Browsed by
Tag: jersey

Society’s Child 2022

Society’s Child 2022

Comments 6 comments

Since last Friday was April 1st, it was time to switch the Guitar calendar on my office wall to May.  We always keep the Guitar calendar a month ahead and refer to a more traditional calendar hanging next to the Guitar calendar for those dates in the current month.

I took one more look at the April birthday list before inserting the pushpin into the corkboard and officially switching it over to May.

April 7th, I noted, Janice Ian’s birthday.

That brought to mind the only Janice Ian song I could think of Society’s Child.

Unless you are my age or older you may not be familiar with Janice Ian.

A Jersey girl though not typically associated with the music we now identify as the Jersey sounds made famous by Bruce Springsteen and Little Steven, she was born in Farmingdale, not far from where I grew up, and went to high school in East Orange.

Janice Ian wrote the song Society’s Child (Baby I’ve been Thinking) when she was thirteen.  The song was about an interracial relationship between a young white girl and a young black boy, and the negative treatment she received from her mom, other students, and teachers.

Her “Society.”

By the end of the song, she says, “I don’t want to see you anymore” and gives in to the pressure.

But not before saying the line “When we’re older, things may change. But for now, this is the way they must remain.”

 

 

I heard a great sermon last Sunday.

One I needed to hear I think in my continued funk.

One that helped to put some of my concerns in perspective.

It was in fact, about perspective.

 

“How critically important it is for me to have to stop in these times when you seem to be being bowled over by shock, anxiety, trauma, and the need to find just a moment to breathe in, take a breath of the Grace of God; to just find some sustenance.  And it may not change what’s going on but it will give you strength.  And God intends us to know something of that peace in the midst of chaos…

The kind of peace that comes to us in the midst of crisis, tumult, and pain…it is strength to know the presence of God, and it’s wisdom,” said the preacher.

 

Unless you live under a rock, you know we have all these things in our world, and some folks may even be experiencing crisis and pain in their personal lives.

 

But what about in those quieter times?

Those times when we may not be experiencing crisis (but everything is a crisis right?), just the normal stresses of work, family, finances, and life in general.

 

A couple of thousand years ago near or maybe even on this day, Jesus stopped on his way to Jerusalem to hang out with some friends and enjoy some quiet time before what he knew was the inevitable.

You may be familiar with the story of Martha and Mary.

Martha runs around stressed and anxious as she prepares the meal in the kitchen while her sister Mary just chills at the feet of Jesus.

She even asks Jesus to tell Mary to help her.

But Jesus tells her “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed…Mary has chosen what is better…

Mary understands the peace of God while Martha creates a crisis.

I am too often guilty of having the Martha thing going on I am afraid, and might be better served to take a seat.

 

According to what I have read, Atlantic Records recorded Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking) but then refused to release it and when it finally was released on a different label many radio stations wouldn’t play it.

This was 1966 and 1967.

The world was different then.

Right?

And “When we’re older, things may change.”

Right?

I think so.

In 1966 and 1967 I was ten and eleven years old.

And through my eyes much has changed in the last fifty-five years.

I have changed.

People I know and love have changed

Our country has changed.

 

But nevertheless, if you look and live like me, and believe what I believe, society would have me labeled as a racist, a capitalist, a homophobe, and whatever else.

Yup, that’s me, Society’s Child of the 2020’s I guess.

And I will admit, I take some offense to that.

 

I watched video of former President Obama’s return to the White House this week.  It reminded me that it really wasn’t that long ago that we weren’t so racist in this country and that we had come a long way since 1966.

But now that has all changed again.

 

It is sad that we can’t put our world in a more realistic perspective, can’t recognize the change that has occurred in humanity, and in the hearts of individuals.  It just may help progress to continue.

I am older now, and I have seen that things do change, things have not remained that way in all circumstances. And I also recognize more change is necessary.

Yet, some want to create a crisis.

And some understand the peace of God.

Choosing what is better.

Sitting at the feet of Jesus.

But that is just my perspective.

 

Postscript:

The photo above was taken last week on my most recent visit to see my Pops.  Janice Ian isn’t the only famous person to have a birthday in April because Monday April 11 is my dad’s birthday.  He will be 93 years old.  So just in case I don’t get around to paying him some attention in words I will acknowledge him here.

My Ride’s Here

My Ride’s Here

Comments 19 comments

I was staying at the Westin
I was playing to a draw
When in walked Charlton Heston
With the Tablets of the Law

He said, “It’s still the Greatest Story”
I said, “Man I’d like to stay
But I’m bound for glory
I’m on my way
My ride’s here…”

 (From “My Ride’s Here” as written by Paul Muldoon and Warren Zevon)

 

I got a nice email from Mike Vineyard back in early May.  Mike is the brother of Steve Vineyard, my pastor who passed away unexpectedly back in January of this year.

You might remember.

I won’t share it exactly but in his email he said he had read and enjoyed some my posts and had even subscribed to the website.

I don’t know Mike.

He didn’t remember meeting me and truthfully I don’t remember meeting him either.  Ever since having Donny’s funeral at the Sterling United Methodist Church, I don’t like to attend funerals there.    So I generally make myself as busy as I can be helping out in some way that keeps me distracted.

But I surely appreciated his comments and his desire to receive my future posts.

 

“My Ride’s Here” was the eleventh studio album released in May of 2002 by singer-songwriter Warren Zevon.  I read that he described the album as a meditation on death.

It was released several months before Zevon was diagnosed with a type of cancer called mesothelioma.

Warren Zevon passed away in September of 2003 at the young age of fifty-six.

 

According to the Mayo Clinic:

Malignant mesothelioma (me-zoe-thee-lee-O-muh) is a type of cancer that occurs in the thin layer of tissue that covers the majority of your internal organs (mesothelium).

Mesothelioma is an aggressive and deadly form of cancer. Mesothelioma treatments are available, but for many people with mesothelioma, a cure isn’t possible.

The primary risk factor for mesothelioma is exposure to asbestos.

 

My brother Carl had mesothelioma.

He died on Tuesday morning, about fourteen months after his diagnosis, at the young age of sixty-six.

 

According to my California brother Gary, who recently was able to spend a week with Carl, he told him that he really liked the song “My Ride’s Here” by Warren Zevon.

Zevon didn’t know he had mesothelioma at the time that he wrote that song.  Yet most interpretations believe “My Ride’s Here refers to the last ride, the one that takes us to the other side.”

Another wrote: “I hope when my time comes I can show half of the class that Warren had and that I can catch my last ride with the dignity he had. There’s no warning, no big production, just the fact that it happens to all of us.”

My brother was a class act.  A genuinely nice guy.

Back in April, I connected with a friend, Lee Scott, who was part of the group of friends we hung with back in Jersey in the early 70’s via Facebook.  I told Lee coincidentally my brother and I had been reminiscing  and talking about him a short time before that.  He asked about Carl and I explained what was going on.  In his response, he said he was sorry to hear and that Carl “was always the more sane of us.”

He was.

He was the pragmatic one.

 

We have all heard this said I’m sure “yeah I know that guy, he would give you the shirt off his back!”

In the literal sense, I don’t know if my brother Carl would have given you the shirt off his back.

He needed that shirt to hide the wounds, the scars, and the colostomy resulting from years of fighting rectal cancer, then lung cancer.

But he would have given you anything else you asked for and more often, even if you didn’t ask.

He just showed up.

Then he met a form of cancer he couldn’t beat, one where “a cure isn’t possible.”

And he faced it with dignity, continuing to give right up to end.

 

I still don’t know Mike Vineyard.

But I feel like I know him a little better today than I did last week.

I know what he felt like back in January and I expect I know what he feels like today.

 

Since Donny’s accident, I believe as the Bible says, God knows the day your ride is going to show up.  I know that it happens to all of us, and as much as we would like to think otherwise, we don’t have control.

And so Tuesday morning, without a lot of production, and to some degree for us, without warning, Carl decided, as the song said,

“Man I’d like to stay

But I’m bound for glory

I’m on my way

My ride’s here…”

 

 

Well, okay then.

 

I wish you would have waited another hour or two, but I understand.

 

You couldn’t miss your ride.

 

I love you.

 

I will see you when I see you.

 

 

 

 

Back Biters and Syndicators, Home Again

Back Biters and Syndicators, Home Again

Comments 2 comments

Back biters and syndicators
Standing all around the door
An’ it wished ’bout ev’ryday
Hopin’ I’d go way to stay
Ooo-ooo-wee, ooo
Almost ruin my happy home
Ooo-wee-ooo
Almost ruin my happy home

(Al Smith and John Lee Hooker)

 

 

It’s Friday and it is now about 9 PM and I am about to exit on to Route 18 for the last leg of my trip home to New Jersey.  With Little Steven’s Underground Garage set on my XM radio, I hear John Lee Hooker’s Back Biters and Syndicators begin to play.  I grab one of the three harmonicas on the console,  an “A” harp and it blends right in, happy that I got it right the first time.

Six hours earlier I had left work, got gas, and hit the road.

More than two hours later I was just getting off the DC beltway and heading towards Baltimore on I-95.

One hour later I was stopped in gridlock north of Baltimore where the express lanes converged with the four or five normal lanes.

Somewhere in this mess on the overpass above with a chain link fence, climate control advocates were holding a sign and waving their arms trying to get the impatient drivers below to beep their horns in support, or maybe, I thought,  trying to dispel the carbon monoxide being pumped out of the sea of cars below them.

It reminded me of what driving the beltway and interstates in late September of 2001 would have looked like.  You could barely travel under an overpass that didn’t have an American flag on it with people rallying support for our country recently attacked by terrorists.

What a difference eighteen years makes, I thought.  You don’t see too many American flags anymore.  Maybe we have just forgotten, or maybe some are just afraid of being labeled.

When I first moved to the Washington DC area, I used to drive home to Jersey pretty much every weekend.  I had an old 1969 C10 pickup truck and off I would go.  Generally it was a three and one half hour ride.

Now forty years later the trip I started at 3PM doesn’t begin to wind down until six hours later.  Thankfully around 9:30PM I arrive.

 

It’s now Sunday afternoon and I am ready to start my trip back, hoping this time the drive won’t be so long.

But before leaving I decide to take a trip past the stretch of Long Branch beaches I used to hang at.  I passed the Church of the Presidents, now closed for renovation and remember the time when I was twelve or so and spent the day sitting with my grandfather as he displayed his paintings.  He won a gold medal for his portrait of John Kennedy.

Then on down Ocean Avenue to West End, back in the day it was once referred to as the Greenwich Village of the Jersey shore and past the restaurant where I got my first job.

Finally at the North End beach where I spent most of my teenage years, I got out and took a photo.  It has all changed now.

Now ready to start my way back home I hope for swifter travel and line up my harmonicas for this ride.

It was a good trip.

Now I am ready to return to my happy home.
Ooo-wee-ooo

The Thanksgiving Day Massacre

The Thanksgiving Day Massacre

Comments 0 Comment

Her body was green and she had two vicious jaws
She polished her mate as she kissed him with her claws
She bit off his head so he would not feel the pain
She wanted his body so much she ate his brain

From Don Dixon’s “Praying Mantis” 1985

 

“Curt come here quick, what is this?” my wife yelled from down the hall.

One of our bedrooms has, over time, been converted into a year round plant room, though this time of year it was also filled with plants that had been recently moved from the deck to winter inside.

It was Thanksgiving morning, we were about to leave for Pennsylvania, Kim decided to check on her plants before hitting the road.

On one of the plants was a tan and orange cocoon like thing that Kim called me to look at.

As I was focusing on the nest- like structure, Kim blurted,

“Look! There are ants all over the leaves!”

I shifted my focus now to one of the long leaves and the “ants.”

Finding the leaves covered with insects I responded,

“Those aren’t ants… those are praying mantises!”

 

As a kid growing up in New Jersey I was always told it was illegal to kill a praying mantis.

And I grew old, never having any reason to challenge that.

Therefore, now standing in my spare bedroom, surrounded by plants, in the presence of my wife, and facing hundreds of praying mantises, in my mind I was looking at ten years to life…but I had to make a decision.

I lifted the plant and carefully carried it down the stairs and out on to the deck.

It was a cold morning.

In a short while, I looked again, they were all dead.

Mantis bodies littered my deck.

 

We threw our suitcases in the car and like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde we headed for the Pennsylvania border.

We were on the lam.

With me driving the get-away car Kim got on her iPad and did some research.

It turns out, a praying mantis is pretty scary.  They are carnivores, and there are some larger species that will hunt small birds, lizards, and mammals! They have triangular heads that they can turn 180 degrees, two compound eyes with a few extra regular eyes in the middle just because.  Their legs are equipped with spikes for pinning their prey.  But mostly in the US, they just eat other bugs.

Sort of.

They are also cannibals and will eat their siblings!

And the real kicker, the female will eat the male after mating!

Okay that’s enough…this is what Dixon was singing about.

“What about the protection…are they protected?” I asked as we left Virginia and entered Maryland.

She read from the internet site Snopes/Fact Check:

The belief that it is illegal to kill a praying mantis (a crime carrying a $50 fine as a punishment) has been floating around since the 1950s, and we have no idea where this bit of insectoid legal apocrypha came from:

“When I was growing up in New Jersey, I used to find praying mantises in our driveway and back yard every once in a while. It was illegal in NJ to kill a praying mantis, as I remember.”

There is not (and never has been) any federal or state law proscribing the killing of praying mantises.

No.

We were in the clear.

No Jail time.

No $50 times a couple hundred dead bugs fine.

Okay, okay so I am sure there is something your momma told you that you still believe too.

And besides, like that guy in the Snopes internet post, I’m from Jersey too where we have the Jersey Devil, Bigfoot, and Jimmy Hoffa.

What’s the moral of the story?

Love and trust your mother… but verify.

And check your plants before you carry them in the house, spring comes early indoors.

Bell Bottom Blues Revisited

Bell Bottom Blues Revisited

Comments 2 comments
That’s me on the left in those WT Grant Jeans circa 1973.

My August 29, 1969 copy of Life Magazine came in the mail today.

The summer of 1969 was a significant one.

The Who released Tommy.

I watched Easy Rider at the Eatontown Drive-In without a car.

I watched with my immigrant Norwegian grandfather, the first man walk on the moon.

The New York Mets began their comeback that would ultimately make them World Series Champs that Fall.

Sharon Tate met Charles Manson.

The United States Gulf Coast met Hurricane Camille.

Woodstock.

And for me maybe the most important thing to happen that summer,   I got my first pair of hip hugger, bell bottom blue jeans.

WT Grant was a department store in Little Silver, New Jersey back in the 1960’s.  Little Silver was the next town over from Oceanport across the small bridge over the Oceanport Creek, then a short hop through the Army’s Fort Monmouth, and across the Little Silver Bridge.  Little Silver had Mike’s Toy Store, the Dairy King drive up ice cream, and a small WT Grant department store.

On one of those trips to WT Grant late in August, in the summer of 1969,  before school started the following week and I would begin the eighth grade,  I convinced my mother to buy me a pair of bell bottom blue jeans.  They were a little big but I didn’t care, I had my first pair of bell bottoms.

In addition to my bell bottoms that day, I also convinced my mother to buy me a copy of the Life magazine that I had picked up from the magazine rack. The one about Woodstock, with Norman Mailer on the cover, and the Manson murders inside.

I remember the ride home, flipping those pages and absorbing the photos.  Once home I spent hours in that magazine reading and imagining…me in my bell bottoms at Woodstock…the horror of the Manson murders and the beauty of Sharon Tate.

Life Magazine back in the day was big with many photos and stories.

The world as we knew it was changing in the 60’s, there was lots of turmoil, tragedy, social unrest, and scientific advancement.

Those bell bottoms signified a change in my life too.  Later that school year those jeans (along with my handmade macramé belt) would get me some trouble and would keep me out of my eighth-grade graduation until my sister could bring me new clothes.

I would wear that same pair of bell bottom jeans through the four years of high school that followed with a little help that they were big when I bought them, eventually cutting the threads out of the seams at bottoms to make them longer, and the fact that I just plain didn’t grow much from the time I was 13 until I graduated high school.

 

The world was different then, but probably really not so much different.  We still have turmoil, tragedy, social unrest, and scientific advancement now.

But back then we had magazines, now we have Facebook and Instagram.

And I don’t have hip hugger bell bottom blue jeans anymore.  But at my age and with the size of my belly I wish I did.  They would have a more practical application for me today.

 

The realization that the sun is setting sooner crept over me as I finished my ride and headed back to my truck last evening.

Just like the lift the extra daylight was in the spring that seemed so liberating,  the impending darkness as the days get shorter is signaling a change that will soon be limiting.

The summer of 2018 is coming to an end already.

But just as fast as I think this summer went, the winter months will go by too, and before I know it the days will be warmer and the sun back out longer.

Because unlike that long lazy summer of 49 years ago, that is how it seems to be now.

Time seems to move faster.

I don’t know why that is, it just does.

 

“Bell bottom blues, don’t say goodbye.
I’m sure we’re gonna meet again,
And if we do, don’t you be surprised”

(from Bell Bottom Blues by Eric Clapton and Bobby Whitlock)

Sharon Tate

It’s Not the Fourth of July Until You Have Had a Carrot Hot Dog?

It’s Not the Fourth of July Until You Have Had a Carrot Hot Dog?

Comments 3 comments

If you are familiar with Max’s hot dogs on the Long Branch, New Jersey boardwalk, or the Windmill in Long Branch’s West End, or my sister’s Fourth of July parties for the last gazillion years, you know Jersey hot dogs.

Man those are hot dogs…

This year I had a carrot hot dog on the Fourth of July.  It was awesome.

 

The first part of the summer is always a bittersweet time of the year for us.

It starts on Mother’s Day; then Memorial Day; Hayley’s birthday; includes Father’s Day; then my birthday; Kim’s birthday; our wedding anniversary;  the Fourth of July; then July 19th, the day of Donny’s accident; and ends with Savannah’s birthday on July 20th; then we breathe again.

And I always find myself reliving that summer.

We had some good times in the early part of the summer of 2002.

I have shared this photo before, its one of my favorites, and these are the three girls who were rightly so, my competition.

On June 20, 2002, Donny and I headed off to Wolf Trap to see Jo Dee Messina and Brad Paisley after Kim couldn’t go.  It was his first and only concert.  I had seats in the first row, but the three girls he knew sitting in the lawn turned out to be tough competition for the old man, but Donny didn’t leave me hanging too long and finished out the show sitting next to me in the front row.

That Fourth of July 2002 we spent in Jersey at my sister’s and got down to the beach.  He used to mess with me and quote the line from the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore, “You want a piece of me old man?” whenever we were doing anything sports-related like throwing the football at the beach or mixing it up with the soccer ball on my sister’s lawn.

I didn’t want a piece of him but I surely wanted badly to have something I could show him.

Donny was a natural-born athlete.

I am a natural-born non-athlete.

He beat me in everything.

One vacation at the outer banks, I knew he had never played golf, so I took him and his friend Chris golfing. Finally, I thought, there was something I could teach him, some sport I could role model.

Something I could maybe even beat him at.

By the end of the day though, I guess I had passed on as many good golf tips as I possibly could and it must have paid off because he beat me again.

 

The funny thing was, I never made the Adam Sandler connection until after Donny’s accident.

I never used to like Adam Sandler movies.

Now I can watch them all day long.

 

When we ride bikes now on the bike trail Kim always says “c’mon old man.”

I like that.

 

I don’t know what I will do on this Thursday the 19th but maybe I will ride my bike.  And maybe my wife will say “c’mon old man.”

And it will be okay.

Because winning doesn’t matter anymore, it never really did, it was having some meaning in that young man’s life that was really important to me.

And maybe, I realize now, in this old man’s life…

So I guess maybe in some way I have won.

At least I can tell you, Donny, that I still have your Mom’s back and she has mine.

Heck, I am even eating carrot hot dogs on the Fourth of July.

That has got to be love.

 

Happy Gilmore: “You like THAT old man? You want a piece of ME?”


Bob Barker character: “I don’t want a PIECE of you, I want the whole THING!”

 

I want the whole thing too…

But I would settle for just a piece of you right now.

 

Joe

Joe

Comments 7 comments

Dear Joe,

Today we will all come together and celebrate your life, remember your friendship, honor your memory.

I hope we are able do that in the way you expected us to.

You know, right after we all found out you had left us, the February weather got warm, temperatures rose into the 70’s and even 80’s.  It was wonderful.  It was like you were telling us it was time to plant the tomatoes.

Then you called us all home to Jersey to share some time to remember you in a Nor’easter!

Yesterday Matt flew in from Florida to Atlantic City in 70 mile an hour winds, “roughest ride ever,” is how he described it.

Then you had me driving over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 60 mile an hour winds since 95 north was closed because two tractor trailers had literally blown over on the Tydings Bridge north of Baltimore.

It was kind of reminiscent of Ricky whipping us around the Shrewsbury in his little Boston Whaler… scary.

But then I hit the Delaware Memorial Bridge and it was covered with slush and I came down into New Jersey and there were cars spun out in ditches on both sides of the highway, and I said to myself “you son of a B?#@*, there is no way you are going to get me to have an accident just to come hang out with you tonight, I hope you are having fun with this, I will see you in good time.”

We did have a lot of fun though.

The time we had to have our sisters bring new clothes to school for us in the eighth grade, in order to participate in graduation because the principal didn’t like our bell bottoms and rope braided belts.

Going to church at Precious Blood and instead of going inside and taking Communion we stayed outside and took something else.

The time we hitch hiked to Asbury Park to see Grand Funk Railroad at the Convention Hall, my first concert, and the wild ride home we had.

The stretch of Steel Mill shows including the infamous Highlands Clearwater Swim Club show; the Sunshine In Black Sabbath/Cactus show that we had early show tickets to, that turned into a Steel Mill marathon when Black Sabbath kept blowing the power. I think my mother almost reported me missing that night and my sister picked us up when we finally spilled out on the street at about 2 AM.  And the final Upstage shows.

The time your sister Diane drove us into the Asbury Park riots where we were stopped by the National Guardsman in full combat gear who asked us “where the hell do you guys think you are going?” then told us to turn around and get out of out of there.

Walking barefoot to North Long Branch and walking back home from North Long Branch. Then walking to North Long Branch again, and walking back home from North Long Branch.  Over and over and over again.

Getting up at 4 AM after getting home at 3 AM to drive to Berkley Heights in your father’s pick-up truck to work at “the shop,” your family’s church furniture woodworking business.  And the time we went to install church pews at a church   in West Orange and Uncle Rudy parked the truck on the hill and the load shifted, when we opened the rear door of the box truck the pews came crashing out on to the street.  Glad that wasn’t our fault.

I could go on and on.

But I have to admit to something.  After losing Donny in 2002, I thought I was immune to all of this.  I thought that never again would I ever feel that death was something that would take me by surprise, something that would rattle me.  I thought that analytically and spiritually I had it under control, because I lived with grief every day and it would never affect me the same again.

And for almost 16 years it didn’t.

Then, I learned I was wrong.

Because, in the last two weeks I felt it again.

And I got scared.

And I started thinking I didn’t even want to come up here and go through this again.

But I knew I had to, and I wanted to, and I knew why as well.

Because I realized, though I had experienced loss, it had been almost 16 years since I lost someone I loved, a member of my “family.”

And the hurt came back.

Your sister told me you had talked about this day and how it should be.  Not religious, just a day for your friends.

So I promise not to get religious, and I think you can be pretty sure that your friends are here.

Through nor’easters or whatever; we may not be barefoot anymore, or need to hitch hike…but thanks for sharing today with us and all the other days before that we will remember.

We had some fun.

 

“Hey Butch…Get Me a Beer”

“Hey Butch…Get Me a Beer”

Comments 2 comments
Fourth of July, 2000.

“Pop” had his bedroom on the first floor, down the hallway from the kitchen.  He would smoke his cigars by shoving them down in the bowl of his pipe.  When he wanted a beer he would holler:

“Hey Butch, get me a beer,” in his “Jugoslavian” accent. That’s how he said it, “Jugoslav.”

Pop was Butch’s grandfather.

Butch was my dear friend Joe.

I spent a lot of time in that house, with his family; his mom, his dad, and a whole bunch of sisters.

It’s weird.

It seems like one day you are growing up 11 years old, then the next thing you know you are 20 and you’ve learned everything about life within a ten-mile radius of a little Jersey shore town called Oceanport.

And then the next thing you know you are 61 with life smacking you upside the head reminding you that you aren’t young anymore and the party can be over abruptly.

What happened?

Where did those forty some years go?

What did I miss?

What could I have done differently?

 

For that which, then, I thought was right…

Have Mercy God.

For that, which now, I regret…

Forgive me God.

For that which, hence, I know not what to do…

Guide me God.

That was from church today.

Today, that resonated with me

 

Before I went to church today I read something on Facebook that resonated with me as well. As I thought about starting to write today I thought what I had read on Facebook would be a good reference, would have some place in these thoughts.

But then I learned about Facebook time.

Like those forty years I just lost, four hours in Facebook time can be just as harsh.  That experience I had at 7 am this morning was now just a cloudy memory of something I know was worth remembering and worth experiencing,  but now lost.  I tried to go back to experience it again but I couldn’t find it, you can’t go back, it is lost in time.

But I recall it had a message that went something like this:

Life is a daily exercise in learning lessons. Mainly because we learn a lesson one day, but because life is what it is and we are what we are, flawed, we have to learn it again and then again, and again and maybe sometimes we never learn.

I think whenever we lose someone we wish we could get a redo, take a mulligan.  The “if I had a chance to do it again” syndrome.

There are songs written about it; I’ve written about it with Donny; now I am writing about it again.

I know this all too well.  It’s like being 60 and making fart noises in walkie-talkies. There are some things I wish I would have done differently.

We don’t always learn lessons well… well, at least I don’t.

We treat our bodies like they are indestructible only to find out once we are older and wiser, that they are not.

We treat our world like it is indestructible only to find out maybe too late,  that may not be true either.

But there is one thing I think I have learned that is true.

Some friendships are indestructible, no matter how hard they are tested or how much time is lost.

And worrying about what I did right or wrong; and what I now regret, is a waste of energy.  It’s in God’s hands now.

And like Facebook time, the remembrances of my experiences forty or fifty years ago might be cloudy and I will never see them as clear again. And even though more recent memories for me were fewer and farther between I can still smile when I think of them all, and still feel good knowing that even after many years, I got messages like this:

“A Very Merry Christmas and a Very Happy and Healthy New Year. I Love You All!! Butch”

We all love you too Butch.

 

Postscript:

My friend Joe died suddenly and unexpectedly last Friday.  We experienced growing into young adulthood together and shared many things in common, especially our love of music (though as instrumentalists,  we were only proficient at air guitar and air drums); and many of life’s lessons that made our relationship one that was comforting; at times funny, sometimes sad; and always in the end, supportive.

It was indestructible.

If there ever was a song written that I always associated with my friendship with Joe, it was this one:

Now young faces grow sad and old and hearts of fire grow cold
We swore blood brothers against the wind
I’m ready to grow young again
And hear your sister’s voice calling us home across the open yards
Well maybe we could cut someplace of our own
With these drums and these guitars

Cause we made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Blood brothers in the stormy night with a vow to defend
No retreat, baby, no surrender

(From No Surrender by Bruce Springsteen)

Here is a great version if you have a few minutes that puts it in a perspective close to home for me, we did a lot of dreaming too.

I will miss him and will always be grateful for the friendship we shared.

Resolutions…What a Waste

Resolutions…What a Waste

Comments 0 Comment
image courtesy of the What The Health facebook page

Animals living in their own waste…they’re living next to animals that are sick or even dead…stuck in cages with these animals where bacteria tends to spread…

 Three thousand people die every year in the United States from Salmonella…twenty thousand people dying from antibiotic resistance deaths…

 …if you live near a swine spray field …three times more likely to have a MRSA infection…

 …ten million pigs in North Carolina produce the waste of one hundred million humans…this is the equivalent of the entire eastern seaboard flushing their toilets in to North Carolina…

The pig’s waste falls through slats in the floors of the sheds they are forced to live in… then pumped into giant waste pits…and pumped out unfiltered on to fields…

(From the documentary “What the Health”)

 

Happy New Year!

Time to bust out some new resolutions!

Maybe I’ll finally fix that sink that has never drained properly…

Maybe I’ll quit procrastinating…

Maybe join the gym…

Maybe change that diet and eat healthier too…

 

A few months ago my wife decided to change her diet.  Not that she was eating poorly to begin with; she almost never ate meat with the exception of some chicken and fish; but this time she was going to try to live on a plant based diet only.  No animal anything. 

No cheese, no eggs, no chicken, no beef, nothing dairy; nothing derived from an animal.

Just plants. 

I thought I might go along with this and do it with her but I insisted that until the freezers were purged of all the leftovers and frozen foods; all those meatballs, chicken wings, and other food stuffs we had accumulated, I would hold back.  Somebody had to eat that stuff, it would be wasteful!

So while my wife got healthier… I got heavier. 

It would go something like this: 

ME: “Hey honey, how are you…you’re on your way home? Good, are you hungry what do you want for dinner?   

KIM:  “No not really, I had a big salad for lunch.”

ME: “Oh… okay… no problem I will just stop and get some bread,   get some meatballs out of the freezer and eat a meatball sub.”

The next day… 

ME: “Oh hey honey, great I will see you at home.  Are you hungry, want me to make something for dinner? “

KIM: “No, you know I had some beans and rice later in the afternoon today so I am good.”

ME: “Okay… no problem… it’s all good…hey you know I will just have a meatball sub…it’s fine don’t worry about me. “

 So while my wife cleansed her body of toxins; I cleansed the freezers.   

And I gained weight. 

 All this got started with my wife by her watching the documentary I illustrated at the beginning of this essay. 

The documentary titled What the Health.

Recently while sitting with my parents and talking about growing up in New Jersey we got on the topic of septic tanks. 

Because back when I was growing up before they put the sewers in Oceanport in the 70’s, septic tanks were common.  You had a septic tank on your property that held the waste until it got full, and then a truck would come along and pump out the sewage until the tank got full again, and so on and so on.

My grandmother had a couple of these septic tanks on her property and she lived across the street.   

My parents went on to explain that they heard that these sewer trucks would pump out the sewage and then drive the raw sewage down to farms in south Jersey where it would be sprayed on the fruits and vegetable fields as fertilizer. 

What the hellllth?

Wait, wait, wait so I could have pooed at my grandma’s house in central Jersey and my poo could then have been driven to south Jersey and sprayed on a head of lettuce that may have subsequently ended up in my salad bowl; or on strawberries that may have been on my strawberry shortcake birthday cakes that I loved so much?

Somehow that whole pig spray issue sounded rather genteel to me now…

I seriously don’t know what to eat after learning all this…the meat is bad…the veggies are sprayed with poo…

Probably not mine anymore but maybe someone else’s!

What kind of resolution should I make?

Never to talk to my parents about septic tanks again?

Maybe…

And why couldn’t my good plumber friend from New Jersey have retired to Northern Virginia and not the west coast of Florida?  I don’t want to fix that drain.

And I already joined a gym, so at least my bank account is getting leaner.

I don’t know what to do…

I know… I will procrastinate.

That always works for me…

Now what is it that I could be more resolute about?…

 

If you would like more information about the film visit the What the Health website.  For additional information visit their facebook page.  It’s worth a look, draw your own conclusions.

Ethan, Christian, and Irma

Ethan, Christian, and Irma

Comments 2 comments
Ethan, my littlest guy, safe and asleep somewhere in north Florida

Just five days ago I was joining many others and praying for the survivors and the first responders in Texas and Louisiana after Hurricane Harvey made landfall and continued to rain and flood for days.   For me, mostly faceless and nameless people, known to me only by images on my TV.

But to many others these folks most certainly had names and faces, some were family like my friend Drew whose brother lives in Houston; others friends and colleagues.  For them their prayers were more specific, their anxiety more real, their concern hitting home beyond CNN or The Weather Channel.

This week I understand.

Yesterday, in the early hours of the morning, members of my immediate family; my daughter, son-in-law, and their two sons fled Broward County and began to head north.  Their sons, two of my three grandchildren, are just babies.  One is two years old, the other less than two months old.  Yesterday morning they became part of the Irma refugee movement north.

Later in the day they found shelter in northern Florida; far enough north where, though they may not avoid a hurricane, they should be safe to ride out a much lesser storm.

Though I find some comfort in a weaker threat, I am not comfortable.

As I sit now and watch CNN, detail after detail, listening to the interview of the mayor of Hollywood Florida, the town where my kids live; watching the storm track and those spinning 5’s and 4’s go up the Florida peninsula I am relieved my daughter, my son-in-law, and those babies are not in south Florida.

But I am not without great concern.

I have a lot of extended family and some very good friends in Florida.

If you are from Jersey, you have family and friends in Florida.

I am concerned for all of them.

I am safe many miles away.

My biggest weather related concern this summer has been how the rain has forced me to have to cut my grass every six days and still my mower sputters and stalls. What an inconvenience.

There are people in Texas and in the Caribbean tonight who don’t have lawns to cut anymore, some don’t have houses, some worse than that.

I am safe far away from the chaos, but I am also helpless to those that I love who may be close to danger.

All I can do now is pray.

And like last Sunday I will pray for the safety of all those in harm’s way as residents, visitors, and those responding to the call for help.

But in addition to that, for me this week I will pray in greater detail.  This week I have names, and faces, and memories, and futures to prayer for.

So for now I will watch the storm projections and listen to the countless interviews. I will act cool and supportive on the phone and in the text messages.

But I will continue to worry about my littlest Irma refugees and my family and friends.

And I will pray.

Ten o’clock update.  A little more shift to the west.  I think it’s working…