Happy Halloween

October 31, 2009

Matt and Bailey left for the city. They were dressed as ghouls. Fake blood. Matt had made fake intestines out of Saran Wrap and condoms and packed them with some unmentionable stuff that looked very real but it wasn’t--I think. He pinned his fake "guts" to the front of his torn dress shirt. He covered himself with theatrical blood and grime and yelled at me to “get the camera” while he pulled on his suit jacket. Bailey was wearing a dress/gown a la Carrie. Both of them sporting tattoos all over the place, eyes rolled back when the flash went off. Really creepy.

While we were taking the photos out on the front porch the mail lady pulled up to the mailbox and Matt, so proud of his get up, couldn’t help himself, yelled out to her “Happy Halloween” and she yell the same back up to him. She did a quick double take from down on the road as she pulled away and saw the two of them like bride and groom from hell, mugging up on the porch. I am sure they will have a good time on the train to Grand Central. I am sure the train will be packed with the youth of America dressed up for the medieval resurrection of the dead. Matt will fit right in.

I am sitting outside right now in my Sweet Construction jacket, in my green, canvas camp chair, sipping the cider we bought two weeks ago when we visited Jake and Ting Ting up in Ithaca. It has gone hard and is not for the feint of heart. The fermentation gases had built up in the plastic jug and when I opened it up the top nearly blew my hand off. It is kind of sweet and bubbly with a kick. When I got up to get the radio from the tool room my knees were decidedly rubbery. Anyhow…I’m in my chair under the overhang of the metal roofed carport. A determined rain has begun where all day it had just been impenetrable clouds and mist. I have my feet up on the rock wall and a basket full of candy sits on the drivers side fender of the VW next to me. The radio is playing Jonathon Schwartz’s show- Mandy Potemkin, who I hate. He sounds like some one cut his nuts off and took his shirt and put him in a meat locker. A castrato with stiff nipples.

Just your normal Halloween. Sip of cider. I don’t suppose too many kids will be coming up the driveway today. It is only three thirty now but I thought a lot of the parents would take their little ones out early because of the weather. The weather is so lousy. We never get to many kids anyway, even in good weather. The long, dark driveway is just too forbidding. The house is usually dark and uninviting from the street-at least for kids. And then there are the tall, winding, wooden steps up to the porch…even if candy is waiting up top. (Oh cripes! Mel Torme! This guy is picking the worst of the worst!) Sip of cider. I thought if I sat downstairs it would make the place look a lot less forbidding but the rain and Mel Torme will surely keep everybody away.

Sitting out here I feel like I’m out on a camping trip. Cool. At least I get that out of it. That and a giant cider/ sugar headache. I’m gonna give it an hour. By then the sun will have set and I will have run out of cider and Halloween will be a happening thing or it won’t. Then I’ll go inside and have a slice of pizza and watch Halloween Rockin’ Eve with Dick Clark. They still have that on, don't they? I'll watch until the pumpkin drops from the tower in Notre Dame at midnight, No?

Cool Halloween.

Happy Halloween.

A Clean Slate

A Clean Slate

In the spring the mint comes up in a patch in the corner of the little piece of ground Liz and her mother made when we first moved in. A small raised plot bordered by giant granite boulders on the south and retained by a two-foot high wall made of stones on the east. The two Liz’s carried each stone from the hill side and piled them up into a rubble wall. Behind the wall they poured loose dirt which they also dug from the hill. I calculate they hauled, by bucket, approximately 15 yards of soil in all. They seeded it with grass, some of which actually grew, and populated the tiny, level area with a picnic table and two benches, which Mutti bought for us. Over the years the domestic grass has given way to thick weeds and native grass which, when mown, has become a dense, serviceable “lawn” of sorts.

The mint, as I said, grows wild on a small portion of the “lawn” spreading down the slope and into the border of the garden fence. It becomes entwined in the fence during the growing season and spreads into the garden itself, usually up to the marigolds which Liz plants for color and to discourage insects. All summer long I tread on it as I tend the vegetables. It is not discouraged by my carelessness. It is a weed that thrives on the garden soil. It doesn’t care if I walk all over it and it even rewards my trespasses with fragrant mint smell as I bruise the hardy plants. Once the fall comes I spend a lot of time selectively pulling up the spent vines of the cucumbers and squash, picking beans to dry for seeds for next year and pulling up other dead and dying plants-including the mint.

The okra stalks come up hard. As I pull them huge clods of earth cling to the root ball. I smack the ball against the fence so the soil will fall into the beds. Earth worms rain out of the loosened soil and borough into the ground as quickly as possible. I throw the stems and roots into a pile outside the fence and I will collect it for composting later. Sometimes I run the mower over the pile and chop it up before I compost it. Long, stringy vines, the stalks of the broccoli, the smooshy, left-over cucumbers, the weeds and the flowers-including the mint-all goes into the pile. The tricky mint. Little seeds fall like sand everywhere I pull it out and everywhere I throw the dying plants. It plants itself everywhere and comes back year after year. No matter if the tomatoes blight or the egg plant withers from insects the mint grows. This year it threatened to take over the entire little hill where I planted potatoes and was so thick on the fence that the sun could barely penetrate. I pulled it and pulled it but it just kept on coming.

I used to pick some of the leaves and dry them on the dining room table. All winter long I drank strong mint tea. I gave some to friends and to the post woman and I would have done it again and again but now one ever asked for more. I assume it was because mint is so common that everyone has some of their own and they don’t need mine. So now I just make a little for myself and mix it with “Lemon Zinger”.

That tea and its pungent smell… that is what the mint gives in return for its intrusion into the lawn and the garden, and that is enough. Today I will spend an hour and reign in the wild growth. I will pull the mint and as much of the garden plants as I can. There is still some broccoli and hot peppers on the plants. The fall has been warm and just wet enough to keep them growing. Soon the hard frost will come and everything will droop and brown and I will turn the soil after I pull the remaining plant life. I will add last years compost and perhaps some manure and start again with a clean slate.

Tar-baby

Tar-baby

Where did this boy, this man, slow and smoldering tar-baby, come from?

An exhaustive search by my wife and I conclude

that he is ours.

Recognizable traits

can be traced back to us.

The genetic signs all point to common ancestors

but environment has strangely tuned him—

like a sinew pine grown

on a hillside

in the wind

or a blast of trees spindly in a sandy grove

angled in unison

bent into the sunlight.

For hours we have spoken

and spoken…

searching for an emotional dew-point

a spot at which relief forms

in clear droplets.

For years (could it be years already?)

we have tugged at our hearts,

plucked up at the downbeat

ranted

raved and

tapped out time

in search of resonance.

The hum.

A sweet sine.

Science claims the real world

while He, his mom and me

reside in a parallel universe

without physics

or biology.

Where the Earth is flat

and at the center of the world

is a tar-baby--

in a clear patch

among the thorns--

I can not help but touch.

Number 1, Number 2, Number 3

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

That is what I want to look at

That is what I want to see

Not some bright white light

Or an angel coming after me

A simple pencil sketch of the boys

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Locked in a boyish brace

Of tiny arms and perfect smiles

And hair,

A cowlick

A golden thatch

A curly, laughing head of hair

Before the problems

Before the acne

Before the braces

Before the complicated

Rhyme of the world set in

Bring me near

As one sad soul gets

To immortality

A copy of a photograph

A simple pencil sketch

Of Number 1

Number 2

Number 3.

The Meal

The Meal

You could tell by the way he paused between bites that enjoying the meal was the most important thing in his world. At least for that short time while he sat at the table with his coat in his lap like a pet—his hands in the soft fleece lining for warmth while he waited for the steaming plate to arrive. Before it would be delivered to his table he always had one small bourbon in a shot glass. Drinking it down in four or five short sips he rolled it around on his tongue and let the fire burn towards his belly. The after effect of the drink---a slight light headedness—was nothing like drunkenness but more like transcendence, which, when tightly controlled allowed him to savor the meal with elevated senses and fuller enjoyment.

When the shot glass had been taken away and the meal set before him (today it was pasta shells stuffed with a mixture of ricotta cheese and eggs and cracked pepper and basil with a sauce made of Elisabeth’s home grown tomatoes. On the side was a salad with the same tomatoes, some cucumber and mixed greens and lastly a fresh garlic bread just this side of burnt but soft on the inside with garlic and olive oil…) He perched over it as he spooned some roughly grated aged cheese and inhaled the steam rising up from the plate . The first bite. Eyes closed. He chewed the pasta and the stringy cheese as slowly as his hungry mouth and tongue would allow. The entire rest of the meal would be framed within this sweet, dynamic tension between desire and patience. Between each bite he would put down his utensils and prop his arms up onto the table. Resting his elbows and entwining his fingers like the tines of two forks his eyes would close and he would chew. And chew. And swallow. And dab his mouth occasionally with a napkin. There was not a shred of doubt that this was the most important thing in his life and if all else failed he was determined to taste this food—this meal—for all that is was worth.

That he can take such pleasure in the glass of water! There is proof enough of the reverence with which he approaches each and every element of the meal. He once exclaimed to me that “this water came from the depths of the earth. Taste it! It is the only water I have ever had that has such taste.” He took a great swallow and another and asked me for a refill. Easy enough. It comes right out of the tap from the well in the back. “Seven hundred and fifty feet down. That water comes from seven hundred and fifty feet”. He will not allow me to put in any ice. He says that he enjoys it at the temperature at which it rests—the temperature that it has come from the stream below the earth. He drinks two full glasses with his meal. He claims it balances out the meal. He drinks with his eyes closed as if he were in love with the water and he is kissing it—shyly and with trepidation. I can not watch him some time as he eats and especially as he drinks. I am embarrassed by the bobbing of his Adam’s apple and go back into the kitchen to work on the meals of the other patrons.

He rarely eats more than one helping of food. He is not thin. Over the years he has put on some weight but not a lot. He has developed a small belly more from a lack of exercise, I think, than over eating. The one sin he commits, I have noticed, is that he must have a small sweet directly after his dinner. A cookie or a small finger of cake that is all. He usually eats it while he pays the bill—standing up near the owners counter and stool. He is sometimes licking his fingers as he walks out of the door and the tiny bell over the door tinkles to announce his departure.

He will be back again tomorrow night. He is as constant as the stars. He told me once that as he becomes older there is less and less that he has to look forward to. I had been telling him about my children and their recent party for Halloween. He laughed and told me to enjoy them for as long as I could and my patience would allow. “Soon enough they will be gone and you will have to find other things to fill up the space in your life that they once occupied.” I asked him what he did to “fill the space” and he replied “Little. But there is Elisabeth’s food. And the walk home. Occasionally a chess game or a piece of music on the radio.” I felt a little sad when I saw the way he stared off to a far away place. He must have sensed my discomfort. “No, no! These are good things. Food is beautiful! And come here…look at this…” He took my arm by the elbow and led me to the front door of the shop. “Look at that.” He pointed up to the stars and still holding onto my elbow he whispered into my ear. “Look at those stars! They are millions of miles away”. And he said it in the same way he said “seven hundred and fifty feet down” and the warmth of his breath sent shivers down my spine. “The stars are free but so few of us looks up to see them. Our meals are so common that few of us taste them. Our children are precious but who among us treasures them? Do you see what I mean? It is all up to you to take the gifts that are given you.” With that he let go my elbow and bowed slightly at the waist. He looked up at me and said “What is on the menu for tomorrow?” “Short ribs”, I said, “and a casserole of potatoes au gratin”. “Wonderful!! That is my favorite.”

You Got Time For Me Now?

You got time for me now?

I've got hot pockets,

And the kids are down at the pool.

No, but you could talk to me if you want.

We talk every day, I say,

I've got one arm around her waist

And I'm leaning on the counter.

She's slicing cucumbers

Taking an occasional slice into her mouth.

She is chewing slowly,

Yeah, but now it's free.

No, it's not.

Talk may be cheap but it's never free.

The boys look so big to me now.

They are developing like clouds before a storm

Filmed in time lapse

Roiling over the horizon of their awakening.

Each peel of a laugh

Each frame of unconscious smile

Is precious to me.

More than it has ever been before

More than I can understand

More than I want to feel.

Do you have time for me now?

I have a hole in my soul

That needs mending.

I have a gash

I have a pool of a wound

Filling up with images

Of how young you were

Of how raw we are

Of how deep and clear our love is.

Of love on the floor

In the mud by the side of the driveway

Behind a hundred doors

Under the influence of the moon and stars.

Do you have time for me now?

I've put the job on hold

I've put my ego in neutral

Put your pots

On the back burner

And make believe

We've all the time in the world

We've all the gold in Fort Knox.

I feel so creative here

In your safe house

With you.

Do you have time for me now?

I Wish I Could Relax,
Like My Cat






I wish I could relax
Like my cat.
I’ve never seen a human
Relax like that.
I’m nervous and find it hard to stop
And smell the flowers
And enjoy the ride,
But my cat just sleeps
With no attempt to hide
His utter contempt for the world
Passing by.
Chewing some grass
Or watching a squirrel-
He sleeps and dreams
In his cryptic cat world.
After sixty-one years
On this earth as a man
I’m about as laid back
As any human being can.
When I’ve exhausted
My earthly time
Lord, bring me back
As an orange feline.

Google Monopoly

I have bought every street in the city
F*ck them now, with their Nazi games
I am going to raise all their taxes
I am the one, now, with the list of names.

I have discovered that I am vindictive
I have found that I hold a grudge
I am the one who presides over them now
I am the jury and I am the judge.

I, I, I, is my new anthem
I am the cyber landlord and king
I will wear the only uniform
Everyone else will kiss my ring.

Everyone else will cough up moolah
Everyone else will scrape and bow
And pay for the privilege of living in Google
Since I own all the cyber-scape now.

All the electrons, all of the atoms
All the packettes and bits and bugs
The whole Google earth is mine now
Until they decide to pull the plug.

Old Timers

There are things we will never understand.

Not you. Not I.

The man I once wished

would curl up and die

smiles

a smile of the old and disoriented

And I love him again,

as if we shared the secret

the one we shared

from the time I was born

until I was ten.

Keep this thought-

There are things we will never understand.

Like the innocence of the time we spend

when the time is right

and there is work to be done.

Courting a wife

Building a home

Giving life

To a son of your own.

My father sat with tubes in a tangle

(I had closed the door

because, I believed,

it was modesty

that kept him alive)

He smiled at me

I want to believe

the same way

he smiled at me

when I was five.

The chain

disappears

link by link beneath the water.

The nurses come in to turn him over.

He stays afloat

And drifts

Through the arc

of the anchor

that holds him fast.

He’s smiles

like he knows the answer

at last.

Million Dollar Dreams

Lotto Winner
("Imagine! I won 200 million in the lotto,
and two days later found the love of my life!")

I bought ten dollars worth of lotto tickets last night. I was out to dinner with Don. He sat across from me in his white shirt (the rest of the universe has gone to casual Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc…but not Don. Somehow it all looks right on him-the pressed white shirt and tie. The dark suit. I feel like it is right for him. In fact I would feel let down if he showed up in jeans and a polo shirt). I wore jeans and a Polo shirt. Dinner was over. We had exhausted the conversation with the last little bits of gossip at our disposal and Don announced that he had to go to the CVS to buy lotto tickets.

Since he insisted on picking up the check I insisted on buying the tickets. We drove to CVS but they don’t sell them there. We drove instead to the liquor store on the other side of the Beach shopping center and they were doing a brisk business selling dreams for a dollar. We got in line and when we got to the cash register I handed Don a ten dollar bill. He laughed and added twenty of his own. I was a little embarrassed. Thirty dollars worth of lotto tickets.

I have bought lotto tickets before. I usually buy one. In fact I buy lotto tickets regularly-about once every two years-and I have never bought more than one. Last night I bought ten. Don bought twenty.

I have not checked the numbers yet today. If I win I will take Liz out to the Grand Canyon in a helicopter (like Don and Diane just did on their vacation to Las Vegas) and we will drink champagne in the depths of G-d’s great creation. Of course Don and Diane will have to be with us.

I don’t know what else I would do with a hundred million dollars. I used to think about that kind of thing when I was a little boy. There was a program on the black and white TV called “The Millionaire”. Every week John Bares Fertipton gave someone a check -taxes paid- for one million dollars. He used an elegant intermediary, a butler type whose accent fell just short of British English, to discretely deliver the check to the unsuspecting recipient. It was an innocent drama from an innocent time in the history of America. The person who got the check could never know who had given it (sedaka?) and they always needed it desperately. Mr. Fertipton must have done some bonzo research on his subjects each week (or rather the writers for the show did some heavy drinking) and it was a very entertaining show. Every one in the United States watched each week and they dreamed that some day Mr. Fertipton would single them out for the check and they would conjecture what would they do with it?? That was the real question. Boys, such as myself, would lay awake and dream of the stack of money and how we would spend it.

I also remember a small illustrated piece in the World Book Encyclopedia (I learned to spell encyclopedia from the Mickey Mouse Club. It was part of a song. Yes. I learned to sing the spelling of the word “encyclopedia” along with ‘Cubby’ and ‘Annette’ on the Mickey Mouse Club!) about the meaning and scope of the concept of “A Million”. It had a drawing of a pile of money and the pile was flying off into space (as if it were being blown to the moon by a giant, intellegent fan) and the description was “if you were to put a million dollar bills end-to-end it would reach…” I honestly don’t remember right now how far a million dollars placed end-to-end would reach but it was amazing to me as a little boy. A boy who read the encyclopedia that his mom had bought from a door-to-door salesman. It came delivered to our door and the entire red, faux leather set fit neatly on the shelves in my bedroom. I read it cover to cover. A yearly update was also sent via the postal service and I read it too.

Well the boy who read the encyclopedia has grown up. A million dollars might reach the moon and half way back but it won’t buy a tenth of what it did when John Bares Fertipton gave out his checks. If they remade “The Millionaire” today it would have to be “The Billionaire”. My father worked all day for the ten bucks it took to buy the lotto tickets in my pocket. Now it will just about cover the cost of a burger and salad in the dinner.

I think I will do a Google search and find a web site that will tell me what last night’s lotto numbers were. With the speed of light I will find the information on the internet. That’s how it is done now. The World Book Encyclopedia is in the land fill. Perhaps I will have won and I can give Don a check-taxes paid-for a million dollars. Through an intermediary, of course, with a great, deep, almost British accent.

My Banker>>>>>>>>>>>>>


A recent article in the New York Times states, "Most of the banking industry couldn’t be happier with the current system", and it is easy to understand why. They have the regulators, the politicians and the public hoodwinked into thinking that the current 'emergency' should give them a license to do what ever is necessary to preserve the system. This existing system of rules and reg's somehow allows them to enjoy a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose environment and they are loving it... Let me give a personal experience as proof.

Friday I received a letter from the administrator of my IRA who informed me that the bank that issued one of the CDs that I have in my retirement portfolio (As an ex-hippie I hate that I have a portfolio but what else to call it???) has been taken over by another bank. I didn't know if the original issuer failed or sold out or what but "Curly bank and trust"is now known as "Moe savings and loan". One wouldn't think that such a change in ownership would affect my CD, which is, essentially, a loan I made to Curly. Curly promised to pay me back my money in a couple of years along with 4.5% interest. I agreed not to touch the money I gave Curly for a couple of years or I would have to pay a penalty and would lose my interest. But now that Moe has taken over Curly's bank he tells me he will only be giving me 0.25% instead of 4.5% and if I don't like it I can have my money back (no penalty or loss of interest to date) and bite his ass. WOW! What a great deal. I was pissed off!

On Monday morning I called the administrator of the IRA account and talked to one of the post-graduate business school whizzes and asked him how this could happen? Didn't Moe have an obligation to honor the business contracts of Curly? This CD was "call protected". Where was my protection now??? He condescendingly opined that this was a merger promulgated BY the FDIC!! and in order to get Moe to take over Curly's bank and not let poor Curly's bank fail (thus necessitating a take-over by the FDIC)they were letting Moe do-what-he-had-to-do. That is to say, that they sweetened the deal to Moe and let Curly off the hook on my dime! Needless to say the concept outraged me.

I informed the Boston-based business school post graduate (who has a job while I do not!) that I would opt out of this 'deal' and find someplace else to put my funds. He then informed me that the administrator would handle all the details for me and for that I was initially pleased. Until he informed me that there would be a 39 dollar charge to broker the complex deal of getting me back my money. "Oh B&*l S*#t", I told him and he put me on hold. When he came back he apologized and told me that since I was a preferred client (A Client! with a Portfolio!)they would waive the fee and then I was not altogether unhappy with him and told him "thanks".

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON????
Sorry for yelling there...

Is there no constancy? Are there no rules anymore?
Why can't I be too big to fail?

More on ...why so much stuff? From a journal entry Feb. 27, '08

I don’t know what a “carbon foot print” is but I know what I did yesterday and this is the …Stuff that got “thrown away”:

doughnut “Buttermilk Bar”, handed to me by the steward as I boarded the plane..

extra packet of sugar that came w/ my coffee

Styrofoam cup/plastic creamer container/paper napkin/ plastic swizzle stick.

paper cup w/ plastic lid/a paper plate

~12 sheets of toilet paper / 2 paper towels

2 pieces of paper used for ‘boarding passes’ 4”x 8” each

4 pieces of paper used for ‘cab vouchers’ 3”x6” each

3 sheets of paper 8 ½” x 11” used keep track of expenses for ‘cash reimbursement

a piece of plastic wrap from a cookie 6”x 12”

a plastic water bottle and plastic cap

2 more napkins

a piece of aluminum foil that wrapped my PB&J sandwich ~12” x 12”

another Styrofoam cup/ creamer and plastic swizzle stick

and this is the…Stuff that got “used up”:

~1 cup of cereal w/ raisins and ~13 blue berries

3 cups of coffee (including cream/milk and sugar)

an egg sandwich (an egg, slice of cheese, a roll and a couple of squirts of catsup, salt and pepper)

a pear, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and an oatmeal raisin cookie

a quart of drinking water

~a gallon of washing water (hands and face)

~15 gallons of water flushed down the toilet and urinals

6 ozs. of green salad w/ a tablespoon of bottled dressing

6 ozs. of pasta w/ eggplant and tomato sauce

6 tsps of ice cream straight out of the carton standing at the refrigerator

a second oatmeal raisin cookie.

gasoline for the ride to the train station and back again in the evening ~ 1/5 gallon

diesel for the train into the city and back home again in the evening

~ 40 passenger miles / gallon x 100 miles= 2.5 gallons

gasoline for the ride to the NYC airport and back again in the evening ~ 2 gallons

gasoline for the ride from the Boston airport to my meeting and back again ~ 1 ½ gallons

jet fuel for the ride up to Boston and back to NYC in the evening

~(15 gal/ minute x 30 minutes) / 50 people x 2 trips= 18 gallons

#2 fuel oil (diesel) to heat the house and produce hot water ~ 3 gallons

propane for cooking ???

electricity for light and fans, tv’s, computers, etc???

4 prescription pills

Feels like I got pretty big carbon-feet!

Why So Much Junk?

Why So Much Junk?

My doctor gave me a bunch of samples of some meds that I have to take regularly. Expensive medicine compared to over-the-counter stuff like aspirin or athletes foot spray (does any one use aspirin any more?). My co-pay for these little purple pills is $45 for 90 days). Still, I was overwhelmed by the amount of packaging that these little purple pills demanded. They came in blister packs of six pills. Each of the blister packs came in a glossy cardboard box and in each box was a full set of warnings and instructions for use. The instructions were printed in typeset that was much smaller than this and impossible to read without glasses and a medical degree so I am confused as to why they bother including it with the product as I am sure everyone is just like me and that is the first thing I throw away…The blister pack packaging is a nuisance and the last thing I need to start off my day is to have to peel and pop one of these devilish packages so I can take my meds. I just removed all the pills from the packs and put them in a bottle. The pile of packaging that resulted from de-packing these samples (about 60 pills in all) made a pile on my kitchen counter eight inches high and filled one of the plastic shopping bags from Wal-Mart. The pills fit neatly into a plastic bottle just larger than a shot glass.

So my question is Why So Much Junk for sixty pills? I have an inquiring mind...a simple Google search led me to—

Pharmaceutical Packaging Forum

Which turns out to be a trade organization who will be hosting a convention (is that the right word for it?). I should have known that nothing is as easy or simple as it might seem. Here is what these folks are going to talk about:

- package design, material innovations and sustainability
- OEE (overall equipment effectiveness)
- Six Sigma and operational excellence
- packaging and clinical trial success
- increasing compliance with improved package designs
- new developments in anti-counterfeiting strategies

I am impressed. But really, I just want to know why so much junk in my trash can for less than a hand full of pills??

Tissue

Tissue

Why do we take these risks?

The climb?

Each time?

Up the side of a steep discussion,

the ascent

on a ladder of steam,

leaves us in the air

looking away from each other

looking over the protective walls

looking for hand-holds

outside the home

out in hostile territory.

Why do we need the speed?

Why do we thrive

on the pain?

Why do we drive our words

like sharp spikes

into the sides

of our arguements?

Into the winged feet of our freedom?

into the soft fronds

of our love?

The face of a clock,

the motion of the sun,

tissue paper...

the simplest things

are filled with terror.

iStick

iStick
Originally uploaded by The Bottomless Paddling Pool

twenty-first century
answer to
a Christmas stocking
full of coal.
a depression
gift
for the technodude
and dude-ette.

The Skipping Stair

I can hear you coming.
I know who is there.
The treads invite
your signature footfalls
up on the skipping stair.

I built the stair
of bits
and pieces
just wood and glue
and carpet
and nails
paint and putty
and a twisting plan--
like Frankenstein
it took on a Life
of its own
It bore the weight
of two young lovers
and three young boys
who into their own lives
have grown.
But they are still pups
when they are on the stair
Bump-t-bump
t-bump
t-bump,
every time they come
back home.

I can hear you coming.
I know who is there.
The treads invite
your signature footfalls
up on the skipping stair.

Edward G. Robinson
born-Edward Goldenberg
December 12, 1893

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Eddie, in his ticklish robe,

made his way among the people.

They put their hands into their pockets

and the hands searched like rats in a bag

for a trinket

for a gleaming bit of gold

(not all of it but just a little for the collection.

“The future comes once a day--regular,

whilst idles come and go”.)

Eddie G. in his ticklish robe,

passed the plate

while his boys stoked the fire.

They melted jewelry

and it gave off an odor

that the whole crowd tasted

in the backs of their throats

when Eddie poured it into

the sandy mold.

Then they partied

waiting for the boss to come.

They danced between the cardboard horizon

and the papier-mâché boulders.

They waited for the sun to set

and for the delivery of the Word.

It would come like a pizza delivery-

late and cold

and the news would be old

and for dessert

they would eat

their words

and Eddie G.

and his ticklish sons

would go on

to get promotions.

HardTimes-a Crock (Truck) of Shit?

So, I was on my way home yesterday from my therapy... (that is the health club I go to to exercise my shoulder, numb my brain and lose weight. In fact my shoulder hurts worse, my brain is clear like it hasn't been in years and I am losing weight. My sister and brothers gave me the membership as a belated 60th b'day present. The best gift I have ever gotten!). Instinct demanded that I detour into the grim looking dirt and gravel parking lot in an industrial area on Dogwood Road on the way back to my house. I have passed the Pizziola Septic Cleaning service parking lot zillions of times but on this day I pulled into their lot and climbed halfway up the metal stair to the second floor office. A guy across the street whistled and I came back down and met him in the parking lot. He turned out to be the owner. I told him I needed to have my septic cleaned but I was not working right at the moment. He appreciated my desire to properly maintain my critical systems and told me he would do the job and give me a $20 discount. Doesn't seem like much but $20 on a $220 bill is about a 10% discount and, as the "Wizard of Omaha" preaches, 10% is 10% whether its on a $220 septic cleaning bill or a million $ bank bail out bill...it's all in the percentages! Mr. "Pizziola" followed me home and checked out the hatch over the cleanout (my own cool, culvert-pipe access, with the pressure treated cover. Eazy access and no digging!) and told me the truck would be over in a few minutes!

He was true to his word. It was only a half hour before the smelly white "Pizziola" truck came up the drive and started sucking a few years of crap outta the custom hatch and into the big tank of the truck. The operator was a nice guy. He smiled a lot and did his best to keep stuff from dripping when he put the hoses away and I gave him a $5 bill for his effort.

I was extra happy that I had yielded to the intuition to get this job done-regardless of the fact that money is tight. You see, the septic tank, it turned out, was full right to the top and another month or even another week might have seen the septic fields filling up and then (G-d forbid!) shit backing up into the house.

Lesson: Even in a depression you can't ignore your basic systems. Shit coming back into the house would be really depressing. As would a broken boiler, a leaky roof or a leaking hot water heater.

Happy Valentines Day

It has been a while. There has been little to report that one could not have gotten from a re-reading of a newspaper from 1932. All the news that is fit is bad. I get closer to the end of my unemployment benefits with each passing unemployed day. Health insurance is becoming a necessity I will soon not be able to afford. I would rather have a home to live in and food to eat...that is the reality of these times in the USA. I am not alone in these respects. I am luckier than many, though, in that I put away some of my earnings during my life, built my own home and have few debts. Significant.
This is not the world I wanted to pass on to my children.
This is not the way the world should have been directed. I see few in the halls of power who have the ability to inspire or instruct. I see few in the society with the sense to see that they have squandered, not only their own portion, but have eaten off the plates of their grandchildren. I am still shocked by the greed of our society. Of the individuals in our society. By the leaders in our society. Though I am beginning to numb. I am aging quickly.

"Nothing like a good depression to get the juices flowing..."
'Baby Face' Gartman

Armored truck robber uses Craigslist to make getaway

MONROE, Wash. – In a move that could be right out of a Hollywood movie, a brazen crook apparently used a Craigslist ad to hire a dozen unsuspecting decoys to help him make his getaway following a robbery outside a bank on Tuesday. He then made his escape in an inner tube on the Skykomish River.

The robbery happened about 11 a.m. on an armored truck guard at a Bank of America branch.

"He was wearing a dust mask, a particle mask. At first I thought it might be a surgical mask. I still didn't think anything was wrong, just unusual. Then I noticed he had a pump sprayer," said Mitch Ruth, who had looked out his office window and noticed the man walking into the bank.

The robber sprayed the guard with pepper spray, grabbed a bag of money the guard was carrying and ran about 100 yards to the creek that runs into the Skykomish River, shedding clothes as he ran.

But apparently, the robber had planned ahead. In case anyone was hot on his trail, he had at least a dozen unsuspecting decoys waiting nearby, which he recruited on Craigslist.

KING

An armored car sits outside a Bank of America branch in Monroe, Wash. on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008. Police say a man tried to rob the car, then jumped into a creek that led to the Skykomish River.

"I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour," said Mike, who saw a Craigslist ad last week looking for workers for a road maintenance project in Monroe.

He said he inquired and was e-mailed back with instructions to meet near the Bank of America in Monroe at 11 a.m. Tuesday. He also was told to wear certain work clothing.

"Yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask… and, if possible, a blue shirt," he said.

Mike showed up along with about a dozen other men dressed like him, but there was no contractor and no road work to be done. He thought they had been stood up until he heard about the bank robbery and the suspect who wore the same attire.

From there, the cook made his watery escape in a creek that dumps out into the Skykomish River. One witness said the robber swam away, but another said he used an inner tube to get away.

"We did get an inner tube that was about 200 yards from the place where he entered the water and took that for evidence," said Debbie Willis, Monroe Police.

Investigators believe accomplices could have picked the robber up at a nearby boat launch or park.

The FBI is helping Monroe Police trace the ad and want to talk to anyone who responded.

"Any piece of information anyone has could be the piece of the puzzle we need to apprehend the suspects," said Debbie Willis, Monroe Police.

Some Monroe residents, while not endorsing what the robber did, are somewhat amused.

"Creative. Not a right way of doing it, but creative," said Monroe resident Byron Bevard.

"I grew up in LA and I never heard of anything so crazy in my life," said resident Sarah Vazquez.

The suspect is described as a white man in his 20s, between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-10, wearing a dark blue shirt, jean shorts and a mask.

Let's Steal

The news on the financial front is becoming bleaker day by day. I have begun re-reading Louis “Studs” Terkel. His survival guides from the not-so-distant-past for our use today- Working and Hard Times. Studs just died a couple of week ago. I think he was 96 years old. He was a very, very smart person. He knew that all the keys to the kingdom were already in our pocket. Or at least in the pocket of some old guy sitting next to us on the bus. All we have to do is ask the old guy to hand them to us—get him to tell his story. If we are about to have a melt-down, I would think some reflections on the melt-downs of the past would be a little helpful, don’t you think? Get to those old buggers with the experience before they all kick off and leave us here alone to face the music!

Similarly, if we need to have a universal health care program, why are we trying to reinvent the wheel. Find the best health care program in the world and copy it (with minor adjustments, of course be cause this is the US of A-bigger and “mo better” than anyplace else…). Ditto for nuclear energy and a slew of other things.

Let’s get smart. Let’s steal!!

"I steal"
Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund (a.k.a. Paul Muni)
b. September 22, 1895(1895-09-22)

" WOW! I remember Michael looking like that
like it was yesterday! I love that picture"
Sheri

passionate about ...something

I like passionate people.
They wear you out in the long run but they make the here-and-now stand for something.
A purpose puts a crisp crease on life's pants.

I went to the doctor and had a small chunk taken out of my dick.
The doctor is a character who loves his camera.
He took some photos of the small chunks he took out of my dick.
Covering his ass w photos of my dick.
He likes Dave van Ronk, the doctor does,
and his git-tar and his camera,
and he was passionate about his work
He gently took away pieces of my dick.
"I'm very good at what I do" he said,
"Don't take away too much" I thought.