Sheer Coincidence....

My mother's birthday is March 9. The only other people I know, or have known, with this birthday are (1) Andrea Lorenzo and (2) Rolando Vigil. (I only work with these 2 families now, and we collect all the birthdays, and of the hundreds of kids I've worked with, only these 2 share that date.) Meaningless, I know, but still an unusual coincidence.

Define, please

I was watching a show about how the media goes all out when a white child goes missing, but does not do the same for missing black children. Chris Cuomo is advocating for increased coverage in these cases, and had several parents of missing black children as guests on the show. One mother said she didn't find out her seven-year-old daughter was missing until the end of the school day, and it turned out the child had not been in school all day, and had not been contacted by the school. The last time she saw her child was when her stepfather walked her to school, just across the street. Such a sad story. Which brings to mind, what is the definition of a stepfather? Just asking.

The Cringe Factor

Is it possible that a TV host of any show could be more awkward than Drew Carey on The Price Is Right?

Q and A

1988: "I got a cat today," she told me. "Where did it come from?" I asked. "Lloyd got it for me, from the shelter, and her name is Chelsea." I'd gotten Nike a few months before, and he was a Maine Coon Cat. I asked her what kind of cat was Chelsea, and she laughed, "Oh, no special breed, not Siamese or Himalayan or anything---just a gray shorthair, plain old American cat."

2011: "And do you have any pets?" asked the intake counselor, just arrived from Hospice. "Well, I had a cat," she answered, a little slowly, maybe wondering why the question was being asked by a stranger. "And what was your cat's name? " "Chelsea," she said, and the questioner made a notation on her notepad. And then, "What kind of cat was Chelsea?" The pause was a little longer this time: how to describe a beloved cat who had been her companion for 22 years. The answer to that question could have gone in many directions------loyal, comforting, loving, unique-----but she took the easy path, and answered, "American." "Oh," the woman responded, and with a knowing look, made another notation.

I felt like explaining, but I didn't. It didn't matter any more.

R.I.P.

Charles Anthony Madigan January 20, 1966 ( St. Agnes's Eve)

Needless Aggravation

I wonder how cost-efficient the mailing of the Social Security Benefit Statement is. Could it be more expensive to print a 5-fold (counting the flap) mailing than to simply send it in regular envelope form? I think that in this age of technology, when most filers are urged to file electronically, that it is anachronistic, and borderline demeaning, to send a written communication that has instructions as to how to open it. "FOLD & TEAR OFF STUB" is printed on each end of the envelope, if I might call it that. But of course with 5 layers of folded paper, it's hard to tear the stub off, and impossible to tear it off evenly, so as to make it neat for filing purposes. "LIFT TO OPEN" reads the next instruction, on the flap of the so-called envelope. That would seem to be a no-brainer, as only the government would think that a person would need to be told you should lift the flap to open an envelope. But wait, it's not such a simple next step because the ragged edges of the statement left from the forcibly removed stub compromise the integrity of an envelope as we know it. Once you have opened the mailer, you see the "Facts About Your 2011 Social Security Benefit Statement," which advises that your Benefit Statement is on the BACK of this form, and "Facts About Computer Matching Programs" and "Notice 703--To See if Your Social Security Benefits May Be Taxable." We are directed to the information most important to us by the message, "See the Social Security Benefit Statement on the REVERSE. " An arrow points to the right, so we can figure out that's the reverse. At least on that side, evidently the FRONT, all printed material is pointed in the same direction. Once you turn the page over, to read the salient information, you encounter a 1/4 page stating that "IMPORTANT: TAX INFORMATION ENCLOSED." You know it's important anyway , because the statement is enclosed in a box. That part of the page advises you to keep the form for proof of benefits and invites you to visit their website. The next 1/4 page bears the addresses of sender and recipient, and for some reason is printed upside down compared to the top portion. The two 1/4 sections above that tell you want you want to know, and it's not very much info, would easily fit into a regular envelope. If that type and configuration were a more economical method of sending simple information, I would think more entities would use it. The private sector is notably cost-conscious and I don't see it used there. The only more unwieldly mailings I receive are through Publisher's ClearingHouse, and I sure don't file them away.

Really, Governor?

Do I understand correctly that you think students are under-represented and that they have nowhere to turn for support, that they are deprived of unions, and other support groups? Are you insane? Students have parents who are highly motivated to care for them, they have grandparents, in school they have teachers, guidance counselors, and there are social workers, religious mentors to guide them if they ask for help, and who are mandated to help them if necessary. What about Student Councils in high schoools, student associations in colleges, as well as various other student alliances? Are there not community, government, and private sources of financial grants and scholarships offered to students? Try applying for one of these opportunities as an adult, a much more difficult proposition. I think Mr. Cuomo is pandering here. Remember that 18-year-olds who can vote are also eligible to join unions if they choose to work. Students can stay on their parents' health insurance now until their hair starts to turn gray. Is that just a benefit for poor old Mom and Dad, or if the student should need medical care, would not the student benefit even more? I'm all for seeing that everyone has a voice and the right to be represented, but is there any more over-subsidized group in today's society than today's youth? And that doesn't even take into account their legions of FB friends. (Someone supports that activity too. Poor, unfortunate students: Bah, Humbug!

Lies and misdemeanors

It is a sin to tell a lie, either venial or mortal depending on the circumstance. I learned that lesson from the nuns who used to be assigned to travel to the far outreaches of the land to teach the heathen children wrong from right. The nuns were either very old, at the end of their service years, or very young, just learning their missionary skills. One lesson addressed the topic of gossiping about others, thus harming their reputations. If the person being maligned were just an ordinary person, we were told, it would not be as serious a sin as if the person being maligned were of a more important status, like a doctor or a priest. As quiet and shy, and as fearful of religion as I was, I found this very unsettling, though I never uttered a single syllable of disagreement. There was a girl in my class whose father was a doctor, and I didn't think it fair that her father should have been judged more important than mine. He was a grouchy doctor, and I thought my father was a better man. Years later, many, many years later, it came to me why this message was being taught, though I don't suppose, if my suspicions were true, that the nuns would have been a party to it anyway. I hope there is no such place as Hell, and if there is, I hope I don't have to go there-------Jeffrey Dahmer, Adolph Hitler, the Kardashians.

Impossible, you say?

He with whom I live bears a self-inflicted injury; a fat and bruised lip. How did it happen? It was a dental floss injury. I can't pursue the matter any further.

"S*#t Poor People Say....

" I'm so glad I didn't have the money to book a cruise this winter."
" It's good the property is a money pit; that means I don't have to pay an estate tax."
"I'm happy I have a nine year old car; it's not a target fot theft."

Human Nature

Well, it wasn't as critical as the mad dash for the life jackets and boats on the Concordia, but it did jog my memory. October 4, 1987. The Saturday evening before was David's 17th birthday. I'd had a previously arranged dinner date with Dorothy and Barbara at a new restaurant on Rte 9. I can't remember the name right now, but it has since closed. I don't remember what I or anyone else had to eat, but I do recall I'd worn a blouse and was miserably cold all evening. The others had worn sweaters so they were more comfortable. A cold rain was falling when we left the restaurant, though there were no weather alerts that we were aware of. Dave had gone with Don on a golf outing, to North Carolina, I believe, and Marilyn was away at her freshman college year, so I was home with the 2 boys. Sunday morning was surprisingly snowing, just beginning, as sometime during the night, the temperature had dropped eve more, and we were having an early October weather event. Danny and I went to the early Mass in Valley Falls, 8:00 a.m. then, with David being left at home to go to the later service in Schaghticoke. He didn't like mornings. While we were in church, we heard cracks and snaps, almost like explosions, increasing during the hour we were at Mass. When we left the sheltered environment of Our Lady of Good Counsel, we entered into a winter wonderland. The ice formed during the night had become covered with the falling snow, and the weight was snapping the ice coated branches off like explosions. Limbs were down, and still falling, and my car was covered with a large branch, which had carried the power and/or telephone wires down with it, across the top of my car, a company-owned station wagon as it was. Dave had driven the older car to the airport and left it there. So I'm standing there, helpless, with my 10-year-old son and the church goers are streaming out, toward their vehicles. Tree limbs are still dropping, the weather is cold and nasty and snowing, and as I said, I'm standing there, helpless. "That's my car, under the tree, " I think I said to anyone who would listen, but that would have been no one, at least no one helpful. I heard someone, or probably several, venture to warn me that they wouldn't go near the car if they were me because, since the power company had yet to appear, the wires were probably live. No offers of help, or a ride home with my child----everyone was bent on getting to the safety of their own homes before the weather got even worse. Ironically enough, I suppose, everybody in the church would have known me because I'd been a lector there almost every week since Danny was 4 years old. I'd also trained and scheduled all the other lectors, was a member of the Prayer and Worship Committee, as well as all the parent activities, etc. So Danny and I were the last ones standing; all had left. (Remember, no such thing as cell phones.) Power lines were down all around us, everything was snow covered, we hadn't worn boots. When all help from organized religion was lost, we picked our way to the other Schroder household. The best idea I could manage was to call "The Madigans" for whatever help they could muster. No one wanted to drive through the snow and ice and downed power lines. Rosemary answered the phone and offered to drive us home. In a short time, there she was, having manipulated her car through the maze of hazards. I know how the cruise ship passengers felt when they saw help coming, the moving car a lifesaver. She got us home safely. Our power was out by then and for the next 5 days, but that's another tale, and, though it was a miserable time for the 3 of us (heightened by knowing Dave was having a great vacation on the golf course) that doesn't carry the baggage of the memory of being abandoned by a whole churchful of fellow parishoners. But at least we didn't drown, or even get electrocuted. Hallelujah.

Quote of the Day

George Kagel, former bon vivant, now turned philosopher, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, January, 13, 2012, " What the hell happened to us anyway?"

More superlativer

If Blue Ivy is the most beautifulest baby, then my new grandaughter is the mostest beautifulest. And we don't care if she grows up with poor grammar.

And another thing...

Why would anyone choose to put their face within inches of the bathroom mirror when flossing their teeth? I don't get it; what is there to look at anyway? And if they could see anything, why couldn't they see the spatters on the mirror? And for that matter, why not use the floss picks instead of the linear dental floss. Isn't it easier, more sanitary, and better in every way to have everything contained within the mouth. There ought to be a law, or some kind of mandate. (I know this is ungrammatical in terms of agreement, but I don't want to point the finger by making it gender specific.)

Suspense...

"There are things about me that nobody knows." Wait, I'm not referring to myself; that would be boring and self-serving. I'm quoting Dr. Phil: I heard this on TV this morning, and have been wondering as to what it could be ever since. Could it be that he wishes he had thick glossy hair, that he knows why Jeff Jordan left basketball, that he believes the Mass. airport authorities were justified in confiscating that woman's cupcake, (Seriously, who travels with a cupcake in a jar!), that he thinks the BMW would be a better choice for car of the year than the Elantra, that he believes it wrong that the California dad threw his daughter off a boat, that Mittens will be our next president, that he wishes he had more closet space, more friends, and that his basement wasn't damp? Could it be that he's not really a doctor, that he cheated on a test in fourth grade, has a now regretted tattoo,or wishes he had the guts to get a tattoo? Maybe he knows what's in Tropicana's orange juice, or could blow the whistle on that woman who claims to have a four-year-old McDonald's cheeseburger. Or, most intriguing of all, what the name Blue Ivy really stands for---intravenous maybe? Tune in at 3:00 p.m. to find out. The possibilities are endless. Oh, darn, I have to be submitting a community service essay this afternoon, and won't be home then. Someone, anyone, keep me posted!

Severance

"The birds of leaving call to us
Yet here we stand endowed with the fear of flight.
Overland the winds of change consume the land,
While we remain in the shadows of summers now past."

Homework assignment

If 3/4 million Jews were incinerated at Auschwitz in a nine-month period of time, and the average weight of each was 120 lbs, how many pounds of ash would be generated in a year? You may use calculators to figure out the answer.

Fuschia???!!!

One day in fifth grade, after the morning Pledge of Allegiance, the teacher said there was another announcement. A girl stood before the class to say she had lost her new scarf. She went on to describe it in detail: a square, quite large, and the color was gold and fuschia. I remember feeling surprised, because she was a friend of mine, and I didn't know she had a new scarf, much less that she had lost it. I also was a little in awe that she had the nerve to voluntarily go to the front of the room to announce her loss. I'd lost one of my mittens a short time before, and I was too shy to tell anyone, and that was my only pair of mittens. But most of all, I felt guilty for not knowing what color fuschia was, and a little envious because she did. She later found the scarf, neatly folded, on the shelf of the cloakroom. (Purple, I would have called it.) In the back of my mind, I always harbored the thought that she had faked the loss so that she could display her knowledge of the word fuschia. But then again, I never believed that Anne Frank actually wrote her diary either.

Three tales

Having been an English major back in the days when that meant you were required to read until you wore out your eyes, I've read and mostly forgotten a ton, several tons, of literature. Too, we were bookworms when we were kids; learning we could take as many books out of the library as we wished was a wondrous discovery. My mother was always telling us to put down that book and go outside and get some fresh air. My father was constantly reminding us to turn out the lights and go to bed. "Do you want to make the electric company rich?" "You wouldn't stay up so late reading if you had to get up at 6:00 in the morning!" But of all the works of literature, I find that only three have a real effect on me now. I do remember Dorothy and me reading downstairs when everybody else was upstairs, and sometimes what we read scared us so much that we dreaded going into the dark hallway, near the foreboding front door, to climb the stairs to bed. Fagan was exceptionally scary when he appeared at the window of the girl he murdered. (The window!!) But what scared us is now mostly forgotten, as is whatever stories moved us to laughter or to tears. Now there are only 3 that are so moving I can't bear to read them anymore. "Our Town" had no effect at first; the play was mandatory reading in Mrs. Hack's 11th grade English class, and Dorothy was assigned to her class, where the play was studied and analyzed in depth. However, I was in the new English teacher Mr. Angelo's class that year, and we read some other work, maybe "Silas Marner." So not until several years later, when I was helping to direct the play at Cambridge High School did I get to know the play all the way through. A girl named Toni played the lead role in the best performance I'd ever seen, counting movies and Broadway versions. A boy name Lewis could have been Thornton Wilder's pure idea of Stage Manager. I can still see those two on stage, with the light shining on the girl's black hair as she yearned to relive the lost past, and the spotlight on the world weary retrospective of the youth who tried to help us make sense of life, and death. I couldn't make it through that performance now, any more than I can read Truman Capote's "Christmas Memory." The last time I read it, years ago, it reminded me so much of the last part of Helen's life interwoven with the last years of Danny's childhood that I became a tear sodden wreck, and that was before time played out its themes of death and growing up, and away. The third literary work forever stuck in my mind is a short story that was published some years ago in "The Atlantic" magazine. I have a vague idea of the title, but can't recall it. I know where I stashed it, to read again, but I've always been afraid to look for it. It was told from the point of view of an elderly woman destined to be murdered, the most chilling narrative I'd ever read. If I can find the nerve to look it up, I'll post the title, but I can't recommend it to anyone.

First Call

Pre-school friend Landon called Andrew, to wish him Happy New Year, or to ask him a question. Andrew told his mother about the call, a little amazed, because he said, " I didn't even know I had a number!"