Berry Blog

Bush's side of the story-

2011-12-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

Charlie Berry's review

Dec 27, 11 · edit

He tells a great complicated story, but like all Presidents gets his chance through this media to tell the story his way, with his slant, his take on history. While I was reading I watched documentaries and read extensively the take others had on the events of his presidency and I often stopped to reflect on opposing viewpoints- such as he economic theories advanced by Millard Friedman of Chicago University ( Shock Doctrine) and the marriage of big gov't and business interests.
In many sections I was very moved and convinced of his sincerety of the interests of all Americans, but after reading so much supplementary material I am left fundamentally skepical. I am following up now with Cheney's " In my Time"
Nonetheless, this is a good read.

Trying to be what I'm not

2011-08-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

I am probably the only member of my family who never cooked professionally ( or served in the military). However cooking seems to obssess me as I sure do like to eat the fancy stuff as well as the home cooking restaurant stuff. I have been fortunate that so many friends in my life could cook, yet I keep working away at attempts.

Nowadays it is harder and harder to do because standing brings a lot of pain to this old back and legs. Got a chair in the kitchen that was not designed for anything in it but the counters and appliances and also serves as the main entrance to the house ( pretty modest but not an apartment and I can still live alone).

My best friend and his wife invited me to their annual summer bash ( pot luck style). I had to come up with something. So I got this recipe from a CA friend and tried it out. 5 hours later I managed to come up with these miniature whoopee pies that are scrumdiddlyumptious. I think my friend came up with the same in an hour with her pre school grandchildren, but I am proud of the product anyway.

After a few failures I came up with this basic cake/ cooky. I split them in two carefully and filled them with butter cream frosting. Wow 3 cups of powdered sugar? I was looking for consistency of size and shape which the recipe I got didn't provide. It told me to drop a spoonful of the cake batter on a flat pan. It all spread and was too thin, and burned too easily. A little trip to duncanhines.com helped that. I used paper baking cups and made half cupcakes. I tried oto touch up the photo without much success. Just trust me they are beautiful and tasty as all get out.

Like little whoopee pies and only a two bite treat. At least I can show my face tomorrow.

No such thing as unskilled labor

2011-08-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

I answered the door and recognized the young man as the one who works at the bottle redemption station I go to. He said he goes home via where I live and by chance had followed me home one day when he got off work, quite by accident. Today he decided to stop and say hello. I mentioned that he looked familiar, more so than our chance meeting at the center, and he addressed me by name. Seems many years ago he was one of the most effectively terrorizing students I ever had in 8 th grade. Totally resistant student, passive aggressive with studies, and that year picked me as his victim. Specialists brought in to mediate between us shared with me and my team that he worshipped his father who did not deserve the adoration- far less of a role model than the kid really wanted. He did everything to please his father who was anti- everything, society, school, etc. but his father continued to belittle him or ignore him completely. The specialists figured he was transferring his disappointment and terrorizing male teachers on his way through the system, taking out his disappointment in his dad on teachers whom he discovered he had considerable clout with legally. He never did a stitch of work, constantly undermined the class, and clinically looked for any mistakes a teacher would make, politically incorrect statements, turning responses to him into meanings that weren't intended, taking words out of context to report to administrators, and skillfully building cases for the teacher abusing him in some way. It was an absolute year of hell- with of course the mother calling the school constantly to complain in his behalf and calling meetings involving slews of specialists with me fundamentally on the hot seat- not the kid. ( I'll tell ya, team teaching is great for that- we have a whole team of teachers - about five at least- who teach the same group of kids, each in heir subject area- and plan small community activities with the team- I loved it. Unlike the old Junior High system, the teacher is not isolated. We've all been attacked by somebody and usually people with big guns and an administration that is lawsuit paranoid as our town budget never includes much insurance money.
So there is this young man standing at my door. I had just seen him a couple days before bringing two big bags of returnables. I had been there a couple times before and always marvelled that he kept a running count of various sizes of bottles and cans, threw them all into their proper receptacles, bagged them at the same time in big bags for the trucks that come and collect from them( which meant he had to have a memory for partially filled bags he was always finishing off, etc. Smooth as hell with no paper and pen, and an enormous amount of returnables running by him all the time, I had to tell him that I really admired him for everything he had to keep track of and how skilled he was at his job. I told him of the Disney quote " Whatever you do, do it so well that people will come to see you do it." and added that I could watch him all day and threw a couple bucks into his nearly empty tip jar.
He was here to thank me for the compliment. He had recognized me as his 8th grade teacher and made no apologies for those days. He just stopped to thank me for the compliment and remind me who he was as I hadn't seemed to recognize who he was. The compliment he said wasn't something the job attracts very often but he was glad someone had recognized what it took to do it and with no apology just dropped " I always thought back then you were an all right guy." ( Jesus, I almost quit teaching over him)
In conclusion, no matter how hard I searched to help him find an interest he could buy into, or uncover a skill he had - damn, he flunked everything- just goes t'show, we all have our own timing for awareness. I don't believe there is such a thing as unskilled labor because I have had to bus tables and wash dishes myself. What a great day this was with him and a great reward for that terrible year.

Between waking and sleep...

2011-01-22T20:55:00.000-08:00

...a name came to me. George Sinclair. "Yes, that was his name", I thought incredulously as once again I dragged myself out of bed and to my recliner to relieve the constant, unyielding back pain. Funny he didn't come to mind during these painful months after all these years. Here I am feeling sorry for myself once again, and George comes to mind.
    He was an old friend of my family for many many years as I grew up. A World War II veteran buddy of my dad's. George was distinctive in or out of a crowd as he had a bizarre curvature of the spine that forced him to walk bent over at a 90º angle from the waist. To even us kids, he had to lift his craggy, wrinkled face with the sharp bony Dickensish chin from it's constant view of the ground to look us children in the eye as he spoke. There was such a sparkle in his eyes through all that pain he must have suffered alone and always a twisted smile that was both frightening while kind and welcoming at the same time. Medical practice hadn't come very far in the 1950s and there were no solutions for this old veteran. Everyone wondered, everyone envied him his beautiful well endowed wife who remained constant to him and clung to him with such love and devotion. Somehow he sired 9-10 kids who all adored him, and his word was law though he never raised a hand to them. We kids always thought it a freakish disgusting picture in our minds, of him having relations with his wife. We didn't even joke about it.
      He must have known our fear and repulsion at the sight of him coming toward us in his strange gait that made his long arms swing ape-like behind his buttocks as he walked, for he always had wrapped hard candies in his pocket for us all. George was a hard worker and though we ever knew what he did, it was enough that he never borrowed money from any of us, who were hardly any better off than he was. He always kept his family fed, well clothed, and in a nice house which his wife kept immaculate while he himself wore grease and oil stained clothes and always smelled to high heaven. In fact during our hard times, he always brought food to the house or hand me down clothes from his kids. And he always had an extra pack of Pall Mall's for my folks. And though a chain smoker, we never saw him take a drink that somehow my father always had to offer.
     I last remember him in my late teens, just before my high school graduation. He was terribly bent over and his hands shook involuntarily. He was dressed up with a sort of old 40s suit coat but still with old work khaki's, baggy and wrinkly, and one of those extra wide ties that hung perpendicularly straight down from his bent body. He could hardly hold the old flip top lighter to the end of his cigarette as the cigarette shook and wobbled up and down in his mouth.
   I don't blog much, but it just seemed important to write him up tonight...to honor him, and be sure I didn't forget him. As freakish as he was then, in my memory he is one of my heroes.

Y'never know...a bum on the street could be Christ"

2010-09-10T15:58:00.000-07:00

I swear ya gotta pay for everything. The waiting time was about half an hour, and there was a little waiting room with plenty of chairs. I was joined by a man about my age, in filthy clothes, unshaven, toothless, and in the mood for company. He was very loud and as luck would have it, and unfortunately for them,well known by everyone trapped in that line. "You look like like a Hathaway. I'm sure you're a Hathaway. By Gawd, I bet I knew your father," he would shout across the floor. No one could escape this man as he yelled out family names, listed all the relatives and relatives of relatives, whom he went to school with in the 50s, what businesses they ran and he worked in, etc. People were gracious but in the time I was there, no fewer than 5-6 different small towns were represented there by customers in line and he knew the families of almost everyone in that line. He was so loud, and brazen, everyone had to acknowledge him. Quite frankly it was amazing. He knew husbands, lovers wives, children and grandchildren of all these people. He was loud, embarrassing, unkempt, and absolutely transparent, open, and guileless.

I recalled to myself a Sunday School lesson as a kid when the teacher read a story that Christ might be a bum on the street....you never know. And though everything about this guy annoyed me, his working memory of everyone in five towns impressed me about what kind of man he must have been in his time. He obviously just loved people and he was a walking geneaology of the whole area. Thinking I might have been forgotten, I got in line again if only to be out of reach of this man who turned to me on every contact and continued his folklore and mention again that had turned cold enough outside today to freeze your rice balls. I was told politely they were working on my order and it would be just a couple more minutes. I took one look behind me and said "perhaps I'll wander a bit then." the clerk smiled and said gently..." sorry about that". The girl knew what it meant...I would lose my place in line and being new, no one would be likely to recognize me and call me to the front if my order was ready. I wandered a bit, but it paid off. I found Over the Moon fat Free chocolate milk someone had told me helps peole with leg problems, and got a gallon of it. Yay! Another argument for synchronicity. But as I got back, sure enough over a dozen people were in line ahead of me. Woe is me. By now my back and legs are ready to totally give out and the old man was still there. I went through the whole dozen people, got to the front, and my order was ready and in fact had been ready almost as soon as I had opted to wander a little. ( and I'm thinking, yet you saw me wait through this whole dozen people when I came back knowing that. I'm sure you could hear my teeth gritting across the store as I smiled and thanked them for the extra special treatment to a customer coming from another pharmacy.
As I finally eased with great relief into my car seat and drove away, I thought that I had indeed met the Christ and wasn't sharp enough at the time to know it. I smiled hinking I was glad i stopped n the way out and said some stupid thing like..." Take care of yourself, and the next time we meet we will both know enough to wear our longjohns."

"Amish Grace" and Forgiveness

2010-08-08T17:14:00.000-07:00

"Amish Grace" premiered tonight (2010) about the shooting of the girls in the Amish school in Penns. fairly recently. Very touching movie...I'm blubbering before we're hardly even into it. Last fall when Lin took her trip through the area she stopped by as her camping ground was nearby. She met a number of Amish people, among them the school teacher now in the new school that they built so as to spare the children going back to that memory ever again. She saw the site of the old school but the old school was razed, understandably. Because Lin is especially sensitive and respectful in many ways ( though a fierce fighter in school and annoying as hell), they allowed her to visit the new school ( not in session) and to take some pictures which Lin has not published in any way of any of the Amish people or their village..not even the bakery where the lady kept bringing pies to her camper because she was a lone traveler.
Keep your eye out for it...I'm sure it will be repeated many times. It also happens to be pretty sensitive to the lifestyle and thinking of the Amish people, and the struggles they had individually and as a community over forgiving the killer and offering help to his wife and family in her grief. I'm sitting here blubbering over a whole community of people being able to do this when I have never been on a committee in my life that ever came to a concensus about anything.
People do strange things. For years we have had a flower fund to send ailing or grieving colleagues in hard times. I understand that this year people withheld their contribution as usual because they feel they always acknowledge everyone individually anyway. Toward the end of the year a rather aggressive teacher went round pressuring everybody who hadn't contributed this year to hand in their contributions. Many people were angry because the money was diverted to pay for a farewell party for an unpopular principal and not for someone sick, in the hospital, or grieving over a loss.
Whatever people thought of her, it was a loss for her. This school was the biggest project of her life and whether or not she was good at it, she threw herself into it with gusto. Had I been on the staff, I wouldn't have resented my contribution being used for such an occasion.

2009 documentary...relevant and powerful today

2010-07-21T17:16:00.000-07:00

"The Most Dangerous Man in America:Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers"( avail @ Netflix)
We were blatantly lied to by 5 American Presidents about our involvement with Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg who worked inside the Pentagon was tried as a traitor to U. S. security for giving top secret papers to the New York Times when he felt he was living and promoting a lie for the government that was needlessly costing million of lives.
For many of us the question of his stealing the Top Secret McNamara history on the on going Vietnam War is still moot. Ellsberg was in on the planning of war strategies and heard in person the behind the scenes conclusions of top administrators and how they publicly stated the opposite in public statements. Going to Vietam himself and volunteering to go on a night patrol, he discovered that the master plan he was reading was bogus...there were no night patrols at the time. In fact the very attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin was proven to be false and began the first U. S Aggression on Nam. That we were guilty of genocide and torture as we pretend to condemn other nations for is evident. To think that we are behaving in defense of our country is false- it is so often not on behalf of the country but in behalf of the ambition of politicians is more evident.
I was so young then and a peace marcher. I am stunned by how little I knew and how dangerous the battle was between the government and the news media. I still find it hard to decide what was right with that issue. The government ( then Nixon administration) had good arguments for protecting high priority documents for the good of the country, but so did the media have rights. The influence of both powers on the general public is astounding.
And just as today, once again, apathy of the public is still a shocking reality that we are continually deceived and what's more, when we find out, still do nothing, and let the big guys duke it out while we complain about the ineffectiveness of Congress and the bias of the media.
I tend to think the original motives of the alleged Tea Party was honest vigil and protest about the dishonesty in government and that the media didn't help much attaching influential figures to the party who don't represent the original intent of the grass roots group.
Such a powerfu documentary that brings my youth back to haunt me and remind me of how little I actually knew when it was all going on. I wish, even if you think you know, that you will watch this film

My Turn in the Cycle: How did I get here?

2010-06-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

Earlier tonight I felt my mind and heart all scrambled yet in another sense I felt I had moved wisely over the latest batch of confusion. I had the task to get my car inspected. So much juggling and so much need for someone to help me with it all. Seems more and more of my life is dependent on asking for help. I am really appreciating the years I both loved and helped older people.For years I talked about the Hoopers whom I helped in their later years...and what social climbers they were and con artists. Boy, I am sure in their shoes now. I knew and understood what they did then and why they had to do it. In the end they had almost no friends but me. They just didn't make it in the world they tried so hard to be a part of. Only in their obituaries did they have the credentials that were so important to them. A list of memberships that in life had done nothing for them and they had done nothing for.

And I think of Clint, the old vaudevillian, living on social security in an SRO in NYC and how he shuffled down the hall to share a can of tomato soup and some crackers with me and Ed, young enough to be thriving but down on our luck. I loved him so dearly. He had a front room in the hotel with two big windows overlooking upper Broadway and watched the streets like an angel patron of the displaced. He would signal the street vendors and prostitutes when the police were coming. They would rush up to his room for sanctuary then hit the streets again for another night's hard work in a world of outcasts.

In common, those elders in old age had their own survival strategies and dealt with pain every day of their lives from the infirmities of age. It was probably the pain I didn't fully appreciate as their young protege. Now I'm there. I look back on them with great respect and admiration for their courage, their ability to try and remain cheerful and vital to the lives of people around them when they probably wanted to withdraw to their beds and pray they would be granted the grace to die in their sleep when it just became unbearable. I think of how patiently they listened to me about all the petty complaints I had about my life and had words of love and sympathy for me instead of putting me in my place compared to their own sufferings.

I loved my old people, but now I revere them for things I didn't know existed for them. I am one of them now. and I am so grateful for the young people who treat me with deference and respect.

My garden/my friends

2010-06-18T18:26:00.000-07:00

Just a couple of picts to update from last time. The foxglove doesn't show up well, but daily the clusters of spires spread and blossom.Silver bells and cockle shells. The bridal veil, one of four, is becoming my opening of the season.The bare spots will be filled in with dahlias, tall ones who have already peeked through the soil. But so have a half dozen little circles-evidence of those pesky chipmunks that find so many of my favorite plants tasty.
Of all the gardens over the years, I am most thankful for this one. With my back such a mess I couldn't do it this year...and good friends showed up with tools, gifts, compost, and mulch, strong backs, and put in hours weeding, hoeing ( that's usually more my thing, heh heh), raking, shoveling, planting and getting it all in shape for one more season. I'm a happy dude.

And here

And here is my young friend Vinnie I've known since his high school days, through his college years, through his adventurous Appalachian trail hike, his Peace Corps stint in Ecuador,and a five year relationship. Seems we have never finished a conversation. He looks, sounds and feels a more mature, wise, mellowed, voice of reason. I am honored that he has given me a few nights of long conversations and delightful company before he resumes his journey. He is one of three brothers who never cease to intrigue and refresh me .

Garden Season and Seasoned friends

2010-05-30T17:03:00.000-07:00

Because of deteriorating back and leg problems,copd, etc- the afflictions of an aging man who had a good time in life, I was very depressed this year about my gardens. I felt I would never be able to do them again and my property would be like a landscape version of Dorian Gray. The rider mower wouldn't work, the push mower wouldn't work, and Lord knows my legs and back wouldn't work.

So as we leapt into spring this year, the weeds and grass were tickling my testicles and I didn't find one bit of it funny. Fail not oh faith of my fathers. Mark, my robust healthy young neighbor showed up with the right tools and attacked my 300ft bank of dying sticks of roses, and later even raked them. He attacked the mower problem and we at least got the push mower going. He chopped out saplings blocking my porch view of the highway and all the young eye candy passing by on a hot afternoon. He has put countless hours into my yard, and visited with me to keep me company. ( I was always careful to honor my elders as a young man in hopes that I too would always have young, vital people around me), He is my wish come true.

As well, my good buddy Rick and his wife, whom I swear can do anything, began coming over. She can do in two hours what now takes me a week...and she went after my weeds and hopeless gardens once so promising. Rick got the rider mower going. Maureen provided invaluable weeding, planting, composting, mulching with Rick and in one day, new life came to my yard. to be honest, when everybody left I went inside and had a good catharsis...what I call cry for happy. I am such a rich man. Here the photos don't do justice as the ground beds are really black as night, beautiful, well defined tho my camera doesn't capture the crispness. but because of generous friends, I will have a wonderful summer showcase again. I'll try to remember to show you again later in the season.

There is really just too much to get it all in, but here are a few plots. I wish my camera could get the true colors for you because it is just stunningly contrasted in colors and there is a whole lot I just didn't get more picts of.
Thanks to my beloved friends to whom I am just immeasurably grateful.Those afternoon cool ones on the lawn or the deck are going to be very rich this year. Gardeners among you will know how full of joy I feel I am truly blessed.

How tough can it be?

2010-04-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

In the early 60s, I made the trip from South Jersey to Maine in a broken down lemon of a used VW with no heat and with blankets spread across my lap, nothing on the radio but static, and not sure I had enough money for gas and tolls ,no AAA, and no phone numbers to call in an emergency. Nobody knew I was coming and no one knew that I left.

Things are apparently still tough:
A friend called me in tears tonight. Among her other problems, her son is driving home alone from College( one of those specially designed colleges for kids who don't want to go to college) in PA. She and the grandparents are worried and call him every few minutes on his cell phone ( while he's driving of course). He has a GPS they are hooked into with their computers to follow him every step of the way. He has a CB going , has a dvd player and his ipod, snacks and a pocketful of money and has his own car. He has made the trip at least 4 times before. For three hours of a" life sucks testimony", including "nobody appreciates what I do for them- my son as well", I heard "hold on, it's him" every five minutes. I heard his side of the conversation then got a recap again from his Mom again.
Now I ask myself, When does this tough life ever get better? Such a hard life. Suffer suffer suffer, and then you die.

Celeb Apprentice 2010 #1

2010-03-15T18:51:00.000-07:00

I still do not like Donald Trump very much, but this season I have two new targets. His son and daughter are asps in a gold lined wicker basket. I really feel contempt for them- smug, arrogant and even downright sneaky. I think even Daddy has more admirable qualities than they do.
    Somehow Carol seemed the right choice for elimination only because I'm felt the other ladies didn't see her backbiting them on camera while giving them all a smiling face. She thought they would regret this down the road, but I felt, down the road when they heard the bitchy stuff she said about them, they would be glad of their reluctant forced choice. Yet under the circumstances, I thought she was a wee bit victimized. She was not the project manager and she did act admirably as a follower.
      In my area we didn't see the result- they ran the board room segment twice which I thought was a technique or strategy but it was apparently some kind of tech error.We didn't see Cyndi return to the boardroom with her two choices for the firing aspect. I saw it today on NBC on line. I didn't expect Lauper to be fired anymore than I expected Joan Rivers to be fired no matter what finger were pointed at them as they are both big catches for the show I did gain some respect points for Cyndi in this role, and I of course expect Sharon to turn out to be champion in so many ways before this is done.
   Among the men I didn't really see a leader emerge except I'm guessing the chef, though he stood back in this personality wise, may turn out to be more of a sane man than the others. I sort of thought this round was almost shit luck for the men.
After Trump's request for Joan Rivers to visit both teams, I couldn't imagine any of them not at least intuiting that she was there as his eyes. At least on what we were shown, none of them made comment to this effect.
    It seemed in previous seasons, someone being a bitch or a goldbricker seemed to come out very early on. This bunch really rallied in a positive way on both teams. I'm thinking Goldberg the wrestler might turn out to be difficult as he wasn't concerned about the team leader's health except in terms of the value of his contribution in the competition. Not hard to believe in a physical man whose life is used to overcoming physical challenges including not feeling well, but will this turn into a man without compassion when it's needed?
I guess what I don't like about the show is the expectation that these stars will pull on their influences among rich people. I so admired Jesse for not tapping Sandra Bullock when he was competing, but hell he goofed on other aspects of his leadership abilities. ie: control freak, non communicator, stubborn, and uncooperative if he wasn't running the show. I felt for Cyndi Lauper when she admittted she just doesn't hang out with rich people.
This project really had that unique problem of big donators being left on the sidewalk. I mean, there was no graceful way to handle that. I thought of take out order provisions, but neither team introduced that idea. Those of us who have been in the business know how hard it is to turn over tables and still keep the customer satisfied.

I surely enjoyed the first round. Can't wait now. I like this batch so much better than previous batches.

Must see "The Stoning of Soraya M" based on true story

2010-03-10T19:36:00.000-08:00

Yes , it actually happened in 1986 right after the Ayotollah Kohmeini took power. An Iranian/French reporter "happened" on the event on his way out of the country when his vehicle broke down in a small remote town in Iran.
Dramatized, not a documentary, it is gut wrenching powerful expose about an innocent woman in Iran whose husband want done with her for a 14 year old and sets about to separate from his wife with lies and accusatons of infidelity of which he himself along with spousal abuse is blatantly guilty. The reporter pulled into the story and who eventually got it to the outside world is played by the actor who portrayed Christ in the Passion of Christ.
The innocence of the woman and the plotting of her husband and the corrupt little village officials and the manipulating of people to construct the false charges of infidelity will remind you of jobs you've worked at, of your own local politics, because it is so convincingly done step by step. It shows how people with a little power are infinitely clever at manipulating people into positions they don't want to be in, and are forced to protect themselves and loved ones to condemn another. Those of us who think we would be honorable with such choices are often tricked into untenable positions such as the man she was accused of sleeping with who knew nothing of the games of more clever men and said as much, but was used nonetheless.
Everything leads to the actual stoning and I wondered ifI would actually witness it. I was not prepared for the slow ritual of the process where they began with the father, then the husband, her sons, her alleged lover, having to cast the first stones before all the participants join in. She is bound and buried in the dirt, standing, up to her hips.
I guarantee you each step of the way will enrage you because you will see how we ourselves often compromise unfair practices in our own workplaces and in our politics and government to get by in our daily lives. We don't think we have enough evidence to confront a person of authority in a case of bias, yet that same person of authority knows exactly how to take bits of information and build a case to condemn someone they want out of the way.
I really feel this is a movie that needs to be seen for more than just the outrage of the stoning, but for the subtle ways we all succumb to manipulators.

Burton's IMAX Alice In Wonderland

2010-03-07T11:49:00.000-08:00

Debbie and I went...on a glorious Spring day. Kind of odd being inside waiting over an hour in a queue when we could walk outside in the sun without jackets. But no matter how old and shriveled I get, I still like eye candy and sized up everyone in the queue from 1-10 in seductibility. A lucky afternoon, in my mind there were a lot of shoes parked under my bed.
If you've seen Avatar, however, save your money. After all the time I spent researching this movie, this topic, Lewis Carroll and his photographer buddy Dodgeson, both Debbie and I had all we could do to keep awake. After a few special effects where we both grabbed in the air at vines and cables and butterflies out over the audience, we kept dozing off...sitting kind of side saddle so the other didn't notice we were sleeping in class kind of thing. Since I treated, she didn't want me to be hurt because it wasn't holding her interest, and I felt the same way because I was the one who pushed to see the movie.
There were hundreds of us paying $14 a ticket having stood in line for over an hour, and one family of little kids screeching and crying all the way through it. Something unfair about that. That mother didn't have the sense to check out movie content before she took them?
Anyway, the colors in the movie were considerably subdued, even dark, and sometimes too "brown tinted, like old tintype photos, that style used to give the illusion of age. The bright colors were rare and thus the muddled colors somewhat detracted from the 3D effect. One quickly adjusted to the medium and it was far from the rousing pit of the stomach in my throat sensation of Avatar. For such a monumental project and such a huge effort put in by everyone, I was disappointed in the results for me, for the artists, for the production crew that worked so hard on it. It was as if Burton had his writer create a story, and he went to Lewis Carroll and borrowed the characters to use them in.
In spite of a stellar cast, the characters were , well, flat. The Red Queen reminded me too much of Bette Davis and even her "Off with her head" was so clipped Davis style, it was not effective. It needed to be more roundhouse bawdy. Johnny Depp was frankly boring and his giggle reminded me of a better movie where Mozart had the identical giggle seducing young ladies under the banquet table.
('member that?). The White Queen however totally amused me with her affected mannerisms and hand gestures moving about- the only live character to pull off something original and hilariously funny.The only inane behavior really came from the March hare. totally cartoon, but the only character delightfully outrageous and full of zest and bi polar energy hurling teacups and pastries about.( yes, we ducked) Perhaps we are too used to Depp playing bizarre roles to be surprised by his antics anymore-as outrageous as he tried to be, he simply wasn't in this context.
I guess my validation of my taste if not my manhood, came with the rush to the men's room and the long line of men standing against the wall waiting for the few toilets available for such a huge theater. The tiled walls echoed our voices as we uncharacteristically at movie men's rooms gushed with opinions to anyone in the room. In this case we somehow felt we had locker room rights because it was a family movie that failed us when we could have been watching NBA or NHL or( right) cleaning the garage. They really grumbled their disappointment, like pre-pubescent boys having wished probably more than their kids and family for a good fantasy. "Well,we can't compare it to Avatar...Avatar is in a class by itself". "Well what the hell was that for the whole family at 14 bucks a pop?" " I dunno, I fell asleep. Couldn't keep awake. It just went on and on and on." "I clapped at the end...not because it was good, but just because it was finally the end." "At least we are walking out into daylight and not dark and slushy snow with a suck drive home."
To boot, Burton couldn't resist the Oz tradition of returning to the engagement party to watch Alice politely assert her new self to all the guests so we could re-connect the real folks to the dream world folks. ( most of us are pretty dumb that way and need it pointed out) Boring! I guess it would have been really monumental if we could return to Richard III ( off with his head reference), Disraeli...#1 ass kisser to the Queen, and the War of the Roses, or the mathematical principles incorporated, etc. or even the Alice Liddell scandal, but even I know that's too much to ask.
We could only find Burger King to dine at, cause Debbie eats fish- and I didn't plan lunch well for some place better. We just took what we could find along famous Rt 1. God bless my doctor, but there's nothing for me like a double bacon cheeseburger and fries. Once a year Doc? Gimme a break! I skipped the vanilla shake this time...c'mon.
We didn't get popcorn after all, but the cute couple next to us did. The guy was especially cute, so I grabbed their popcorn and held it in my lap. What an appetite that guy had!
Love you folks...save your money for Hubble, coming up. Now that looks spectacular!

IMAX-birthday-Alice

2010-03-04T18:27:00.000-08:00

Follow up to email conversations with Joy:

Since our little chats on Stephen Frye I have been engrossed in anything he does....like a new discovery for me. I noticed he will be playing the Chesire Cat in Alice in Wonderland Debbie and I are going to see at IMAX Saturday. I checked out his web page over the past hour:
http://www.stephenfry.com/ which I got after reading a lot on Wikipedia. There's apparently a lot of stuff I can get on Netflix that he's done. I'd like to see where he screwed up and wrote an apology to the Polish people for his unintended offensive remarks on Auschwitz. He certainly was brilliant in his talk at the little square mile.

I was first interested in why the Tim Burton movie version is so controversial ( "but", they say, " in a positive way"). Only once before did I ever delve into Lewis Carroll very seriously and had forgotten the whole Alice Liddle and sisters controversy back in the mid 19th century and the rampant rumors that he spent his time in the company of pedophiles if not one himself- attracted particularly to little girls until they reached adolescence whereupon he abandon his tie with them. In Burton's version Alice comes back at the age of 19 having forgotten her previous visit 12 years before to Wonderland. Burton concentrates mostly on the first version of Alice but introduces characters of the second book we are more familiar with via the Disney version from Alice Through a Looking Glass.
I realize that Wikepedia has to be taken with a good dose of caution, but sometimes it is a good source to clear up basics whereas other sources can get complex for an old man with an addled mind. I have reviewed his incredible references in the books to mathematical principles, politics, the psychology and sexual development ( through symbols later interpreted by others) of little very pre-pubescent girls, of symbols not really generally known in his day as he was just pre Freudian in time, of his brilliant anagrams and puns, his political references ( War of the Roses and the two families, Richard III and "off with his head") and his alleged portrayal of Disraeli etc. His works have never been out of print since 1866- amazing.
Back to the basic question I had: what's so controversial about this movie... and it seemed mostly to be about the technical aspects. The 3-D became boring and lack luster after a while ( happens with all of them so far), that characters and aspects of both books were combined, that it shoots for a well defined storyline ( fighting the Jabberwock owned by the Red Queen) rather than the traditional disjointed series of unlikely events, but overall the controversy doesn't really emerge clearly about this movie. Something I missed I guess. Basically a researcher, some woman they got hold of, studied the expected behavior of young ladies of Victorian times, and made this Alice ( who is 19) just the opposite. To me that makes sense in a fantasy/dream world anyway.

Can't help but thinking of the profound effect a little rowboat trip up the river with the three little girls is so much like taking my kids for a ride around the lake after school- Open to suspicion if suspicion is sought. I don't think there will be any such discussions about me 150 years from now. I'm not that good at double entendre.
I plan to be fascinating for Debbie on this trip but hopefully not pedantic. Truth be known, I will probably bore her to death with updates on former students we shared. We plan lunch loosely on what we can find in the area or as Debbie says..dine elegantly on theater popcorn.( My lap or yours?) We might stop at our favorite giant bookstore ( lord I can't pull names of places and people and titles, anymore until my fellow conversant is long gone- then all the names pop in again), but if the truth be known, I'm not going to have the energy to do more than the one big event...getting there and getting home. After I sleep for two days, I will be 68, and far too run down for today's norm at that age. What the hell, it's been a helluva run.

The Mouse War of '10

2010-01-14T17:56:00.000-08:00

It's not a fantasy of mine. After four yesterday, and after cleaning out cupboards all day long ( with admittedly more to go), this little feller showed up in my kitchen when I went out for a snack. My shoes mind you, my SHOES!
The battle continues. There are peanut butter laden traps all around the kitchen now. I watched this one for a long long time as he skirted the edges looking for a way to climb from the floor to the counter before he explored my shoes and decided to take a nap on the edge of the heel of my shoe. I nudged him with a yardstick which really didn't seem to bother him. He actually stood up on hind legs and took hold of the yardstick with his front legs- checking it out. A couple more nudges and he stepped down and onto the trap. I would guess he is in astral travel now heading for that big dry food cupboard in the sky.
The war tally now is about $60 ---> Mice 5 mice--->Berry. There is a bill before Congress now to increase war funding. Additional troops and supplies due in tomorrow.

Of Mice and Men:

2010-01-13T13:38:00.000-08:00

I saw this little blip of light flit across my fireplace. At first I thought it a reflection of light from my giant living room windows, but it happened again in a flash and this time it disappeared into a brick air vent. the thought passed. Later at WalMart's I accidentally stopped while looking for something else, and found myself right in front of mousetraps.
A woosy about harming living things, I realize there are some we can not safely co-exist with. I picked up a package of traps, new plastic ones, camehome and set one in front of the fireplace and the other in my spice cupboard. ( Yeah, awful thought isn't it? But I had found a box with little shreds of paper around it and was suspicious anyway) Before I finished showering to go out to dinner, I caught one. It was alive to my horror. I know my rabies shots are up to date, but I didn't want to risk getting bitten. Luckily a friend called and suggested I put it in a jar. Only it's front legs were caught and broken. I couldn't stand the thought of it suffocating nor throwing it out in the snow so I put nail holes in the cover. I swear it had a frightened" Help me" look on its face. "Click". What was that? I checked the cupboard and there was another. Really dead. So into the jar it went. On a double check the wounded one was now dead too.
Funny how one's feelings can change so fast. "Hmmm...",I thought to myself, with Cinderella images flashing through my mind along with images of Ernest Borgnine in Rats, this could go on for a spell. How am I doing to deal with this." I left them both in the jar with an extra hard twist on the cover and went to dinner. When I came home, there was another in the cupboard trap. I dispatched him to the jar, a touch more easily this time. It has been 18 hours now and no more caught. But I have that lingering horror that they must still be out there and they're not making me a pretty dress.

I can't bear to use poison. Its just anaethema to me. Has anybody else out there dealth with this? Surely those of you in the country have had to. Ms Moon, surely your house is not air tight. I'm not about to adopt cat again..ever in my life. It took all my strength not to adopt an abandoned puppy last week. Guess I just keep waiting.

Writer Mark LaFlamme freezes for global warming

2010-01-07T10:59:00.001-08:00

I know Mark and follow his column and writings. He is a bit of a daredevil, but at the very least a risk taker and a lot of fun around these parts.

clipped from www.youtube.com

Joy @Babble On turned me on to this:

2010-01-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

You're The Poisonwood Bible!

by Barbara Kingsolver

Deeply rooted in a religious background, you have since become both
isolated and schizophrenic. You were naively sure that your actions would help people,
but of course they were resistant to your message and ultimately disaster ensued. Since
you can see so many sides of the same issue, you are both wise beyond your years and
tied to worthless perspectives. If you were a type of waffle, it would be
Belgian.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
I'll be damned if I knew how they got it from those questions, and I'll be damned if I don't have to agree with the results.

You're Romeo and Juliet!

by William Shakespeare

While people think of you as the most romantic person alive,
you may actually be more prone to offer practical warnings of what happens when
people follow their feelings too severely. You do believe that love has the power
to conquer the sharpest divides, no matter the cost. It's just not entirely clear
whether that cost is worth it. People spend a great deal of time referencing the
things you've said or even singing about you. Nevertheless, they are most likely
to describe you as "star-crossed".

Take the Book Quiz II
at the Blue Pyramid.

Dacre Stoker,

2010-01-04T08:16:00.000-08:00

The great grandson of Bram Stoker who published the original Dracula in 1897, has published a sequel to Gramp's book called Dracula the Un-dead which his grandfather initially wanted to title his. No question that Dacre over a century later can get away with a lot more gore than Grandpappy. He keeps a lot of the old Stoker traditions in there, the riderless carriage, the ability to use multiple forms, the superhuman strength and sticks to the turn of the century, but doesn't seem to add to the newly created mythology of our age. I must give credit that he co-authored with Ian Holt. copyright 2009. So far it's about saving the survivors of Dracula's shenanigans.

There will be no Christianity today:

2010-01-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

As you know Maine is inundated with snow during a three day storm. As I wait for rescue, I am watching the no services and church activity cancellations on the bottom of my screen. I haven't seen a church repeated for hours and hours now. I haven't seen one temple or mosque closing...not that they didn't, but I just didn't see them as the denominations flew by on the screen.

Love-definition by 4-8yr olds(shared email)

2009-12-31T08:22:00.000-08:00

> Love - the kid's definition
>
>
> What Love means to a 4-8 year old . . .
> Slow down for three minutes to read this. It is so worth it. Touching
> words
> from the mouth of babes.
>
> A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to
> 8 year-olds, 'What does love mean?'
>
> The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have
> imagined. See what you think:
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint
> her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time,
> even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love.'
>
> Rebecca- age 8
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You
> just know that your name is safe in their mouth.'
>
> Billy - age 4
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne

> and they go out and smell each other.'
>
> Karl - age 5
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French
> fries
> without making them give you any of theirs..'
>
> Chrissy - age 6
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is what makes you smile when you're tired.'
>
> Terri - age 4
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip
> before
> giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.'
>
> Danny - age 7
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of
> kissing,
> you
> still want to be together and you talk more.
> My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss'
>
> Emily - age 8
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening
> presents and listen.'
>
> Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend
> who
> you
> hate,'
>
> Nikka - age 6
> (we need a few million more Nikka's on this planet)
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it
> everyday.'
>
> Noelle - age 7
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still
> friends
> even after they know each other so well.'
>
> Tommy - age 6
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked
> at
> all
> the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling.
>
> He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore.'
>
> Cindy - age 8
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'My mommy loves me more than anybody
> You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.'
>
> Clare - age 6
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.'
>
> Elaine-age 5
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is
> handsomer than Robert Redford.'
>
> Chris - age 7
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone

> all day.'
>
> Mary Ann - age 4
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old
> clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.'
>
> Lauren - age 4
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little
> stars
> come
> out of you.' (what an image)
>
> Karen - age 7
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn't think
> it's gross..'
>
> Mark - age 6
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> 'You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you
> mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.'
>
> Jessica - age 8
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> And the final one -- Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked
> about a contest he was asked to judge.
>
> The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.
>
> The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an
> elderly
> gentleman who had recently lost his wife.
>
> Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's
> yard,
> climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.
>
> When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy
> said,
>
> 'Nothing, I just helped him cry'

Direction in consciousness..

2009-12-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

2012 is much touted as the apocalypse but Dan Brown as well as many others tell us the origin of the word is about the end of the old and the beginning of the new. Brown tells us in his fiction and his legitimate research, that a new idea is coming , that the ancient knowledge will be revealed.
I've been thinking.It has long been my belief that sin is not about morality at all but things like missing the point though we keep aiming for the truth; it's about learned behaviors and responses to life passed on generation after generation, about misunderstanding as we "learn" fear. Sin is simply "Missing the Mark" which is the title of a book I read many years ago. In a simplistic church, one might say that God's favored angel was not really cast out as much as he(it) felt separateness from God ( or all things). As I read Dan Brown's latest novel, "The Lost Symbol" some concepts were gelilng in my mind that for centuries we have moved toward a unity in hopes of returning to a sense of unity and belonging.

I wonder if we are moving into an age where we begin to move away from what that need to resolve separateness has produced...a society built on hierarchies, authorities, social attitudes, those who are "in" and those who are pariahs etc. We may be moving toward keeping the lessons of that era(organizing ideas) and now moving toward diversity as the natural divine creative process ( the expanding universe)and recognizing that though God may have taken on human form to show us the way...it is a sign of our own godliness that each of us is godlike and are only taking on temporary human form as well. That God concept is not a singular entity but made up of all our consciousnesses collectively. Maybe in 2012 we may read all the ancient texts and find emphasis on different phrases than we have heretofore de emphasized because our goal was a return to singularity. Our previous pursuits have all been aimed, whether we like to admit it or not has been in the quest for survival through the quest for powerl.
We live in an expanding universe...yet we pursue the garden of Eden. Maybe that's going to turn around.

Magic of Christmas 09

2009-12-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

My friends treated me to the 30th annual Portland Symphony Orchestra Christmas show at beautiful Merrill Auditorium at the stately City Hall here in Maine. In this photo it is impossible to fathom the stage- something like 3 stories high containing the 7th largest pipe organ in the world ( Kotschmar) which we all enjoy in the public singing of carols. Huge sound you can feel in your feet.
We had most of the traditional features including the Sleigh ride where the orchestra hams it up with hats, sound effects, and good laughs santas, a "reader's digest" version of Christmas Carol featuring Joseph Cassidy( Jean valJean, Les Miserables; Freddy in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels- on Broadway) and the incredible Figures of Speech Puppets- giant puppets 8-20 ft high.

Of course there were some old songs I dreaded but was determined to sit out for the better pieces. We got an early intermission when the fire alarm went off and we were all evacuated out onto the sub zero temperature street. the entire first floor has only two exits. I was reminded of all the years as a school teacher telling the kids to walk quickly and quietly and NO TALKING. but I managed to keep my mouth shut. That set us back 40 minutes but the audience was all the more cheerful once back inside. Usherettes were wrapped in silver metallic blankets and claim they really work. There were lots of good lines "If you don't have your tickets you have to pay again"

"You all know where your seats are"

"Second time around all seats are first come first served. No elbowing please."

and to my chagrin we opened again with "Chet's Nuts Roasting on an Open Fire." I dont' know where they got the dancers but they were simply terrible. The lead male dancer was an enormous overweight kid, very effeminate to say the least whose leaps were downright embarrassing. They doubled as stagehands rolling Scrooge's door and bed on and off stage. Lots of their dancing was posing in vignettes and all rather pointless. The choreographer had a handful of gestures that involved much waving of the arms. The chorus ( 148 voices) was rather impressive once they got over their initial phrase and got their balls on.

All in all it was a very special night cherished in all it's good and bad by we locals. I am very grateful for my gift from Rick and Maureen, who also started us off with a fantastic homemade Chicken Pot Pie, salad, and delightful Xmas candies, cookies, and wine( laughingly served as the best of the boxed) before we took the trip down to Portland. I must say Portland Symphony Orchestra always produces the best of music and is as competent as any I've heard. And we all agree we love our new maaestro, young handsome and personable Robert Moody. He's very very good so I wonder how long we'll have him.

I love you, Rick and Maureen. Thanks again.

Reducing X-mas

2009-12-15T08:09:00.000-08:00

Reading Ms Moon's blog hasme both thinking and laughing over an eccentric aunt with bizarre decorating taste. At about my age now, my grandparents squeaking by on a policeman's pension of the 1950s continually complained about Christmas. As I grew older their trees got smaller- they were only for me anyway. In 6th grade I came to their beloved cold water flat and saw their final concessions to Christmas. It was a ceramic tree on top of the old 12" Emerson B&W console Picture-Rahdio, best of it's kind in those days. I never saw a show on it really because my hard of hearing grandfather kept shouting " What the hell is that shit about anyway. Can you make any sense out it? I can't make any sense out the goddamned thing." I patiently shouted the plot to him but got lost myself as the story progressed while I was explaining it to him. The response always wound up the same " You like that shit? It's stupid. They're goddamned fools. Shut it off." They weren't stories to Gramps, they were real and anybody who thought like that oughter be shot.

Behind Gramps was a table with a beautiful old Tiffany lamp. I always wondered what happened to that. On that table was a neat pile of opened Christmas cards and beside that was a box of fresh cards and a roll of stamps. They never read the cards ( unless one was from me) or the notes in them. When the mailman came Nana fetched it faithfully. Nana did everything faithfully. Grampa would yell out "ANOTHER GODDAMNED CARD? WHO'S IT FROM? I DON'T CARE NOTHIN' ABOUT THEM. WHAT THE HELL DID THEY SEND A CARD FOR? WELL EMMA, GET OUT A CARD SIGN MY NAME AND SEND IT TO THEM.
Emma dutifully got out a card addressed it and asked "Do you want to send them a note dear?"
"NO, FUCK EM. JUST SEND IT." Now Nana and I knew he was pleased as punch to hear from whomever it was. And now you know.

It pretty much baffled me that presents didn't wait until Christmas morning either. They were torn open as soon as they came and piled, wrappings and all, on the table until they could figure out who to pass them on to. Grampa had no use for clothes and sweaters as he still wore remnants of his uniform and the same button up sweaters he'd had for years. If they were cigars he smoked them. If it was another "fucking box of ribbon candy" it came to me until the day he found out I was gay and banned all sweets from the house to make me straight again. If they were embroidered hankies for Grandma, they were folded neatly and never seen again. Too good to use, dontcha know?

You'd never know to hear it from me, but that old couple were loved all over the state. He was a notary public and justice of the peace and married all the poor people in town. He prided himself on keeping records on how many of 'em stuck because he hitched them. For three months out of the year he did income taxes for two bucks and grandmother played gracious hostess in the middle room in her giant full bodied apron with all the doodads in her big pockets while people sat hour after hour for their turn. She knew all the gossip in town. Yep, and as I told you once before, all my homework was notarized because I got to play with all his official stamps and seals by the hour.
Toward the end, all the little bulb inserts in the ceramic tree had been lost and just the inside light shone through the holes. But as long as "Bud" was coming home, it went back out on the tv if only for a day.
My gawd, look at me. I'm all choked up! Funny what you remember isn't it?

So I watched them sleep:

2009-12-14T17:54:00.000-08:00

Oh well now I don't think I could sleep with anyone. It's hard enough by myself. But I have read and seen so much about little ones smothered to death by their parent(s) that it makes me wonder. I wonder if others of you can remember as little ones sleeping with adults?

My mother and I had to sleep together a lot when I was little, because in the old days people only had one guest room in the farmhouse with a big double bed or a pull out couch with a huge bar poking at the middle of your back. I hated it. A small woman, she was still bigger than me, and I spent the night holding on to the side of the bed to keep from rolling into her. She didn't particularly like my clinging. But I remember that cold room and the ticking of the alarm clock long into the night. I used to slip out of bed and stare out the window at the blinking light in the small town square. and welcomed the rare sound of a car passing in the night. I could hear it and waited for the headlights to come into view on the highway- all the way through to the arrival of the car and long after it passed in the night.-recalling the image.( tail lights on a car are still my favorite shade of red) And I watched and listened to her sleep. I waited forever for her to get up in the morning so we could go downstairs where life was only slightly more interesting. ( children are to be seen and not heard).

Later when I belonged to a bigger family, I shared a bed with two brothers. who wet the bed well into their early teens, and that was a smelly bummer. So I watched them sleep. Heavier then them, I held on the side of the bed so I wouldn't slide into them.

For long time as a child, I had a small bed beside my grandparents. Gram used to take me up every night to say my "now I lay me down to sleep"s and listen to my long list of "and God bless...". In the morning I was allowed to crawl into bed between them where I could smell my grandfather's aging Mennons shaving lotion and the denture breath of both of them. But they were comfy and fat and warm. And I didn't roll anywhere because both sides were balanced with their massive weight. I got a very nice second and dreamless sleep out of that. Nobody had to wake me from my noisy nightmares.
In preteens, an assortment of sailors, uncles etc stayed overnight woith my gregarious family when I had my own bed. Once again, I was always clinging to the edge of my side of the bed, holding on so I won't roll into them. I was pretty aware by then that such an accident was very desirable but knew enough that it would be more than the hand of God that would rebuff me. I knew what was taboo and began my struggle with why is it that what I desire is taboo, and what others desired seemed to be okay because what they desired was not me...and that is what's right in the eyes of God. So I watched them sleep.
In Scouting I learned a little more about manipulating whom to share a tent with, or whom to befriend camping out. I learned that counselors loved a willing boy to sleep beside on the cold ground but knowing the taboo I stayed awake both wishing something would happen and dreading it. It was after all taboo, but cuddling for warmth was acceptable. I lay awake all night for the slightest touch of affection and trembling over whether it was real or imagined. ( as an aside...Scouting for years has been the best breeding ground for homosexuality bar even the sacristy of the Roman Catholic Church in organized society). At any rate, I was awake and alert, all night.

Comes real relationships as an adult. The worst sleep I ever had was with lovers. I swear I was always the more horny of us in every situation. Talk about holding on the to the edge of the bed. I never slept...always waiting for the opportunity of pleasure again. My biggest growing up lesson in life was when my constant lover asked that we sleep in separate beds and eventually different rooms.My lover never meant to hurt me and approached this subject with the most delicate of care. It was a long time before I could admit, I was getting a good night's sleep and enormous freedom of movement in the deal. Not to mention learning not to keep track of the other person, leaving a light on, or leaving the tv on as long as I wanted...or even....well never mind....Yes you guessed it...crackers in bed.
In me old age, I find I used most of the bed during the night. Now one good turn doesn't get most of the blankets, it gets most of the cold air...where did they all go? I certainly never smothered sleeping with another as a tot, a child, a young man, or a teen....I've sure slept with a lot of people for a lot of reasons.but I can assure you, after all my observations, I would never take a job watching someone sleep in a lab. I've had my share of sleepless nights.
On the other hand...nothing could be as dark as---

In the meantime, I like to imagine I can still do this:

A most unusual day...in every way...like SUNSHINE...wtf?

2009-12-03T14:23:00.000-08:00

It was pouring flooding rain...the crik below swelled from 2 ft to 14 or more.( It's okay, it's 30 ft drop from my house). for the first time in 26 years here I saw white caps in it. I was scheduled to switch services and the T/W cable guy showed up on time. I now have T/W cable, digital phone, and Roadrunner- all of which are a sizeable upgrade. I started to investigate but wound up glued to the local arts program you may already know and have been back to my beloved classical music vids all day. What an incredible improvement over the old Adelphia I had years ago.
Then the sun came out....suddenly like an epiphany. I rushed outside and started on more Xmas lights while the weather was so good. Just a T-shirt in December in Maine. It's looking a lot better than the picts I posted last night. a trip to the store and back confirmed that. No treadmill for the old ticker today- I was so out of breath, panting and paining...I knew I got what I needed.
Then inside to watch a movie I thought I wasn't going to watch: Bruno. What a disturbing movie...at least while I watched it. I actually ran it again before I could handle what he was doing. I mean he has Andy Kaufman beat all to hell. Actually it was quite courageous. I see now why my students like Bruno. The specials including the deleted scenes were actually better than what he did in the movie.I'm quite glad, on reflection, that I got over my preconceived notions about the film

"Flamboyantly gay Austrian television reporter Bruno (Sacha Baron Cohen) stirs up trouble with unsuspecting guests and large crowds through brutally frank interviews and painfully hilarious public displays of homosexuality. An incredible chameleon who completely disappears behind his flaming alter ego, the bold Baron Cohen serves up nonstop laughs in this comedy by successfully rubbing people the wrong way." - Netflix

If he was shocking, so were the very real people he interviewed. One minister "There must be a place for Black people because in the Noahmic passages, He gathered two of every kind".

He goes for the most dangerous confrontations imaginable...like trhing to convert from homoseuxal to straight...how he puts these people on. At a gun show he speaks of guns metaphorically"if you could shoot your load all over somebody's face, would you do it?" It took the gun show me a while before they drew the parallel and shut him off. And he took it to the limit!

I dunno what I feel at the end of this experience. He is one ballsy sunuvabitch.

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
- Thomas H. Huxley

Faking Xmas-just for fun

2009-12-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

The sun shines so I go in the cellar and start going through the Xmas lights old process.That takes the sunny day. Pouring rain, I go out and start stringing lights. Sun shines next day and I have to go shopping for light replacements, etc. Next day it rains, I string more lights outside. Today, it's sunshine. I have to replace mailbox bashed in a driveby last night. Police cruiser pulls up...apparently neighbors called in. We have a nice chat for an hour in my driveway. So I go inside and start pulling out more lights. Oh damn, Time/Warner comes tomorrow and we do the big switch over. I have to get a router for my internet wireless. Back to town. Home again. Friend calls who just installed a hot water heater monitor for me that doesn't work for all the time he put into it. Another friend calls...needs a quickie cash loan. More games with store and ATM and running around. My the days are short in December! It's dark. So I took a couple photos to show you how far I got with the lights.

Now we all know it's impossible to take good night picures with a camera you didn't spend $500 on so my colors don't really show here. I assure you in person it is brilliant and impressive. But what the hell, I'm faking Christmas anyway.

More on Jeff in the Antarctic

2009-11-30T21:40:00.000-08:00

My young friend Jeff is now well ensconced in his job in Antarctica. He has a blog now and I spent most of my evening reading it, and since he only shows one post at a time I had to keep hitting older post. They say there are no mentors after 42, but Jeff proves me wrong. At 31 or so, he has lived and worked on almost all the continents. some of you might enjoy following his latest venture on the darkest. lightest most intemperate climate on earth. Here is his link:

http://unraveltravelogue.blogspot.com/

I am sure he would like feedback, but it would not be because he is lacking in friends. He has people who love him all over the world.

A Family in Perfect Accord on T-day

2009-11-29T13:37:00.000-08:00

Everyone at our Thanksgiving was pro same-sex marriage. That would be me, Chris, Mark, and a unanimous yea vote from 7 happy beagles. Of course the latter contingent will say okay to anybody who has food to offer, so we weren't entirely secure about inviting a Catholic or a fundamentalist anything. (A fundamentalist by definition is anyone who has stopped listening.) So it was just the three of us, entirely in accord about gender issues and people just loving each other.
When I came over with my camera a little gift bag, I was hugged warmly and given a drink and a seat. My boyiz, ( I call em my boyiz cuz I feel like their yiddisha uncle), brined a turkey, cuz that's what everybody does in 2009 and had at least a dozen other dishes going. I alone discovered on a refill that my favorite dish was in the refrig- nothing pleases me more than a good can of jellied cranberry sauce.

Why did I bring gifts? simple, I could never match the wonderful cooking of my boyiz. They make food a joy. They make leftovers a joy. ( and they make my drink a joy!) I'm the old guy so I tell stories. I don't know if they hear them or not...they are pretty busy and there are constant corrections and directions to dogs underfoot waiting impatiently for a bite of mercy. Something is bound to drop to the floor. I remained politely in my seat. I hate looking as desperate as a dog at a feast being prepared. I can's say the same for my natal brothers who for as long as I can remember had to snatch/steal little chunks from the ham or turkey just to claim credit that it didn't go to the table perfect. Of course my parents were such that we kids were never sure the meal would make it to the table- but that's another drinking story.
Finally everything is ready and laid out buffet style- simple, comfortable, out of the kettle onto the plate. It was sheer delight. Finally we are all at the table together and the dogs are at our feet amazingly on the spots where their meals are served in bowls on the floor. Yes there is a feeding order and they all know it and its paws off the other bowls until each gets his, and he knows what order he'll get it. when the bowls are empty it is permissable to go lick anything that might have been left in the other bowls. We enjoy our meal, my hosts very polite not mentioning that I didn't get any sweet potatoes which they simply adore. We laugh, we redesign the house in better days to come, make great plans. Then we separate again...Chris, exhausted and stuffed to the living room and Mark as always to the kitchen sink. He's the clean as you go cook, and Chris is the tornado cook. But Mark really knows how to put away those leftovers and get them all into the refrig or my take home packet.
Then they hitched up the toboggan to the dogs and whisked me away home where I confess I slept like a log most of the early evening.

I love my boyiz. They are down to earth, always open, welcoming and warm. I treasure that they regard me with such respect. I love their humor, such as the evening I gave them lottery tickets and said if they won, I was taking them back. Chris faked a win, I snatched the ticket, and he said : " Charlie you are very very old. You wouldn't want me to wrench that ticket from your dead hand."

Old Kottabych

2009-11-28T18:13:00.000-08:00

1956 Russian Fantasy movie.
In 1956 Krushev began his public anti Stalin defamations of his crimes and murders revealing that Stalin had more than 5,000 officers executed and other crimes against humanity. This film won the Lenin award and I can see why. A boy finds a bottle at the ocean, uncorks it and releases the classic genie who becomes his servant as a reward for his freedom. His first magic is helping the boy through his geography classes where he feeds him information that is antiquated."of course the world is not round because all the water would drop off and people would die of thirst." They boy is humilated in school. Next the genie gets rid of an annoying friend by sending him far to the East where he is sold into slavery. To rescue him they fly a magic carpet( alas full of moths and holes) against old aerial photos of Russia. The old genie means well, but he is no doubt an outdated capitalist. And like a good little Russian, the boy continually is cursed with fifts of riches and power that only cause him misery. He has everything turned over "to the people" in some way. EVentually the boy decides he must be reeducated. Sound familiar? But the boy has learned his lesson and decides to do things the old fashioned way...study for tests, etc. In his re-education the genie provides a ball for every player in a soccer game, and the boy explains to him why there are rules in the game. It comes down to a new agreement betweenthe boy and the genie...the genie is not to do anything without consulting him. Comes the principle...combine work with studies.
(a little note: all the women of the film were husky, broad, stout ladies- even the ones representing glamour)
I am reminded again of a professor who once taught..the more two cultures fight each other the more alike they become. At the end of this movie, I saw little difference in the American propaganda than the Russian. Inthe special features the lead actor talked of his trade and how necesary it was to understand the culture to understand his art and for a fleeting moment I thought...maybe because I wanted to, that he was very guarded in his statements. I mean even in this country, we had the rise of McCarthyism and the infamous blacklist- not so different from the political terror of our counterparts.

Pie Sale down t'the libary:

2009-11-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I showed you my pies. I balanced them on the car seat today, and stopped by my neighbor's where Chris had a fancy apple pie to go along. He had cut out oak leaves and used them as a pie crust top. Really artsy. At the library the elders among the Deperate Housewives had gathered and were spreading the pies out on our one big library table and any small tables and benches they could muster up. No sooner did I get in the door with my two contributions, than a shriek went up from Sandy, my favorite librarian in all the world. "Charlie, where in the world have you been? I was so worried about you!" I couldn't get the pies down fast enough before we locked into a warm bear hug. I went back and got Chris's beauty and ladies were waiting to take it. One little old dear couldn't resist the pie and hoped she could claim it when zero hour opened the sale. " I guess it's yours dear. You've had your fingers all over it already" snapped a matronly desperate housewife. "Oh really, do you really think I could have it?"

Sandy had thought I had had to move into a home or with relatives knowing I had some sickness back along. We shared news, helped stack pies, and in general renewed our strange bond. If you know Sandy, you know that the real goodies are not in the library. She invites you out to her SUV, swings wide the doors, and there are boxes and boxes of treasures, first editions, subjects only a history buff such as myself would give a hoot about. I keep some of the books a lifetime it seems, but never a call from Sandy. She knows they will be returned, safe and sound. Then we go in and get warm or cool, as the case may be and just talk books and history. She's learning to speak Scottish..the original, so she can read these rare books she's found and donated to a very grateful Scottish National Library. One set she loaned me were incredibly old with only one other copy left in the world. She found them in an old estate sale and picked them up for 10 bucks or so and wrote to Scotland right away. Gold leaf edging no less and a history of every sovereign of Scotland with beautiful plates of their portraits.
It was a grand Thanksgiving before Thanksgiving.

The library proper is all crowded onto the first floor with old carved oak shelving and one huge old wide library table. Upstairs are mountains and boxes of books. An autistic young man comes in once a week, goes right to the shelf, right to the book, and right to the page, sits down and starts reading out loud. Of course he has picked the raunchiest,most sexually explicit passages in the raciest book in the library. None of the librarians can handle him, but Sandy can. If there's no one there at the time, no one minds, but she has to stop him when adults come in with children. It is too funny for words as nobody knows if he knows exactly what he's doing or not. The joint has slews of small town characters like that.
You need to go to a sale like that to see how many many people frequent the place with Sandy's motherly guidance. For an hour there was a steady stream of cars flowing in and out with countless pies. "We'll start at 12" Sandy remarks, " and the last one will be gone by 1. Three at the very latest, but we'll sell them all."

Clean as you go or tornado cook?

2009-11-24T15:07:00.000-08:00

I have several teacher friends who on holidays go home from school and starting at 9 pm, make a dozen pies for their family holidays and think absolutely nothing of it. I am not a great cook but I have never killed anyone or put them in the hospital, but when Bog Hoot Library called and asked that I make a pie for their T-day sale, I was instantly thrown into the jaws of fear.
      I did it last year, and made key lime pies. I was tempted to go back and check their trash or the river running by it for those pie tins but instead tried to put it out of my mind. I never borrow books out of the library. I borrow them out of the back of the librarian's SUV. She is a real book hound and serves me up the best of her finds in first editions etc. So I know she didn't put my pies in there-no room. Anyway, last year I brought my pies in to the tiny library- probably one of the best in small town libraries, and saw the works of art displayed in great numbers on church tables. My first impression, having just made two of my very first pies ever, was how they crimp the edges. The ladies in attendance gave me a wonderful lesson in edging pie crusts...all of which I forgot this year.
     I read up on recipes and finally picked a couple, printed them out and spent off and on hours reading the steps over and over. I went to the store a few times to make sure I had absolutely everything. I had a sleepless night last night. Today I stalled until afternoon then attacked the project.
For ages I haven't had a drink in the afternoon, but today I figured I needed a stiffener. I began....certain I had all the steps and all the ingredients. The drink inspired me to turn it into a tv cooking show. Aware that I would be on camera, I got out all my little custard cups and doodads and lined them up for the camera. I measured out everything I would need, and with a homemade CBS eye on the hood of my stove, I began my show.
Mix mix...stir stir, add add, push the spices and brown sugar through a seive...fold in, fold out. Oh, the Pillsbury premade pie shell- no way am I going through the rolling shit. I poured my mixture into the pie shell, after struggling with the edge crimping- terribly crude...I copped out with a fork imprint pattern. All very good but not a pyrex dish...I'd never get it back. Into an aluminum pie dish. When I lifted it, it spilled across the shelf, the floor, and the oven. But for 50 minutes it smelled great. then it didn't smell so great. Damn, neighbor's advice...aluminum foil on the pie edges. Bottom of oven burning off excess spills. Time for refill on the drink.
Finally it was ready to come out of the oven. simply beautiful. Simply gorgeous. Can I get it to the rack? I did it..and started on the not bake but chill recipe for peanut butter pie. It wasn't coming out smooth and the color wasn't coming out any smoother. I took a break. Went back when my arm was rested from all this....none of the recipes I find call for an electric mixer...but I got one sitting around waiting for one of those recipes. Everything is fold fold fold. Finally the two pies are done. Just two lousy pies. TWO LOUSY pies. But I am proud of them, proud of myself, and thankful for friends who drive me to do things I know better than to try given my own choices in life.
   So you Mothers everywhere who do this enormous task PLUS all the other things you spread the bountiful table with, my Hat is off to you. Happy thanksgiving.

I am all cleaned up. I was every step of the way. And when I hit the last step, I only had to sit my ass down and finish the quart of Allen's coffee brandy.

Agog on the Blog

2009-11-04T06:56:00.000-08:00

Maine repealed the law granting the right to same sex marriage by 53% to 47% with 40% of the vote turning out. We lost in our sister city Lewiston but won in Auburn where I taught so many years. Our Governor swears to continue the fight for same sex rights. He is not really in favor of same sex marriage but says he realizes that constitutionally it is the right thing to do.
"Out" in his own way, the chairman from out of state who ran the California Prop 8 successful campaign and had the audacity to criticize our team for funding our campaign with out of state funds, appeared in public for the first time in a victory speech, proud to have led the opposition in this one.
My facebook is loaded with comments from disheartened former students, parents and friends upset with our state. Had it not been revealed by tough newsmen, we wouldn't even have known his company was leading the ad campaign to fight to repeal the law. They tried to keep it secret. Ironically they didn't get their money's worth. Promised a fresh campaign designed for the region, they got exactly the same scripted ads that were run in California, but with different actors. I'm sure he'll appear in your state soon so there's no need to tell you about the misinformation in the ads. You'll see for yourself.

I feel so badly for all the students out there who come from non traditional families, and for all those who live unhappily in traditional families but would rather follow their own hearts, and for all those whose otherwise in-law families ban them from hospital visitations, funerals, and even the apartments they shared with loved ones. And I feel badly for those who cannot break from tradition to do what is right.

Equal rights in Maine

2009-11-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

so far 52% against rights, and 48% will have to live to fight another day 11:30 Pm, 3. 5 hours after polls closed

I WAS FIRST TODAY

2009-11-03T10:50:00.000-08:00

I was the first in line today for the voting at the old high school gym. While waiting for the town clerk to yell out the official opening of the polls ( yeah, she actually does that with a stopwatch), I bought a calendar from the local Historical Society now ensconced in the town's oldest church ( 1847). It included a brief history of the town and it is no joke that it was once known as Bog Hoot (1700s). It was also known as Bog Falls and Jericho. It stood under standing water much of the year and over many many years they hauled in gravel and dirt to raise up the center of town- a massive project for a small town made up of the poor and disenfranchised....and all by horse and wagons.
Of course we had a better turn out than usual because of the equal rights issue which most of you know about. Ads lately have emphasized making it safe and supportive for all kinds of families...not just families of one man/one woman marriages. The opposition has claimed that we raised a lot of money from out of state when in fact their whole campaign is run by the same out of state corporation that ran the Prop 8 campaign so successfully.
Another issue was whether or not to allow a casino in my area. I voted it down for years because the American Natives were turned down so many times. Then Whites got one passed farther upstate and on a ballot a couple years later, the Native Americans were turned down again. This time I voted for it since this tiny town supports a thriving porn store so why should we be hypocritical about it all?
Yet another big issue is the Tabor law which we have voted down continually year after year which is promoted from the outside. It caps gov't spending which might make us happy on the state level, but if limited, would make our schools and social services suffer more than they are now. It really sounds good, but it is full of pratfalls. For example, once again we are over budget and 200 million in cuts must be applied. Of course they hit the schools and public services first. The law would not allow them to recover those funds without a referendum vote. We just aren't going to get the vote out for every raise in taxes the state has to put up. Property taxes locally will escalate out of sight.
We had 7 referendums in all and only one elected position to resolve. I must admit I voted for someone I don't know and hope he's a raving lunatic who shakes up the town fathers just by being there.

Aging Americans Ripoff Policy

2009-10-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to drop my membership in A.A.R.P. I have been a member since I qualified so many years ago. So far they haven't beat my home or auto insurance rates. I haven't had a need for their term life insurance nor anything else they have offered. I cant remember when I pulled out my card for a discount that was honored other than what I would be given as a senior citizen anyway. In my history with them, I haven't seen them effective in any lobbying interest that do anything for me. Maybe when they were younger and smaller they did some good work but I don't hear about it anymore.
Though my membership isn't expensive, I can use the money for at least three glasses of house wine per year when I go to retirement luncheons.
I can do without the mountains of promotional junk mail trying to get my money with the best deals I could ever find, and don't. And I could do without the constant phone calls and emails for me to see a representative touring in my area. I just don't want to get out of my sweats and take a shower to see another salesperson just like every other salesperson. In fact I'm finding them downright invasive lately.
Anybody else feel the same or differently?

Between a rock and a hard place kind of quote:

2009-10-02T19:53:00.000-07:00

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

I can't count the number of times I have awakened in the dark hours and wrestled with the angst of where I would prefer to be...back in that awful dream or here awake in the awful reality of what I have to face when I get up.
In the glory of the golden years, sometimes the ailments of muscle cramps, arthritis, etc transfer between worlds, and its just better to be awake where I can do something about it. Have you ever experienced knowing in the dream that if you could just wake up, you could take care of the pain while in the dream you can't move to escape it?
Credit where credit is due, I have really begun to enjoy wonderful dreams lately. My super powers have returned like when I was a kid and the jumping as high as I could in the awake hours, transferred to jumping high enough to fly in a dream. But I still don't like to catch myself in a dream, clinging to a ledge 100 stories up on a skyscraper. WTF is that anyway?

Antarctic Taxi

2009-09-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

My young friend , Jeff Alexander, has been all over the world at 31-mostly working as a guide for an international touring company which provides outdoor life in all kids of environments. His latest adventure will be to drive this "taxi" the next four months between the airport and the famous McClellan Research institute in Antarctica. He just posted this picture of the vehicle on Facebook. To give you an idea of its size, the tires are 5 ft in diameter.

Australian Dust Storm

2009-09-26T06:55:00.000-07:00

"By the early afternoon of September 24, 2009, when the same satellite acquired this image, the thick dust that had covered the eastern shore of Australia previouly, stretched in a long plume from northern Queensland to New Zealand. This image shows the northern portion of the plume off the coast of Queenland. The tan dust is densely concentrated in a compact plume that mirrors the coastline. The gem-like blue-green Great Barrier Reef is visible beneath the plume near the top of the image where the tan dust mingles with gray-brown smoke from wildfires." ( from NASA)
I don't know about you, but this just astounds me in the light of global warming and prophesies of doom.

Last family institute:

2009-09-25T12:33:00.000-07:00

I went for my 7 week haircut today, right on schedule. After 25 years, I'm accepted as a fellow old timer and allowed to share in the stories. I am aware however that I will always be "from away". Russ's Rusty Razor, the locals call it behind his back- is a one room shop with one chair, and a few scattered plastic chairs around with a big picture window looking out onto the town square. the walls are covered with a mounted front page newspaper NIXON RESIGNS, and countless mounted fish, deer heads, and assundry trophies. Pictures of sons, grandsons, and great grandsons all holding prize fish catches line the barber's counter top. Around the room are the daily papers, and a grand assortment of hunting and fishing magazines. No telling how far back they go. The place is made and designed for "hanging out" and swapping yarns.
Arta was in the chair when I got there. He's 92- has smooth skin without a wrinkle in it and pure white hair and plenty of it. Russ was in the middle of a joke, as always."Three Black men wuz discussin' what plants to crop..." and I just can't share the rest here. then in walked old John....taking a full five minutes to cross the 12 ft space twixt the door and a chair. Yep, flannel shirt, suspenders, baggy old wool pants, and scruffy shoes, hair aflyin' all over his head. It would have to be combed with a steel rake before it was cut. He tossed his old Irish style pancake hat into the chair and thenpainfully he lowered himself on the hat.( so he always knows where it is) Then he and spent a couple minutes trying to lean his crooked old hand carved cane against the wall. He's 96.
After 5 minutes or so, Russ had already told the two gentlemen that they knew each other. Old John never heard a word, and suddenly shouts out feebly "By the sweet Jesus, is that you Arta?" Arta says they live less than a stone's throw from each other( through the woods) but hadn't seen each other in forty years.
I'm here to tell you they had some stories to tell. " My graduating class was 13 strong." John: oh I went to a big school. Mine was 19. But two of 'em don't count as they was from Bath." And the two of them laughed their asses off. I wished my haircut would last all afternoon as the two of them went on about the characters they had known in their classes, who had passed on, old pranks they used to play, taking the train to school in those days. "That was the dumbest thing they ever did was let them railroads go. They ain't never come up with a public transportation like that agin." ( The old train station up the street is now a restaurant refurbished in beautiful hardwood with etched glass and burned wood designs- only freight trains move by there now) "Ayuh, and I remember takin' the figure 8 trolley from Lewiston to Brunswick and back and then on up to South Paris and Norway all for a nickel. ( the route formed the figure 8)

For a bland sunny autumn day, it was just a great way to spend an afternoon. As for my hair, it's never been so short.

Pretty good sized station for a small town, but we used to be a mill town- long ago closed down now.

Me and me new laptop:

2009-09-23T02:20:00.000-07:00

15.4" Macbook Pro 2.4 mgh processor and 2 gigs ram.
Mac has come along way since I last bought one. I find this incredibly convenient in countless ways and am just thoroughly enjoying my experience. I have pretty much restored everything I want and elminated things in the transference process that in reality I seldom use. Of course for a few weeks now I have been running on old used Macs and the speed of this just has me dizzy. The 15.4" screen is wonderful. In a softly lit room the keyboard is backlit...a super feature. Finding things and relabelling is a whole lot easier.
Lately I have become addicted to Farmville, Farmtown on Facebook and even my good "old" iMac that fried in a thunderstorm couldn't handle the graphics without the spinning wheel of death. This one moves right along with ease.
Now this is the second time I have bought a refurbished Mac. The last one lasted longer than the previous ones I bought new and would still be alive had I not been so stupid and that one day plugged into the surge protector instead of the more convenient wall at the time. This one also has a 7 hour battery that pretty much lasts that long...what a relief that is. I do notice my laptops from Mac seem to go bad about two days after a service contract is up and I kind of resent those contracts almost as much as I resent them on Sears products. It amounts to $100+ per year and I almost never have to use them. I must admit however, that the Apple people ARE there when I do need them.( which is more than our school systems can say).
Anuyway, I am loving it.

An old parallel: history repeats itself in many ways

2009-09-20T14:45:00.000-07:00

"If Christians were being attacked the same way, or heterosexual couples were being attacked the same way, I would be fighting for them." Charliz Theron had to say about the current equality battle our nation is going through. Check out Bob's post over on "I Should Be Laughing" here. The tactics being used by both sides are sometimes reprehensible and even fearsome. Each claims foul bantering back and forth. It would take an entire judicial system created for just the occasion to determine just how much anyone is threatened by the beliefs of the other.
   There are protocols in how those in power and those not in power deal with each other. The underdog traditionally will use tactics those in power feel are unfair. In our own historic American Revolution, the British cried foul when our forces used non traditional fighting tactics by hiding behind bushes and trees to raid more traditional British fighting forces. Yet the colonists were fighting a war that could be compared in it's day to what we attribute to terrorism in our day.
In political wars, the use of lies, deceit, and selective information-propaganda, are the weapons. Christian organizations, for example are campaigning for traditional marriage and against any gay rights whatsoever, yet refuse to reveal identities of contributing financial supporters. They claim that their constituents have been threatened with violence and thus have a right to protect their identities on petitions and donor groups. Yet the record shows that no one has been beaten of killed for being heterosexual. Quite the opposite for Gays.
   Lawyers ad litigants brought into the fray in PSO's are claming that the entire country will face a total slow down of the justice system when the courts are clogged with civil cases after an equal rights agenda is passed. does that sound Ante-Bellum to you in the racial equality test we had?
   My point is that the more two opposing ideologies atatck each other without using reason, the more they become like each other. After WWII came the social prototype-Communism vs Democray, which is still strongly proliferated.
What was the catalyst that kept the two sides from destroying each other? Nuclear, mutual annihilation. What is the catalyst now if any? That all sides of all issues are threatened by the Taliban and/or El Quaeda, a way of life completely different than either Communism or Democracy. As Americans we seem unable to unify unless we are hit up side the head by a third party's interests.
An astute teacher I had once told me...The more we fight an enemy of any sort, the more like him we become. Certainly we have seen plenty of evidence of that in the two great ideologies. Both sides did their share of dirty fighting, hush hush operations, spy vs spy, as well as stockpiling war weaponry. both sides propagandized how their way of life was bettr than th other and how corrupt the other was. both sides pleaded they only wanted peace and human dignity to prevail, and both sides claimed the other violated that principle.

I don't think we've come up with that third power more threateniing than the equality issue or the medicare issue either for that matter. The problems of this coming decade are well defined

OUTSTANDING MUSIC: Playing for change

2009-09-20T08:41:00.000-07:00

PBN is still annoying with their commercial free television with 10 minute fund raising promos, not to mention the only good programming i ever seem to catch is during fund raising times. Let's see, the pain of that is five minutes of programming and 10 minutes of urging us to Give Give Give.
But last night I saw a wonderful show:

Playing for Change: Peace Through Music:Grammy-winning producer Mark Johnson fosters global awareness by recording local musicians from around the world, then mixing together the separate performances into a unified whole.
I put some of the clips on my video bar in the right hand column or you can check it out HERE.

One commentator noted that religion, politics, governments, philosophies tend to separate us, but music is the one element that seems to bring people together ( I might add that a good pot luck supper is pretty effective too sometimes). This program shows an end product with over 100 musicians in what appears to be a world wide performance of a song because of this man's incredible mixing skills.

Series email reminder allows you to subscribe to get an email reminder for each upcoming episode of a series. PBS will send a tune-in reminder each time the series is showing on a channel in your selected lineup.

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Don't get around much anymore: an apology

2009-09-15T07:42:00.000-07:00

I haven't been around to do much with my blogging friends. I have excuses. In the past month I have been through the thunder storm frying of my imac laptop which was my traveling home, through an old HP laptop where the screen died ( a friend has taken it assuring me it is a software problem), and now an old eMac desktop which makes every move of the cursor like an old dial up experience. It just can't handle the sizes of the blogs. I just gave up for a while. I ran out of patience. I just sat me down and quit.

Now I have awakened to the fact that Blogspot has a whole new format for images and I has me sum ketchin up t'do.

However the eMac was powerful enough to get me to the Applestore where I ordered a snazzy Macbook Pro with a nice wide screen, a lit keyboard, a super drive, and all kinds of bells and whistles.
I had forgotten the last days of teaching was that one of my many physical problems was using a desktop literally on a desktop. It just wrecks my back and neck and takes hours and hours and Tylenol after Tylenol to recover from a school day on a desktop. I have gotten used to a recliner with support for my back and a wireless mouse on the arm, and laptop where it was designed to be- in my lap. And in just a few days, that will all be back with my new jazz hands Macbook Pro and I'' be making the rounds of all your wonderful blogs again.
See you all soon I hope.

Perception Management

2009-09-15T07:01:00.000-07:00

	Read in September, 2009
	Perception management- organizations who literally create truths and facts to corroborate what corporations or governments want us to believe, bleeding them into the culture in multiple media. Baldacci creates a believable story of a mogul defense contractor who manipulates super powers to the edge of WWIII actually believing himself he is saving the world. Trouble is, he's unscrupulous in method making the ends justify the means. Good read, fast paced, short chapters, lots of action, some moving moments

Read in September, 2009

Perception management- organizations who literally create truths and facts to corroborate what corporations or governments want us to believe, bleeding them into the culture in multiple media. Baldacci creates a believable story of a mogul defense contractor who manipulates super powers to the edge of WWIII actually believing himself he is saving the world. Trouble is, he's unscrupulous in method making the ends justify the means. Good read, fast paced, short chapters, lots of action, some moving moments

History repeated in our time

2009-09-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

I liked what Obama said tonight about thinking about the character of our country. It was very real to me as I listen to old and good friends feeling threatened that we will be forced to pay benefits to what they consider to be deadwood inferior people.The same people will point out our patriotic actions to save oppressed people everywhere and promote democracy.
The old question remains, do the times make the man or does the man make the times? During the legendary Great Depression, FDRoosevelt came onto the scene when we had been through the most difficult of times and were not much interested in helping our foreign neighbors, yet we were, the same as today, determined to set things right on the home front.. Elected on the promise that we would not go to war, Roosevelt was already busy working to pull us out of a depression where almost no one had work. We learn in later years, he was secretly planning to enter the war because he recognized the real and eventual threat to the U.S. Was it a good plan? Always a debate.
   More importantly at the time when he created the CCC which has had lasting effect- we can still visit in every state, projects that were accomplished because of the CCC that employed people. Parallel to that, our taxes have been directing to providing the incentive money to stimulate economy.
       Parallel to that FDR initiated one of the most unusual programs ever introduced to the masses....Social Security. And now, we have reached a point where universal medical care is an extension of that idea that government was created to serve the people not just the privileged afraid to part with their goodies.
Will it eventually result in the same kind of plan as soc security...a little bit out of every paycheck to help with this? But Obama seems to think the money source will come from another way that many people feel threatened about because they think it will take away from them, or they will be paying for someone else ( the real fear of sharing with anyone else by law-especially stupid people who can't manage their paychecks and are too lazy to improve their lives.
   If Obama is ignoring gay issues at the moment, I don't wholly mind. Our country is faced with huge problems and the medical care is the one that serves the most people right now. I sure know a lot of gay people who are in the public service areas with no medical plan whatsoever. They work damned hard for their money and one trip to emergency wipes out everything they have.Of course then we get into single parents...and homeless but working. Most of us know that establishing a foundation of security of any kind takes years of luck, hard work, and reasonable success.And eventhe most successful can lose it all with a lay off.
But what is the character of the country...one thing when we are all thriving and another when things are tough. I choose to think in this case ,that the two are true..history makes the man and the man makes history.

Hit again by a close friend and bigot- can't sit and say nuthin'

2009-09-08T21:55:00.000-07:00

Cosby is first and foremost a humorist..and a good one too. Apparently in his act he announced he would be a write in candidate for President in 2012. His platform( which i was unable to save for you), if you will, is incredibly naieve. As in everything else, there are people who take advantage of American privileges, certainly high on the list, a high percentage of Americans, who screw us over more than aliens by far. But what the hell, they're probably Republicans or religious right, so it's American.Among other things, he suggests enlisting veterans to guard the borders for a couple of years into their retirement and allow only aliens going South through. Now I realize that no comments he made between platform issues were included and someone may have edited out what he really means by what he says...but face value, it sucks.
My spiritual belief has long been that what we do to raise the level of our fellow man, improves our own spiritual lot, but I hear a lot of religious people going out of their way to deny good works to other people and especially equal rights under the law of the country, not religious law which ought to be working toward that end, but equal rights to all who live and abide by that constitution. If you can marry whom you choose, so can I. If we abide by the standards of exclusion laws and what some people think is right and moral, we should all marry their spouse.I don't think those people would want us all in your house. If those people can visit their loved ones in the hospital only because they are family, then others of us who do not have traditional families should also be allowed those we consider family for us.
I simply don't understand why a nation with so much diversity should be forced as a whole to live by Christian standards nor any other religious standard.to me being American, doesn't mean being Christian.
-Charlie

Inner Peace ( for those of you who haven't heard this)

2009-09-08T07:40:00.001-07:00

I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me today, and we all could probably use more calm in our lives! Some doctor on the TV this morning said that the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started. So I looked around my house to see things I'd started and hadn't finished and, before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of Merlow, a bottle of shhhardonay, a bodle of Baileys, abutle of vocka, a pockage of Pringlies, the res of the Chesescke an a box a choklets. Yu haf no idr ow frigin gud I fel. Peas sen dis orn to anyy yu fee ar in ned ov inr pece.

Not to be cruel but-

2009-08-29T16:44:00.001-07:00

Seems that with a great civil rights advocate passed on now, it's interesting who spoke up among the Black self appointed leaders. I hadn't heard of most of the Black leaders who did speak, just the one Black senator. Jesse Jackson has not been heard from so far. And where is Al Sharpton? Are they just ministers to the rock stars? Seems they show up where there is a potential for a paycheck. So it must be the Kennedys who are biased, right?
Where is the Black community in this process where this man is being celebrated as a civil rights leader?

2009-08-29T16:40:00.000-07:00

I stop and think how much of the last century some of us have lived...with different but similar experiences and interests.We have lived a truly remarkable time in history for the advancement of humans while witnessing such atrocities in the face of it. As a poor person, relatively speaking in this country, I have never felt that being rich made life any easier in so many ways though I have spent some years resenting the privileged. Affluence usually brings a responsibility with it whether to struggle to maintain it or to share it or to use it with compassion for those with less to work with.
     In this Ted Kennedy funeral procession so much news is coming out about his private life, often riddled with scandal, he never revealed, such as a once a week disappearance where he went w/o any publicity to help out with charities of various types...esp drug addicted.
    I wonder what Joe and Rose Kennedy's teachings were all about,being a generation that made their fortune in illegal bootlegging. Allegedly the whole family gathered every single evening for supper and there the teaching took place. I understood, from my reading, that Joe Kennedy taught his boys about how to deal with those less fortunate who would be jealous of their opulence. What else did he teach?
   As the tv camera is centered now around JFK's eternal flame, I can't help but think profoundly how many times the flame has gone out and the cemetery attendants have rushed in the morning to fire that baby up again. hey. Nobody's perfect.

Things that make me ugly:

2009-08-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

Occasionally we all have a rough spell and hope that bad things only happen in threes. Well this the week that was:
1. Thunderstorms fried my beloved Macintosh. Thanks to my buddy, I have a PC for the time being and can do most of the thing I was doing. But it makes me ugly trying to find my way around.I am not used to rebooting every other fart.
2. It makes me ugly figuring out what to do about replacing the computer on a pension budget.
3. It makes me ugly that we spent hours dropping the carriage on the rider mower, mounting it with new blades, and this morning it didn't work. It threw nothing up the chutes to the bagger and left a green gooey mess on the lawn before the belt just came off. I called my buddy once again. He said he gave up...it was the fault of the guy holding the flashlight.
4. It makes me ugly that Ted Kennedy died...and never got to see his dream through for universal medical care.It made me ugly that he couldn't have one more scandalous pool party and to hell with the public.
5. It made me ugly that I wasn't born rich and good looking. I had to achieve this pleasingly plump form through hard drinking, smoking, and heavy eating myself.
6. It made me ugly to watch a friend being snowjobbed by a con artist and having to keep my mouth shut.
7. It made me ugly to open my med drawer and find out I was out of ugly pills. So here I am up on the farm with plenty of the wrong kind of grass.

Sell it baby, Sell it- new show on ABC

2009-08-23T19:04:00.000-07:00

"Shark Tank" has applicants pitch their products before a panel of billionaires. Rejections, offers, counter offers are made. It's blood stirring stuff as these pitchers go up against enormous experience and try to get at least one billionaire to back their fledgling companies.
All the follies of entrepreneurs show us the strengths and weaknesses of presenting the product, how applicants have thought or not thought things through. We armchair businessmen, too soon oldt und too late schmart, can have a ball shouting advice to the boob tube wanna be's. One lady wasn't great at presentation but nearly passed up a quarter million because she couldn't give up any control when she reallly didn't know anything about business except what she got from her husband-not a bright light either. Two billionaires gave her offers, one at 50% and one at 51%, but withdrew their offers. Her idea: a line of book with stories that included actual techniques to help ADD kids. Not bad techniques either. She had invested 200K but was publishing herself because she didn't make enough money off big publishing companies. She had only netted 50 K.
A guy who designed a fold up guitar that didn't go out of tune was obviously greedy and passed up a whole buncha money because of greed. The Billionaire who made the offer obviously knew scads more about marketing than he did. I was surprised when the Billionaire tried out the guitar and was very accomplished on it himself.
Others were totaly unknowledgeable about business and obviously did not think in the huge terms that interested the billionaires- the proof of the pudding they wanted before they invested. It's a great learning experience that shows how so many have good ideas, but human foibles glared because they don't have the business acumen,the experience, the education to handle bigger ideas that would really promote their products. They don't know enough about networking, having possibly multiple partners backing with millions of dollars and sort of fly by the seat of their pants through the session. That old American mistrust of a good deal and giving up something in the deal scares them.
The billionaires themselves were fascinating: open, polite, but knowing exactly the right questions to ask. They are incredibly BIG thinkers and certainly opened my mind a lot. Some applicants were hesitant and one billionaire said...no, there's no tomorrow in this."You turn your back now and you're dead to me." And he meant it.
Almost all of the people offered deals stood to improve their material lives by a thousand per cent but wanted unrealistic deals. The guitar guy wanted 1 million in exchange for 5% of his company. He lacked the means to produce enough guitars. He not only got one offer and suggestions for doing it all easier and just sitting back and collecting, but a second offer to open up television to go it on it all. Even the viewer could see that the man had done his homework on business but he lacked vision.
Of course there were some cockamany ideas where the applicant didn't stand a chance...didn't have a good idea or any kind of business mind at all, then we got short but polite feedback and "I'm out" from the investors. It wasn't awfully sad as we could see they hadn't put that much blood sweat and tears into their projects yet.
I think it's absolutely magnetic watching. ABC Sundays 9PM EST

Childhood superstitions are real after all~

2009-08-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

I ripped off Ms. Moon's photo of this dragon fly, not so fearsome at rest, over on her wonderful blog Bless Our Hearts, which I am getting a great kick out of reading lately. Her family and friends and chickens and venison are like reading an updated script of Ma Kettle in the new milennium. ( What would Ma Kettle have really thought in a liberated age?)

As a kid we called the dragon fly either dragon needle or darning needle. We were afraid of them as we were told that if we swore or blasphemed or told a lie, they would sew up our mouths.Now, I was not the best of kids......so I was pretty lean and tanned running my ass off in the summer.
I was already having psychic experiences which my stepmother and grandmother took very seriously when I announced fears about family. But I also caught the Southern Baptist religious bug at about 8 yrs old, and the religious experiences they sort of dismissed. See I was in love with a handsome young minister. Even then I knew my yearnings and leanings- I just didn't know what it was called. However, I could see spirits, and my stepmother and grandmother knew that. The minister didn't get it. When I grew older I realized he didn't believe half the shit that came out of his mouth in the name of the Lord and certainly didn't want to believe anyone in his congregation could see things he couldn't.( Good thing he wasn't sensitive enough to know how many times I undressed him in my mind and imagined myself in his arms for only God knew what when I was that age) I brought my grandmother to church and she could see the same spirits I did- so I knew I wasn't just nuts. Definitely a confusing time. the point is, I took all kinds of beliefs seriously and especially the superstitions we were taught.
"Step on a crack and break your mother's back." It took the family a long time to get me out of this fix. I followed that law religiously walking those old cement squared sidewalks with cracks between each block. Some of them were pretty smashed up over the years which made my task that much more frustrating. they say Pisces people usually walk with their faces pointing to the ground. I think, though a Pisces myself, that I got the habit watching for cracks in walkways. I publically advocated the coming of black tar toppings on walkways even though they were hotter on bare feet. The particular irony of this paragraph is that my mother did break her back in a motorcycle accident. I was absolutely convinced and certain that I could pin point the date when I had stepped on a crack. I remember sobbing my ass off when she made me feel that huge plaster of Paris body cast under her blankets. And I couldn't tell her what was really bothering me. The poor dear woman thought I was crying for her pain, but I was crying for being the cause of her pain. So I said something like " I dunno, it's just so sad." After all, I couldn't risk a dragon fly coming out of nowhere.

Maybe some of you remember superstitions you took seriously as a kid. Maybe some of them have followed you into adulthood, like throwing salt over your shoulder, or a dog baying at night, etc.

Word verification security

2009-08-12T18:23:00.000-07:00

For those of you who use it, you probably had some bad experiences with comments. I know it gives you a choice about whether to publish the comment or not, but I'm thinking: It really only protects you from drunks having trouble typing. LOL

Harmony-barbershop

2009-08-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

NCIS has the wonderful forensic scientist, played by David McCallum, noted for his brilliance as is the whole team, however his specialty is information nobody is paricularly interested in except his devoted assistants who must of course indulge his endless story telling cheerfully to keep their jobs.
In one episode he hums a little Gilbert and Sullivan, which leads to a diatribe between him and his assistant on the principles of harmony. His assistant happens to love Barbershop quartets. The striking bit of info I got out of it is that in the four part harmony of barbershop style, the ideal sound the group can produce is singing four notes which, when all four parts are sung at once, seem to produce a fifth voice/part.
When I go to concerts I enjoy trying to discern as many instrumental parts as I can individually yet enjoy the whole. I especially enjoy this task in choral work having sung in many choral groups over the years. ( ya just can't help it) I love all the parts with their own melodies fitting into the whole.( except for that gal I mentioned the other day in a comment for Joy, singing hymns in church and could always find e flat in any tune if nothing else and drown out any major melody in the tune)
As well, I love the Eastern art of throat singing. To an initiate it may be a bit of a culture shock, but one man can produce multiple notes with his voice, making other sounds that resonate out of his throat. I have recordings of an 8 man choral group producing as many as 40 different notes at once. As in an SATB score, each part produces multiple sounds within it. I believe it is done within the Eastern 5 note scale as opposed to the Western 8 note scale.( if you wondered why Arab, Israeli, Greek, music sounds so different than our own)
What it leads to for me, is the creation of shadows and ghosts in our lives,in our minds that may actually manifest in a way we can perceive as realities. Again, it's working with energy,sometimes loosely called the music of the spheres where our combined consciousnesses in harmony bring into being new forms. The phenomenon is called synchronicity. I' m sure prayer and meditation are forms of harmonics that produce tangible results. In other words, from idea we can manifest physical things.

Proud to be a Redneck: origin of the term

2009-08-09T16:44:00.000-07:00

<--actual photo of the ambushers. Hundreds of miners joined the march to Logan County, the last county still fighting for unionization of coal miners in West Virginia in the 1920s. The coal company appointed sheriff there hired 3,000 private thugs( officially private police, detectives, mercenaries hired by big companies, deputized them, and set up an ambush on the road to stop the marchers. To identify themselves the miners wore red kerchiefs around their necks. Rounding the bend the "rednecks" were fired upon, and a battle began leaving 50 dead of the miners. It only spurred more miners to march, and eventually the town was unionized.
The History Channel runs a program called the legend of Hillbillies and I happened to catch it tonight and found out a lot of stuff that was fascinating. For instance, NASCAR and stock car racing grew out of bootleg booze runs. The first bets were laid on runners in Georgia who souped up old cars to beat the police when carrying illegal booze. The first stockcar races were these bootleggers competing on muddy tracks. Lots of lives were bet and lost in terrible accidents...many not accidents at all, but just the result of fierce competitiveness. With reputations at stake, anything was fair. "Never tell a hillbilly he can't do something, he'll be twice as sure to do it." When rules cam einto being, early racers simply ignored them. If they couldn't do something, they would do it and just try not to get caught.
"Coal Miner's Daughter" is tame stuff compared to what companies were allowed to do with the sanction of the law. They had every advantage.Most of the workers lived in company owned houses, with company owned stores, with companny owned water...everything. Companies would simply evict dissenters and cripple any organizers. Protest marchers were arrested and put on trial for bearing arms illegally when they came unarmed. And the courts convicted them! Graft was rampant.
Anyway these tough tough people survived. they are still known for their diversity in religion and have countless tiny churches throughout based on literal bibilical teachings. a interviewee said, "if you don't like what a preacher has to say, you go down the road a ways, and start up another group." West Virginia is still the only state that has no law to ban or restrict snake handling in religious practices. It is alive and well.
Personally I am very claustrophobic and have imagined many times the horror of working in mines. The Welsh produced great men's choruses in music from the mines. West Virinians have produced strange cults and sects, plus an incredible gutsy view of life. If it were me in those caves with 32" of headroom, I am sure I would produce nothing but babbling. I would do whatever it takes not to go in those mines another day.

the Plain Black Suit

2009-08-05T08:47:00.000-07:00

Today I went to a funeral. Fortunately I haven't been to one in a while; even more fortunately I arrived to find it wasn't mine. I emailed around to see what men might be wearing and got one response offering a number of possibilities. Once there I saw everything. jeans, polo shirts, t-shirts, make shift suits, chinos, open collared shirts, some with ties, but being one of the few with a full black suit I wasn't surprised that people asked me where the rest rooms were. Someone even dropped their keys on me for valet parking and asked for a wheelchair.

If women never have anything to wear, men have less. I'm convinced that every young man should be forced to accept and maintain a plain black suit as part of his rite of passage whatever that is- the day he quits school, the day he graduates, the day he gets his driver's license, his bar mitvah, his first hand job whatever. His first suit should come when he learns about please, thank-you, and excuse me. There are just times that celebrating life comes with looking and feeling our best to others as well as ourselves. Even ancient jungle tribes decorate their private parts on holidays even if they are right out there for everyone to see. They dress'em up a little. It is surprising that very few men seem to wear a suit in this day and age. Doctors have lab coats, lawyers often work in shirtsleeves wearing suits only in trial law. Business men may either have a uniform with the company logo, or a smock with a plastic badge attached to signal his position in the company. I've come to associate suits with someone selling me something. It puts me on alert.
When I re-entered teaching in 1985, at 42, I wore sports jackets, ties, and appropriate slacks. I was already outdated. On the first day of school I was among less than a handful of men wearing a jacket or tie of any kind. As a teacher I was invited to many types of occasions, awards ceremonies, graduations, weddings, funerals, formal meetings, professional interviews, and had learned that coat and tie were the minimal requirement for dress at these occasions. Wrong, old fossil. The standard has relaxed considerably.
At certain dances for middle schoolers the boys are asked to wear slacks and collared shirts and girls are asked to wear dresses. Girls show up in skirts short enough to show their undies. Boys showed up in polo shirts. ( Yeah, they have a collar of sorts) Those who understood the spirit of the message showed up in wrinkled white shirts, one side untucked for style of course, and no ties. Ticket sales on the whole went way down and club sponsors asked the admins to forego the rule. The Dress Up concept had turned more into a costume party.

Furthermore, gone are the somber funerals of my youth. No more dramatic shows of grief with some unknown relative wailing and throwing herself over the casket. (When was she ever friends with the deceased?) No more sitting in the rows of chairs for endless hours the night before and all morning before the service. Everyone is in the aisles withh groups, chatting away, laughing, and celebrating the life of the deceased as it is wont to be known now. The room full of flowers is now gross. a few discreet sprays by the family are visible. More would be distasteful. We all know that flower money is now deferred to charities in the name of the deceased.

As for celebrating life, I came home with several old family recipes, several new emails and addresses, some phone numbers and two sets of car keys, and oh yes, a list of funerals to attend in the next week with the advice, "Make friends with more young people. Then maybe you'll only have to go to your own next time."

Comp'ny from Texas~

2009-07-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

Ashleigh's Dad first brought her to my house when she was 8 years old. Her Dad was an accomplished pitchman at fairs, malls, conventions all over the 50 states, and claimed Ashleigh was every bit as good as he was. Now as she says on her blog, A Day in theLife, she is a corporate slave by day and a hippy by night.
Bob, her handsome husband, is a managing nurse in the ER at Houston County Hospital,( and hippy by night). a warmer couple you will never meet. Most of their property is a prolifically productive 3-4 crops a year garden. It's Texas after all. The house is filled with sewing machines, craft supplies, a kiln, pottery everywhere and a designer prize worthy bedroom for equally talented daughter- 8 year old Sydney, shown here organizing her amazing collection of lake glass.
Have you picked up the synchronicity? It is Sydney's first visit to my house- 8 years old. When this cute, gorgeous little gal entered the door, I was thrown back in time. Already having traveled a week, she was pretty tired, but she managed to be charming and conversational even with another total stranger. She has a plethora of interests to share, just like her mother.

Two of the three had never met me, yet there was never a moment's break in all that everybody had to share. we toured my paltry gardens, got drinks, found the Disney channel and just started catching up on our lives, even though we talk on blogs, emails, and facebook daily. So there ya go, if ya ever meet your blogging friends in person. Ashleigh's Dad and my good friend, died last August which is how we reunited so of course we had a past to reminisce about.

Yes we did get to Charlie's homemade suppah. I figured their family reunion would bring them plenty of lobstah, so I did my poor folks specialties.

Though they made a good hole in the simple fare, I am eating it a week later. I never did learn much about portion control.

I recall not being able to get over the radical haircut and finally had to ask. For Ashley it was comfort and easy management. She allowed that she had a boss who didn't mind that and the pierced jewelry probably because she knows more about the company than he does.
Not long after suppah, Ashleigh and Sydney kind of settled into the two couches, like the house of the Three bears, each just right for them and got into sawing wood.
That left me without an audience for my evening of cliffhanging stories. Bob leaned forward and said "It's okay Charlie, I'll listen to ya." And what a night we had, way into the wee hours, comparing notes on the management practices of our two professions, medicine and education. His admins, like mine, are into incesssant assessement and report filling. As well they micromanage everything into duplication and more duplication, hence the endless waste of time and resources of staff. Both professions are on constant alert for lawsuits, turning everything into concrete measurable goals ofen at the expense of the holistic welfare of the client. But that's not all we found in common, and by the end felt as bonded as brothers of many years.
Bright and early next morning, found Ashleigh, as usual, with something to do in the early morning light of the kitchenette window. We did loads more catching up while the other two slept in for a while. This lady would make a fantastic den mother...there isn't any phase of crafts she isn't into. What's nice about it is that the two of them are very capable and love to be active. They just don't know all the tv shows I do. With showers all around, light breakfasts, and hugs all around, they headed on to the next leg of their journey farther downeast at a huge Maine style family reunion.

Now they are in Nashville, and tomorrow will head to the Parthenon and look up our good friend Linda, Wings Unfolding, the curator there.
I love my new little family and wherever you are up there Mike, thanks for the heritage. It's the best gift you ever brought to my house.
XOXOXOXOXO Charlie

Catching up on blogs:

2009-07-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

The gay issues always predominate in many of the blogs I follow.I do believe until we are all equal no one is equal. Even those who oppose equality for all their reasons, religious, or otherwise, cannot truly prosper until equality is attained by everyone. I know certainly in my time that groups have been discriminated against, but I see it start on a smaller level.
I think of the people I have loved and even been In Love with and the relationship failed. It was in no small part because I didn't treat my love object as an equal.There is more than one way to isolate or discriminate against people. When I fall in love with someone, I tend to discriminate because I knowingly put them on a pedestal and suddenly go into a fit of adoration and worship If I put them above me in my own mind...how can they have a chance to be my equal? So it's attitude...and where does attidutde come from...experience, programming, influences? It comes from making comparisons which is a learned activity. If it's a learned activity it can be changed.
Nuff said.

Revisit: I figured out family values- how could I have forgotten?

2009-07-20T15:29:00.000-07:00

"Percy Kilbride and Marjorie Main were asked in 1956 why they thought the Ma and Pa Kettle films had been so popular. “I think it’s because anybody, even the lowliest bum,” said Kilbride, “can feel superior to the Kettles.” Marjorie Main answered, 'I’ll be hanged if I can understand why so many people like the Kettle comedies. Critics don’t like ‘em. Nobody seems to like Kettle comedies but the people.' ”

15 kids, wild, untamed, no table manners once Pa tipped his hat for grace and said "Mighty grateful" and always pulling terrible tricks on guests who were snooty or represented the law. Pa did nuthin...lots of nuthin' but had a talent for winning contests that moved them into a new high tech futuristic house that baffled him, took them on exotic trips to expensive places they had no idea how to behave in. On the old farm, Pa's remote control for radio was his old rocker which he pounded on the floor to change stations. They followed their own logic and proved it out everytime..such as 25/5=14. Pa had no prejudices and always had deals going with the neighboring tribe of Indians...Hollywood's greatest stereotypes.
Ma was the quintessential farmwife...hardy stock, not beautiful but handsome. It was always clear that she and Pa were ready to be romantic at any time and any place. A contract actress for Warner's she didn't want the part but was forced to go to MGM to play it. she got contract pay and the bonuses MGM paid were kept by Warners. She never saw a cent of it. It was an enormous success with just plain folks across the nation....a box office smash.
The kids if nothing else were wholesome. None of them showed any signs of being gay but one wonders about the eldest who left the family to become successful in business and knew his way around, except for actually getting married. He always seemed to shy off there.But he always protected his parents' interest in citified settings...not that they needed any protectin'
Pa and the kids always wanted to move back to the farm, ( where we liked them best) but didn't mind showing off the door that automatically opened with lengthy demonstrations to outsiders. He couldn't , Ma did of course, master automatic water faucets ( way ahead of their time) and the multi media living room with movies, radio, and tv. And at meal time, after Ma got the table set, she never "et". She had an enormous collection of milk pitchers and spent her time pouring for the family. Her cry was always at the top of her husky lungs..." Come and get it" and family charged from all corners of the house to fill that table. At the movies as kids, we used to yell it with her. Even as a kid I remember my grandmother's cry " SOUP'S ON" that rang true for our family- so much like them in so many ways.
There's an inherent mistrust of the rich, of the educated, of anyone in any position of governmental power. It was much like Perry's "helllllerrrrr or halleluyer..."
Ma was hardworking around the clock while Pa was always figuring a way for somebody else to do his work. Or he made his one famous excuse..."got to fix that.....(long pause)...one of these days." My father and now myself, followed that philosphy of never do today what you can put off until tomorrow. If he couldn't get someone to fix that loose board in the porch, or the leaky roof, or mend the fence that let all the barnyard animals out and into the house, he would make a comittment...a powerful comittment. " Got to fix that....one of these day" But he was nobody's fool either.
I don't know exactly what their values were, but they certainly put me in mind of people today who would like us to go back to old family values. Pa didn't have a work ethic ofr a job...nor any goveernment benefits. He just entered contests for slogans and jingles and had incredible luck. Ma did and took care of just about everything. With 15 kids, they were not particularly nurturing but the kids were clothed and fed and fiercely protected. And pretty much the folks were home all the time. On the occasions they were away, they didn't worry about the kids' safety, but the babysitters' safety. They knew the kids would look after each other in the face of an outsider.
but somehow, when I saw them on Ted Turner Saturday night, I thought right away..."of course, these are the mystic family values people are talking about."

converted 1800s Mill~ for Bob and David

2009-07-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

Two views of an old paper mill formerly textile) farther down river in Topsham, Maine that was successfully converted into businesses. The big section has a deck that justs out now and makes for a chilly summer afternoon of river spray with a mansized sandwich and a mug of beer. The first picture is at flood tide in 1947 when I was 5 years old and lived just across the river with an exciting full view. those rocks form a waterfall. to the left is a man- made waterfall built to run two mills...the other just to the left of these photos on the other side of the bridge.
Below is the original mill built for $2000.

Big fire here~ major landmarks

2009-07-16T11:37:00.000-07:00

Cowen Mill established in 1850 housed the manufacturing of everything from shoes to artillery shells in WWII burned yesterday. Closed since the 80s, it's a National Historical Landmark, one of many giant mills built along the river below the famous falls, harnessed to drive the mills.
I was driving on the other side of the river and saw the huge column of smoke, raced home and went on FB where several friends had taken phone pictures and explained quickly what was going on. Suddenly someone posted that a second building had caught fire- one of the largest buildings in Maine also around since the mid 1800s. Streets were being closed down left and right as authorities feared the whole city could be threatened.
It fell on Mark LaFlamme's shift at the Lewiston Sun Journal here, where you'll find his write up. I stole some pictures from the article to use here to give you some idea of the size of the place. A few years earlier a similar sized building behind it had burned. It had been bought for a song (19K) by the grandmother of one of my kids who had hoped to turn it into a huge all faith Spiritual center.
Some of you may be familiar with Bates bedspreads, an ornately woven bedspread of worldwide fame. Those buildings built Lewiston with it's strong French Canadian heritage. They cover several blocks of the city on the river and folks have done everything imaginable to keep them useful and alive. It is not hard to imagine knowing someone for 40+ years day after day after day working beside you-knowing their whole family for generations back and attending the same Roman Catholic churches. Cowen Mill was in that tradition.
There were plans to change it into a luxury hotel that never materialized. Sheraton built a hotel across the river in the town's parking lot ( there goes the view). But both cities have built parks beside the river a couple miles long and I hope this spot becomes part of that complex as it's right next to the Great Falls.
I found a winter photo of the mill to show how close to Great Falls it is ( winter shot of course).Below are the famous falls and a pciture of Bates mills to show you how huge and how much of the city they take up.

Clash of the Choirs

2009-07-12T19:29:00.001-07:00

I caught this a while ago but lost track. Tonight I saw repeats on the GMC ( gospel music channel?) It was on NBC produced by the Dancing with the Stars people. The idea was to get celebrity musicians to gather together a choir of 20 from their communities, train them to perform/compete in NYC. It's over now but my gosh, if you want inspiration and excellent arrangements wonderfully performed with inspiring background stories, try to catch repeats.

CLASH OF THE CHOIRS -- Day One -- Pictured: (l-r) Nick Lachey, Kelly Rowland, Maria Menounos, Patti Labelle, Michael Bolton, Black Shelton -- Host, Maria Menounos, with 5 choirs masters -

The tears just streamed down my face listening and watching these amateurs led by celebrities. Patty LaBelle and Nick Lachey's choirs were magnificent. Some of the celebs used their choirs more like back up singers and featured themselves. Patty and Nick developed really class acts with their people. I admit, some of these performances I haven't seen but I will be looking out for them if I can catch this again. And no, it is not gospel per se in the original sense...they would be inspirational songs and with arrangements you can't believe.

Zac is closing in on home after a year at sea

2009-07-12T19:12:00.000-07:00

I have followed him all year since this now 17 year old left Marina Del Rey,CA to become the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the earth. Tonight he was featured on NBC Nightly news who interviewed him in Mexico just before his last leg on the journey home.Following his blog has been an armchair adventure for me and countless others. He is within days of reaching home and I am ecstatic for he and his family. Since he left the Panama Canal, he has had to traverse hurricane spawning seas and has had some harrowing experiences near the end of his j0urney that back tracked him rather than propelled him more toward home.
He will of course publish a DVD on his experiences in surprising time. He has an enormous crew of people supporting his effort. If interested, you can check him out here. His Mom and Pop write a lot of his blogs, but he writes a lot too and for his age and being homeschooled, is a pretty good writer. His last blog has me on the edge of my recliner( about passing ships in the night).

"Legal Gay Marriage in Maine would take a first ever event"

2009-07-12T18:36:00.000-07:00

Lewiston Sun Journal- Sunday July 12
This editorial is by the paper, not a write in. I was surprised at their point of view.

"Maine is the first state to legalize same sex marriage through the legislative process without being forced by a court order."

As you probably note from Bob's up to date gay issues blog, Maine's legislature did pass a same sex marriage law. Immediately the Stand for Marriage Coalition went into action to get signatures to bring this to a referendum vote.
" that means that Maine should be the scene of a tough campaign this fall, featuring out of state money and consulting talent interested in not only steering this outcome, but in the precedent it would set for other states."
And also this surprising statement by the paper:
" We trust that Maine voters will have the ability to ignore the noise and come to the right conclusion for people who live here. We also hope that Mainers will be able to resist the kinds of bigoted attacks against foes based on their sexual orientation or religious beliefs that have characterized this fight elsewhere."

It doesn't openly support the issue, but it calls for reason and as we have experienced here before, the lying and unethical tactics of the anti gay issue organizations has been astounding as if when fighting for their brand of " Lord", anything goes even if contrary to their own moral standing.
It is also interesting that people who are not particularly religious and in fact of downright agnostic or even atheistic persuasion, carry this "God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" concept. They can't admit they are /were influenced by religious views that clung to them through the years? It is so hard to escape our environmental, societal structure of reality and genuinely think for ourselves.
I wonder how these same people handle the news that at least 10 of our key founding fathers were Masons. I know I sure find it hard to believe that a number of our Presidents were members of the KKK. Honestly, we have to learn to think for ourselves.

Another mythical concept:family values

2009-07-10T04:51:00.000-07:00

Joy's blog (here) has an interesting post on the meaning of hero and how perhaps we use it too loosely. Another term that simply floods us on the media by everyone with a cause or running for office is "family values". The nuance would seem to be that we need a return to the good old days when "queers, faggots, perverts, and the like" knew enough to keep their mouths shut and accept being shut out, ignored, or suffer persecution in silence.

For the length of my teaching career, we discussed the changing structure of the family unit. In the 60s we were concerned about providing for the needs of the very different structure of the Black family which was usually large, run by a matriarchy,with the father existent but somehow not present if even on public record. when we did home visits, a house would be full of children from all kinds of families in the neighborhood. Often children were never in their own homes and we got double speak about who the parent or guardian was. School records could never keep up with changing addresses.

Then we became concerned about the high divorce rate in White communities and the two or more family child. Somewhere in there we began to excuse the student from responsibility because of difficult family circumstances. Situations became complex about whether a parent was allowed to visit a child at school or whether they were banned from contact, complex separate meetings were set up for IEP meetings, conferences, etc. Then came duplication of records where we had to send home copies of everything to different parties concerned with the child. Workshops multiplied about the needs of the single parent. In the 90s we admitted that there was no such thing as the typical family and that family values had become a complex concept.
At the turn of the century lots more children showed up with two mothers or two fathers or a divorced set where one or both of the set was having a homosexual relationship. They were always there, but it was more open now. They seemed no better or worse off than the children of straights where 1 out of 2 marriages ended in divorce.
Since the majority of families no longer consisted of a male Dad and a female Mom and 2.1 children, and the public was split on whether "values" should be taught in school, at home, or in church, how were we addressing the needs of children falling farther and farther behind and in greater numbers? and why did some students succeed in spite of all of us in our adult game playing? In Maine the legislature decided that we should teach values in the schools. Legislators are not educators, though they think they are, so it was our job to send them several models of what values should be taught. We all had to come up with key words such as Responsibility, loyalty,honesty, etc. until eventually the State adopted it's little list which are now painted on our gym wall and included on stationery headings from the school.
When politicians, anti gay or anti anything organizations, church leaders, journalists, etc. call for a return to family values, what the hell are they talking about? And why do we support them because they are for family values? Since we have left our children in the age of information to form their own extended families on the network, we have left them exposed to all kinds of values from all kinds of sources.What is family now?
As Joy often quotes: "Inquiring minds want to know"

On sharing opinions-the blogging dilemma

2009-07-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

This morning I watched Lunch with Bokara, a show Joy introduced me to some time ago. Kind of hard to find episodes but caught today's "What is our place in the Cosmos" in which Ms Bokara had more success with the Chinese chicken salad than she did the discussion this time. I'm afraid it just got too obtuse and they really tackled way too much for a half hour show. The woman herself is a character, but nobody's fool.She really has profound scholars and in spite of being almost a caricature of little old health food ladies, is no slouch herself. She slices through the philosophizing with very poignant remarks and down to earth questions.

Speaking of pedantic, I had a dream last night that I was attending a class on Chaucer. We watched a film where someone was reading excerpts. In the dream I was astounded by the professor's lack of appreciation and kept trying to bring up "who would think to emphasize these particular words in the selection and recite them in a high pitched voice unless they had been educated and coached for it? It's just brilliant." The professor was annoyed that I brought it up though he allowed it was probably beyond the students in this class.. "Well that's why I wanted to bring it up and discuss it" I pushed. When I woke up I was ashamed of myself for being so presumptuous and pedantic.
It reminded me that Ed used to tell me that every thought I have doesn't need to be expresssed. Some insights are just for ourselves and I shouldn't be disappointed that other people didn't have the same appreciation for them that I did. It also made me think that Debbie used to say about my comments at meetings " You have a way of saying what we are all thinking" and rethought what she meant about that. Maybe she was really trying to tell me that I wasn't the only one with the insight and that sometimes it is better to keep my mouth shut. She was too nice to say it directly. This led to my hesitancy about blogging lately that Tina on her post Sunday, July 5th,kind of brought out with her hesitancy about blogging. I have been working hard to be into people and not so much myself. Learning to listen as opposed to being thedominant in any conversation. I thought exactly what Joy said about her own comment on her post aouat M.J. that she took a neutral stand. but did raise the questionm, put it out there, and enjoyed the variety of responses.
Hence I have had a long dry spell with my blog posting.

I am delighted with the sun this morning. Weatherperons promise us a week of it..not completely dry but not to stop our plans- to go ahead and do them, being ready to duck inside for the occasional showers but we would have mostly sunshine.I can't remember a spring/summer with so many cloudy, rainy days.

Gay Marriage opposition in Maine-

2009-07-08T20:07:00.000-07:00

Tonight WCSH-TV news announced that the 55,000 + signatures needed to get a referendum on the ballot to repeal the legislature's passage of gay marriage rights will be presented to the Sec't of State in a few days. They were gathered in 4 weeks and they have another month before the deadline. Supporters say that the speed with which the task was accomplished indicates that many Maine voters prefer to retain the traditional marriage contract between a man and a woman. They used volunteer signature gatherers and hired professional gatherers.

Many of these signatures were gathered at Church meetings so who knows what kind of social pressure people were under to sign these petitions. Gay rights advocates remind us that two years ago they tried to repeal gay rights laws and the voters rejected the repeal. Advocates feel there is a good chance they will do the same in November if the referendum appears ont he ballot. Traditionalists say they will begin a serious public anti Gay marriage campaign in August.

Again I'm a Celebrity that I'm really not watching:( every night)

2009-06-22T17:10:00.001-07:00

Baldwin really believes what he professes about his religious stuff. At first I thought he was using his Baldwin humor but he really believes what he's saying. He's survived Janice, as have the others, but now he's saying he doesn't want to be here, he's lost his enthusiasm and missses his family too much. Lou is flexing well. but was bitten in the night by insects and looks swollen but still game in the last segments..Torrie looks great-it's the square circle for her as usual, Patty is doing great. I think she has won over a lot of people who were so mistrustful of her ex governor husband. Sanjaya is missing his girlfriends, blazingly gay as he seems to be but claims not to be, and seems to be doing very well. Ah...Steven is leaving on his own power. John Sally, basketball star, and new team leader is on top of his game at the moment, "one less person for me to compete with".
As I type, I am really waiting for Donald Trump's appearance on his new acquistion-Monday Night Raw- my secret passion for years...the ever phony professional wrestling. I shall have to do some fancy remote controlling to watch them both as they overlap.
Oh. addition...someone rejoining the group.( to replace Steven)..and the first candidate is......Janice! Her plea is that she admits she has not been a good team player but she wants to be back in. the team priavately talks about how they have been out and eaten and rested. Lawd how would we viewers do without someone to bitch about more than Janice? has she really changed?
Holly...she misses everybody. They love her but want a competiter who wants to win, so they say. Twenty minutes to go folks...they gotta resolve it and they haven't had to do any challenges the whole show. Two more nights and it's the end of this one. Pan to Janice sitting by a stream crying saying she's not a bitch but back in camp Holly gets the vote! Janice is taking to the bridge and now not making any apologies for who she is. ( They picked Holly because they all thought they can beat her) and Holly is back in a side by side hammock beside Sanjaya, the wanna be little closet gay tough guy sweetie carrying on with a potential lifetime friendship. I'm still waiting for Sanjaya's pants to make the final drop. They are always on the edge of his pubic hairs and the crack of his ass.
Oh just one hour.Gotta switch now and play two shows
__________________
A little Father's day schmaltz. And ohh c'mon..a weigh in after all these weeks. Amazing how little lbs they have lost. John 21 lbs...really good, but most not that much. Lou is turning out to be featured in almost all interviews. Is he the Joan Rivers in this show? Beginning to see that they have a lot, really a lot of time to kill there.
Finally a competition. John is busted again because the audience voted low on him and he has to go head to head against Holly, just returned to the group. Tell me again this is all fair and not producer manipulated. They gotta drink crap. Insects are ground up in otherwise tasty drinks. They seem to be doing okay. Oh hell, if you've had a colonoscopy, you could do this too.That stuff we do the night before is worse. Anyway, John wins, Holly is out...as soon as she came back in. Back to camp chat.
King or Queen of the Jungle? how ridiculous can they get? Two to go tomorrow night. but of course, I won't be watching.

In response to Auntie Flame:7 deadly sins

2009-06-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

Greed:	Very Low
Gluttony:	Low
Wrath:	Very Low
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Low
Pride:	Very Low

The Seven Deadly Sins Quiz on 4degreez.com

What better way to make beef tender...

2009-06-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

I'm exhausted watching 6 hours of a Russian prize winning film at Cannes about the history of two families, one rich and one poor from 1900 till the 70s. Siberiade (1979) both families were basically serfdom remnants living in remote Siberian woods with all their eccentricities, superstitions, and merciless climate. The rich family were furriers and butchers while the poor family basically stole from them for a living. There was a considerable amount of tolerance for this if the poorer family could handle the humiliation dealt out by the richer when they were caught.
Russia was still pretty strong in communist-dictatorship doctrine in 1979 and I was not surprised at the number of government agencies in the credits involved in cooperating with the production of this film.
And I cannot BELIEVE that golf is more important than network world news and the introduction of Merlin on NBC. It simply astounds me. Back to the film at hand:
Considered a full epic movie, it all takes place in a small area of Siberia. On subsistence existence of a few families. There are fairly remote contacts with city life or the Tsars or the Revolution. Outside influences infiltrate in very small ways...a stray prison escapee rescued from almost certain death by the elements is saved by ignorant peasants full of superstitions and almost purposeless lives living at the edge of an unimaginably vast swamp. The Russians love to do their histories mingled with myths and legends. Two characters who continually show up " in your face" are a gypsy accordian player/singer who wails through out one episode after another during the actual plot, and he is real enough to last generations. Supposedly a myth characters actually physically bump into him going through theirdaily events. There is also the Eternal Old Man who seems to be present and serves only as observor to many many generations. He was already the old man in 1900 and still is old and present in the 1970s.
The remarkable aspect for me is how the government ever reached these remote people at all. The attempts by police of the Tsar were bumbling and feeble...not taken too seriously. After the revolution, attempts were more serious but still feeble from what we in our American education have heard. Mostly the propaganca of the revolution convinced people to change their ways somewhat before force was actually possible- especially community volunteer projects to give the community x amount of time from their usual jobs as farmers and hunters toward community goals and then the redistribution of properties upset the apple cart.
The producers advanced the history of Russia through short news film footage of national issues indicating the industrialization of the state, but still we wind up again and again in this one village scenario for everything. The climate, the swamp, the gigantic forests play a huge role in this but we don't have huge armies( and huge casts of extras) waging great battles on the plains in this. The camera continually pans back to the microcosm of the village and its family politics. It's not what one thinks of with sagas and epics.
Certain status symbols withstand the passage of time...like the gates to the yards of landowners and the cemetaries. Old customs are breached when oil rigs show up and drill next to family cemetary plots or plans are made to make damns to flood and relocate everyone to a "sun city" as Moscow intellectually from offices determine the use of Russia's resources and attempts to rise as a great power again. Through it all the families survive side by side, a murder or two here and there, interfering bureaucracy, financial adventurers, until we get to the last great crisis...is there oil to be found in Siberia? the serfs survive with vodka, goats, hand made cigarettes, and forbidden sex from one crisis to another.
If you've ever read Doestoevski or Tolstoy, you'll appreciate the Russian style of dragging every moment out to it's dramatic potential and counting how many pages you still have to endure to legitimately say you read the book. To drag out the sense of time, much footage is devoted to brooding and long depressing times with key characters. Same with this movie. Though at times I was sucked in, there were many moments I was tolerating my time spent. "Oh get on with it", I silently pleaded. Yet there were many things that were very well done...repetitive symbols, etc.
Hell the day before ( might say this was a Russian weekend) I watched a saga of Russian history about the successors of Boris Gudonov ( 1612) that I had waited since last fall for. So I have had a weekend of Russian history from 1605 to 1970. I have no idea how much influence the Minstry of Culture had on all this. Nonetheless I still feel I got more out of it than I would a self help book.
My whole point is that I slow cooked my beef and gravy in a crockpot during the movie, and it's now tender as can be.

Out of the Ruts-

2009-06-18T08:40:00.000-07:00

Most of my favorite viewing is dead for a while so I needed to get into some new shows for me to watch( new for me). Oh yeah, I got caught by Celebrity again and saw all the half naked men shaking their fat, the homesick and sick women, the ever so private confessions that only several million people saw but not the rest of the cast. I started watching So You Think You Can Dance and saw that there would be 18 couples. I just couldn't bear two hours of "we'll find out when we come back". so I decided to watch one of Auntie Flames regulars, Criminal Minds, and was just fascinated with the episode. Talk about a sick relationship, two neighborhood dads were into abducting girls, raping and killing them. Of course it took genius and a young computer whiz to figure it all out. Then I switched over to Master Chefs and got the munchies. I can never figure out how or what they are doing or cooking as they do it, but the pictures of the presentations turn me on. There seems to be less pressure on this show and I'm enjoying it more.

This morning I had a good tear or two over The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, but not till near the end. For most of the 2 hrs + I found myself not paying very close attention. I got sucked into it just occasionally. I thought the themes and issues approached weren't too interesting over all and all that mattered was kind of glossed over. To tell the truth I didn't know F.Scott Fitzgerald wrote the book. To tell the truth I wasn't too impressed with him in all those American Lit courses back in college either.
But there were some good moments. The thing about living life backwards from old age to youth seems rather dismal. I mean we all know we're going to die, but to know just about when is a rather ugly reminder of our mortality. and I thought the question of awareness and sentience of the mind going backwards was handled inadequately. I mean Button just begins to forget the life he's led? Kate Blanchette did a great job with her part- worthy of an Oscar nomination at least. Buttons character, Brad Pitt, didn't demand an awful lot from an actor-he was kind of mild mannered anda passive throughout. It struck me that Button must have gone through much more traumatic emotions than Pitt showed with the part. I'm sure it was enough to remember that in this case an old man is not wise nor could a boy be having lived life in reverse. Maybe he was limited by the writing. Anyway, I'm glad I didn't miss the experience and that I got it finished in time for the mailman.

PS on previous post

2009-06-14T16:09:00.000-07:00

I reread the post about an hour later and realize I should clarify it is a really literal concern. It is not an allegory, a metaphor, or double speak in any way. ( though it might be Freudian- I will have to take it up with a therapist)

One of them 'mergencies....

2009-06-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

Sumbuddy told me you can put something into the bag that will keep it from getting hard as granite after you've opened it. I have a recipe that needs a bit, but have to buy a whole lot to get it. Until the next recipe, how can I keep it soft and granular? Ennybody know?
Mine happens to be a plastic bag. I know a clothespin ain't gonna do the trick. I already have a brick of it in the cupboard. and BTW, popping it into the microwave doesn't make it granular- it makes it gummy at best.

It's obvious that as a retiree, I have serious problems, ain't it?

And I thought my house had problems~

2009-06-12T08:44:00.001-07:00

Can you imagine why the meter reader does estimates? These homes are definitely challenges to a newspaper boy, a postal deliverer,UPS, Fed Ex, but they certainly discourage Girl Scouts, bottle drives, and other solicitors.

These photos came to me via email thanks to Helen H.
That cable in the first one, by the way, is attached to that tree hanging out there so precariously. Imagine hearing a branch crack !

Ads from the 30s

2009-06-11T17:05:00.001-07:00

Needless to say the last is my favorite.

Men's answer to Maxine: Meet Marvin

2009-06-10T13:37:00.000-07:00

Waxing nonsense in the rain:

2009-06-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

A thought forwarded to me today- what do you think? I've no idea who this Ungawa is except I recall Tarzan saying something similar in the movies of the 50s.

" Happiness comes first. Partners, abundance, and cool shoes come later.

Or at least this is how I'd line up my duckies.
Ungawa -
The Universe"

Not sure I agree with this.
Because we are so programmed by environment, society, family, genes, etc we resist what may possibly be very natural. Whatever state of happiness we may find ourselves in always seems shortlived and some inner restlessness or dissatisfaction drives us on again in pursuit of happiness. It's always illusionary and temporal.

We seem to think/feel happiness may be achieved by working through our conflicts introduced constantly from when we fight for our first breath- and thus we are provided with friends, enemies, indifference, social situations, etc not to return to that mythic state of the Garden of Eden but hoping for something better- beyond what we can conceive ourselves. Happiness is not likely though certainly it is a goal at the top of the list, but unless we take our journeys, it is certainly not likely at all. Joseph Campbell says that for the old, death becomes the desired solution to attaining bliss ( if that is happiness), all others having come short. Perhaps it is one of Plato's forms.
Anyway, Tarzan has spoken. What do you think of the quote?
Umgowah!

Needful things:to know:

2009-06-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

Greetings:

Be the first to tell your friends:
At five minutes and six seconds after 4 AM on the 8th of July this year, the time and date will be 04:05:06 07/08/09.
This will never happen again.

And the question remains, what time will it be in 2012, will it happen, and if it does, will it ever happen again?

Well friends, I watched, but just part of it.

2009-06-04T15:35:00.000-07:00

Spence and Heidi were interviewed, said they made a mistake, rethought how thoughtless and selfish they were and want to come back. It's all about the charity not about us". ( Yeah right and their agents probably told them they had just committed professional suicide). And for those who asked but don't want to watch, Blago's wife is on and is making a decent showing for herself. She got a little choked up when she said she and hubby had been through so much this couldn't possibly be worse. There's some other gal on, the sadder but wiser girl syndrome who lays around camp and makes sardonic remarks and plays the sour older woman. she sympathizes with them and throws out cynical remarks all the time but I haven't seen her do anything yet. Anyway, the gruesome twosome have to spend the night in some horrible place as punishment and then present their apologies to the cast who don't have to accept them back.
Baldwin is hilarious. He's been bitten twice by a bullet ant ( which delivers a body shaking bite and couple other cads. He's really in terrible pain but staying cheerful and game. Lou disappeared for a while and came back after some medical treatment for rat bites- he got two. they had to stick their hands in a hole in the wall to feel around for these styrofoam stars. The ugliest of Mother Nature was behind those walls. Not so gay divorcee mothered him a little but of course my hero didn't need much. He needs me...and Bob, and David, and Joy...and.....
Surprise surprise...replacement star...Dan Baldwin. I don't think i've seen him in anything but the old comedy routine the brothers used to do years and years ago. He's become enormous. Stephen was kind of neutral about it. He says they are competitive in a healthy way and should have a good time, but he didn't look too enthusiastic.
The reward for each daily challenge is real food. The losers, the women for three times now, have to eat beans and rice.
but really I got into Dancing show and the White house tour (which was excellent) "So You Think You Can Dance " is tearing up my ass with triumphs and defeats. I gave up my handkerchief and went to the linen cupboard for a big assed towel. My Gawd the stories, the dance for your life, and big mouthed Mary are killing me. The young dancers are simply beautiful, sexy, and charismatic. Some are so limber and graceful it just stuns this old hobbling fool. We have yet to get to the final twenty- looks like I've got a lot of laundry ahead of me. But even those who are consistently coming out on top are critiqued harshly and walk away with their hearts in their throats. A little Japanees fellow, not much to look at, seems terribly silly and immature, but when he dances he takes my breath away. a tall slender handsome young fellow is wonderful as well...terribly sexy. and the Black guys on this show are out of sight for agility, grace and form and just ballsy sexy with a kind of eagerness and innocence in their faces that melt the heart.
I know that dancers for the most part have very short careers but I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't the only Dance company in the business and the incredibly talented losers will be picked up by companies all over the country after this exposure. And they're still young. I have to keep telling myself that it is great for them to be exposed to this level of competition and it will all pay off just as it did for me when I was named the Greatest Middle School Teacher in the Universe and the United Nations wanted to make me Master Consultant of Lord of the Universe Dance Company in charge of tutus, sneakers, tights, and spiritual philosophy.
Is that holy water coming out of a stagnant water pool FP?

Can't Believe I Watched "Im a Celebrity"

2009-06-03T05:28:00.000-07:00

I caught myself before I got caught and watched some segments of" I'm a Celebrity-Get Me out of here" before I switched over to the White House tour. Talk about an interesting group of people! Lou Diamond Phillips ( above) I have always had a "thing" about and have followed him for years. I was just too curious what our heroic leading man would be like in a really tight situation. He was a group leader last night and I was impressed with his calmness in the midst of some pretty stormy arguing among the more spoiled brat types. He also had a much bigger torso than I imagined, with massive arms and deep chest. In my mind he's still in his twenties.Most colorful and really in the spoiled brat immature category were Spence and Heidi, the husband and wife team who refused to do their share in chores, napped during decision making, and started fights with the others. Almost nobody could calm him down including his wife and he threw teenage tantrums all the while reminding everybody- mostly himself- that he made a lot of money and was a celebrity. He didn't have to put up with this bleep. He threatened to quit almost as soon as they landed. Somehow they got into a discussion about his wife's Christian ways. He wanted to change, to be a better person. Suddenly Stephen Baldwin enters the scene and claims he has a connection with God and can baptise him in the river. Only through Christ could he truly change. His claim to ordination was his personal connection with God. He was non denominational. Knowing the Baldwin family humor I split a gut. Spence swallowed his line. After the first couple of events, sure enough Spence quit and Stephen reminded him about baptism. They actually went through with it. Then Spence and Heidi jumped into a limousine ( where did that come from? They flew in by helicopter and hiked to their campsite- I cracked up again) I had already been telling myself, they can't possibly be put in harms' way in a real sense.The producers would be up to their asses in lawsuits even with legal waivers.

The surprise of the day was Sanjaya, the slender good looking singer who seemed like the most scared of the lot. He gave every indication that he was a genuine sissy and milktoast and would probably be the first to fold. He won the first event hands down holding out with bugs, snakes, and spiders crawling all over him and then water filling the horror tank up to his nose- the final straw in everyone elses fear threshold. Then he was the first to volunteer to go into the jungle with Heidi for another horrific disgusting event. He was spared only by spence's shallow ego. "No way in hell he's going into the jungle alone with my wife." So Spence had to put his money where his mouth was. Heidi commented that Spence was so competitive that he'd willingly throw her into a river to win. this guy was entirely all about himself. Good riddance.

Be guaranteed that I will not commit myself to this every night for Gawd knows how long. It's a stretch now to hang out and catch Conan's new shows and what little I can tolerate of Jimmy Fallon.

Evening treat. NBC White house visit~

2009-06-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

It sure seemed like even when he does manage to arrange something spontaneously- like for a take out food visit with unmarked cars full of security rushing through the city, Obama still almost has to schedule a visit with his wife. I loved the impromptu ping pong match in the office with his wife. There must be times of the day when the elevator to his family quarters must seem a million miles away.
I had never seen in previous visits with previous Presidents, the little side offices and the many roles ongoing with his staff. I sort of expected that key figures might be on a waiting list while his personal staff set things up. He has such a young staff and they really seem so very capable and energetic. In a history book I recently saw a drawing of Adams and his wife sitting in the White House in the East Room with the laundry hung out.
I wondered too how he maintains his composure with one meeting following another with a time limit on each. It concerns me that other people prioritize the agenda and that things might well be hidden from our President because of that necessary filtering process. When does the man get time to just plain think without people tugging on his sleeves all the time. I guess that's the homework part when he could be with his family. Kind of like teaching when we ae grading papers and preparing reports while our families are carrying on the traditional celebrations. It has to be constantly on his mind.
It was interesting that they followed the process with the Supreme Court nomination and how they would handle it, while NBC was there, and how the German govt wanted his attention and they carried it just so far before Obama said " At this point we should probably stop the cameras". Wouldn't you expect the miracle of Tv to leave a camera with yet a third point of view left behind to watch? Stuff West Wing was made of...lol. He heh...where was the behind the scenes camera like the docudrama of Frost/Nixon?
Can't wait for tomorrow night. I have help in the garden tomorrow and will probably be wasted. Hope I can make it.

Charming old couple ~ impromptu concert

2009-05-29T06:31:00.001-07:00

This will warm your cockles on a rainy day. I played it over and over. He was 90 yrs old in February. His wife just laughs with glee through the whole number. You will too, if you're not shedding some of those happy tears.

clipped from www.youtube.com

Mensa Invitational: Winners: Washington Post

2009-05-28T18:39:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high

8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon : It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido : All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

Wordplay from Washington Post

2009-05-28T06:18:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:

1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4 esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.

6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men

Mark LaFlamme grabs me again:"Dirt: an American Campaign

2009-05-27T05:07:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking for about 3 weeks what to say about this latest horror offering by Mark, my favorite journalist and iconoclast up here in Maine. The premise here is that a Maine governor is running for President and has a son obsessed with the love of his deceased wife enough to rob her grave and run off with her body. Mark has done considerable care learning about the decomposition of the human body.The metaphor of the dirt of the grave being common to all of us with the "dirt" that can bury a politician is a stretch but still holds the imagination.
A hired sleuth, trusted exclusively by the governor is hired to find him before the public gets wind of the outrage. In turn he recruits Mark's proverbial Sam Slade type burnt out alcoholic writer to aid him in the hunt, plying him with alcohol as they wander Maine and New Hampshire in pursuit of the grieving lover. His role is somewhat vague during the adventure. In the meantime, the governor is losing primaries but staying in the race and of course unwilling doing what politicians have to do, digging up dirt/scandals on his opponents. It becomes clear that the young lover must be stopped at any cost.
In the course of the Presidential race, various competitors are unseated by their own "dirt" and not always by the Maine candidate. The Maine Governor of course remains unscathed in the scandal department.
I think one day Laflamme's books will be studied if just for his use of point of view.He jumps in and out of bodies left and right and his discourses are portrayed in the thinking of each of his characters quite convincingly. There is a noticeable lack of women in this novel, except as memories of the men in the novel. Baylor, the writer, has also lost his wife and daughter. The sleuth/security/ hired man has his own strange association with the lover and I held my breath wondering what he was going to do when he finally caught up with the lover and his captive cadaver. How crazy is this lover, the governor's son? Is he violent, dangerous to others and himself? and since all politicians have "pasts", what secrets does this family have?Aall the pieces finally fall together in another of LaFlammes'unexpected endings.
Because Mark writes in rather short segments often not more than a couple pages long, it is easy to read, put down, pick up, and quickly get into the mood again. The storyline moves fast. Laflamme once wrote that he only hoped to "entertain" and this he does well. I think I'll go after the Red Sox book next. In the meantime our author meanders the soddy, seamy streets of Lewiston, Maine as our crime reporter for the Sun Journal, the only one on the staff ( he says) who doesn't mind working nights chasing crime, treed cats, and fires. I dont think there's anybody in town he doesn't know ( after all, we all have Dirt).
You can find him yourself on his blog:The Screaming Room
http://marklaflamme.com/blog/

Unusual foreign film about a Bromance

2009-05-27T04:42:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.netflix.com

I found this haunting about a man finding himself after having established a fairly happy family life. Beautiful scenery in Provencal summertime. Incredible music by a string quartet we see in unusual places, like a cabin, a hayfield, etc. Every morning a gay man and a straight man meet on a morning run and every evening sit outside the house and discuss life and love. There is nothing physical between them but their bond reminds me of close friendships I have had with straight men and the unexpected impacts the exchange of ideas has had. Existential in nature, they discuss the futility of relationships, the prison of self deception of being in love, the only certainty one can count on is death, the reasons we live, why we attempt relationships,etc. The director is a beautiful sensitive young woman who wants us to draw our conclusions more from what we see than what we read ( subtitles) and according to her interview did a massive job of editing to get the effect she sought. After such discussions most of us remain in our lives moved but not inspired to change. This man decides to take action which brings the movie to a melancholy ending.It is pretty powerful stuff.

When Frédéric (Bernard Campan) and his family meet a gay man named Hugo (Charles Berling) while vacationing in the Provençal countryside, their lives are irrevocably changed, as the two men develop a strong yet unconventional friendship. Although Frédéric is happily married to his wife, Frédérique (Léa Drucker), his bond with Hugo challenges the strength of his marriage and ultimately inspires him to reevaluate his life. - Netflix recap.

A hankerin' for spaghetti-

2009-05-26T05:07:00.000-07:00

I just got that hankering that can't be satisfied by anything but that special taste of a special childhood food done just the way it was. I have never made a spaghetti sauce that I was happy with. I have had lots of friends in life who brag about their sauce, tasted the stuff, and made believe that it was great- but it wasn't. I never liked it poured over spaghetti and then mixed by twisting the sauce into the pasta with a fork and tablespoon.
I remember with some pleasure the old Chef Boyardee kits but they never really did the trick either. I've seen folks spend days making a sauce from scratch and tell me it was better than any restaurant could make- but it wasn't. And somehow their meatballs never came out right, too spicy, too bland, too big and dry, just too big, or not big enough at all. And their sausages came out big, and dry, and rubbery. I've had spaghetti with chicken, with turkey, with shrimp, even with whole clams ( not to be confused with a good white clam sauce), with mussels, with sausage, with chopped peppers, with added oregano, with parmesan cheese- but never quite what I'm looking for. When I go to an Italian restaurant, I never order all the other goodies, just the spaghetti. I have to find that hunky satisfying taste.

Wanna know what works? Pot luck suppers! Some mystery woman will always show up with a pot of spaghetti where the sauce and the pasta are pre-mixed in one big jumbo bowl. It's a big fellowship hall, or a school caferteria PTO fund raiser, or a Boy Scout supper where the kids have had the spaghetti all over the walls, counters, and floor. Y'gotta get there fast because it disappears fast. The meatballs are often not even meatballs, just chunks of chopped hamburger. It's hunky and I just fill my plate with it shamelessly. It's always very plain and very simple. It's not Campbell's tomato soup, but it's not really just a jug of doctored Ragu. It's always a mystery.
Perhaps I need to go farther back in my childhood to find the time when I loved it most -back when it was an aquired taste that challenged me, if not everyone else at the table.
There ya go. Or maybe an even more sentimental time.

Anybody out there know how to make a good easy sauce?

Y'never know dept: another generous plain ol' worker

2009-05-23T18:51:00.000-07:00

A friend spent a whole afternoon cleaning out my gardens. I was so happy I was all misty eyed. I went to Walmarts to buy food for a dinner I was cooking for her and my buddy, her husband, while he fixed my car. I took my first spring pass through the flower/gardening section and for 14 bucks found a beautiful, full geranium I got for my friend.( this picture isn't as gorgeous as my plant)
Since ya gotta wait anyway, I always choose my cashiers for my entertainment. One cashier looked interesting so I pulled in. When my turn came up, I put the geranium pot on the belt and one leaf broke off. The pot went through and feeling playful I picked up the leaf and asked her if we should run this one through or did I get a discount. I laughed, she did not. She insisted I give her the leaf. As she gently added it to the plant with a temporary stuff, she started telling me how I could start a new plant with it by dropping it in dirt directly and it would root. "Sure, just add it to the pot!" she spouted cheerfully. Well I thought that might be true with a glass of water but didn't know that fact.
"Oh yeah, I kept a lot of gardens for years" she said. "do you like gardening?" I allowed that I did but had my challenges. "oh yah," she said," gotta know your land and what it will support, test your soil, I read up on all that stuff for years but I don't have a house anymore. " I wasn't all that surpri8sed and wondered what her real story was working now as a cashier at Walmarts. She went on "You can do the same with a lot of other plants. Got any hydrangeas? Lilacs? "

Always pressure conscious at registers I checked behind me and no one was waiting. How good does it get? she went on and on and I soaked it all up asking one question after another. It was all precisely what I needed. She was knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and so generously willing to share. She just has that joi de vivre I needed to pick up my waning spirits. I just loved her on the spot.

I tell ya, Jesus said "the poor ye have always", but I'll tell ya something else, it's not just the poor that work at Walmarts.

Frogponder got me thinking again...

2009-05-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

Our middle school rose to the top four in the country in 1985 but has gone downhill ever since the first principal who designed both building and the organization according to the new middle school concept, left to go back to college teaching. They built it in 6 team areas each with a conference room and a good sized team closet for storage. We were right up there when California was dictating what a middle school should be. When California dropped a program we kept it and just kept adding and adding everything California sent our way. One year another new principal announced, "no more new programs for a year" and we applauded.
Now the conf. rooms are classroom and even the closets are offices. Free spaces around the building for air,plants, and views of the campus were enclosed for more tiny classrooms and offices. The library was cut up and partitioned off for a computer lab, a tech director, an after school program. ( Of course libraries are almost obsolete now as reference centers) the cafeteria has bounced students waiting alone at tables, small classes scattered about and one on one tutors everywhere. We have a beautiful music room/theater that has survived partitioning and a big gym and auxiliary gym so far in sad repair but intact. Our Tech lab, home ec and art have had rooms juttihg through the concrete wall from the hall way to accomodate special needs students who literally need to be changed and serviced in private. The special ed rooms haven't seen a coat of paint in twenty years and are all scarred up. We even had an observation room for a classroom.one way view glass and all, closed up for an office that literally can seat two people at a time.
I understand that yesterday there was a two hour staff meeting to announce the changes for next year. Everybody, it seems, has to move...while construction crews are tearing up rugs and asbestos tiles again. It's all about test scores and to hell with the middle school concept now what with retirees and transfer teachers not being replaced and more extreme special needs students coming in. The state continues to create special categories of needs that must be met for an increasing number of students with yet more special needs ringing from the very severely handicapped needs to the extremely gifted who are spread the whole range of math skills. Who knows what a normal classroom is anymore? Yet there are those middle road kids who are really the backbone of the system. They still carry the ball for the public education system.
There just is no money for education. It is a perennial greedy monster and people just get tired of putting out more for it. Where teachers are holding classes is almost a miracle in itself. What is only temporary always turns out added to the norm.
There is probably a special place in heaven where teachers sit in a swing and kids/parents throw baseballs at a target to get them dumped in water or boiling oil for eternity. After all, Dante warns...Abandon all hope entering here

the Opposition to the Gay marriage law in Maine has 90 days

2009-05-07T12:45:00.000-07:00

Spokespeople for the Catholic Diocese of Maine have started collecting the 55,057 certifiable signatures within 90 days to turn this Gay Marriage law to referendum in November. They feel it is unfair that this is a hard time of year to collect signatures and feel that most of it will be done in churches- however they intend to expand to other places. Like laws passed by legislature, this law does not go into effect for 90 days. so any of you coming to Maine to marry and have the proverbial honeymoon in Vacationland, shouldn't book anything until after August 1st. If it goes to referendum the law would not be in effect until after the referendum vote in November.
One of their complaints that the law is unfair is that it is a special rights for gays law. ( the usual argument) and that wedding and marriage related businesses will be forced to cater to them against their loyalty to church beliefs or be charged with discrimination violations. Actually I never thought of it that way myself. However, we lived through this with other minority groups And what about gay owned businesses? they too cannot withhold services based on civil rights criteria.

Mark it! May 6th Maine. It's a law you silly savages...

2009-05-06T13:42:00.000-07:00

Two hours ago Governor Baldacci signed the Gay marriage Bill into law. If you'd been raised here, you'd never believe it. When I think of all the years I hid myself from the world so i could make my contribution to society, I am just in tears here. Common sense tells me still not to walk down certain streets alone. But if my lover were alive today how much easier our lives would be thanks to the long persistent battle of the new generations and the more open mind of a younger generation. My own students, straight and gay have been involved in this fight. Here is the governor's statement on the signing:
"

AUGUSTA (NEWS CENTER) -- Wednesday, shortly after the Maine Senate took its final vote on LD 1020, "An Act to End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom," Governor Baldacci signed the bill into law.

This changes Maine law, which formerly defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. It now will allow marriage between people of the same gender.

The Governor made these statements at a news conference on Wednesday.

"I have followed closely the debate on this issue. I have listened to both sides, as they have presented their arguments during the public hearing and on the floor of the Maine Senate and the House of Representatives. I have read many of the notes and letters sent to my office, and I have weighed my decision carefully," Governor Baldacci said. "I did not come to this decision lightly or in haste."

"I appreciate the tone brought to this debate by both sides of the issue," Governor Baldacci said. "This is an emotional issue that touches deeply many of our most important ideals and traditions. There are good, earnest and honest people on both sides of the question."

"In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions," Governor Baldacci said. "I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage."

"Article I in the Maine Constitution states that 'no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor be denied the equal protection of the laws, nor be denied the enjoyment of that person's civil rights or be discriminated against.'"

"This new law does not force any religion to recognize a marriage that falls outside of its beliefs. It does not require the church to perform any ceremony with which it disagrees. Instead, it reaffirms the separation of Church and State," Governor Baldacci said.

"It guarantees that Maine citizens will be treated equally under Maine's civil marriage laws, and that is the responsibility of government."

"Even as I sign this important legislation into law, I recognize that this may not be the final word," Governor Baldacci said. "Just as the Maine Constitution demands that all people are treated equally under the law, it also guarantees that the ultimate political power in the State belongs to the people."

"While the good and just people of Maine may determine this issue, my responsibility is to uphold the Constitution and do, as best as possible, what is right. I believe that signing this legislation is the right thing to do," Governor Baldacci said.

Click here for article

Not new...but kinda struck me tonight-

2009-05-02T19:40:00.000-07:00

I am not preparing for anything. I am not on the way to anywhere. I have arrived. I am here and have always been at this same point. This is it.

Gay marriage vote in Maine

2009-04-30T20:11:00.000-07:00

Tonight the news announced that the vote went to the senate and won 21-14 for gay marriage rights in Maine. One senator from my town area said that these people come from families with histories of long marriages in their families and want to be a part of those families. They want what their parents had/have. To me, it's simply a matter of fair."
There was a proposal to add an amendment to the proposal that the vote go to referendum. ( we have a long history of our legislature passing rights laws only to be defeated by the religious rights in referendum votes a year or so later. The rights involving employment, housing etc finally made it through a referendum a couple years ago). The amendment for the current law was defeated. It's a pass or fail deal.

That means that opposition will have to initiate a referendum from the grass roots level which is costly. In the past some of their petitions have been challenged for authenticity of signatures. who would have thought. Isn't it the perception that gay advocates who are corruptive and dishonest?
The bill goes to the Representatives next. Our governor once said he would veto such a law but in this round he hasn't committed to anything. A forum for public opinion was held for the last couple of days where thousands showed up hours before the doors opened at the Civic Center. No banners or posters were allowed. The whole thing was handled civilly with no demonstrations nor particularly nasty incidents-both sides seemed to be happy that they were well represented.

Local news commentators have said that it is obvious that it's going to come about eventually. Our neighbors are doing it. Let's do it and get past it and deal with some really important issues to all of us.

House of Saddam/ W.

2009-04-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend on House of Saddam, an HBO/BBC docudrama that was excellent. It followed Saddam's bio from his coup for the Presidency( forcing his uncle to resign) to his capture and hanging- kind of skipping over the details of his trial and hanging. He was brutal and merciless, and a brilliant strategist. In his first act, he killed his best and most loyal friend since childhood in cold blood for no other reason than as an act to prove his strength. In his first meeting with his legislative body, he uncovered an alleged plot of treason and simply named his enemies who who made to stand and walk out. The victims' best friends were forced to execute them in the yard outside to prove their loyalty.
I found his thinking fascinating. He justified everything, totally destroyed everyone in his way or who even played loyal opposition. He wanted to be the leader of the Arab world and make it the cradle of civilization again. His war againt Iran but received aid from the West because the Ayotollah was a common enemy. He wanted to strike Kuwait because Kuwait was undermining the oil prices- Iraq's #1 export. His personal war against the two Bushes was based pretty much on pure hatred. He made life impossible for his top aides, military men, and security commanders who endured one insult and humiliation after another from his two spoiled, unbridled, and depraved murderous sons. He took a second wife from her husband and had him simply killed. He was totally treacherous.
But what was most interesting to me was the rationale he had for U.S. interests in Iraq. From his point of view, and from the re-enactments of U.S. officials, I had to wonder myself about the motives of our own government. to me, both sides presented ideologies that were shallow masks for pesonal power and pesonal business gains on both sides. While one country was being sold a bill of goods, the other was simply afraid to dissent.
This 4 hour presentation on BBC's HBO seemed to me to be about as true a picture as one could get to understand that whole regime and what happened-even why Saddam had no Weapons of Mass Destruction but led his people to believe he had.
I am still curious about what happened to the women in the family who fled the country with supposedly tons of money.

Secondly I watched W. , Oliver Stone's production on the life and career of G.W.Bush, Jeb, and elder Bush. I oved the coincidence that i got the two at the same time and got to see the whole Iraq story from very different perspectives of the major players both East and West. W was played to a "t" by Josh Brolin. It was slanted against Bush and the liberties he took with executive power that were unprecedented. Brolin captured the personality we all suspected as a"C" student in college, a young hellraiser, carouser, womanizer and alcoholic through his born again conversion and his rather fanatical egalamanic modus operandi. Brolin nailed the role right down to his terrible grammar and problems with diction and his aversion to actually reading anything or his inablity to speak on the cuff. It more than implies that the taking Iraq was intended as a permanent move toward U.S. occupancy- forever, and only shrouded with the concept of democracy and freedom, which he and his cronies actually hated as dyed in the wool capitalists. The movie brought more clarity of the U.S. motivations for the war. Bush was no politician and in fact no match for the likes of Saddam in strategy. had they ever met to debate and discuss, I doubt Bush could have held his own, but it would have been two collossal bullies meeting head to head.Neither of them were able to take advice or criticism. Both were not adverse to illegal tactics to gain ends. Both deluded themselves that they were destined to rule. Both betrayed loyal followers when they no longer served their needs. Both believe they were chosen of God for their roles in the world. Both guarded the right to decide zealously and yet knew how to divert the stake of guilt and responsibility when the goiong got tough.
Helluva weekend study, I'll tell ya.

Winter Boy

2009-04-24T04:08:00.001-07:00

David Dust's post today brought back this song I shed many a tear over when I met my winter boy so many years ago.It was of those powerful mad romances that pierced the heart long after we parted ways. .

clipped from www.youtube.com

Reading about Ancient Rome

2009-04-24T03:37:00.000-07:00

Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome by Robert Harris

Cicero's politicking on the senate floor of Ancient Rome renacts assassinations,plunder,campaigns,power plays,oppression,hair raising close calls of men such as Caesar, Marcellus, Pompei on the path to the coveted office of consul of the empire. Harris made me feel I was living in the midst of everyday Rome and it's long experiment as a republic. I kept thinking how similar our own government functions - the power of the wealthy, powers behind the powers,the strange bedfellows of politicians, how morality/values are determined with the manipulation of words and the law, how quickly fortunes can change, the differences between public image and actual behavior,how utter defeat can be, and how fragile power can be. I can't wait to read another of Harris's books.

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Old and new science/religion

2009-04-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been ignoring everything to delve more into string theory, creation, the theory of everything started by Einstein and continued by Hawkin. In tandem I do all the history channels on "Universe" etc. and stories of the Bible. In fact just got to watch Religuosity- Bill Maher, who only reinforced my own long embraced questions.
I picked up on a connection between Plato and string theories.
Plato talked about perfect forms...the abstract that a point in space is really non existent..just a thought, and all thoughts are manifested on a spiritual plane perfectly but not on the physical plane as more than an imperfect and uncompleted concept. Thus we cannot create a perfect square on the physical plane, but it is manifested on another level which he claimed is more real than this one.
String theory challenges dualtiy as a fundamental concept and I love that just because I need any avenue to escape this form of thinking I was programmed into from birth. TheoreticaI science is playing with duality as a limited way of perceiving the universe and suggests at least 7 dimensions beyond our usual four. This was discovered when mathematical problems could not be resolved using four dimensions.
String theory has picked up on something I don't quie understand...that the universe is ultimately symmetrical. This would back Plato's theories of more than two thousand years ago. ( Is there nothing new under the sun?) I'm wondering that in our limited scope, still, why the cosmologists of today and leading scientists would support this theory of univeral symmetry at the end of their search?
I sort of understand that justice ( as a concept) is not always served like people in jail for crimes they didn't commit... or a bountiful garden in one yard and not the next,but somewhere in time, maybe beyond life spans, justice is served in a perfect concept? In the big picture, is everything really evened out?I think of universes created and destroyed in the grand scheme...and the time involved for them to transpire and reach our telescopes in light years. It's all prettty big.
I truly wonder if there is a universal justice. but what is to say that a higher intelligence, if that be the case, designed a universe so huge that symmetry would actually occur making what we see as asymetrical as symetrical in the biggger picture? How huge does the picture have to get to arrive at that? How expanded must our consciousness be or is it already present on unexplored levels of the human psyche.
How do we, on our level, even have clues that this might be a possibility? and why do we assume that fairness in the social contract could ever reach perfect justice for all? Do we have a sense( and I mean inner vs training) at all what is fair and what is not?
I like that original point that Plato talks about perfect forms in the abstract which he deems a real world. I'm not sure that a perfectly symmetrical world suggested by string theorists, which implies seeing beyond dualtiy, is possible in our present belief systems. And if I could imagine a perfect square or circle in the universe, could I imagine a perfect social environment as well? or better still, a perfect self realization?
At times it's hard to sleep. I guess there will be compensation time for that.
But if this is true, somewhere I have a perfectly charming, handsome, sexy, intelligent, charismatic, and lovable doppleganger. If you run into me, let me know.

Another Laflamme horror: Vegetation

2009-04-15T18:07:00.000-07:00

Vegetation by Mark Laflamme

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Time well spent...increased my awareness of the depth of my veggie dependence in so many ways. Like the ornithologist in the bar scene of Hitchcock's "The Birds", if they ever got together we wouldn't have a chance". LaFlamme's character, unlikeable as he is, seems to suffer more than even his hideous crime deserves in this torturous attack of the plant world on him. How little did I realize about my intake of food, how the plant life is embeeded in almost everything I eat as well as other facets of my life. I found myself helping this villainous protagonist find places where he could be safe (where in fact I could be safe if this preposterous situation struck me).LaFlamme says he wants to entertain- sort of his writing priority. He writes in short vignettes that I categorize as perfect "almost next in line" readings at the drug store, getting my license renewed, Dr's office, - and even the john. The entertainment value is A+ but I also like the research behind it all. Damned good read and now I am looking for another of his little playgrounds of fantasies.

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