Bad, Recipe,Bad

    If the biggest concern you have is what to do with leftover Halloween candy, your life is okay as it is.  You should NOT follow the advice of TV "cooks" who concoct recipes for leftover candy, the most pointless advice ever.  If you have leftover candy, consider it dessert as long as it's edible, which can be quite a long time.  Do NOT crumble it into a cream cheese mixture, pour it into a graham cracker piecrust, bake, then chill it, and serve with whipped cream.  Why? There's no rule that says you must eat candy; if you don't want to eat it, give it to somebody else, or for heaven's sake, throw it away.  Why would you even consider disguising it as a pie; it's not as if you're forcing yourself to eat vegetables, which have some nutrient value.  Candy or pie: pick one---do not consolidate!

Seductive

"I did my best to bring her back
  To what she was before,
But my baby walks
  The Streets of Baltimore." 

Once upon a time......

In Memory

March 9, 1905      October 30, 1983
                  On a cold Sunday morning thirty years ago, my world changed.

How It Happens

   The Public Service Announcement is shown repeatedly, advising viewers to get their shingles shot.  The speaker is recounting his experience with shingles, saying he was so miserable that he felt like he just wanted  "to crawl up into a ball."   Since  this ad is run over and over, the assumption will be that this is the way to go, no more will we curl up into a ball, we'll crawl up there somehow. 
    It reminds me of the massive undertaking in the book, "The Professor and the Madman."  The compilers of the OED solicited word input from anyone who could document three  in-print usages of a word, which they would then include in the Oxford English Dictionary, kind of the grand-daddy of them all.   So if today's TV ads control the future of the language, so be it. 
    I don't care (but it sounds stupid).

Read,read,read.

Did you ever, while preparing a box of chocolate pudding, wonder why it seemed to be curdling and not reaching that nice rolling boil state, and then find out it was the instant kind?   Not the best, but I must confess I ate it anyway. 

TV Redux

     I'm still trying to get a grasp on the new season.  I watched "Ironside" tonight, or that portion that wasn't usurped  by the news that the country is back in business.  The show was okay I guess, for those who like that kind of show.  But at first when I saw Ironside  tooling along in his "mobility chair" I thought it was the icon for one of those screen crawlers. He wheeled along so smoothly, and at breakneck speed too.  What a man!

Finally

Tethered by a lifeline,
She sits,
Fading hope billowing
Through the waning hour:
Waiting---for the healing poison---
Like a balloon being filled with helium
Struggling to rise in freedom
If only briefly, before it falls,
Crashing down through earth's darkness.

More, or less.

The rooms were empty
My  heart cried out.
"Empty nest," they said.
Yearning, unanswered  emptiness.
Then Death moved in,
And took up all the space.
Far worse than loneliness
The menacing, unwanted presence.
"So soon?" the question. 
Silence the answer.

ANONYMOUS

  Nay child, Do not go gently.
  Linger upon fields of apathy:
  Abandoned soldiers, broken from their ranks,
  Cords of driftwood strewn along river banks.

The ways of nature bestowed the bane
So generously, upon us, the gift of pain.
    Liberty!
           Pursuit!
               and Life
Yet we remain stunted children, unworthy, resigned
To the lock and key of His grand eternal  design.

What Is, Is, Is
Must, Must, Must
And what Is, Is, Is can
never, never, never....CEASE.

The winter of our discontent
Will smother the tree and flower.
But amidst ice and biting frost
May reveal our finest hour.
Only in darkness does light exist;
Only in love will our lives be missed.

          Anyone familiar with the above poem is welcome to comment, either as to author, or as to poetic veracity.

Book Report

Divesting:  66 down, 637 more to go.    At least.

Not me---Boo hoo.

So when the cops are called to an underage drinking party, and arrest those in attendance, they should first listen to the excuses.  "Not me, Officer, I was just picking up a drunk friend."   If the young woman happens to be captain of a volleyball team, then of course she has to be telling the truth.  If the police asked the other attendees if they were drinking, or were there to support a friend, how many would so claim.  If the school enforces their discipline code, with by the way what seems to be a rather mild punishment, the school is wrong, because the mother believes her child. Said child could have called someone else to pick up the drunk girl, or the driver could have waited outside: teens do beep horns. As a team captain, she should have possessed a measure of leadership and responsibility to avoid placing herself in jeopardy.  Aren't  captains skilled at strategy?  It's so easy (and a cheap shot) to denigrate the bad bureaucrats while protecting a young innocent girl, who's good at sports, and has loving, hovering parents. 

TV or not TV: That is the question

  I feel so out of it.  I glanced at the ratings of this season's new television shows, and realized that not only have I not watched them, I also have never watched a single episode of most of the older shows.  I used to have a viewing  familiarity  with every show, but that was before there were so many offerings, and also before I developed what is  apparently a series-induced attention deficit disorder.  Even when I attempt to watch a show, either my mind wanders and blocks out the storyline, or else, when it comes to the crime/murder/gore/ genre, I change the channel because  I don't want to endure the suspense of watching a cheerful female character become a corpse. 
   During the years that Dorothy spent weekends at my house, the TV would be turned to all the CSI-type detective shows, but I would work on the Sunday NYT crossword while she was engrossed in the whodunit aspect.  Some of them were accompanied by eerie soundtracks which really didn't invite me as a viewer. 
  I figured  it was too late for me to get in on any of the existing series:  I'd watched a single episode of the top-rated "Breaking Bad," or most of the episode, but  when the main character was suffering so badly----racing across the desert trying to stop the bad guys from destroying the cash for which he'd sold his soul, avoiding sniper fire while simultaneously suffering the effects of terminal lung cancer------I abruptly changed the channel so I wouldn't have to feel his pain.  It was the next-to-last episode anyway.
   I resolved to stay more current this season, doing my viewing before the series got so far along that I couldn't catch up.  I resolutely watched a full episode of "The Crazy Ones,"  and found it boring and mundane.  I tried, I really did, to watch "The Michael Fox Show,"  but all I could think of was how hard it must be for him to articulate his lines, so courageous, but not so entertaining.  I have consistently watched the singing and dancing shows, mainly I suppose because they don't require full attention: there's no plot and it's  easy to drop in and out.  I lost my focus on "American Idol" after Adam Lambert's season because nobody measured up to him.  I will watch DWTS's as long as Derek Hough is on, though I must confess I was relieved after V.H left, because watching her left me sad, not entertained.  When the judges no longer feel required to overrate the dancing prowess  of  the remaining dancers who are physically challenged, socially handicapped, or just plain old, I may be able to watch angst-free. I'm waiting for that.
    One night last week, sleepless, I inadvertently viewed back-to-back episodes of the hitherto unseen "Burn Notice,"  and found it strangely compelling.  The show made me feel the same as when I read comic books when I was a child----interested but unworried as to the characters' outcomes.  The next day, I read that the show had run its course. 
    I'm pretty saturated with all the singing shows.  Many of the vocalists on "The Voice" are outstanding, but how badly do we need more good singers?  The so-called reality shows are obviously scripted but if they weren't who would want to view real life; we have enough of that.  If anyone can let me in on a fresh new show, please let me know.  Anything besides "Duck Dynasty," that is.

How now, Tom Hanks

  Does it really come as a surprise for a man in his late 50's to be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, especially when  his glucose levels have been high since he was 36 years old.  Millions have  been so diagnosed, minus the  benefit of a formal announcement.  Could be he's looking to be the spokesperson; every disease has one, and most are fronted by celebrities.  (Most likely prostrate enlargement is present too, but publicizing  that doesn't carry the same cachet.)

Where's the magic, Peter?

    I read your column every Sunday in the TU's "Handyman On Call" column.  Most of your recommendations  and suggestions seem well-advised, though I have not had occasion to put most of your advice to use. You have often highly recommended "Magic Eraser"  as a means of removing many different kinds of soil and stains from a variety of materials.   Based on your glowing endorsement, which seems contrary to your usual curmudgeonly nature, I bought some of the product, and I just don't see the magic. So far, I've tried it on everything from walls to furniture to vinyl with no more success than a damp cloth.  The stains remain; what's up with that?

Oenophilia, Anyone?

  Direct from, and produced and bottled by the Amorici Vineyard at Spirit Earth, Valley Falls, A New York State Farm Winery, I now possess a bottle of  Riesling Finger Lakes Dry White Wine, 12% ALC./VOL.  Now I must get in touch with my inner sommelier.  Skoal!

Uncle Joe

   Joe lived with us for as long as I can remember, the last 20 years or so in our  final family house.  His room was the small one, at the top of the stairs  in the back of the house.  The room boasted a closet and a single window, and of course the private entrance that the second stairway allowed.  In the room were a single bed and a small kerosene stove, all he needed he said. He must have been lonely, but was doubtless accustomed to it because his wife had died young of cancer, his son drowned in the Hoosic River at the age of 11 years, and Joe had lost his arm in an accident while working at the Powder Mills.  When we  were little kids, we spent a lot of time outside with Joe.  He didn't play with us exactly, but talked to us and listened to us as we followed him around while he did chores in the yard. He often carried a hoe which he used to tend a small vegetable garden, and more fascinating to us, he would divert streams of water through areas where mud had formed. When he would put his hoe away in the shed, us following him, he would sing words to the song, "Hang up the shovel and the hoe, for there's no more work for Poor Old Joe," thus adapting the words way before the time of racial consciousness.   Our father was always at work, and my mother's life consumed with household and farming chores, so Joe was a constant presence in our lives, and as memory serves, he treated us quite as adults.
     We kids grew up, as children are destined (or doomed) to do, and we came to abandon his presence in our lives, ungratefully, as children also do.
One cold winter night in January, Joe died in that small room. Once the bed and the small stove were taken out of the room, there was little evidence that he had ever lived there.  I was in college then and a year or so later, with the help of a friend, I made the room into a small study for myself, with a cot and a desk and a wardrobe for my winter clothes, as well as the room's closet.  A luxury of a sort, as I'd never had a room of my own or a closet either.  In cold months, I could spend  only limited time in the room, as the house had no central heat and no heat at all upstairs.  Those were the days when we would grab our clothes in the morning and run downstairs to dress near the living room stove. In the summer, I would lie on the cot and read--a simple but most desirable pleasure.  But there was a peculiar thing that would happen at times, always in that room and always when I was alone.  I would hear voices in my head.  No, that's not true; it was more like a refrain running through my head, wordless, but struggling to become words.  I was in my early twenties with no history of illness, though that was about the time I started to develop migraines. It was before the time of self analysis or pseudo-psychology, so I never strove to make any connection, and none was apparent.  I do remember that when I would feel the sensation of the unspoken coming on, I would run, not walk, down those stairs into the company of anybody who happened to be in the house.  I never mentioned it to anybody, though years later I discussed it with Dorothy, and she said she had similar experiences.  When we had these rare conversations, and after she had married and moved away, Dorothy would say she had felt the presence of ghosts, or spirits, in the house.  Not too surprising, I suppose, because in our lifetimes, my mother, father, and Joe would all die in the house, in different rooms, and I believe that my father's father also died there, in still another room.  Helen, in her later and lonesome years, claimed to have seen angels in the middle room, and could hear them singing.  She would describe the sight and the sound.  Years later, I would research the topic, and learn there is a recognized and identified phenomenon of choir voices in people who have suffered hearing loss.  Helen didn't dislike the voices or the vision, but rather was  in awe of them, and religious as she was, seemed to attach some feeling that the angels were preparing a way for her.  After a while, and a long life, dreams and reality appear to merge as one, which could be a stark reminder that the way is being prepared, ready or not.
     
    

Trend Fatigue---Hearts and Syntax

  How long is the Hand Heart destined to last?  Cute the first few thousand times, but now it makes me feel like breaking thumbs.
  And the Carter Family should be rolling over in their graves about the current  rephrasing of their poignant, "Will you miss me when I'm gone?"  Even Mother Maybelle, perhaps never  the most avid proponent of proper syntax, must shudder to hear, "You're gonna miss me by my hair, You're gonna miss  me everywhere."  Combined with "You're gonna miss me by my walk, You're gonna miss me by my talk,"the song makes a mockery of  the  English language.  That little ditty just sticks in your head though, doesn't it? And makes you want to form a reply -----"I'm gonna miss you by your weight, I'm gonna miss you by your pate,"  you fat, balding S.O.B."

OK, then--Whatever.....

......"OK, then. Whatever." These were Brad's words  to me after I said I didn't think his call was legitimate, and told him not to call me again.  Even though he was calling from Windows about a problem with my computer. 

The Ice Cream Oath

     We promised each other we would never do it.  We would never take our future child's melting ice cream cone out of its little hands, lick the dribbling area around the circumference of the cone, and hand it back, with the process to be repeated as necessary.  Back when we were teenagers, my friend and I used to sit on the porch of an ice cream store on a summer day and watch as young mothers leaving the store with their children would stop to talk to friends. On a warm day, the mothers would, almost as if it were an instinct, neaten up their children's ice cream cones in this manner without even pausing in their conversation.  We, as yet untainted by motherhood, would observe, appalled.  Yuck! How could they!
    "Promise me," said my friend one day, "that you will never do that, even if we do some day have kids."   I was more than in accord, so I took the oath. "No, I will never lick my child's dripping ice cream cone."  And I never did, although I did have three children.  Even as toddlers, they had to take care of their own ice cream dribbles.

SMALL BUSINESS (really small)

  Yesterday I attended the Small Business /Craft Fair Expo at the Schaghticoke Fairgrounds.  There were 3 buildings full of vendors.  I bought a pumpkin for $5.00 and I think that may have been the major sale of the day, except for cider doughnuts and curly fries.  Attendance was sparse, the weather not optimal, but the event is scheduled to run through Sunday.  I hope it will be worth the trouble of setting up all the display booths, but I would project the outlook as dismal.

P.P.D.

Can you suffer from post-partum depression 2 years after giving birth?  5 years?  35 years?   Didn't that used to be called by another name?

Where art thou?

    Sometimes I'll be typing along on my computer keyboard,  and look up to see that nothing has appeared on the screen.  I know I entered the words;  I wonder where they went, how they just disappeared into the ether.  I suppose they could suffer the same fate as all the ideas you've mentally translated into words over the years---questions, explanations, ---but never got around to verbalizing.  When you die, they all end up in Limbo.

The AARP website says "Millions of Americans over age 65 are suffering from undiagnosed depression."   How is it possible for anyone to make this statement?  What type of survey could possibly identify those whose depression has not been diagnosed?  That would mean the survey takers would be making the diagnosis of the millions undiagnosed.  Sounds like something out of Joseph Heller-land. 

Tres absurde, Candide. Oui, oui.

 For "If you had not been expelled from the noble castle, if you had not been clapped into the Inquisition, if you had not wandered about America on foot, if you had not stuck your sword into the Baron, if you had not lost all your sheep from the land of Eldorado, you would not be eating candied citrons and pistachios here." 
      "Tis well said," replied Candide, " but we must cultivate our gardens."

O Which Path

Francis Bacon:  "I have taken all knowledge to be my province."

Confucius say:

  "Those who bring confusion to our midst always begin by being fond of offending their elders."
 "Who does not know the value of words will never come to understand his fellow-men."

Sorry, Mr. Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my blog has gleaned my teeming brain,
Then on the shores of the wide world
I stand alone
With all unuttered words of angst and pain.
Forsooth.

Be like Trayvon

The woman driver of the Lexus  that crashed the Capitol gates, the motorcycle driver who got in the way of the SUV fleeing from danger------embodiments of the spirit of Trayvon.

Im-peached

   One of my favorite foods is a nice ripe juicy peach.  Finding one is as difficult as the hunt for the golden apple in Minecraft.  Peaches have a short growing season in this part of the country, and those are the only peaches worth eating.  My mother used to delight in planting things, including fruit trees.  She had planted 2 sour cherry trees that on maturity yielded large crops of their fruit each summer; the cherry-laden boughs  were widely admired by the customers who used to frequent Sara's store, and their compliments often resulted in their leaving with a generous  offering of cherries. 
    My mother also planted a peach tree on the side of the house, though winter conditions were not ideal for that type of tree, and eventually it fell victim to a severe freeze.  But not before it yielded, in what was to be its final year, a one-time crop of the finest peaches I've ever tasted.  The tree grew for several years before its eventual demise, but for most of its life, it bore no fruit.  I was teaching in Cambridge then, and kept my car parked on the side of the house next to the vacant building next door.  One day, as I was backing out of the driveway, I spotted something in the peach tree------three perfect golden peaches.  I stopped and gathered them up, and was privileged, over the next few days, to partake of the most delectable flavors I'd ever experienced.
    Each year, I try to replicate that experience, and a few times I've come close, but the ultimate "golden apple hunt" is ever elusive.  This year, I've bought peaches about half a dozen times,  usually only a few at a time because I'm  so accustomed to the disappointment.  If I have had in my house a dozen fresh peaches this summer, only about one-fourth of them have been worth eating.  The best were probably presented as a gift from my brother-in-law.  Most of the others were duds. 
    Today I went to a local orchard to buy apples, a once-upon-a-time tradition.  I was pleasantly surprised that they were also advertising peaches.  I saw them in the cooler, in baskets.  I asked the clerk how the peaches were, if they were juicy; she said they were good, she liked them.  I bought a small basket of them;  the clerk told me to refrigerate them as they were ready to eat.  As soon as I got home, I washed a peach, and brought it outside to eat in the waning sunlight.  I also brought a small paring knife (I don't like to bite into fuzzy skin) and a dish towel to soak up the juice. I sat on the deck, spread the towel on my lap, and sliced off a piece of the peach with my knife.  I bit into a piece of Styrofoam.  This can't be. I tried again: desiccated fiberboard.  I took my paring knife and stabbed the peach until it was mutilated--it bled not a drop of juice.  I threw its body down the bank behind the house.  More mayhem undoubtedly awaits. 

Right Aid

   It happened again, the second time in a week.  I was in the Rite-Aid store and another person spoke to me, using my "old name."  I don't hear my name that much any more, so it gets my attention.  But each time I failed at first to recognize the speaker.  I'm not one of those people who usually addresses people by their names in conversation, so I went with the flow, scrambling in my mind to garner a clue as to who the person was.  I never did confirm the identity of the first person, but yesterday, after a few minutes, I realized I was talking to a former classmate,  a man I hadn't even seen in too many years to count.  He seemed glad to see me, and we were in easy conversation for about 10 minutes or so, and not about old times either.  I learned that he's now retired and that he carries a load of birdshot throughout his body from a hunting accident in his youth.  He showed me the lump in his wrist; the bullets will prevent his ever having an MRI, though CT scans are possible.  He said that not all the containers outside the store are for the construction debris.  Some are storage containers holding merchandise that will be put back on the shelves when the renovation  is complete. 
     Since everything is now so much more open, and the customers more visible to each other, I should probably visit the store more often: it's nice to talk to people.  The store looks good, nice floors.  But I must say---I despise the Wellness Program.  The cashiers always point out my eligibility with enthusiasm, evidently as part of their job, but to this date I've never been able to access anything of value through it.  Maybe in the future......