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.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Christmas 2009
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!
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. . . .
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.
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.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
First Snow
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.
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.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Not a good day . . . .
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.
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.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thanksgiving Day 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
About Freecycling and Dumps
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Sad . . . .
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.
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.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Halloween 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Random stuff
* 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
* 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
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A life lost and Morons
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.
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.
Monday, October 19, 2009
HEART WALK FOR ‘THE PEDUZZI FLU’
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.
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.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Animal Abuse
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?
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?
Monday, September 21, 2009
A beagle named Lemon
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.
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.
Friday, September 11, 2009
September 11
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The Fair
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.
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.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Last day of the theatre season
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.
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.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
“One Year Ago Today”
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
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
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Long Distance Phone Calls
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Make the most of it
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.
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.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
THE CLASS OF ’59
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.
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.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Family History
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.
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.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The Beauty and the Beast review
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.
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.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Happy July 4
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tragic truck accidents
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.
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.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Celebrity deaths
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.
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.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Father's Day
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.
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.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Random Things
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!
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!
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