Here's What I Think

Visiting Friends - Priceless

2012-01-25T14:44:00.000-08:00

This must be my month to catch up with old friends. I met up with several on my trip, and some others coming back from the job fair on Sunday. And I came away from each thinking why didn’t I do that a long time ago? Why did I wait so long? Why don’t I just pick up the dang phone and talk to people? It’s not like I don’t think about them. Heck, we even email and talk on Facebook. But this was the first time I’d seen most of them in 20 or so years – let’s see, Annie it’s gotta be over 20 years, it was the year we went to Disney World when SETC auditions were in Orlando. Kelly, must be when her mom died, so that’s about 15 years. Mary Jane and Harry – wow, I can’t even remember when I saw them last, although her daughter and family did show up on mu porch a year ago summer and made me stand there trying to figure out who it was for a while. Johnna, only since Camp Katrina, in 2005, but still a while.
Admittedly, distance is a factor for some of them, they live in Florida and Mississippi and North Carolina. But the others are only a couple of hours up the road. Why don’t I take a day trip and have lunch? Not like I don’t drive places. Not like I’m not looking for road trips. Why didn’t I do this sooner, like many years ago, and many times since?
OK, so two of them, Claude and Shirley, it wasn’t a matter of visiting, two of them it was the first time I met them, even though I’ve known them for about ten years, online. And they live in Florida, too, so there’s the distance thing again. But gee, it was nice to actually meet them and sit in their nice little house, pet their dog, and just talk.
And to talk and talk and talk some more about old times and old friends and as much else under the sun as we could cram in with the 3 hours and 24 hours and few days I stayed with them – well, like the ad says: gas-haven’t added up yet, motels-haven’t added up yet, food- I travel fairly cheap, seeing the sights along the way-great, but visiting with people dear to me – priceless.
Here’s what I think – I have to get to do it again, and not so many years apart the next time – and do it with more people, too.

The condensed version of my vacation:

2012-01-15T12:47:00.001-08:00

Monday, December 26: left late in the day and got to Wilkes-Barre, PA for the night
Tuesday, December 27: To Rickett’s Glen SP a little ways from Wilkes Barre, where I wanted to hike to see waterfalls, but only experienced ice climbers with equipment were allowed to do that, which left me out, so I went to the one fall I could walk to. Then to Woolrich and the outlet store.
Then to Shankesville to the Flight 93 Memorial, which is so simple and so eloquent, very moving. Quite a ride along Route 30 to get there, with lots of twists and turns and scenery. To Somerset, PA for the night.
Wednesday, December 28: To Fallingwaters, the Frank Lloyd Wright designed house, did not go through the house itself, but walked the grounds and got good views of the outside. Then on to Kentucky, to Mt. Sterling for the night.
Thursday, December 29: Drove through the Red River Gorge scenic area in the Daniel Boone National Forest, seeing lots of great scenery and several arches-Kentucky has the largest amount of those in the east, who knew. A little hiking and a lot of getting out of the car to look at things. Also hiked up the trail to a Natural Bridge. To London, Kentucky for the night.
Friday, December 30: Across Kentucky and down around Nashville, TN, to the Natchez Trace. LOTS of stopping to look at all the things, scenic and historic. To Tupelo, MS.
Saturday, December 31: Continue south on the Trace, with more stops, scenery and history. Got off near Jackson, MS, and went over to Louisiana to Poverty Point, an historic Indian Mound site, just had enough time to drive quickly through it and look at the main parts, and climb the largest mound, built in about 1500 or so BC. Amazing. Then back to the Trace, to Rocky Springs campground for my New Year’s Eve.
Sunday, January 1, 2012: Finished the Trace, with stops at Rocky Springs to walk around the old town site, and then at Mount Locust to look at the house, which became the first stopover point on the Trace back in the early 1800’s. Then across MS to Tylertown and Merrywood to visit with Camp Katrina friends. Lovely place, with lots of all sorts of animals.
Monday, January 2: Loafed, drove around to Camp Katrina, into town and back to Merrywood, took a little walk, then rode around with Johnna and Susan to look at horses and property.
Tuesday, January 3: Went down to New Orleans, to meet another Camp Katrina friend and to see the Katrina Animals Memorial; drove through the French Quarter but didn’t stop, no parking and too many pba’s in town for the football game. Back to Merrywood.
Wednesday, January 4: More friends came over, went to Camp Katrina which I said didn’t look right there were no tents all over the place – many changes, still lots of animals. Nice visit and yummy supper.
Thursday, January 5: Left Merrywood and across MS into Alabama and then Florida, on the way to meet online friends Claude & Shirley. A few scenery viewing and photo stops, went to Destin to see the white sands, and then looking for miles for a campground, finally found one at Panama City.
Friday, January 6: foggy in the morning, and most of the way along the Gulf, did get some sightseeing in, and a nice ‘shore’ lunch. Then up in to the middle of the panhandle to Fort White.
Saturday, January 7: Went for a walk at a state park near their house, where a river ‘sinks’ down out of sight into the ground and reappears several miles down. Then visited, out for supper again, and visited some more.
Sunday, January 8: Left in late morning to go over to see Anne Somers in Fruitland Park, got there and sat and visited the afternoon and evening away.
Monday, January 9: Left Anne’s about noon, up through the Ocala NF towards Jacksonville, but then saw a sign for St. Augustine so cut over to see it, went to the fort and walked around looking at old buildings, very pretty. To Kingsland GA for the night.
Tuesday, January 10: Went out to Jekyll Island, very pretty, with huge old ‘cottages’ that are a testament to wealth. To St. George SC.
Wednesday, January 11: Stopped to see Kelly Casey, which was a delightful visit. Started to rain very hard after that, got to Emporia VA and quit for the night.
Thursday, January 12: Just drove all day to get home, got here about 8.

Why are people? Sigh....

2011-12-18T11:11:00.000-08:00

So, I was just at the drug store making some more Christmas cards ( I know, making your own Christmas cards at the drug store - that's a whole 'nother thing), and hear a dog barking. Then while I'm paying for the cards, the woman with the dog, a mid-size poodle-y looking thing, comes in line behind me, so naturally I turn and hold my hand down towards the dog and she says 'Oh, no don't do that, h...e'll bark or . . . . He's not a friendly dog" and she picked it up. Now, call me kooky, but if I had a dog that wasn't friendly and might 'or . . . ' at people, I damn sure wouldn't bring it into a store where there are people, especially kids, who might not be cautious about reaching for a strange animal, and might get, I don't know, bit, 'or . . .' whatever. Get your dog socialized or don't bring it into places where people are, you MOron! And if it bites a kid and you get sued, you'll be all 'why are they doing that to ME?' No doubt a *&#%ing cidiot. Why are people? Sigh.

“Neighbors Helping Neighbors”

2011-11-26T16:51:00.001-08:00

Went to a spaghetti supper tonight, a benefit at the firehouse, for a family in town. She’s battling breast cancer, and some friends got together and decided to help them out. The place was packed. Of course, having it two days after Thanksgiving, when everybody needs a break from turkey leftovers, didn’t hurt, but it sure did show the support that a town can give to its friends. Besides the supper, there was a silent auction, and a 50/50 drawing, the gallon jar for that was full and they’d run out of the printed tickets by the time we got ours. Three tables loaded with desserts, all donated. The woman thanked me for coming as we were leaving; I said “Good food, good friends, for good people” and gave her a hug. I’d be willing to bet that the show of support helps them as much as the money. Neighbors Helping Neighbors.
We do this. We rally with donations, like the one I made this morning to help with vet expenses for the dog that escaped a tragic fire a few days ago; her master and another dog did not escape. No, I don’t know them, but it doesn’t matter. People in the town they live in put together a car wash, to help the rest of the family with expenses, and I’m sure there will be more such events before it’s all done. Neighbors help neighbors.
It happens all over. Those not affected, no, even those who are affected get together and do what they can to help. I saw it at the pig roast up in Upper Jay last month, where area people came and ate and drank and visited and gave each other monetary and moral support. I saw it a couple of weeks later, when musicians gave their time and talent for a concert to raise money for HelpJayNY, to a packed house in the Indian Lake movie theatre. I saw it when I helped pack a truck of donated things to be sent to New York after 9/11, in the three truckloads of things collected in Chatham that we took to South Florida after Hurricane Andrew, in the dozens of people who descended on the Gulf areas to rescue animals after Hurricane Katrina, in the SUV load of donations our audience brought this summer for the troops overseas, and so many more examples throughout our country. Neighbors help neighbors, even when they are hundreds of miles away and we’ve never met them.
We got a bunch of help for the kids affected when our cast house burned in July – from patrons, from people who had been at the theatre in years past, from people who didn’t know them, but who wanted to help out. Also got so much support at our fund-raising Gala-wow!
Here’s what I think - we help, because we can, because we feel better for it, because it’s the right thing to do, and maybe also because we’re glad it’s not us – this time – but someday it might be and we hope that other neighbors will help neighbors. Go ahead, help your neighbor.

Hurricane Irene hits the Adirondacks

2011-11-03T10:58:00.001-07:00

The river babbles behind us as we carry things to a storage container parked on the front lawn. Two months ago Hurricane Irene tore through the area with record-breaking rains that turned the now benign stream, about maybe 20 feet wide, into a raging torrent that leapt over it’s banks, surged across lawns and roads, through houses and businesses, tearing up trees, buildings, pavement and lives. Now the couple is moving memories to install a new heating system. “The neighbor’s barn was there”, she points to the corner of an ell on the back, the river side, of their old mountain farmhouse that has withstood many other storms in it’s almost 200 years. “It caught on our house and the water went under it”. The water dug a hole more than five feet deep under their house and tore out the foundation, went into the basement and destroyed the furnace and everything else there. “There were five brook trout on the floor”, she adds.
The course of the river changed, “it’s about 20 feet closer to our house now, and it just drops off, there used to be lawn there and a gentle slope down to the water”, I am shown. “I miss our lawn”. An old cedar tree was torn up by the roots when the water surged by, she had some of it pulled near the house to use the wood for something, she’s not sure what. The trunk is a good foot and a half thick.
They are just one of dozens of families whose lives were torn up by the roots when Hurricane Irene’s torrential rains hit the Adirondacks on August 28. The water came from the tops of the mountains in this High Peaks region, rushing to small streams and sometimes taking parts of the mountains with it. The small streams held what they could and the rest stormed of their banks onto fields, forest, lawns and roads. When the streams got to the Ausable River’s East Branch, which runs through the towns of Keene, Upper Jay and Jay it did the same thing.
Two branches of the Ausable River, West and East, flow through two valleys and meet at the village of Ausable Forks – where the water was up to the door handles of the pizza parlor, two blocks from either river. “It’s probably in Ausable Chasm” is a catch phrase about things that were washed away. It’s about 20 miles from Ausable Forks to the popular tourist spot where the river narrows and pours through deep rock walls before broadening out and finally dumping into Lake Champlain.
You first see some damage on Route 73, where pavement was torn up by what are usually tiny brooks you can step across; orange cones and new pavement now line the road. Then you notice the storage containers beside houses that are near a stream. Then, turning onto Route 9N and heading north, some houses are empty, some have piles of rubble outside: possessions and walls heaped together to be taken away. Near the house where I was helping several piles of trees, bushes, branches, boards and bicycles and more sit in the trees between the road and the river. She found her kayak under one of the piles, pulled it out and set it in the sun, undamaged.
On a side road I take photos of piles of trees and rocks, then notice that some of the rocks are black, look closer and see that some of those have yellow stripes on them - it’s not rocks, it’s pieces of pavement, torn up and left there by the water of a small brook as it raced past to join the bigger river and add to the woes downstream.
Along the road, which runs beside the river from Keene to Keesville, pieces of buildings, furniture, scraps of clothing and trees lie in fields, along the river bank, stuck in trees and on guard rails. Bridge abutments are scraped to the top by the debris pushed past. In Jay, the water was up to the bottom of the recently restored covered bridge, some 20 feet above the normal height of the river. An 8 foot high wall of 2 foot thick concrete blocks on the opposite side of the road from the river is marked about a foot from the bottom with ‘April, 2011’, showing the depth of the flooding then. Now added, at the top, with arrows pointing up, is “Hurricane Irene, August 28, 2011’. On the other side it says “Irene was here-don’t come back!’
Firehouses in Keene and Upper Jay are empty, with damage that might not be repairable. In Upper Jay, the fire chief gave the order to move the trucks just in time; the water was up to the doors as the volunteers drove them out. The hamlet’s library was flooded, the soccer and ball fields destroyed, a woman watched her livelihood float away as she stood downstream from her antique shop.
The once popular family attraction Land of Make Believe, no longer operating but with many of the memorable pieces still in place, is now bare, with piles of sand pushed from the road to open it to traffic standing in what once was a parking area filled with excited children. A pony kept there was swept away.
Near where one town road meets the highway, a three car garage blocked the view of the field behind it. Now you can see the whole field, there is no trace of the garage. You can also see a house in the middle of the field; it used to be beside the road, a hundred yards or so away.
Upper Jay is tiny, with just a few people and fewer businesses in the hamlet. One, a motel, opened for refugees until they could return to their houses, or make other arrangements if that was not an option. A woman tells me that she brought food from Lake Placid, 20 plus miles away, for them. “People in Lake Placid had no idea, we didn’t get this kind of damage”, she says, adding that some of the things that were sent were “Lake Placid people’s idea of what these folks needed – a chocolatier sent boxes of fancy chocolates” and she shakes her head.
People are picking up and putting their lives back together. Some may not be able to. The neighbor of the couple I was helping may not, their house has been condemned. Some say ‘well, they live in a flood plain, they should expect it’. You can’t expect a ‘500 year flood’, as this is being called. ‘They should move’, those same people say. To where? With what?
No, it wasn’t as big and bad as Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans. Or the tornadoes in the southeast, perhaps. Or maybe not event he scope of the destruction when the floods took out the towns in the Catskills. But for the people affected, it is. When it’s your disaster, it’s big. This is big, for that area.
To help: www.helpjayny.com

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A 9-11 Ceremony

2011-09-11T08:47:00.001-07:00

Our local fire department, like others across the country, had a small ceremony this morning to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9-11. A flag hung from the extended ladder, black cloth draped the windshield of a pumper, and turnout gear stood in front of it: empty coat, boots, bunker pants and helmet to signify the gear not to be worn again by those gone.
Some of the firefighters spoke; where they were, what they were doing – just as most of us are remembering the same things about that day. One woman told of fears that a cousin who worked in the towers was lost and the elation when he was finally able to call two days later to tell them he had gone out of the office for coffee – his co-workers perished. A fireman talked about how one plane made it’s turn over our county, how comment was made about the plane flying so low and slow, how unusual that was – not knowing how much more unusual that flight was going to become. A man now a state trooper told how the day created his job, because the State Police forces were increased. Several remembered going to an annual weekend fire school and how every person there jammed an auditorium on Friday night for a memorial service.
One just waved his hand, indicating he had no words to say, and a tear fell from his cheek.
There will be many more ceremonies, one is scheduled this evening at the county 9-11 memorial. There will be many more tears, as more memories are shared.
As we did ten years ago, our country and our people cry, and continue. It would be unfair to those who gave their lives to do otherwise.

September 11 - Ten Years later

2011-09-11T05:31:00.001-07:00

I put on the t-shirt I got on the Comfort, the one that says “Terrorists may crumble buildings, but they can’t touch my patriotism. In memory of those who paid for freedom with the ultimate price. September 11, 2001. God Bless America still the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
I’ll go to the firehouse for an impromptu, short ceremony there, then later read a message, updated from when I first wrote it ten years ago for the truck company newsletter, before our matinee performance.
As everyone, I will have my moment to remember, what I was doing, what I thought and felt and did that day. I will make a moment for those lost, for those still being lost as a result of the attacks in 2001. I will take a moment to be thankful for our American life.
Here’s what I think: We should all do this, not just today, but every day.
My reading:
“Everyone in our country, and beyond, was affected by the tragic events in New York City, Washington DC and Pennsylvania ten years ago today.
I went to New York as a member of an Emergency Medical Services Task Force, went to the scene and saw the destruction that was left of the World Trade Center and saw the desolation on the faces of those going to dig in the rubble, some for their friends and co-workers, some just to help. I stood crying at the ‘wall of tears’, where the pictures and messages from people looking for their loved ones were beyond heartbreaking. I heard the thanks of countless people, strangers, in a city that before was known for its cold, self-centered personality – thanks just because we were there, had come to help and support them.
I can only say that if those who perpetrated and carried out this horrendous crime against humanity thought they were going to bring the United States of America and its people to their knees by these actions, well, they did.
They brought us to our knees to unite in prayer for the victims and their loved ones, and then to add a prayer for the strength and the wisdom and courage to do what must be done next. Then, we stood up with more patriotism and determination than ever and with the resolve that they would not win, that we would keep our life and our freedom and our country and our spirit.
And we did and we can continue to do so.
We can get down on our knees once again and say a prayer for the victims and their families and friends.
We can say “Thank you” and “God Bless You” and “God Be With You” when we see a fire truck or an ambulance or a police car go by, in memory of the brave men and women who ran towards, not away from, the carnage at the World Trade Center and who died doing their job.
We can say a prayer and a “Thank you” for those people who were on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, those people who may have averted another incident with even more deaths and destruction.
We can show our patriotism - wave a flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance and sing the Star Spangled Banner, not just today when the memory is being celebrated, but tomorrow and the day after and the week and the month and the year after tomorrow.
We can teach a child to respect our country and its government and its flag.
We can say “our knees, my butt – this is America”, and do everything in our power to keep our country moving and growing and going strong, as we did after this tragedy and as people have throughout every day of its existence.
Please join us in a moment of silence in remembrance.”

Thank them a lot, thank them often

2011-08-29T05:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve been listening to the scanner all day, which is not unusual since its never shut off, but today it was in case there were things happening with the hurricane that I should respond or stand by for. Fortunately for the squad, the hurricane didn’t amount to as much as predicted and we only had the usual sort and amount of calls, and extra help wasn’t needed.
The fire companies are a whole ‘nother story, though. The county called all departments out to stand by in quarters starting at 8 a.m. today. Many of them have been flat out since before that. Heavy rain brought flooded and washed out roads, and then flooded basements. Now the wind has picked up a bit (nowhere near the predicted but it’s a bit brisk) and trees are starting to fall. Fire departments responded for a family needing help getting out through the water surrounding their house and to evacuate residents of a mobile home park being flooded by the creek it is next to. Some went to fire alarms activated by the storm, or power blips. Some checked out a car stranded in water on a flooded road. Then a barn fire, which was burned to the ground by the time it was discovered and the first fire fighter got there.
They’ve been running between setting up warnings at the impassable roadways to pumping water from a basement before a furnace or other costly appliances are ruined or a fire started, to trees fallen on power lines or across roadways or both, to assisting rescue squads with emergency medical calls - and there’s no sign of them getting any break soon.
Hopefully there have been enough people so they can take a little rest between calls, and also hopefully the faithful, helpful auxiliaries have been making food for them.
It’s not just our county, either. I can hear some areas of Greene County and they’ve been just as busy if not busier. All day. As I am sure others throughout the storm track area have been.
And you know what’s the best part? They do this because they want to help their families, friends, neighbors, communities. That’s right, they don’t get any pay except for the grateful thanks of the people they help, and the waves when they march past in the firemen’s parade. No pay, no benefits, no retirement. They just want to help. And they do. We’d be in a sorry mess without them.
Here’s what I think: these men and women don’t get enough credit. Friends have posted a video on Facebook of an area firehouse with floodwater around it – where are the people who staff this building? Out helping their neighbors – I wrote the first part yesterday, and this morning they are heading out again, after a full day and night of helping, to check out an odor of smoke in one of their neighbors homes. Hoping that it is not a fire, for everyone’s sake. The firefighters we invited to see the dress rehearsal of Grease, after they responded to our cast house fire, kept thanking us for the invitation, and I kept saying no, we thank you for what you did-this is little enough we can do. We all need to give these people a great big THANK YOU for everything they do, and we need to do it more often

Visiting one of my past lives

2011-08-28T06:10:00.001-07:00

I took a step back into one of my past lives a few days ago. After not going there for several years, I went to Springfield, to the truck company I worked for, and visited the few people still working there that I know, and then met some of them for dinner. The occasion was instigated by one woman I was good friends with, she recently left the company (which isn’t even named what it was when I was there) to drive for another outfit, was home for a week and wanted to visit everyone. Just worked out right I had a day off when it happened. I haven’t seen her sine I left, over 9 years ago. Talked on email, on facebook, on the phone a couple of times, but haven’t seen each other, so it was really nice. Lot of catching up, general chit chat and laughing. Some ’have you heard about’ – both good and sad news.
Made me miss both the place and the driving. They all say it’s not the same as it was when I was there, and I can see that – Our little company has been absorbed by one of the owner’s other companies, and that’s not a change for the better from what they all were saying.
It was a good place to work, I thought. Small, everyone like family, always friendly and ready to talk, just to visit or to try to work out a problem. One reason I left is that the trying to work out problems part was not happening as much. There are other reasons as well, but that was one.
But for the 17 winters I was there, I was part of that family. I started as a rookie, with a few months of regional driving miles behind me, but with a whole lot to learn. There weren’t trainers as such and I mostly had to pick up things as I went, but I didn’t get into too much trouble. I remember being so pleased when the first partner they put me with said to the office, after my first shift driving ‘she does good – I slept for 8 hours’.
I went from that to being the ‘special projects’ trainer over the years there; it seemed every time they had a new driver that needed special attention, they gave them to me to train. Some worked out, some didn’t. Some I was proud to have a hand in, some wouldn’t have worked out no matter who tried. Oh well.
I got an award from the company at an annual driver’s dinner; I had done a collection for a special thing for Feed The Children, combining it with the theatre I think it was the 30th anniversary season, and collected things to donate to that group. That winter I won the Humanitarian Award. I had just made it in on the afternoon of the dinner, and didn’t have what I’d normally have worn to such an event with me, but put on a nice shirt and clean jeans and went – and was totally surprised to win something. A plaque and $250. Plus they let me take the things to FTC in Oklahoma City.
Same as they let me drop off the Evita coffin in Chicago on one run.
I felt part of the company. Even when I’d go visit in the summer, they’d stop to chat. And ask ‘you back?’ For a while I’d get The Bakery’s pumpkin donuts and take a couple of bags over when I went for my first trip, and so when I was ready to start in the fall I’d call and say ‘it’s pumpkin donut time!’ I called one time and was leaving a message for dispatch, and when the girl (someone new who didn’t know what it meant) repeated ‘tell him it’s pumpkin donut time?’ I could hear Kevin in the background yelling ‘She’s Back!’.
So many memories, mostly good, a few bad - I think I left before the bad got to be more than the good. But mainly what I remember is being part of it – of the company, of the people, of just driving in general, with the other drivers I was ‘one of them’. That’s a good memory.
Here’s what I think: yes, most of the time I’m fine to have left that behind me, but every now and then I sure do miss it. I was part of it, I belonged, I could do it. And I know I’m happy that they remember me and make me feel welcome, even after being away almost 10 years. And I think maybe I’ll try to put more stories about that life on here. Maybe, if I get to it.

Unwanted emails (a recurring theme)

2011-08-16T06:12:00.001-07:00

Once again I am in a discussion with a friend about forwarded emails. This person forwards many very enjoyable ones, but sometimes sends ones that I just don’t care to get. You know the kind, that ‘prove’ that a person, place or thing are all wrong for whatever the purpose is because of all the dastardly reasons listed in the email. Occasionally there’s a grain of truth to these, more often not. It’s easy to check, there are several sites that do this for a living. I use snopes.com, there are others. About three clicks and before you pass along what is pure untruthful drivel, you can see for yourself what has been found out about the particular item. Pretty easy but most people don’t bother, they are so intent on sharing this ‘GASP-did you know this, how dare they’ news. Most of the time when someone sends me one of these I don’t make an issue of it, often I will go to snopes and check it out and then forward them the link to to read for themselves. I hope they get the hint because they are, after all, friends, or they wouldn’t be on my email list and me on theirs. Some do, some haven’t; and I’m not sure if I’ve directly addressed this issue with the person who sent the latest or not. The item in question was all about how Barak Obama is not really an American citizen because of all sorts of alleged problems with his birth certificate. Variations on this theme have been going around since his candidacy was announced, if not before. My first reaction is that ‘don’t you think that those in charge of his campaign, to say nothing of people in the government who pay attention to such things, would have carefully checked this so as to not have any question about the matter?’ Gee, ya think? Another person replied to all on her mailing list that she did not want to receive this sort of thing any more, and I followed with a similar message. This of course led to a discussion on how we can always delete the messages – but that’s not the point here. The point is that to responsibly share emails the sender should not pass along something that isn’t true. The sender should stop and think ‘does this person want to receive this message?’ The sender should know their friends well enough to edit the mailing list. As I put in one of my responses, don’t send everything to everyone. You never know who you might be offending or upsetting.
I (and the other protestors to this particular message) have obviously offended and upset the sender by objecting to getting these emails. She has sent a message that says in short that she won’t be forwarding any more emails since ‘not everyone seems to appreciate when I send something out’ and that ‘free speech and the right to use the delete button seem not to apply…’. Well, yes, there is free speech, but there’s also common sense. There’s also my right to say I don’t want to get things like this. The delete button is indeed an option, and I exercise it often, but as another objector to this item said, you don’t know until you read at least part of the message if you want to do that. I may lose a friend over this, and that would make me sad. But if you can’t tell a friend what you do or don’t want them to tell you, then maybe it wasn’t that strong a bond to begin with.
My messages regarding this:
“…we've been friends for a long time, but I don't wish to receive any more of this sort of thing either. I agree with Gail in that even if you don't like Obama as president, there should be respect for the office. I find it and every thing else of this manner that I have looked up on hoax sites (snopes. com shows several examples of this theme, all false, btw) I have found to be if not entirely false, at least bent to suit someone's hateful rabble-rousing. And has anyone stopped to think that, gee, maybe all this was checked out before the man was even proposed for nomination for the election, because why the hell would anyone leave themselves open for him not being a valid candidate? Just because something is received on the internet does not mean it is true. Please, everyone, check things like this out before spreading more hateful lies. PS, this is not the first message of this type I have sent this week alone. If people would spend the time and effort trying to spread good things that they do spreading this garbage, we'd all be a lot better off.”
And:
“The delete button is often used. However the assumption (and this is not personally directed to you, Carey) that everyone will want to receive every email is not always the right one to make. For that very reason, I personally don't forward to a general group of my email list, I pick and choose. No doubt there are people who don't mind the emails that some of us don't want to get. Send those to those people, and others to the people who want those. Please do not make us the bad guys for speaking up as to what we do or do not wish to receive. That is our choice to make and our right to request. If this annoys you, I'm sorry, likewise any others it may annoy.”
Here’s what I think: no matter how good a friend you are, no matter how well you know the person, don’t assume (makes an ‘ass’ our of ‘u’ and ‘me’), think a bit – and don’t take it personally if someone says they don’t agree – not even the very closest of friends always do. It’s how people are.

-

Bushnell House Fire

2011-08-01T08:35:00.001-07:00

It’s been three weeks minus two days since I woke up to Chatham’s tones going off for a structure fire on Hudson Ave., and as I was thinking ‘that’s near the cast house, maybe I better go down just in case the kids get nervous’ and as I started to get dressed, it changed to corner of Bushnell and Hudson, house on the left, which was closer but still not and then changed to ‘house on the right’ and I can’t even describe – or remember – all of what went through my mind. I know that the phrase ‘scared the shit out of me’ is a descriptive one, and I know that hard as you try you cannot put on pants and a shirt at the same time, but you can come close. I know that Matt calling me to say they were all out was indescribable relief ‘that’s what I wanted to hear, I’ll be there in a couple of minutes’.
As the previous post says, there’s no found cause. A few thoughts on maybe if it started here it was this or if it started there it was that, but can’t put an exact answer to that. Probably just as well, because I’d hate to think that it was something any one person did, for their sake and ours.
The community overall (the expanded MHT community) has been wonderfully supportive. Neighbors gave the kids blankets to wrap up in; they got out in their bvd’s and nighties. Before the fire trucks were gone people made offers for housing, and there were bags of clothes spread out on the hood of my car.
Besides the ‘fire chasing’ news reporters and items, we were on radio to give a plea for help. Jesse did a masterful job with media relations.
Monica came over and took charge of the kids, driving back and forth to other cast houses, bringing them back when the Red Cross got there to give out vouchers (say what you want about the organization, they were there when we needed them) for food and clothing, the County Fire Chief’s Association gave vouchers for purchases at WalMart (ps, both the Red Cross and Walmart vouchers got screwed up but straightened out fairly quickly).
I’d told the kids if they wanted to go to Ace Hardware and get clothes they could in the morning and put it on my tab, well they went at about 4:30 in the morning, one of the firemen standing by at Chatham station called and Frank (who had brought the gator to the fire) went up to open the store and let them get things.
Can’t even mention all the people who helped, from a little boy who brought $100 of his own saved up money to donate, to a long time friend of my family who donated a sizeable check ‘in memory of Ed and Marian Peduzzi’.
The kids are recovering, they’ve gotten so much in clothes, stuff, money, gift cards that the rest of the company is a bit jealous. Won’t make up for favorite things lost, I know, but they are all grateful for knowing the generosity they’ve received.
The house is totaled and we’re waiting for estimates to demolish it, and starting to think about what to do to replace it. Real glad it didn’t get into the attached barn full of props and sets, that would have been a whole different story. Not sure what stopped it but glad it did.
Many things were salvaged, including the other day on a last foray through, Brian’s glasses, ipod, phone and notebook; some electronics even still work.
Many thanks to the Powers That Be for the smoke alarms going off and waking them up. Many thanks to all who have helped.
Never want a night like that one again, if you please.

Odd comments and smoke alarms

2011-08-01T08:14:00.000-07:00

So, a patron came to the office door Saturday night and asked ‘what was the fire that is mentioned in the program?’. I started to explain, got interrupted several times (and that’s just my favorite thing in the world as some know) as I was trying to, and finally it was apparent that she was more interested in how it started than the fact that 11 people got out safely and they weren’t the people she was watching on stage they were the tech crew (I think I told her that about 5 times). Each time I tried to explain to her about the County Cause and Origin Team, who are very well trained in this sort of thing, and the insurance investigator coming to the same conclusion: ‘unknown accidental cause’, she interrupted again with a ‘but they must have some idea’ and ‘what do you mean they don’t know’. My patience was getting more worn as she went on, but the final straw (and I was good, I didn’t tell her what I wanted to, didn’t even – well hardly even – raise my voice, but it did get a bit hard) was when she said ‘well! that seems fishy!’ ‘That was when my voice went hard and I asked her ‘Why do you say it seems fishy?’ Guess what – she didn’t have an answer for that, just mumbled ‘well – because – well – ‘ a few times.
Now, she might have been an arson investigator. Might have won firefighter of the year award wherever she’s from. Might know a whole lot more than I do about fires (and I’ve been to a lot of them, although admittedly I’m not a firefighter, and I went to arson school long ago). But from the way she looked and talked I kinda doubt it. So why would she say something like that? Obviously for whatever reason she’s got an interest in fire, but still, what would lead to such a remark. Is she a citidiot who would of course think that here in the sticks we wouldn’t have people who could find a fire cause – not so, at all, our team is good. Is she just a trouble making busybody – kinda more my thought – or did she go through a fire herself at some time? Won’t ever know. What’s the moral of this story? Not sure, just wanted to mention this odd happening. Well, yeah, I guess there is one – don’t interrupt, you’ll get through the conversation and learn everything it was about a lot faster. And don’t make comments when you don’t know everything – or anything – about the subject matter.
Here’s what I think: I’m just glad all the kids got out. Smoke alarms, Smoke Alarms, SMOKE ALARMS! Was talking to a person yesterday who said ‘oh, ours don’t work right so we took the batteries out’. I told her I have 11 people walking around today who wouldn’t be if they’d done that. She said ‘oh, maybe we better get ours fixed.’ $24.95 for a 6-pack at Home Depot. Is your life worth that?
And to the woman who thinks it’s fishy – glad you were enjoying the show, but: ‘Fishy This!’ ya nitwit!

Father's Day

2011-06-19T06:39:00.001-07:00

No matter how well – or not – you get along with, or got along with your father, stop today and remember him. Embrace the good times, and try to learn from ones that were bad, if only to not do those things yourself.
Most of my times with my father were good, I was fortunate. Oh, of course there was a rebellious ‘I hate my father’ spell when I was a teenager. But it passed, soon enough.
My father had a quick temper (that I unfortunately inherited). He would yell a lot, but strangely when it was something serious he often took it calmly.
As mentioned in another Father’s Day post, he hunted deer with bow and arrow. This hobby led him to purchase the ‘latest and best’ in bows, and at one time his pride and joy was a ‘recurve’ bow. Of course, one day when there were several of us kids around, we had to try to string it and shoot it and of course we were doing it wrong and broke the bow. We spent the day in terror of what he’d do to us when he got home from work, and we met him with the bad news at the front porch – he stopped, looked at his bow (and no doubt thought of the cost of replacing it, definitely an issue in those days) and sighed and merely said ‘well that’s what happens when you don’t know how to do something the right way’ and went on in the house. Maybe he hoped we’d learn from that to stop and do things the right way – and maybe we did learn it, a bit.
Other things I learned from him were a strong work ethic – the cows had to be milked at 6 o’clock – that’s both 6 o’clock’s every day – I told that to some of the partners and dispatchers when I was driving truck, when they’d comment that I almost always got deliveries on time (unless there was a real reason not to). He worked hard his entire life and I don’t doubt that one how or another I will too.
He never stopped finding new things and I hope I never do either. He always wanted to see new places. He loved back roads, and taking a new one to see where it went. His interests were widely varied - from opera to deer hunting – and he could have a conversation about all of them. He had no tolerance for fools.
One night, when I was a very new driver, I was coming home from a friend’s house up the road, and slid on the ice and went into the trees. No major damage except for breaking all the little squares in the grill of the car. I walked home, he came up with I forget which vehicle and pulled the Chevy out, and then at some point found a way to repair all those pieces. And only said, ‘yep, that ice can be tricky’.
My mother used to say, when someone would call or something would happen to bring him to mind, ‘your father is very close’. He was very close when I had the wreck with the truck: I rarely dream about him (although I often do about my mother, another story) but I had several times for a short while. Then, the wreck happened and although it was bad (and scary) enough, it could have been a whole lot worse. I said at the time that something did the right thing for me, but thinking on it, I rather believe it was someone being close enough to make it happen. After the wreck I didn’t dream about him for a long, long time.
His birthday would have been on Tuesday. I’ll try to have some strawberry shortcake this week to remember him by.
Do something to remember your father by.

My Sunday morning sermon

2011-06-12T06:49:00.000-07:00

The Tony Awards are presented tonight – Broadway’s equivalent of the Oscars, the awards every show hopes to win, to insure a place in the record books and hopefully boost ticket sales and create a longer run.
One of the shows nominated for several awards is ‘The Book of Mormon’. It’s billed as a ‘religious satire musical’. It’s written by the creators of the animated series ‘South Park’. I haven’t seen the show, nor have I ever watched the series, which, from what I’ve heard, is very – for want of another term – irreverent, and has language that used to be banned from tv.
Several friends have seen ‘The Book of Mormon’ and have raved about how good the show is. They say the show is very funny, the story line is sweet, the songs and dancing great and overall it’s the best they’ve seen – and they’ve seen (and been in) a lot.
The authors call the show ‘an atheist’s love letter to religion’.
I haven’t seen the show, haven’t listened to the score, and probably won’t. Not that I don’t like comedy, musicals, sweet stories. But one song in the show is titled: "Hasa Diga Eebowai", which translates from the Ugandan in the show to ‘Fuck You, God’. I just can’t rationalize, in any context or translation, a show that has a song with that title in it.
Not that I’m a prude, I admit to being a long way from that and to using the word myself probably way more than should be done. And I’m not overly religious either, although I do have some beliefs that go along religious lines – and some that probably don’t.
But to put a song with that title and theme into a musical show – nope, just can’t understand that. Just can’t understand what it adds to any plot. Just don’t understand the creative process that would come up with something like that.
So, I guess I just won’t be hoping that the show wins any awards. And I hope that someone points out the wrongness of that title, that song. It probably won’t be done, but I can hope.
Because here’s what I think: that whether you believe in God (or any God) or not, to so crudely and blatantly and publicly send the message that title and song do – and you can say all you want that it’s a satire and people know that (which I’m not sure all people will realize)- is just wrong. And it should be noted as wrong, not given an award for it.

Are they EFF*#+ kiddint!?!

2011-06-09T07:32:00.000-07:00

In the 'are they fucking kidding department for today:
A school district in Silsbee, TX, is demanding that a family pay the district's legal fees for a lawsuit brought by the family. The suit was over the issue of their daughter being tossed off the cheerleading squad because she refused to cheer for a basketball team member who had raped her. Yes, he's still on the team, and yes, the school had her removed from the squad because she would not say his name in an individual cheer. A petition is online to voice your opinion, mine is below:
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/tx_cheerleader/?rc=fb_share2

By taking this stand you are condoning and even encouraging rape and all forms of physical and sexual assault. To have this done by anyone is unconscionable, to have it done by persons who are entrusted with the education of our young people goes so far beyond that, there are no words to describe the unfairness and inappropriateness of your decision. A long hard look should be taken at your thinking and attitudes towards victims, women and your reasons for wanting to be involved in the education of the young people of your area. This is just flat-out wrong. Would you want to do it, had the rape happened to you? Would you demand that your daughter cheer for her rapist. Ask yourselves those questions, give an honest answer and then reverse this decision. You do not deserve to be in the positions you are, if you truly believe yourselves to be right. I can only shake my head and hope that you do not represent the thinking of the majority of people in your area, and that your incredibly wrong attitudes are not passed on to others, especially the young people whose care and education have been entrusted to you – a position of trust you so blatantly obviously do not deserve.

Goodbye to a soldier

2011-05-30T06:37:00.000-07:00

Today is Memorial Day. Maybe it’s appropriate that I said goodbye to a soldier over the weekend. He was a WWII veteran, one of the thousands who served his country well and quietly. He came home with several awards: the Asiatic-Pacific Service Medal, World War II Victory Medal, American Defense Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal and the American Service Medal prior to his honorable discharge on Jan. 1, 1946. I don’t remember him ever talking about the war or his medals. He may have reserved that for the American Legion which he was a long and proud member of. I went to a small town in the mountains for the service, where there aren’t too many of his generation, his war left - in fact there might only be one at this point. He was 95 when he died, and besides serving his country, he served his town and his family and friends for the whole 60+ years I’d known him. He was active in his church, the volunteer fire and ambulance departments, a town councilman, and one of the people that others went to for advice on how something to do with the town or a function of it – or something in their life - might be best handled.
He’s one of the thousands that we should thank every day for the life we know – quiet, unassuming, faithful, hard-working men and women who served their country, helped their family, friends, neighbors and just went on about their business. They did what they had to do and moved on to what had to be done next. No fanfare, no expectations, they just did what they saw needed to be done.
Leroy, as the priest said, you’ve ‘changed your residence’. You’ll always be right next door in memory, though. To you and all those like you – Goodbye and Thank You.
_

A funeral in the mountains; ‘changed residence’ and Coming Home

2011-05-30T06:36:00.000-07:00

Had to go to Indian Lake Saturday, for Uncle Leroy’s funeral. He had every right to be having a funeral, having been 95 and active and alert up until fairly recently. He wasn’t really an uncle by family, but his family and my folks were very close and so he became our uncle and his sister our Aunt Margaret. He was the last of their generation in that group, another thing making it a sad passage.
The priest remarked that his predecessor had kept a book of all the parishioners and the events in their lives he tended to, and that when someone died he would write ‘change of residence’. Thinking on it, whatever you do or don’t believe in, that’s a pretty good way to describe the final move. Personally I’d like to think I’m just moving on to another new place, maybe seeing some old friends, and having some new adventures. And, there’s the whole Rainbow Bridge thing.
It was fitting that the funeral was on Memorial Day weekend; Leroy served in the U.S. Army during World War II earning the Asiatic-Pacific Service Medal, World War II Victory Medal, American Defense Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal and the American Service Medal prior to his honorable discharge on Jan. 1, 1946. He was active in the American Legion and they gave him a 21-gun salute at the graveside service.
That I recall he wasn’t one to talk a lot about his military time, even with that impressive list of awards - he preferred to talk about hunting and fishing and family. Leroy, your final resting place is near my parents. I hope you find them in your ‘change of residence’ and that you’re telling stories about hunting and fishing and family together there. Where they lie is a near perfect spot, near enough the Cedar River to hear the water racing by, surrounded by trees, mountain views. There’s two more places in our family plot, I claim one.
Speaking of change of residence, it occurred to me as I was driving up Route 28 that on every trip to Indian Lake, somewhere past the top of the North River hill I get a feeling of coming home. There’s the place where if you look off to the left you can get a glimpse of Snow Mountain – when we were kids we’d vie to be the first one to call that we saw it. Then you get to the top of another hill and can see the village water tower and top of the ski slope. Down the hill on the right is where George and Ida Osgood lived with their daughters, and then the barn where George kept the school bus he drove. Cross the inlet between the lakes, up and down another small hill and past the dam and the boat launch, and then you’re in the village. Even though we don’t have the house there any more, and Margaret’s old house where we spent so much time is gone, it’s still home. And I’m glad I got to go there, and to say goodbye to Leroy, and see long-time friends. For too short a time, I was home again.
.

Happy Birthday, Stephen!

2011-05-16T05:39:00.002-07:00

Today is my grandson’s 23rd birthday – how did that happen? It wasn’t all that long ago he was graduating, eager to try a new life in a new place and gone from our immediate lives. Just a short time before that I was going to football games and track meets to cheer him on. And that was only a little bit of time after teaching him to drive the stick shift pickup his mother got for him – yeah and that he rolled over into a corn field after getting forced off the road by a vehicle that drove away – heard all of that on the scanner and was getting up to get dressed because I was sure from the location who it was, when his mother called to say he was all right – she’d called the guys in the ambulance that responded to make sure. Shortly after that he moved into my house, and for the last couple of years of school it was my job to get him up in the mornings. He wasn’t an eager student, and when he graduated the truant officer told me ‘now I can take your number off my speed dial’. That, btw, carried over from his mother. Gee, it was just a little bit ago that he was twelve and consoling Mom over the breakup with a guy by saying ‘since I’m the man of the house now is it ok if I have one of those beers he left in the refrigerator?’ Not long before that he told me, upon hearing me talk about donating a kidney to a friend, and donating blood after 9/11 “Geez, Meema, you gotta stop doin’ that stuff!” “What stuff, Stephen?” “Well, givin’ away blood, givin’ away body parts – you gotta stop doin’ that!” PS, neither happened. Going to California with me in the truck – he has inherited my love of travel and seeing new places, what’s over the next mountain and around the next bend in the road. Anguish on that trip when his game boy got broken – we had to time the stop for the night so that we were close to a Walmart in Oklahome to get a new one, and then find another Walmart in NY when that one malfunctioned. So much more…. Scares like when he fell from we’re not sure how high up a tree in the yard when he was just past a toddler, and when he drank some medicine and ended up in the ER. And now he’s 23 and 2/3 of the country away. When he’s here there’s never enough time to visit a lot, and it’s not like the too few years when a visit to Meema meant renting 3 movies – one for him, one for me and one for us to watch together. He’ll be here again in July for his mother’s wedding, and there will be a few minutes to catch up, and then I get to get up early to take him to the airport again-how come I get all those early flights? Part of the job. Happy Birthday, Boo – love you lots.

For Dawn

2011-05-16T05:39:00.001-07:00

My grandson’s birthday and the happiness of it also brings some sadness. He was born a year to the day after a dear friend was killed in a car accident. In the way that these things sometimes happen, I feel there’s a reason they share a day. Maybe some of her spirit lives on in him. She would have liked him. She’s no doubt one of several who have watched over him when it was needed, like when he rolled the pickup and fell out of the tree. She’s in many memories. This morning her sister posted in Facebook: “24 years later and I still can not find forgivness for you. I hope karma gets you! I remember and if I find you, You'll remember too.” I share some of that, but I think there’s been at least some karma. Goodbye again, Dawn – we will always miss you.

Mother’s Day 2011

2011-05-08T06:23:00.001-07:00

Looking at past posts, I’ve said most of what I have to say about mothers, my own, and the mother’s my daughters have become. I’m waiting to become a great-grandmother for the 4th time any day now, and that’s a whole different thing for sure. Never thought when I was a granddaughter, or even a mother that would happen, but it has. So I’ll just repeat from the past couple of years: from 2009, about my mother: “She is honored just about every day in my memory, and I repeat what I said at her funeral: ‘Some people say ‘Oh, no, I’m becoming my mother’ – I say ‘I should be so lucky’.” Thanks, Mommy.”
And from 2010: “So, somehow, somewhere, sometime, I did something right. And I have to thank my girls for helping me be a mother to help them become what they did. I’m sorry for everything I did wrong and I’m glad we all got beyond it. And I’m proud that you became the great mothers you are. I love you. Happy Mother’s Day. “
Happy Mother’s Day to us all!

Part 2: celebratingl

2011-05-03T06:08:00.001-07:00

A friend’s Facebook post led me to a blog about the celebrating that followed the news of Osama’s killing. It was a good post with interesting references and reactions, I agreed with some, didn't with some. The writer was likening the celebrations to rioting in Boston after the Red Sox won the World Series some years ago. He cited a story by an NYC reporter who went to the WTC site to find scores of young people, he made it seem like all the people were college students and no doubt a majority were. The writer pointed out that these people were only 10 or 11 years old when the WTC attacks happened, and how much could they really grasp – yes, they were that young when the attacks happened, but they have lived with it ever since, and with the war(s) that have followed 9/11. They do have a grasp on the significance, since some of their family, friends, their generation are fighting those wars. And, being young and college students, most of them will celebrate anything. C’mon – even though you didn’t join the ‘rioting’ with the Red Sox win please don’t tell me you’ve never done a ‘wooo’ or the equivalent about something. Yes, I agree some of the participants were overboard. Yes, perhaps the WTC site should be considered above such actions, but to some, what better place? I would have preferred to go to the side street across from the site, laid my hand on the heart-breakingly touching brass plaque that commemorates the fallen firemen, police and emergency workers and told them that they have, in a way and to some extent, been avenged. Rather than a mob drinking and dancing, I prefer to have the image of the photo of firemen on their ladder truck, one with his arms raised in a victory pose, looking at the NYC building with the scrolling headline “Osama bin Ladin is dead” as my own mark of the event. But if theirs is waving a flag, or raising a beer – that is, after all, what America is about, the freedom to do things like this as we wish. That’s why we eliminated one symbol of a vastly different way of life.

Ding dong, the Witch is dead.........

2011-05-03T05:42:00.001-07:00

“Ding dong, the Witch is dead.” This innocent phrase, originally penned as part of a song for the movie version of a children’s fantasy story, seems to have become a catch phrase for the killing of Osama bin Ladin. Someone actually sang it to me in the gas station yesterday morning. By now, of course, there are stories, replays, photos, in-depth reports, columns, blogs and more world wide about the event. I turned off the news last night as it was showing film footage that panned to a pool of blood, I didn’t even wait to find out if it was his or someone else’s. I’ve seen pools of blood, thanks anyway. There are understandable ranges of emotions in our country: jubilation, relief, pride, and yes, concern. We are entitled to all of them. We have eliminated the symbol of a dark day in our country, our history. We have prevailed over that face of evil. We have won a battle. We have not, unfortunately, won the war, and those who feel we have should reexamine their thoughts. Osama was one man. His followers are many. As one friend put it, and I can’t improve on this: “The thing to appreciate here is not so much the fact that the man is dead, but something or someone as bad or worse will fill in the void of his passing.
His flavor of evil has been discontinued, but that was just him. Like something from Ben and Jerry, a different flavor will fill the shelf space.
Nature abhors a vacuum.” (Ken Walker 5/2/11)
We should not relax our vigilance, indeed we should strengthen it. As long as there are different people on earth, there will be different. My Facebook post yesterday: “While I join all Americans in celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden, I can't help but wonder what his fanatical followers might do now....................”
And in retrospect, celebrating is the wrong word to use here, and the wrong feeling to have. I did not ‘celebrate’. I felt pride that my country had found this one bad man, relief that this one particular threat has been eliminated. I also feel concern because I am convinced that his followers will retaliate and I am worried as to how. I watched the towers fall on television, saw the remains first hand and close up ( http://www.picturesandwordsbybarb.com/WTC.Story.pdf ).
We are now waiting for the other shoe to drop. Hope and pray in whatever manner and to whatever entity you do that it does not happen, but be prepared that it will..

What are they afraid of? Themselves.

2011-04-27T07:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve been following posts on Facebook about a heartbreaking fire out in Ohio. It is labeled as not only arson but also a hate crime. Someone sprayed anti-gay phrases: ‘fags are freaks’ ‘burn in hell fag‘on a barn and set it on fire. There were eight horses in the barn, one a week-old foal, one a mare due to foal any day. When the owner saw the fire he tried to get into the barn to save his horses, his pets, his friends, but could not. They all died. The owner is understandably heartbroken, the neighborhood is in shock, and all are wondering who would do this and why.
One report mentioned that a group called Ohio FAIR was posting a %5000 reward towards finding the arsonist(s). I called them to see if I could donate (no, it’s that company’s reward but the guy I talked to is going to let me know if any other funds are started) and while talking about the fire I said ‘You wonder what people like that are afraid of to make them do something like that?’. He answered ‘themselves’.
Themselves. Because they don’t know how to accept, to deal with someone who is different and so their answer is to strike out, to hurt, to hide behind the dark of night. This, instead of finding out more about why this person is different, finding out that he might be a perfectly normal, acceptable person except for this one difference. This is where cowards and bullies come from, because this is a cowardly act, an ultimate bullying act.
People, individuals, schools, society that condones (and by not stopping it they are condoning) bullying all have encouraged acts such as this. There are many, we heard about this one, there are so many others that we do not hear of. All because one person is different, and others cannot accept that. People’s lives are lost because of this, at other’s hands and sadly at their own.
What are they afraid of? Themselves.
Don’t be afraid. Learn. Accept. You don’t have to like them, you don’t have to agree with them. You just have to accept that some people are not like you and accept that. You go your way, they go theirs. Meanwhile, we can try to teach, to show that their fears are unfounded, to help prevent. If it works just one time, we’ve accomplished something.
PS, I did mention to the guy at FAIR that I’d like about 10 minutes in a small room with the person(s) who did this, just me and my tire stick, to educate them. No, that’s not what I mean by teach, but damn it would feel good.

Easter memories……..

2011-04-24T09:44:00.001-07:00

Waiting for it to be time to go meet Lynne for Easter brunch at Lippera’s, yummy – and thinking of Easter in years past . . . . .
Hunting for Easter candy – my parents would hide candies all through the house – never outdoors that I remember, and never eggs, again that I remember, don’t know why. My sister and I would run from place to place: under sofa cushions, behind books, behind and under knickknacks – sometimes very easy, like next to the banisters on the stairs, sometimes harder, but we would run around like – well, like little kids – until we found all the candy. Then we’d compare who found the most. And of course, eat some.
The aunts would take us to church, and we probably had new spring outfits for that, although I cannot remember details of a single one. (Imagine me not remembering an outfit!)
There would be a family dinner, usually at the Big House, which was where my father and his siblings had grown up and his oldest sister still lived. As with all family dinners, lots of aunts and uncles and cousins – and food - one dinner I still remember was traditional Italian, with a pasta course that was enough for two dinners, then the full ham dinner, then salad, then desserts.
Since my sister’s birthday is in April sometimes they came on the same day and we would celebrate both.
When the kids were small we would go to my parents and they hid eggs for them – one year Stephanie came running in to the kitchen to tell the adults: “Sara just sat on one of Penny’s eggs and it was her most colorfable one!”
I hid candies for Sara, but it’s not as much fun with just one. Then I did for Stephen, up until he was maybe 13 or so – I think the last time was one year my sister and niece came over for dinner, and I hid things outside, since it was a nice day – Stephen and Rachel hunted, more to humor the adults than to find candies for themselves.
My sister did it for a few years for the younger kids, but they’re all pretty past it now, another ritual left behind.
When Stephen was small he would come over and we’d dye eggs together. I did some the other night, because it’s Easter and you have to have colored eggs; gave some to Sara in the basket I took there yesterday and I’ll eventually eat the rest myself, had one for breakfast.
Another day to reflect on the meaning of it, and maybe that’s why I dreamed about both of my parents last night.
Celebrate it however you do.
Happy Easter – renew, revive, reaffirm, rejoice

....love brings you a fairy tale ....

2011-04-23T17:01:00.001-07:00

I went to my daughter’s today to deliver Easter things – a Winnie The Pooh with Tigger prominent gift bag with trinkets, colored eggs, candy for all, and a candle for her. The candle’s kind of a ‘for you’ gift, but Easter seemed as good a time as any to give it. It’s more holder than candle, square with a tea light inset on top, and in nice lettering it says: “Once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life…love brings you a fairy tale.” Reaction: “I LOVE that candle!! I saw it and thought about getting it but never did.. Thank you meema!!!!!! (Love Meema too!)”
She’s getting married in a couple of months. Yes, this is the same daughter who for years shared my philosophy (in fact she coined the phrase) “Men are fine as long as they know what ‘thank you-get out’ means”. Yeah, I’m not big on ‘relationships’ any more. Neither was she, for a long time. It took Geoff a long time to talk her in to getting married. Then he was the one who ‘strayed’. She’s had a couple of guys over the 13 years since he left, but nothing stuck. There was one who several of us thought might eventually become a contender, but before that happened, along came her fairy tale. Every now and then she’d talk about different ones of her neighbors in the trailer park she lived in, a couple across the street with two little girls no more or less than any others. Then she mentioned that the neighbor’s wife left them. Then she was going to the neighbor’s now and then for a beer. Nothing unforeseen in that. Then the neighbor bought a house and she was helping him move. Nothing unforeseen in that either, we’re like that. Then, in the middle of the move, the neighbor turned to his daughters and said ‘Sara’s my girlfriend now’ – to which she said ‘Did ya want to tell Sara about that?’ And then she was moved in, and then came to my house one day and said ‘I figured I better tell you before you hear it on the street somewhere’ and held out her left hand with a diamond on it. Who’d’a thunk?! So they’re getting married July 9. She says he treats her better than any man ever has, and you can’t ask for more than that for your daughter. They seem to need each other. Their fairy tale is giving them a chance to live happily ever after.

A Great Smoking Debate

2011-04-17T07:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my friend Kelly down in NC posted a news item about a sad, sad event in which a trailer with nine thoroughbred horses traveling on I-95 caught fire, none of the horses were saved. The article noted "Troopers said a discarded cigarette from a passing vehicle likely flew into one of the partially open stalls, setting fire to the hay, troopers said."
Well, that set off a storm of responses that led to a great smoking debate, and of course because I don't know to keep my mouth - or keyboard - shut, got into the thick of it. Some of the postings are below, there were some others in between.
Right now I'm trying to find out if she's all right, as she lives in the path of the storms that went through yesterday.

Kelly's first post: how aweful!!! Smokers DO NOT discard your cigarettes out the window when driving down the road! Someone did just that last nite and inadvertantly killed 6 thoroughbred on I95!!!!

Billy: For years I've smoked, and if I want to smoke in my car I will, let the horses fend for themselves. They shouldn't have been driving anyway
Plus people who put out butts in their car are more likely to set the inside of the car on fire then people who toss them out are likely to start a fire period. So would you rather the 1 in a million chance that my cigarette flying out the window will start a fire, or the one in a hundred chance that I light up the inside of my car like a little piece of hell on wheels, and go flying 90mph at other cars?

Kelly: your the smoker so let it be your car that catches fire, and your insurance to pay the additional damages. and I think your #'s are a little backwards, your more apt to start a fire outside your car then in.

Me: I doubt it's a 1 in a million chance, many wild fires are started by tossed cigarettes. Kelly what's the full story on this? Think the key words here are 'put the cigarette out'-the smoker is more apt to actually put it out if discarding in the car, as opposed to just tossing the still lit butt out the window. And why should other people have to deal with your noxious litter? It's yours, keep it yours. I don't drop my toilet paper on your lawn.

Me: That is truly terrible! And to your smoker friend I say, suppose it had fallen into the open window of another car, and killed a family, that would be their fault for driving next to you, I suppose? Smokers are by and large incredibly thoughtless, I have observed, as long as they can indulge themselves they don't care about results - and I realize not all are, but so many that I lump them all together. This is just too sad.

Me: Yeah, there are documented cases of grass/brush/wild fires being tracked back to a cigarette as the point of origin. In this particular case the point of origin is uncertain, although it is probably a better guess that it might have been a... cigarette from a vehicle, than oh, say perhaps the horse playing with a Bic. But yes, there are cases of cigarettes thrown from moving vehicles starting fires in the grass along the road, I have seen it myowndamnself. When the big red trucks with the flashing lights are in front of your house and the guys in the funny coats are putting the wet stuff on the red stuff, I hope you can still say you can throw a cigarette butt into the grass out back with no flaming results.

Billy: lol, prove it, show me a documented case of a cigarette butt being 100% certain the cause of a roadside fire. it's always speculation, and usually proven to be false. you're like one of those people who think it's bad to smoke around gasoline, even though it is impossible to ignite it with a cigarette

Me: Well, Bill, few things in the world are 100% certain, but when investigators find the filter of a cigarette at the point of origin of a fire, it's a high percentage indication that's the cause. As far as what I believe, don't ass-u-me - I do indeed know several things about cigarettes and fires, one of them being that it is not the gasoline that burns, it is the fumes that ignite, and do not actually burn, they explode, causing things in close proximity to burn. I am glad that you have so far not had bad experiences caused by your somewhat daring attitude towards cigarettes and fire origins, and hope that continues, for both your sake and that of others around you who would be affected if at some time your beliefs are proved wrong.

Peter: "Kelly, I have read the story and although very tragic indeed, it does say likely and not that it's positively from some other driver. For all anybody knows, it could be the driver of the the truck himself OR MAYBE even the guy in back FELL ASLEEP with a cigarette. Yes, I still smoke, and can I say i've never flicked one out the window of a car, absolutely not. Can I say that I have not for years and don't now, ABSOLUTELY. I remember that you used to smoke and if you tell me that you've never flicked one out the window of a car, i'd have a very hard time believing that. Sorry, but just how it is. And to your friend that realizes that all smokers are not alike that but STILL lumps them all together I say, I live by the beach now and when i walk on the beach I DO constantly pick up other peoples butts on the beach as they take many years to bio-degrade. Can you say that you clean them up when you see them? I highly doubt it. But then you'll tell me you're not going to clean up after anybody who smokes. Non-smokers put themselves on such a high pedestal I sometimes just find it so hard to believe. you act like just because they smoke, it gives you the right to classify them in any way you wish. Even if you've never smoked in your life, i'm sure there is some kind of dirt that could be dug up on you too. Everybody has some somewhere. It's just that it's easier for you to do because smoking is not something that's hid for no-one to see. I say, just be glad that ember hit your face and not the bedding or you wouldn't be here today to trash people who smoke that you don't even know. Sorry for the rant but some things on here are very hard NOT to respond to."

Me: Geez, Kelly, I bet you didn’t know you were going to start a whole debate! Peter, you are an exception. Sure, there’s ‘dirt’ that can be dug up on me, some of it being that I don’t always pick up other people’s litter such as butts on the beach (ps I hope you wear gloves or cover your hands somehow when you do that). And I for sure don’t belong on a pedestal. However, after a lifetime of being around smokers, some of the thoughtless things I and probably many other non-smokers have been subject to (without getting in to the whole second hand smoke thing, and some before the new laws abolished smoking indoors in so many places) include: moving the ashtray so that the smoke from the cigarette isn’t floating into their face – but it is going right into mine; always having to sit in the smoking section to sit in non-smoking; lighting up when they are done eating whether others are or not; having my clothes, hair, self smelling like used ashtrays, having smoke bother my eyes; now smokers have to do it, standing one step away from the door, so that I have to walk around them to get inside; putting out smoldering butts dropped where they might start a fire; putting out fires in ash trays and butt cans and on the ground caused by smoldering butts ….. and so on. Yes, these are little things that could be called petty, but not to the person constantly putting up with them. Turn around the irritation you might feel about the fact that now you can’t smoke every place you’d like to, maybe. And maybe you never do any of these or other annoying things with your cigarettes/smoking, and yes there are no doubt other smokers who don’t or didn’t do these things, but these are things that some if not most/all of the rest of us have dealt with.
Tossing still lit butts out the car windows, whether done by a passerby or the people in the truck in this instance (although what difference that makes, I’m not sure, the result was sadly the same) does cause fires, which lead to loss of property and more – if it’s a lucky case just some grass and trees lost, but all too often it’s people’s homes, and even lives. Firefighters put their lives on the line every day to extinguish fires caused by careless smoking. You are an exception if you always police your own butts, but the reason smokers get lumped together is the same as any other group taking the heat for the way the majority of them are – the majority of smokers are not the way you are.
Sorry Kelly – and I still think it’s sadder than sad that the horses were lost due to someone’s carelessness and not caring.

Spring

2011-04-02T08:27:00.001-07:00

Today it’s more spring like – more ‘seasonal’ – go figure. Spring always signaled many changes –for one thing, we could start leaving the cows out during the day, although if it was wet we didn’t want them in the pasture because their hooves would slide and pull up the grass by the roots and that was a bad thing. Getting the machinery ready for plowing, planting, and so on. April is too early for planting, but not for planning. Which field to put the corn in this year, should we switch from hay to corn or the other way around? Hoping for good weather to dry the fields, hoping the hay lasted until the cows could go out and graze full time. My mother would start planning her garden and ordering seeds. We’d have our semi-annual ‘trying on party’, which involved getting the new season clothes out and seeing what still fit, or in my case, if I grew into any of my sister’s hand-me-downs – usually that took several years. And sometimes I hoped it would never happen, she wore ‘girlier’ clothes than I did. I was happy with jeans and shirts, there’s a photo somewhere of me with jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a piece of rope for a belt, hugging one of my horses. Teasing warm days and then back to cold again. Waiting to hear the ‘peepers’, that’s the first sure sign of spring. I’ve got a lot of branches to pick up, a few downed trees to spend quality chain saw time with. Bulbs to plant, and the seeds I got the other day. But, it’s spring, and for today, we’ll take that.

April Fool Snow

2011-04-01T06:10:00.001-07:00

April Fool, it’s snowing! Although it appears it will be only a couple of inches instead of the foot that was being predicted before the track of the storm changed, it’s still snowing. Most are saying enough, already, after a snowier winter than we’ve had in a long time. Again I say: this is what winter used to be. When it melted in March I said we will probably have at least one more storm. I remember April and even May snow storms. In the 1970’s, was still living over by my folk’s house, there was one that dumped several inches of heavy wet snow, I remember a big limb broke off one of the maple trees in front of their house, and if memory serves it almost landed on my father’s car. About 10 years ago, I had just moved all my daffodils so that the workers could get the heavy equipment in to make a new septic field, and the next night it snowed about 10 inches, I said the poor daffodils were probably saying ‘what the hey, here?!’ And in 2002 we were rehearsing ‘The Sound of Music’ and it snowed; I was writing an email to Monica who was on tour at the time and said ‘WTF-it’s Snowing – May 18 and it’s SNOWING!’ Someone made little Trapp Family snowmen on the picnic table that hadn’t been moved off the terrace yet. So, April Fool on us, winter isn’t ready to leave us alone yet. The good side, with temps in the 40 and 50’s predicted, it won’t be around long.
The daffodils and crocus are poking up, no blooms yet but they’re coming along, the iris and day lilies are coming up. I got a planting tray and seeds yesterday and may even get enough ambition to plant and then replant some flowers, we’ll see.
Here’s what I think, we can’t fight Mother Nature, so make the best of it. All that snow was good for the ground and good for the water table – with apologies to those who got too much water table and had flooded basements or worse.
Think the real thing Spring!

Valentine’s Day

2011-02-14T05:51:00.001-08:00

The radio station I listen to had a big party Friday night: the ‘I Did, I’d do It Again’ for couples to renew their wedding vows. It was sold out. That’s a great statement for marriage, romance, and so on, but, as I asked one of the personalities who were the hosts, what about the rest of us? “So, if there's a big 'I Did, I'll Do It Again' party to renew the wedding vows, why isn't there a party for those of us who 'Did But Ain't Never Gonna do THAT Again!'? Just wondering.”
Remember in school (well, maybe they don’t do it any more, but we did when I was in grade school in the 1950’s) the valentine parties? Cupcakes with pink frosting and red sprinkles. A box with valentines for everyone in the class, and you had to give to everyone, because it wasn’t ‘nice’ to leave anyone out. Nicer cards for the people you liked, of course. I don’t remember for sure what grade, 2nd or 3rd probably because the parties didn’t go on in much higher grades than that, anyway, yeah, I was the kid who didn’t get any./ None. Zip, nada, not a card. I was upset, and probably cried, although I don’t remember for sure. The teacher and I think one or two kids went looking, and lo and behold, they found a whole stack of cards for me, sitting near where the box had been. I don’t remember if the box was set out for us all to put our cards into, or if we gave the cards to someone to put into it and then it appeared. I just know mine didn’t make it. Never felt the same about Valentine’s Day since.
I mean, it’s a nice thought and all, make your special someone feel even more special, but again, what about those of us who don’t have someone? Give us a day, too!
My Facebook post this morning: “To those saying 'To celebrate Valentines Day, change your profile picture to you and your spouse/significant other. Re-post, and make sure to tell how long you've been together.' - my profile picture already is me and one of my three significant others - we've been together since Camp Katrina, October, 2005.” My profile picture is me holding Streetcar.
Is it lame/sad/whatever that my significant others are three cats? With my record with human ones, I don’t think so, and that’s where we’ll leave that.
Anyway, holiday made up by the card/candy/flower companies or not, to everyone who does have a significant other make sure you do something special for them, with them, and enjoy them as much as you can.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all those I love!

Guns

2011-01-15T06:09:00.000-08:00

A friend posted on facebook: To everyone who is calling for stricter gun laws in light of the tragedy in Tucson, may I offer this little tidbit: If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars drive drunk, and spoons made Oprah fat! Remember: Hold the person accountable for their actions, not the means they chose to utilize!!!

My reply: Not to start a debate, and I'm not against guns, but: in our area a 12 y.o. boy shot his best friend-playing with dad's pistol; in MA the trial just ended for a gun show operator where an 8 y.o. shot himself-with an Uzi. Virginia Tech, how many more? No, the guns don't do it by themselves, but holding the person responsible after the deaths doesn't seem to be helping. Won't bring them back. Why does the average person need an Uzi, anyway? Know I won't be popular, but I do think there needs to be better way to attempt control - what we have now isn't working like it should. Too many people needlessly die at the hands of those who should not have the means to make it happen.

Ambulance and responder accidents and the results

2010-12-30T06:19:00.000-08:00

From several fire and rescue sites I read:
> AMBULANCE DRIVER SENTENCED FOR FATAL CRASH - IOWA
Now, I have a lot of problems with this one. The driver was ‘transporting a critically ill patient’ when he hit the back of a tractor-trailer, a livestock trailer not that it makes a difference. The trucker was preparing to make a left turn and had moved partly into the left lane (not sure why he did that, but not knowing the road or the turn reserve judgment on him for it), apparently saw the rig coming up behind him and moved back to the right (again not sure why). The speeding ambulance hit the back of his trailer. An ambulance technician (presumably in the back) and the patient were killed, the driver and another technician were injured. The driver was sentenced to 10 days in jail for each of two traffic citations from the crash: failure to use caution by the driver of an emergency vehicle; passing too near an intersection; this sentence was suspended and he was put on probation for one year, and fined $200. The attorney for the ambulance company stated that this sentence will ‘have a chilling effect on how ambulance drivers do their jobs’.
Oh, ps, one of the investigating officers said that the driver should have been charged with vehicular homicide, that he was going 90 mph before the crash and only partially applied the brakes as he approached the truck, making his speed about 58 mph when he hit it.
Here’s my problems with this one, folks: first and foremost, 90 mph? Really? I know the roads in Iowa are often flat and straight for miles, but 90 mph, when you see a vehicle ahead of you? YOU NEVER KNOW what a vehicle is going to do when the driver sees the lights coming up behind it. How many of us have had them stop right in front of us? Yup, thought so. Next, not applying brakes to get to a reasonable speed to compensate for what the other driver might do. Never Assume!
My other problems are with the court system. I know, many will think I should be defending the ambulance driver, but, can’t find it in me to do that. Bottom line, he killed two people. The law did not allow him to be charged with a felony, hence the lesser charges. Maybe it will be enough for him to know that he did this, but then again…. Why would he have had to show ‘a higher amount of recklessness’ – isn’t driving 90 mph (and yes, I’ve done it myself on a hot call) and not using caution around another vehicle reckless enough?
The driver and his attorney say the sentence will affect how other drivers do their job – that they will be ‘second guessing themselves’. Well, if it makes them second guess to use more caution, hip, hip, hooray! My take on it is that it may make them think they can be as reckless as they want and they’ll get off with a slap on the wrist if anything happens. Maybe I’m looking from the wrong angle, but I see it potentially making them more careless.
Oh, and of course the families of the fatalities and the surviving two people in the ambulance are all suing the truck driver and company, who are in turn suing the ambulance company and the driver. Who wins? The lawyers, as ever.
Here’s what I think: that the ambulance company, and every one across the country, should hold regular emergency vehicle safety courses, to remind their drivers that getting behind the wheel and putting on the lights and siren do not make they and their crew and patients invincible. C’mon guys, we are the ones who get called to help – riding with us shouldn’t put people at more risk than the problem they called us for does!
In two other states, firefighters are fighting for their lives following accidents which happened while they were responding to alarms. In Pennsylvania, a young husband and wife are both in critical condition. In North Carolina, a 17-year-old went off the road and flipped his truck 5 times, he’s also critical. In both cases, members of their own departments discovered the accidents and then had to work rescue for their fellow volunteers. Without knowing details (not in the stories I saw), I’ll guess that both were caused by the same thing: driving above what the existing conditions called for. I’ve done it, we’ve all done it, raced to quarters or to a scene, adrenaline pumping, thinking ahead of what might need to be done when you get there, you lose track of what’s happening in front of, around and underneath your own vehicle. If you’re lucky, it doesn’t matter, you make it ok and go to work. If you’re not, you end up being part of the problem, instead of contributing to the solution. Not only do you need help, but you take it away from the ones who originally needed it.
> UPDATE: PA. HUSBAND & WIFE FIREFIGHTERS CRITICAL AFTER RESPONDING CRASH
> FIREFIGHTER (Age 17) CRITICAL (IN A COMA) AFTER CRASHING LAST NIGHT WHILE RESPONDING TO A FIRE CALL
Bottom line – remember you’re not helping if you’re being pulled from the twisted wreckage of your responding vehicle. You’re a victim. You’re using manpower that should be working on the original call.
Let’s all be MORE careful out there. And let’s say whatever kind of prayer to whoever you say it to for the well-being of not only these folks, but all of those out there doing these jobs.
> The headlines are from the items on the sites EMS Close Calls and Firefighter Close Calls, if you want to see more on these stories.

Christmas Eve and the bad peanuts

2010-12-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

Last Christmas I wrote a lot of the memories I have from over the years, and mentioned the year that my father got the ‘bad peanuts’, so here’s that story:
My father worked for a fuel oil company, and he was one of, if not the first of their people they sent to ‘burner school’ to learn how to repair furnaces. That was quite an event of itself, and perhaps worth another story.
Anyway, he would always be the one on duty on holidays; I think he volunteered for it, saying that the other guys should be home with their families. We thought nothing of it, it was what he did, never mind that he also had a family to be home with. It wasn’t unusual for him to be home late because he was on a service call, or to have to get up from a meal, or milking the cows, to go restore someone’s heat. Also, he wasn’t the sort to ‘stop for a cold one’ on the way home, although now and then it did happen.
This one year, I don’t remember how old I was, maybe 10 or so, Christmas Eve he was on call, and wasn’t home when it was time to start milking, so my mother and sister and I went out to do it. We expected him to get home at any time. We were almost to the far end of the barn and the last few cows when one of his co-workers came in, and walked up the row to where my mother was, holding a set of keys in his hand and just saying ‘Now it wasn’t Eddie’s fault’ over and over again. My mother of course immediately thought the worst, that he’d been in an accident, but some how it got conveyed that this wasn’t the case.
The case was that they’d stopped at the bar for a Christmas drink. That led to one more, and then one more because of course everyone had to buy a round – or more. Speed’s, I think the name of the place was, not that it matters or that I remember right, on Lower Warren Street in Hudson.
By the time they got done, none of them was in any kind of shape to drive, but the other guys decided that my father was the worst, and had the furthest to drive, so they’d better take him home. Which they did, one driving the service truck, and one driving his car.
Their plan was that the one whose car they brought would take the service calls for that night, but just take his tools in the car, not the truck.
So the friend telling my mother ‘it wasn’t Eddie’s fault’ was saying that it wasn’t his fault he got toasted.
While he was doing this, the other guys were getting my father out of the car, and starting to help him to the house. In the midst of this, one of them noticed something not quite right at the front of the car – that being smoke coming from under the hood. He opened it and there was less right, including flames in the engine! They immediately abandoned my father, and started hollering for water.
I don’t know why I wasn’t still in the barn, but I was in or near the house when several of them came piling in looking for water, and something to carry it to the car in. I grabbed some pots from the cupboard and we started a ‘pot brigade’ to the car - and carrying open pots of water across the snowy path was no small feat for those guys at that point in time, let me tell you! I think that one or more of them were still outside, throwing snow on the fire, and between all the efforts the fire got put out quickly.
My father, meanwhile, had made it to the porch, heard the commotion, turned around and saw the flames (hanging on to the porch post for balance help) and said ‘Well, that’s a hell of a note’ and went on into the house and collapsed on the couch.
The guys got the fire out, piled into the car, with promises that they’d cover the service calls, and left. The next morning the car owner came back to retrieve his tool box, which he’d grabbed out of the car when the fire was going on. Good thing nobody’s furnace broke down that night!
My father said he wasn’t drunk. He’d been eating the peanuts on the bar and some of them must have been bad, that was what made him not feel well. For a long time that was the catch phrase for over-indulging in spirits in our family.
Enjoy your Christmas, and if you’re out celebrating, look out for the bad peanuts.
Merry Christmas.

Streetcar Escapes!

2010-11-18T05:03:00.000-08:00

My Streetcar cat escaped over the weekend, while I was away. Jesse said when he came by to check on the cats that the front door was open-the lock was turned on, but the door itself was open several inches, and the screen was latched. Only thing I can think is that when I left, I forgot something and ran back in to get it, and either the cat dashed out when I left from that, or I just didn’t pull the door all the way shut (which usually I do, pull it shut and check it) and he got it open.
Anyway, I got home, and Prettypurr was at the entryway to greet me but Streetcar wasn’t, so I looked through the house for him, and no black & white cat. Looked again. No Streetcar. Called him. Looked in the rooms that the doors were shut to. No Streetcar. Starting to panic. Check for messages, check email, and there’s one from Jesse, explaining about the open door. Now I am really panicked. Went outside and looked, called him. No Streetcar.
Look through the house and outside one more time, and had a complete and total melt down.
Drove through the trailer park, back to the house, looked around the storage trailer and theatre. No Streetcar.
Went to my meeting, but couldn’t give the attention I should have, because of being worried about him. Got home, put on the outside lights and looked some more, pulled up the skirting and looked under the house, went into the woods, looked in the shed. No Streetcar. Left the outside lights on, in case he was watching, so he’d know that I was home.
Called Sara and had another melt down. She reassured me he could just be hiding, and don’t give up, but I was sure, because of the feeling I’d had all weekend that something bad was happening/going to happen (like going to two funerals in three days wasn’t bad enough). Now what about the book, how could I let him be gone, after what he’s already gone through, and so on.
Well, have to do something, so I made up a poster to put around, and was going out to put some up, opened the door and there he was on the deck, wanting to know why I hadn’t let him in.
I dropped everything and grabbed him “Where were you? Don’t ever do that to me again!” He just purred.
He must have had ‘outdoors’ scent on him, because Prettypurr hissed and hissed at him, and he acted real spooky for a couple of days, but now both are back to their version of normal.
So am I. Mostly.
As Sara said ‘dumb-ass animals, anyway!’ Is it wrong to get that way about a cat? I don’t think so, given what he is, what he represents to me. I’m just a mess about my animals and that’s all there is to it.

Morning Musings:

2010-11-18T04:34:00.001-08:00

Thursday, 11/18/10: The song ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old oak Tree’ is playing on the radio, and it led me to wonder – What did you do that you were sent to prison, and why should she have waited for you while you were there? Another of life's little mysteries......

Noreen Whyte November 2, 2010

2010-11-12T15:03:00.000-08:00

Farewell, my wolf spirit friend
The Greater Spirit has chosen to take you to his side
This is the destiny he knew best for you
We left behind cry for missing you
But deep inside we know that this is now your place to be.

Farewell, my wolf spirit friend
I hope that now you see the places we meant to visit together
And never did - the town of shells, the place with wolves
I wish I had seen you one more time
But I know I want more to remember you
Laughing at a good joke, delighting in a good meal
Sitting by the pond …. teaching the fish to sing
A wonderful day of carousel horses and sightseeing
And ‘Goats have No-o-o- sense of direction’
Maybelline
The Sunday Funnies . . .
And Kira

Farewell, my wolf spirit friend
I will look for you again
In every Wolf Moon
I will hear your howl
See your face
And miss you

Oh, and by the way – the damn game – one move: 2,147,483, 648, for the game: 2,147,483,894.
Thanks.

Election Day 2010

2010-11-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

The day for all Americans to exercise their freedom and go out to vote. This is a ‘mid-term’ election, between the four-year ‘big’ election for president, and so it gets somewhat less attention. Although the big attention this year has been which party will have ‘control’ when the winners are declared. Will it make a difference? We can only wait and see.
Meanwhile, for the past several weeks, even months, we’ve been bombarded with tv ads, mailings, phone calls, signs – and they all seem to have the same theme: “SO AND SO IS A BIG LIAR/JERK/CROOK/BAD GUY WHO WILL ONLY STEAL YOUR MONEY AND MAKE THINGS SO MUCH WORSE THAN THEY ALREADY ARE!!!!! Oh, yeah, you should vote for me.”
I don’t know about anyone else, but I find these disgusting. They all have the same bad things to say about each other, so there’s no way to tell if there is anyone out there who can really do a good job, who really is interested in the welfare of the people they will serve. And what’s in the media doesn’t help a whole lot, because even factual stories tend to get skewed, and of course if a candidate says something offensive the very next breathe he or she says ‘Oh I didn’t really mean that, what I really meant was . . .’
Nobody any more just makes a commercial saying “Here’s what I’d like to do and here’s how I think I can do it.” Somebody did that, I’d vote for them in a heartbeat, just because they were telling me something that wasn’t how dirty the other guy is supposed to be.
As one of my friends put on Facebook ..’voting for the a**holes of my choice because after all that’s all we got to choose from.’ So I will go vote for the people of my choice, or the ones I feel are the least a**holes of what there is to choose from and hope for the best. All we can do.
As Linda used to say, part of the problem is that there are no more statesmen, there are only politicians.
Sigh.

Open letter to all the candidates:

2010-10-08T15:03:00.001-07:00

Can I please have your personal phone number, and that of all the people who make the unsolicited telephone calls for you? I'd like to be able to call you, and them, at any time of the day or evening, no matter what you are doing: working, eating, trying to relax; no matter what your situation is at the time: celebrating a victory, mourning a loss, greeting friends or family not seen in a long time, trying to work out a serious problem with work or personal life, meeting a work deadline - you fill in the blanks. I find it damn annoying and would say that I won't vote for any candidate who disrupts my life for their personal gain, except that you all seem to think it is perfectly all right to do so. I thought there were laws to prevent this - oh, wait, there are, except that the clever politicians gave themselves an out so that they could do it.
Well, I don't like it, and I would like you to stop bothering me! I would especially like you to stop having recordings do your dirty work - if you and your supporters insist on being a pain in the butt to the general public, at least have the courage to do it in person, so that you can reap the consequences of someone like myself who is liable to tell you where to take your phone call campaign. It's intrusive, and having robotic voices do it for you is cowardly. To me, the political integrity of all of the candidates is already in question for the smarmy, unethical, ridiculous campaign tactics of not saying what you will do for us, only what the other candidates have done wrong, and the phone campaign only adds to my disgust with all.
Please be so good as to take my phone number off your lists. Constantly demanding that I interrupt my life to answer your calls is harming rather than helping the odds that I will vote for you.

Add to the list of things I just don’t get

2010-09-27T18:48:00.000-07:00

Why is it that people who otherwise consider themselves so courteous and considerate to everyone around them have no qualms whatsoever about interrupting some people when they are talking?
Now I’m not talking (well, actually usually I am and this happens to me, which is the whole point behind this posting) about a bunch of people in a bar when everyone is talking at once, or some other equally situation where politeness is not the first consideration. I’m talking about in a two or three person conversation, or, like tonight, at a meeting where for all the other speakers it’s been one person’s turn to speak and then another person’s and the rest of us wait until that person is finished before we start.
My boss does it to me constantly. And usually glosses it over by ‘well, you stopped talking’ ‘No, I was in the middle of a word’ ‘No, you stopped’ and usually I give up because I really am trying to pick my battles. Although occasionally I have walked out of the room or just turned around and started doing something else. Oh, and yeah, this has been going on for years.
But now there’s another person from work who has started to do it. I let it pass when it happened a few days ago. Tonight it happened twice, the first time I kind of let it pass, the second I just sat there when she got done with what she had to say, had to say before I finished what I was saying, and when someone else said ‘what were you saying’, I didn’t respond immediately and the person who had interrupted then said ‘oh she’s made because I interrupted her – again’.
You’re flippin’ well right I was mad, and you making a joke of it and making it seem like it’s my fault because I mind your rudeness just makes me madder. And what I was really doing was trying to control myself so as not to be equally rude and say some thing I’d only be chastised for later (business meeting, the boss was there).
But if she’d’a done it again I probably would have got up and gone over and bit her effing nose off. And I might if she keeps doing it. Except that tonight she had a sudden allergy attack and her nose was running and that would have been just too icky.
But what makes otherwise civilized people do things like that? I just don’t get it.
Add that to my list.
Here’s what I think – rude is rude, and if you’ve been rude at least be polite enough to own up and say ‘sorry’, don’t make it the other person’s fault. I hope it comes back and bites them in the ass some time. Is that rude of me?

Tribute

2010-09-12T06:41:00.001-07:00

Read before both performances yesterday:
Ladies and Gentlemen, on this ninth anniversary of the attacks on World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the crash of Flight 93 we ask you to join us in a moment of silence in memory not only of the people lost in those tragedies, but for all those people who are defending our country and also protecting and serving us here at home: the military, the police, the firefighters and the emergency medical workers who are always there for us when we need them, and who sometimes make the supreme sacrifice in doing their duty.

NEVER FORGET 9-11-01

2010-09-11T05:23:00.001-07:00

NEVER FORGET has become a motto of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon nine years ago.
Many things stick in our memory of that day: the brave words ‘Let’s Roll!’ in an airplane over the Pennsylvania countryside, the billows of smoke and ash surging through the narrow New York streets, the hole breaching our ideal of protection at the Pentagon, a mass of people walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to escape the aftermath, disbelief, horror and personal, private memories that will never fade.
We will Never Forget that day and the ones following. But let’s extend that motto to Never Forget those lost in the fighting initiated by the attacks on our country. Let’s Never Forget those lost at Pearl Harbor, D-Day, and for that matter in Hiroshima and Auschwitz; Vietnam, Korea and any and all the other times and places that people have paid the ultimate price in a conflict that someone started in the name of right and righteousness.
Let’s extend that to Never Forget the ones who rushed to help, who lost their lives trying to save others – as they do for you and you and you every time they answer a call for help every day in every part of our country.
Let’s extend that to Never Forget the civilians lost, the ones who are always the innocent victims of conflict, the ones who pay that same ultimate price only because they were there.
Because if enough of us Never Forget, maybe, just maybe, there will be enough of us to remember that maybe there’s another way, a better way, a way that doesn’t end in disbelief and horror.
And meanwhile, let’s Never Forget to honor all of those mentioned here, and do it every day in every way we can.
NEVER FORGET. 9-11-01

For all the rescued animals – and for the ones that could not be saved:

2010-08-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

Where were you when the water was rising
Back 5 years ago
Where were you when the floods rushed in?
Were you in the yard,
In your house
Did you have a home that you never left
Did you find a roof to climb on?
Did you run, did you swim, did you hide
Climb a tree, crawl inside
A room or cupboard
Or scramble high on something
Above the rushing water?
Did you live?
Where were you when the water went down
Were your people gone
Were you all alone?
Where were you in the ruined city
Hungry, alone, afraid
Did someone take pity?
Were you on the streets
Were you chained and bound
On the streets alone
Were you lucky enough to be found?
Where are you now
Are you warm, dry and safe
Did your people find you
Did you find a new home to stay
Many miles away?
Is your new life good
Lots of love, lots of food
Do you miss anyone
From that life long ago?
We’ll never know.
We only know we love you now.

“The pond beckons….”

2010-07-17T07:08:00.001-07:00

My cousin Kelli wrote that of Facebook this morning. It sure is a pond beckons kind of day shaping up, temps in the 90’s and muggy. I sure wish a pond could beckon me and I could answer it, but nope, work won’t let me heed the call.
The pond she refers to is at her father’s place, a wonderful location on a hill just above (literally) the farm where I grew up. It’s useable for swimming, and also works for a short rather circular boat ride and some fishing. It’s also a bit of sadness for me; when they dug the test holes to decide where the pond should be, one of my dogs fell into one and drowned.
But this is about ponds beckoning. Ponds, and creeks. We did have a pond on the farm, but it never amounted to much, it never got deep enough to swim in because very soon after it was made, the dam got a large hole that never did get repaired. It was shallow, we could wade in it, and my father took the guide boat out on it sometimes, guide boats being especially made to work in very shallow water – I was in it with him once and he was trying to see how shallow we could go, and we were in water only a couple of inches deep when he asked me ‘did you ever walk home from a boat ride?’ We didn’t have to, he rowed/poled until deeper water and we rowed back.
Our ‘swimming holes’ were in the creek, and I think that anyone who has never swum in a lazy country creek has lacked something in their life. There were two, ‘Raup’s’ and ‘Wagner’s’, named for the property owners where the lanes went down to the swimming hole. Wagner’s was more popular, because there were rocks to swim to and sit on and jump off of. Raup’s I think might have been a larger area, and deeper.
We’d work in the hayfield or doing other chores, and then either in the late afternoon, or early evening after the cows were milked, we’d all climb into the pick-up (usually there were a few cousins around to join in) and go swimming. Oh, that first jump into the water was so wonderful! Whether you grabbed the rope and swung out and launched yourself into the deep water, or ran in or waded and then let yourself sink down, it was the best feeling ever!
We’d have swimming races, or see who could stay under the longest, or who could dive to the bottom in the deeper places. Or we’d just swim to the rocks and lay on them in the sun – or push each other off, or sit on the bank and dare each other to try different stunts.
Once, after a day of hard rain storms, a neighbor took us down, but the creek was running so high and fast he wouldn’t let us go in. He did, and tried to swim against the current, he was a large, strong man, and he couldn’t go forward; that was a lesson in the power of water. And one night, my father and mother brought my sister and I down after dark and we all went skinny dipping. My sister and I giggled a lot.
A few times we rode the horses down there, and took them into the water. I think that old guy of mine tried to roll over in it once, if I recall correctly, with me on him, of course. And I think that was the same day that I stepped on a broken jar top and cut my foot quite deeply and badly. We tied a bandana around it and I kept on swimming, because why let a little thing like that stop the fun? I still have that scar.
I can still feel the water flowing around me and feel the sun. Swimming pools are fine, but they can’t match the feel of the pond or creek that beckons.

July 4 - Happy Birthday, America

2010-07-04T06:31:00.000-07:00

July 4 – Happy Birthday America. There were fireworks at the end of the ‘FunDay’ on the fairgrounds, we can hardly see them from the back of the theatre any more, the trees have grown up so high, but some went out and watched anyway. They were quite noisy, and during moments in “The Secret Garden” that did not match the booming. The only time that worked was once when we were doing “1776” and the fireworks went off as they were tolling the bell for the men to come up and sign the document.
I hope that all take a moment from their play, cook-outs, swimming, or working (EMS, fire, police, and people like my friend Laurie, who is driving a load from Houston to Wisconsin) and give thought to the real reason for the day. Think about our ancestors, who defied their mother country and declared themselves a free and independent nation. Think about the courage, the daring to do that. But their forefathers had already made a daring giant step, to come here, to strike out blindly to a new land, and a new life. Things could be a lot different for us all if they all had not done that. So also when you think, say “Thanks” to them all for giving us what we have today.
Me, I’m off to work, too. Two shows and then changeover from “The Secret Garden”, which has been one beautiful show in which everything: the voices, the set, the children doing major roles, the leads, the ensemble, the costumes all clicked to create majestic magic. The people who did not come see it have missed a treasure.
But, we celebrate the Fourth. We have Patriotic Night in the coffee house on Friday and Saturday – almost everyone in the company joined in a medley of patriotic songs from “The Star Spangled Banner to God Bless America to Anchors Away to God Bless The USA”. Those same great voices singing those stirring songs was memorable, and as always I got a little snuffly. Everyone sang “The Star Spangled Banner”, on their feet (although not all put their hands over their hearts, I noticed but will not comment on). Makes me proud, makes me happy.
We will also have a cookout, between shows, a nice break.
And, since I have to dig out the grill and take it up to the theatre, I guess I better get to work.
Happy Fourth, everyone – enjoy it, but please take the moment to think and say thanks.

FATHER’S DAY 2010

2010-06-20T06:06:00.000-07:00

Today is Father’s Day, tomorrow would have been my father’s birthday. We usually celebrated them together, along with a little celebration for the end of school, and always had strawberry shortcake. My father has been gone for 30 years and I miss him (and my mother, who has been gone 13 years) every day. This is the progression of life that we must all face and come to terms with.
Somebody posted on facebook this morning ‘Anyone can be a father, it takes some one special to be a Dad’. Breaking that down, we all know that there’s way too much of the ‘anyone can be a father’ stuff going on, with people bringing into this world a new human being that they cannot – or will not – care for correctly, cannot afford the cost of either financially or emotionally, will not take the time and effort to give them care, love, guidance, values. We need fewer fathers and more dads – dads to praise or to correct as necessary, to teach and to set an example, and to be there with their strength.
Some fathers do get to be dads, some will never make it. That’s a loss to their children, but an even greater one to themselves.
My daughter’s father was an off and on dad, maybe mostly off. He tried, off and on, and cared, in his own way. He’s tried to do some reconnecting over the past couple of years, having moved from Florida back to our area, and has reached out some, and I’m glad. Even with all that’s been missed, there’s a chance to have something in the time they have left to do it. Her stepfather had good intentions, but was distracted and didn’t know what to do with a daughter and stepdaughter. My daughter let him know he was forgiven, with a birthday card that said ‘now that I’m a parent I know where you were coming from all those times’ or words to that effect. She’s also managed to let her own father know the same thing, I think.
I think I know where both the fathers were coming from, to some extent, because, like I said last month, I was never all that great a mother.
So, besides being fathers, they both had some times when they were dads. I’m happy for that, and happy that my girls had those times. And I’m happy for all the children, of all ages, who have a dad, even if it’s just for a little bit. Make the most of it.

2010-06-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

The ending of a post on A Day In The Life Of An Ambulance Driver, for the whole thing go to http://ambulancedriverfiles/2010-06/hunnert-percent-murkin/ :
“But these immigrants are not the ones we’re looking for. These people came here because America represented an opportunity. They live here, they work here, they pay taxes here, and they send their kids to college here.
They’re the people Emma Lazarus was talking about in that sonnet enscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty:
…”Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the tempest-tossed, to me,
I lift up my lamp beside the golden door!”
In other words, they’re Americans too, and they enrich this country with their culture and their presence. They represent the values this country was founded upon.
Me, I think I’m going to take my business elsewhere in the future. Maybe even learn to say, “Thanks, partner, have a good ‘un,” in Urdu.
I think it would be the American thing to do.”

Needless to say, he got a bunch of responses, some completely supporting his thoughts, some disagreeing. My response:

Where did your family come here from? Unless we are Native American, we are all immigrants. Some are more generations removed that others; personally I am two generations away on one side and go back to the Mayflower on the other. Our life today takes in parts of all of the cultures that make up our population, the heritage that each brought to this land with them. Don’t know about in rural Louisiana (my experience in that part of the world is limited to a delivery in New Orleans once and helping at an animal shelter after Katrina), but here in upstate NY we have German, Polish, Indian, Italian, Irish and many other ethnic festivals that are attended by people of many heritages. If the Indian and Pakistani people shouldn’t keep their culture, does that mean that Italians shouldn’t eat spaghetti, or Irish not celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? No, I don’t condone illegal immigrants, and hate extremist action by any side of the issue (my squad went to NYC and I saw first hand the sad pile of fire trucks and ambulances pulled from the WTC rubble). No, we may not have the same religious or cultural beliefs as many of them do. But, yes, the majority of them are here for the same reasons our forefathers came – to express and practice their beliefs and to improve their lives. And as long as they do it as our forefathers did (ok, hanging the witches is an exception to this whole thing) – peacefully and within their own community, where’s the harm to us? Education and understanding of differences, acceptance of people for who they are what is needed, not judgment of all by the actions of a few.

Memorial Day

2010-05-31T08:14:00.000-07:00

Once again, Ambulance Driver has beaten my post, hands down - it's a repeat but so worth another look:

http://ambulancedriverfiles.com/2010/05/memorial-day/

I would like to get to meet this man in person someday, he is one kewl dude.

Memorial Day

2010-05-31T07:07:00.001-07:00

Memorial Day – for most the unofficial beginning of summer, a day off from work or school, a cookout, first day at the beach, parades. For some pride, for others grim remembering, for still others sadness and closely held memories. A day set aside to honor those who fought, who are still fighting for freedom, sometimes our country’s own, sometimes others who needed our country’s help. I’m thinking maybe more people consider it the day for grilling and beer, and don’t think enough about the real reason for the day. Those who fought and fell, who still fight and fear for their lives should be thought of every day, not just one a year, yet I’m thinking maybe too many of us don’t think of them enough, don’t thank them enough whether it is silently or to their face now and then. I admit I don’t.
Whether you approve of/support the current fighting or not, whatever you think of the wars and the reasons behind them, the people who put our country into these conflicts, we all need to support the people who are out there, over there in the midst of them. They are doing their job, a job that is voluntary these days, and we can only hope and pray that they do it well enough to come home to their lives and families. So here’s what I think: you should say whatever kind of prayer you use that they do, and next time you see a uniform, say thank you. They deserve it.
I think I’ll go watch the parade, and wave and say thank you, whether they can hear me or not.

ODDS & ENDS

2010-05-25T05:33:00.000-07:00

- One of the firefighter blogs I read regularly had a posting last week of videos taken in a town in Canada. Seems these people spotted smoke, lots of smoke, from a fire across a lake from where they were. They decided to go see what it was. The video showed their drive around the lake, through some city streets and to the street where the fire was raging. All they way, the talk on the video is about how big the fire looks, and how it looks like there are not firefighters there yet. They pass a crew paving a section of road, and comment: ‘There’s a road crew, they don’t care about putting the fire out’. Once near where the house is burning, their car is one of several stopped in the street, watching the fire, blocking access to it. They do move, to go to a street on the other side of the house and there’s a guy taking photos of the fire with his cell phone. Their video is full of comments about ‘where is the #%&*ng fire department’. Not once do you hear them say they are calling it in. Don’t see the guy with the cell phone using it to call the fire in. And there they are, in the way of any emergency equipment. Sadly, the fire went on to destroy four homes. Even sadder, that there are people like this couple, who were more interested in what everyone else wasn’t doing to do anything themselves.
Don’t be like that – fire fighters would rather get a call for something not a fire than not get called and have a bigger fire to deal with. Meanwhile, these gene pool rejects go on, thinking they are just the best because they got on You Tube. Sigh.
- Speaking of fire, the other night at the theatre the lights were flickering. At first I thought it was my eyes, but then a couple of other people noticed it and so I thought I should go check things out. Walking around the building outside, I could hear the transformer out back buzzing from way further away than I should have been able to, and when I got to where I could see it there was a big ball of fire (in reality not fire but electrical sparking/arcing) on something at the top of the pole. I said an ‘Oh #%&&’ of my own, let me tell you! Called the fire guys, called the power company, and then stood out back talking to the firemen until the power crew got there and replaced the bad fuse that was the culprit. Stuff like that scares me, even more so since the fire during the ice storm caused by a power surge, even though this situation might not have caused something like that.
- Who invented oval shaped toilets? I bet there’s not a person in the world with an oval shaped ass, yet the new thing is oval shaped toilets that you just can’t sit on easily and not be draping your drawers across the front of them. Had to have been a man.
- And have you ever noticed on some hand dryers (most of which don’t work worth tiddley-pom, takes 5 minutes to get your hands dry, although there are some that will blow the prints off your fingers) there are instructions to ‘push button, hold hands under vent, rub rapidly’ and then there is a line ‘to dry hair, turn nozzle up’. I don’t know about the rest of you but I have never seen anyone washing their hair in a rest room. Yeah - I'm in Walmart rest room, think I'll wash my hair - ? The very thought makes me go ICK. Maybe that’s just me, though.

Unplanned quick trip to Oregon

2010-05-14T05:55:00.001-07:00

I took a whirlwind trip to Oregon a couple of weeks ago. It was unplanned, and for a sad occasion. Unplanned: me, going across the country a few weeks before the theatre season starts is unheard of, although years ago I would go back in the truck for a few weeks between auditions and opening. The sad occasion was a memorial service for a cousin’s daughter. Had to fly and I’m not big on flying, not necessarily scared but I prefer driving where I can see things and stop when I want to. I haven’t flown in almost 10 years and it’s a whole new deal, with all the security and everything. Not to mention paying $25 to check a bag. Sheesh! On the way out I had to surrender bottles of water, V8 and iced tea I’d stuck in my bag to drink, not thinking about them being liquids that are not allowed. On the way back I had so much stuff crammed in my carry on bag that it had to be inspected; the woman asked about the boxes with baked goodies that I had wrapped against crushing and when I said they were cookies she said ‘I may have to E.A.T. test those’. She also had to take my big camera out of the case and look through the viewfinder – not sure why that was, but I had to show her how to do it. Thanks, all the terrorists and would-be terrorists, for making our lives just that much more complex and bothersome. Part of your purpose is achieved.
It sure is some beautiful country out there. Not that we don’t live in, as people on the road used to tell me when I told them where I was from, ‘a pretty part of the country’. And of course, because it is different, you look at it with newer eyes and see things you might miss in familiar territory. Driving from Eugene up to Sisters the Mackenzie Pass road is still closed with snow, that won’t open until maybe June or July, but the road past the waterfalls is open, as is Route 20, the same Route 20 that goes near here, with piles of snow still on the side from a storm a week or so ago. Some mountains soar above their lower neighbors, still white capped, and I took so many pictures of them that ‘you’d think I never saw snow on a mountain top before’.
Sisters is a bustling little town. The population is about the same as Chatham, but what a difference. They have several blocks of stores, with people in all of them. An eclectic mix, and geared more towards tourists than locals, but tucked among them and on the western edge of town are the more everyday places where residents can get their groceries, hardware and everyday needs. A golf tournament was going on and some of the crowds are part of it, some are no doubt day trippers, some folks stopping because they are on Route 20 going through the center of town and want a break or see something of interest. But a busy place, and I wished I could bring some of it back for the shops on our Main Street.
Mule deer came down to the field on one side of our motel in the morning, acclimated to people they just watched as I came close to take photos. The llamas in the field on the other side crowded the fence for a nibble of the feed the motel supplies for them.
The service was appropriate. Many people stood to talk about Emily, to say what a good friend she was and how they will miss her. I wonder how this equates with a person so unhappy with their life that they have to leave it as she did. We will never know her demons.
Spent time visiting with the cousins, we don’t see each other much, being on opposite sides of the country, and it’s nice to catch up a bit. We talk about getting together more often, and hug a lot, and then my sister and I go home – on different flights because we booked at different times, of course. My ‘red eye’ left SFA late so I missed the connection in DC and had to sit around several hours waiting on the next one.
Nice to be home.

Mother's Day 2010

2010-05-09T06:52:00.000-07:00

A day to honor, celebrate, and remember mothers. I keep saying I was never meant to be a mother: ‘I have the right biological equipment but the wrong mental attitude’. I also say my kids (daughter Sara and step-daughter Stephanie) grew up to be great women, in spite of what I did. Both had some teen-age and beyond moments, but they have turned into women I am proud of and amazed by.
Motherhood: that 8 pound, 20 inch bit of a new person that nothing can prepare you for the first look at, the first time holding her – all of the firsts: first word, step, day of school, overnight away from, illness, accident, boyfriend, driving lesson, heartbreak, disappointment, life lesson, confession – all of the firsts, and the seconds and beyond. The trials, tribulations and triumphs. The joy and despair. The worry and wondering, sentiment and surprises, delights and tragedies. Nothing can prepare for it and nothing can compare with it.
“Mom, does it hurt when you have a baby?” “Yes, it hurts very much for a while.” “But then when you have the baby and hold it and everything you forget about that part, huh?” Pause to marvel at the insight a child can have, “Yes, yes, you do forget all about that part.”
At missing being the flag carrier in a rain-cancelled parade “This is the worst day of my life!”
From a leader during a very brief time in girl scouts: “When things aren’t going right, along comes Sara with her little smile and I feel better….”
“She pee’d on my jacket!!”
“We can’t sit with you (as young teens at a at a Disney movie) – you laugh too much. It’s embarrassing.”
At about age 12: “You better watch out, Mom, I’m bigger than you now.” “Yeah, well, you come on back when you get tougher.” Stephanie: “That’s Barbara, the Mighty Midget.” (that I used as a CB handle and still use for my email address)
“I’m gonna move in with Dickie.” “I’ve been expecting that.” “If it doesn’t work, can I move back home?” “You can always move back home – but I’m gonna say I told you so.” (She did and I did.)
And a whole bunch more.
Both girls, yes, Stephanie, who was afraid of blood, turned to nursing home work. Stephanie got her LPN, now she is part of the administration of a large senior facility. And is a mother to 5 girls herself.
Sara, who got her GED, learned bookkeeping on her own on some jobs, learned computer work on her own on some jobs, joined the rescue squad (that as a teen she professed to hate and never want any part of), and now is the administrator, running the whole thing. She’s got Stephen, who just keeps on giving me reason to say: ‘Grandchildren – a parent’s revenge.”
So, somehow, somewhere, sometime, I did something right. And I have to thank my girls for helping me be a mother to help them become what they did. I’m sorry for everything I did wrong and I’m glad we all got beyond it. And I’m proud that you became the great mothers you are. I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.

Cats and storms and stalking

2010-05-08T06:35:00.000-07:00

Everybody who knows me knows about my cats. Streetcar, found on Desire Street after Hurricane Katrina, Prettypurr, from a cat rescuer in the area, and Snowdrift, from a Freecycle posting.
Streetcar was here first, then Prettypurr, and they have established their relationship and it works. When Snowdrift came along almost two years ago, she upset the regime. She does not like other animals. Therefore, they do not like her. After several months of trying to get them all to fit together, I gave up. Snowdrift lives in my bedroom, she has a large size dog crate that is her ‘safe house’ to go into at night when I open the door and the other two come in.
Prettypurr and Streetcar will go to the crate when she is in it and taunt her, and I can’t get them to stop. Usually they don’t do it for long, but still, they are cat stalkers. I tell them this and they don’t care. They consider it their place, since they were here and she is the one who disrupted their happy home. They don’t care that they did the same thing, Streetcar did it to Mocha and Beauty Queen, who did not think we needed a kitten when I brought him back from Camp Katrina. He didn’t think he needed a companion when Prettypurr came along. So of course they both didn’t think we needed Snowdrift, don’t care about her story (abandoned, separated, reunited and separated again from her kittens), they only know that they didn’t like her and she doesn’t like them.
Last night – actually about 4 a.m. this morning – it started to rain and thunder and lightning. Now, I’ve had dogs who were terrified of thunder, even quiet and far away as this was, but I never noticed it in the cats before. But Snowdrift was pacing in her safe house, meowing and very upset. I got up once and talked to her and petted her and she was better for a few minutes and then started again. I got up again and this time Prettypurr ran out from underneath the bed. Streetcar had been up on the bed with me all along. He’s the one who should have issues with rain and thunderstorms, but he seems to be mostly all right, although he does get a little nervous sometimes during a storm.
So now I’m wondering, was Prettypurr under the bed to hide from the storm, or was she there to harass Snowdrift? There is cardboard around the safe house so they can’t see each other from the bed, but she knows they are there, and they know they can tease her from there.
Was Snowdrift fussing because Prettypurr was under the bed, hiding or harassing, either one? Or was she fussing because she was frightened by the storm? She no doubt was out alone in some, I don’t know how long she was on her own but I guess several weeks, I’m thinking she was probably dumped when her owners discovered she was pregnant, and when found the kittens were a few weeks old. (She was found first, the kittens about a week later, how they managed without her that long we don’t know but luckily they did.)
I’ll have to wait for the next storm to see if any of them do it again, I guess, to try to figure it out. Yeah, like you can figure out why cats do what they do.
Meanwhile, Streetcar is having his morning snuggle in the front of my bathrobe, Prettypurr is probably upstairs (where I have to clear out the cradle so she has her napping spot back) and Snowdrift is shut in the bedroom, but out of her safe house. A normal cat day in my little corner of the world.

For Emily

2010-04-17T20:13:00.000-07:00

An email came across the country from my cousin to my sister, his youngest sister’s only daughter has committed suicide. She calls me - our morning starts with speechless shock.
I talk to my cousin tonight. She says “This is messed up. This is so messed up. Why would some one do this – a daughter, a wife, a mother? We had her yesterday and today she’s gone.” I wish I could tell you, I wish I had answers, magic words to ease your pain.
I wish someone had those magic words to ease hers, so she did not have to take this path, this final journey.
Suicide.
Who is to know the demons that drive a person to this final step, this ultimate, irreversible resolution? Why do they think this is the only thing left for them, the only way they now can go? Many say it is one of the most selfish acts, but I wonder also if it is in some way a form of bravery? I wonder if they feel that the swift, intense pain this will cause is better than the pain they feel they would inflict by staying with us, being as they are – do they do this bravely, thinking to spare those left behind a lasting burden caused by their unhappiness?
Tonight we looked at pictures of a laughing, carefree teenager on a long ago trip to Australia. Tonight we shed our own tears for her loss, for our family’s pain. Tonight and tomorrow and tomorrow those who loved her most continue their lives, wondering why, knowing they will probably never know.
She took a picture many, many years ago, of a hummingbird at the feeder my mother had outside her window and gave it to my mother. It’s on my refrigerator, I looked at it this morning and thought how lovely, how fragile, yet how hardy those tiny birds are. Emily, you were lovely. We grieve that you were too fragile, not hardy enough to fight your demons. We hope you are past them now. Go in peace.

THE GREAT PEEPS CONTROVERSY

2010-04-04T08:15:00.000-07:00

Peeps. Love ‘em or hate em’. Peeps have been taking up a large share of the comments from my Facebook friends this morning. I said that it was permissible for adults to eat peeps for breakfast on Easter, and a friend sent back ‘well, yeah!’. So that’s what I’m doing right now.
Used to be Peeps were just yellow chicks. Now there are lavender, blue, green. And bunnies in all those colors as well. I guess that’s ok, and helps the company sell more of them, but you’re messing with tradition here, folks. Although I have to confess I bought green bunnies yesterday along with the yellow chick.
How to eat Peeps? Do you nibble out the tiny chocolate eyes first? Bite the tail off? Or just go for the whole thing in one bite. Everybody no doubt has their own preferred method. Same with the bunnies – ears first or last?
More important, Peeps fresh out of the box or left out to get a little or a lot hard?
I don’t even care that much for marshmallows (S’Mores aside) but I gotta have my Peeps at Easter. Soft, right out of the box, not hardened.
Now, oh the sacrilege of it all, there are also Christmas Peeps. I, for one, will not indulge. Some things just are not right. I mean, it’s not Easter without Peeps, but Christmas? That’s like having striped peppermint eggs for Easter. Just not right.
I’ve got a friend who admits to being afraid of Peeps. A childhood trauma, no doubt. You know who you are, and I will be thinking of you when I eat the green bunny – ears first.

Spring

2010-04-03T06:14:00.001-07:00

Spring seems to have sprung in our corner of the world. Of course, it’s more likely a ‘faux spring’, a teaser of a few days of glorious weather that will turn chilly and rainy and then ease into the real thing in a few more weeks. But temps in the 70’s in early April – we’ll all take it.
I just hung laundry outside for the first time this year. Yeah, I have a dryer, but I just love the smell, especially sheets, of things that dry in the sunlight.
Remember back before there were dryers? I remember hanging things on the clothesline in winter, and they would freeze solid before they dried. Then you’d try to take them in when the wind was blowing – well, there’s nothing like getting whacked in the head by a pair of frozen jeans, let me tell you. And try to fold them to get them into the wash basket – nope, no way. You’d have to make a stack, and then turn to get through the door.
I also remember hanging diapers (yes, cloth diapers, none of these ‘huggies’ when I was changing the baby) out one very windy day – by the time I got to the far end of the clothesline, the ones I’d hung first were dry!
About 10 years ago, about this time of year, I had to have my whole septic system dug up and redone. That meant moving flower beds that were right where the backhoe would have to be. So I did that, with the daffodils just ready to bloom, again it was quite warm. Then there was a very warm day, so I went over to Lindenwald to take the nature trail hike. That night the weather changed and it snowed about a foot. Those poor little flowers were saying ‘what the hey, here-first we’re moved then we’re snowed on-what’s goin’ on?’ So I won’t be surprised to see another snowstorm. But it won’t stay around long, if it happens.
Meanwhile, I have to start picking up the yard, raking the leaves off the flower beds – and figuring out where to put the garden bed I bought at the Austerlitz Historical Society festival last fall. It was a good idea then. It’s about 6x8’ or so I guess, and makes a bed raised about 10”, which will be nice, but I have to find a space with enough sunlight to put it. There’s the rub, with al the trees around my house. Then get topsoil and put into it, and then plant the garden. Making myself tired to think about it.
That’s for another day, today I have to meet the person bringing back the surrey, and work on show rentals, including the one that I told in January to get me measurements as soon as possible because of all I had going on. She sent them two days ago. Sigh.
Happy Easter, Happy Spring!!

A LITTLE BIT OF THIS, A LITTLE BIT OF THAT . . . .

2010-03-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

A little idle talk of this and that, as Sancho sings in ‘Man of La Mancha’. Sancho, faithful servant as Don Quixote rides forth to tilt at windmills; faithful and caring to the end, as the musical depicts him. Wouldn’t that be nice, to have someone to follow us, to pick up the pieces when the windmill wins. Lynne keeps saying that she needs a slave and Monica and I keep telling her she’s already got us. I’d have a servant clean this disgusting house – after, of course, I got things put where I want them. And got rid of a lot of stuff that doesn’t need to be here. Maybe I’ll get to it someday, but for now, sorry, Sara, that’s still up to you after I’m gone, as of now anyway.
For now – that’s what I’ve been saying about where to put things in the new costume storage space. Yes, I know it means moving boxes twice or maybe even more times, but for now I need them out of the way so I can see where things might end up going. That’s going real well, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, almost without my binoculars.
Speaking of cleaning out, I have managed to weed out some things from the costumes that we don’t need that many of. Furs. Bridal gowns. Fabric. We get donations of things that other people are cleaning out. We use a wedding dress maybe once a season, and then it’s usually something we build to get the designer’s right look, but still get donations or offers several times a year. Furs –same thing, maybe once or twice a season, but people want to give them to us. I pulled a lot out over the past few days, and put them on Freecycle. One response said ‘just a suggestion...................if no one responds you might try contacting the MacHaydn Theater in Chatham to see if they would be interested in any of this stuff for their costume department’. Um, maybe not. . . . . . .
I had a lot of people come to get fabric, again from donations, of things we won’t use. And a desk there won’t be space for at the new storage. I love Freecycle – I’m happy that others will get use out of what we don’t need any more.
Ever notice that when you put a cup of something in the microwave to warm it up, when the turntable stops the handle will always be on the side away from the door?
My friend Noreen is getting better, at last report. I am so glad of that. I don’t know what her husband, Michael, would have done. She still has a ways to go, and still needs heart surgery, but as of a few days ago was doing better. Hopefully she gets to sit by her little backyard pond and watch the fish again this summer. Hopefully I get to go down there and sit with her.
There are not enough radio stations that play good jazz music.
We’re almost done with auditions – the local kid’s one is today, then we will have callbacks for the kid’s roles this summer, and then done, except of course for ones during the season. Almost two months of auditions. Sigh.
It is hard to type when you are holding a cat on one arm.
If you do a lot of shopping on line, check our Mr. Rebates. You get rebates by going through that site to the places you shop. Now if I can just figure out how to go through that to get books for my nook; it probably can be done, but the nook wants you to use it to get to the books you want.
There have been several ads on the radio urging people to fill out and send in their census form. There were three mailings for that, a card saying it was coming, the form itself, and then a mailing saying it had been sent. And they claim these are still cheaper than sending people around to do it in person. I guess. But three? Wouldn’t people catch on when the form came that it had been mailed to them – do they really need to be alerted to the fact that it will be and has been? OK, yeah, some people would.
Think I’ll treat myself to breakfast out today. Since I don’t have a servant to make it.
Ah, shoot, I promised gossip and I don’t have any – let’s see - - - nope, you’ll have to look elsewhere for that. Maybe I’ll get some when I go to breakfast, I’ll pass it on if I do. But I hope I gave enough chat for a while. As Amos says in ‘Chicago’: ‘hope I didn’t take up too much of your time.’

For a friend

2010-03-23T05:26:00.001-07:00

My dear friend Noreen is gravely ill. Each time the phone rings I fear it is her husband, Michael, calling to tell me she is gone. She’s had health problems for many years, and this seems to be the culmination of them all: heart, asthma, I don’t know what-all else.
Noreen and Michael are friends left over from a failed ‘relationship’ of years ago. Noreen and Jerry were cousins; they had not been in touch for years and reconnected during Jerry’s and my time together. When Jerry and I separated, I ‘kept’ Noreen’s friendship for which I will always be grateful and pleased. Jerry gained another lady friend after our split, and those two couples did not get along; this caused a rift between Jerry and Noreen that she and I often discussed; after his death she despaired over it, that they had missed times together.
She’s opinionated, outspoken and fun. She had some hard times, but kept on past them. She loves her animals, and friends, fiercely. She has a special love for wolves, and has an online ‘pack’ of friends that share interests and thinking.
We talk online, and I called her a couple of months ago, maybe more than a couple now. I visited several years ago, travel has been hard for her. We planned to go to a town in southern New Jersey called Shellpile, and to meet at a wolf sanctuary, but those were scrapped by one of her health issues. I keep saying I’d try to get down (Jersey Shore) to see them again, but as we all know how those things go, hadn’t made it. Or called again.
Now I hope I get another chance to.
Here’s what I think: that we should make the call, make the trip, when we can. Don’t put it off, because the chance might be taken away. Tell people now, when they can hear you. Because feeling like ‘I should have’ when it’s too late sucks.

Fly, fly, wolf-spirit friend
Through the forest
Over the fields
Stop, stop and stare
At what is ahead
Do you race on alone
Or stay with your pack
For more time
Only a greater spirit than ours knows
We pray he lets us have you longer
And hope to understand if he does not
Fly, fly, wolf-spirit friend
To the destiny best for you

The Crandall Theatre

2010-03-09T05:16:00.001-08:00

Speaking of movies, in our little village there’s been a movie tragedy. Not a tragedy movie. The Crandall Theatre is closed. The Crandall started life as a vaudeville house, back in those days. When vaudeville lagged, it converted to a movie theatre. I’ve been going there since I was a little kid. I remember seeing “War of the Worlds’ there, my grandmother took us, and in my memory, on the way home there was a full moon and we looked out the windows to see if we could spot any alien space ships. I remember going there on dates in high school, and after the movie going to the Boston Candy Kitchen for ice cream. I took the kids there – we went to a Disney movie and I was laughing so much they were embarrassed and went to sit somewhere else, not with me.
The tragedy is a true one, the owner, Tony Quirino, unexpectedly passed away in January. The theatre is closed while the family recovers.
As one merchant put it ‘We look like a ghost town at night now’ – there were always cars parked on Main Street, every night of the week, while people went to the Crandall.
Tony had been in negotiation to sell the theatre. The Chatham Film Club, an active group that the Crandall helped by giving space for an annual film festival and an ‘art’ film every month, had been trying to raise the money needed to buy it. I heard last night that they are still trying and might be able to close the deal. I hope so, as they have pledged to keep the Crandall – ‘the Crandall’. I hope it happens.
I’m not anti-movie, despite being anti-excess for some things connected with movies. I like movies, I just don’t go often, especially now with the Crandall closed. It’s handy, 2 minutes away, as opposed to half an hour for other theatres. And, the best part, it was only $5.00 for admission and $1.50 for popcorn – not the $10.00 and $5.00 the big chains rip you off for. So I am hoping that the film club can complete their deal, and keep the Crandall in Chatham. It’s a needed part of the community.
Anybody around here reads this, give a donation! Please.

The Oscar's and Excess

2010-03-09T05:15:00.001-08:00

I didn’t watch the Oscars. I admit it. It may be un-American, but there it is. I know, especially since I’m in the ‘entertainment business’, I should. But, there’s just too much hype and folderol with them, and too much talk for too little action. Plus, I haven’t seen and probably won’t see most of the movies; or know most of the people nominated. Just doesn’t make any difference to me.
I understand it was a pretty good show this year, according to the people who did watch. That the thanks given by the winners was limited – that’s another reason I don’t watch, I mean, it’s nice that they want to thank everyone from Mom and Dad to their hairdresser’s neighbor’s cat groomer, but that doesn’t interest me a bit. I understand that one winner thanked the men and women in the armed forces and I think that’s great. Otherwise, blah-de-blah, de-blah, de-blah. Should have thanked those people in person when they did the job for you.
And this year, maybe subconsciously it was my own private protest. Look at the Oscars. First there’s the movies themselves, costing how many millions of dollars to make. The stars making how many millions of dollars. The ‘goody bags’, the gowns, the speakers and presenters, the security, the press – the excess of it all. It’s a show that many enjoy, but it’s all about excess. The winners sell more tickets so the movies can make more money, that goes where? Now that’s a good question-gotta go into somebody’s pockets and I wonder whose-no doubt someone who already has quite enough there. All about excess.
Meanwhile, all over the country, live theatres are closing because they don’t have enough money to keep running. Not to say that the Tony Awards aren’t their own little exercise in excess, but not to the extent of the Oscars. But those theatres provided entertainment to thousands of people too, enriched the lives of thousands, provided employment, enhanced the quality of life in their area, contributed to the overall economy. They don’t deserve to close. How about sending some of that excess their way, our way?
Yeah, right, like that’s gonna happen. There’ll be another Oscars extravaganza next year and the year after and so on. And more theatres will close.
Here’s what I think – the Oscar for helping cause that goes to, in part to – the award excess. Is there a way to even the playing field? Nope, not that I can see happening. Sad, but true.

Whose Rights Are Right?

2010-02-26T07:02:00.001-08:00

Last night I went to the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting. A performance space on the other side of the village had applied to continue the variance granted 5 years ago for them to put up a tent to have shows in, while they raised funds to put up the building they hope to have. This summer will be the last of the 5 years, and they wanted to continue the variance as they are not even close to getting the building built. Yup, we know how that goes, we’ve been talking about a new building for about 40 years that I remember.
I put on my Chatham Business Alliance hat and went to read a letter of support for the place, PS21. Yeah, individually they might be considered competition, but they do different kinds of things than we do, and it’s a fact that arts bring arts audiences to an area, so we get some run-off from them.
What a process the whole hearing was, and this was part 2, there was another last month. Some of the neighbors didn’t want the variance continued, because they hear noise from the tent when performances are going on. A decibel level was set when the first variance was granted and numerous tests have been done to show that the noise is below that, but these people can still hear it. Which brought up the question “What is considered objectionable?” The town lawyer said they had to go with the dictionary definition: ob•jec•tion•a•ble: –adjective 1. causing or tending to cause an objection, disapproval, or protest. 2. offending good taste, manners, etiquette, propriety, etc.; offensive: objectionable behavior.
Without going into details on who said what at the meeting, this brought up the old: ‘beauty in the eye – or ear in this case – of the beholder’. ‘one man’s pleasure ---‘ and so on debates.
Which makes me wonder, again, where do one person’s rights begin and another’s end? Does the Zoning Board deny the variance, and close down PS21 after this summer because of two people (well, three, one was a couple) objecting? They claimed there were many more but those others were ‘afraid to come and say anything because they might have a request of the board at some point and it would be used against them’. There were many more there in support, and the owner claims an audience of thousands over a season. So if the space is closed, what happens to their rights?
The objectors said they wouldn’t mind the noise from the 20 houses that could be built on the acreage that PS21 occupies. It’s zoned residential/rural. I wonder what they’d say to a tractor running from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., if it was turned into some type of farm?
Noise is a fact of life, unless you’re camping at The Goosenecks on the San Juan River in Utah. I can hear people in the trailer park next to me, the loudspeaker and cheers from the football field at the school, and in Chatham of course there are always the trains. But these neighbors didn’t mind any of that sort of thing, what they mind is the music from The Tent.
Seems to me, as I said in the letter I read, that all should try working together to find a solution. There could be one. There should be ways to baffle more of the noise, I would think, and I think it is PS21’s responsibility to look into this.
The wife of the couple objecting asked what the Zoning Board was going to do for HER, because in effect her life is ruined by this noise. A reasonable question. Is there a way to mollify, to throw a bone to the losers in this case? Where do their rights start and PS21’s stop?
And this whole discussion could continue into so many other things that there’s not space to list – and I got work to do. But think about it. Where do your rights end and someone else’s begin? And who decides?
Asides: When we went to the town board (different town) for the variance to operate our theatre, the owner of the trailer park next door said he didn’t think we should be there because, among other things, our audience might come down into the park and steal people’s lawn furniture.
The Board voted to allow the variance, with one nay vote. I want to know why there are no women on the Board.

The Naming Of Cars Is A Curious Thing

2010-02-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

As well as the naming of cats (with apologies to T.S. Eliot and Andrew Lloyd Webber), but that’s another story.
Car’s names. Who names a car, anyway? Lots of us do.
This is brought to mind after reading one of the blogs I follow, wherein the writer was mourning the loss of his pickup truck, Frankenhoopety. He has a 7 y.o. daughter so you can pretty well guess where the name came from. Missed a curve in the rain. That’ll do it.
The first named car I remember – in fact the first csr I remember, was a Model A Ford that got named Singy. I cannot help but boast that I named it - I was maybe 3 or 4 when we got the car, and were all in it for the first family drive. In those days it was customary to warm the car up before moving off, and while this was happening I asked what the nose of the motor was. ‘The car is singing to us’ my father said, and I said ‘then it’s name should be Singy’. And so it was. Singy was around for quite a while. I think it was Singy that suffered the results of my terrible carsickness all the way to Wilkes Barre, PA, when we drove there for my uncle’s wedding. Suffice to say it had to be washed before my parents would drive it to the church. We may have still had it when we moved to the farm, and then had to get a truck to bring in hay and take milk to the dairy in Hudson. One day my mother had Singy loaded with aunts and cousins, going somewhere; we got about a quarter mile down the road and suddenly smoke started pouring out of the space where the shifting lever came up through the floor (ah, yes, my younger friends, in those days all cars were standard shift and Singy predated shifters on the steering column). My mother stopped and we all piled out; my mother ran back towards the house shouting ‘Honey, the cars on fire!’ my sister and I were as close behind as we could be, crying ‘Daddy , Singy’s on fire’, and the aunts and cousins were either circling the car or somewhere in between, all yelling ‘Ed the car’s on fire’. It didn’t spread and was put out with little damage. I can’t remember if we continued our trip, but I suppose we did.
I don’t remember any other cars being named for many years after that, although I remember several of the cars. And trucks. But those are other stories.
I got back into naming cars through Linda and Lynne. They had a cute little Dodge they named Samantha – nope, don’t know where that came from and neither did they but they said it just seemed like a Samanatha. After they got a newer car they stopped naming them, because if the car had a name, they couldn’t get rid of it. They sold Samanatha to my ex, just to ‘keep it in the family.
We named the theatre cars for a while, the theory being that the un-car-savvy people could identify a named thing better than ‘the green Pontiac’. Each name was carefully chosen, debated and re-debated, sometimes hotly, before one was settled on. Most of these escape me, except for Miss Mona. Miss Mona was a full size, back when they made them FULL size Ford station wagon. She was give to us by Dee’s ex (what is it about the ex’s and cars?). There were a lot of miles on her but the motor had been run on lp gas, not gasoline, so it was clean as a whistle. So, she was ours, free, and all we had to do was drive it up from Georgia. Guess who got elected to do that. Linda took me to the airport on Tuesday morning, and I said ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’. ‘Oh, no, you won’t be back until Thursday or Friday’. ‘No I’ll see you tomorrow for the matinee. Maybe not the start but before it’s over,’ At that time, I’d been doing the coat sales and been to Georgia a few times so had a good idea about how long it would take me to drive back from Savannah. After dillying around a good share of the day with waiting for something to be done to the car, and getting paperwork done, I left Savannah about 5. Got to north of DC and stopped to sleep for a few hours, and came on home. Got to Chatham about 3 or so, it was intermission of the matinee. I went in to the office and said ‘the new car has a name, and there is no debate about it. Her name is Miss Mona (after the Madam in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas).’ Linda said ‘Miss Mona? Why? ‘Because she might be a tired ol’ ‘ho, but if you talk to her right she’ll go all night and all day for you’.
Miss Mona was around for many years, and starred in many theatre stories. When we finally had to give her up, we sold her to a guy to put into the demo derby at the fair – but we insisted that he paint Miss Mona, in pink, on her.
I think I started naming cars with The Arab’s Delight – a v-8 Chevy that would pass anything on the road but a gas station. I think that’s the car I ended up with when David and I split up, he got the red convertible to use in parades. I drove the Delight for several years, took it on the road to some of the coat sales, and finally gave it to Sara, I think that was when I bought the grey Citation, which I named Silver, and I think the second grey Citation was Silver Jr. Then the blue wagon was Colonel (after the blue roan horse I had), can't recall what the white station wagon was. Now the Vue is named Big Girl – from the guy at a delivery in Michigan who asked did I drive that great big truck all the way from Massachusetts and when I said ‘well, somebody had to’, he said ‘My - you a Big Girl’.
Is it weird to name a car? Is it weird to love a car? And be sad when you miss a curve and hit a tree? Or just have to finally admit that it’s useful days are done? Define weird – those of us who do it don’t think so.
PS, AD, I’m waiting for the photos of Frankenhoopety II.

ADD TO THE LIST OF THINGS I JUST DON’T GET….

2010-02-04T06:45:00.001-08:00

Why people who have had your email address for years, now that you are ‘Friends’ on Facebook can’t just email, they have to open Facebook, find your Wall, post a message on it and send it to you that way. Then when you open your email you see that you have a message from them but instead of just answering like you used to do when they used email, you have to go to Facebook to answer it – and then they in turn have to open their Facebook to respond to you.
??
And while we’re at it – and don’t get me wrong, Facebook is fun and even useful as we found when trying to locate a person and an address last year – but what’s with all the games and putting things on your status and all that?
Not to be rude, but I got too much to do to get involved in all that. Plus, if I started any of those games I know I’d get hooked and spend more time on those than doing what I don’t get done already.
Ah, modern technology – it’s a wonderful thing – more and more ways to spend more and more time doing – sometimes, who knows what?
Gotta go write on somebody’s wall…………………..

Winters back when . . . .

2010-01-23T06:07:00.000-08:00

Well, here’s another one I started and never finished, this was from last winter on a real cold day. Today’s not so cold, but seasonal, and some snow on the ground.
Everybody has been whining about winter and the weather. I keep saying it’s just that we have had a few easy winters and this is more like what it used to be.
Some winters I remember:
here would be one ‘big’ storm, at least, every year, where there’d be 1 ½ to 2 feet of snow, instead of the under 1 foot from the usual storms. After one of these, I guess I was about 14, so it would have been about 1957 or so, we had a storm that snowed and blew so much that the road coming up to our farm, which had high banks on each side, was completely blocked in about 4 to 5 feet deep. My father was away and the neighbor was helping us with milking the cows, we loaded the cans of milk to go to the diary in Hudson, and the car could not even get out of the driveway - and carrying the cans back to the milk house we managed to drop one and spill it - my father kept asking why the dogs were always licking the snow in that one spot but we just said 'I dunno!"
Many times the temperature going well below 0 – 10 or more below. We always had to keep the water running in the house and barn so the pipes did not freeze. I still have to do that!
Again when I was in high school, one winter the ice was thick enough to skate on by a little bit before Thanksgiving, and we were able to skate right up until sometime in March. And when I lived in Utica while going to college, it snowed every day from Thanksgiving to Easter, not a lot some days, but every single day there was at least a little fluffy of snow.
One year we had so much snow that my father could not get the tractor and manure spreader into the fields, so he just kept spreading it on my mother’s garden – boy did we have some vegetables that summer!
Having a couple of feet of snow on the ground used to be the norm, and we thought nothing of it. I have a photo of Sara as a toddler, in a bright print jacket, climbing over a huge snowbank in front of the trailer we lived in then, over in back of my folk’s house on our old farm.
Our farm was on top of a big hill, with more hills behind the house and barns, so we had plenty of places to go sledding. We could use the road, and with the packed snow on it you could really fly – there was a longer hill and a little flat space and a shorter hill and the goal was to be going fast enough to get down them both. It was a longer walk back up but what a ride! At night it was so neat – there was very little traffic and the neighbors would know that we might be sledding so we’d be watching out for each other. Once there was a crust on the snow, and I went sliding on top of it in the neighbor’s field on the other side of the road. Sliding until the runners broke through the crust, and the sled stopped but I didn’t and my face hit that crust – ye-ouch!
I’m sure I’ll remember more as soon as I post this, but that’s a few. Does this count for the ‘memory a day’ that I started last year and of course fell short of. Let’s call it that.

Random thoughts from a drive across the country:

2010-01-17T06:53:00.000-08:00

* No matter how warm the sun is coming in the windows on the right side of the car, when it is minus 1 degree your breath will still frost over the window on the left side. PS, making it impossible to see the rear view mirror on that side, so you have to hold your hand on the cold frost to melt it, and then put that hand under your leg to warm it back up.
* There is no place to pee in Hardin, Montana after midnight unless you want to go in to a casino. And when the rest area is closed for winter or repair or whatever, that means no place until Billings, which is 54 miles away.
* There are more casinos per square mile, I think, in Montana than in Nevada. Don’t know what the difference is, nor why Nevada gets all the talk about them and Montana doesn’t. They are just small ones, though, not the huge hotels with all the extra stuff.
* The Exxon station in Kaycee may be all lit up at night, but it won’t give you gas, even when you use your credit card in every direction and kick the pumps besides. The Sinclair station on the other side of the interstate will give you gas, but has what is possibly the world’s worst pre-made pizza.
* If you want to buy a bridge, there’s one for sale alongside the interstate somewhere in the middle of Montana.
* In Montana they call the cars that skid and go off the road ‘spin-offs’. There were very few spin-offs in Montana, despite a couple hundred miles of icy roads. In Iowa and Nebraska, there were spin-offs every few hundred yards. I don’t know what the difference is, but on both the way out and back, the carnage was incredible. Do they drive differently in Montana?
* All the left over hippies who did not go to Eugene, Oregon went to Missoula, Montana.
* There are an awful lot of drivers who do not think ahead, and a lot of the time don’t know what they are doing on the road.
* Even though you have a legal right to do so, if you are driving 10 to 20 miles under the speed limit, you really should pull over to let traffic behind you past.
* Everyone should drive across our country at least once, to see the grandeur of it, and to have an appreciation of what the pioneers went through. Just think about walking that distance, through heat, rain, snow, cold, losing friends and family to the perils of the trip, not knowing what you will encounter next, not knowing what is waiting at the end of your trip – and then think twice before you complain about a little traffic tie-up, or because the towel in the motel is too small.
* Come to think of it, where did they pee?
* Our National Parks (and forests, heritage sites and so on) are truly a Great Idea and we should thank those who established them for their foresight and vision. Visit as many as you can, and support their efforts.
* A store that will take your word that the left boot of the pair you bought a week ago in one of their other outlets has a defective zipper that won’t stay up, and just gives you another pair even though you’ve been wearing the first pair, is a good place to shop. Cabela’s.
* New snow on a sunny day, sunset over the mountains, sunrise through clouds, rock formations, trees and a creek – there are some things it is hard to not take a pretty picture of.
* Finding a nice motel is a bonus.
* There are a lot of places that are too built-up.
* There are also a lot of places where there are miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.
* No matter how good a trip is, it’s nice to be home, and so nice to pee in your own bathroom.

Love someone enough - take the keys away

2009-12-31T08:56:00.001-08:00

I got to Missoula on Tuesday. The newspaper still had front page headlines about a tragic accident on Saturday. An (allegedly) drunk driver went off the road, running over four teenage girls walking well away from the pavement. Two were killed. Two were injured and even if those are minor, they are scarred for life.
Many questions to be answered of course; one of mine was 'why were they walkng along the highway, at 11:45 at night, 14 and 15 year olds?' My Missoula connection, Stephen's girlfriend Chelsey, said it is a common practice, to get from school or social functions in town to what is known as East Missoula, just the other side of the river/interstate.
One article reported that the man said he was on his cell phone, and that he felt the rumble strips that warn a motorist who is drifting off the roadway - there are no rumble strips on that stretch of highway, btw. The article also said that he stayed, he even helped one girl into his truck while waiting for help (if it said who called, I don't remembber). Of course we in EMS know that he probably should not have moved the girl, without knowing what her injuries were, but that's another story.
Today there is a girl's basketball game, with their team playing without four of their usual nine players. Two will never play again. A memorial service is planned for after it, for them.
We've had our share of these tragedies in Chatham, three since 2001 with the New Year's Eve crash about 2 minutes into the year that killed one star athelete and left another in a wheelchair for life. All 4 in the car had been drinking at a party hosted by people who as yet have not been publically revealed. The driver was waiting for his trial for a previous dwi. This accident led to the passage of 'Sean's Law' in NYS, which takes their driving license away from people in that situation. Hopefully it will save lives.
Another crash, just a few weeks before Christmas a few years later, left a football player dead. He and the driver had been at a party. The next day a car was at the gas station by the traffic light, with messages to him painted on it - one said 'We love you Scooby'.
When Stephen and I were talkng about this the other night I said that all I could think was that nobody loved him enough to take the keys away from the driver.
Sadly, it all too frequently is not the drunken driver who is the one injured or killed. It is a passenger or as in the case here in Missoula, completely innocent persons who all to often are the victims.
So, let's all do it. Let's love someone enough to take the keys away.
Make someone's New Year happier.

Christmas 2009

2009-12-24T17:44:00.001-08:00

Like I said, no way I can top Claude’s true story, but some Christmas memories are:
Going downstairs very early one Christmas morning, to go potty, and seeing a Howdy Doody doll on the tree. It had to be mine, and I knew I had to leave it there, and I don’t remember if I successfully was surprised enough at it or not.
My mother always made clothes for us for Christmas presents, and she seemed to always be up so very late on Christmas Eve finishing everything – after we grew up and weren’t there any more, she used to want to just sit and relax on Christmas Eve, she said that was making up for all the years she didn’t get to.
We always had one present to open on Christmas Eve, usually it was something to wear to Midnight Mass, that the good Catholic aunts came to get us to go to. How magical that was, to be up that late, and to have the ritual of the full mass.
We would open our stocking presents and then go have breakfast before we opened the rest. My parents would milk the cows and so nothing could get opened until they were done and in the house. When we got older sometimes we would get up with my father and do the milking, and I remember one year he got me up, and we milked and then on the way to the house he stopped at his service truck and said ‘we have to bring this inside’. It was a stereo for my mother for her present and I was so thrilled when he said he got me up because he wanted me to be the one to help carry it inside. Of course I was being a brat about having to get up before he said that. That stereo, btw, is still up in the Indian Lake house and the last I knew at least parts of it were working fine. I know I listened to the radio part of it often up there.
My mother would write a poem for us every year. She told us that on Christmas Eve at midnight, the animals were able to talk, and she would go to the barn and write down what they had to say. She got every animal into that poem, and they always had something to say about what they had done that year, especially of course the ones who went to the fair, and especially if they won prizes. I don’t know how she did it but those were treasures that I wish someone had the sense to keep. I tried once or twice, but it wasn’t the same with just a couple of cats.
The family would get together at the old family home, even after my grandparents were gone (they both died when I was fairly young). The kids had to eat at a card table, there were so many of us, and sometimes it even was put in another room – but somehow the aunts always knew when we were not minding our manners.
One of my favorite presents was a Roy Rogers western town, with tin buildings, corral pieces, animals and of course Roy and Dale. I kept that all through high school, and had a shelf in my room that I used to make different arrangements of it on; I had Lincoln Logs too, and made buildings, and added other pieces through the years. My mother finally sold it in her antique shop, but she later found the Dale Evans figure from it and gave to Stephen, but he said I should keep it because he would loose it, so it is on my bookshelf now.
When my sister and her then husband were living at the farm in Connecticut, one year we were supposed to go down there on Christmas Day but it started snowing real bad and so we started a ‘convoy’, Sara’s father and she and I in our car and my parents in the Saab they had then, I think we got there at something like 2 in the morning. Jeanie and Dick were still up putting toys together. Can’t remember if it was the same year, but one year they got Penny a pony and I remember walking out to the barn with her and how big her eyes got when she saw it.
I don’t remember doing the late night put toys together thing, but maybe I just never got Sara anything that needed it.
I love Christmas, the lights, the preparations – I love thinking of things to give and then seeing if people really like them. This year I tried to be practical –my sister and I decided we both have enough crap and don’t need more, so we are doing donations. And I did one for the family to the Land Conservancy, ‘From the Peduzzi family, in memory of Grampy and Grammy’ – they’d like that, they’d have liked the idea of land being kept for farming or wild for people to enjoy.
Like Christmas music, too, but I don’t especially like that stations start playing only that before Thanksgiving, it gets old before it’s time.
I’m listening to ‘Melodies of Christmas’ now, an area tv station produces it, with the Albany Symphony and with a chorus selected from schools throughout the area, it’s an honor to be chosen for it. The music is beautiful, always something different. They give the proceeds to the children’s hospital. Really should go to it in person some year.
This Christmas I didn’t decorate a whole lot, because I am going out to see Stephen the day after, and tonight I am packing in between listening to the music. Tomorrow Sara will come down and we will open our things, then she will go off to some friends and I will go over to my step-daughter’s and then to my niece’s – and then home to finish packing so I can leave as early as possible on Saturday – depending on the weather, of course, they are predicting rain/ice/sleet/who knows what.
Then there was the time that my father got the ‘bad peanuts’ when he and some other guys from work stopped on the way home on a Christmas Eve, but maybe that should be another story. As should the newspaper Christmas party my sister and I were both at.
Merry Christmas to all!

A Christmas Story - no way I can top this. . . .

2009-12-24T17:13:00.000-08:00

This story was sent to me by my dear e-friend Claude. We have never met in person, and happened to meet on line through a series of unfortunate - and fortunate events, which proves that out of sadness can come happiness. It is a true story, and even without meeting Claude in person, I can see him doing this - it is a sweet, wonderful story about the true spirit of Christmas. His comments are included. Enjoy . . .

THANK YOU BARBARA, IT PUT TEARS IN MY EYES WITH MEMORIES OF A CHRISTMAS I
HAD 25 OR 30 YEARS AGO.. I'LL TELL YOU ABOUT IT SOMETIME.. GOT YOUR
CHRISTMAS CARD TODAY, IT IS A BEAUTIFUL SIGHT !! THANK YOU FOR IT ALSO... CLAUDE
ONE CHRISTMAS ABOUT 25 OR 30 YEARS AGO

ON A CHRISTMAS EVE A LONG TIME AGO, THIS STORY BEGAN: USUALLY ON CHRISTMAS EVE TRIO TV CLOSED ABOUT 1 OR 2 IN THE AFTERNOON. THIS PARTICULAR CHRISTMAS EVE WE HAD MORE CALLS TO MAKE THAN USUAL. I DID NOT GET THROUGH UNTIL AROUND 5 O'CLOCK OR SO. WHEN I DID GET HOME LAURA WAS MAD AS COULD BE AT ME FOR NOT BEING OFF EARLY! JUST LIKE IT WAS ALL MY FAULT, AS MOST THINGS THAT WENT WRONG USUALLY SEEMED TO BE IN THOSE DAYS. I LET HER CARRY ON FOR A WHILE AND I FINALLY TOLD HER TO BE QUIET AND LISTEN TO ME AND AFTER A LITTLE WHILE SHE DID. AND STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LIVING ROOM FLOOR, SHE SAID "WELL, GO ON WHAT IS YOUR EXCUSE?"
I TOLD HER HOW THE DAY HAD BEEN SO MUCH BUSIER THAN MOST CHRISTMASES. THEN I TOLD HER ABOUT THE LAST CALL I HAD MADE. IT WENT LIKE THIS:
I HAD AN ELDERLY BLACK LADY FOR A CUSTOMER FOR A LOT OF YEARS. SHE LIVED IN THE LITTLE, ALL BLACK COMMUNITY OF KINLOCH. TODAY HER TV HAD GONE OUT AND COULD I COME BY AND SEE HOW MUCH IT WOULD COST TO FIX. SO I TOLD HER SURE, I WOULD BE BY AFTER I HAD FINISHED ALL THE OTHER STUFF I HAD. I KNEW THAT SHE DID NOT HAVE ANYTHING AND THAT THIS WOULD BE "ON THE HOUSE" (I HAD SEVERAL CUSTOMERS LIKE THAT, ALL OF THEM ELDERLY BLACK PEOPLE).
THIS OLD LADY PUBLISHED A LITTLE 4 PAGE LOCAL NEWSPAPER, SHE BARELY KEPT HER EYES ABOVE WATER WITH THAT. SO I WENT BY ABOUT 4PM, AND I GET TO HER LITTLE SHACK AND BECAUSE OF THE COLD SHE HAD NEWSPAPER OVER THE WINDOWS AND BLANKETS OVER THE DOORWAYS AND IT WAS DARK INSIDE. SHE LETS ME IN AND I CAN BARELY SEE TO GET AROUND. AS ALWAYS SHE APOLOGIZES FOR THE CONDITION OF THE PLACE, AND EXPLAINS THAT SHE JUST DOES NOT HAVE THE MEANS TO LIVE ANY BETTER. IT WAS COLD INSIDE THE HOUSE TOO, NO HEAT ON. THE OLD LADY IS WEARING A HEAVY COAT AND GLOVES TO STAY WARM. THIS CHRISTMAS SHE HAS A GRAND DAUGHTER LIVING WITH HER, 6 YEARS OLD, THE LITTLE GIRL IS IN BED TO STAY WARM. I CANNOT REMEMBER THEIR NAMES TO SAVE MY NECK, I REMEMBERED FOR MANY YEARS. SHE CALLS THE LITTLE GIRL OUT TO MEET "MR. CLAUDE". SHE COMES OUT AND WITH THE BIGGEST AND SHYEST GRIN YOU EVER SAW COMES OVER TO ME AND HUGS ME AROUND THE LEGS. IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL, HOW SHE TOOK TO ME. AFTER A WHILE, SHE ASKED ME IF SHE COULD GO BACK TO BED "IT'S TOO COLD OUT HERE". OF COURSE I TOLD HER TO GO BACK. AND SHE DID.
HERE IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE AND THERE IS NO SIGN OF CHRISTMAS AROUND. AND AS IF SHE KNEW WHAT I WAS THINKING, THE OLD LADY CAME BACK IN THE ROOM AND TOLD ME THAT THERE WAS NO MONEY FOR ANY CHRISTMAS! THIS CHILD HAD BEEN TAKEN AWAY FROM IT MOTHER AND HAD BEEN GIVEN TO THE GRANDMOTHER. I AM NOT SURE ANYMORE, BUT I THINK THE GIRL WAS ILLEGITIMATE. I GOT THE TV FIXED AND SHE ASKED "HOW MUCH?" YOU KNOW HOW I REACTED TO THAT – “NO IT'S NOT MUCH - NO CHARGE.”
AND I WAS SO SADDENED BY THE PLIGHT OF THESE TWO,AS I AM DRIVING ON HOME, HARDLY ABLE TO SEE THE STREETS FOR THE TEARS. I GET HOME AND AM GOING TO TELL LAURA ABOUT IT AND THEN SHE IS SPITTING FIRE WHEN I LET MYSELF IN THE HOUSE. AFTER I TELL LAURA MY STORY, SHE SAYS "WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING FOR THEM". I HAD ALREADY DECIDED THAT.
SO WE BEGAN OUR CHRISTMAS HUNT. LAURA HAD MADE A CHRISTMAS TREE OUT OF STYROFOAM BALLS ABOUT 4 IN. IN DIAMETER, WITH TOOTH PICKS STUCK IN THEM AND THEN SPRAYED WITH WHITE PAINT AND SPARKLES SPRINKLED ON IT WAS ABOUT 12 INCHES TALL. THAT WAS THE FIRST ITEM. THEN WE WENT DOWNTON IN FERGUSON TO SEE WHAT WE COULD FIND... AT GASEN'S DRUG STORE WE GOT A FEW TOYS AND LO AND BEHOLD THERE WAS A LITTLE BLACK BABY DOLL ABOUT 10 OR 12 INCHES LONG. THE ONLY DOLL LEFT IN THE PLACE, WE GOT IT. THEN WENT TO THE GROCERY STORE TO SEE WHAT WE COULD FIND. WE GOT SOME APPLES AND ORANGES AND TANGERENES AND SOME CHRISTMAS CANDY. WE GOT THE INGREDIENTS FOR A CHRISTMAS DINNER AND WE WENT HOME WITH OUR TREASURE, AT LEAST IT WOULD BE TO THEM. BY THEN IT WAS ABOUT 8 PM AND WE HAD TWO HUNGRY BOYS AT HOME TO FEED. SO WE ATE AND AFTER PRESENT OPENING, WENT TO BED.
CHRISTMAS WAS ON A SUNDAY THAT YEAR. LAURA AND I GOT UP AND LOADED UP OUR "CHRISTMAS STUFF" AND HEADED OUT TO KINLOCH. WE GET TO THE HOUSE AND LO AND BEHOLD THERE IS SMOKE COMING OUT OF THE CHIMNEY!!! WE KNOCK AND GET INSIDE WITH OUR BOXES AND BAGS, AND BEFORE WE CAN UNDO ANYTHING THE OLD LADY LEADS US OUT THE BACK DOOR TO SHOW US HER COAL PILE. SOME ONE HAD DELIVERED A TON OF COAL TO HER IN THE DARK RIGHT AFTER LAURA AND I HAD LEFT THE DAY BEFORE. WHAT A MIRACLE!! AND SHE DID NOT KNOW WHERE OR WHO IT CAME FROM. WE WENT BACK IN AND UNDID "OUR CHRISTMAS" AND SPREAD IT OUT. AS WE DID SO IT WAS SOMETHING TO WATCH THAT LITTLE GIRL WATCH US IN OPEN MOUTHED WONDER, SET ALL THIS OUT. AND THAT LITTLE SPINY LOOKING TREE SEEMED TO ATTRACT HER MORE THAN ANYTHING, UNTIL WE STARTED GETTING HER PRESENTS OUT. AND SHE WAS JUST JUMPING FOR JOY BY THE TIME WE GOT THROUGH. IT WAS SOMETHING TO SEE THAT CHILD SO VERY HAPPY, WITH WHAT VERY LIKELY HER FIRST REAL CHRISTMAS IN HER LIFE. AND NOT ONCE DID SHE SAY "IS THAT ALL?" SHE WAS JUST SO VERY HAPPY, AND SO WAS EVERYONE ELSE!
GRANDMA COMES OUTSIDE WITH US AS WE LEAVE AND TRIES TO THANK US, BUT WITH ALL THE HAPPINESS THAT WE ALL FELT AND THE TEARS THAT WERE BEING SHED, I DON'T KNOW IF ANY THANK YOU'S WE ACTUALLY PUT INTO WORDS OR NOT.
THE WEATHER THAT CHRISTMAS WAS VERY COLD AND THERE WAS SEVERAL INCHES OF SNOW IN THE GROUND AND IT WAS A SUNNY DAY AND WINDY, I REMEMBER. BUT IT SURE FELT WARMER LEAVING THAN IT HAD WHEN WE WENT IN. AND I STILL THINK THAT WAS ONE OF THE BEST CHRISTMASES I EVER HAD.
I KEPT UP WITH THAT LITTLE GIRL FOR A LOT OF YEARS, THROUGH HER HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION, HER COLLEGE FULL SCHOLARSHIP, FROM MACDONNELL AIRCRAFT CO, AND THE LAST I HEARD SHE WAS TEACHING SCHOOL IN DETROIT. I DON'T HAVE ANY WAY OF KNOWING, BUT I LIKE TO THINK THAT WHAT WE DID THAT CHRISTMAS MAY HAVE BEEN A TURNING POINT IN HER LIFE AND SENT HER IN THE RIGHT DIRECION. OF COURSE THAT IS JUST BRAGGING A LITTLE, OF COURSE I HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING.
THAT IS THE WAY IT HAPPENED. I DON'T THINK THAT I HAVE TOLD THIS STORY TO BUT ONE OTHER PERSON. THAT WAS NICOLE, SOME TIME AGO.

First Snow

2009-12-06T08:03:00.001-08:00

The first snow of the season came yesterday. Just a couple of inches, wet enough to still be frosting the tree branches, enough to have to brush it off the car (note to self: Self, when you have to brush the snow off the car, don’t wear backless clogs, put on boots to brush the car and then go back and put on the clogs to wear to the party), enough to make it a bright, sparkly morning out there. Wasn’t enough to make anybody fall off the road, at least not that I heard about.
Went to a small party last night, and of course conversation was about the snow, and that turned to conversation about the ice storm, this week coming up will be the 1-year anniversary of that. And of the ‘October 4’ storm, over 20 years ago now, that caught the area by surprise with over a foot of heavy wet snow. Every one has stories of ‘what I/we did’, what they remember, how long their power was out, how they coped. Sales of generators soared after both storms, I’m sure.
Remember how exciting the first snow was when you were a kid? And the days when school was closed because of snow – wow, now there was a holiday for sure. I used to wake Sara up and say – ‘guess what happened outside’.
A Camp Katrina friend sent photos of his dogs enjoying a romp in the snow. They live in the mountains in Virginia, and don’t get as much as often as we do, although I remember driving I-81 through there a few nasty times. The cats sat inside and watched, although Streetcar wanted to go out to chase those fluffy white things in the air.
We’ve had a few years of not much snow, have to wait to see what this year brings. Funny weather, Thursday it was 60 +, I saw people on the Northway with top-down convertibles! And yesterday it snowed – they do say about the Northeast: ‘don’t like the weather? Wait a bit, it’ll be different.’
Knew I should have put outside Christmas decorations up last Sunday, when it was a beautiful day. Now I have to stand in the snow to do it. Oh, well. Part of the fun. Off to find the decorations and plan what to do.

Not a good day . . . .

2009-12-05T07:21:00.001-08:00

Tuesday was not a good day for fire and EMS in our corner of the county. Started with a total loss structure fire in Austerlitz and ended with a fatal accident in Valatie’s ambulance district, but Chatham Fire and our rescue squad got called. One of those days you want to strike from the records.
The fire had enough of a start that by the time the alarm system went off and anyone got there with a truck there wasn’t much they could do. It was an old house, the original part built in the 1780‘s I heard, and added on over the years; also heard that the current owner had just done extensive remodeling – it was her childhood home. Sad.
I don’t quite understand how it got so much of a start with an alarm system in the house – mine goes off when I burn popcorn (yes, it has happened, quite embarrassing). The house was just off the main highway, but still a few miles from the firehouse, with a long hill for them to pull to get to it. Combination of circumstances.
The total loss fires like that bother me more than they used to; guess with age I think more about what if it happened here? People say ‘it’s just things’, as long as all the people and hopefully all the pets got out all right, but it’s not ‘just things’, it’s your life that’s being destroyed. I’d be a mess.
The accident was nasty, a car ran a Yield sign at the end of a road that comes straight onto a curve on the more main highway, and had the misfortune to do it as a box delivery truck was coming around the curve. Truck driver did his best, but there wasn’t much choice for him; both vehicles ended up in the field on the other side of the road. Many questions including why did the driver not see the sign, what were they doing there anyway (four people not from this area, on a not main road, etc.) and so on. Questions we will never know the answers to, and one life lost and four others (counting three passengers and the truck driver) changed forever. The passengers all had substantial injuries, two went to the trauma center by helicopter.
A friend says to me ‘I don’t know how you do it’ and some times I don’t know either. What made me think this would be a good hobby to take up? I have an answer to that that will make another item. As far as how I/we do it, everyone has their own defense for the sights and sounds. As long as you can put them into the right perspective, know that you are doing what you can to make the situation better, know that you didn’t cause it, and so on, you can work through it. If it’s really bad, there’s the stress team to help. And that’s another item.
Tuesday was not a good day. Thankfully there are fewer of them than more. That’s another way we do it, knowing that the majority of the time we’re helping. That’s what we’re here for.
Speaking of helping, I have to go scare a squirrel off the deck railing, so Streetcar can stop being on alert. Guess the squirrel found a nut, and thought that would be a good place to enjoy it.

Thanksgiving Day 2009

2009-11-26T06:40:00.000-08:00

Thankful for wonderful family, good friends, that I am able to do many things I like and want to – that I was just able to see the clips from ‘Ragtime’ that started off the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and that I’m not cooking the turkey. Happy Thanksgiving to All and may you all have many things to be thankful for in your lives.

Of course I turned on the Macy’s Parade, and was so glad to have done it now, since they began the broadcast with a performance from ‘Ragtime’, done at Battery Park with the harbor and Statue of Liberty in the background (kudos to the camera crew, btw, for that great show of the statue between Sarah and Coalhouse, wonderful placement). What a great ‘on location’, because one plot line of the show is the immigrant’s story. No surprise that show music often has special meaning for me, even before I worked at a musical theatre I had that feeling for some songs. ‘Ragtime’ has glorious music and the lyrics are especially touching and meaningful. Anyone who’s ever loved a child or been proud to be American can relate to ‘Wheels of a Dream’ (lyrics below), where Coalhouse tells Sarah how they will travel as a family in his car: ‘We’ll go down South to see your people, They’ll take to him like cats to cream’ – can’t you see the aunties fussing over that baby boy. And when he sings about living in a country that lets ‘a man like me – own a car, raise a child, build a life with you’, it is so much of the dream that so many came here or grew up here with. Sadly, in the show, Sarah and Coalhouse do not realize the dream; however their son does. The story is a powerful and touching commentary of those times. It makes me snuffle.
Of course seeing the shots from Battery Park remind me of standing there and looking at the same view when I was in New York with the rescue squad after 9/11; of the guard pointing out the Coast Guard ship and saying ‘they’ve got our backs’, of looking at the Statue of Liberty and thinking she could still stand proud for how Americans were coping with this.
Hm – now they have the cast of ‘West Side Story’, another show about immigrants – wonder if they planned it for that? It does tell another story of people who came here to make another life for themselves. Well, let’s face it, we’re all connected with people like that, unless we’re Native American descendants, and we can be thankful that our ancestors did come here and build a life for us. And that they started this tradition – although, quite frankly, I’m having trouble seeing them sitting outside eating a huge dinner in what the weather likely was in late November on Cape Cod at that time, but maybe it was Indian Summer, who knows? We could get in to a big discussion here about how that gesture of friendship went down the tubes, and a lot of other such discussions, but I’m not going to. There have been good moments throughout all of that.
I have to go make my salad for dinner at my sister’s later. There will be liberal amounts of laughter, food and wine and I’ll be thankful once again for my family and being able to enjoy them and my life as it is.
Blessings to you all, enjoy the day. May you have the hope in your hearts that Coalhouse and Sarah do here:

“On the Wheels Of A Dream”
[COALHOUSE]: I see his face.
I hear his heartbeat.
I look in those eyes.
How wise they seem.
Well, when he is old enough
I will show him America
And he will ride
on the wheels of a dream.

(COALHOUSE): We'll go down South

[SARAH]: Go down South,

[COALHOUSE]: And see your people

[SARAH]: See my folks.

[COALHOUSE]: Won't they take to him

[SARAH]: They'll take to him

[COALHOUSE]: Like cats to cream!

[SARAH]: Mmm...

[COALHOUSE]: Then we'll travel on from there.

[SARAH]: California or who knows where!

[BOTH]: And we will ride
On the wheels of a dream.

[COALHOUSE]: Yes, the wheels are turning for us, girl.
And the times are starting to roll.
Any man can get where he wants to
If he's got some fire in his soul.
We'll see justice, Sarah,
And plenty of men
Who will stand up
And give us our due.
Oh, Sarah, it's more that promises.
Sarah, it must be true.
A country that let's a man like me
Own a car, raise a child, build a life with you...

[COALHOUSE]: With you...

[SARAH]: With you...

[BOTH]: Beyond that road,
Beyond this lifetime
That care full of hope
Will always gleam!
With the promise of happiness
And the freedom he'll live to know.
He'll travel with head held high,
Just as far as his heart can go
And he will ride-
Our son will ride-
On the wheels of a dream.

About Freecycling and Dumps

2009-11-25T07:30:00.000-08:00

Freecycling, to my mind, is one of the great inventions of the internet world. Want something, but don’t have money for it? Put a notice on Freecycle. If somebody else in the group has it, they’ll let you know and you can come pick it up. Have something you don’t use any more, but it’s too good to throw away? Put a notice on Freecycle. Somebody will say they need it and come pick it up. Couldn’t be simpler. Just recently I got the file cabinets I’ve been wanting – lowest price I could find them for was over $100. Found a cart the coffee house people can use to roll their treats out into the lobby at intermission to show off and get customers-it’s a microwave cart but they don’t care, one wheel sticks but our handy guys can fix that - probably would have been around $50. And I just found a home for a nice hanging wine glass rack, the kind you put stem ware in over the bar. The former son-in-law got that, I have no idea why because we never had a bar or that much stemware, but it hung above the microwave for a long time, I took it down and stuck it in the closet and just found it when I moved things in that a couple of weeks ago, and thought someone might want it and I was right. She’s happy, I’m happy and one more thing is recycled.
Dumps – what brought that to mind was when the person came to pick up the rack I went out and said ‘Hi’, noticed a branch hanging in one of the trees and went to pull it down, picked up a few others on the way to the edge of the woods where I throw such things, and while I was tossing them onto the pile, I noticed – again – the several old things that are tossed over into the trees there. Toys, a tire, I forget what-all else. Made me think about dumps. When I was a kid there was one way at the far end of the old orchard, near a little marshy area that sometimes had a tiny pond in it, if there had been an overabundance of rain. Why the people put it there, well, I guess it was far enough from the house to keep critters away. I remember rummaging through it looking for treasures but I don’t remember if I ever found any. My mother dug through it after she started her antique shop and found some old bottles and other odds and ends, but usually in the days when the dump was in use if something went to it, it was past any use. Except for the bottles, some of those were interesting. And you could speculate on the broken things, what they were for and what happened to them.
I wonder what people in the future will think when they see our little pile? An old plastic push toy, I think a shopping cart, of Stephen’s, some beer bottles, couple of kitty litter pails that I don’t want to know what might be in them. And yes, I presume that somebody will go through it, probably the kids in the trailer park already have, because something about other people’s trash invites you to see if there’s any treasure in it.
Now the word dump means a huge garbage complex, plastic bags full of icky stuff, bulldozers smushing it down and spreading it out, but in years past they were a commentary on the lives of those who were there before. Mini archeological digs, as it were. That’s how we are learning about past civilizations. In the future, they will determine that ours is plastic. Hmm-not so far off, that.

Sad . . . .

2009-11-17T06:29:00.000-08:00

Saw in the paper (on-line) this morning that a local man injured in an accident last month has died. He had been in Pittsfield, visiting someone in the hospital, was coming home, and a kid ran a red light at an intersection that has seen more than it’s share of bad accidents, t-boned his pickup. The man was thrown out, the car went on to hit several other cars in the parking lot of a garage on the corner, and passengers in the car were also injured, at least one seriously.
The man had severe head injuries, and there was nothing to be done. He had been in hospice at St. Peter’s Hospital, where my sister had her knee operation, and when I was going to visit her last week, his son’s girlfriend got on the same elevator, with I’ll guess one of his grandsons, who was holding a dog. They let pets come in to the hospice, so you can see your good friends one last time. Even if the patients are not in condition to know it, that’s a nice thing.
A sad thing. The kid driving the car was being checked for alcohol or drug use, with or without, he ruined many lives by his actions. He robbed this man of more years with his family and friends, of doing what he enjoyed, of growing old with his wife. He robbed his children and grandchildren. He gave horrible injuries and memories to the people in his car. And, he gave himself the life-long knowledge that he took another life. That’s sad, all the way around.
Let’s all hope that he, and hopefully others learned something, and will think about putting themselves in the situation to have it happen again.
A prayer for all involved.

Halloween 2009

2009-10-31T19:27:00.000-07:00

It’s raining here, which no doubt is putting a wet blanket on the Haunted House the Rotary Club is running as a fund raiser – as well as to have fun. I went over last night – I mean, how can you not go to a Haunted House that’s set up in a funeral parlor? The good folks of the area cooperated, and Pete (the undertaker) had no ‘clients’ for the two nights it’s running.
Halloween’s a quiet night in my personal corner of the world. I don’t get any trick or treaters, too far from the road, no close neighbors. In the village, two streets get hoards, mostly Kinderhook Street, where they do everything but bring in busses. There was an article in the paper this week with people living on the street saying they get 300 to 400 kids, or more. Payn Ave. gets a lot, too. That’s a lot of candy to buy. The people interviewed said they enjoy it, enjoy seeing the kid’s costumes, but that’s still a lot of candy to buy.
The fire department has a costume parade and a small party, and the nursery school parades their kids on Main Street. The merchants had a little Halloween day, with a scavenger hunt, and had candy for kids in their stores.
We don’t get a lot of mischief, either. Years ago, the fire department had ‘fire watch’ because there would be a lot of little nuisance trash and leaf fires, but there’s not much of that any more. There will be some smashed pumpkins and no doubt some soaped windows, but not a lot of that either.
I like that people decorate for Halloween. There’s everything from the traditional one or two pumpkins to lights, ‘gravestones’, monsters, spider webs, ghosts and witches and even one or two ‘bodies’ hanging in trees. Fun.
I can’t remember one single Halloween costume I ever wore, although I am sure that there had to be more than one cowboy one. We lived in the country, so my folks would take us into Kinderhook to trick or treat, hitting a few of the friends and relatives on the way. We’d go up and down the main streets and get a pretty good haul of candy, with a few cookies and apples as well. There used to be a bonfire at the school for the older kids, my sister got to go to that but by the time I was old enough they stopped having it.
One year two of my friends, twins, came with us, and I remember they dressed as clowns; one house we went to the screen door had no screen in it and the woman was apologizing and one of the twins said ‘oh, that’s all right, we’re clowns, we’ll just climb in’ – and did.
The only costume I remember of my daughter’s was when she was probably 2, and I put together a ‘little old lady’ with a skirt, top and hat from somewhere – and probably the only reason I remember that is because I have photos. Oh, well.
When I lived in New Hartford with my aunt and uncle, they did Halloween proud, Uncle John used to say it was his favorite holiday. One year I took my cousin Mark out to trick or treat, and as we were walking back up the hill towards their house, kids coming down were saying ‘go up to that house, they’re bobbing for apples!’ and Mark said ‘Oh, No!”. Oh, yes, it was our house, and the kids were lined up out the door to bob for apples. Probably wouldn’t get many takers these days.
Then there was the year that Aunt Dot and I went ‘trick or drinking’ with shot glasses instead of goodie bags, but that’s a whole ‘nother Halloween story. . . . .
Anyway, hope there were no bad ghosts and ghouls at your house and that Halloween was fun for you. Everybody should dress up and be somebody else every now and then.

Random stuff

2009-10-28T06:10:00.000-07:00

* Sunday I planned to meet people to do a quick costume rental and then go for a nice hike somewhere, maybe the CLC down in Greenport, by the Hudson River. That all went down the tubes when two more people called about rentals that ended up taking most of the afternoon – but it was ok because one was Tirza and I haven’t seen her in a long time and we caught up chatting. Then I figured that since the day was shot anyhow, I might as well go to Walmart. Haven’t checked out the ‘new SuperWalmart’ in Hudson yet. Did that, it’s not as large as some I have seen in other parts of the country, but it’s still got a lot of stuff, and I did find some things I needed and probably a few I didn’t. I don’t like new grocery stores because you have to go around and around finding where things are, because they are all laid out differently and not all of them carry the same things. I did reflect as I went to check out that here I was with a bra and a pomegranate in the same shopping cart. Is this a great system or what? On the way home I got thinking that this big fancy store isn’t so different from the old time general stores – well, ok, they didn’t stock bras and pomegranates, but the family could come to town once a week or once a month and get clothing or fabric to make clothes, flour, penny candy, hardware, all the staples they needed until the next trip to town, which in those days was an event. So, we’ve made another circle in history, just updating to our era.
* TV – most shows have only been airing for about a month of the ‘new season’ and they’re showing reruns already. What?!? Are they running out of stories, or is this a new contract thing or what? I remember when shows used to run from fall to spring and then you got reruns. Oh, well, it gives me a chance to catch up on some that have aired opposite each other and I have to choose which to watch first. But, really, is this the new tv, three or four new shows and then two or three weeks of reruns? And they get paid how much for this?
* Speaking of getting paid how much, the radio station I listen to had a discussion on baseball player’s salaries yesterday. Not only baseball players, but some of the actors, singers and so on – not to mention CEO’s of some companies – ridiculous salaries, just so out of line. Yeah, they bring in the bucks to their employers, at least the players bring in bucks for their teams, and the stars bring viewers to movies and tv. Not gonna comment on the CEO’s and their ‘golden parachutes’. And for what? When our medics and EMT’s have to work two and three jobs to get enough hours to get enough to pay their bills. They save people’s lives. What do the ballplayers do? What’s wrong with this picture and our system? And will it ever get fixed? Nope, not that I can see. Sigh.
* Here’s what I think: they should put some of us ’common folk’ in charge to straighten out some of this stuff. We know where the priorities are. Will it happen? Nope, not that I can see.
* but I still think it's kinda cool that I can buy a bra and a pomegranate in the same store

A life lost and Morons

2009-10-27T05:36:00.000-07:00

I originally wrote this back in the early summer, after a tragic accident in our area. Then, as some things do, it got lost in the shuffle that is my summer. Here it is, and if you change the word ATV to snowmobile, it’s for the upcoming season also.
Why would you let an 8 year old drive one of those? What kind of moron lets a kid that age drive something like that? That was the first thing I asked my daughter about a tragic accident last week. A man, watching his girl friend’s children, and also watching another friend’s house, let his son take his two sisters for a ride on an ATV owned by the house owner. Not a ‘quad’, but the kind with a bench seat for two people and an open bed behind.
The boy is 8. One sister is 10, the other was 3.
Yes, sadly I said was. They had the vehicle in another neighbor’s driveway, somehow it hit a tree and overturned, throwing the toddler out and landing on her. My daughter responded, with our rescue squad. They did everything they could. Nobody could have done anything. Being on the steps of the hospital would not have helped. A 3 year old child is dead. The obituary called her ‘our little angel’. Yet she was not precious enough for them to use some sense and not put her in the seat with a too young, not trained enough driver. Nothing has been said about seat belts, but there are only two on the vehicle, and there were three of them.
In our region there have been I think four deaths of young people/teenagers on various types of ATV’s in recent months. I went to one several years ago, a man in maybe his 30’s, married, couple of kids, out riding with his buddies on their quads. He always wore a helmet. You could see where it hit the tree. You could see where the quad hit the tree. In between those marks you could see where his face hit the tree. And when his wife called a couple of weeks after the accident to talk to someone in the squad about the accident, if the outcome could have been any different than leaving her a widow, guess who got to talk to her.
These are not toys, people! These machines are built for adults, with adult size steering wheels, adult size pedals, at adult length reach from the adult size seat to these. Not an 8 year old child’s reach, an adult’s reach. And yet anyone under the age of 16 can ride one, if on their own property and supervised. This time it wasn’t their own machine, or their own property, although they were allegedly supervised.
And now a man has to live the rest of his life knowing that his permission killed a ‘little angel’. An 8 year old boy has to grow up and live the rest of his life knowing he killed his little sister. Responders have to live with knowing they could not do anything to save this ‘little angel’. Our crew had to have a critical incident debriefing to help them resolve this fact. The little angel will not grow up to have a little angel of her own.
These are not toys, people! They are machines, made to be driven by adults, who will still have their own share of unfortunate and tragic mishaps. So, please, don’t take the chance of making someone else go through what this man, this boy, this family, these responders, all of the people affected, are going through. Don’t be a moron. Don’t let kids play with adult vehicles like this. Save a life. We’ll all thank you.

HEART WALK FOR ‘THE PEDUZZI FLU’

2009-10-19T06:08:00.000-07:00

I had a pretty good weekend, and managed to avoid doing much for work, for a change.
Saturday I went with my niece to the American Heart Association Start! Heart Walk. Walks have become a big fund-raising event for many causes; it’s become a pick your weekend and your cause thing. I did one several years ago for diabetes, but this is the first since then I’ve gone on, although I’ve donated to some since.
Anyway, Mary sent me an email saying she was doing this, because given the history of heart disease in our family, her generation is getting to where they need to think about it.
I think my father was the first, in 1959, the summer after I graduated from high school. As I recall the events, he came home from work feeling sick, called the doctor somewhere along the line, who said ‘it’s probably indigestion’ and told him to go to bed. At some point, don’t remember exactly when (I wasn’t home at the time, was working over across the river as a waitress in a small resort and that’s another story) he ended up going to the hospital, where they did tests and he spent time walking around the halls visiting people he knew, when two doctors came and grabbed him and carried him to bed and told him he’d had a heart attack. He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, and then home recovering for a while after that. I went off to college while he was still getting better, and he wrote me letters – in one he commented about the weather being warm one day and chilly the next and said ‘Oh, well, that’s September for you”.
He went on to be as active as before, pretty much. Then in the 1970’s, he had bypass surgery. This was back when it was still fairly new, and he had to go to a hospital in New York City for it. My then mother-in-law had it done a few years before his, and I remember we took an ambulance down to NYC to bring her home-stopping in a diner along the way for lunch and saying we needed an order to go for the person on the stretcher. When my folks said that their daughter could bring a rig to take him home, the doctor said ‘an ambulance! How did you get here?’ ‘On the train.’ ‘Well, then take the train home’. They didn’t, my cousin who lived in the city and used to come up many weekends anyway gave them a ride.
There was something in the hospital about the ‘Zipper Club’, because the scar looks like a zipper down the chest.
I went down to the house a while after he’d been settled down, and he had a glass of scotch – ‘It wasn’t on the list of what I can’t have!’ he said.
Anyway, after his, I forget the order, but six of his brothers and sisters had heart attacks, a couple had the bypass surgery, at least one did not make it to that point.
Then, my Uncle John and his family at the time had gone to Florida, to Disney World. They came home to find an ambulance parked in front of the house, and my cousin, his youngest son, on the stretcher, I think maybe in his early 40’s at the time, having a heart attack. After being told that Mark was doing well and would be all right, Uncle John looked at him and said ‘Don’t worry, you’re just having the Peduzzi Flu!’
There’s a picture of my father and his three brothers someplace, the ‘Coronary Quartet’.
By now a few others of my generation have had heart attacks and/or bypass surgery. So far my ticker’s in good shape, they say. Still….
So I signed up for the walk and we went and had a dandy time. It was in a large community park, with paths to walk on that made a 3-mile loop. A lot of people, I won’t even try to guess but several hundred easily. Many families, work groups, school kids, people with photos of loved ones gone on t-shirts, at least one woman on a motorized wheelchair, a few with walkers and canes, many with strollers or kids in wagons. Several displays of heart-healthy things, a board to sign a remembrance on, healthy snacks and sandwiches after the walk, a radio live broadcast and singers, someone to do a warm-up exercise and even a ‘brass band’ to play as we started walking. Brownie scouts handing out water and more healthy snacks along the way. Pretty enough scenery for a place on the edge of the city, and some dance, yoga and music groups to watch as we walked. At each mile point there were people to cheer us on. Near the end there were more cheerers, and one woman said ‘this is the last hill’ and Mary and I, we’ve both hiked up mountains, said this isn’t a hill, this is a ‘rise’. A group congratulating the finishers. We had our sandwiches and a nice talked with a woman with a group called ‘Sistah’s With A Heart’, from a church group in Albany that raises thousands of dollars (made our paltry $500 + pretty skinchy, but every bit helps). Decided we need to get more of us and do it again next year. Oh, and we need at least one dog, too, there were lots of dogs, some wearing the same t-shirts the people with them had on. We can call ourselves ‘The Peduzzi Flu Crew’.
Here’s what I think: that these things are great. It’s a way to raise awareness – and money – that’s fun and gets you out in the fresh air, meeting new people and sharing experiences. Doesn’t get any better.

Animal Abuse

2009-10-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

Is it just me or are there a lot more instances of animal abuse being reported in the news? Am I more aware of it after my Camp Katrina experience, is the news media more aware that animal stories will sell papers – or viewers? Or is there just more of this happening, just as it seems there are more of all other types of crimes?
Either way, it is bringing attention to this terrible thing. From animals being abandoned to a cat wrapped in duct tape like a mummy to hoarders having dozens of animals and not caring for them, to pets being stolen and killed, there is at least one story in the news just about every day.
That’s disturbing. That’s disturbing not just because of the suffering the animals, and the owners of the pets must go through, but because it indicates a general trend towards an absence of caring, of feeling, of doing things for more thrills, ‘just for kicks’ that seems to be happening in our society. Or, in the cases of the perpetrators, the absence of society. In so many of the cases, we are reminded that people who commit crimes against people often start out with crimes against animals.
Today’s news reported a story of two teens who tortured and killed a dog, and were given sentences that included community service, getting a GED, a few days in jail – enough of a return for a dog’s life? Enough of a lesson that they did wrong? Most of those who commented did not think so. I don’t. What would be enough? Apart for being put into a small room with a few animal rescuers with tire sticks and broom handles, I’m not sure. But there’s got to be something.
Meanwhile, those of us who do care can do something. We can be on the lookout for animal abuse instances and report them. We can try to educate young people. We can get involved. And maybe it will save a life and cure another. Maybe.
Spay and Neuter! Hmm – maybe spaying and neutering a few people – oh, that’s just too radical, but don’t we all have a story about seeing or knowing someone that it wouldn’t be the worst idea for?

A beagle named Lemon

2009-09-21T18:32:00.001-07:00

What’s that line: ‘If you have ESP, raise my hand. . .’? Well, I’m not really claiming there’s some of it in my family, but there have been some things take place that, as I like to put it, ‘have no other ‘rational’ explanation’. I’ve had things happen, and my daughter has as well, and now I think maybe the grandson is on the same wave length. Actually, I’m pretty sure he is, starting from the day he was born.
My good friend Dawn and her family were very much in favor of Sara and Goeff getting married, even though mixed race couples were not a big thing in our area. Dawn had gotten married over the winter, and was looking forward to their wedding, when she was killed in a freak car accident. Dawn had always wanted children and couldn’t have any, and it was one sadness in her otherwise happy life. Sara’s wedding was two months after Dawn’s death. Stephen was born a year to the day after it.
Now, I am told, Stephen has gotten himself a dog, a cute little beagle. What the hell he needs with a dog, let alone a hunting dog, escapes me, but whatever. My father had beagles; he enjoyed rabbit hunting a lot. He loved going out in the winter, up in Indian Lake, after the snowshoe rabbits, and even got a beagle specially bred for that. She got named Mame, because she had sort of reddish marking, and the grandkids, very young at the time, had just seen the show ‘Mame’ at the theatre, in which the star had red hair. (Oh, don’t get me started on naming animals, how we named the cows is a story of it’s own.) Mame had pups, and one had sort of yellowish markings, so she got named ‘Lemon’.
Now, all of this was long before Stephen was even a thought, in fact my father died and my mother gave the dogs back to the person my father had gotten them from when Sara was a teenager. We may have told a story about the dogs when he was around, but nobody remembers doing that.
Stephen’s beagle has sort of dark yellow markings, and he has named it Lemon.
Go ahead – if you have ESP, raise my hand. Or raise Stephen’s hand. Or pet the beagle.

September 11

2009-09-11T06:24:00.000-07:00

A date that forever changed for all Americans eight years ago. Ceremonies are being held in many places to commemorate the day, the events, the victims. Even if you don’t go to one, take a moment and have your own. Say whatever type of prayer you do for the victims, that their fate was as easy as it could be. Say one for those they left, that they are able to continue their lives in as much peace as possible. Say one for all of us, that we can continue to use this to make our country, our patriotism, our selves stronger and braver. Say one that we and our children and our children’s children never know this again.
Being involved with the rescue squad and fire department, I am especially saddened by the number of those victims. Someone had the photo of the firefighters carrying Father Michael Judge out of the rubble on their blog this morning; the photo always makes me tear up. Likewise the one of the firefighters raising the flag on a beam sticking out of the pile of destroyed building. When I was down there the sight of the destroyed fire and EMS equipment was heart-wrenching.
Last night at intermission of dress rehearsal we spent a few minutes playing ‘what were you doing when’. Andrew had been working and his wife called to tell him. Lynne remembered me coming to their house to tell them ‘turn on your tv – we’ve been attacked’. I was home, heard then-President Bush’s statement on the radio station I had on, and put on the tv to see the second plane hit. I watched for a while, and when they declared no flying, I went to the cast house, I was supposed to take one of the company guys to fly home later that day – told him he wasn’t flying anywhere for a while. Then I went to Lynne and Linda’s to tell them.
Called Sara, called my sister – my sister and I went to lunch on Main Street later, and noticed that the village flag was still at the top of the pole. Happened one of the police force was in the restaurant, and I asked him why and he said something to the effect they hadn’t said to put it at half mast but they probably would. So, my sister, and I (being doers, not waiters) went and put it at half mast.
Talking to my daughter the next day I mentioned I hadn’t slept well last night and she wisely said “I don’t think anybody in America slept much last night”.
I did go to NYC about 10 days later, with the rescue squad, and it was an experience I will never forget. http://www.picturesandwordsbybarb.com/WTC.Story.pdf
As I write this, the radio station (WKLI, 100.9 FM: albanymagic.com) is playing a song that has many clips from things like the Kennedy assassinations; they’ve played ‘God Bless America’ and other patriotic songs this morning.
It’s sobering, the number of events of this nature we’ve seen happen in recent history. Let’s see what we can do to keep any more of them from happening in the future.
God Bless all those who lost their lives, those they left behind, and all those who continue to do so helping and protecting the rest of us.
NYC still has tributes to the fallen; every fire station was affected and many have plaques listing their fallen. The hotel we stay in for auditions has a plaque in the elevator lobby commemorating those from the fire station around the corner who were lost. A friend put on Facebook that he was heading for the train to go to the city for remembrance ceremonies this morning.
They remember. We should all remember. Never Forget.

The Fair

2009-09-09T06:00:00.001-07:00

The county fair was the past weekend. Besides marking the end of summer and meaning that school would start in two days, the fair was quite a deal when I was a kid.
When I was – oh, gosh, maybe 7 or 8, my sister and I were in the Juvenile Grange. We had made things to put into the Grange exhibit at the fair and my parents were going to take us to look at them – except it kept getting put off because of things to be done on the farm, and by the time we got there on the last night of the fair, the exhibit was taken down. My parents promised us that would never happen again. And, since during the year following we got involved with 4-H, it never did. From then until we quit farming, every year summer was all about getting ready for the fair. Mainly getting the cows we were going to show ready, although we did also practice making pies or cakes or cookies or whatever other food things we were going to enter, and also putting finishing touches on our sewing projects. But mostly it was about the cows. They had to be taught to wear halters and walk on the lead, had to be brushed, washed and clipped. Then they had to be loaded into the truck and taken over and put into the stalls and brushed some more and fed and cleaned up after and washed – and shown. They went into the appropriate age class, and we did Fitting and Showmanship, and any other classes we could qualify for. Ribbons piled up along the rail above the animal’s heads. I think the fair was three days long when we started and may have gone to four days at some point. My sister and I usually spent the whole time there, sleeping in piles of hay next to the cows (I remember one afternoon I was taking a nap, laying against my cow, when she got up and proceeded to lift her tail and crap all over me!). We’d talk to friends, compare cows and prizes, and of course take time out to go to the midway. Got in some fair food, although my mother always made sure to have lots of ‘good food’ for us. We would have those little packets of cereal that used to come with wax paper in the boxes, so you could eat right out of them. We’d wait until some ‘city people’ were coming along and take a box and go to the cow and squirt milk onto the cereal so they could see it – grossed the city kids out every time.
One year A couple of older ladies came down through the barns, got to the animal at the end of our group and started their conversation: “Oh, look at that one laying down – I think it’s going to have a baby”. “Oh, it might be” and to me: “Is that one going to have a baby?” “No, Ma’am, it’s not.” “Ooh, are you sure? It looks to me like it is.” “Yes, Ma’am, I’m pretty sure it’s not.” “Oh, I think it is. Are you really, really sure.” “Well, yes, Ma’am I am really sure that one’s not going to have a baby. That one’s the bull.”
Yeah, the fair was fun.
We couldn’t wait to get there, and at the end couldn’t wait to load up and go home. If we had food in the 4-H building, we’d go get it as soon as we could on closing day, and eat it, prize winner or not.
I get my nostalgia fix, walking through the 4-H building (and getting my baked potato with all the fixings, which they didn’t have when I was there), and going to the barns and looking at the people and their animals. And I’m very glad there are still people bringing exhibits and animals to the fair. I hope that never changes.

Last day of the theatre season

2009-09-06T07:00:00.001-07:00

Today is the last day of the theatre season – or at least the last day of what we now call the ‘regular’ season. We still have Footloose happening for the next two weekends, but most of the company will be leaving after tonight. It’s always a bittersweet time. No matter how talented the group is, and how much we like them, after being together almost 24/7 for 3 ½ months, it’s time to break. This group was very talented and a good bunch to have around, very nice, all got along well as far as I ever heard, anyway. Many of them we’d like to have back, but of course that all depends on what our shows are next summer and what they are doing. No doubt a few we’ll try for.
Nice as it will be to have evenings free again, I’ll miss the music. Won’t miss things like solving all the problems, like last night when I was so tired after a long, long day, and one of the girls ran a car out of gas so at midnight I was holding a flashlight under my arm and trying to fit the too short spout on the gas can into the gas tank and getting gas all over my sandals – all the while hoping nobody came over the hill and clipped the back of the car that was just barely off the highway.
Will miss Quinto and his outrageous actions – like fully flashing me by lifting his shirt up as I was going past him out the door to the deck – and comments like his ‘It’s a fat kid’s Christmas’, about the chocolate fountain at the opening night party. Laura, peeking into the office as she waited for her entrance in aisle 4, telling me about what’s on stage: ‘Did you know there’s a big fight happening on your stage? You should check that out!’ and ‘Did you know there’s a trolley car on your stage? You should check that out!’ Rich: ‘Is this a record for the number of straight guys you’ve had here in one season?’ The apprentices: ‘Barb, what do we do with……’ And many more.
Yeah, there’s some things I won’t miss but I won’t go into that. Well, I won’t miss having to call the ambulance every other thing, it seemed like. I have to count up how many times, but way, way more than any other year, or any couple put together. And the whole thing with leaking roofs, seems like every single building we owned had that problem, and the house the tree fell on still isn’t fixed, 5 months later! But that’s another story. And cars – every one of them had a problem this year, and right now two are out of service and both the others need work but are running – except when out of gas. And air conditioners, two went belly up, a small one in the rehearsal room and one of the big, old ones in the theatre-that wasn’t a problem because it was pretty cool all summer, but the rehearsal room one was missed both at dance rehearsals and during coffee house. Nope, won’t miss that – oh, wait, I still have to deal with all that, to get things fixed for next year. Sigh.
There will be a lot of tears tonight, as always. There already were, at the cabaret yesterday, as always. But the summer has formed friendships and given growth and helped people move along in their careers and lives. And given a lot of people a lot of pleasure. And that’s what we’re about.

“One Year Ago Today”

2009-08-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

The stories of a puppy, a cat, a dog and a kitten, in New Orleans on August 29, 2005

One year ago today I was part of a family
I was loved, I was petted, I had food and drink when I wanted.

One year ago today I was happy
I loved my people – they took care of me

They would never leave me
I caught mice and I purred and I slept on the bed.

One year ago today I was chained in a yard
No shelter from the rain or sun.

Shouted at, beaten, scraps of food and stale water
My only company was my brother, who was treated the same way

One year ago today I was playful and free
Young and small, no cares,
Chasing butterflies, not yet big enough for mice.

I was taken for rides, given treats, shown off to others
One year ago today my tail wagged often.

I was pampered, brushed, fussed over,
I got saucers of milk, food from a can,
One year ago today they scratched my head when I rubbed their legs.

Teased, tormented, made to fight and bite
Never petted, never praised –
One year ago today I was nothing but a dog.

My mother still washed me.
We lived under a porch,
Sometimes the people in the house would pet me.
I liked that.
One year ago today a little girl played with me.

One year ago today the wind blew, the rain came,
And then the water was everywhere.
I heard them say leave, but they would not leave me.
One year ago today my people stayed and they died.

One year ago today my people fled
They left me some food, they left me some water
They closed me in the bathroom and said they would come back in a few days.

One year ago today I was left on my chain
They fled, they left me
Alone, no food, no water
And the waters rose around my brother and me.

One year ago today the waters rushed in
Our little house was crushed
My people fled, I tried, I could not keep up
I was left alone in the flood.

One year ago today the water rose and filled our house
The house I was used to, running through the rooms,
Sleeping on the rug
We tried to stay above it.
I swam and swam and climbed into a cupboard.
My people could not. I could see them in the water.
They could no longer see me.

One year ago today the water came.
It filled every room.
It filled the room I was locked in, but I climbed and clung to the walls.
The water went down and I waited.
My people did not come back.
My food and water were gone, rancid
My people did not come back.

One year ago today the water rushed into our yard.
I jumped to the top of a pile of trash
My brother had no where to go.
I watched him struggle, I watched him try
I watched him drown, I watched him die.

One year ago today I was suddenly alone
Racing from the water that was everywhere.
I ran, I climbed, I swam, I jumped
I found a place above it and I cried for my family
No one was there to answer me.

The water went down
I do not know how long it took.
I went to my people and licked them and nuzzled them but they did not answer me.

The water went down
I meowed, I yowled,
I was hungry, I was thirsty.
They did not come back.

The water went down.
My brother lay in the yard.
I howled for him.

The water went down.
I was back on the ground
Searching for my people, my mother,
Searching for food and drink.

Many days passed
I was hungry, I was thirsty.
I whimpered and barked
I heard voices and barked louder.
“Listen”, the voices said, “A dog!”

Many days passed.
I was getting thin and weak.
I heard voices and mewed as loud as I could
It was not very loud and the voices went away.

Many days passed.
No one came near my yard.
I saw things in the air, I heard things on the streets.
I was so tired, so hungry, so thirsty.

Many days passed.
I walked the streets, went into houses.
There was no food.
I chased bugs and moths and birds and mice.
I drank ugly water.
I lived on the streets.
I was young and small.

The door crashed in and people filled our house.
I was afraid.
“Oh, no”, one voice said. “The people stayed.”
“Come here, little guy”, another voice said.
Hands reached and touched me and I whimpered.
“It’s all right. You are safe now”, the voices said.

I heard them again!
I meowed as loudly as I could
I was so hungry and thirsty.
“Listen!” A voice said, “A cat.”
I heard noise in the house, and meowed again.
The door crashed in and a person came into the bathroom.
“Well, hello, pretty girl,” she said. “Come with us. You are safe now.”

I saw people!
I barked.
I had been trained to bark at people, to frighten them away.
These people did not go.
They talked to me.
“It’s all right, big guy,” they said. “You can trust us. We’re here to help you.”
I let them come close, let them touch me, let them cut the big chain and lead me away.
“You are safe now,” they said.

I heard voices and saw people.
The other cats ran.
“Look”, the people said, “a kitten.”
I let them pick me up.
“You are safe now”, they said.

I was in a cage in a car, then in a cage in a tent.
I got a bath and food and petting.
I cried out in my sleep.
I was put into a pen, near other dogs.
People walked me and talked to me.
I was put in a cage on a big bus and taken far away.
More people came and looked at me.
“What is this puppy’s story?” they asked.
“His people stayed with him and did not make it”, they were told.
“We will be his new people.”

I was put in a cage in a car and then a cage in a house.
People fed me and petted me and gave me treats.
More people came and put me in another cage and into a van and I rode a long ways.
Someone took my cage and said “You can come with me.”

I was put in a cage in a car and then a cage in a tent.
I got a bath. I never had one before.
I got petted. I never did before.
I was walked and talked to. I never was before.
I was put in a cage in a van and then in a cage in an airplane, and then a cage in a car again.
I was let out in a place with no chains.
There are trees and high mountains, and soon after I got here something cold and white and fluffy fell from the sky and covered the ground.
It did not rise as high as the water had. I ran through it and the people laughed and said “You are home now.”

I was put in a cage in a car and then a cage in a house.
I got food and water and I felt better.
I reached out to everyone who passed my cage to pet me
When they did I felt better.
I was put in another cage, in another car and rode for two days.
At the end of the ride, someone carried me into a house and said
“Now you are home.”

One year ago today the life that I knew changed forever.
My new life is good.
I miss my first people.

One year ago today the life that I knew changed forever.
My new life is good.
I miss my first people.

One year ago today the life that I knew changed forever.
My new life is good.
I never knew I could be more than just a dog.

One year ago today the life that I knew changed forever.
My new life is good.
I like it here.

One year ago today the life that I knew changed forever.
It brought this sweet animal to me.

BP, August 2006
In memory of them all

Long Distance Phone Calls

2009-08-27T06:05:00.000-07:00

The other day I called a friend I haven’t spoken to is probably a couple of years. We email a fair amount, but haven’t actually seen each other in about 4 years and haven’t conversed in one or two years. And I said how silly that is, but it showed my generation gap, that to phone her (all the way down in New Jersey) is a long distance call. Yes, of course I have a plan that covers all my calls, and I should make more of them because the plan is geared to my spring hiring call volume that used to cost several hundred dollars a month. But to pick up the phone and call someone – nope, it’s ‘long distance’. It’s also one more thing that email has done for us, because it’s so much easier since I’m at the computer anyway, to dash off a message or forward a joke, because then the person can read and respond at their convenience.
Gee it was nice to hear her voice and visit and gossip for a while. To actually talk to her. Made me wonder why I waited so long to do it, and why I don't do it more often with more people.
I remember having a fight with my father (well, ok, I remember having several fights with my father) about a long distance call. We used to take the cows to shows, and once, I must have been about maybe 11 or 12 or so, we were not sure of the date of one. It then became my responsibility to have known the date, I’m not sure why except it was the Capital District Guernsey Show and I was the one who had the Guernsey cows in the herd (nope, not sure why that was, either). So my father told me to call another farmer who might know when it was. I looked up the number, dialed (remember dialing, not punching buttons?) and somehow got the wrong party. Who of course did not know when this show was. When I hung up, my father said ‘you wasted a call to Philmont’ – now Philmont is about two towns away and maybe the charge would have been a quarter but back then even a quarter was an amount not to waste.
So even now, 55 or so years later, I hesitate to make a long distance call. And we shouldn’t – we should hear the voices of our friends more often. So I am going to try to resolve to call people more. Let’s see what happens.
Oh, p.s., we did somehow find out when the cow show was and go to it and bring home a few ribbons. But cow shows are another story.

Make the most of it

2009-08-12T07:07:00.000-07:00

Started this before the previous one about the reunion:
Oh, dear, been letting this go again – not ignoring you, honest, ‘loyal readers’ (presuming I have any readers, that is), just no inspirations. But I was given one the other day in an message from an ‘e-friend’. We talk online, and the end of her last message was: "by the way the gentleman I was speaking of is the one who lives in Schenectady xxxxxxxx--he is still devestated over his wifes death!! He didn't realize how much he loved her until she wasn't there any more-- sounds like we humans doesn't it!! Guess that is why I always run my hand over Bob's back when I go past him!! WE DO NOT HAVE 20 or 30 years to be together!! SOOO I try to make the most of it!!" **
Got me to thinking, how many people do we run our hand over their back when we go by them? OK, maybe not literally for all, but how many do we let know what they mean to us by a simple little gesture or word, on a regular basis? My list is pretty short. I’ll have to do something about that. And, at the risk of sounding like one of those syrupy emails you get every now and then, you should too.
Life’s short. Run your hand over somebody’s back today.
** this friend is in her later 70’s. I met her through another e-friend several years ago, and was delighted to be able to meet her in person last summer. She had been making other friends, and several male ones, online. Going on two years ago, all of a sudden there were no emails from her, which concerned me, but then we found out that instead of going to her son’s for Thanksgiving as was told, she went to North Carolina to meet one of these men – and they ‘clicked’ and the wedding was about two months later. So I say go for it – it’s never too late to find someone with a back to run your hand over.

THE CLASS OF ’59

2009-08-09T09:09:00.001-07:00

We wore bobby sox and saddle shoes and poodle skirts and pony tails. The guys wore crew cuts and t-shirts under their usually plaid shirts; the ‘tough guys had ‘d-a’ haircuts and turned their shirt collars up. We dressed up with stockings for dances and only wore jeans when we were riding our horses and doing the farm work. Few of us had our own cars, and those who did had a job to pay for it and the gas to drive it with. No drugs, and beer at parties was unheard of.
That’s just some of the memories that the Class of 1959, Ichabod Crane Central School talked about last night at our 50 year class reunion.
We joked that how could it be 50 years when none of us have changed a bit – yeah right. Most have put on some pounds, most have grey hair, a few looked just the same as in school but there were some I would not have recognized without their name tag (complete with yearbook picture).
We talked about teachers – Miss Biser (also know as Miss Bison) who, as one grad put it was a ‘perfect 36’ – 12-12-12, a not so well liked math teacher. Our class advisor and English teacher, Mrs. Van Alstyne (sure can’t remember her maiden name which she was when teaching us), was there, with her husband, Coach Van Alstyne – he helped coach our teams to many basketball championships. There was a letter from another teacher, Miss Johnson. I think she was one of the ones who determined that we did not get a senior trip because the faculty decided none of them wanted to be responsible for what our class might do in someplace like Washington, D.C.
We caught up on what people have been doing. We didn’t formally remember those who are not with us, but I am sure everyone had their private moment of silence.
Prizes were given for who came the furthest (Sally, Florida), most grandchildren (Sandy, 9), high school sweethearts married the longest (Shirley and Chuck, John and Pam (?), 49 and 48 years), who looks the most like they did then (Wally), the person with the job we would least have thought they’d have (Karen, a minister) and so on. I was a little surprised at the number of people who have winter homes in Florida, although I probably shouldn’t have been. Quite a few still live in our area, although we rarely see each other.
Lots of pictures were taken, including the now traditional one outside by a vintage car owned by one classmate (this year’s a ’35 sedan). Lots of laughing. Some ‘we have to get together more often’ and ‘you have to come visit’.
And a lot of memories, but they have to wait because I have to go to work.
A good time was had by all.

Family History

2009-07-19T06:47:00.001-07:00

My daughter noodles around on the computer and finds fascinating things, like a link (or whatever it is) that will shrink photos you want to send to people – so you are not sending a photo that is 6 feet tall and 17 feet wide and will take about a day and a half to download.
She also found a site that you can make up web pages on, geared to a family scrapbook sort of thing and so she went ahead and started one. We have some wonderful scrapbooks and notes from my mother, some outlining our family history and some on events that happened while my sister and I were growing up, and on through the granddaughters’ early years.
I was just looking at that (as an email from a few months ago that she sent me when she started the page, and I am just now getting around to sorting and filing that time frame of my emails). Anyway, she put a couple of pages of our family heritage on the site, and I am going to bore you with some of that today.
The Peduzzi side of it is actually fairly calm, and for all that we say we are Italian, my grandfather was actually born in Gabbio, Switzerland. His family came to America when he was a young boy, they settled in Westchester County. That’ll be another story.
The Hough side, my mother’s family, however, has several ‘claims to fame’. The first of those is that our ancestors Francis Cooke and his son John, were passengers on the Mayflower. Other ancestors Sarah Warren and Allen Breed came to this country in 1623 and 1630.
According to history books, The Revolutionary War Battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought on Breed’s Hill; no idea why the stories changed the location/name.
My grandmother on my mother’s side was named Avis, after another ancestor Avis Swift Keene (Keene was my mother’s middle name), who was the subject of a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier “To Avis Keene”.
Another ancestor, Sarah Bassett, was sentenced as a witch (which may explain some of my personality although I spell it with a ‘b’) in 1692, but was freed 7 months later, happily.
Thanks to a once estranged family member who resurfaced and supplied much family history, my mother was able to trace the descendants of John Cooke to what might be our biggest ‘claim to fame’. John Cooke had three daughters. My mother’s family tree goes back to one of them. Tracing another daughter’s lineage to the same generation, we reach Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the third Cooke daughter’s progeny produced Winston Churchill. And, as my mother wrote, to make a nice tidy package of the whole thing and bring it all back to Kinderhook, Jenny Jerome, Churchill’s mother, lived at Lindenwald (the Martin Van Buren home, now a National Park) when she was a young woman.
Wonder what the Roosevelt’s and the Churchill’s would think to know they’ve got a pretty much broke relative living in a beat-up trailer home? Ah, like they say, you can’t pick your family.
The Hough/Stein (Breed/Bassett/Cooke, etc.) side of our family is having a reunion next month. The Peduzzi’s used to have reunions every year but Lynne was asking the other day and it occurred to me that the last one I recall was the year before my mother died, over 10 years ago. Gee, we should get our butts together, huh? We are down to my generation being the ‘older generation’ on both sides of the family now. I hope I can make it to the one next month, we don’t know that side of the family nearly well enough.

The Beauty and the Beast review

2009-07-12T06:50:00.001-07:00

We are currently doing the show Beauty and the Beast. You know, the Disney movie and Broadway hit. The show for kids. Or as we say, ‘kids of all ages’.
So far two reviewers have been to it, and written their opinions. One pretty much liked the show and was complimentary. The other, well, very honestly, I (and numerous others) couldn’t figure out quite what she was saying. Now, don’t get me wrong, over the years that she’s been coming to review shows, I’ve gotten to be somewhat friendly with this woman; we share some interests such as writing and animals and I commiserated when she lost a beloved cat a few weeks ago. But sometimes I can’t quite figure out what she’s trying to say in her reviews, and naturally we don’t always share the same opinion of the show she’s seen, but I give her the right to not think as highly of each production as we do.
For this one, though, what she basically said, near as I can figure, is that if she was 6 she would have enjoyed the show but since she’s 50+ she didn’t. She took issue with the script, the way the Disney edited the original version of the story, and so on.
Now, Disney is no dope. If they edited a story in a particular way, it was for pretty much one reason – they went with the version that would sell the most tickets. Yep, Disney is in it to make money and they’ve been pretty successful at that. They went with what made the best story for what they were doing, making a movie – and video - and show -that kids would want to see again and again, and that wouldn’t drive the parents nuts seeing/hearing it again and again.
It worked for Disney, big time. I wish I could say it was working for us as big, at least in the audience numbers department, but so far it isn’t – although sales are growing. The kids and adults are loving it. It is good (if I do say so myself). It is very good. We’ve got rolling arches that light up and change colors, the signature rose in a bell jar that flies (gets lowered from the ceiling) in and magically drops its petals, an Enchantress who rises into the air as she casts her spell, costumes that rival the originals, and some damn fine singers and actors making it sound fabulous. We’ve got 30 plus people in the cast, and over half of them singing and dancing on a 14x16’ stage at one time, while dressed as human sized kitchen equipment. And if that isn’t enough to appeal to any age, I don’t know what is.
Yes, the plot’s a little hokey and predictable. But it’s also sweet, touching, funny, and exciting. And it shouldn’t be written off because it’s what Disney did primarily as entertainment for kids. Think about a lot of musicals and they can relate to this one in story line, if not actual presentation.
When I have someone who has been coming to every show for more years than I can remember, someone who I will guess has sat through the movie or show or video with his own kids or grandkids, someone who is not easy to impress but who has appreciation for what he sees on this stage, tell me he thought it is the best show we’ve ever done – I’ll take his comment and think that we’ve done a real good job.
Nope, sorry, Ms. Reviewer – you’re not too old to just take this for what it is – a show meant to do nothing but entertain people all ages old - and I feel bad that you think you are.
You know what I think? I think that no one should ever be too old to enjoy a show like this. I think we all need to keep some of our childhood wonderment, our ability to laugh, to go ‘oooh’ at unexpected special effects, to boo the villain and cheer the hero and just sit back and have a good time with something that is meant to supply only that. Because if we loose those things, we’ve got a pretty dreary future ahead. And I personally don’t want that. Being an adult is tough, dammit, and we need to escape it sometimes.
To all my friends, and any stray people who might read this blog, if you’re close enough to Chatham, come and escape at Beauty and the Beast – if you’re not close enough to come, check the web page: www.machaydntheatre for photos and film clips. It’s awesome.

Happy July 4

2009-07-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

Happy July 4. Happy Birthday, America.
Although to be completely historically correct, the whole Declaration of Independence was not signed on the 4th, it’s as good a day as any to celebrate what those men of vision, bravery, foresight and yes, a little treason, did 233 years ago.
I cannot tell a lie (yeah, me and George Washington), a good deal of my historical perspective of this day comes from the musical 1776. It’s as good a telling of the Continental Congress and the history of our independence as any, with some speculation and fiction thrown in to make it a good musical. It is, in fact, a great musical and it’s hard to watch without getting goosebumps. It’s a good representation of those times and those people, not just the men, but their women as well, personified as Martha Jefferson and Abigail Adams. Martha, Thomas Jefferson’s wife, is brought to Philadelphia to appease Jefferson, after he tells John Adams and Benjamin Franklin that he needs what we might call some ‘R & R’ with his wife – “But I burn, Mr. A.”, he says. “So do I, Mr. J’”, Adams responds, which brings Franklin’s response “You, John?” Franklin is portrayed as the somewhat lusty codger he was, while Adams is more shown to give all his passion to the cause. (This is belied in the songs between he and Abigail, where he asks ‘is my favorite lover’s pillow still firm and fair’ – yes, folks, they were real people with real loves and desires.) But, both Franklin and Adams realize they need to fulfill Jefferson’s need to fulfill theirs and get the declaration written, and so they send for Martha. When questioned as to how Jefferson is so lucky as to have a beautiful young wife such as her (and never mind all the things that he also found aside from her), she replies with the song ‘He Plays The Violin’ – what better reason to fall in love with a man than that he will play the violin for you.
Abigail Adams seems more practical, but then again, she’s a New Englander and they tend to be. She and John have needs for their causes and sing a lively debate over whose is more: he demands that she set all the ladies to looking for saltpeter – not for what they might think but for gunpowder, while she has a more practical request – that he find them pins for their sewing – they sign off one of their series of letters in song with the words that say so much more: “Saltpeter, John” “Pins, Abigail”.
These were the people who forged and formed our country. Thank goodness there are enough of them still around to keep it going.
July 4th memories: picnics with the family, bringing in hay, riding the horse in parades, running around the lawn with sparklers. And once, at my grandparent’s in Tuckahoe, so I couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7 maybe, there was a community picnic I think, in the courtyard of their apartment complex, and all the kids got together and spelled out ‘Happy 4th of July’ with sparklers and then tried to light them fast enough to have it all sparking at once. I think we made it.
Today the closest I get to a holiday is – hm, well, I guess I don’t. I have heard that red, white and blue dessert is planned for supper – no picnic because we couldn’t figure out how to do it around the Saturday Elks supplied supper. And it will be Patriotic Night again in coffee house and that always makes me a little snuffly. I listen to the company sing songs from ‘You’re A Grand Old Flag’ to ‘God Bless The USA’ to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and I think look at those proud young people – there’s hope for us.
Enjoy your 4th, and have a safe one.

Tragic truck accidents

2009-06-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

Two multiple fatal accidents within two days, and all the reporting and comment emphasizes that they were caused by big trucks. As a former big truck driver who has come close to this same situation (come to think of it, I was actually involved in one that fortunately was no where near that devastating but that’s another story), and who has also had a friend killed by an identical one, I’d like to shift some of the blame.
Both the recent wrecks, and the one closer to me, took place when traffic was stopped for previous incidents. If you’ve ever been surprised by a vehicle stopped in front of you when driving your car (or fire truck, ambulance, pick-up, SUV, whatever) you know the drill: “Ohmigawd, that car’s stopped! I gotta take my foot off the gas and put it on the brake - I gotta pull to the left/right to avoid it. I gotta hope my car stops in time!” Most of the time you can avoid a crash. You’re probably usually driving a vehicle that weighs a couple of tons, and even at 60 or more mph, you can stop it fairly soon.
A big truck, fully loaded, can legally weigh up to 80,000 pounds - 40 tons. And even with ‘those great big brakes’ that weight and inertia take at least the length of a football field to stop. Probably more, given the speed limit on the roads where these happened (I-65 in Indiana, Will Rogers Tpk in Oklahoma)is I think 70 mph. Simple physics, folks.
Law enforcement should know this, maybe some of them do. So why, whyinhell, don’t they put a warning car or lights, signs, whatever, at a point before the stopped traffic and yes, keep moving it as the stationary vehicles build up, to warn oncoming traffic? Safety of those working at the scene is a top priority, why isn’t safety of those held hostage by the scene?
How many of us have been on a scene and observed multiple law enforcement personnel standing around playing pocket pool, doing nothing to protect anybody? Surely there’s a better deployment of that resource to perhaps save a life - or five, or nine?
When discussing the incident where my friend was killed (where there was no wreck, traffic was stopped by the troopers because there was a person threatening to jump off a high bridge) with a trooper, I asked why they couldn’t have kept one of the three lanes on the bridge open to let traffic through, she (yes I said she) replied (in the ‘I’m the trooper therefore I know’ tone that we’ve all experienced hearing) ‘Do you know how many accidents that could cause!” Another person in the conversation answered ‘Seems to me what you did, did cause one.’ Hmm-she had no answer to that.
So I want to shift some of the blame to all those people who don’t do anything to protect the innocent bystanders - the stopped traffic. Let people know there’s traffic stopped ahead - can’t be that hard to figure out how. Is it an idea that might save lives? I think so. Is it ever gonna happen? I doubt it. Sigh.
Sympathy to all those involved in those horrific wrecks: the victims and their close ones, the truck drivers who now have to live with what happened under their wheels, and the responders who have to deal with it, hope they have good support teams.

Celebrity deaths

2009-06-27T05:20:00.000-07:00

Ed McMahon died. Farrah Faucett died. Michael Jackson died. All within the past week.
Ed McMahon – to be expected, given his age, and the fact that he had bone cancer.
Farrah Faucett – to be expected, given the fact that she had cancer.
Michael Jackson – to be expected, if indeed it is given the fact, as a news report I am listening to as I write is saying, that he was taking a mixture of prescription (possibly diet and/or painkillers plus who knows what else) and possibly non-prescription drugs.
And who is getting the most press? You gotta know if you’ve been looking and listening for the past few days. Yep, Michael Jackson.
Why, news media, why?
Because he made more headlines in life, and because there is the potential for scandal, and scandal sells newspapers, as the old saying goes.
Yep, if it can be proved that he was taking dangerous drugs that could have caused his cardiac arrest (and they can do it, anyone in EMS has seen this first hand), there’s who knows how many more days of stories that the general public will snap right up.
Never mind the fact that if the others were getting the same press, with the same attention focused on what caused their deaths, it might encourage people to donate to cancer research or to hospices, or encourage more work towards cancer relief.
Never mind that they may have led lives without the questions that Jackson’s raised (the whole pedophile thing, for example, plus the questions about his lightening his skin, altering his nose and so on) and therefore might be more worthy of our attention and adulation.
Never mind that the others were equal talents in their own right.
Michael Jackson is getting the headlines – today’s are that they are moving his body to a mortuary. Well, duh, what else do they do with bodies?
And the world can’t keep turning unless we keep hearing all about it. Yesterday I heard yet another of the ongoing news reports, where the announcer said “….changed the world……”. To which I said “WHAT!? Really!?” and stared at the radio longer than I should have, given I was driving at the time. Michael Jackson changed the world? Puh-leeze, folks – grabbing headlines by questionable behavior doesn’t make you a world-changer, it makes you a headline-grabber. Please save that designation for those who really do something worthwhile to make a difference.
Sigh.
Please remember the others who died this week, and maybe make a donation to the Cancer Society or a local hospice group – they need your help more than Michael Jackson needs more headlines.

Father's Day

2009-06-21T06:55:00.000-07:00

If your father is still with you, see him, call him, talk to him. If not, take a few minutes to remember him.
My father has much to do with who and how I am, I think. For one thing, the ADD that my grandson was diagnosed with, I can trace back through my daughter, myself , and on to my father. He was an intelligent man who only went to the eighth grade in formal schooling, but who never stopped learning. He was a young man during Word War II, but never was in the armed forces, I think he was deferred for flat feet, if I recall correctly. He started working for a company called Pulver Gas & Oil, delivering fuel oil. When the company began to offer oil burner installation and service, he drove to Rochester, NY (a major trip in those pre-NYS Thruway days) and, went to school for a week to learn how to do that. He became the top burner serviceman for the company, and did that until his heart attack in 1959. After that he was put into a desk job and eventually became manager of the company.
Along with the full-time job with Pulver, he started his life’s dream, to have a dairy farm. How did he get that dream, when the only connection with cows he had growing up was the family no doubt having a cow for milk at some time? Who knows. But he learned all he could about cows and farming and away we went, buying a farm (plus some machinery and one cow) when I was 6.
The farm lasted about 13 or 14 years (my sister can correct me on this); when she married a guy who also wanted to dairy farm they ran it for a while, but that ended badly and the cows were sold in the early 1960’s.
He was about 6 months away from retirement when he died.
But, he would never have retired, because there always would have been another project, another something new to learn and try. When he died I said ‘I wish he could have done all the things he wanted to – but then again he never would have because there would have been something new coming along all the time’.
A couple of stories about my father: He was the first man in New York State known to shoot a deer with a bow and arrow since the time of the Indians. He got interested in bow hunting, and went up to Indian Lake (there was no better place to hunt, in his opinion). On the way up, he stopped at a small mountain gas station and got talking with the owner and mentioned the bow hunting. The other man scoffed, and said no one could shoot a deer with a bow and arrow. My father did. He had to chase the deer a little ways through the woods to get to where it dropped, but he did it. On the way home he stopped at the same station, and while the owner was standing by the back of the car putting the gas in, my father just walked around and casually opened the trunk, where the deer lay, causing mush sputtering and ‘How did?’ from the other guy. He was written up in the New York Times for that.
Which leads to another story: most farm machinery is by nature large, awkward and dangerous, some more than other pieces. One of the more dangerous we had for a while was a corn husker. It was two long cylinders with some type of rough covering (I can’t remember exactly what that was, what I am thinking is some sort of metal or wooded or both slats going lengthwise down the rolls, but not sure on that) that were angled down from top to bottom of the machine and turned towards each other. You put ears of corn at the top and the rollers caught the husk and by the time the ear got to the bottom it was stripped, and fell into a container that you had to keep emptying. That was our job, to many, many, many warning not to get our hands near the rollers because the machine would take them off. Well, one night, my father was husking corn, went to push an ear that wasn’t catching into the rollers and his glove got caught and pulled his hand in. He managed to pull it out of the glove, but not before some finger damage was done; he lost the tip of one, had to have skin grafts on another and two or three of them were permanently crooked. His main concern was whether he would still be able to pull the bow string. One of his roommates was a reporter with the NY Times, who said that if he ever shot a deer to let him know, he’d do a story.
My father had his share of mishaps, but he didn’t like to admit it. One of the most famous was the winter night he was spreading the manure and got the tractor and spreader stuck at the far end of our pond – he thought it was frozen enough to drive across and it wasn’t. He walked down to the house, and never said a word, just called a neighbor to come up to give him a hand with ‘something’ and bring a heavy chain. It took some pulling and cussing but they got it out. This was a couple of weeks before Christmas, and for a gift, the neighbor put together a little scene with snow, a mirror for a pond, and a little tractor in the middle of the pond, on a bar of Ivory soap – because ‘it floats’.
When I was 6 or 7, one night I couldn’t sleep, and went downstairs while my parents were still up. He took me on his lap and sang ‘Daddy’s Little Girl’.
When I was about 13, he didn’t like my current ‘boyfriend’ and pretty much said I shouldn’t see him any more, or at least that was how I heard it. I had my bags packed that night to run away from home. Never did it, but my bags were packed.
When I was learning to drive, he tried and tried to teach me how to double clutch to shift our old farm truck. Didn’t work. When I was driving truck, I learned, and thought of him. I asked my mother what he would have thought of my doing that. We agreed that he would have given a little giggle – and wanted to come along on a trip with me.
He died doing one of the things he loved most, hunting in the woods near Indian Lake. Well, technically he died in the hospital the next day, but for all intent and purposes, that was the last thing he was doing. As one of his companions said, that’s about the best last thing you could do, and the prettiest last place you could be.
I still miss him. I have evidence that he’s still around, though, but those are other stories.
To all of you who are, Happy Father’s Day.

Random Things

2009-06-20T06:00:00.001-07:00

I just made a cup of tea. I have an electric pot, it’s intended for making coffee, but since I don’t do that, I took the innards out and just heat water in it. Yes, I have a teakettle, but I have a bad habit of turning the stove on under that and forgetting I did. The electric one shuts itself off. There’s a little round doohickey on the base that I presume is where the connection between pot and plug is. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I put my finger on that. Would I get a shock, or get electrocuted or would nothing happen? Don’t wonder enough to try it, though.
It’s gonna rain here again, later today, the predictions are. We now could do with a few days of non-rain. And it’s been unseasonably cool all month. What happened to the global warming? Yeah, we’ll be complaining the other way when it gets hot, which it is supposed to do next week. Weather predicting fascinates me – high pressure, low pressure – all that is a mystery to me. What made people figure out those things, anyway? ‘Gee, I think I’ll put some of this mercury stuff in a glass tube and make marks on it and then we can tell just how hot or cold it is, because we can’t do with just being hot or cold we have to know how much of each is happening’. The people who invented stuff like that were amazing.
Speaking of rain, I’ve got more leaks in more buildings than I can keep track of. There’s a leak over the stage manager’s desk that has been there for years, and nobody has been able to find exactly where it is coming from. The handyman I had started to shingle the roof, but then he left and the bundles of shingles are sitting up there waiting for the rain to stop long enough for the new guy to finish the job. The former one put a new roof on part of a cast house but he didn’t finish the job so when it rains there’s a waterfall down one wall of one room. There’s a leak in the men’s rest room ceiling, which was being directed into the sink by a judiciously placed pencil hole in the ceiling tile, but that got waterlogged the other day and fell down, so now the leak goes onto the middle of the floor. Oh, and we found a new, good sized one in the rehearsal room ceiling a week or so ago, I think that’s from a big tree limb that fell on the roof during the ice storm. And of course the hole in the other house roof from the tree that fell on it, that we are waiting on the insurance people to get their act together to resolve so it can be fixed. Plus, the first handyman said there was a leak into the kitchen of that house but nobody else has noticed anything so that might not be for real.
Yeah, and the other day when it was raining hard I was in my bathroom and felt drip –drip – drip coming from the corner of the skylight, so I have to get someone up there to check what that’s about.
Anybody want a job fixing roofs?
My good news is that Streetcar is recovered from his abscess and infection. And back to his bratty self. When I took the collar off that he had on to keep him from chewing the stitches on the drain he had in, he licked himself all over for about half an hour straight.
Found the grandson on Facebook the other day. He’s apparently been on it for a long time, but was very surprised that Meema was able to do such modern stuff. Of course, he tried to chat the other night and by the time I figured out that you just click Enter to post your part of the message, he was gone. I admit to being electronically illiterate. Most of the stuff on Facebook I can’t figure out how to do, but it is kinda fun to see what other people post.
Guess I better get my day going here. Have to send a promo mailing to camps, post the first children’s show cast list, two shows, have a meeting with the children’s theatre director, music director and stage manager, coffee house – at least with this being a real short show won’t be too late tonight getting home. And children’s theatre hasn’t started yet, so mornings are a little flexible and not quite as early. Oh, and since I am going to Maine Monday to pick up the Beauty and the Beast costumes, I have to start taking orders for lobster. Because nobody can go to Maine without bringing back lobster.
Everybody have a good weekend!

A memory a day . . . June . . . .

2009-06-07T06:16:00.000-07:00

Just because it’s June, June, June . . . those last days of school, waiting so hard for it to be over and vacation to start. Studying for final exams, would you pass to the next grade and what if you didn’t, sitting in class staring out the window thinking what you could be doing if not ‘trapped’ in school on these lovely days. Walking up the hill from where the bus dropped us off to home, on the dusty dirt road, the smell of the dust, and the wild flowers waving along the side – there were little white ones, on tall stalks, my father called them ‘snaps’ because if you plucked the flower off the stem and snapped it against the back of your hand it would make a very satisfying ‘snap’ or ‘POP’ noise.
There were peony bushes all along the front of our house, and we would pick them to stick in our hair, or maybe bring to a teacher. Oh, they were so pretty, big lush pink and white blooms.
Helping plant the garden, starting to think about which cows to work with over the summer to take to the fair, hoping for an early first cutting of hay even though it would mean all the haying work would start.
Warm days turning hotter, bare feet, shorts, the first day to go swimming! Sitting out on the lawn in the evening, often after dark, with my parents and often other friends or family. It often came before June, but that first evening it was warm enough to sit outside and have a beer.
One year a friend and I rode our horses to the school, we did not have to go if we didn’t have an exam, so we rode over there, quite a ride because we had to plan it on the back roads so as not to be riding along the highway – and we got in trouble (now there’s a surprise!) for riding on the track.
Father’s Day, and my father’s birthday (June 21) were often on the same day, and we would have strawberry shortcake to celebrate those and the end of school.
Graduation. First job away from home.
June is a transition month, bringing us into full summer. And those are some more memories for another time.

A couple of May 31 memories

2009-05-31T07:47:00.001-07:00

A MEMORY A DAY

What was I thinking, that I’d actually get to write one thing a day? I shoulda known better! But here goes a little bit for this – week - - -
May 31. I remember when Memorial Day was on May 31, no matter when Monday was on the calendar. Sometimes I think we’ve lost for making things more convenient, but whatever.
I remember walking and riding in parades. One parade, when I was very young, and it might not even have been Memorial Day, but anyway – it was in Stuyvesant Falls, I’m thinking probably it was the Sunday School classes from the Catholic Church, that’s where we went, and one of my aunt’s was a teacher, she’d have gotten us all into the parade. Anyway, there’s a creek running through the middle of the town, with a fairly high bridge over the little gorge that it goes through after the falls. It was then (might still be) an open grate deck bridge. I was marching along just fine (and I can’t march in step to save my soul, but it didn’t matter then, at least not to me) until I got to that bridge. Got partway across and realized I could look down through the deck and see the rocks and water and falls below me. Well, if I could see them, I could fall through and be there. I froze. No amount of talking got me going and I think someone finally carried me off the bridge. The part I still remember is just standing there looking down at the terrifying sight underneath me, I can still see the rushing water. Still not real fond of that kind of bridge.
When I had horses and we had the 4-H Horse Club, we rode in parades. Our ’uniform’ was blue jeans, white shirts, green bandana and cowboy hat, things everybody had. It was great fun, we would carry the American Flag and a 4-H flag, and always get cheers, of course. Once I had to borrow a hat for some reason, and it was too big – someone took pictures that showed a hat sitting on a set of shoulders.
We must have had picnics, quite possibly at one of the aunt and uncle’s, with lots of cousins there, I remember big picnics, but don’t specifically know if they were for a holiday or the family reunion, we had both.
Spring’s a good time to look ahead, but every day’s a good time to look back, too.
That’s my memory for today, now I gotta get ready for work.

Remember

2009-05-25T04:49:00.001-07:00

Wherever you are, whatever you do, wherever you go
Remember
Those who returned and those who did not,
Remember
What they did for us, what they gave us
Remember
Today and every day you enjoy your life
Remember
Especially today, pause and
Remember
And say "Thank You"

Memorial Day 2009

PS, I have never seen it said better than this man does:
http://ambulancedriverfiles.blogspot.com/

Give me my stuff back!

2009-05-24T08:27:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid, whenever anything couldn’t be found in our house, it was because “Clarence took it”. I have no idea who started it, or how this ‘spirit’ got named Clarence, but if there was something missing or eventually it expanded to whenever something went wrong, it was because of Clarence. Frequently the lost things were found, and it was because Clarence was done with them and brought them back.
Well, I’d like the family to know that Clarence lives. He’s moved into my house. I freely admit that the house is a mess, with a lot of clutter for things to hide in. But there are some things missing that there is no explanation for except Clarence.
My small digital camera. Last I remember having it, was when I was seeing what photos were left on the memory cards, because for reasons known only to the digital world, the whole Kodak photo folder did not transfer over when I got my new computer, and I was asking Laurie (she and husband Carl do my computer work) about retrieving them from the old hard drive. Thought I put it back in the little case in my bag. Went to use it a couple of months later and nope, not there – or anyplace else that I can find.
And, in the past couple of weeks the camera has been joined by several other things. My gold ‘inheritance’ring, for example. Last I remember I took it to NYC to wear during auditions. Went to the box it usually lives in a week or so ago and the box is empty. My last clear recollection is that I took it off one afternoon and put it in my wallet, or maybe I took it off in the hotel shower and put it in my shower bag. Haven’t looked either place because I don’t want to not find it and then try to figure out where it might have gone.
Then there’s my travel drive, had that in my bag, used it either home or at the theatre to transfer some files. Yep, that’s missing, too.
And a nice silver chain that I just bought a week ago for the lovely little mother-grandmother pendant Sara got me several years ago for Mother’s Day. I know I put the chain and the pendant in the little wicker basket on my nightstand where my pocket stuff goes at night. Found the pendant, not the chain.
The latest is a pair of jeans. Now mind you I have a whole lot of jeans, because when I was driving I had a bunch for the truck, but I also had some nicer ones to wear for non-truck times. (OK, it’s weird, what can I say, everybody has their ‘thing’.) These are a sort of brown color and I went to get them to wear today and they are nowhere to be found.
So, Clarence is clearly living in my house. It couldn’t be that I am just not looking hard enough for these things, and somehow am managing to overlook them, or just plain forgot where I put them. I will blame the silver chain on the cats, because Streetcar was trying to play with it just before I put it in the basket; one of them may have snagged it out of the basket and it’s now buried under a rug or under the bed or some such place. The rest – it’s gotta be Clarence.
So, c’mon, Clarence – what do you want with a worn old pair of size 14 brownish jeans? Here’s what I think – you’re trying to push me over the edge. Give me my stuff back!

A MEMORY A DAY

2009-05-21T05:08:00.001-07:00

Okay, okay, so it’s been a week – make that a week and a half +, but here’s a timely one:
People ask how long I’ve been with the theatre.
Since it started in 1969.
They go ‘ooh’ or ‘aah’ or some such and then ask how I got into it.
I got into it the same way I’ve gotten into a lot of things in my life – ass-backwards.
I was not a ‘theatre-geek’ in school, no thoughts of working in theatre, no aspirations except for helping with costumes for the senior play and being in another one in school where I played, as I recall, an old maid who ended up kissing the crusty old batchelor –who was played by someone I would normally not have considered kissing. Oh, la.
So how’d I end up here?
I was 25, separated, with Sara 3 years old, it was summer, I had nothing going on, no hobbies, no place to go, etc., etc. A girl I worked with, and one of my cousins, were very ‘into’ theatre and had been talking about their experiences and it sounded fun. I was working at the newspaper at the time, and Lynne and Linda were coming in with ads and stories, so when one went in about the auditions in Chatham I said ‘what the heck, it’ll take up a little spare time and might be fun’. Little did I know!
I went to the audition, went into the room when it was my turn, and said ‘I can’t sing or dance, I don’t know anything about theatre but I’m a warm body and I can help out’.
A week or so later, Lynne called to see if I could come over and help paint the space that would be dressing rooms. This was where the theatre started, in the barn on the county fairgrounds where they show cows during the fair (Nope, I didn’t show cows in it, they had another tent and then a shed when I was doing that). They were fixing up the two rooms where the 4-H kids slept during the fair (Nope, we didn’t have any rooms to sleep in, we slept in the hay by the cows) and I helped paint them, and did some other odds and ends as directed.
I was there one evening, and happened to walk past Lynne, Linda and Pat, the director that first season, and overheard them talking about an antique birdcage, needed in the first show, “My Fair Lady’. I stopped and said ‘I think my mother has one of those in her antique shop’.
The three of them turned – in unison – and said – in unison – ‘Your mother has an antique shop?’
I said ‘yeah, it’s small, just in her house, but yeah’.
They said – again in unison – ‘How would you like to do props for us?’
I said ‘OK, sure. What are props?’
Seriously had no idea what they were talking about.
Needless to say I found out, and did do props for several summers, then ‘graduated’ to being TD (which I also had no idea what that was, nor did they think to enlighten me), and so on to what I am doing now.
Which includes still doing things for props, like ordering some yesterday – oh, and that’s right, I still have to order the unbreakable glasses today. Don’t forget.
And that’s how I came to be working in theatre.
Don’t try this at home, without guidance from a professional!

MOTHER’S DAY 2009

2009-05-11T04:31:00.001-07:00

For quite a few years now, on Mother’s Day I have gotten my summer family; it has been the day the ‘kids’ arrive for the theatre summer. This year, because of the wonky calendar, they are not coming until this week. Which is just as well because of course there is still a ton of stuff to do before they get here, and that’s been compounded by a tree falling on one of the cast houses Saturday night during a thunderstorm. Our spring has been – well, let me just say that the F***Up Fairy can just go squat over someone else for a while and we won’t mind a bit.
So, my Mother’s Day was a lot of running back and forth to try to line up someone to fix the roof, cover the hole in it and the broken window, get stuff to cover the window myself and then take it back because one of the contractors contacted did show up (the man has my business, he showed up not only on Sunday but on Mother’s Day), as did someone from the tree service to discuss getting a 3-thick, 40 +- foot tall tree away from the house and out of the yard.
The nice early breakfast at the firehouse ended up being a hurried one at 11 a.m., the other plans went down the tubes, but I did get a couple of planned projects done, so it wasn’t a total waste. Then I went to the Dairy Queen for supper and a large Midnight Truffle Blizzard – I fully recommend them as an antidote to a bad day, btw – even though half of it is still in the freezer because I was stuffed!
Speaking of being stuffed, it was my weekend: Friday Jesse and I went over to Kinderhook to Pi Café, a highly recommended place, and ate ourselves into oblivion; Saturday night I went to my sisters for a birthday/Mother’s Day cookout with the nieces and their families – we laughed a lot and everyone took turns holding Mary’s new puppy, my mother would have approved; anyway came home from that with too much pork loin, grilled jerk chicken, grilled sausage and peppers, and the traditional angel food cake with strawberries and ice cream under my belt.
Never did see my daughter yesterday, but we talked on the phone quite a while – actually twice, because she called me by mistake at 1 a.m., about the whole tree falling on the house (since no one could remember that I was at my sister’s, she stood in with me on the scene with Lynne and Monica), and again in the afternoon, in between my running around and projects.
I just finished reading a very sweet tribute to his mother by a blogger I follow (A Day In The Life Of An Ambulance Driver). Apparently they were somewhat estranged, and this tribute chronicled his reversal of that as she spent her last days in an ICU. Well told.
Our last days with our mother were in the hospital, although not ICU. I took her there four days before, when the doctor told her she needed to get further checked out and that she should not drive herself, as she had to his office. We had known she was getting less able to be by herself, and even she had been talking about not being sure she could spend another winter alone in the house that was home for 50 years.
My sister and I, and my cousin who had spent part of his growing up with us were with her. The grandchildren had all been there, and we talked and laughed a lot. My niece Penny and I had to go out into the hall to laugh when the woman in the other bed asked ‘Are you all part of a religious group, come to pray over her?’ She’d have laughed at that too. Not that she wasn’t religious, in her own way. She did her share of saintly things, with the farm work, raising the family (my sister and I and several other ‘strays’ who came and went) and an assortment of outside, community things. She was honored by Eleanor Roosevelt, during an on the site radio broadcast, quite a deal for the early 1950’s, for her work in making an historic school house over into a community hall.
She is honored just about every day in my memory, and I repeat what I said at her funeral: ‘Some people say ‘Oh, no, I’m becoming my mother’ – I say ‘I should be so lucky’.”
Thanks, Mommy.

Cow knows*

2009-05-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

I have been remiss on the ‘Memory A Day’ – now there’s a surprise, me being remiss on something – anyway, this deserves an explanation, and it’s a fun memory.
The company I drove truck for mostly ran a partner operation. That’s two people per truck and one is sleeping while the other is driving so the truck rarely stops for more than enough time to fuel, eat and take a shower, at least in between pick up and delivery points. Time allowed to make that distance, that’s a whole ‘nother story, not this one.
Since I did not have a ready-made partner (friend or ‘significant other’), I got who the company decided might work. Some did and some – not so much. Have I got stories about some of them!
This story, however, involves Winston McTeague. He had been a truck driver since ‘the old days’, and was entrenched in the thinking of another era of the business. He’d had his own truck at one time, but didn’t when I met him, which was in the mid 1990’s. Bill Clinton was the reason he didn’t have his own truck any more, but I never did find out why, except I’m pretty sure Clinton didn’t come into his yard in Maine and drive it away. He was not as obnoxious as some they had paired me with, and we did about four trips together.
He would come out of the blue with some comments, questions and ideas that made me go ‘Huh?’ a fair amount of the time. The truck broke down and we had to lay over in Cheyenne, Wyoming one trip to get it repaired, and Winston decided to do his laundry. The dryer didn’t work well, and when I woke up in the morning the hotel room was draped end to end with his drying clothes, outer and under wear. Hey, living with someone for a couple of weeks at a time in a space smaller than some people’s clothes closets will drop a lot of barriers in a hurry.
Anyway, *Cow knows. We were stopped for breakfast at the Flying J that’s a bit west of Rawlins, Wyoming. In truck stops, you get talking to people around you, to break the boredom of only talking to one person for so many miles, to see what’s going on in someone else’s world and just to be friendly. The guys at the next table were in a discussion about God, and how some people don’t believe in God. Winston joined in with much spirit. As we finished and got up to leave, he said: “These people who don’t believe in God, you just ask them ‘what about cows’”. I think one of the other guys said what I was thinking: ‘Cows? What about cows?’ Winston said, “Cows. Cows were put on earth to serve man and that proves there’s a God.” And having finished the discussion he just walked off, never said another word about it. So there you are. Cows prove there’s a God.
With no intention of being irreverent, I have used the phrases ‘Hand to Cow’ and ‘Cow knows’ since then. After all, we do get a lot from cows.

A Good man

2009-05-03T06:42:00.000-07:00

I went to the memorial service for the father of a friend yesterday. I had briefly met the man once or twice; the friend is Andrew Gmoser (the ‘G’ is silent, and that made for some of the comments at the service) who has been the lighting designer at the theatre for I think this will be 14 years now, and his family has come to visit and see shows a few times.
At the end of the service I was sorry I didn’t know him better. And I’m thinking that’s not a bad way to leave this world, after being in it for 86 years, to have had a life that the comments about it make people wish they’d known you better.
There was much singing, several readings, most of which brought many laughs, a program included stories from friends and family, and towards the end they played ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever, because he enjoyed Sousa’s marches.
He seemed a very Good man (and the G is pronounced in that). Condolences to his family and may his memories support you in the times ahead.
Of course any such event makes one think about one’s own mortality – makes this one think about it anyway. Also makes this one wonder what might be said at such an event for one. I think I’m gonna leave instructions on some music to play and/or sing, and to only tell funny stories – there ought to be enough of those, Cow knows*.

The self-CPR email

2009-04-26T05:57:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been forwarded this one? I have gotten it a few times. The email professes to show you how to do 'self CPR' by coughing vigorously. My big problem with it is that it is an email trying to promote a life-saving technique that may or may not work, as researched by snopes.com. My great big problem with it, however is, that is starts out by saying "It's 5:30 and you're driving home from work. Suddenly you feel pain in your chest and know you're having a heart attack. You know the hospital is only 5 miles away. Should you wait for an ambulance to get you there safely? NO - here's how you can 'do-it-yourself." The email then goes in to 'instructions' on how to do the 'cough CPR'. Well, here's what I think, the answer I gave to the most recent person who sent it to me:
I will add my 2 cents to this, pass along if you see fit:
As someone who has been an EMT for about 30 years now, and who has a CPR save to their credit (as well as many more that did not save), I have a big problem with this. If ever the people who started this rot can be found, I wish there were some criminal charges that could be brought against them, for perhaps contributing to the further medical problems or even death of someone trying this on their own.
As it states in the article, this is a complex procedure that might work, if done correctly, under supervision or specialized training. Do you not think that maybe if it was a universally saving procedure, that when we train for or recertify our CPR cards, we'd be taught it? Never heard of it except on these bogus internet postings. Even under the best of conditions, the constantly being upgraded CPR methods we are taught (that anyone can and should learn, btw) are marginal at best. I was lucky enough to save one person, because he was already in the ambulance, already receiving oxygen and already under the care of two EMT's when he arrested. And the key word there is lucky. One in 30 years. Don't get me wrong, CPR and the now readily accessible in many places defibrillators are livesavers, but facts are facts, everything has to be just right for them to work. That's not usually the case.
Also, this article advocates someone who thinks they are having a heart attack while they are 'driving home from work' to keep driving themself to the hospital. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING!?!?!?!? Do you have any idea of the number of accidents that are caused by people having a medical emergency while they are driving? Well, I don't know numbers either, but it is a lot. By continuing to drive, even the '5 miles to the nearest hospital' claimed in this story, you put not only yourself at risk if you pass out behind the wheel and hit a tree, but all the other innocent people on the road (add sidewalks, etc.) around you. People die daily from incidents such as this.
If you feel ill at all while driving PULL OVER AND STOP THE CAR. Call 911. Wait for help. Try to relax, keep still, take slow deep breaths.
Don't do something that puts others as well as yourself at risk. It's a lot easier to take care of you if we don't have to cut you out of the car first.
CRS224