Rescue!

OMG, I think I might have to dig down into the coffers and come up with $2500 to bail David Cassidy out of the Rensselaer County Jail.  He was pulled over for failure to dim headlights, found to be DWI, and remanded to Rens. Co. Jail.  Poor guy.   His mug shot looked terrible; he used to be so beautiful. Sic transit gloria.

Dylan's Villanelle--Updated

Go gentle. Rage not.  Night is good.

Super Agents

  I'm not much given to paying compliments for people who are just doing their jobs, because I  figure that's what they're supposed to do.   But, looking back over the years, I think the Lohnes brothers, Dick and Bob, were the best insurance agents ever.  They unfailingly responded almost instantly whenever there was an accident or a burglary, and in a timely manner when there was storm damage or  some other issue.  They helped with all the paperwork and forms that had to be submitted, and would advise the best course of action, even when it was out of their area of responsibility.  They were caring and respectful, and we couldn't have asked for better service.
     I wish that somewhere there exists an equivalent to their insurance agency, because our present agency seems bent on being diametrically opposed to the Lohnes Agency.  (I didn't used to appreciate the Travelers calendars, though later I changed my opinion.  Now we get nada.)
   

Fightin' Irish

    Once upon a time, when the world was new,  I taught third grade at a parochial school in Delmar.  My class consisted of 51 students because although the class size was set at 50, one child was moving, and there was a waiting list so they allowed the child into class  before the other child moved away.  A lot of kids, but absolutely no discipline problems because the school and the parents of the students wouldn't have allowed any problems.
    Except for one other lay teacher, all the other classes, K to 8th grade, were taught by nuns, who were a fairly youthful and pretty dynamic lot  back then.  They pretty much stayed to themselves, instruction-wise, and allowed me and the other teacher freedom inside our classrooms, without any criticism.  I would say they never criticized anything I did, except that would not be entirely true: on one occasion they all descended on me like a pack of avengers:
      I drove myself to that job, in my 1957 Chevrolet BelAir.   One evening, while I was driving my sister to a doctor's appointment, a drunken realtor came speeding  down Stillwater's Lake Avenue and smashed into the side of the front of my car as it was stopped to make a turn.  (Ironically while his big old Olds, or whatever, was stopped on the road with the police on the scene, another car drove right up behind it and pushed it forward quite a good distance.  That driver was also obviously inebriated, but nobody paid any attention to that back then.  Hard to believe, but true.)
     My car had some fairly minor damage, but was still drivable.  A few days later, while it was parked outside the school, the adjustor from the other insurance company came to investigate and was taking pictures, unbeknownst to me.  The street where my car was parked was right outside the window where the nuns hung out, to eat lunch, have their prep periods, etc.  They were not supposed to socialize  during those times with us 2 non-nuns, so I was taken by surprise when a contingent of nuns burst into my room, and announced that somebody was taking pictures of my car, WITHOUT my permission.  And was I going to allow it??  I was a new driver then, and this was my first accident, so I hadn't really thought about the protocol involved.  I indicated as much to the questioning nuns. 
     The head nun, Sister Anne, who thought of me as kind of her protégé, drew herself up, and obviously disappointed in me, exclaimed (the only word for it):   "Well, I thought you were Irish!"
     If every tale has to have a lesson, I guess the takeaway here would be not to let everybody walk all over you.  And this from a group of peaceable nuns.

Moving (On)?

   First comes the dumpster.  Then the painters.  Then the realtor's sign.  Moving on, or at least out, after most of a lifetime means the clearing out, cleaning up, and erasing of an existence.  The new inhabitants will vow never to sully their pristine surroundings with the untidiness of life lived, but time will take its toll. 

Honor the System

I drove to Cambridge today for the express purpose of buying a cheesecake baked by The Nuns of New Skete.  I read that their energy efficient kitchen can bake 400 cakes a session, and that they bake 1 or 2 days a week for about 37 weeks out of the year.  That's a lot of cheesecakes, so I figured they'd have some in stock and they certainly did.  There were cars parked in front of the building on Ash Grove Road, but not a person in sight.  You enter the doorway that a sign marks as the gift shop and there in the vestibule is a large cooler filled with the cheesecakes and other cheese spreads.  There are jars of jam and jellies and fruitcakes and pancake mixes and other items on shelves around the room.  Not a person in sight though.  Each item is marked with the selling price and you are instructed to choose your item and slide cash or a check through a slot in the locked doorway . How quaint, and trusting, I thought, the honor system.  But reading further---there are lots of signage with instructions posted around the room----your eye falls upon another sign advising that cameras are present, because unfortunately, some people took items without paying for them.  I slid my check into the slot and hoped my hair didn't look too bad for the invisible camera.

Hostesses Unaware

   Our house was a gathering place for all the local kids during our growing-up years.  Local meant primarily all the kids on our street all the time, the kids from the corner on down through the lane most of the time, and occasionally some upstreet kids.  We weren't fans of them and later learned that some of them thought downstreet was slumming it.  But downstreet was the hub as far as we were concerned; we were all comfortable enough to be able to ignore each other in perfect harmony.  However, another element was introduced when the families on the street, most of them older than my mother's age, had their grandchildren visit.  The women would ask my mother if their children could come down to play with the Madigan girls, such obedient and perfect children we were. Moreover, we had a front porch, a back yard, and a vacant lot next door. The grandparents meant visitors to our yard, not the inside of the house, because that was an unspoken rule in our neighborhood. Don't be a bother to others and play outside.   At first, that could be a little awkward, during the initial visit, carrying with it as it did a sense of obligation which was new to us.  But gradually the visiting  kids adapted to the way the hierarchy worked, and fit right into our games and pursuits.
    One family had visitors from West Virginia who stayed summers for a few years.  There was a girl named Patti and her younger brother Steve.  We were somewhat impressed because Patti had an accent, and also because she was unfailingly the most perfectly groomed child of 10 years old we had ever encountered.  Although they pretty much lived out of a suitcase during the visits, and she seemed to have only one outfit of clothing, her shirt was always crisp and ironed and her blonde hair never out of place. We were too young to realize that was the way of  her Southern mother. Though she appeared bandbox perfect, she dove right into all activities and had an affinity for horror stories.  One older boy had attended Boy Scout Camp, and had shared those campfire horror stories with us, and when she pleaded with us from her seat on the doghouse roof, somebody would usually recount the tale of an iron claw stuck to a car's door handle after leaving a drive-in, or some other ghoulish story.  Oddly enough, while she came down every day, her brother never did, although at the age of 6, he would not have been the youngest on the scene.  We lose track of each other, as children do,  never knowing when the last sighting of each other would be.  We did learn of little brother Steve years later, though.  He had become a Secret Service Agent and was widely  portrayed by the media for his efforts in protecting President Reagan  during  the 1981  assassination attempt.