of the Connecticut River Valley is idyllic, my memories of Bangor winters are different, so I don’t think I am simply being nostalgic.
And both western Massachusetts and Bangor had what I remember as predictable climates.
I have lived here in Plymouth for over twenty years now, and I have no sense of what the weather is supposed to be like, season to season.
Is that because here on the coast we don’t –and never have, had consistent weather?
I get the sense it’s something else: not exactly what you might think of as the effect of Global Warming, but maybe part of that phenomena.
My wife came home a few hours after sunset the other day –during this recent stretch of brutal humidity, and when she got out of her air-conditioned car she looked like something out of a Charlie Chan movie: her glasses were completely fogged over.
Inscrutable, was the word the war-time movie propagandists used to describe the impending ‘yellow peril’.
This weather is inscrutable.
This oppressive humidity reminds me of the kind of weather I got used to, growing up in the Washington D.C. area. The summers in Washington are consistently hot and humid –double nineties are not unusual: but because it is so predictably uncomfortable from June to September every building is fully air-conditioned.
In July in the D.C. area it can be 77 by 7, 88 by 8, and in the nineties by the time the sweating, aluminum-clad snack trucks begin arriving at construction sites.
But you can learn to live with anything, if you know what to expect.
Here, though the coastal waters often moderate the cold, the homes are still built to withstand the temperatures and cost of winter: the houses insulated so well that, when we get this kind of humidity, traditional colonial-style, wooden homes are swollen with the heat that can’t escape.
If this continues, and the wood keeps swelling up, you could see dozens of gray and white gambrels break free of their foundations and float off, east, like Dorothy headed for Oz.
Actually I don’t think I would mind that. It’s probably a bit cooler, up a few thousand feet.
It’s so humid the fireflies can’t light their little torches.
It’s so humid the mosquitoes can’t hold on long enough to bite.
It’s so humid you can put a teabag in an empty cup and, in an hour or two, voila!
It’s so humid I can’t remember what the weather is supposed to be like ‘round here’.
I’m not kidding: I’ve forgotten what it is supposed to be like.
I remember as a kid spending time in Holyoke, thinking the weather there was perfect in the summer.
My grandfather was a supervisor in the Water Department in Holyoke: it was largely a ceremonial role, I believe, giving him the authority to take my brother and me fishing in the town’s reservoir whenever he wanted.
Maybe I am mistaken, but as I remember it Indian Summer lasted all summer long then: warm days, dry and deliciously cool nights.
I also remember swimming all day, eating at least a dozen ears of corn at one sitting, and then sitting on my grandparents’ screened porch and playing Scrabble until every word in the dictionary had been used and we all just sat there in the early evening light, speechless.
Now that was weather!
I guess I always believed that New England –from one end to the other, was just like that.
But we didn’t really live in New England then – we were just visiting.
Remember when local newspapers would print who was on vacation, and who had relatives visiting? Were we actually that safe then, or just a little more naive?
I was actually born in Massachusetts, in Chicopee Falls ( a pretty name, but Westover Air Force Base in point of fact), and later lived for two years in Bangor, Maine. While my memory of the Connecticut River Valley is idyllic, my memories of Bangor winters are different, so I don’t think I am simply being nostalgic.
And both western Massachusetts and Bangor had what I remember as predictable climates.
I have lived here in Plymouth for over twenty years now, and I have no sense of what the weather is supposed to be like, season to season.
Is that because here on the coast we don’t –and never have, had consistent weather?
I get the sense it’s something else: not exactly what you might think of as the effect of Global Warming, but maybe part of that phenomena.
My wife came home a few hours after sunset the other day –during this recent stretch of brutal humidity, and when she got out of her air-conditioned car she looked like something out of a Charlie Chan movie: her glasses were completely fogged over.
Inscrutable, was the word the war-time movie propagandists used to describe the impending ‘yellow peril’.
This weather is inscrutable.
This oppressive humidity reminds me of the kind of weather I got used to, growing up in the Washington D.C. area. The summers in Washington are consistently hot and humid –double nineties are not unusual: but because it is so predictably uncomfortable from June to September every building is fully air-conditioned.
In July in the D.C. area it can be 77 by 7, 88 by 8, and in the nineties by the time the sweating, aluminum-clad snack trucks begin arriving at construction sites.
But you can learn to live with anything, if you know what to expect.
Here, though the coastal waters often moderate the cold, the homes are still built to withstand the temperatures and cost of winter: the houses insulated so well that, when we get this kind of humidity, traditional colonial-style, wooden homes are swollen with the heat that can’t escape.
If this continues, and the wood keeps swelling up, you could see dozens of gray and white gambrels break free of their foundations and float off, east, like Dorothy headed for Oz.
Actually I don’t think I would mind that. It’s probably a bit cooler, up a few thousand feet.
It’s so humid the fireflies can’t light their little torches.
It’s so humid the mosquitoes can’t hold on long enough to bite.
It’s so humid you can put a teabag in an empty cup and, in an hour or two, voila!
It’s so humid I can’t remember what the weather is supposed to be like ‘round here’.
Friday, July 22, 2005
All in the Family?
It’s no secret that my employment history is a bit –as they say, checkered. And that’s one of the reasons I got so excited when the world’s largest corporation recently made me an offer...
It wasn’t a job offer, not exactly: even better, they offered to treat me like one of the family.
Instead of $47,503 for their Andes Vista-Cruiser SUV with full Red-State Option Package (protruding chromed grille, ski-rack, tow-package and over-sized fluorescent ‘W” sticker) my ‘employee price’ would be $41,222.
I don’t know where you come from, but around here when somebody offers to give you $6,000, that deserves a hug!
I went down to my local Massive Auto Company dealership and –except for a few skittish guys from the service department, managed to give every one of their actual employees a big squeeze.
I had to pass on the vehicle though.
Despite all the love my checking account still can’t absorb another $500 a month in auto payments, plus the $100 or so more in insurance costs, or even the cost of fueling that baby up for a trip to the gas station and back.
But in the glow of an emotional high I started to think that maybe there was something here that we could all share in –whatever our automotive needs or financial wherewithal.
Why can’t we all get employee prices, on everything?
Cars are, for better or worse, an inescapable part of our lives. In Plymouth most especially, transportation is always an issue. So the idea of being treated as one of the family by an auto manufacturer really hits home.
But there are other things that hit home too, and in the wallet. Take electricity for example.
We are one of those modern Plymouth families who moved in to a home that old Thomas Alva would have loved: it’s 100% electric.
Our heat is electric, our stove is electric, and our electricity is electric. When the lines go down –from weather or accident, nothing works, not even the toilets (the well water is pumped up by an electric motor). Imagine that: every time I flush the toilet I am literally flushing nickels and dimes down the drain.
What, I wonder, is the employee price for electricity? What do Mr. and Mrs. NStar and their family of employees pay for each of their kilowatts?
A little love from that power-couple would go a long way.
And speaking of power couples, what’s up with Mr. and Mrs. Exxon-Mobil?
I sent them a nice card when they first announced their engagement a few years back, but I never got as much as a thank-you.
Now that they’re officially a couple they’re sending me cards and letters too, and calling night and day.
If anyone can afford to share the love, it’s the Exxon-Mobil family.
I’m not asking for my gas free, just at the price that good friends of the family pay.
At the store where I work they give employees a 25% discount. If you took 25% off my gasoline bill each month and I could almost afford to pay my electricity bill!
I have a little more empathy for the Adelphia family: they’ve had their own financial troubles of late. Things got so bad a few years back that even they had to take advantage of the family discount themselves –only they chose the wrong family.
According to the authorities they were acting as if they were the Royal House of Windsor, using a few hundred million of the company’s money like it was their own.
Still, gas and electricity are one thing –access to the internet, email, or cable television are quite another. One is a necessity, the other supposedly a luxury.
But with electricity bills going up, gas bills higher than ever, and a host of other rising costs cable television is –for many, a necessary refuge from the harsh financial realities.
Not that I need a refuge from reality –but others might.
By the way, if you can already afford the Andes Vista Cruiser with Optional Red-State Option Package than you already have a refuge from reality, don’t you?
I don’t know: maybe I am being unrealistic if I expect Mr. And Mrs. Exxon-Mobil, the NStar family, and the Duke and Duchess of Adelphia to share the wealth.
If every one of us got the ‘family’ price on electricity, the employee price on cars, a barrel or two of gift gasoline, a Royal freebie of cable television and other perks, than those corporations sharing the love probably couldn’t afford the lobbyists they need to convince the politicians we elect to keep the regulators off their backs.
And where would be then?
It wasn’t a job offer, not exactly: even better, they offered to treat me like one of the family.
Instead of $47,503 for their Andes Vista-Cruiser SUV with full Red-State Option Package (protruding chromed grille, ski-rack, tow-package and over-sized fluorescent ‘W” sticker) my ‘employee price’ would be $41,222.
I don’t know where you come from, but around here when somebody offers to give you $6,000, that deserves a hug!
I went down to my local Massive Auto Company dealership and –except for a few skittish guys from the service department, managed to give every one of their actual employees a big squeeze.
I had to pass on the vehicle though.
Despite all the love my checking account still can’t absorb another $500 a month in auto payments, plus the $100 or so more in insurance costs, or even the cost of fueling that baby up for a trip to the gas station and back.
But in the glow of an emotional high I started to think that maybe there was something here that we could all share in –whatever our automotive needs or financial wherewithal.
Why can’t we all get employee prices, on everything?
Cars are, for better or worse, an inescapable part of our lives. In Plymouth most especially, transportation is always an issue. So the idea of being treated as one of the family by an auto manufacturer really hits home.
But there are other things that hit home too, and in the wallet. Take electricity for example.
We are one of those modern Plymouth families who moved in to a home that old Thomas Alva would have loved: it’s 100% electric.
Our heat is electric, our stove is electric, and our electricity is electric. When the lines go down –from weather or accident, nothing works, not even the toilets (the well water is pumped up by an electric motor). Imagine that: every time I flush the toilet I am literally flushing nickels and dimes down the drain.
What, I wonder, is the employee price for electricity? What do Mr. and Mrs. NStar and their family of employees pay for each of their kilowatts?
A little love from that power-couple would go a long way.
And speaking of power couples, what’s up with Mr. and Mrs. Exxon-Mobil?
I sent them a nice card when they first announced their engagement a few years back, but I never got as much as a thank-you.
Now that they’re officially a couple they’re sending me cards and letters too, and calling night and day.
If anyone can afford to share the love, it’s the Exxon-Mobil family.
I’m not asking for my gas free, just at the price that good friends of the family pay.
At the store where I work they give employees a 25% discount. If you took 25% off my gasoline bill each month and I could almost afford to pay my electricity bill!
I have a little more empathy for the Adelphia family: they’ve had their own financial troubles of late. Things got so bad a few years back that even they had to take advantage of the family discount themselves –only they chose the wrong family.
According to the authorities they were acting as if they were the Royal House of Windsor, using a few hundred million of the company’s money like it was their own.
Still, gas and electricity are one thing –access to the internet, email, or cable television are quite another. One is a necessity, the other supposedly a luxury.
But with electricity bills going up, gas bills higher than ever, and a host of other rising costs cable television is –for many, a necessary refuge from the harsh financial realities.
Not that I need a refuge from reality –but others might.
By the way, if you can already afford the Andes Vista Cruiser with Optional Red-State Option Package than you already have a refuge from reality, don’t you?
I don’t know: maybe I am being unrealistic if I expect Mr. And Mrs. Exxon-Mobil, the NStar family, and the Duke and Duchess of Adelphia to share the wealth.
If every one of us got the ‘family’ price on electricity, the employee price on cars, a barrel or two of gift gasoline, a Royal freebie of cable television and other perks, than those corporations sharing the love probably couldn’t afford the lobbyists they need to convince the politicians we elect to keep the regulators off their backs.
And where would be then?
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Oh Say Can You See?
As I write this my South Plymouth neighborhood is popping like a bag of Orville Reddenbacher in the microwave: supposedly you can’t buy fireworks in Massachusetts but I guess you can lease them for the evening.
Farther off more serious, and possibly even legal explosions, seem to mimic a line of thunderstorms approaching: or perhaps more accurately, the sounds recall the sonic booms of my youth.
That’s no metaphor: my father was a ‘lifer’ in the Air Force and when I was a boy it was not unusual to first feel, and then hear the sounds of military jets breaking the sound barrier over the base.
That was the first bit of science that really caught my attention. The idea that objects could travel faster than the sounds they made was intriguing. Seeing the silver jets at air shows go flashing by just a few dozen feet off the ground, followed moments later by their sounds, was exhilarating.
Later I learned that light also had a speed: that the stars in the sky that you watched on your back on a warm summer night, might not actually be there at all anymore: that what you were seeing was in fact ‘old’ light.
Somewhere in the same dark sky where lightning bugs and imported bottle rockets are obscuring the stars on this Independence Day night– but far over the western horizon, another display of pyrotechnics is underway: a $300 million dollar display in fact.
They call it ‘Deep Impact’, hoping I think to get some of the same kind of attention that a recent movie of the same name attracted.
But there’s the problem as well. In order to keep the public’s attention NASA and others in the business of science and space exploration need to please both the public and their peers.
The scientists justified this mission in terms of the potential for uncovering the raw materials of creation –believing that comets represent the primordial play-doh that our solar systems began with. But they also made sure that this mission went off with a ‘bang’ on July 4th: packing their craft with an eight-hundred pound slug of pure copper that they hoped –and publicized, would create a spectacular display in the night sky.
To their credit their aim was true, their copper slug brutally efficient, and the show a perfect coming attraction of the film that would play at 11: fireworks over the water to the sound of the 1812 Overture.
But the thrill is gone – at least for me.
The timpani drum roll that Air Force jets used to produce in my stomach now comes buffered by the disquieting knowledge that the United States spends more of its wealth on weaponry than any other country.
The amazing designs that fireworks experts can produce from canisters of gunpowder fade in the light of the truth that we are the only country in the world that could but does not provide health care for all of its citizens.
The brilliance of the engineers and scientists who managed to build the Deep Impact craft, and hit that far away, moving target does still not justify, in my opinion, the enormous expenditure of time, money, and most importantly, imagination.
Couldn’t our scientists have imagined a way to create ‘energy independence’ without despoiling the arctic wilderness?
Couldn’t our politicians have imagined a way of spreading democracy without destroying a country’s infrastructure and killing thousands?
We bicker amongst ourselves over the cost of educating our children, while we allow $300 million to be spent to take a pot shot at a rock in the sky.
When I was a child sonic booms convinced me that man could move faster than sound.
When I was a young man the idea that it was theoretically possible to move faster than light fascinated me.
Now I see much of science as a kind of acceptable perversion –focusing far too much of its time devising ways to produce perpetually youthful skin (or its illusion), end erectile dysfunction, or set off galactic fireworks displays.
Here on earth, in Plymouth, I am only interested in the speed at which wisdom travels, and I am finding it very difficult to wait even one more star-spangled night.
Farther off more serious, and possibly even legal explosions, seem to mimic a line of thunderstorms approaching: or perhaps more accurately, the sounds recall the sonic booms of my youth.
That’s no metaphor: my father was a ‘lifer’ in the Air Force and when I was a boy it was not unusual to first feel, and then hear the sounds of military jets breaking the sound barrier over the base.
That was the first bit of science that really caught my attention. The idea that objects could travel faster than the sounds they made was intriguing. Seeing the silver jets at air shows go flashing by just a few dozen feet off the ground, followed moments later by their sounds, was exhilarating.
Later I learned that light also had a speed: that the stars in the sky that you watched on your back on a warm summer night, might not actually be there at all anymore: that what you were seeing was in fact ‘old’ light.
Somewhere in the same dark sky where lightning bugs and imported bottle rockets are obscuring the stars on this Independence Day night– but far over the western horizon, another display of pyrotechnics is underway: a $300 million dollar display in fact.
They call it ‘Deep Impact’, hoping I think to get some of the same kind of attention that a recent movie of the same name attracted.
But there’s the problem as well. In order to keep the public’s attention NASA and others in the business of science and space exploration need to please both the public and their peers.
The scientists justified this mission in terms of the potential for uncovering the raw materials of creation –believing that comets represent the primordial play-doh that our solar systems began with. But they also made sure that this mission went off with a ‘bang’ on July 4th: packing their craft with an eight-hundred pound slug of pure copper that they hoped –and publicized, would create a spectacular display in the night sky.
To their credit their aim was true, their copper slug brutally efficient, and the show a perfect coming attraction of the film that would play at 11: fireworks over the water to the sound of the 1812 Overture.
But the thrill is gone – at least for me.
The timpani drum roll that Air Force jets used to produce in my stomach now comes buffered by the disquieting knowledge that the United States spends more of its wealth on weaponry than any other country.
The amazing designs that fireworks experts can produce from canisters of gunpowder fade in the light of the truth that we are the only country in the world that could but does not provide health care for all of its citizens.
The brilliance of the engineers and scientists who managed to build the Deep Impact craft, and hit that far away, moving target does still not justify, in my opinion, the enormous expenditure of time, money, and most importantly, imagination.
Couldn’t our scientists have imagined a way to create ‘energy independence’ without despoiling the arctic wilderness?
Couldn’t our politicians have imagined a way of spreading democracy without destroying a country’s infrastructure and killing thousands?
We bicker amongst ourselves over the cost of educating our children, while we allow $300 million to be spent to take a pot shot at a rock in the sky.
When I was a child sonic booms convinced me that man could move faster than sound.
When I was a young man the idea that it was theoretically possible to move faster than light fascinated me.
Now I see much of science as a kind of acceptable perversion –focusing far too much of its time devising ways to produce perpetually youthful skin (or its illusion), end erectile dysfunction, or set off galactic fireworks displays.
Here on earth, in Plymouth, I am only interested in the speed at which wisdom travels, and I am finding it very difficult to wait even one more star-spangled night.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Jimmie's Sprinkles
If I had an ice cream stand I’d call it Jimmie’s Sprinkles.
At least that’s what I’d like to call it, but in a town that depends so much on the tourist dollar that may not be a good idea. Customers, from other parts of the country, might not get the joke.
Do you?
I love language, and part of what I like about it is the confusion it creates.
At Jimmie’s Sprinkles I’d have Frappes, Milk Shakes, and Cabinets one after the other on the same menu – and at the same price.
Frappes are what we here in Plymouth are supposed to call that frosty blend of a few scoops of ice cream, milk, and flavored syrup.
Much of the rest of the country however calls that same concoction a Milk Shake. In Rhode Island the same drink is called a Cabinet.
Then again, many locals are not really local, and they use an American dialect I like to call McDonaldese. If you speak McDonaldese skip the rest of this column and go directly to the second window.
Even if you’re not from these ‘parts’ I strongly advise you to adopt the local lingo. Taking the time to understand out local ways can save you a lot of grief.
My friend Dan bought his first house in Plymouth because of his confusion about the term ‘deeded beach rights’. His tiny gambrel with ten hardy shrubs and 1000 square feet of sod was located way off in the woods on the western side of Route 3, down some dirt road, but he was sure there was a path back behind his new home that led directly to the ocean.
A few weeks later Dan discovered he had the right to swim in a nearby cranberry bog.
Musty is a great local word: people tell you they have musty basements. My first house had deeded beach rights to my neighbor’s musty basement. He was pretty good about it too. Whenever the temperature got above 80 he’d open up his bulkhead door and stock the thing with brown trout.
Visitors to Plymouth are often amused at the names of our Ponds.
First off they’re amused that we call just about everything that isn’t saltwater, a pond. Water in the basement, as I said, qualifies as a pond. Goldfish Ponds are ponds. Inflatable pools larger than 8 feet across are often referred to as ‘personal’ ponds.
But most of all they are amused at the names, as I said. They assume that the locals are a bunch of simple-minded folk who just couldn’t think of anything better than ‘Long Pond’, ‘Round Pond’, ‘Square Pond’ and such.
Where they’re from there is very little water, except in the man-made lakes and golf course waterfalls created by developers. Leave the naming to developers and you end up with hundreds of names like Sunset Lake, Sunrise Lake, Postcard Lake, Watercolor Lake and the Lake, I mean like.
For some reason developers don’t like to call anything a pond...
But Plymouth ponds were named long ago, by practical men who were often lost in the woods, scared of the natives, and eager to get the heck back to their musty shacks and do a little preventive thatching.
So these individuals named the ponds for practical reasons: mainly for ease of navigation, but also so as to remember just what the pond was like so they wouldn’t have to go back for a second look.
It was those common-sensical pioneers who gave us Muddy Pond, Shallow Pond, Ugly Pond, and Not Another Pond.
They also came up with Bloody Pond, Freakin Pond, One More Pond, and Once-a-Pond-a-Pond.
There are over 7000 ponds in Plymouth and mysteriously, around 1693 they stopped naming, with 1103 ponds still to go.
“Perchance I beholdeth one more freakith pond”, Isaac Hummarock declared that year in his diary, “likely I goeth out of my freakith gourd”.
Ah yes, those were the days: when there were a half dozen ponds for every resident of Plymouth. Now the population has increased to the point where we have to share our ponds with seven or eight strangers, many of whom think they’re swimming in Cape Cod Bay.
It’s pitiful.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
If we all do our part, embrace our local lingo and customs, we can develop a sense of community and cooperation, and then finish the job.
At Jimmie’s Sprinkles we’ll offer a free booklet on local language and customs to anyone who wonders out loud what the difference is between a Cabinet and a Frappe, or between a Frappe and a Milk Shake, or between New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
And to anyone who spends more than $30 on any non-sale item, we’ll give them a map to the location of those 1103 anonymous ponds, together with a list of suggested names.
It won’t change the world, but if we work together at least there won’t be more poor souls like Dan, wandering the mosquito-infested woods looking for the perfect wave.
At least that’s what I’d like to call it, but in a town that depends so much on the tourist dollar that may not be a good idea. Customers, from other parts of the country, might not get the joke.
Do you?
I love language, and part of what I like about it is the confusion it creates.
At Jimmie’s Sprinkles I’d have Frappes, Milk Shakes, and Cabinets one after the other on the same menu – and at the same price.
Frappes are what we here in Plymouth are supposed to call that frosty blend of a few scoops of ice cream, milk, and flavored syrup.
Much of the rest of the country however calls that same concoction a Milk Shake. In Rhode Island the same drink is called a Cabinet.
Then again, many locals are not really local, and they use an American dialect I like to call McDonaldese. If you speak McDonaldese skip the rest of this column and go directly to the second window.
Even if you’re not from these ‘parts’ I strongly advise you to adopt the local lingo. Taking the time to understand out local ways can save you a lot of grief.
My friend Dan bought his first house in Plymouth because of his confusion about the term ‘deeded beach rights’. His tiny gambrel with ten hardy shrubs and 1000 square feet of sod was located way off in the woods on the western side of Route 3, down some dirt road, but he was sure there was a path back behind his new home that led directly to the ocean.
A few weeks later Dan discovered he had the right to swim in a nearby cranberry bog.
Musty is a great local word: people tell you they have musty basements. My first house had deeded beach rights to my neighbor’s musty basement. He was pretty good about it too. Whenever the temperature got above 80 he’d open up his bulkhead door and stock the thing with brown trout.
Visitors to Plymouth are often amused at the names of our Ponds.
First off they’re amused that we call just about everything that isn’t saltwater, a pond. Water in the basement, as I said, qualifies as a pond. Goldfish Ponds are ponds. Inflatable pools larger than 8 feet across are often referred to as ‘personal’ ponds.
But most of all they are amused at the names, as I said. They assume that the locals are a bunch of simple-minded folk who just couldn’t think of anything better than ‘Long Pond’, ‘Round Pond’, ‘Square Pond’ and such.
Where they’re from there is very little water, except in the man-made lakes and golf course waterfalls created by developers. Leave the naming to developers and you end up with hundreds of names like Sunset Lake, Sunrise Lake, Postcard Lake, Watercolor Lake and the Lake, I mean like.
For some reason developers don’t like to call anything a pond...
But Plymouth ponds were named long ago, by practical men who were often lost in the woods, scared of the natives, and eager to get the heck back to their musty shacks and do a little preventive thatching.
So these individuals named the ponds for practical reasons: mainly for ease of navigation, but also so as to remember just what the pond was like so they wouldn’t have to go back for a second look.
It was those common-sensical pioneers who gave us Muddy Pond, Shallow Pond, Ugly Pond, and Not Another Pond.
They also came up with Bloody Pond, Freakin Pond, One More Pond, and Once-a-Pond-a-Pond.
There are over 7000 ponds in Plymouth and mysteriously, around 1693 they stopped naming, with 1103 ponds still to go.
“Perchance I beholdeth one more freakith pond”, Isaac Hummarock declared that year in his diary, “likely I goeth out of my freakith gourd”.
Ah yes, those were the days: when there were a half dozen ponds for every resident of Plymouth. Now the population has increased to the point where we have to share our ponds with seven or eight strangers, many of whom think they’re swimming in Cape Cod Bay.
It’s pitiful.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
If we all do our part, embrace our local lingo and customs, we can develop a sense of community and cooperation, and then finish the job.
At Jimmie’s Sprinkles we’ll offer a free booklet on local language and customs to anyone who wonders out loud what the difference is between a Cabinet and a Frappe, or between a Frappe and a Milk Shake, or between New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
And to anyone who spends more than $30 on any non-sale item, we’ll give them a map to the location of those 1103 anonymous ponds, together with a list of suggested names.
It won’t change the world, but if we work together at least there won’t be more poor souls like Dan, wandering the mosquito-infested woods looking for the perfect wave.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Heavenly Hash?
Plymouth for me is an abstraction, like the four-foot ice cream cone on top of Gellar’s in Manomet.
It’s not a particularly well-designed cone, and I certainly know that if I had the chance to give it a big lick I would not be pleased with its metallic taste – but it represents an ideal worthy of my aspirations.
I think we all carry around images of an ideal Plymouth, and often find it difficult to reconcile those images with the reality we see every day.
The First Church of Nostalgia:
Many ‘townies’ see Plymouth through the prism of the past. 100 years or so ago the town was still a collection of neighborhoods and villages- each truly separate and unique. There was by necessity, in those days, greater self-sufficiency and, paradoxically, a resulting closeness.
The core of those old neighborhoods still exists today- at least physically, but they are no longer completely distinct and separate from the town, except in the memories of our oldest residents.
Beach Stickers and Bonfires:
To some degree the nostalgic vision of old Plymouth –and perhaps the general notion of the ‘New England Village’, was responsible for the next wave of residents who came here. They didn’t know the old neighborhoods, or recognize them as distinct and separate, but they accepted the vision of a community which offered a certain quality of life that they wanted to participate in – either on a temporary ‘summer’ basis, or year-round: never mind that by moving here in large numbers they were necessarily changing what they found most appealing about the area.
Single Family Homeys:
For the next wave of residents –in which I include myself, the appeal of Plymouth as an historic entity or quaint New England village was not, at least initially, particularly important –especially considering that for people looking for their first home it seemed that the tighter grasp a town had on its past, the higher the cost of their property. No, Plymouth’s greatest appeal to those who came here from the Sixties on was, I believe, the basic notion of affordability. Instead of the corner store, we looked for two full baths. Instead of a town green, we asked for 1000 square feet of sod.
Mock Apple Pie
And finally, or at least most recently, are those who have come to Plymouth for the golf, or the après-golf, and who live in someone else’s idea of the perfect retirement community – developments that have almost nothing to do with the historic or imagined Plymouth but in their own way represent an ideal.
I guess what I am getting at is that we all have these ‘visions’ of Plymouth that are often odds with one another, and with reality. Even my vision of a Plymouth is such a stereotype. People are always more complex than we imagine.
We hold on to these mental images though because like all stereotypes, they offer the fantasy of a simple, manageable world. That’s usually a harmless thing, except when we insist that everyone else act as if our vision was reality.
I firmly believe that for the town to move forward we have to open our eyes to a far more complex and challenging reality of what Plymouth is, and should be.
Instead of fighting against affordable housing, or trying to restrict who moves to town because of their ‘demographics’, the town should aggressively pursue a mix of development that appeals to the young and old, rich and poor, commuter and retiree.
Instead of holding on to (or creating) imaginary villages, I feel we should be focusing on improving services for all town residents, no matter where they live.
Instead of focusing on the town being simply cheaper for all of its existing residents –and criticizing town officials for any expenditure that impacts the tax rate, we should concentrate on making the town more attractive overall: better schools, smooth, paved roads, well-kept parks and recreational facilities and the like will attract (and keep) a variety of people and businesses in town, and keep our community economically vital.
Admittedly my vision of Plymouth too, is an abstraction: I buy in to the idea of a town that has for nearly 400 years offered the nation a lesson in the benefits of positive civic engagement. That, I agree, hasn’t always been true.
In some ways we’re like that French girl standing in New York Harbor. We’re a four hundred year old electrified ice cream cone that you can see from far out at sea: a cone that no matter what the reality is, is always topped with a scoop of your favorite flavor.
It’s not a particularly well-designed cone, and I certainly know that if I had the chance to give it a big lick I would not be pleased with its metallic taste – but it represents an ideal worthy of my aspirations.
I think we all carry around images of an ideal Plymouth, and often find it difficult to reconcile those images with the reality we see every day.
The First Church of Nostalgia:
Many ‘townies’ see Plymouth through the prism of the past. 100 years or so ago the town was still a collection of neighborhoods and villages- each truly separate and unique. There was by necessity, in those days, greater self-sufficiency and, paradoxically, a resulting closeness.
The core of those old neighborhoods still exists today- at least physically, but they are no longer completely distinct and separate from the town, except in the memories of our oldest residents.
Beach Stickers and Bonfires:
To some degree the nostalgic vision of old Plymouth –and perhaps the general notion of the ‘New England Village’, was responsible for the next wave of residents who came here. They didn’t know the old neighborhoods, or recognize them as distinct and separate, but they accepted the vision of a community which offered a certain quality of life that they wanted to participate in – either on a temporary ‘summer’ basis, or year-round: never mind that by moving here in large numbers they were necessarily changing what they found most appealing about the area.
Single Family Homeys:
For the next wave of residents –in which I include myself, the appeal of Plymouth as an historic entity or quaint New England village was not, at least initially, particularly important –especially considering that for people looking for their first home it seemed that the tighter grasp a town had on its past, the higher the cost of their property. No, Plymouth’s greatest appeal to those who came here from the Sixties on was, I believe, the basic notion of affordability. Instead of the corner store, we looked for two full baths. Instead of a town green, we asked for 1000 square feet of sod.
Mock Apple Pie
And finally, or at least most recently, are those who have come to Plymouth for the golf, or the après-golf, and who live in someone else’s idea of the perfect retirement community – developments that have almost nothing to do with the historic or imagined Plymouth but in their own way represent an ideal.
I guess what I am getting at is that we all have these ‘visions’ of Plymouth that are often odds with one another, and with reality. Even my vision of a Plymouth is such a stereotype. People are always more complex than we imagine.
We hold on to these mental images though because like all stereotypes, they offer the fantasy of a simple, manageable world. That’s usually a harmless thing, except when we insist that everyone else act as if our vision was reality.
I firmly believe that for the town to move forward we have to open our eyes to a far more complex and challenging reality of what Plymouth is, and should be.
Instead of fighting against affordable housing, or trying to restrict who moves to town because of their ‘demographics’, the town should aggressively pursue a mix of development that appeals to the young and old, rich and poor, commuter and retiree.
Instead of holding on to (or creating) imaginary villages, I feel we should be focusing on improving services for all town residents, no matter where they live.
Instead of focusing on the town being simply cheaper for all of its existing residents –and criticizing town officials for any expenditure that impacts the tax rate, we should concentrate on making the town more attractive overall: better schools, smooth, paved roads, well-kept parks and recreational facilities and the like will attract (and keep) a variety of people and businesses in town, and keep our community economically vital.
Admittedly my vision of Plymouth too, is an abstraction: I buy in to the idea of a town that has for nearly 400 years offered the nation a lesson in the benefits of positive civic engagement. That, I agree, hasn’t always been true.
In some ways we’re like that French girl standing in New York Harbor. We’re a four hundred year old electrified ice cream cone that you can see from far out at sea: a cone that no matter what the reality is, is always topped with a scoop of your favorite flavor.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Happy Billington Day!
Billington Day is almost here, and while I know a lot of you are planning big barbeques, I think it is appropriate that we take a moment to remember who the Billington Boy’s were, and why we celebrate this day.
Nearly 400 years ago young Francis Billington climbed a tree and saw a patch of water to the west that he thought was the western ocean, but turned out to be a large pond. Francis’ brother John later got lost in the same woods, and didn’t turn up for over a year.
In their honor Plymouth planners have for hundreds of years deliberately created confusing, maze-like subdivisions and streets, and every year on Billington Day town residents spread out to give bad directions to unsuspecting travelers. Not vague directions mind you: very specific, easy to follow, eminently plausible yet absolutely inefficient directions
How do you get to the Plymouth Rock?
On Billington Day in 1999 I was asked this by a sweet young couple from Ohio, as we stood on the little bridge on Water Street overlooking Brewster Gardens. Careful to stand between them and the direct line to the columned canopy over The Rock, I pointed out Leyden Street, which I engagingly described as ‘America’s First Main Street’. “If you go up that street, and through the lights on Court”, I started, and sent them on their way up to the top of Burial Hill, down its northern edge, to the Court House, and then eventually up Water Street from the opposite end -after a lunch break at Martha’s Galley.
Why take the trolley, I thought with an air of self-c0ngratulation, when I can mis-direct you all about town!
Tourists are easy though, and perhaps less satisfying. After all, they are already committed to wandering. Far more satisfying –and traditional, are bad directions given to new residents of town who are as yet unaware of our holiday traditions: such as the town regulation that goes all the way back to the first Billington Day that stipulates you cannot speak at town meeting unless you have been lost in Myles Standish State Forest.
I was minding my own business at the MRA ball fields off State Road on Billington Day last year when a family in a brand-spanking new Ford Extrapolate rolled up to me and, after I hit the ground expecting bullets to come flying out as the tinted windows on one side began to descend (thinking it might be that nice young couple from Ohio), someone from inside its vast interior meekly asked for directions to Armstrong Rink.
After I dusted myself off I was the very model of helpfulness, going so far as to illustrate the best route on a napkin using a felt pen and hardened old French fries as street signs.
“You’re in luck,” I said, with a profound earnestness, “Plymouth is a big town, but I know a short-cut.” And with those fateful words I described the miracle of Ship Pond Road (‘The virtual spinal column of central Plymouth’ I believe I said), which would take them through the historic heartland of Plymouth while bypassing the congestion of a more ‘direct’ route.
Of course I neglected to mention the washboard dirt surface, the unmarked streets that branch off from either side and take you to the far hinterlands, or the take-your-life-in-your-hands intersection with Long Pond Road.
“If you make it that far,” I said with a wink, knowing full well that my holiday spirit would be misread as ‘local color’, “you take a right on Long Pond and continue on until you see the entrance to the Myles Standish State Forest…”
Sure, I know what you’re thinking: you love the idea, want to keep up the tradition, but are concerned that you won’t be able to keep a straight face when dispensing your bad directions. Well try this: tell the unsuspecting traveler to stay on the road they are on!
“Whatever you do, make sure you stay on _____ Street!”
If they’re on Sandwich Street it will soon change to Court Street, back to Sandwich, then change to State Road, Will of the Wisp Boulevard, and Ellisville Avenue before leaping in to the Cape Cod Canal. Chances are they’ll never make it that far, coming to a screeching halt somewhere down ‘3A’.
In this part of the country, even roads with apparently only one name change at the town line: Carver Road becomes Plymouth Road, Bourne Road becomes Plymouth Road. Wareham Road becomes Plymouth Road –all depending on where you are and which direction you are headed in. Then consider that many of the roads I just mentioned can be in Plymouth, then Bourne, then Wareham, then Plymouth again. What a hoot!.
If you’re having a Billington Day Party make sure the fun starts early by printing out directions from Internet.
Those web trip planning sites are notorious for using old maps for their databases and when you add their out-of-date directions to Plymouth’s maze of forest roads, ‘pork chop lots’ and changing names you can almost guarantee that family members that you had to invite -but don’t really care to see, somehow won’t show!
History, tradition, being lost for days in Myles Standish State Forest – its all of part of living in America’s Home Town.
Happy Billington Day!
Nearly 400 years ago young Francis Billington climbed a tree and saw a patch of water to the west that he thought was the western ocean, but turned out to be a large pond. Francis’ brother John later got lost in the same woods, and didn’t turn up for over a year.
In their honor Plymouth planners have for hundreds of years deliberately created confusing, maze-like subdivisions and streets, and every year on Billington Day town residents spread out to give bad directions to unsuspecting travelers. Not vague directions mind you: very specific, easy to follow, eminently plausible yet absolutely inefficient directions
How do you get to the Plymouth Rock?
On Billington Day in 1999 I was asked this by a sweet young couple from Ohio, as we stood on the little bridge on Water Street overlooking Brewster Gardens. Careful to stand between them and the direct line to the columned canopy over The Rock, I pointed out Leyden Street, which I engagingly described as ‘America’s First Main Street’. “If you go up that street, and through the lights on Court”, I started, and sent them on their way up to the top of Burial Hill, down its northern edge, to the Court House, and then eventually up Water Street from the opposite end -after a lunch break at Martha’s Galley.
Why take the trolley, I thought with an air of self-c0ngratulation, when I can mis-direct you all about town!
Tourists are easy though, and perhaps less satisfying. After all, they are already committed to wandering. Far more satisfying –and traditional, are bad directions given to new residents of town who are as yet unaware of our holiday traditions: such as the town regulation that goes all the way back to the first Billington Day that stipulates you cannot speak at town meeting unless you have been lost in Myles Standish State Forest.
I was minding my own business at the MRA ball fields off State Road on Billington Day last year when a family in a brand-spanking new Ford Extrapolate rolled up to me and, after I hit the ground expecting bullets to come flying out as the tinted windows on one side began to descend (thinking it might be that nice young couple from Ohio), someone from inside its vast interior meekly asked for directions to Armstrong Rink.
After I dusted myself off I was the very model of helpfulness, going so far as to illustrate the best route on a napkin using a felt pen and hardened old French fries as street signs.
“You’re in luck,” I said, with a profound earnestness, “Plymouth is a big town, but I know a short-cut.” And with those fateful words I described the miracle of Ship Pond Road (‘The virtual spinal column of central Plymouth’ I believe I said), which would take them through the historic heartland of Plymouth while bypassing the congestion of a more ‘direct’ route.
Of course I neglected to mention the washboard dirt surface, the unmarked streets that branch off from either side and take you to the far hinterlands, or the take-your-life-in-your-hands intersection with Long Pond Road.
“If you make it that far,” I said with a wink, knowing full well that my holiday spirit would be misread as ‘local color’, “you take a right on Long Pond and continue on until you see the entrance to the Myles Standish State Forest…”
Sure, I know what you’re thinking: you love the idea, want to keep up the tradition, but are concerned that you won’t be able to keep a straight face when dispensing your bad directions. Well try this: tell the unsuspecting traveler to stay on the road they are on!
“Whatever you do, make sure you stay on _____ Street!”
If they’re on Sandwich Street it will soon change to Court Street, back to Sandwich, then change to State Road, Will of the Wisp Boulevard, and Ellisville Avenue before leaping in to the Cape Cod Canal. Chances are they’ll never make it that far, coming to a screeching halt somewhere down ‘3A’.
In this part of the country, even roads with apparently only one name change at the town line: Carver Road becomes Plymouth Road, Bourne Road becomes Plymouth Road. Wareham Road becomes Plymouth Road –all depending on where you are and which direction you are headed in. Then consider that many of the roads I just mentioned can be in Plymouth, then Bourne, then Wareham, then Plymouth again. What a hoot!.
If you’re having a Billington Day Party make sure the fun starts early by printing out directions from Internet.
Those web trip planning sites are notorious for using old maps for their databases and when you add their out-of-date directions to Plymouth’s maze of forest roads, ‘pork chop lots’ and changing names you can almost guarantee that family members that you had to invite -but don’t really care to see, somehow won’t show!
History, tradition, being lost for days in Myles Standish State Forest – its all of part of living in America’s Home Town.
Happy Billington Day!
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Pajama Party
I have managed with mice and squirrels, and a family of migrant raccoons in my attic, but these caterpillars have got to go.
Okay, maybe they aren’t caterpillars: I’m no entomologist. But you know something, I don’t care.
I have always said that a big plus to living where I do, set back from the road, nestled in the trees, are the wild creatures that I see every day.
In our twenty years in this house we have seen fox and deer, wild turkey, families of quail, a great, waddling old badger (I swear!) and a whole host of other creatures cavorting about (or in )our home. And apart from taking action to stop a few from eating away at the attic timber, we have all gotten along just fine.
But these caterpillars are making me nuts.
First of all, it’s the sheer number: I am sure some naturalist has already explained why, and it probably has something to do with the 50 feet of snow we just recovered from, and the 40 days of rain that followed, but all that I know is I am being invaded.
Choose your allusion: invasion of the body snatchers; men from mars, plagues of locust. It all fits.
And what the heck are those clumps of twisted bark hanging from nearly invisible threads? It looks like some creature climbed three quarters of the way down, ditched their pajamas, and hopped off. Are their naked caterpillars cavorting in the bushes?
My son, the college boy, is pretty darn messy: but even he doesn’t leave his pajamas balled up and hanging from the ceiling.
That’s a scary thought though, isn’t it: an invasion of tiny college boys who move in to your yard, sleep all day, eat pounds and pounds of Cheerios, and talk back to you when you ask them how the job hunting is going?
And you know what, the fuzz on my sluggish son’s chin bears an eerie resemblance to the fuzz of these caterpillars.
Wait a second, I’ve got to go check something.
Okay, I’m back, and you can relax: the Cheerios are disappearing at the same alarming rate as before, and there are no small bite marks on the boxes, or tiny rolled-up pajamas in the cabinet where we keep the cereal.
I’m not paranoid, but you have to admit we’ve had it pretty rough in the past few years here in America’s Home Town.
I used to boast about our ‘ocean effect: breezes off the water from Cape Cod and Buzzards Bays, that kept the temperatures a good ten degrees lower than abutting communities. Now I wonder if that same weather pattern is responsible for our record snows, long-lasting murk, and the growth in the critter population.
Is it me or do we have more than our fair share of skunks in Plymouth?
And whatever happened to the ‘wild’ in the wild turkeys that are thriving in these parts? Our turkeys are not domesticated fowl, their tax-paying citizens. You can set your watch by their appearance at certain well-worn entry points on Beaver Dam Road in the morning, and I swear I sat next to one on the train to Boston: he tried to disguise himself, but that turkey-neck gave him away.
But back to the real pillars of our society: the caterpillars. Did you ever see the old Marlon Brando classic motor bike film, ‘The Wild Ones’? That’s the way these caterpillars have come rolling in to our town: loud, obnoxious, and looking for trouble. What’s next, is what I want to know? Are they going to want to date our daughters?
The moral of ‘The Wild One’s is not to pre-judge leather-clad motorcycle punks. They’re really not so bad.
Okay, I am willing to admit right now that I misunderstand these caterpillars. They are probably just harmless young moths, trying to enjoy themselves before they are drawn to the flame of adulthood. But if I get just one more of these things stuck in my hair, or find another one in my cereal bowl, Brando or not, I am going to hire a crop duster and have them eradicate every thing that crawls, hops or flies.
That will leave only the problem of getting rid of 32,000 sets of caterpillar pajamas –and that’s just in my yard.
Is there a Goodwill for critters?
Okay, maybe they aren’t caterpillars: I’m no entomologist. But you know something, I don’t care.
I have always said that a big plus to living where I do, set back from the road, nestled in the trees, are the wild creatures that I see every day.
In our twenty years in this house we have seen fox and deer, wild turkey, families of quail, a great, waddling old badger (I swear!) and a whole host of other creatures cavorting about (or in )our home. And apart from taking action to stop a few from eating away at the attic timber, we have all gotten along just fine.
But these caterpillars are making me nuts.
First of all, it’s the sheer number: I am sure some naturalist has already explained why, and it probably has something to do with the 50 feet of snow we just recovered from, and the 40 days of rain that followed, but all that I know is I am being invaded.
Choose your allusion: invasion of the body snatchers; men from mars, plagues of locust. It all fits.
And what the heck are those clumps of twisted bark hanging from nearly invisible threads? It looks like some creature climbed three quarters of the way down, ditched their pajamas, and hopped off. Are their naked caterpillars cavorting in the bushes?
My son, the college boy, is pretty darn messy: but even he doesn’t leave his pajamas balled up and hanging from the ceiling.
That’s a scary thought though, isn’t it: an invasion of tiny college boys who move in to your yard, sleep all day, eat pounds and pounds of Cheerios, and talk back to you when you ask them how the job hunting is going?
And you know what, the fuzz on my sluggish son’s chin bears an eerie resemblance to the fuzz of these caterpillars.
Wait a second, I’ve got to go check something.
Okay, I’m back, and you can relax: the Cheerios are disappearing at the same alarming rate as before, and there are no small bite marks on the boxes, or tiny rolled-up pajamas in the cabinet where we keep the cereal.
I’m not paranoid, but you have to admit we’ve had it pretty rough in the past few years here in America’s Home Town.
I used to boast about our ‘ocean effect: breezes off the water from Cape Cod and Buzzards Bays, that kept the temperatures a good ten degrees lower than abutting communities. Now I wonder if that same weather pattern is responsible for our record snows, long-lasting murk, and the growth in the critter population.
Is it me or do we have more than our fair share of skunks in Plymouth?
And whatever happened to the ‘wild’ in the wild turkeys that are thriving in these parts? Our turkeys are not domesticated fowl, their tax-paying citizens. You can set your watch by their appearance at certain well-worn entry points on Beaver Dam Road in the morning, and I swear I sat next to one on the train to Boston: he tried to disguise himself, but that turkey-neck gave him away.
But back to the real pillars of our society: the caterpillars. Did you ever see the old Marlon Brando classic motor bike film, ‘The Wild Ones’? That’s the way these caterpillars have come rolling in to our town: loud, obnoxious, and looking for trouble. What’s next, is what I want to know? Are they going to want to date our daughters?
The moral of ‘The Wild One’s is not to pre-judge leather-clad motorcycle punks. They’re really not so bad.
Okay, I am willing to admit right now that I misunderstand these caterpillars. They are probably just harmless young moths, trying to enjoy themselves before they are drawn to the flame of adulthood. But if I get just one more of these things stuck in my hair, or find another one in my cereal bowl, Brando or not, I am going to hire a crop duster and have them eradicate every thing that crawls, hops or flies.
That will leave only the problem of getting rid of 32,000 sets of caterpillar pajamas –and that’s just in my yard.
Is there a Goodwill for critters?
Monday, June 06, 2005
Invasion of the Plymouthian Arthropods
Don’t call me a ‘Plymouthian’!
To my ear that term sounds like something taken from one of my son’s Art History books (..the façade of the Parthenon is covered in vertical Plymouthian columns), or something out of a B-Movie of the Fifties (Invasion of the Plymouthian Arthropods).
Speaking of films, if I am going to refer to local residents by one name I prefer the affectionate term used by John Wayne, describing Jimmy Stewart’s character, in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”.
Screenwriter Willis Goldbeck used the word to describe a character who was both an idealist and, perhaps, a bit naive –which I think is a good description of many of the residents of this town (myself included).
The term? Why “Pilgrim”, of course.
It might be argued that we are not all pilgrims in 21st Century Plymouth, at least not in the dictionary sense: “a person journeying to a sacred place.” But here on this historic coast – in a town founded by pilgrims -in the strict dictionary sense of that word, and in a country that still believes in the myth of the eternal pioneer, is there a better or more affectionate term to apply to one another?
And Goldbeck’s use of the word pilgrim, was again, not limited to the dictionary definition: in fact in the film John Wayne seemed to use the term with an awareness of the mix of respect and amusement that most modern-day Americans feel toward those first boatloads of Bradfords and Howlands and Allertons.
Those first settlers were after all, a bit unprepared for what lay ahead. In fact our ‘pilgrims’ really had no clear sense of where they were going, and how they would manage to survive.
Imagine the conversation that perhaps, a father back in Holland had with his son, hearing that he intended to head over to the new world.
“Where is it, exactly, that you are going?”
“To Myles’ place in Virginia.”
“And are his parents going to be there?”
“Well, no, but they are planning to come over on a later boat”.
“And what are you going to be doing?”
“Starting a new colony”.
There is a certain desperation that we associate with the American ‘pilgrim’, and rightly so. In the traditional sense a pilgrim is someone who goes on a sacred voyage and then, it is implied, after they get to their destination, turn around and head right back to their normal life. For most of history pilgrimages were a kind of ‘dream vacation’: a chance to get out of the muddy field, buy a few sacred snow globes, and see what lay beyond the hill. But the American pilgrim does not usually have a return ticket. The American pilgrim puts his thumb out and just goes…
We have the freedom to do that, and the faith. Faith and freedom are an intoxicating mixture, and a rare combination even in these days when democracy is, allegedly, on the march.
So let’s celebrate that naïve faith we all share, whatever our circumstances, and celebrate as well the factors that have brought us together in this historic community.
Forget Plymouthian. Let’s call each other pilgrim, and let’s do it with that cocky, John Wayne west-coast drawl, moving toward each other, hands outstretched, and with the stiff-hipped gait of someone who has been a bit too long in the saddle.
Repeat after me, “Howdy, Pilgrim.”
And let’s all make a point to respect our friends in neighboring communities, by referring to them by the names they have chosen: Carverites, Kingstonians, Warehamalians, Bourneolians, Sandwichidoridians, and Foul Mouthians.
It’s the least we can do.
To my ear that term sounds like something taken from one of my son’s Art History books (..the façade of the Parthenon is covered in vertical Plymouthian columns), or something out of a B-Movie of the Fifties (Invasion of the Plymouthian Arthropods).
Speaking of films, if I am going to refer to local residents by one name I prefer the affectionate term used by John Wayne, describing Jimmy Stewart’s character, in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”.
Screenwriter Willis Goldbeck used the word to describe a character who was both an idealist and, perhaps, a bit naive –which I think is a good description of many of the residents of this town (myself included).
The term? Why “Pilgrim”, of course.
It might be argued that we are not all pilgrims in 21st Century Plymouth, at least not in the dictionary sense: “a person journeying to a sacred place.” But here on this historic coast – in a town founded by pilgrims -in the strict dictionary sense of that word, and in a country that still believes in the myth of the eternal pioneer, is there a better or more affectionate term to apply to one another?
And Goldbeck’s use of the word pilgrim, was again, not limited to the dictionary definition: in fact in the film John Wayne seemed to use the term with an awareness of the mix of respect and amusement that most modern-day Americans feel toward those first boatloads of Bradfords and Howlands and Allertons.
Those first settlers were after all, a bit unprepared for what lay ahead. In fact our ‘pilgrims’ really had no clear sense of where they were going, and how they would manage to survive.
Imagine the conversation that perhaps, a father back in Holland had with his son, hearing that he intended to head over to the new world.
“Where is it, exactly, that you are going?”
“To Myles’ place in Virginia.”
“And are his parents going to be there?”
“Well, no, but they are planning to come over on a later boat”.
“And what are you going to be doing?”
“Starting a new colony”.
There is a certain desperation that we associate with the American ‘pilgrim’, and rightly so. In the traditional sense a pilgrim is someone who goes on a sacred voyage and then, it is implied, after they get to their destination, turn around and head right back to their normal life. For most of history pilgrimages were a kind of ‘dream vacation’: a chance to get out of the muddy field, buy a few sacred snow globes, and see what lay beyond the hill. But the American pilgrim does not usually have a return ticket. The American pilgrim puts his thumb out and just goes…
We have the freedom to do that, and the faith. Faith and freedom are an intoxicating mixture, and a rare combination even in these days when democracy is, allegedly, on the march.
So let’s celebrate that naïve faith we all share, whatever our circumstances, and celebrate as well the factors that have brought us together in this historic community.
Forget Plymouthian. Let’s call each other pilgrim, and let’s do it with that cocky, John Wayne west-coast drawl, moving toward each other, hands outstretched, and with the stiff-hipped gait of someone who has been a bit too long in the saddle.
Repeat after me, “Howdy, Pilgrim.”
And let’s all make a point to respect our friends in neighboring communities, by referring to them by the names they have chosen: Carverites, Kingstonians, Warehamalians, Bourneolians, Sandwichidoridians, and Foul Mouthians.
It’s the least we can do.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Baseball, hot dogs, and a working knowledge of meteorology
It has come to my attention that parents are dropping off their kids at the Little League fields in town without the proper equipment or preparation.
Given the mobility of the modern family it is certainly possible that many of you aren’t from ‘these parts’, and so are unaware of how the game is played in New England.
So, as an experienced Little League administrator and parent, I thought I would use my column this week to inform you of some basic ‘truths’, and perhaps run down the list of equipment and special rules that make baseball in this area so.. well, unique.
First, metal cleats are against the rules, for safety reasons. If you want to have the latest foot ware for your young ballplayer I suggest the LL Bean combination baseball shoe and wader. It keeps the youngsters feet dry, even when standing in base path water up to their thighs, and provides remarkable traction rounding second.
Insulated jackets or fleece pullovers should not be worn on the field. During games the official team jersey must be on the outside of any other clothing, and tucked in to baseball pants. This helps teams differentiate each other on the field, and guards against the ball disappearing in to a fold of clothing. Ask the coach for a shirt three-times as large as you need, so you can comfortably fit the thermal underwear and sweatshirt underneath.
Your young ball player should also never go to the field without a copy of the ‘Little League Guide to Basic Meteorology’. This wonderfully concise little book gives even the youngest player an understanding of the basic kinds of weather they can expect to confront on the field, and how that weather impacts play.
Low hanging clouds, fog, impenetrable mists, and hail are not officially recognized by the manual as ‘weather’. Instead, think of those phenomena as you would dust: annoying yes, but not an impediment to play.
Snow, sleet, acid rain, cats & dogs, frogs, locust, and any other of the Seven Plagues of Egypt are officially recognized as weather, but are not a guarantee of postponement. The standard rule of thumb when confronted by these conditions on the day of a game is to go to the field and wait for an announcement. In New England a forecast of rain throughout the day will often turn out just to be intermittent showers –punctuated by lightning, the glow from which can really brighten up a ball field.
Parents of players should also go to the park with the expectation that they will be needed to help prepare the field prior to a game. Don’t wait to be asked! Bring your own wheelbarrow, shovel, and kitty litter (a great drying agent!) and pick out a particularly muddy or snow-covered section of the infield to work on.
Do not, under any circumstances, make mud caricatures of the opposing team’s coaching staff, as this can often delay the start of the game.
Many parents and coaches alike have asked me for an easy way to determine if, after inclement weather, a field is suitable for play. Simple: if a player can walk the entire base path from home plate to home plate, without becoming lost or having one or more pieces of clothing sucked off by the mud, ‘Play Ball!’.
Yes, yes, I know, they do things differently where you come from. But you’re in New England now. We invented the game. In fact, we invented basketball and volleyball too.
You may think it’s crazy to play in these kinds of conditions, but after being stuck in our cabins for six months, being crazy outdoors seems less crazy by far.
Given the mobility of the modern family it is certainly possible that many of you aren’t from ‘these parts’, and so are unaware of how the game is played in New England.
So, as an experienced Little League administrator and parent, I thought I would use my column this week to inform you of some basic ‘truths’, and perhaps run down the list of equipment and special rules that make baseball in this area so.. well, unique.
First, metal cleats are against the rules, for safety reasons. If you want to have the latest foot ware for your young ballplayer I suggest the LL Bean combination baseball shoe and wader. It keeps the youngsters feet dry, even when standing in base path water up to their thighs, and provides remarkable traction rounding second.
Insulated jackets or fleece pullovers should not be worn on the field. During games the official team jersey must be on the outside of any other clothing, and tucked in to baseball pants. This helps teams differentiate each other on the field, and guards against the ball disappearing in to a fold of clothing. Ask the coach for a shirt three-times as large as you need, so you can comfortably fit the thermal underwear and sweatshirt underneath.
Your young ball player should also never go to the field without a copy of the ‘Little League Guide to Basic Meteorology’. This wonderfully concise little book gives even the youngest player an understanding of the basic kinds of weather they can expect to confront on the field, and how that weather impacts play.
Low hanging clouds, fog, impenetrable mists, and hail are not officially recognized by the manual as ‘weather’. Instead, think of those phenomena as you would dust: annoying yes, but not an impediment to play.
Snow, sleet, acid rain, cats & dogs, frogs, locust, and any other of the Seven Plagues of Egypt are officially recognized as weather, but are not a guarantee of postponement. The standard rule of thumb when confronted by these conditions on the day of a game is to go to the field and wait for an announcement. In New England a forecast of rain throughout the day will often turn out just to be intermittent showers –punctuated by lightning, the glow from which can really brighten up a ball field.
Parents of players should also go to the park with the expectation that they will be needed to help prepare the field prior to a game. Don’t wait to be asked! Bring your own wheelbarrow, shovel, and kitty litter (a great drying agent!) and pick out a particularly muddy or snow-covered section of the infield to work on.
Do not, under any circumstances, make mud caricatures of the opposing team’s coaching staff, as this can often delay the start of the game.
Many parents and coaches alike have asked me for an easy way to determine if, after inclement weather, a field is suitable for play. Simple: if a player can walk the entire base path from home plate to home plate, without becoming lost or having one or more pieces of clothing sucked off by the mud, ‘Play Ball!’.
Yes, yes, I know, they do things differently where you come from. But you’re in New England now. We invented the game. In fact, we invented basketball and volleyball too.
You may think it’s crazy to play in these kinds of conditions, but after being stuck in our cabins for six months, being crazy outdoors seems less crazy by far.
Monday, May 23, 2005
The Thatched Roof Party
NML051905-1
The Scarlet “V”
The results are in: and after a long and scientifically rigorous analysis of the raw data I feel comfortable in ignoring the facts and saying that the news is, well, confusing.
Nothing, it is abundantly clear, is abundantly clear. Or should I say that it is abundantly clear that nothing is abundantly clear?
Nevertheless, a lack of clarity has never stopped me before, so here are my observations:
The override referendum was soundly defeated
-but one of the leaders of the naysayers didn’t make the cut
Teacher’s jobs are still on the line
-but word from the State House is that more cash is on the way. How much is not, at least at this time, abundantly clear.
It is official; Town Meeting has decreed that the Selectmen are over-compensated for their efforts
-then again, later Town Meeting officially asserted that they are not; then again they are, then again..
It is not true –my sources indicate, that Dramamine is given out to all town meeting members.
Here are my conclusions:
Hey hey, hey ho, the status quo has got to go
-just not yet.
“Put it on the Ballot” failed as a campaign slogan
-but then, to be fair, it hasn’t been fully tested.
We need to have a ballot referendum on the question of whether voters approve of the concept of ‘Put It on the Ballot” and so I propose that we put it on the ballot and see what the people think.
Then again, what the average ‘pilgrim’ thinks is still not clear, given the fact that 75% of the town’s registered voters were too busy thatching their roofs on Election Day to make it to the polls.
My sources indicate however, that there is a disparity between the actual number of thatched roofs in town (which according to the Building Department is 12) and the number of voters who never made it off their ladders in time to vote.
Do the 25% of registered voters who did manage to cast a vote speak for the entire town?
If not, what part of the town do they speak for? (The thatched roof section?)
If so, they’re going to need to speak up: I can’t hear them way down here in the village of South Plymouth.
I propose that the town establish an award to be given to the ‘village’ with the highest turnout on Election Day (as a percentage of registered voters).
How embarrassing would it be if the model ‘village’ of Pinehills won that award?
I also propose that –in deference to our pilgrim forefathers, anyone who can’t manage to vote in a local election (or come up with a better excuse than that they were thatching their roof) should have to put on a long skirt or pumpkin pants, and a heavy polyester puffy shirt embroidered with a scarlet “V”, and climb up on one of those rickety wooden ladders so they can actually thatch some roofs –at the Plimoth Plantation, in late July.
Then again, maybe we should put that on the ballot.
(You know, come to think of it, maybe there should be some additional incentives to get people out to the polls. My family has always taken advantage of the fact that the Plimoth Plantation offers free admissions to residents of the town, and has politely declined when the Plantation asks us to make an additional donation. But I do appreciate the value of their presence in town. What if the Plantation were allowed to discriminate between town residents who vote, and those who don’t? What if they could charge an admission fee for residents who did not take their civic responsibility as seriously as others? It would seem to be a ‘lesson’ that could be incorporated in the Plantation’s educational mission. )
The Scarlet “V”
The results are in: and after a long and scientifically rigorous analysis of the raw data I feel comfortable in ignoring the facts and saying that the news is, well, confusing.
Nothing, it is abundantly clear, is abundantly clear. Or should I say that it is abundantly clear that nothing is abundantly clear?
Nevertheless, a lack of clarity has never stopped me before, so here are my observations:
The override referendum was soundly defeated
-but one of the leaders of the naysayers didn’t make the cut
Teacher’s jobs are still on the line
-but word from the State House is that more cash is on the way. How much is not, at least at this time, abundantly clear.
It is official; Town Meeting has decreed that the Selectmen are over-compensated for their efforts
-then again, later Town Meeting officially asserted that they are not; then again they are, then again..
It is not true –my sources indicate, that Dramamine is given out to all town meeting members.
Here are my conclusions:
Hey hey, hey ho, the status quo has got to go
-just not yet.
“Put it on the Ballot” failed as a campaign slogan
-but then, to be fair, it hasn’t been fully tested.
We need to have a ballot referendum on the question of whether voters approve of the concept of ‘Put It on the Ballot” and so I propose that we put it on the ballot and see what the people think.
Then again, what the average ‘pilgrim’ thinks is still not clear, given the fact that 75% of the town’s registered voters were too busy thatching their roofs on Election Day to make it to the polls.
My sources indicate however, that there is a disparity between the actual number of thatched roofs in town (which according to the Building Department is 12) and the number of voters who never made it off their ladders in time to vote.
Do the 25% of registered voters who did manage to cast a vote speak for the entire town?
If not, what part of the town do they speak for? (The thatched roof section?)
If so, they’re going to need to speak up: I can’t hear them way down here in the village of South Plymouth.
I propose that the town establish an award to be given to the ‘village’ with the highest turnout on Election Day (as a percentage of registered voters).
How embarrassing would it be if the model ‘village’ of Pinehills won that award?
I also propose that –in deference to our pilgrim forefathers, anyone who can’t manage to vote in a local election (or come up with a better excuse than that they were thatching their roof) should have to put on a long skirt or pumpkin pants, and a heavy polyester puffy shirt embroidered with a scarlet “V”, and climb up on one of those rickety wooden ladders so they can actually thatch some roofs –at the Plimoth Plantation, in late July.
Then again, maybe we should put that on the ballot.
(You know, come to think of it, maybe there should be some additional incentives to get people out to the polls. My family has always taken advantage of the fact that the Plimoth Plantation offers free admissions to residents of the town, and has politely declined when the Plantation asks us to make an additional donation. But I do appreciate the value of their presence in town. What if the Plantation were allowed to discriminate between town residents who vote, and those who don’t? What if they could charge an admission fee for residents who did not take their civic responsibility as seriously as others? It would seem to be a ‘lesson’ that could be incorporated in the Plantation’s educational mission. )
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