Brain Drain

I finally saw one of the I guess it's new TV shows last night.  "Private Practice" is a medical show evidently, though I had  thought it might be  a crime show.  I also thought it had received decent reviews, but I hope that was a mistake on my part.  I might be a little biased because my viewing was a sort of default, meaning I had fallen asleep, woke up, it was on, and I couldn't find the remote.  What a disaster of a show.  A central character by the name of Addison seems to have captured the hearts and minds of every male in or near the hospital.  Two such hunks, friends of each other, are feuding because it turns out that Addison has kissed both of them in a single day. Kissed!!  She had wanted to have a child, and her present and primary stud friend wants no more children, so she succeeded in adopting a baby boy.  Another doctor goes on a tirade and tells the lovely (though I thought rather strange-looking) Addison how much she hates her and can't stand to have her anywhere near her.  She is jealous of Addison's baby because she herself is pregnant with a baby that will be born without a brain, and she, ironically, is a neurosurgeon.  Another couple of doctors, I guess, is undergoing marriage counseling, where the wise and wizened counselor holds out hope but only after the sessions morph from polite to ugly.  There is hope when there is ugliness he tells them, but the husband seems to reject this approach in favor of just live and love philosophy.  The wife gets distracted because a nine-year-old girl is brought into the ER with multiple stab wounds, and the doctor is suspicious of the teenaged sister's demeanor. (Viewers are treated to the sight of a child covered in blood, in case they need a reminder to keep watching.) The child is placed on life support, and the doctor gets the teen sister to admit that she stabbed her little sister because she wanted to know what it felt like to plunge a knife into flesh, and it turned out to be not a bad feeling at all.  The teen is dismayed when the cops immediately come in to arrest her, telling the doctor-confessor that she thought they understood each other.  It all worked out for the best, though, because the parents decide, in unison with the pregnant neurosurgeon, to donate their children's organs.  A number of other sub-plots lie in wait, and will surely erupt in next week's episode.  I can't wait: I'm so afraid that the baby momma of Addison's son will want him back. 

Some people

Heartwarming and heartbreaking-------Some people are so good, kind, friendly and helpful that they tower above the rest of us in their humanity.  I can't think of a single way that I could ever compare myself to them .They carry on in what seems to be the absence of a god.  Maybe heartfelt  compassion put into service is as close as we can get to god; then why would some have to go through such suffering so others can be  so  elevated.  What I know is that I'll never know........

A Horse of a Color

Somewhere over the far side of a rainbow veiled in haze lies a farm, with the red barn and the animals in a sunlit field, one of them a horse, a black and white horse. The promise of living there happily forever was made by a very young child.

Let it, my people, go

Memo to the former parishoners of the former St. Patrick's Church in Watervliet:   let it go.  Do not bother trying to stop Price Chopper from tearing it down.  Remember they paved paradise to put up a parking lot.  You will lose.  Time is not on your side.  You are old people, and your power has waned.  Those hallowed halls  of worship where sacred memories were formed and once revered are destined to be aisles of frozen foods and fresh produce.  Your memories will fade; some of you will   reach a stage of senility or Alzheimer's that will allow you to make the transition less painful.   You will even be able to buy lottery tickets, way better than pinning your dreams on Bingo night winnings.  Your ambassador from the Diocese has most likely already explained to you that what you once regarded as God's earthly home is in truth nothing more than a compilation of bricks and mortar, to be rightfully returned to the oblivion of the ashes from which it sprung.  Just as battleships are decommissioned, churches go through a solemn rite where the holiness once bestowed on them is formally removed; they are desanctified.   St. Patrick has already left the building.   My former church, Our Lady of Good Counsel, site of baptisms, communions, confirmations, weddings, wakes, funerals, religious instruction, and countless Masses and religious ceremonies and rituals, is now known as The Brick Elephant.  We are not able to buy food there, only occasionally listen to Baroque music.  So your fate could be worse.

WDEHTBSS?

That's my blog shorthand for "Why does everything have to be so stupid?" I used to enjoy watching "The Office" because it cleverly combined comedy with the subtleties of the human condition. I sort of lost track of it for a while, but watched it tonight. The show did not just jump the shark: the entire episode took place in a shark infested tank, worse even than the lamest of the SNL skits. The writers must all have been stoned; that's the only viable explanation for the stupidity. But then, I'm reminded of the Secret Service Agents who do drugs and consort with whores while on a mission. Are they stupid, or stoned? And if they weren't stupid before they got stoned, how could they engage in such idiotic behavior. Arrogance can't be the answer because arrogance presumes at least a modicum of pride in oneself, which could not exist among such repugnance and complete lack of thought. Their minds must have been essentially eaten away by drugs. To paraphrase Dan Quayle, a mind is a terrible thing to waste, and not to have a mind (left) at all, that's even worse.

Scar

I have a scar that no one is aware of. And it's not one of those emotional or psychic scars; it's a real-life physical scar. And it's not in a concealed area either; it's in plain sight on the inside of my right wrist, about an inch and a half long, and faded now. I've had it since I was 9 years old, and it used to be longer, red, and very noticeable, when I was young and the scar was new and in its prime. At first, when people, adults, would notice and ask how I got it, I was too shy to answer, so I probably said I didn't know. Later on, doctors would ask, because I guess it did look like I tried to cut my wrist, and I had to come up with a better answer, so I would say I fell on some glass. That was partly true, but actually I was knocked down and run over by a fire engine. This is how I was scarred for life:
Back in the day, the night before Halloween was prank night. Though it was called then Doorbell Night, the activities, i.e. vandalism, were much greater than the name would imply. What was done back then with pretty much a wink and a nod would bring reporters and criminal investigation today. Probably because there was no such thing as mischief or destruction at any time other than the scary night before Halloween, adults seemed willing to overlook the damage done, and, except for the targeted victims, even seemed to condone it. People would speak rather admiringly of some of the most memorable examples of vandalism from the past. I remember my father recollecting a time when a front door was actually rigged with a concealed bucket of water which drenched the unlucky home owner. I knew of that trick from comic books, but hadn't realized it had ever been actually carried out. The village was populated with a more cohesive group of people years ago, and plans were easily conceived and efficiently implemented. Most of the homes had outhouses in the back yard, some still in use. On Halloween morning, several of those little buildings were found lying on their sides. Garbage cans formed roadblocks, car and house windows were covered with soap. So it was no surprise one Halloween season to find a fire engine in the lot next to our house, deposited there by the"big kids." Not just any fire engine, but an antique, single-shafted type with the hose basket on top. It was the 40's though, when no one much valued the antique aspect of the venerable old piece of equipment, so no one came to retrieve it for several years, as I seem to recall. It stayed there in plain sight, an attraction for us little kids, who came to consider it as part of our informal playground. A vacant lot, an unwanted piece of junk------it had to be good for something. We younger kids used to sit on it, and fancied it a stagecoach when we played cowboys and Indians, or a car when we imagined traveling, and I suppose at times, we considered it as it was, a fire engine--one that required a horse. When the novelty had worn off somewhat, some of the bigger boys, my brother included, tipped it on its side, on a slope. There was a very large iron wheel on each side: it had only the two wheels. The front had a shaft in the middle. We used to imagine a horse on either side of the shaft, but thinking about it now, I believe it must have been meant to be drawn by men. It was not very big, and there was a round metal basket on top (another story), where the fire hose would be coiled. So the fire cart is on its side, on a slope, and the long wooden shaft can be pulled up to the top of the hilly slope, you can sit on the shaft, and when someone gives it a push, the shaft, with riders, swings down the slope, and since it rests on a big round wheel, carries considerable force. A makeshift piece of playground equipment, if ever there was one. One day, I had the misfortune to be standing in the arc of the pendulum shaft when someone swung it down, hitting me in the shins and knocking me flat on the ground. My leg really hurt, and when I picked myself up and reached down to rub my throbbing leg, I saw blood streaming from my wrist, where there was a long gash caused by my falling on broken glass. That was another popular sport of the boys at the time, (always those darn boys.) Then soda was sold in glass bottles, there was no deposit, and therefore no incentive to return them, so they became part of game-time for THE BOYS, who would line them up, and throw rocks at them. So broken glass was a playground hazard which we learned to avoid, that is, unless somebody knocked you down with a fire engine. Anyway, my cut was spectacular enough that my mother considered taking me to Dr. Sproat, but once the bleeding stopped, it was decided otherwise.
Since all stories should have a moral, take your pick. They say scars never completely heal. That of course is true. They say some scars are internal, and though unseen, once incurred, always exist, though they remain unseen, also true. But what about a scar that is completely visible, but is completely unseen. The moral could be that the person with the scar has become invisible.

Attention

Like that of Willy Loman, it seemed necessary that "Attention must be paid" to the end of Dick Clark's life. After all, he'd been famous for as long as I could remember, and was older than most of my generation. When Brian Williams broke into regular programming to announce his death, I was alone, and so I waited to tell someone, not sure of what the comments would be, but some words would certainly be spoken, "some attention paid." I heard the steps on the back stairs, the door open, and waited for him to enter the room. "Dick Clark is dead," I announced. "What?" I repeated the announcement, much louder this time: "Dick Clark is dead!" A pause, then, "The car is dead?" After the third time, even louder, there was nothing left to say. RIP, Dick, I'm sure there will be plenty of attention paid, but we're exhausted.