Civilian Conservation Corps.

     Charles Madigan enrolled in the CCC at Cherry Plain, NY on August 29, 1935. He was 41 years old, had blue eyes, brown hair, fair complexion and was 5 feet 8 1/2 inches in height. He was discharged May 11, 1936 because he was employed. 

Medicare: How Stringent Thou Art

   To qualify for a Skilled Nursing Facility, the Medicare beneficiary must have had a QUALIFYING Hospital Inpatient Stay of at least 3 days. Usually Medicare will cover its part of up to 100 days.
  Ever wonder why so many patients leave on the 3rd day. Of course they may possibly have stayed a few days longer, and still will not be admitted as inpatient, but admitted for observation, which is not a qualifying stay.

Times Fifty or so

"Five hundred twenty-five thousand,  six hundred minutes.
How do you measure a year in a life?"

Hacked!

   You can find out instantly whether you were hacked in the Equifax breach. Just enter your last name and the last 4 of your SSN. 
   If the response says you were, you are entitled to enter a claim for your share of the multi-millions settlement. You have the choice of $125 cash settlement if you already have credit-monitoring, which is automatically the case with many credit card companies.  Or, if not, you can agree to 10 years of free monitoring.
  But if eligible for the $125, don't expect you will receive that amount. It will most likely be much less, but worth  a try anyway.

Oh God, I Need To Write Something

I got a call today from the newly instituted religious service provider at the VVH, from the chaplain.  He asked to be called Chuck as he doesn't want to be called Charles or Charlie Chaplain.  Hereby to be known as Chuck the Chaplain.

VHV For the good of who?

       STATE OF VERMONT
 VERMONT VETERANS' HOME OFFICIAL STATE WEBSITE
        Excerpts from FISCAL YEAR 2019 BUDGET :                                                           "In September of 2015 the facility entered into a contract with a Medicare Hospice provider.  This will allow the facility to provide hospice care that we could not previously provide.  This will allow us to offer...services and receive a higher reimbursement for the services provided.  Additionally, this contract will deliver additional support services for the Veteran and their family members..."


Veterans Administration Per Diem
      "For Veterans who are determined to be 70% or more service connected disabled by the VA, the VA will pay a  daily rate of $410.17.  This rate includes room, board, medical care, pharmacy, laboratory services, rehabilitation services, activities, social work and transportation.  Specialty medical equipment can be provided by the VA as long as the equipment needed is related to their service connected disability."

"RDM Starting" What?

  After I stopped at  the post office today, on my way to Schaghticoke to tend to  Molly, and before I had to go to the bank for a notarization, I stopped to get gas, thinking I should probably drive to VVH to see what's going on.
   I pulled up to the only available gas pump, prepared to insert my credit card, and nothing happened. The message on the screen of the pump read "RDM Starting."  There was a prior charge on the screen, which is usual, so the pump didn't appear to be out of order.
  I figure, as I always do, that I ought to know what this message means, and that I'm the only person in the world of gas pumping that is ignorant of the meaning.
 So, as I always do, as in trying to turn my TV on, I pressed every possible button on the pump, cancel. pay outside, insert card again and again. But RDM still remained.
  Out of the blue, or from the next pump, a man appeared, asking if he could help. It turned out he had  no idea what the RDM meant either, and he pretty much repeated all of what I'd already done, before saying there was something wrong with the pump. He offered to go inside and ask, or to help me find another available pump, but I declined his kind offer, as I had other things to do, like find a notary.
  He asked if I was Marilyn's mom. I admitted such. He is one of the Sandersons, the brother of her next-door neighbor. I told him they were in Delaware, and he said last year, during a similar function, at Myrtle Beach, he accidentally came across Joe T. and then Marilyn.
  Small world, eh? But I need gas if I'm to go to Vermont, and I, as well as at least one other, still can't interpret the meaning of RDM.
  Ironically, or coincidentally if you prefer, I was on the way to the bank to notarize my IRA which includes a RMD, which I know means Required  Minimum Distribution. But I don't see that as applying to gas.

Bleary Eyed

I'm seeing Adam Schiff and James Comey as the same person.

A Gift to Dorothy

  During Dorothy's brief tenure as a secretary at RPI, she met a hockey player from Canada. He gave her this lovely crystal figure of the Blessed Virgin and Child.  She kept it on the dresser in her home, but it's in my house now.

My Book Review Via Dorothy

   Yes, my summer reading consists of a single book, non-fiction at that.I started to read it almost 20 years ago when Dorothy handed it to me, but I lost interest at the time; it struck me as rather boring in its presentation.
  The title is  To Spend Eternity Alone. The author is Dr. Hollis A. Palmer, and the book was published by Deep Roots Publications, Saratoga Springs, N.Y. a vanity press edition, I assume.
   The subject is the 1878 Trial of the Century, where all the major newspapers in the country sent their reporters to cover what was to become the longest and most expensive trial in the history of the United States: the "Billings Tragedy."
Wealthy Jesse Billings was tried for the murder of his wife by shooting her in the head through the window of her  living room one evening.
    So it is a mystery. The author claims to have been inspired to write the book by reading a single sentence in a book on local history. How it ends is still a mystery to me because I haven't finished reading it yet.
   The other mystery is how this book came to be in my house. I know Dorothy gave it to me, with kind of  quixotic expression and explanation. She didn't want it anymore, but also didn't want to throw it away.
    The book was given to her by the author, and signed by him. I never heard the story.

Tres Chic

  When I bought these shorts at Steinbach's back in the last Century, I never could have dreamed they would

be so trendy. And to think I almost threw them away.

Veteran Charles A. Madigan (Updated 7/17/19)

Article from the  PITTSTOWN HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER Spring 2019

Chris Kelly called me about this a few years ago. She was researching Veterans in the Madigan family. I remember mailing her some information. (I hope they were copies.)
   There are a few mistakes or conflicts in the writing, at least according to my knowledge and memory, which are always subject to inaccuracy.
   The 1900 Pittstown Census lists the family, including parents Patrick and Mary Ann, Katherine, (Kate Barrett) and Lizzie (Fitzpatrick), and the 5 boys. I remember both Kate and Lizzie,  but was never sure whether Lizzie was the daughter of Patrick's first wife, Ellen, or his second wife, Mary Ann. However, as per the 1900 Census, Kate would have been born in 1882, and Lizzie* in 1887. So if first wife Ellen died in 1884, Lizzie was the daughter of second wife Mary Ann, and the older sister to the 5 Madigan brothers, the youngest of whom was Frank (Francis Peter.) I have no knowledge who Jennie was, but at 9, the same age as brother Edmond, a twin? Maybe she died young, but there were so many Jenny's in our ancestry, her name may have blended in.
     In 1915, Main Street, Pittstown would have been the Madigan family farm. Incidentally, at this years's Schaghticoke Strawberry Festival, we spoke to a man who bought that farm, which,previous to his purchase, was made up of hundreds more acres.
    Charles was stationed in France. He'd been deployed there because he had studied French in high school. At one time in our house,  there was a  leatherette case with letters from a French woman. We kids called them his love letters.  I don't know what happened to them.
 In 1935, he married Mary Donovan, the daughter of ELLEN O'Brien Donovan Hogan. Second husband John Hogan was the father of Agnes Hogan Murray.
    It is true that Charles and Mary lived in a house opposite the one-time Valley Inn, and Joseph may have been born while they lived there, but not me or Dorothy. I was a baby when we lived in the Bates tenant house. I think Daddy MAY have initially worked on that farm, but then got a job at Behr Manning, as a machine operator and later in maintenance, where he worked until he retired at age 65. After retirement, he worked part time as a night watchman at the Valley Falls Mill. (If he was employed there before that, The record fails to show, and I can't recall.)
  He died January 20, 1966 (Not Jan.29)
   * When we moved into our House on River Road, ***there was a large tall pine tree in the front yard, the side toward the bridge. I remember my father saying that one Christmas, when the tree was smaller, his father had cut a branch off that tree to make a Christmas Tree for Lizzie. The family must had lived in that house after leaving the farm, before Kate and family took over the house. I also seem to recall my father recounting how his father had died in that house. He rolled off a bed in the Middle Room, and died.
**I can't understand how "sister Mary Sweeney" who is listed as having survived him, figures int the mix either. (Could she have been born after the 1900 census?
***We moved in about 1944. My parents bought the house from Kate, who had married Pete Barrett. They raised their  3 daughters in that house, which had the addition housing a barroom, and above it a 3-room "suite" for the girls. There were 2 bedrooms. Dorothy claimed the one overlooking the river, and I the one with the view of the backyard. The rooms were used by our family for storage only, but Dorothy and I had aspirations of an eventual room of our own.
      That never happened as Helen moved in with us after her mother died in 1950. When my father was working on preparing the rooms for her, he peeled off the old wallpaper. On the plaster walls were messages and drawings from the Barrett twins, before their wallpaper was applied.  Rumor had it that Pete Barrett was a hard man, and that the marriage was not a comfortable one. I know that in later years, Kate lived with one or the other of the twins. Each had made a successful marriage, each had one son: one by birth and one adopted. My mother was impressed with how close her daughters were to their mother. At least one of the sons-in-law evidently traveled  frequently on business and/or maybe for vacationing. Kate would accompany them and would send postcards. One of the first I remember was a card from St. Louis. I had thought that the most exotic and desirable location ever.
     By all accounts, and from memory, the Barrett twins were exceptional girls, very pretty and attractive in every way. They had many friends, and they would frequently travel to the city of Troy, for jobs and entertainment. I recall one of them telling me a story of how a friend was staying with them overnight, and awoke in a state of panic to the sound and reflection on the bedroom wall of a passing train. Too close for comfort. My eighth grade English teacher, Mr. Doug MacCartee, had also taught the twins some years before. He knew our relationship, probably better than I did, and would comment on the twins, saying they were identical, that the teachers couldn't tell them apart, but that they were way too nice to have ever taken advantage of that. He greatly admired them, as apparently did all who knew them.

Those F.U. Medical Appointments (What fools we mortals be)

    Yes, that's how  medical offices abbreviate your Follow-Up  appointments. If, six months or a year ago, you were scheduled for said appointment in the months of July or August, odds are great that your appointment will be rescheduled to at least September.
   Could be you'll be notified by postcard because "Our attempt to call you regarding your appointment was unsuccessful."  Strange that they couldn't leave a message on my  answering machine.  But they had to reschedule my appointment on August 29 because of  "a conflict with the doctor's schedule." 
   Certainly plenty of notice, about a month and a half before the appointment. Perhaps he's scheduled for pre-emptive emergency surgery. That would be PAR FOR THE COURSE.

Apraxia of Speech

   At one time, I made regular visits to a child whose tentative diagnosis was apraxia, though another person thought it might be selective mutism.  I don't know if these conditions are in the same spectrum or not. I was only an observer.
   The child was quite beautiful, and seemed to behave normally in other aspects of behavior. She eagerly performed childhood learning activities, which she looked forward to, and sometimes she would cry when I left, as she wanted to do more.
  One day I drove her mother to the store. She was in the back seat with her younger brother. . The day was rainy, so her mother ran into the store, leaving the kids in the car with me. They wanted to go with her, and began protesting, in the manner of young children, whining and crying. 
   In an attempt to calm them, I told them about the rain, and that their mom had wanted them to stay in the car with me. I added, "And you know, Mommy is the boss."   The girl, then about 4 years old, responded, "Mommy's not the boss. I'm the boss." 
   Her voice was raspy and hoarse, but she spoke in complete sentences. Those were the first and only words I'd ever heard her speak, though I visited her home for a while afterwards, before they moved across the country.  I often think of the family and wonder how things turned out.

The Keegan Connection

  From Ella Keegan's Address Book given to her as a birthday present: Writing is not clear, so I'll clarify: Ella's parents, so also Mary Ann's, my father's mother, were Mary Morrison (Keegan) and Patrick Keegan.
Mary Morrison was born in Connacht (?) Ireland on June 24, 1845. She came to America in 1862, and she died Sept.7, 1931.Her parents were Patrick Morrison and Ann Winn. Ann died in 1931.
Patrick Keegan was born in West Mead, Ireland on June 12, 1833, and he died April 13, 1914. His parents were Peter Keegan and Nancy Coleman.
 Mary Morrison married Peter Keegan and they had 7 children.
1) Mary Ann Keegan (Madigan) Daddy's mother----1865-1930
2) Peter Keegan Nov.1, 1867--Dec. 12, 1944
3) Kate Keegan (Boose)
4) Elizabeth Keegan
5) Ella Keegan
6) Margaret Keegan
7) Jennie Keegan
      We used to visit Daddy's aunt and uncle Ella and Peter in Johnsonville. Neither married, so no children. I recall references to Kate Boose; I think she's related to the Rowe family. I don't remember anything about Elizabeth , Margaret or Jennie. Daddy used to care for his Aunt Ella when she grew older. He died before she did. When she heard of his death, she grew sad and said, "Charlie was always such a good boy." I remember thinking how odd to hear my father called a boy. He died at 71 and Ella at 95.

Chaucer Place Hydrangea

Finally in bloom, only one so far. I thought Dorothy said it was a blue hydrangea, but the one and only bloom looks pink.

Scammers, Hoarders, eBay and Me

 I have found: (1) If you list pricey items on eBay, the scammers will be attracted.
                       (2) If you list very low-priced items, it serves as a magnet for penniless hoarders.

The Wrath of Grapes

  We've had a self-styled grape arbor here for years. We'd planted a vine or two, and Dorothy contributed a few more from her gardening days. The crop used to be plentiful. For years, I would make grape jelly, or, easier to do, grape juice. The birds were happy to help harvest the crop.
   However, a while ago, maybe a decade or more, the grape crop has failed. No grapes at all. They grow fine until just as they start to ripen they fall victim to what looks like a sort of blight. The fruit shrivels and dies. Last year looked promising. I thought maybe we'll  have grapes this year. But in the final stage, the grapes again shriveled and dropped off the vine.  I was so discouraged that I decided to tear the vine down, the disappointing old thing. I tried cutting it off and pulling it away from the  makeshift swing set that serves as an arbor, but I was only partly, minimally, successful. I had to stop  as I thought the crumbling old structure might fall on me. The vines were what was holding it up.
     Today the grapevines look as healthy as ever. The pruning may have helped them grow. They are covered in little green grapes.  Maybe this year???

(And, one perfect rose)

Berry Picking Season--Kid-Style

    Just about this time of year, the kids on our street all went berry-picking, for black raspberries mostly, and red raspberries if we could find them. The red raspberries were tastier, harder to find, and more likely to contain those little white worms, and they also tended to fall apart when picked. So we kids mostly pursued the black raspberries.
    First we had to come up with some sort of container, not always easy back in those days, pre-plastic age pretty much. We knew what the ideal would be, as portrayed in pictures, a dandy little metal pail with a handle, but none of us ever had anything like that. Sometimes we would find used berry cartons, those made of that thin wood, or we would borrow a bowl from our mothers, an old bowl of course.
   We would head for the fields behind our house, and sometimes venture several fields up, into the wooded areas where bramble bushes like to grow. Occasionally a few of the boys would cross the road and follow the tracks up the road a piece--to---hey, where my house is now. The main drawback to that was the old woman who'd homesteaded a plot of land near the track. She claimed everything in the vicinity as hers. She had a shotgun and wasn't afraid to use it. If the berry pickers got too close to her trailer, there would be shots fired. Even the daring little boys learned to stay on their own side of the tracks.
   If the picking was good, there was always the opportunity for us to sell our berries from a cardboard box in front of our house, placed in view of the customers to Sara's store. The price was $.25 a quart.
   The berrying itself was quite rigorous.The day would be hot, our shoes  would get wet  from the natural springs that kept the fields soggy, the bugs would be out-mosquitoes, gnats, spiders, and others though we never saw a tick; they apparently hadn't been invented yet. So we would be hot and sweaty, with wet feet and insect bites, but that wasn't the worst of it.  Scratches from the berry bushes were. The best array of berries were always deep beneath the tallest bushes, which had the sharpest thorns. Our arms and other parts bore scratches throughout the berrying season. We didn't care; we expected it, though the intense itching and pain from the ever-present nettles was a definite negative. The most traumatic happening of all was losing the contents of our container as we reached to pick and stray branches attacked us in the process. Even sadder was the trip home with a full basket when we spilled our berries climbing over the several fences on our way back.
    Now it's easy. I have a blackberry bush  growing at the back corner of my house, a red raspberry bush near the shed; I even have a blackberry bush growing out of a hollow in the tree in my front yard. But,

Alas!  There's nobody to go picking with and no sitting on our front porch afterward, drinking soda, comparing our scratch wounds, and discussing how our profits might be spent at the Schaghticoke Fair.
 
 

The nightmare "ahead of" the Dumpster

   This morning it happened, not the fulfillment of the entire nightmare, but enough to cause a spate of anxiety in my eBay world.  I opened my site to find that 9 items have sold overnight. Oh, that won't make me rich; the total is only $20.  The problem is twofold.
    First, I have to locate the items, from wherever they're stored in my house. I have over 100 items listed because I'm attempting to clear the clutter before everything  ends up in the dumpster.  I'm not emotionally attached to all this stuff. It's just that the longer these articles have remained in my house, the more I feel compelled to, as it were, re-home them. So I've taken advantage of the free listings, some of which have been renewed over months and months. So where the heck did I put that little box?  The search is on.
  Second, I need to find shipping containers, and packaging materials. That is a constant problem with oddly shaped and variously weighted items. Many will go First Class, so the container must be fairly lightweight. If the item is breakable or fragile, it has to be securely packed. I'll have to go buy some bubblewrap, tissue paper, small sturdy boxes, and probably more shipping tape.
    At least only about 10% of the listed items sold as of this morning, not all 100+, which is the stuff of my recurring nightmare.

Make My Day

Tiny Tomato Plant and Potential BLT's

I think I see a tiny yellow bud opening, forerunner of a tiny tomato?

The Ideal Patient in Hospital-Speak

  An otherwise healthy young man is brought to the hospital on an emergency basis in the early morning hours, and is found to have appendicitis. A surgeon performs the operation, a successful procedure. The patient is released that same day. The family barely had time to get the word out, and certainly not to gather round.
   A perfect outcome, for patient and medical providers. Hospitals are compensated for such medical events at a "packaged rate." One price coded for each procedure, regardless of the time spent. (At least that's my understanding.) So the quicker the patient is discharged, the less time spent under care, the  more of the allotted funding the hospital gets to keep. I'm sure it goes to defray the costs of those who are not such ideal patients. Young and healthy is the way to go.

This was The Schroders in Kingston, NY

   Herman and Gertrude installed this swimming pool in their back yard on  Wrentham Street in Kingston in May, 1969. I remember because I was in St. Mary's Hospital in Troy and family members were working on the pool while I was having a baby. All the action seemed centered there: I felt so alone. (Though Dave was here of course.)  The elder Schroders already had 6 grandchildren, but they lived across the country. Herman especially wanted the pool for the grandkids, I think.
  So a few years later, in the summer of 1973, as the picture shows, the whole family was in the pool, all 9 grandkids. Danny missed it, as he wasn't born until 4 years later. His time in the pool was limited as his grandfather died the year Danny was born, in 1977, and things were never the same.
    Unfortunately, in an attempt to include the pool in the picture (and it was a spectacular pool for its time) some of the people got severed, notably Bill and one of his 4 sons, I think Thomas.
Dave is kneeling in front of those 2 wounded  people; next to him is David, and John Schroder. Of those 2 little cousins, David was the elder by 5 months.
Grandpa Herman is sitting next to Grandma who is holding Marilyn.
I am standing next to Norine and Don and  Barbara are  on the end. The taller boy in back is Paul (I think) and then Phillip, the 2 redheads Martha and Carl, and the youngest of the 6 siblings, Annemarie.

It's summer. 90 In the Shade

Double Negative Morass

So wrote Philip Nolan, The Man Without A Country:
 
"He loved his country as no other  man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands."
    Did he, full of self-loathing, feel he deserved the draconian punishment rendered throughout his life, or did he feel his sentence was too harsh?
   No man deserved less would serve as  the opposite of no man deserved more.  Less punishment?  More punishment?  Any other man could deserve more or less punishment. But if no man deserves less, does he feel he had committed the ultimate offense? 
    I guess since he used the word "but" as a contrast, he thought he deserved what he got. 
Then again,  since this was his posthumous message, he could be thinking "more" would be an even stricter sentence, so no man, nobody, deserved less. 
    Between the Mueller Report and this tale, I've gotten a headache. Nobody deserves that more than I do. Nobody deserves that less than I do.

Life Revised

No longer the calm before the storm, but the storm before the calm...

Ann Burke Donovan 7/1/1986