Kim Jong Il and Bon Jovi (tf)

That little dwarf from North Korea died yesterday (or maybe days earlier….. totalitarians aren’t good with the details). Kim Jong Il, he of the pompadour and the platform shoes and the Stalinesque communistic wardrobe….a lover of American kitsch who just happened to be batshit crazy and homicidal and armed with nuclear warheads….and thus hard to completely ignore, especially if you lived in South Korea. But still. The world doesn’t exactly weep when dictators go into permanent vapor lock…although when the guy’s son is set to take over, North Koreans suddenly perfected the art of being grief-stricken for the state-run cameras….tossing themselves on the ground and pulling their hair out in spasms of anguish that would make Lee Strasberg disciples smile. Nobody grieves like citizens in a totalitarian state. And nobody does funerals like totalitarians either. They have their guy encased in a glass box, and his hair is perfect, like Tom Cruise’s in “The Color of Money”. I’d hate to be the guy who embalmed him if Il starts turning green in the bubble. Could be early retirement on some ice floe somewhere.

Next up on the depth chart is Kim Jong Un. The “Great Leader” is dead. So now we have the “Great Successor”. So named by North Korean state television. You wonder how long it took a room full of terrified underlings to come up with that moniker eh? From what we know the kid is about 30 years old and loves James Bond and Michael Jordan and Playstation. Like his father, he looks like a dumpling dipped in gravy, and has really bad hair. All of this, not to mention his lineage, gives him the qualifications to start WWIII if he so desires. Nice to know.

Stevens didn’t seem to care about any of this however, being much more busy spreading the rumor that Bon Jovi ceased to exist. Stevens sent me a text about it. Being a peerless journalist, he is surely one to be trusted with such news, right? So I sent out a flurry of text messages myself, only to be called all sorts of vile names by my contacts when it turned out Bon Jovi was alive and well in New Jersey….the victim of some hoax that went viral. Thankfully, Stevens was not near a news desk at the time, or he might have breathlessly reported the news to the WNEP viewing area. I did notice, however, that he spelled “Bon Jovi” wrong in his text to me. Some bizarre spelling I can’t recall right now, so I’m not sure he was re-living the 80s or anything, especially since his previous texts were spouting the brilliance of a Tony Bennett CD that he’d just purchased. In the music taste department, Stevens (staying in the totalitarian vein here) is more square than Tiananmen.

So all in all it was quite the day yesterday, and certainly worth writing about, in this blog anyway. Especially with me having to fill in for that slacker Stevens, who continues to moan about his writer’s block. With such almost ground-breaking things happening daily….even if some of them are made-up? Writer’s block?

Bah. Humbug.

–Tom Flannery

The Elusive Spirit (ms)

It seems harder each year to get excited about Christmas. I suppose there are a lot of reasons for that: the weather turns cold, the days grow short, the darkness of night seems especially dark. I think one of the main reasons, though, is that there are no kids in the house.

Children have an aura of happiness around them this time of year and once you get close to them you can’t help but become trapped by it. Soon enough it spreads from you to another and so on; before long entire neighborhoods can become covered with Christmas joy. That is what makes Christmas such an enjoyable time of year. Of course it is not to say no kids, no Christmas, it is just that it becomes more difficult to find.

See, I guess it is that if you have no kids you must then search for the meaning of the holiday in the real world where the pickings are slim. Murder, mayhem and mishap around every turn, a page turning detective/action/adventure novel where the casualties are real and leave nothing but memories in their passing. If one is forced to feed on only that with sides of political graft and government bureaucracy washed down with a delightful cocktail of incompetence and greed it’s easy enough to find the well of Christmas spirit bone dry. One wanders the streets, then, with the bitter taste of Christmas now ever present and the sweet joy of it a small compartment to the side, one opened less and less as time skates by faster and faster.

There are, however, moments that help put even the most jaded citizen in the holiday spirit, moments that can happen only this time of year, moments that seem so appropriate, so deliciously good. The rough looking kid who holds the door with a smile for a passing senior citizen. The face of a child who sees Santa for the very first time. The warm greeting of an old friend newly home for the holidays. All simple. All inconsequential. All ordinary. Not one to be given a second thought unless you are of the writing ilk and spend your time viewing the world up close. They are out there if one is willing to look.

So, I spend a lot of time looking these days before Christmas. I ignore the financial world, the political world, the criminal world and focus as much as I can on the good stuff of life. That means taking a look at the ordinary real people who live around the block or in the next neighborhood. There you will undoubtedly find good people who do everything they’re supposed to and enjoy especially this season of the year for having done so. These are the kinds of people I seek for in them is the true spirit of the season. The pleasure of their company is a pleasure indeed and something that makes me happy in a time when happiness is in short supply.

–Mike Stevens

It made my bloody day it did….(tf)

I’ve been blindsided by the blues.

Maybe it’s just all-purpose holiday-induced malaise.

Hell, I don’t know what it is but I’ve been in hibernation mostly, hoping it will pass. The recent cold snap has helped some. I don’t like the feeling of one season hanging around when its time is past. Maybe winter is finally here to stay and I don’t have to step outside to decide if I need a jacket anymore.

It’s the little things that get you at times like this.

Music that used to lift me up is leaving me flat. It’s not that it won’t lift me up next week, or even tomorrow, but I’ve been spinning my Ipod wheel and there’s nothing among the 12,000 tracks that’s either getting inside my head or getting inside my Doc Martens. It’s just background noise…..the one thing music should never be if you treat it dead seriously like I do. So I gotta look elsewhere when the lights go out. It’s dead quiet ’round here. That kinda sucks.

Sports is a welcome diversion. Saturday I witnessed the best of college basketball (unranked Indiana beating top-ranked Kentucky with a thrilling 3 pointer at the buzzer….setting the Indiana home crowd into a frenzy and turning their coach into a catatonic with wobbly knees) and the worst (cross-town rivals Cincinnati and Xavier brawling with each other at the end of their game. All the fight lacked was guns and knives). Sports brings you up and then it brings you back down again. And then you realize that it doesn’t really matter all that much no matter what happens. It’s like cotton candy on the tongue. Good while it’s on there. Long-term nourishment? Not so much.

(Tim Tebow is 7-1 as a starting QB for the Broncos, and one-third of the nation thinks it’s because he loves Jesus so much that the son of god intervenes and makes the opposing teams do incredibly stupid things in order to lose (as if the Bears need any help being dumb). What to make of such nonsense? When 1 out of every 3 people you meet on the street things Tim Tebow has the bat phone to the almighty, is it any wonder I’ve got the blues? You should have them too. Unless you really dig the Broncos.)

A presidential election is on the horizon, and the anti-Obama party has lined up a row of barely indistinguishable right wing fanatics to fight it out for the nomination. The current front-runner is Newt Gingrich, but that’s only because he seems the least likely to start rounding up poor people and putting them into concentration camps. At least at the moment. Some pizza maker named Herman Cain was the darling of the party a few weeks back until it came to light that he couldn’t keep his hands off his waitresses or something. He didn’t deny any of it, but still managed to blame the media. Rick Perry put out an amazingly insulting and homophobic YouTube ad last week that made him the darling of the American Nazi party but pretty much doomed him everywhere else. The fact Perry looked gay in the ad made every gay person I know laugh out loud. So that leaves Mitt Romney…..who is a Mormon. Now, Republicans will play just about any cheap god card they can to get votes, but they’re not ready for Angel Moroni references during the swearing-in. Romney is pure window dressing. That fact that he’s as dumb as a bag of fertilizer doesn’t help either.

So, Gingrich. A sleazy lying corporate bag man with the morals of a diseased toad. Richard Nixon looks like Eugene Debs next to this guy. If Gingrich is ever elected President this nation deserves the unregulated frenzy of poor people getting stomped in the name of the free markets that would ensue. Forget Guantanamo. Once it’s illegal to be gay, black, brown, poor, own a condom, be non-christian, or to speak Spanish, they’ll have to put barbed-wire around Yellowstone National Park to hold all the detainees. We’ll all be Tebowed. Too late for prayers boys. You should have thought of that before your grandfather voted for FDR.

Obama will roll-over whoever gets the nomination though. Even I don’t think our nation is dumb enough to allow the alternative. Not yet anyway. But we’re getting there. President Palin? It could happen in my lifetime, which terrifies me. What’s happening now is not the natural ebb and flow of politics drifting from the left to the middle to the right….and round and round again as new promises are made, broken, blamed on the other guy, and then made all over again.

No, this is time travel stuff. Back to the days of crusades and moving on to police dogs and fire hoses. To the days when fear and ignorance melded together to form a witches brew. Those who drink today are convinced it’s the lesbians across the street or the Mexican working in the old lady’s garden or them dead-beat welfare cheats with the big screen TVs who are causing all this grief. It ain’t the banks or the corporations or the politicians with their hands out…..it’s the unwashed hippies making all that noise around Wall Street, and all those pain in the ass newly-foreclosed-on-homeless families sleeping in their cars on the edges of Wal-Mart parking lots (an irony only the US could provide). It ain’t the cops cracking the heads. It’s the heads getting in the way of patriotic nightsticks. And Fox News told me to never mind the pepper spray. It’s only a “vegetable”.

It’s all getting too dicey for me….so I’m in a bit of a mood these days I’m afraid.

I know some people who feel the same way I do about these sorts of things. But I don’t know enough of them…..and I don’t talk to the ones I do know enough. After a while this sort of thing makes you feel like the crazy Uncle in the corner that nobody talks to ’cause he refuses to lie about anything….one of the few people left who didn’t have the decency gene surgically removed from the breast to make room for the flag-pin on the lapel.

But then again….it’s the little things.

I was at the mall this weekend with my daughters. We bumped into an old neighbor dropping over $200 on all kinds of stuff. Turns out the couple had “adopted” a family mired in poverty this holiday season…and were stocking up on gifts for them. Gifts for the Mom, and the kids. Somebody was gonna have one of them shocked, stuck-in-place smiles on Christmas morning. And I thought…..look what we’re capable of.

It made my bloody day it did.

I needed to hear of something like this. Something that makes “’tis the season” mean something more than frenzied credit-card swiping and elbowing others out of the way to get the latest Ipad.

On our way out I again passed the Salvation Army volunteer. A massive African-American with a smile brighter than the mid-day sun, despite a few missing teeth. I remember him from last year too. Same guy. Impossible to forget. I dropped a few coins in the bucket on the way in. Now I emptied my pockets. It wasn’t much….but his thank you was so genuine and his “Merry Christmas” so pleasant that I felt like I just helped feed the world. Not sure how a few dollars could do that, but still…..it was me who should have been thanking him. He gets it.

So many of us don’t.

That’s where the blues comes from. From not getting it when the answers to getting it are all around you.

Here’s hoping somebody makes your bloody day too.

–Tom Flannery

A throwback…..with numerous caveats…(tf)

Me and Stevens have been at this blog for a year now. Mostly, it’s me badgering him to write, and him telling me to leave him alone. But eventually he gets to it. Though he’s way too crotchety to admit it, I suspect he’s ok with my badgering, since he knows he should be writing more and spending less time as a TV star, and needs a bit of bother to kick-start himself. Not that he’s not a good TV star. It’s just that he’s a better writer.

We don’t really talk, me and Stevens. Our communication over the past year has largely consisted of insulting back and forth text messages. We used to meet periodically at the local bookstore until the local bookstore closed. I tried email a few times but he’s way too famous to check email. He made the mistake of giving me his cell phone number, so that sealed it. I don’t dare call him…..since he saves his voice for his TV spots. So texting is it. It’s amazing what you can gleam from a year’s worth of texting.

Assuming of course, he answers his messages. He usually does, unless he’s off somewhere being famous or lounging around his gated compound nursing one of his frequent colds. Most of the time I interrupt him while he’s reading. Since he’s gotten into the E-book craze he scours the internet for the ones they give away for free, and so devours “Dracula”, “Frankenstein”, and Poe short stories over and over again….claiming that anything more topical “depresses” him (I think what depresses him is paying for books). The next time you see him and he seems a wee bit…..er….distant, keep in mind he probably spent half the night reading “The Cask of Amontillado”.

I try to broaden his horizons, but he doesn’t trust me because he’s so old. I’m not sure how old he is actually. I can remember hearing him on TV when I was about 8 years old, and I’m pretty old. His voice hasn’t changed a bit though. I saw him on TV last week wearing one of those corduroy jackets with the patches on the elbows that transcends time….so I’m not sure about the rest of him. Let’s just say that the man is a throwback with numerous caveats. An old-schooler who is suspicious of anyone under 60 years old. A man who longs for the good ‘ol days while writing his TV scripts on his new Ipad. A grizzled veteran TV journalist who still carries a notebook and stubby pencil in his shirt pocket but files his stories electronically.

He was also the first person to call me when my father passed away. At that time, I hadn’t heard from Stevens in years. It’s a gesture I’ve never forgotten….although he probably has. Which is why I like the guy so much despite the fact that the only thing we have in common is thinking Congress should all be thrown in jail. And a love of written words. That seems to be enough.

He won’t say anything bad about anybody (except me), no matter how much he knows I know that he hates their guts. The guy listens to disco music in his pick-up truck. When I go on and on about the power of rock and roll he’ll say things like, “why are they always screaming and using bad language?” I’ll tell him about my latest play and he’ll say, “I’ll come see it as long as you don’t use the f-word.”

He still hasn’t come to see any of my plays. The f$%&r.

But no matter. I actually tried to write one without “that word” (as he calls it…he’s ever so quaint) in it, and it was only 30 seconds long. Hardly an evening’s entertainment. He needs much more incentive to leave the bosom of his mansion. Like  judging a pie-baking contest in some backwater that only he and the people who live there have heard of. He gets to take the samples home, you see. Or serving as toast-master for this or that organization. He’s got a hard time saying no to anybody except me, and even I can wear him down if I’m persistent enough and time my texts to coincide with his early bedtime, when he’s always at his most vulnerable. He’s way too nice for his own good, which is why he’s so grumpy most of the time. That does make sense if you read it twice you know. It really does.

Last year he said he’d only keep up this blog for a year. I didn’t believe him then and I don’t believe him now. So here’s to another year of me badgering him, and him telling me to leave him alone, and then pulling up this URL and finding that Stevens has added yet more of his inimitable prose on whatever it is that catches his fancy. Or whatever it is I can flog out of him.

He’s an old softie really. He just pretends to be a misanthrope. At least in his texts.

–Tom Flannery

Christmas Lights (tf)

It’s December and it’s finally getting cold out. The week of Thanksgiving was very disconcerting. T-shirt weather. People taking advantage by putting up their Christmas decorations sans outer wear. Took the fun out of it for me. I recall having to take off gloves to fiddle with lights….and having about 30 seconds or so before my fingers turned into immovable claws. My father had this peculiar habit of choosing the coldest day of the year to put up the lights. I swear he did it on purpose. And he loved every minute of it. I miss him still. I suspect I always will.

Thanksgiving passed uneventfully. A nice meal with family. An assortment of pies and toppings. Myself and my father-in-law sitting on the couch after dinner and both falling asleep while sitting up. Football on the TV. That whole turkey makes you sleepy thing I guess. Much to be thankful for. I don’t verbalize it as much as I should. But when you’re warm and well-fed and your kids are healthy and your dog is lying in front of the fireplace without a care in the world, there’s not much to bitch about. There’s no telling what adventures are ahead, but for now at least, a sort of contentment.

Some nights I stand on the front porch and take deep breaths. That chilled air feels nice in the lungs. I like how darkness descends earlier in winter. More time to see the stars. The main road has Xmas lights on the telephone poles. It’s nice. We should all take deep breaths more often and look at the lights, wherever they may be.

My daughter is 9 and started getting a little suspicious about Santa last year. He left her a note and she noticed how Santa’s handwriting looked strangely familiar to my own. The bubble burst this year for sure. Wasn’t helped by her answering the door and seeing the Fedex guy with hands full of booty……all from her list. Oh well, you do what you can….and then you just stutter your way out of it. In a way I think she’s kinda relieved. As they get older I think kids are kinda creeped out over some stranger breaking and entering every year. And having to explain away how Santa gets in without a chimney to slide down was getting old. I was never able to keep my stories straight.

Our house is decorated. Tree up. Lights functioning. No strands out, always a bonus. The Xmas afghan hangs on the back of the couch. That’s when I really know ’tis the season. I can wrap myself up in that thing and sleep the way sleep was meant to be. The perfect way to rest up for those 8 hours in bed.

I have a small office in the basement. It’s the only room in the house where I’m allowed decorating privileges. The place is a bit of a mess actually. Books are everywhere. The surface of my desk is buried under layers of papers and diet soda cans. The walls are covered with everything from a famous portrait of Abraham Lincoln, a world atlas, pictures of various pubs in Ireland that are named after me (well….at least the family), and drawings from my kids. But hung around the room are Christmas lights. I put them up a few years ago and decided to not take them down. Nothing is more depressing than taking down Christmas lights.

Who says you have to?

–Tom Flannery

1 in 4 – One in Four – 25% – Twenty Five Percent (tf)

One in Four.

1 in 4.

That’s the ratio of US children who live in poverty today. I’m not sure if it looks worse with the words spelled…or with the stark numbers. So I wrote them both.

Read them again.

Twenty-five percent.

25%

In what is, by far, the land of the plenty-ist….we allow a quarter of our children to go to bed hungry. Or wondering about their next meal. Their parents have to make decisions like….”medication….or food”….”cheap motel or shelter”…..”back seat of the car for a bed….or the front seat?”

It’s a staggering statistic that should be blared at us from every roof-top. But it’s not. You can’t look at a kid and say, “he’s poor”. Maybe in the old days you could….but not anymore. Poor people aren’t just the dirty, disheveled pan-handlers of folklore anymore. Poor people are looking more and more like me and you these days. Because it doesn’t take much in this century. A lay-off. Unemployment runs out. Can’t pay the mortgage or the rent. Want-ads don’t seem to want you. The only jobs available are the ones that make you wear a name-tag. The $7 or $8 per hour kind. With no insurance. Then a kid gets sick. Or the car breaks down. And it’s all gone. You’ve got nothing but the nice clothes on your back.

You look the same. Nobody knows. You send your kids to school. You’re anonymous. Even your own government stops figuring you into the unemployment numbers. They figure they’ve done their bit. Time has run out. So you’re cut loose. You’re on your own. While your kids sleep…..you stay awake. Maybe just to make sure that no harm comes to them. There’s no telling where you’re forced to lay their heads down for the night….but it’s probably not in the safe part of town.

All this happens when it’s dark outside. Nobody sees. When the daylight comes, we pass them by on the street without a glance. It’s not that we don’t care….it’s that we don’t know. We should….it should be our responsibility to know, but we don’t. We’re in cocoons. We don’t even have to walk in the house through the front door anymore. We just drive right into the garage….and seal ourselves. It’s possible to own land and never set foot on the dirt itself. We’ve got a big screen TV, high speed internet, heat that works and water that isn’t dirty. A thousand homeless kids could silently march up the street and we might not notice. Unless they messed up our lawns. Then we’d be pissed.

This is the United States of America. If we can’t feed and shelter our own children….what will future generations say about us? How can we claim to be the greatest nation on earth when a parent has $500 left in the bank…and needs $500 for rent…and $500 for food….and $500 for medicine. And while pondering that decision that parent is lambasted for being “lazy” and “milking the system”. For being “on drugs”. A majority of Americans actually want the government to drug rest welfare recipients. As if they are criminals. I know tons of folks about a million miles from welfare who couldn’t pass a drug test with somebody else’s pee. All this sounds vaguely nazi-ish to me. It just seems we’re constantly blaming the wrong people for the wrong things….because that’s what we’re being told to do.

Poverty needs to be attacked at the local level. If Washington (or Harrisburg) has taught us anything, it’s that expecting politicians to solve issues of human decency is madness. Poor people, for the most part, do not vote. The goal of a federal or state politician is to stay a federal or state politician. To get re-elected. You don’t get re-elected reminding the electorate that they’re selfishly neglecting children in their midst.

Whoa….neglect? Is that fair?

Well….if it’s true that the only thing evil needs to propagate is for good men (and women) to do nothing….then that would be something we’d have to ask ourselves.

Have we done anything to reverse the trend? Have we done anything to address the root cause of poverty in a nation more than capable of feeding its own many times over? That is….rampant corporate greed. Have we opened up that window and screamed out that we’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore that 1 in 4 of our own children go to bed hungry at night?

I know I haven’t. But that’s what I’m doing now. I hope people hear me.

It starts here. In our own cities and towns. One kind act at a time. Supporting a food bank. Or a shelter. Or a community kitchen. Spending less on saving people’s souls and more on putting food in a child’s belly. The Sunday collection plate spells out loud and clear that we’ve got “disposable income”. Maybe it’s time to drop those bills someplace else?

Any maybe it’s time to identify the corporations that take and do not give. Maybe identify the propagandists in our collective midst who help ensure that we fight among ourselves instead of fighting the true enemy. To divide and conquer is so alarmingly simple….it’s almost grotesque to see it in retrospect. Yet we fall for it. Again and again and again. Because when we shut that garage door and turn on the TV, these idiots are the only other voices we have access to.

Maybe it’s time to shun these people. Maybe it’s time to stop blaming Washington and Harrisburg and to start blaming ourselves. After all….we put these guys where they are. How is all this mess not at least partially our fault?

1 in 4.

One in Four.

Twenty five percent.

25%

If this is the greatest nation on earth…..humanity has lots to answer for.

Our children deserve more. About 75% more.

–Tom Flannery

Did I Miss Something? (ms)

So, a show of hands now. Did anybody except me miss Thanksgiving?

Of course, we did not actually miss the holiday. The date came around as it was supposed to and even if we worked we all knew it. The turkeys were put in the oven with care later to be consumed along with a mountain of other foods. There was family for those lucky enough to have one and then football kicked off and the day was complete. Well, almost.

The newspaper that came to the house on Wednesday was probably the biggest of the year. Two rubber bands held it together so it could be shoved into the tube out front. The reason the paper was so big was not because there was so much news but because there was so much advertising.

I lugged it into the house and slid the rubber bands off each end. The paper exploded in front of me and sheets of it fell off my lap onto the floor. Just about every one of those pieces heralded door buster bargains on Black Friday. By the way, I don’t think I like the term “door buster”, too negative, too destructive. The term “blowout” is on the same order. I wouldn’t wish a blowout on my worst enemy.

Anyway, all those sheets of paper spread out before me seemed to suggest that if we didn’t shop on Black Friday it was as good as taking our money down to the sewer plant and throwing it in. The advertiser was convinced that if you didn’t shop at his store on Friday you would miss deals so good his competitors not only couldn’t beat them but they were secretly shopping there to pick up the bargains. Stores opened early this year since I guess merchants thought it inconsiderate to make customers sleep in tents out in front of the store. You could do Black Friday shopping on Thursday if you put your mind to it.

Now, I know there is a game to it all. Those who participate look on it as a part of the Thanksgiving holiday and its pretty much harmless fun unless of course you want the popular toy of the year and there’s only one left. That can be dangerous to life and limb. I never have understood why parents insist on fighting over some toy which will be forgotten by the child a day after Christmas, two at the most.

It seems to me that this year got a little out of hand, though, and we glossed over Thanksgiving so we might slide directly into Black Friday or maybe we could call it Twilight Thursday. Keep it up, I fear, and there will be no distinction whatever between the holiday and shopping. It’ll be eat up quick, throw the pans in the sink and lets go shopping. Why, look at the time, it’s noon already. I remember a time when the stores weren’t open at all on Thanksgiving and we couldn’t shop until Friday. How archaic!

–Mike Stevens

Haven’t Been Writing Much (ms)

Writers never spend as much time writing as they should. We try to be sure but something always gets in the way. Many view the whole thing as planning to visit the gym.

Sure you know the benefits of exercise, the value of pumping iron or working out on a machine; it’s all good. You decide that the very next day, say at 5 in the afternoon, you will go to the gym and work up a sweat, about an hour will do it. It will be perfect for you will finish in time to have a reasonable supper and still relax with some reading or television before bed. Why, there might even be a small snack before the night is over. Haven’t you burned off the calories and done the work to deserve it?

The next day, though, is bad. One thing after another goes wrong, the car won’t start, the kids get sick and so by five you are thinking only of home and hang the benefits of exercise, you’ll enjoy them another day. The road to you know where is paved with good intentions. Writers frequently find themselves on that road. Take me for example.

I carefully schedule a few hours to create the next epic tome for posting here, write it down in my calendar, look at it often during the day preparing mentally for the encounter with my keyboard. Generally that encounter never occurs. Like the plan to visit the gym, something always comes up to spoil things.

There is a good movie on television, I’ve gotten to an interesting portion of a book, some odd chore around the ranch attracts my attention, I’m tired. Any excuse will do, really, for I am flexible. To tell the truth, I really don’t like sitting down to write.

I hope for the day when writing will be as simple as thinking, that this sentence for example would materialize on a screen by just imagining it. I could edit them the same way, swipe out whole paragraphs and replace them with others, do all the things I now can do when I sit in front of my keyboard only I wouldn’t need to sit in front of my keyboard. Instead I could be walking in the woods or down the street or sitting on my front porch. It all comes down to the spontaneity of the writing thing.

Walk along and an idea comes to you and just as quickly its gone. Even jotting it down on paper doesn’t quite do it justice for something is always lost in the translation. This thought writing thing is really the only answer. The words never seem to come the same way when I’m sitting in front of my laptop staring at the vacant white screen. The screen is like a road block to those words of wisdom I so desperately want, need to share with those who take the time to read these things.

Well, enough for now; I think I’ll go to the gym or maybe there’s a good movie on and there is that book…

–Mike Stevens

Now Listen Up (ms)

As I write this I’m sitting in a newly opened coffee shop near my house. It was a natural for me as I’ve spent much time in my career visiting coffee shops, diners and donut counters and this is another in a long line.

Coffee shops and the aforementioned other places are always interesting for if you want to know what people are thinking, what’s important to them, then you come to places like this. One need not eavesdrop, all one need do, really, is listen. Some teenagers are considering weekend plans, two ladies are discussing family, two college students just left after a lengthy discussion of music. Tis the stuff of life. The places I visit are really small slices of the world as it really exists; no hype, no production, no cameras. Makes me wonder why our politicians don’t do the same as I do, as many of us do. Perhaps they might learn what America is really thinking instead of imagining it based on reports from other people near them, other people who likewise seldom if ever frequent coffee shops.

When the flood waters came through a few weeks ago the politicians followed in their wake. I believe I mentioned here how odd most of them looked — no ties, sleeves rolled up, the better actors among them wore jeans though there was nary a spot of dirt to be found on them. I suppose the belief is the working man uniform they wear makes the electorate believe they are one of us and that they can truly relate to those facing piles of their accumulated treasures and every day necessities piled up on the tree lawn waiting to be taken to a landfill. Hardly. In fairness I did find one state representative working in the flood area, he was dirty so I could tell.

See, the problem is that if you don’t do as that one guy did or as I am doing right now, you never really know what’s going on. Nor does it count to go to such places with a full entourage of public relations people and news media in tow. No, what it requires is for politicians to go for a coffee or a donut incognito. They can do this because its safe to say not many folks would know their elected officials if they tripped over them. We only get to renew acquaintances around election time so its easy to forget what they look like. A monthly excursion would do, I think.

Our elected people would then be able to return to their respective plush chairs replete with staff to serve them and expense accounts to pay for much of what they need, with health care assured and immunity to the cares we ordinary people must face with a better understanding of those they are supposed to serve. They might even be able to vote more intelligently for things we all need instead of what the Party wants.

Good idea if I do say so myself. I would even be willing to buy the coffee.

–Mike Stevens

See what I’m saying? (tf)

I like to write. Which means I still do it even if I don’t have a real clear idea of what I want to write about. I scribble things everywhere. Legal pads are a big favorite. The yellow ones. White legal pads just seem wrong. My first thought on seeing a white legal pad is….”why isn’t it yellow?”

I used to use those pocket-sized marble notebooks, but as you get to the bottom of the page it’s so small and your hand is so scrunched it’s almost impossible to write legibly. And for somebody who’s scrawl is barely legible under normal circumstances, this was causing big problems when the time came for deciphering. Plus, using a non-legal-pad type thing, you feel forced to write on the front and back. Not sure why that is. Nobody writes on the back of a legal pad sheet. I like the freedom of just flipping the page over the top….and being able to scribble stuff on the back after the fact without interrupting the flow of what I was trying to say in the first place. If all of this sounds inane….keep in mind that writers obsess over such things, which is why most people think writers are weirdos. And why we don’t get invited to many parties.

Well, Stevens gets invited to lots of parties but that’s not because he’s a writer. It’s because through his writing he’s become a TV star….which conveniently allows people to forget that he’s merely a writer with the ability to speak in front of a camera without making a complete dunce out of himself. No small feat that. Most folks at ease in front of the camera couldn’t write a coherent sentence if you spotted them the subject and the verb. On the other hand, writers are mostly pale, oddly dressed, haggard personages who perpetually look as if they’ve been awake for 48 hours. They are the type of people a camera runs screaming from. Stevens is an oddity. Make no mistake about that. But don’t let him convince you that he’s a “television guy” who just happens to write. When he says that even he starts to squirm…and he then immediately tries to change the subject…..blathering about his constantly-in-the-shop pick-up truck or the breathtaking  view from his office window at his incredibly secretive maniacally secured compound/farm. Ask him if he’d agree to go on TV and read the words written by a newly hired intern making $12 an hour. Then duck.

You see what I’m saying? (actually….what a stupid expression. of course you can’t see what anybody is saying…funny pages excepted of course..)

I was on TV once and my leg was shivering so much people thought I was either having a seizure or was being filmed in the midst of a mine subsidence. So that was pretty much that for me. TV scares me because when you know you’re being filmed you don’t act normal, and when you don’t know you’re being filmed everybody sees what “normal” is and they won’t let their kids play with your kids anymore.

So I’ll stick to writing. Even when I don’t have anything in particular to say. And as always, I’ll look forward to what Stevens has to say, because no matter what it is it sure is interesting because he says it so well.

–Tom Flannery

Gameday (tf)

Well, they played the game. Penn State lost…..the way they usually lose. Lack of a potent offense….combined with turgid play-calling and a lack of team speed. Their defense played their brains out, as they always do. Good defense is enough against teams like Temple and Indiana. Against Nebraska….usually not. You need more. Make no mistake. Penn State didn’t lose on Saturday because of a “distraction”, or because they lacked a wizard on the sidelines. They lost because they’re not as good as Nebraska.

Stands were filled to the brim though. 100k plus. Lots of “JoePa” chants and “poor Joe why’d you fire him” signs. The 2 teams met at mid-field before the game for a quickie prayer, which went over big with the masses. Then it was business as usual. Rumors were rampant that if Penn State won the players were going to march from Beaver Stadium to Paterno’s house and present him with the game ball….presumably with 100,000 or so of their friends. No mention of presenting a game ball to any of Sandusky’s rape victims. At the end of the game reporter stuck a mic in the face of Joe Paterno’s son, who teared up thinking about his father not being there. A poignant moment on live TV for sure. Would have been more poignant if tears were shed for victims 10 years ago….and Sandusky was stuck in a cage where he belongs.  Then this whole ugly thing could have been avoided in the first place. But, we all know the story by now. Penn State is about football. Football is Joe Paterno. When they build statues of you and name things after you when you’re still alive…..and when fans don’t think they look completely insane being filmed on their knees in their beloved coach’s modest front yard saying prayers, you’ve probably accumulated a bit too much power.

At least let the guy die before he’s entombed and pigeons start shitting on him.

I don’t know what I was hoping would happen on Saturday. I thought playing the game itself was wrong, but there was never any real doubt that it would be played. I thought having a ticket and actually using it for the game was wrong, but since the place was filled to overflowing, nobody else thought so. I thought being a player on that team….knowing what your coaches both did and didn’t do, would create a moral dilemma….for at least a few of them. It didn’t. Not a single player sat out the game on moral grounds. I supposed I’m just incredibly idealistic when it comes to the proper reaction to the sexual abuse of children. Playing a game isn’t on my list. Senior day be damned. I know the players didn’t do anything wrong….but that’s not the issue. The issue is that Penn State as an institution did do wrong. Ghastly bits of wrong-doing….from the President to the football program to the campus police to the janitorial staff. Even the campus bookstore seemed clueless. As of Saturday they were still selling Sandusky’s book…..cringingly titled “Touched”.

There are still an alarming number of folks out there who say Paterno did not nothing wrong. And certainly nothingillegal. He’s got nothing whatsoever to worry about, they say. The pope of State College gets a pass because he’s got 400+ wins. Because he’s donated millions to the school. Because he’s “molded” so many “men”. Because he lives in a regular house and not a gated mansion. Because Franco Harris says so. Or just because the way Paterno handled the situation is the way his “generation” handles such un-heard of modern things. By kinda ignoring it hoping it’ll go away. Paterno should not be held to the same moral standards as a lowly janitor….or even a cowardly graduate assistant (all Paterno apologists consider what assistant coach Mike McQueary didn’t do scandalous….yet allow Paterno to slide for the same offense…which is not only absurd but incredibly elitist). Paterno simply means too much to the University. He’s an icon. The face of the place. Treating JoePa so disrespectfully is like spitting out the host into the priest’s face at communion.

Even when faced with the fact that JoePa has hired one of the most expensive criminal lawyers in the country…..some blue and white faithful cannot be nudged. Such is not the act of a man convinced of the moral and legal high ground…but then again folks stood in line to drink kool-aid in Jonestown too….even after folks were laying down and not getting up again.

This is not over. Sandusky didn’t stop at 8 or 10 or even 100 boys. Deep down everyone knows that. More victims will come forward. And more hard questions will be asked. Like…..how exactly do Mike McQueary and Joe Paterno know about a guy raping little boys in the football showers and Penn State interim coach Tom Bradley not know. What aboutPaterno’s assistant coach son? Or the rest of the staff. Did they know? Why did Sandusky, at the height of his coaching prestige and with Penn State coming off a national championship, suddenly retire in 1999? Seems strange…especially since it was no secret Sandusky longed to be Paterno’s heir apparent.

How many others knew?

Why was the judge who released Sandusky on $100,000 bail allowed to handle the case at all, considering she openly served as a volunteer for the “Second Mile”, Sandusky’s charity?

It doesn’t get better with time….or with hindsight. It gets worse. Sandusky’s backyard is adjacent to….an elementary school.

And still, the games go on. And the money rolls in.

— Tom Flannery

My Children, My Children (ms)

It was commonly called a cat-o-nine tails but could have passed for a tiger with an attitude. It was a leather strap cut into strips, about a foot long with a handle on it that allowed for a better swing if the operator chose. My parents had one, so too did the parents of every kid I knew; it’s only purpose in life was to teach a lesson to a kid, the hard way.

It was the go-to device when simple orders would no longer work, when disobedience hit screaming levels, when chore work or school work fell below standards established at the parental level. It was used across a butt, not very hard as I recall but one didn’t need to swing very hard to make a kid swear he would never forget to do whatever again. It generally worked.

It was called corporal punishment and before you hasten to chastise the adults of the era remember that they came from rough backgrounds. They worked hard, lived with little and made just enough to get by. Their parents before them had even less to show. There was no psychologist on staff at the school, no books on child rearing, no hand-holding by a family physician; punishment was quick and sharp but never considered cruel nor offered in a cruel manner. One or two hits was enough to get any kids attention. Though I suppose I will get some argument about this, I don’t honestly think it hurt me beyond the immediate point but it did teach me valuable lessons that I have tried to follow.

Such things have gone out of use, at least as far as most of us know. Do something like that today and you’ll get a police officer to your door. So we don’t do it but that is not to say children get off with a free pass through kidhood. No, some of us have developed new and ingenious ways to harm them.

The methods can be flagrantly violent, intended to kill or maim a child, a child who won’t sleep, who soils his diaper, is simply a burden, but more likely they are insidious, the perpetrator hiding behind a cloak of respectability, trust and good natured appearances. Those are the ones a kid really needs to fear.

Those are the ones who prey on children, who get kids to do or submit to sexual acts then convince the children they should keep it a little secret between them. It’s a mind game where the perpetrator holds all the cards and thus makes up all the rules. The kid? He/she won’t say anything and besides who would believe them if they did. That kid’s from a rough background, troublesome parents, history of petty crime — who would take his word against some fine upstanding pillar of the community church going family raising home owning guy?

Who?

So the kid shuts up and takes it and eventually the predator disguised as a god-fearing man of the community moves on to new challenges leaving behind someone with a ruined childhood and a scar in the back of his/her mind that will never heal. By those standards, corporal punishment is a walk in the park.

As I write this my sorrow runs deep for those young people who have and will likely have forever only the brutal, violent memories of sexual abuse in the back of their minds instead of the good things most kids have. We as a society all too often treat our children with anger, disrespect and indecency the likes of which we would not bring down upon any other animal on earth.

Even more unforgivable is knowing it’s happening, suspecting it’s happening and doing little or nothing to stop it. God help us should our society sink that low and then consider such a thing okay.

–Mike Stevens

An addendum….(tf)

I really don’t understand people. Some people I guess….although it seems like “most” fits better sometimes.

Joe Paterno went home last night to 1000+ cheering Penn State students…..with We Love You Joe signs and all the rest. The coach actually led them all in a PSU chant on his front lawn. This being Penn State, I suspect most if not all of the students were drunk off their ass, but still it seemed vaguely shameful. Watching it, you got the feeling that if one of the victims of this abuse scandal showed up he might have been set upon with stones and blamed for poor Joe’s plight.

This is a man who admittedly covered up the crimes of a serial sexual predator. For years. Jerry Sandusky was lifting weights in the Penn State weight room last week. A guy Paterno knew was caught, literally with pants down, raping a 10 year old boy in the Penn State showers. And for the next 9 years…..Paterno allowed the man full access to all University facilities. Paterno did not call the police. He did not check with the Penn State athletic department to find out if they called the police. Indeed, he didn’t check with anybody to see if anything at all was done. There was no investigation at all.

The only reason that Sandusky is not still preying on young boys is because somebody at a local State College High School did the right thing. He or she heard about Sandusky abusing high school kids….and immediately called the State Police. That sealed the deal. That’s the only reason this is in the news today. That’s the only reason Penn State got caught covering up abuse so heinous that the 26 pages of charges can induce vomiting. An anonymous high school teacher, not that moral pillar Joe Paterno….ended up saving countless more kids from devastation. All it took was a sense of decency and morality. Something we’ve been led to believe the Penn State program fostered like no other. All a sham.

I’ve been waiting for somebody with guts to emerge. To take a stand. It’s obviously not going to be a University official, who have, to a man, all acted like bloodless bureaucrats. Maybe a leading player will stand up and say, “you know what, I’m not playing for a guy who covered up the rape of a child.” I’m waiting for Penn State ticket holders to show the world what they think by showing us an empty stadium on Saturday. No protest would be louder than seats with no asses in them. How can anybody support this program now with money? It’s like dropping coins in a Catholic Church collection plate. With the lawsuits sure to come……you’re doing nothing but subsidizing legal fees. And protecting those who knowingly protected a pedophile.

I just don’t know how you spin this any differently. How exactly does the number of wins Paterno has accumulated on the football field even slither into the equation? I’m hearing about his “legacy”. Lets put his “legacy” up against what’s in store for a now 20 something male who was sexually violated over and over again as a child….by a monster. We can’t even begin to calculate the damage. How far do the tentacles stretch? Sorry folks, I don’t give a shit about how Paterno is going to be remembered. I worry about these kids. And I worry about the cheering idiots on Paterno’s lawn last night. Is this the type of person Penn State churns out? Alumni should be ashamed.

So word just in. He retires at the end of the year. He gets to coach for a few more weeks. He gets to represent the University despite having disgraced it. He gets to leave on his own terms.

He should be frog marched out of Beaver Stadium.

They’ll be cheers. They’ll be tears. Poor JoePa. His last home game on Saturday. A perverted spectacle of absolute power corrupting absolutely. No empty seats. No morally brave players. Just a goddamn football game going on amidst shattered lives and a grand moral failure that played out on a huge stage for all to see. If the institution of Penn State had any decency…..not only would Paterno not coach anymore….but the rest of the football season would be canceled. As the grandest of grand statements. That this is not about football or a man’s legacy.

This is about children. It’s not about some doddering old hypocritical fool covering up for one of his boys.

Shame on us if we forget that. And shame on us if we watch one wretched snap.

–Tom Flannery

He had a chance to prove his true greatness….and failed (tf)

We’re numb to most things. We’re subjected to such a barrage of people-behaving-badly coverage that after a while it’s like trying to recall the exact shape, size, and taste of the 27th potato chip you ate during the first quarter of the game. It all runs together and eventually rolls over everything else. Crooked politicians and newly dead dictators and the reiterated real possibility that our economy, what little of it still exists, may indeed spark rioting in US cities if us 99% ain’t pacified soon with some trickle-down coins and folded paper. We live on borrowed money and borrowed time but if we can watch the world go by on a large screen HD TV, we’re reminded how lucky we are and mostly just put up with things we probably could fight but don’t have the energy to. Let others occupy Wall Street. I’ll cheer from the sidelines where it’s warmer….and I’m less likely to get tasered. I’m proud of myself that I can spot a democracy turning into an oligarchy, but I do wish I was a bit more vociferous in my reaction to it all. I guess I’m just tired. I was raised on Nixon, plied myself with booze during the Reagan years, stammered like a donkey as W made Jesus and Tony Blair honorary Americans…..and right now feel about 1000 years old. All I want is to turn on a reading lamp, get under warm covers….and travel someplace else.

And then this story out of State College. A revered coach at Penn State starts a charity to help disadvantaged kids, and the word is out that he’s been buggering many of them for years and years, some even in Penn State athletic facilities. Like the showers and the weight room. Kids. Maybe 10 years old.

Kids. We notice this one.

I’ve never been one to revere coaches….no matter how many wins they collect or how many young men they “mold”. A coach is just as likely to be an asshole as a bricklayer. I had coaches growing up. Some were Ok. Some were fools. All received special favors.

Things get so out of whack you had a sociopath like Bob Knight effectively running Indiana University. Nobody thought it was strange that an obviously deranged basketball coach, who would question his player’s toughness by putting tampons in their locker, and once said if rape was “inevitable”, a woman should “just lay back and enjoy it”, should have run of an esteemed place of higher learning…..and it wasn’t until a brave player stepped forward….and the school was forced to watch Knight, actually caught him on film, choking this kid, that the cowards who were supposed to be running the place were forced to act. And even then, Knight was still defended. And is still defended. By many. The whisleblower had his life threatened and was forced to leave the state.

Joe Paterno runs Penn State. He’s the football coach, but for years if Joe made a “suggestion”, it was treated like a decree. Paterno was the face of Happy Valley….a throwback with highwater pants, google glasses, and a sort of “aw shucks it ain’t nothing special I’m doing” charm. He turned out powerhouse football teams, was never caught cheating, and made a fortune for the University. No coach is America was more revered….or more associated with his team.

Until now. Paterno knew his long-time friend and 30+ year assistant coach was sexually abusing children. He was told. Back in 2002. And he didn’t get the information via hearsay. No….a graduate assistant actually witnessed the abuse taking place. Was tipped off by disturbing noises coming from the showers. On University grounds. At this point, only someone who is morally bankrupt or dead from the neck up does not go to the police. Or does not grab a baseball bat and take it to the abuser’s skull.

Paterno went to the Athletic Director….a guy who in a later deposition denied knowledge of any abuse and will probably end up in jail himself on a perjury charge. Paterno did not go to the cops and did not grab a bat. And though folks aren’t making a big deal out of this part, he made no attempt to find out who the abused child was. To me this is the most sickening part. Paterno considers his behavior above-board and is expressing no regret. He’s saying all the “right things”, which means he’s saying nothing at all. At least not yet.

Joe Paterno is not a pedophile, obviously. But Joe Paterno knew a pedophile was operating right under his nose. And Joe Paterno did next to nothing. What does that make him, actually?

What kind of “molder of men” could he possibly be? Is this the best we can come up with to (pardon the pun) lionize? At least everybody who ever dealt with Bob Knight knew he was an unstable bully. Knight was refreshingly honest in a lot of ways. He adored being an asshole. It was part of his charm.

But Paterno plays the squeaky clean old-fashioned values thing to the hilt. In his own way, he now appears every bit as arrogant as Bob Knight.

Paterno has grown old and legendary because he wins football games. I don’t think he “molds” kids anymore than any other teacher does. See how much molding any of these guys do after they recruit you and you blow out your knee.You’re in the way then. In his mind, Paterno best serves the University by winning football games. In a real sense, reporting the pedophile in the next room would have jeopardized this goal. You want to send your own blue-chipper to a school with a sexual predator roaming the sidelines?

So Paterno covered it up. Like an un-elected Bishop deciding what’s best for his flock.

His penance is now a tarnished legacy. He had a chance to prove his true greatness as a coach.

He failed.

–Tom Flannery

The Snows Of Yesteryear (ms)

As I sit writing this the snow is falling quite heavily outside. Unusual, snow in October, but not unheard of. Why, when I was a kid living in these parts we would get snow in mid-September some years and it was deep too. Before long some of the neighbors took to tunneling their way out of their homes that’s how deep it was.

Of course they never did cancel school back then. No, not like today when it seems they cancel at the drop of a flake; back in my day you went to school no matter what and winter was a “what” but that’s the way it was.

Before long, about early to mid-October, the snow was pretty deep but that never bothered me. No, I was too busy to worry about snow for the work of the day had me occupied from dawn to dark and then some.

There was the furnace to tend every morning; a big old hot air coal furnace that needed to be fed each day and I was the guy doing it. Went down at dawn, poked the red coals a little then shoveled some fresh stuff on. Once that was done I went out and fed the chickens and gathered up some eggs. Ma made my breakfast while I cleaned up and got dressed to go. After I ate a hearty meal intended to keep a boy with my work ethic on the move till lunch I started off for school.

It was about three miles as I remember, maybe six, but it’s been a long time. Most of it was uphill which wouldn’t have been bad except I was pulling a sleigh full of books. They were what I used to study from each night as I worked at maintaining my straight A average. It was a struggle but then anything good is only gained by proper work I always say. Generally I ran most of the way to school thereby blazing a trail following the frequent overnight snowfalls we had back then. The smaller kids always thanked me for that.

At times I would take my lunch but then spend half the lunch period down by the boilers. See, I had persuaded the janitor to let me help him shovel coal just to keep my blood moving. For a guy like me there is nothing worse than stale blood.

After school I headed on home, often in a blizzard or a squall, my books carefully piled on my sled. I had to watch how they were stacked for on the way home I would often pick chunks of coal to carry with me; generally two or three pieces weighing maybe twenty pounds each would do it.

Once home I cracked it into smaller pieces making it ready for our own furnace which I of course filled again before going up for supper. When the meal was done it was off to hit the books where I would spend a few hours studying before calling it a day.

Now, all this might seem to be a bit of exaggeration to you and I can understand that. Today I’d likely be on all the news shows as Super Boy given my work load but there wasn’t as much television back then so my adventures stayed local but what I’ve told you here, for the first time, is true. I’ve thought about it over the passing years and this is exactly as I remember it so that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

That guy with the name nobody can agree how to spell is dead…(tf)

Gaddafi is dead apparently. Not sure that’s how you spell his name. According the ABC there are 112 different ways to spell the guy’s name. I never really cared one way or another. Now that he’s dead I care even less. Not sure who got him or how, but I don’t think anybody not on his graft list really gives a toss. Things rarely end well for dictators. They seem strangely immune to history though. Even the ones who die natural deaths have to put up with their flacks standing around afraid to intervene as the boss gasps for breath. Poor Stalin had a stroke and pissed himself a bunch of times while his boys argued over who  was gonna call the doctor…..and then they had a near impossible time getting a doctor to agree to do anything when one was brought in. It’s one of the detriments of killing people who displease you. Often the safest thing for a boot-licker to do is to nothing….which is one of the reasons dictators always seem to preside over nation’s with completely dysfunctional infrastructures. Outside the palace walls of course.

I’ve tried to blot the Reagan years from my memory but I think the Gipper tried to take whatever his name is out a few times…..with a few well-placed warheads if I recall. Reagan missed but did send the Colonel (modest rank for a dictator, no?) scurrying back to his compound for a few decades. For a nano-second Gaddafi was public enemy number one in America….and then the torch was passed. I forget to whom. I drank a bit too much in those days. The details are hazy.

Dictators are like those boxers who hang around a few fights too long and end up all woozy in the head. What else can a boxer do but box? Not much….so they continue to allow themselves to get their brains juggled. What else can a dictator do but dictate? Not much…..so they keep pushing their people until even the most mild-mannered of the masses says, “you know what? I’m getting tired of all this crap. Where are my guns?” It may take a while, some marching and massive gatherings in public squares and the like, but the script is always the same. Dictator panics. Dictator threatens the army. The army panics. The army overreacts. The masses realize there is incredible strength in numbers and stand up to the army. The army, faced all of a sudden with a million people pissed off at them, switches sides. The dictator grabs his cash and his loyal bodyguards and gets the hell out of Dodge. Dodge is harder to survive in than the palace, however. Dictator is tracked down in something resembling a fox-hunt and some bloody unpleasantness occurs. Soon, everybody is switching sides.

Not sure American’s are in a position to preach about being governed badly. But still, I think I can say with confidence that we’d never succumb to a dictatorship. Even if we decided we wanted one, we’d never agree on the dictatorial details. Republicans would complain that not enough liberals were beheaded, and Democrats would complain that nobody read them their rights before they were tortured by the secret police. An American dictator might indeed be pitied by the rest of the world.

Such are the jewels of democracy my friends. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded that as messed up as we are, we’re still better off than most.

–Tom Flannery

Decision time…(tf)

My daughter starts high school next year. Which means we have a decision to make. What school?

She’s got actual choices because she’s both extremely intelligent and socially savvy. She’s a great kid who thrives in just about any environment….as neither the gang leader nor the wallflower. She understands that sometimes when you come to a wall, it’s best to climb over it…..sometimes it’s better to dig under it….sometimes more useful to navigate around it…and sometimes the only thing worth doing is to lower the shoulder and obliterate the impediment entirely. Extremely useful judgement for a new teen to have. The fact that I had something to do with her creation still astounds me.

Leaving aside the financial aspects of all this for now, I’m remembering back to my choice. Or rather my lack of one, since I had a lazy streak as wide as the Nile and didn’t exactly fit in the square pegs or the round holes. Even the thought of not following my (admittedly small) group of friends to the school of their choice filled me with uncontrollable dread. Me, walking new hallways without the crutch of familiar faces? Unthinkable. I’d be deemed an incorrigible weirdo and shunned before I even had the chance to flunk out.

I was a kid who spent much of my time holed up in my bedroom peering into my mirror pretending to be Pete Townshend (I could do a mean windmill while holding a tennis racket). I’d listen to my Who records so loud that my father gave up calling for me and started using a broom to bang on the ceiling to get my attention. I preferred this to when he’d get really ticked and throw a shoe at my door, ’cause this always scared the crap out of me and caused the record to skip. Pop had to throw a good curve from the bottom of the steps to reach my door, but he had impeccable control. And mighty fine velocity. I do remember my door was scarred with direct hits……and our living room always had a broom in the corner, which must have seemed odd to visitors.

Looking back all of this seems rather quaint now. It would be interesting to know where I’d have ended up if I had a bit more maturity and wasn’t afraid of my own and everybody else’s shadow. I still prefer the back of the room to the front, and would rather hole-up than venture forth. I’ve gotten a bit better over the years, more willing to speak out when I see something wrong. But any pending revolution is safe from me taking the reigns, and I wish this wasn’t so. There are quite a few revolutions I’d like to lead these days actually.

But, decisions closer to home must be made first…as always.

Public vs Private high school?

If private….which one? The $$ differential is a chasm. Do you really get what you pay for? Or is what you pay for the smoke and mirrors that makes everybody go “ahhh”?

Which school will better prepare her for the next step….which we trust will be college? How much of the actual preparedness is on the child? There’s a part of me that thinks she’d thrive in a mud-hut if given the proper guidance. So how much is on the teachers? And how do I know who the better teachers are? Maybe they’re in public school and my preference for private school is nothing more than some sort of snob gene. Public school certainly fits my budget more than private school.

Tuition is….well….it’s almost goofy. This is high school mind you. Even thinking about what 4 years of college are going to cost 4 years from now makes me want to take all sorts of illegal drugs, so the focus has to remain on high school. How much is too much? If spending the money is the best thing for your child, is there even such a thing as “too much”? If capitalism has taught us anything it’s that banks will fall all over themselves to lend me all kinds of money that I may not have an even reasonable chance of paying back. It’s the American way…..and as long as the word “foreclosure” does not frighten….what the hell?

I would never wish for my kids to “be more like me when I was your age”…..unless of course I wanted social misfits who lived in assorted dream worlds and forced their father to throw shoes and wield brooms….kids who wouldn’t even be considered above average in Lake Woebegone. I don’t wish for that actually. I prefer what I have…and damn the expense.

–Tom Flannery

Grant me serenity? Well…maybe for a minute or two…(tf)

I took my kids to school today (there’s a bus but they intentionally by mistake miss it every morning) and on the drive home I finally noticed the exploding leaves. The deep blue sky helps to show them off. Driving up the hill towards my house, with the overhanging trees on both sides of me, was like driving through a 3-D painting. Just gorgeous. It reminded me all over again why I hate summer and long for fall. It’s for views like this. The crispness of it all. It just forces you into a kind of serenity….if only for a few minutes. And with everything swirling around us, serenity even in small doses is welcome.

Folks are fed up. They’re tired of waiting for that trickle to trickle down. The gap between those who have and those who have not is growing ever-wider. Eventually, if history teaches us anything at all, this type of chasm leads to rebellion. What we’re seeing happening on Wall Street right now may simply run out of steam….or be ignored to death by a media that has no financial interest in the poor in this country becoming not poor. I’m not sure it’s got the popular support it needs….or that the amount of anger needed to effect real change is sustainable yet. No recognizable leader has emerged, nor any coherent strategy. Without this, the effort might very well be wiped out by the other side’s propaganda machines. Fox News has recently started calling the protesters “un-American”….but then again Fox News only screams about “class war” when poor people actually fight back. Fox is a joke of course, but then so was the club-footed dimwit Joseph Goebbels….before he managed to convince the most culturally advanced nation on earth that state-sponsored killing was God’s will. And yea, I guess I am comparing Fox News to the chief Nazi propagandist….just in case anybody is reading between the lines. I’m not convinced there’s a line Roger Ailes would refuse to cross. If that doesn’t frighten you, it should, because there are loads of Hank Williams Jr. fans out there being fed a daily diet of this hateful swill….getting more and more pissed off at more and more of the wrong people. Furious, armed, dumb, God-fearing white men can ruin anyone’s day.

Obama could turn himself into a legend if he went down to Wall Street and spent the night in a tent. But, well….you know. This is status-quo stuff we’re talking about here. And even more….quid pro quo stuff. Obama promised change and instead delivered billions of our money to the same guys who buggered it out of us in the first place. These are the kind of guys you need on your side to become President. And these are the kind of guys you need on your side to remain President. In Washington “change” represents the amount of money in the unmarked envelopes.

Us commie liberal socialist types made a mistake in thinking Obama was the moral giant the nation needed. He’s not. Surely he’s better than what the other side was offering….but then Big Bird would have been better than what the other side was offering. When our nation elected our first African-American President…..I teared up. I really did. It just seemed to offer so much. How far we’d come. Even in my lifetime. A staggering triumph over hate and ignorance. How could anybody think this was not the beginning of something epic?

Well, it wasn’t. I’ve no doubt that Obama is a good man trying to do his best within the rules he’s afraid to break. But that’s not nearly enough. What this nation needs is Churchillian “we shall fight them….we shall never surrender” type leadership. We need to be inspired. We need the fear knocked out of us. Only then will things change. Fear is the main ingredient in the stew of “business as usual”.

What’s happening now on Wall Street, and spreading around the country, is all the more remarkable in that it’s happening in spite of a lack of moral leadership from the White House. It’s below the grass-roots even. It’s staggering in its simplicity and, dare I say it, even its naiveté. We’re here and we ain’t moving until you change. How’s that? It makes me proud to be an American…..or “un-American” as some of the twits would say.

This is what I’m thinking on this fine fall day. Serene, don’t you think?

–Tom Flannery

Time To Stop And Stare (ms)

There’s a common misconception about these days. The thinking is that we should waste not a moment of the day, that multitasking is the way to work, that twenty-four hours of every day need to be crammed full of stuff to do. The logic is that a moment wasted is a moment gone forever and think what you might have accomplished in that moment had you been wise enough to use it. Such thinking, in my view, is not that good. What’s wrong, I ask, with wasting a little time?

Now, I don’t mean gobs of it such as an all day on line poker game or some hours long word contest you’re into with three guys from England. I don’t favor eight hour “naps” on the couch either nor am I a big fan of sampling each piece of a multi layer box of candy in search of the tastiest one. No, in these endeavors I must agree with those who say they are moments truly wasted however there is plenty to be gained from what I consider creative lingering.

I drove along a dirt road in search of autumn photos last week and happened across a nice home and yard. Beneath a maple tree, off to one side of a small pond, sat a high backed bench with a heart cut in the middle of the otherwise solid back. It was a bench not made for long term sitting, for spending an afternoon but rather a bench meant for a momentary pause in the day. Good for those folks, I thought. Here they had the perfect place for a little creative lingering.

This was a place to sit a spell and look at the tree, watch the insects around the pond, see the sun play across the small waves, listen to the birds. Moments like that, Dear Reader, are moments well spent for they help to recharge the mind if not the body. Here was a place where your mind could wander away from monthly bills, the car that needs front brakes, a not-so-good report card from one of the kids. In short, the daily burdens of the day so common in our complicated world had no place on that bench; only idle thoughts could find space next to you. Let the world go round, you’ll get back to it and continue the ride in just a little while.

This very morning I spent time at the end of a lake and water from recent high rains was pouring over the top as intended. The water cascaded down a steep incline bouncing off rock walls creating quite a roar as it went. I stood and watched for a bit happy that I could but happy also to realize I needed to do it. I tire of the race some days, the phone calls, the demands for this and that; so much to do, so little time. Better off are we who waste a little of it now and again.

–Mike Stevens

All I can do is watch kids now…. (tf)

Been thinking a lot about kids. And what’s it’s like to be a kid. And what hurts and what heals and what sucks and what’s worth getting totally irrational over and what’s worth blowing off as just one of life’s lessons to be learned…with no grown-up intervention. Being a kid means being scared a lot of the time….not unlike being a grown-up mind you….but grown-ups call fear “making a living”. For kids…..being afraid means literally not wanting to get out of bed. Not wanting to face that locker that you can’t open….or that kid in gym class who pushes you around while everybody else laughs. That kid….a kid will dream of dismembering that kid in gym class….and stuffing him into jelly jars and keeping them in the basement just to make sure he never gets out. But alarm clocks mess-up good dreams, so the bully kid stays very much alive and grows even more sociopathic as the days go by because his Dad is some type of big shot asshole who gives the school money in envelopes. You know, one of societies pillars with the million dollar smile and the morals of a diseased toad.

Yes, I’m afraid a kid is very much an extension of his or her parents. And when you think of all the parents you deal with everyday who are complete neanderthals, ’tis no surprise that so many kids meet the same criteria. And these are the kids your kid has to sit next to in science class. Which is the main reason he’s sticking a hot wash-cloth on his brow hoping it will fool the thermometer into reading 102 so he can stay home.

Being an idiot is not against the law. Nor can idiots be stopped from breeding….which they apparently do with relish. Like rabbits they are, still trusting in the rhythm method and the power of the Sunday collection plate.The arithmetic is ghastly.

Being a kid is just so confusing. Everything has consequences….so immediately any kids with any positive spontaneity or inventive spark built-in end up sitting alone in the cafeteria….while the brown-shirts throw food at them. Teachers don’t much like those who march to their own dance-band either…..as these kids are the ones who challenge the 40 year old gibberish written on the black-board. It’s truly a special teacher who enjoys give-and-take over text-book dogma with a whip-smart 14 year old with “The Who” and “BoDeans” stickers all over his books…..especially when the same kid is being beaten up daily by the basketball players, whom the teacher adores. Think how many special teachers you had in school. You won’t need 2 hands.

Sometimes I’d like to take another crack at being a kid. I’ve learned so many things. Like when to carry a bat. It would make a huge difference. In a land of hormones…..perception becomes reality….which is why the kid who used to get beat up by boys and laughed at by girls……who is now sneering from a stage with a loud guitar in his hands….has become suddenly untouchable. Well, except for the girls….who suddenly aren’t laughing and now want to touch him a lot.

But I can’t go back, of course. All I can do is watch kids now. And see how music and clothes and slang changes, but not much else. When our kids hurt we hurt….all the more so because we understand how insidious the pain of acceptance really is. How powerful it is to fight both for it and against.

At the end of the movie “Stand by Me”, the Richard Dreyfuss character types this line into his computer….”I never had any friends like the ones I had when I was twelve… Jesus, does anyone?”

It’s a brilliant line, and it may indeed be true.

But you never quite feel so vulnerable either.

I wish there was something we could do to make it not so.

–Tom Flannery

The Appeal Of The Pie (ms)

I’ve given this considerable thought over the years and finally concluded that autumn is my favorite time of the year.

There are a number of reasons for that choice: the pretty leaves, the fresh crispness in the air, Halloween, football, a wood stove churning out fragrant smoke, a walk in the woods on a pleasant fall afternoon. Yes indeed, good reasons all for choosing autumn as my most favorite time of the year. But the paramount reason, the reason I wait for this season all year, the reason I buy more whipped cream during the fall than at any other time — apple pie.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing at all bad about a good pumpkin pie or for that matter a mincemeat. When hard pressed I could even have some blueberry or a lemon meringue but these would be mere stopgaps, sidetracks, diversions until the apple of my eye that is an apple pie came along.

I suppose my love for such a creation began in kidhood. Fresh apples cut into chunks, a crust rolled out just so, the spices added in secret amounts known only to the lady of the house. It was put into the oven and baked at just the right temperature for a time ball parked by the clock on the stove but determined by said lady whose knack for knowing when the time had come was second to none. On days of extreme luck, of incalculable good fortune, pie day came on a rainy day hence the doors were shut. This meant, Dear Reader, that the doors would be shut allowing the aroma, the aroma de apple fragrance to spread into every nook and cranny in the house. It was a sensory delight. Were it bottled as after shave men across America would embrace it wildly if only to use as a car scent thereby enabling them to drive home calm, relaxed and with a smile despite the traffic outside.

Anyway, the pie came out, the crust that crowned it a golden brown and so tender it would fall apart of its own weight if balanced on a fork. That unto itself was something to behold and something which men like myself, world travelers and connoisseurs all, would note as the true test of an apple pie. It was a test the pies of my younger and may I say leaner years never failed.

The top off was whipped cream but not the collection of stuff colored white that one finds today at the neighborhood supermarket. No, this was whipped cream by golly and it was the only additive allowed to bask in the glow of an autumn apple pie. Course, if the milk man forgot to leave the cream for whipping, an exception could be made for vanilla ice cream.

The taste of all this, the first bite of the first pie of the season, well, I have been in the word business for a long time and I have yet to find the proper phrasing to adequately describe it.

So spring, summer, winter they all have their good and bad points, of that there is no doubt and so too does autumn. I must add, though, that an autumn apple pie more than makes up for those shortcomings.

–Mike Stevens

If the music you make is loud enough, you can’t hear a thing (tf)

Having kids of your own reminds you how hard it was being a kid. Especially when the teen years beckon.

I can still remember. And sometimes I still shudder.

It’s like a minefield.

I was never strong enough to disregard the flow of the crowd….even though I was not nearly notorious enough to not get lost in it most of the time. If I had stood up to be counted, I’m not sure many would have noticed anyway. But I tried to get along by going along, even if that meant doing mindless (and borderline and not so borderline legal) things. And maybe some things that hurt other kids. I was far from a bully….but can’t really recall ever standing up to one….or coming to the defense of somebody being bullied. I just kinda stood back and was thankful I wasn’t being beaten up on a daily basis. My 98 pound frame was not built for bravery.

Nor was it built for girls. I spent much of my time obsessing over females who probably didn’t know my name. I had a few “girlfriends”….the word then meaning the same as it does now. The one you sneak off with when everybody else pairs off at the house party or behind the skating rink. The very first girl I kissed didn’t even bother to take the gum out of her mouth, which should have been a sign that I was destined for the minor leagues. I was probably too revved up to notice at the time. But the girl did “dump” me soon after…..and as I recall barely acknowledged my existence for the next….oh 30 years or so. The dumping, by the way, took place the same way dumpings take place today. One of her friends was dispatched to drop the bomb. I was suicidal for about 12 hours and then a new girl smiled at me and I was all better. The heart is very resilient.

There was an “in crowd” of course. I was sorta-friends with them….one of them was kinda forced ’cause my Dad gave him a ride to school every morning. But still, you take what you can get. A few were complete assholes….which I knew at the time but dared not articulate because that’s the way it is with in-crowds. The ones that were assholes then, by the way, are even bigger assholes today. Funny how that works eh? It’s really not one of those “if I only knew then what I know now” moments when you think on it. It’s more the “if I’d only acted on what was, even then, blindingly obvious”. Leaders of in-crowds of 13 year olds are rarely known for their humanitarianism.

Eventually, I leaked away from all the drama when I fell in love with the guitar. I spent many a weekend night ensconced in my bedroom, pretending I was Pete Townshend….trying desperately to play “Won’t Get Fooled Again” on an acoustic guitar that I bought for $150 out of the Paper Shop from a guy in Olyphant who lived in an apartment the size of a closet and had, from what I counted, 7 small kids. Clearly this guitar was cursed. But it was mine…..and I beat on the wretched thing for years. It saved me from taking headers off the Harrison Avenue bridge more than once. Even getting brutally dumped by a gorgeous blond cheerleader wasn’t fatal (how I’d gotten in there in the first place is still a mystery).

I was no longer a blatant follower. I was way more interested in the intricacies of “Quadrophenia” than my social standing amongst my peers (ironic when you consider that’s exactly what “Quadrophenia” deals with). I started to articulate my own angst by writing my own songs. For years they were all dreadful, but I got the hang of it eventually. I still consider songwriting a form of therapy….and though I dabbled in the stuff that alters minds, I’ve never had a high like knocking off a song I know is special. And my best ones? I think they’re all….in some way…..about teenagers. That feeling never goes away.

So that’s my sermon for the day. I’m glad I’m not a kid anymore. I wish there was more I could do to help my kids be kids. But it’s really something to go through alone. Either following the path trod by others, or finding your own and blocking out the catcalls of the tone-deaf.

If the music you make is loud enough, you can’t hear a thing.

–Tom Flannery

Doncha Ever Listen to the Radio? (tf)

I love music but I never ever listen to the radio. For me music is not something you hear in an elevator or mindlessly hum along to in traffic. It’s more like the air I breathe. Something to ponder….to be inspired by….to jump around like a pogo stick to…..to make sense out of a nonsensical situation….to sum up a time and a place and a feeling in 3 minutes flat. Music is made by human beings with guitars and drums and pianos and B3 organs…wailing vocals and great horn charts…and lots of sweat and tears and beer and smoke in the kind of places where you carve your name in the walls backstage. It’s not technically “perfect”. The beat can waver, the guitars can fight losing battles with each other. But as a cacophony of (mostly) teen angst, the greatest rock and roll is unrivaled. It is America’s greatest gift to the world, a melting pot of delta blues and mountain bluegrass amplified, black and white together before black and white were allowed together. It’s the only religion I know of that’s all-inclusive.

And people say it’s dying.

To listen to the radio you might think so. Rock and roll doesn’t get played on the radio anymore. I checked the billboard top 10 singles list and I’ve never heard of any of the songs or any of the artists. All I know is that none of them are rock and roll. It’s all processed drivel, a hodge-podge of studio trickery and image manipulation. Boardroom maneuvering and the right PR hacks can literally turn anybody into a star right now. Genuine talent is helpful but not required. When I’m in the car with my kids and the radio is on I long for the sound of a real guitar…or the snap of a real snare drum. Something that sounds human. It’s just not there. All I hear is interchangeable. The first song sounds like the next song, and the last song is as bad as the next to last song. It could all be the same song. There’s no attempt at melody, so there’s nothing memorable enough that would allow me to differentiate one song from another. It all sounds like it was created in a bank vault.

It’s certainly enough to kill the radio stone-dead as a viable place to become truly inspired.

Of course there’s the mind-set that because you don’t hear rock and roll on the radio anymore it means that rock and roll has shriveled up and died. For those not accustomed to digging past the top layer of soil….you don’t know what you’re missing. And I don’t feel bad for you. I feel kinda smug actually….like the kid with the secret.

There are scores…..no hundreds….of self-contained rock and roll bands out there who never sniff the radio yet continue to make thrilling noise. I won’t start listing names for I’d not know where to stop or start, but trust me, they’re out there. Snarling kids in garages and wily vets crisscrossing the country in vans, from California to the New York Islands, pounding stages in bars and clubs and theaters and backyards, railing against the dying of the light. There’s no gulf between these bands and their fans because the bands are fans too. It’s all the same community.

When punk rock exploded in the mid 1970s the great Pete Townshend said he felt too old to participate, but that he surely wanted to watch and listen. He was being disingenuous, since he and his band the Who largely created punk rock more than a decade earlier. It had taken this long for folks to catch on. But they did, and for a time the sheer energy and bile of reinvigorated, piss and vinegar rock and roll made everything around it sound so tired. You could hear the Clash on the radio, until it became de rigueur to try to re-create the Clash, which of course nobody else could do. It happened again in the early 90s. Kurt Cobain’s kicked and screamed his way out of his backwards, redneck town and took on the world. And until he decided it was too much work, he beat them at their own game. He became Elvis to a new generation. The dividing line between what came before and what came after.

But it hasn’t happened since.

Not for lack of trying. There are lots of guys with guitars out there, quietly changing lives, one fan at a time. You can find them if you look hard enough. When I locate yet another it gives my day a bounce. It’s therapeutic to know that loud noises can be peaceful too.

So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I’ve got a treasure trove of music that keeps growing. I’ve got music for all seasons. I’ve got music to attend to all the gremlins inside my head.

I’m glad music this vital is not on the radio. It might cheapen it. It might make me the same as everybody else.

That’s one thing I do not wish to be.

Long Live Rock.

–Tom Flannery

A Few Pennies Here, A Few Pennies There (ms)

I am about to break the bank. Not a real bank, of course, for the law sends you away on extended vacations should you try to take one. No, my bank is much more accessible and far less trouble. I can break into it any time and take what I want for the money inside is all mine. Despite the ease of entry I enjoy I only go to my piggy bank once a year.

This is a piggy bank given to me by our son and daughter in law a few years ago and it is a hand painted little guy that I value even more than the money inside. I must say though by the end of the year that piggy has pulled in some pennies.

I learned a long time ago that if you saved five pennies you had a nickel, two nickels a dime and so on. When you think about it this is a remarkably simple notion yet one that can’t fail to work. Not a day goes by that I don’t have at least a few pennies in my pocket and they make a rather satisfying clink when dropped into my little pig. The smile on his face seems to get a little bigger when I feed him but perhaps that’s my imagination.

Anyway, in a custom I began years ago, I open the pig each autumn. There is no cracking, of course. He has a plug in his tummy and I work that out allowing the money inside to fall onto a table. I have a stack of coin rolls from the bank that I fill. The goal is to use the money to buy Christmas gifts for anyone I choose but when the holiday is over I owe nothing. It’s a good feeling to get up December 26th knowing that I don’t owe a penny for the gifts I bought, the Christmas dinner, Christmas Eve supper. I pay for it all with the pennies that grew into nickels, dimes and quarters.

Some friends of mine would never consider doing such a thing; for them coins are an annoyance. If it can’t be bought with plastic they won’t buy it for I doubt you could scrape together a dollar in real money between them. Now, I’m not above using plastic either but I am also the kind of guy who doesn’t let a penny in the parking lot go untouched. Yes, I’ve been known to stoop down to pick one up.

At one time, when our kids were very young, my change went into a pickle jar and together the three of us would open it come mid-October, count the money, roll it up and take it to the bank. This became a custom though I guess I’m the only one still following it. No matter.

I like to heft my little pig this time of year to see how much weight he’s put on. He is generally pleasingly plump and I like the sound he makes. It’s the sound of money mixed with the silence of a post Christmas credit card bill displaying zeroes where the balance should be. Now that, Dear Reader, is a happy tune.

–Mike Stevens

Taking the Pulse of Stevens (tf)

Stevens is slacking again. No surprise really, as he suffers these bouts of indolence more and more as he gets older and creakier. And since our local Borders book emporium, where Stevens took all his meals and basked in his recognizability as a television star, has been shuttered, the man has rarely left his gated compound…except of course to crawl around wooded areas with his camera, looking for that one shutter click that would get him on the staff of the National Geographic channel. Sure, everybody compares his on the PA road bits with the late Charles Kuralt’s TV work, but when the cameras are off Stevens really wants to be David Attenborough.

I really think this Borders thing has enfeebled him. The store was perfectly located, a few hundred yards from the Firestone tire place where Stevens would constantly be dropping off his battered red pick-up truck for yet more repairs. I realized the truck was great street-cred for him…..man of the people and all that….but I often wondered why a man who drove literally hundreds of miles a day, on highways and cratered back-roads, had a truck that broke down with such monotonous regularity. When I’d meet him at Borders and somehow always ended up paying for his coffees and his assortment of muffins that he ate with relish, I considered that he was paid a duff salary. But then it came to me. Of course. He was donating much of it to assorted charities. Yes, that must be it.

A sucker for Charity is Stevens.  He’ll get a call to serve as a toastmaster for one group, then shoot off to some town nobody’s ever heard of to judge a pie-baking contest (I wondered what the large totes in the cab of his truck were for…..”samples” he said), then off to the pumpkin patch to drive the bratty little kids around the grounds in one of them tractors….indulging his inner blue-collar. The man is a whirling-dervish of civic responsibility.

And of course through it all, the price of fame. A constant flow of 75 year old ladies queuing up to kiss the ruddy cheek of a television star, and to whisper in his ear of some really strange goings-on in their husband’s garages with pieces of wood, geraniums, and old beer cans…..all of which should be featured on “On the Pennsylvania Road” post haste. So Stevens gets more phone numbers than a rock star. I’ve seen him in action and if he’s interested, he writes it down. If he’s just being polite, he acts like he can memorize them, like one of those lifer-waitresses. Usually, he’s just being polite. I’ve heard some of the story ideas the public pitches to him. If it were me, I’d carry a taser.

Stevens will reappear in these pages soon. The coming of Autumn invigorates him….if only because he can take pictures of the same trees and pass them off as something new. My goal, as always, is to keep him writing. I believe him to be a writer first and foremost….his gargantuan fame as a TV personality notwithstanding. He is smooth as silk on TV mind you, and has one of them pitch perfect voices, but it’s the words that make him so good, not his good looks. And the words are written before they are spoken….which is easy to forget when they are digested like honey.

So there it is. I should probably stop slobbering compliments on the man lest his head grow too big for the cab of his wretched pick-up. He is a bit grumpy at times….which is something he fights from showing off to the general public but doesn’t mind battering me with. His favorite music is 1970s disco, which is worrisome in all sorts of ways. And if you ask him important questions he has a ghastly way of answering in pseudo-riddles that satisfy you initially….until about an hour later when you realize that he fed you gibberish.

Still and all. He’s a good friend who has nary a bad word to say about anyone. Even me. Remarkable self-restraint considering how much I intentionally irritate him.

My attempt to shame him into writing on a semi-regular basis has worked beyond my wildest expectations. It’s been nearly a year since this blog started and he’s only missed a handful of deadlines. Like last week’s. But who’s counting?

–Tom Flannery

Autumn Ho (ms)

I fired up our Blog page the other day and found my old friend Flannery had waxed philosophical about autumn. Remarkable, I  thought, because I seldom hear about sightings of him beyond the mini-mart down the road and then only in times of emergency runs to renew his supply of diet soda. The rest of the time he spends cooped up in his man cave reading or making music or sometimes doing gainful work.

Given that hectic yet confining schedule it’s difficult to imagine he knows what season we’re in let alone what goes on during it. I, on the other hand believe in the enjoyment of the season.

I was out for a late afternoon walk the other day, one of those things I do to try and keep myself in some sort of shape even if it isn’t great. This is not a set routine for me like those who run and walk every day come rain or shine. I spend more time evading the walk than I use actually doing it. I have a new routine that gets me a nearly two mile walk just cutting my lawn. That nearly never happened because I almost went and bought a riding mower this year. Fortunately I spotted a guy older than me out cutting his lawn using a walk behind mower. I figured if he can do it, so can I and I’m better for it but, I digress.

My afternoon stroll took me up a dirt road near the Ranch. It’s a good road with few homes along it, a car now and then. Walking along it gives me the chance to do a little thinking, to work out story ideas or just think about the stuff of life. The awakening came about halfway up the last hill before the turn around: autumn is here!

It wasn’t any one thing that made me conclude this, it was more like a few mixed in with a bit of feel. The Goldenrod, that scourge of allergy sufferers nationwide, was in full bloom. It’s color was vibrant, plants standing tall and proud waving in a gentle breeze. It made for a very nice photo when shot against a blue sky. Looking back, more than anything else, I think it was that breeze which convinced me the seasons were changing.

You know how they say there’s something in the air? Well, there was and it wasn’t the smell of burning tires. It was a freshness, I think, a crispness the air had that day and didn’t have a few days before. I thought the Directors of Wind Currents on the shift had sent a few breezes up into Canada then had them travel south right over PA. Oh it was most refreshing. If only I could capture that and put it on the market as some type of freshener I think I would make a fortune. Mike’s Fall Freedom seems a good name.

Anyway, I just thought I would pass along the fact that I too noticed autumn was here and that I appreciate it’s presence. If only I could get myself out to walk I would probably enjoy it even more.

–Mike Stevens

Fall Ramblings (tf)

Football season is finally here. I know this because Notre Dame has already managed to lose 2 games it should have won. It could be worse but the Irish have only played 2 games. So there’s a bit of silver lining.

On these glorious just-about-fall Saturdays and Sundays, it is quite possible to sink down in your couch at Noon, and if you have a superhuman bladder, not move anything but your thumb on the remote for more than 12 hours. As a matter of fact, I would recommend seeing how long you can last, if only to have something to talk about when you go back to work on Monday (Avoid liquids or you’ll never make it past the first quarter. Like most things, it’s all a matter of discipline).

The kids are back in school full-time. The house grows quieter earlier. The days are growing shorter little by little. There seems more urgency as we tackle the mundane tasks of the day. Summer malaise has worn off, and we feel like we should be working harder, or moving faster, or doing that little extra that we promised we’d do in July and August but never got around to doing. If we’re lulled into complacency Madison Avenue is always there to remind us that Halloween and Thanksgiving are right around the proverbial corner. And of course, it won’t be long before we all start getting those dreadful catalogs in the mail with those impossibly good-looking real-life mannequins on the cover wearing red sweaters and scarves (no, “scarfs” is not the plural of “scarf”…I checked) standing in front of Xmas trees smiling manically at each other pretending that they look completely normal and that all of us look that way too.

People are already talking about 2012, especially Republicans, who are currently busy gouging each others eyeballs out for the right to get stomped in the next Presidential election…not because Obama is doing a great job because he isn’t, but because the Republicans have once again managed to corral a group of batshit-crazed ideologues who all look like they’ve overdosed on Botox.  As I watch Rick Perry all by himself bringing the national IQ down every time he opens his mouth, I’m reminded of what the late great Texan Molly Ivins said. “Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States … please pay attention.” That goes for anybody who thinks the earth is 5000 years old too, by the way. Folks are certainly entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.

Don’t get mad at me. I don’t make these people up. Look on the bright side. At least Christine O’Donnell isn’t running…although it might be interesting to have somebody in the White House who felt the need to spend money on a national ad in which she proclaimed, with a straight face, “I am not a witch”.

And Obama is not a foreign Muslim bent on destroying us all via creeping socialism….although you’d be forgiven for thinking so if Fox News is your cup of tea (excuse the horrible pun).

Obama is also not a great President, which I hoped he would be. He’s not even a particularly good one (his bank bailout and his retreat on Universal Health care lost me…..and unemployment has gotten so bad that Fox News has actually started to report on “new poor people”, which is ironic to say the least), but I dare say if it comes down between him and a guy who calls Social Security a “ponzi scheme”, I don’t think I’m gonna have any trouble deciding who to vote for.

Good grief. I seem to have gotten all liberal and commie-like all of a sudden. Over the last few years I’ve largely given up on politics, so I hope you’ll forgive my rare detour. Somebody had to tell me who my congressman was the other day….and at the moment I’ve forgotten his name again. I could google it but it hardly seems worth it. Mark Twain once said, “There is no native criminal class except Congress”…..and Twain was way smarter than I am. I don’t want to spend a splendid fall day googling somebody I didn’t vote for anyway. But still, it seems vaguely important to have sane people in charge of our government, which should disqualify Texans and deranged Alaskans at least. But….well…..never mind. It’s not 2012 yet. Maybe we’ll be obliterated by a meteor before then…or that guy who keeps changing his prediction dates on the rapture will get lucky. Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day you know.

Yea….and maybe Notre Dame will finish 9-2.

–Tom Flannery

It’ll Wash Away Your Heart (ms)

Well, the flood of 2011 came, the crest moved down river taking much of the water it spilled with it. Now comes the awful, terrible, heart-wrenching task of cleaning up, if you are able.

I was a leaf green reporter back in 1972 when Agnes swept in and overstayed her visit. The evacuation order came at night when I was working radio and doing television part-time. The word “terror” takes on new meaning when you are ordered to snatch up whatever you can carry, leave in the darkness of night carrying your sometimes sleepy, sometimes screaming kids and head out to who knows what for who knows how long. They do their very best at shelters but one is still surrounded by a few hundred total strangers all equally distraught, confused, tired and scared. Still, that’s Paradise compared to what you face when you go home.

I went into the Agnes flood area as a television/radio reporter right after the water went down. War zone is a term often used to describe a post-flood area. That’s accurate but doesn’t quite grasp what it’s really like.

The storm cleared and the sun had been out for a few days when  I went in with everyone else. Dust rolled in our wake as we drove up a main road that, until the flood, had been a four to six lane thoroughfare. Here and there were puddles of dirty water but they weren’t just puddles; these were miniature ponds of dirty brown water held in place by sunken yards with homes in them. Over everything was a stench that is still hard to define. The closest I can come is a mix of diesel fuel and raw sewage and that was in places where the air moved a little.

Where it was stagnant, say in the basement of a home or the lube bay of a gas station, the stench was nearly overpowering. Everything the filthy water touched was permanently stained and therefore ruined and even had it not been discolored I doubt you could get the smell out. That smell became a permanent part of everything it touched and it touched a lot. Some of what it touched could not be readily seen.

The flood area of 1972 I’m most familiar with is the Wyoming Valley for I grew up there and lived there or around it for thirty-some years. It was then and still is to some degree today a closely knit area. Folks bought houses close to childhood homes, bought gasoline at the same station their father did, had prescriptions filled by the pharmacist you went through grade school with. I think that’s what made doing stories there very difficult.

My dad still lived in the family homestead but he made it to our house high up on a hill so I wasn’t worried about him. I thought I would run across aunts and cousins in due time and I heard from one they were all safe so I went about the job of reporting.

If you owned a business or home the best you could hope for after caring for family was having a home or business still standing. Then all you had to do was throw out your furniture and appliances, gut the interior, put in a new furnace, rewire, sheetrock, paint, get some new stuff and you were good to go. There was a problem if you also had to work your regular job and do all this at night or if you had to do it plus take care of your elderly parents home as well. There were many whose luck was not even that good.

I went with a few of them, back to the pile of junk that had been their homes. Some had sunk their lives into the twisted mess we were looking at and in those few days of June, 1972, their bank had been robbed.

There is no adequate way to describe the reactions of people when they first see their life’s work in shambles. If I was writing a book then and sat down long enough to think it through I might have come up with something but as it was I couldn’t. Tell the truth, I still can’t.

One house in particular was popped off its foundation and it floated away maybe a half block before coming down partially on the street and on a neighbors lawn. We interviewed the man and woman who owned the home; they cried and I think I did too. They were dirty from cleaning what little they were able to salvage, her hair tied back with a bandana, he wearing a sweaty ball cap. They now had no place to live and nothing to live with even if they did. They had a couple kids, were in their mid-thirties I would guess and were leading a good life and then came Agnes and there went that.

I cannot tell you how many similar interviews I did during my assignment. I became numb for like the flood victims I could take only so much. The mind shuts down when it nears circuit overload making its owner operate on remote control like a living breathing wind up doll that does what needs doing by pure instinct. At least I had a home to go to each night. My father stayed with us so work on his place could be done a bit more leisurely. We knew we would finish it eventually but there was no hurry and since he lived simply things wouldn’t be greatly complicated.

I watched the politicians come in to visit the Flood of 2011 just like they did in ’72 and have for everything in between. They promise to work hard to help us then meet with someone in the flood area, look first hand at some damage, have a news conference maybe then leave. As I did in 2011, 1972 and every disaster in between, they will have a shower at night, fresh clothes, a good meal and clean bedding to sleep in. They will not have lived the flood. I didn’t either but at least I came close.

There was, to the best of my recollection, only one Agnes related death in the Wyoming Valley and we must be thankful for that. I do wonder though how many folks had their lives shortened, fell into the gloom of depression, maybe decided to cash it in. I’ll never know, of course, but I wonder. It’s hard to pick up your life and carry on when your heart has been broken.

–Mike Stevens

The Flood of 2011 (tf)

The images are more powerful than any words. The chocolate-brown river. Small, ankle-deep creeks suddenly turned into torrents that can rip a house from its foundation. Boats on various Main Streets. These small river-towns with their wonderful names. West-Pittston. Tunkhannock. Meshoppen. Duryea. Shickshinny. And dozens more. From above they call to mind New Orleans in 2005. When rivers take over neighborhoods, it always looks the same. Water and roofs. Tops of cars. You’re trying to figure out where the river ends and the neighborhood begins. Grand homes. Modest modules. Trailers. No discrimination. Water doesn’t give a shit what tax bracket you’re in.

Today we’re all pretty stunned by what’s happened. In ’72 they called it Agnes. It doesn’t have a name this time. It happened too fast. No time for names. I’ve heard a few ideas from folks affected, but they might make the weather folks blush.

It’s sunny as I write these words. Blue skies. Isn’t that always the way? After bringing tens of thousands to their knees, Mother Nature wakes up the next day and acts like everything is normal.

And all of us know that it could have been a lot worse. If the rain hadn’t stopped…..maybe a few more hours worth….the Wilkes-Barre levee would have been topped. And then…..well it would have been Agnes II. As bad as this was, it was not Agnes. Small consolation for many, for some areas got hammered harder this time then in 72. Levees, flood walls….it becomes cruelly mathematical after a while. The water stopped in one place will find another. Surely better for 1 to flood than 100, but tell that to the guy who lost everything but the clothes he’s wearing. Then duck.

Watched hours and hours on TV. Became numb after a while. Bridges look like foot-paths laid over the water. A house in the river…..getting obliterated as it slams into a bridge. An eerie night-time boat tour through 8 foot waters in West Pittston. That Victorian house on the right? So pretty. How many years old must it be? How many children raised there? We’re told the elderly woman who remains refuses to leave. She’s on the 2nd floor. Alone and in the dark. Leave? Where would she go?  “Home” is the ultimate 4 letter word.

Many lost everything. Some had microphones thrust into their faces. “How do you feel?” I’m not sure I wouldn’t have lost it. “How do I feel? Wonderful. Heading to f-ing Disney World.” But Wyoming County folks are battle hardened. I saw no tears. I heard no rants. Just steely determination. “Well, this is home and we’ll just have clean up the mess and get back to it.” With water in the 2nd floor bedrooms. Incredible. These people respect the river. But they ain’t gonna be bullied by it.

So we all move on, no?

It’s all in the rear-view mirror now?

In Tunkhannock, Main Street is currently filled with residents pushing brooms. Not the kind of folks who wait for the “official” clean-up to begin. Bureaucracies have their time frame, and these folks have theirs.

Surely we’ll all remember this for the rest of our lives. For my generation, the way our elders spoke of Agnes, we’ll speak of the flooding of 2011. And of course, many others will speak of both…..for they eye-balled the river both times. They expected no quarter. And they gave none. Stalemate.

The sun is still out. The ground is dry in some places. The grass all around is golf-course-green from the rains. The television stations have returned to their regularly scheduled programs. What comes next?

And is it truly over? Will it ever be for some?

What comes next?

Better days I trust. Better days.

I eagerly await Mike’s words on this. These are his roads. This is his backyard. These are his people. He deserves the final say here.

–Tom Flannery

Sometimes Too Old (tf)

I’m not an expert but from what I’ve seen getting old sucks.

Sure, you’ve accumulated years of wisdom, but most likely you’re going to get unpleasantly ill and expire before anybody thinks to tap it.

Being old means being in the way and not mattering as much as you used to matter. What you’ve done your whole life you can’t do anymore….and what you can do requires assistance, which irritates the person forced to do the assisting, even though most won’t admit to it. People talk about old people when the old person is in the room, assuming that because they’re old they must be deaf too. This just makes the old person pissed off, and a pissed off old person fits the stereotype, so everybody just thinks…..”well, he’s pissed off ’cause he’s old and cranky”….even though he’s pissed off because people are now treating him like a child.

Doctors don’t like old people much. There’s no challenge to treating a patient who is simply breaking down one section at a time. When my dad got sick we had to deal with all kinds of doctors. Each did the bare minimum, and some less than that. Not one thought outside the box or offered anything that I couldn’t find in a 5 minute Google session. And not one spent more than 5 minutes with my father at any one time. In fact, we got bills from Doctors who never saw him at all. He was a chart on the wall. And old guy a host of physical ailments to go with his Alzheimer’s disease who might kick you if you got too close. The fact that he was also one of the most respected and admired men this city has ever produced mattered not one iota. He was just another on the assembly line, waiting for a bed to open up. There was no use in complaining, because all the caregivers were doing what they could when they could. There was no neglect. It was just…..well….this was and is the way it is. Getting old and dying is ugly…..which is why so many old people die alone. Loved ones turn away. It’s too hard to look. Cowardly yes, but reality.

I was at a Funeral over the weekend. The woman passed away at 84. She had a hard life. Lost her husband years before. Was never given anything. She did the best she could. Never hurt a soul. Religious. Generous even when she couldn’t really afford to be. A good woman all around. Her last few months were hard. The suffering she went through towards the end was ghastly. I didn’t know her well but I still cried. Why does it so often have to end this way? There is no redemption in pain.

Can’t we do better?

Well, we could. When we allow a human being to suffer pain we’d never subject a beloved pet to, it’s pretty clear we’e not nearly as advanced as we think we are. Blame it on the voodoo of religion. Blame it on fear. Blame it on ignorance. Blame it on the insurance companies. Blame it on those who profit from the agony of others. Blame it on Fox News or George Bush or Obama. Take your pick. But blame it on something and let’s get past it so there’s less pain in a world that already has plenty.

Let us grow old with dignity.

Gee…..that was a cheerful 500+ words, no?

Can’t help it sometimes. Getting old sucks. And guess what? I’m getting there too…

–Tom Flannery

Never Too Old (ms)

I have an aunt who somehow has managed to dodge the heavy hand of Father Time. She is in her nineties and still gets around to do a lot of the things that seem to tire out some men and women one-third her age. The last time I saw her she had finished making from scratch a few dozen pierogie that very morning. For those of you who may not know, these classic delights are time consuming to prepare and a good ballpark is about a morning to whip up a batch.

Now, this work thing is not new for her. She started working as a child around the family farm. Later on she got married and the kids just kept on comin’; I believe she had five. No matter, after three who’s counting. There were always more kids at the dinner table than lived in the house but that didn’t matter. If you came to the door, family or not, you were fed and it was good eats as I recall. Course there was all the other work to do around the house and even though the kids shared some of it the bulk fell mainly to her. She never backed away from it but went right toward it.

When you approach life in that manner it becomes an ingrained habit after a while. You do not shirk your duties, you meet them head on and tussle with them until you’ve beaten them soundly.

My aunt is one of a passing breed, the kind that thought work was what you did. The folks from her generation had few mechanical devices like automatic clothes washers or furnaces that kicked on automatically each morning nor were there electric mixers, electric knives, electric blenders. Even if they were available many from that generation could not have afforded them at least at the time when they needed them most, when their families were growing.

I recall complaining mildly to myself the other day when the power went out here at The Ranch and I actually had to tend to a few things without benefit of electricity. My word! For my aunt that would have been no problem. She would have figured out something and no one would have gone hungry, or cold or want for conversation. Her generation knew how to do stuff, you see, something many of us have forgotten.

I admire my aunt for being who she is and for the journey she’s taken. It was never really easy for her but she stuck with it dealing with the problems of the day and moving on from there. I have a great deal to learn in that regard for like many of my generation and later I have become accustomed to the niceties of life and should they disappear I would be traumatized. My goodness no Facebook, no email, no television; what on earth would I do?

Oh, and if someone suggested hard work leads to an early grave I would say maybe they’re right but I would also mention my aunt, in her nineties, and say maybe they’re wrong.

–Mike Stevens

The Edge of September (tf)

We’re on the edge of September. The kids are back in school. College football starts this weekend and the NFL the week after that. Baseball gets more and more interesting by the day. The heat has dissipated for the most part. The snap of fall is not in the air yet, but I can look to the hills and know it’s coming. The leaves will soon explode and we’ll be able to walk and drive in the midst of a beautiful canvas. There is nothing and nowhere prettier than NEPA in the fall. It’s been a long, hot summer and I for one am ready for some relief.

Summer is lazy. Fall is when everything starts moving again. Alarm clocks are set. Lunches are made and packed the night before. School buses criss-cross busy streets. Kids sleep-walk to their corner, staggering under filled backpacks and dreading the test they sorta studied for but not really. After school activities are charted. Who will pick up who when to take them where? It seems logistically impossible but it always seems to just about work out. A little bit of frenzy can be a good thing. It focuses the mind that has been dulled by July and August lethargy.

Stores have Halloween stuff out. Halloween! It’s only 2 months away. And we all know what comes after that. The year is 2/3 over. I can still taste the Chicken Marsala from New Year’s Eve. Where did the time go? My youngest called me “dude” the other day. Feels like weeks ago I was wiping her bum and now she’s calling me “dude”. She’s also excellent with money (says she’s saving all her accumulated b-day and Xmas cash for a car), and is always offering me some of hers when I loudly and frequently complain about being broke. It’s tempting but….

My hair has gone gray. There’s no sense fighting it. Oh it’s still sorta dark but the gray is spreading with alacrity and it won’t be long before I look like Sparky Anderson. I’m told gray hair on a guy looks “distinguished” but that’s just what women say when they’re watching a Richard Gere movie. Gray looks old, which makes sense because I feel old. Things hurt that didn’t used to hurt before. Kids bewilder me more than they used to. What little patience I had for just about anything mildly annoying has gone. Nirvana’s “Nevermind” record is 20 years old. The Russians were a year into their 9 year war with Afghanistan when John Lennon was murdered. Their was ended 12 years before our war with Afghanistan commenced….a war which has become, at 10 years and counting, the longest in US history.

Do you feel old now?

I’m just saying.

If was fall that brought this on was it not? True, I’m old and getting even creakier. But I can still feel invigorated….even if that invigoration leads me to the couch to watch sporting events. But still. It’s the feeling that counts.

We’re on the edge of September….and I long to fall over. Maybe into a pile of leaves.

It will be 10 years since the planes hit the towers. Ten years. Remember the sky on that day? How blue it was? It almost hurt the eyes to look into it. And then it was defiled. Those images still haunt, but they did not overwhelm us. We are a nation of colors. Blue. Green. And the turning leaves of fall.

Anything but gray.

–Tom Flannery

Irene (tf)

It’s Sunday at 1pm and it’s pretty much over. The wind has died down and the rain has slowed significantly. The worst-case scenarios have, thankfully, not come to pass.

Like most, for the last 30+ hours I’ve been battered more by MSNBC and CNN than the weather. I went to bed last night being told New York City might be full of boats in the morning. (I slept in my basement nuzzled against my sump pump, lulled to sleep by its near continuous eruptions. I noticed my pump was made in Ireland. Another reason to love the Irish. It’s keep me dry for 2 years now, and weathered yet another storm).

A young boy died in the storm…..crushed by a tree that fell into his 2nd floor apartment. There’s a large tree in the yard behind our house, and I did some quick visual measurements and asked my daughter not to sleep in her 2nd floor room situated towards the back of the house. She agreed. I feel kinda sheepish and reactionary now…..as if I was bullied into panic. But then again I’m not sure there’s a way to overreact when it comes to the safety of your children.

Yesterday was filled with biblical forecasts of doom and destruction. Today the same talking heads are explaining why, for most of the East Coast, it seemed like no more than a severe thunderstorm. I used to live on the banks of the Lackawanna River, and I can think of at least half a dozen instances of it lapping up into our yard after prolonged rains. I just drove down to my old stomping grounds and the river, while not exactly docile, is well within its banks. It almost made me feel smug.

So let the naysaying begin. The charges of hype will surely fly. And the next time a hurricane roars up the coast even more folks will ignore the warnings to get the hell out of the way, remembering “Irene” and what didn’t happen more than what did. Yesterday they were reporting that Ocean City, Maryland could suffer catastrophic damages. This morning it’s sunny there and surfers are in the water. The hotels and beaches and bars will be open for business tomorrow. In the Battery Park section of NYC, which was supposed to be inundated by a huge storm surge, the police have nothing more to do than chase kids away from splashing in large puddles. I feel a bit whip-sawed by it all.

I sent a text to a good friend of mine who lives in Luzerne County. I mentioned my fear of basement flooding, and he reminded me that his house ended up floating down the Susquehanna river during the Agnes Flood of 1972. That brought some much needed perspective.

It could have been worse. So much worse.

In truth, we just got lucky. “Only” 10 people died, which is small comfort for the families of the deceased but quite remarkable when you think back to those satellite images showing a raging storm larger than the continent of Europe snaking its way up the coast. Even an astronaut viewing the storm from space called it “terrifying”. You hardly needed to be an expert to fear this ghastly computerized blob on the map. Nothing this large can be good.

At the last moment it appeared to veer East, sparing New York City the relentless rain and storm surges projected. It’s still not over, as it’s currently drenching New England. But mainly it’s turned from biblical to inconvenient. Power outages. Flash floods. Fallen trees. Even the cable news channels seem bored by now. Reporters seem glassy-eyed.

In modern memory, Irene probably won’t last much longer than the storm itself.

I do wonder what that says about us.

–Tom Flannery

We Are Here If You Need Us (ms)

It’s a scene that’s been playing out across the country. You know the one, the kid fresh from high school leaves home to start life at college, the parents waving good bye from the front porch or, if the school is close enough, dropping the kid off with more than a few reminders of home. It’s common enough and it’s rather sad.

I think as parents we never expect the day to arrive. It’s hard to look at a squirming little baby, a toddler, a first-grader or a high school freshman as anything more than our child. Our child will always be with us here, in this house, nice and safe. Deep down we know that won’t happen. We know deep down that there will come a time when our child walks out the door taking the first steps toward maturity.

There are friends of mine who face that moment even now. One of them has a student six hours away, the other three or so. No matter the exact time, it’s far enough to rule out a weekly commute. Their families wished the kids well and sent them off as they knew they would from the moment the child was born.

It is hard to separate yourself from your kids and I guess most of us really don’t. We have too many sleepless nights, runny noses, broken hearts, senior proms and graduations under our collective belts to do that. We have an investment in them, by golly, and like any good money manager we want to see our investment safe and unthreatened by outside forces that can liquidate it in a heartbeat.

We go through eighteen or so years of their lives in that role, fiercely protecting that which is ours, guarding it from harm, watching over our investment while adding judiciously but at the end of that time they no longer really belong to us. We must cut them loose but that snip of the scissors is a terrifying sound, about as bad as a car door slamming outside on a night when you know your kid hasn’t come home and that door, could it be someone bringing terrible news? It is a terrifying thing to do and at the same time very sad. Knowing it had to happen doesn’t make it easier.

So, these last few days of summer, folks are packing up their kids and shipping them off to the schools of their choice. New doors will open for them, new things will be learned, new friends made and memories to match them all will be recorded as well.

Those of us left behind will sit and ponder the empty nest we are left with and then slowly begin to move along with our new lives taking care of business as we go, secure in the knowledge that so far as our children are concerned we have done what we can, they are on their own.

Not to worry, really, they’ll call. They always do.

–Mike Stevens

Playing Ball at Memory Park (tf)

Stevens, that old curmudgeon, has admitted to liking baseball. Well….sort of liking baseball.

I feel there is hope for humanity when Stevens admits to liking anything other than toy trucks and taking pictures of leaves.

But I do share his ambivalence for the game….to a certain degree at least. We all do.

We were all duped by the Bonds/McGwire/Sosa era. We filled ballparks and oohed and ahhed when one baseball after another was obliterated and hallowed records started to fall like ten-pins. Deep down we knew something was amiss. I mean…just one look at the size of Bond’s head was all you needed to know. The guy was 170 as a rookie. Now he looked like somebody stuck an air hose up his ass.

McGwire played the country bumpkin to the hilt, all the while injecting himself with scientifically perfect doses of ‘roids that allowed him to not only pass Maris and Ruth, but to gob on then as he went by. He was a lovable Paul Bunyon…the Babe reincarnated for an ESPN generation. Nobody in their right mind could look long at the guy…with legs that looked like tree trunks and arms that blotted out the sun…and not think he wasn’t cheating. So we looked only long enough to see him float another fast-ball towards downtown St. Louis. Then we cheered even louder. Baseball was fun again.

And Sosa was his lovable Tonto. Kind of a goofy, petulant, astoundingly charismatic guy who played the game like a kid, and therefore got away with just about anything, including getting caught red-handed with a corked bat and playing hard only when he felt like it. He hit the ball 10 miles….then would take a hop- skip up the first base line in a piece of showman-ship that an old school pitcher like Bob Gibson or Don Drysdale would have made him fearful for his life over. But hey, this was Sammy….and he was untouchable. The idol of kids everywhere…..and him and McGwire seemed to be rooting each other on. It was all so warm and fuzzy. To swim against the tide was to be baseball’s version of the Grinch. Pitcher’s who dared to walk any of them were booed no matter what the situation.

But the truth came out, as it inevitably always does. The trail of needles was so bountiful you’d hesitate to walk barefoot anywhere near these guys.

McGwire’s reputation was destroyed on national television, in his infamous “I’m not here to talk about the past” testimony before Congress. He appeared with his granny glasses…..was about half the size he used to be, and made a complete jackass out of himself. Unlike Sosa, McGwire couldn’t pretend he couldn’t speak English either. Sammy was able to slither out of the hearings by forgetting how well he could call up English words like “20 million a year” at contract time. But no matter. It was all over. Even Bonds, at the time probably the greatest baseball player who ever lived, wore out his welcome with stunning displays of arrogance….refusing to admit what even a slow child knew, and blaming everybody but himself for his possible perp-walks. The Giants let him go, and he waited for another team to make him an offer. None did. The guy was radioactive. It was the most anti-climatic retirement ever.

They all cheated. And loads of others too. It’s gotten so goofy that Alex Rodriguez, who if he stays healthy may pass Bonds as the greatest home run hitter in baseball history, might not make it into the hall of fame due to his doping, which he denied and denied and then admitted to when he had no choice. If there’s justice in the world Bonds of course won’t get in either. Nor will McGwire or Sosa. Or the greatest pitcher I’ve ever seen, Roger Clemons. All have tainted the game….and the players they’ve played with. Jim Thome, one of baseball’s good guys, recently hit his 600th home run. He probably did it legally. But there’s always going to be that little bit of doubt, and that’s not fair to Thome.

A great game has been tarnished for sure. But it’s still a great game. It’s as uniquely American as Blues music. It’s broken our hearts before but it always makes amends. This summer is a searing one. The Phillies rolling and tumblin’. Yankees/Boston in the usual stranglehold. The Brewers doing their bit for the small market teams. Even the Pirates, who have since returned to their normal dreadfulness, made us smile for half a season at least. All good stuff.

All good reasons for a game of catch in the backyard.

–Tom Flannery

Playing Ball at Memory Park (ms)

I don’t think about, read about or wonder about baseball as much as I once did. The game has become one played by millionaires for the enrichment of other millionaires and, judging by the admission and eats at a game, open mostly to those with more than a few bucks in their pockets.

To my way of thinking Little League is still at least somewhat representative of the game, and remember it is only a game. Kids don’t go out and play for money; they play for the run, the hit, the sound of the crowd cheering, the spirit and love of the game, all the things you really ought to play for. Little League has progressed though and out of necessity has changed with the times so there are corporate sponsors and the like. More power to them if that’s needed to keep the League going around the world; It gives kids an opportunity to play baseball and that is a good thing. I did a story once with a guy of about forty who came to the Little League World Series years before as a pitcher. As we walked out onto the field I asked if he remembered it well and the story he told was as fresh and clear as if the game happened the day before. Memories are fine things.

The good old days of pro baseball were a lot more fun, a lot more interesting. Only a few rules here and there to keep things somewhat civil, dirt and grass on the field, hot summer afternoons and a crowd of thousands brought to a hush by the weight of the next swing of the batter. The characters were remarkable as well. As a kid I read books about them and loved their nicknames, their antics on and off the field, the memories they made for all who came to watch the game, or to listen.

Radio was big back then and every house had at least one centered in the front room. Each evening the family would gather round to listen to the shows and later to baseball games. On warm summer nights folks would bring their radios closer to the front door so everyone could sit out, catch a breath of air and listen to a game at the same time. Depending on the neighborhood you could walk up a street and listen to the same game on different radios for the whole block. There were only three kinds of sounds to be heard beyond the game itself: groans, cheers and the clink of ice cubes in a glass.

One final story and I’ll let you go. I was at the town park the other evening taking some pictures in the nearby creek, trying to capture the sense of late summer, the dog days. I finished my work, put the cameras away and caught sight of a man and three boys having a little fielding, pitching and catching practice each trading places with the other for a few pitches; a round robin kind of routine. The man, I think he was the father of one of the boys, offered comment, the kids hit then ran to base, maybe tagged out but surely moved on to the next position. There were no winners, it was just practice, a nice way to spend a pretty summer evening. Maybe I should look for more moments like that, maybe I’d enjoy baseball again.

Art in Small Packages (tf)

Stevens just wrote about stamps. Do they even make stamps anymore? He is quite the hidden Luddite at times, especially when he’s being all famous on TV.

The crap I get in the mail doesn’t have stamps on it. Just some red bar or a written notice saying the people bombing me with junk didn’t have to pay regular postage in order to do so.

I think it should be a law that anybody sending me anything through the mail that I didn’t specifically ask for has to pay me to open it. Even a token amount. Like a dollar.

They keep raising the price of stamps but I haven’t bought one in so long I have no idea what they cost. I do know that the government is going to whack over 100,000 postal employees so maybe they didn’t raise the price enough. The last I remember a stamp cost 29 cents but I think that was 30 years ago or something.

My kids think using a phone for talking is quaint and old-fashioned. I’m not sure they even know what a stamp is. If I told them you used to have to lick stamps to get them to stick they’d think I was mad. Actually, I’m not sure when you stopped having to lick stamps. Does anybody know this crucial piece of information? Has to be a cost-cutting move. Stevens is telling me it has to do with dead horses but I think he’s pulling my leg. He cannot be trusted with such sensitive information. He is, after all, a television star.

Email, texting, video chat, it’s a new world. New rarely means better, but sometimes it does. It’s nice to send an email to someone 1000 miles away and have them reply 5 minutes later. The “Dear John” letter has been transformed. You can be dumped in writing…..in near real time. And she can attach pics of the guy who replaced you if she feels like twisting the knife a bit.

But still, there’s nothing like receiving a good old-fashioned letter. Handwritten and gossipy and all that. My aunt is pushing 90 and she writes letters all the time. And they’re marvelous. She’s got her own stationery and everything. If somebody sends you a handwritten letter on their own stationery, you know they like you. It’s a good feeling. And a letter lasts. It’s depressing to think you’d need to hack a Yahoo account to gain insight into somebody when they’re dead.

But forget the US mail. We’ve not no time for such niceties these days. We demand an immediate response, spelling and proper grammar be damned. We are too busy to sit at a desk and craft something in longhand. Quicker to use 2 thumbs and send along such profundity as “OMG R U CR8Z?” I think my Aunt would stick a pencil in her retina before resorting to such shorthand.

What has happened to the written word? It is being massacred. Even a spell-checker doesn’t fix the “their/there/they’re” and “to/too” and “your/you’re” dilemma. A peruse through facebook is all you need to know about education in this country. It’s not that people don’t know proper usage, it’s that they don’t really care. “You know what I mean” is what they’ll say when you point out that their latest post contained 15 mis-spelled words. And they’re right. You do know what they mean. But that kinda makes it all the more sad. It’s accepted that people write like crack-addicted baboons…because we’ve adapted. We can decipher gibberish….all in the name of saving time.

And it’s always amusing to me that the very people who haven’t mastered the English language themselves are the ones most likely to get all red white and bluey when they hear a bi-lingual speaking Spanish. When I listen to the Fox News stormtroopers saying people in this country should “all speak American” I feel like digging a hole to Canada.

But, alas, what’s a poor boy to do? My father once saw bad grammar on a box of “Sarah Lee” cake mix. He wrote them a charming, folksy, handwritten letter. With a stamp and all.  The company not only apologized, but fixed the mangled syntax and forwarded him about a 10 year supply of free stuff. Not sure why this is relevant but it surely is and you know it.

Ah, the “know/no” conundrum…

I could go on but you get the idea.

Take a few minutes and write someone a nice letter. And when you put a stamp on it can you let me know what they cost?

–Tom Flannery

Art in Small Packages (ms)

I go up to my local post office about once a week to check on any business mail I might have. As you might guess I don’t get much mail along those lines and I probably could go once a month and not miss anything. Well, I would miss looking at the stamps.

A new supply of stamps comes in about once a month but I never know when so my weekly trips give me a chance to check if the shipment arrived.

If it has, the clerk on duty is good enough to show me the latest pieces. I frequently buy a sheet or two of those I like most. I don’t save them though I once did collect stamps; I use them for I like to share the wealth.

Stamps used to be rather boring, to tell the truth; pictures of famous men, some historic moments, some locations of national value but not much beyond that. They were good engravings I thought but lacked, well, showmanship I guess is the best word. They seemed bland and I guess that is one of the reasons I gave up collecting. The other major one was that most of my collection of unused stamps, with the glue still on the back, somehow ended up in a basement where the moisture in the air was rather high. No one checked, the glue worked and that was that.

So far as mailing is concerned I guess I go with the rest of the country in that I don’t do as much as I once did. I still send cards and I pay a few bills that way but much of my communication and bill paying is done on the Web. So convenient and handy the Web but I do like stamps.

I like them because they are really miniature works of art produced by some of the best artists and engravers. I admire them immensely and frankly almost hate to use them for when they are gone I no longer can look at them.

On the other hand using them is a good thing for it contributes at least a tiny fraction to the postal service which deserves it. My mail comes six days a week (maybe five soon) and it still costs less than a half dollar to send a letter to Alaska or Hawaii and that’s a good bargain. I also like to allow others to see these little beauties and sending stamps off to places around the country does that. I like to think a stamp celebrating Jazz in America might brighten someone’s day. Maybe the one honoring Mark Twain could remind a person of stories read in the front room on a cold winters night. Lots of possibilities.

So, who knows, maybe soon we’ll see more changes in the mail and in a way that will be sad for tradition and custom are good things and knowing the mail would be there every day was comforting. I can only hope  it will be deemed necessary to keep those little works of art called stamps around.

–Mike Stevens

Remembering the Vet and Harry and Pop (tf)

My father passed away a year and a half ago. I miss him intensely still. But time is allowing me to remember some of the wonderful times we had together. And that makes me smile, in spite of the tears.

August is when I start tuning in to baseball. I am really getting into the Phillies drive to the World Series this year. They seem a near perfect blend of starting pitching and situational hitting, and I shudder for that poor city if they find a way to not win it all this year. Philadelphia does not tolerate teams that do not perform up to expectations.

I followed the Phils as a kid. The Mike Schmidt teams. On channel 17. The smooth-as-butter voice of Harry Kalas drifting through summer nights. Richie Asburn the perfect side-kick….sounding like a guy with a few drinks in him who wandered into the booth by mistake and decided to stay ’cause it was so much fun.

It was the days of Veteran’s Stadium, a ghastly edifice that managed to feel creepy even when it was relatively new. But still, even filled with drunks, druggies, thugs, pimps, hookers, guys who used to pee in the sinks, and those one-legged dudes selling pencils, it was a glorious place to spend a summer night. Schmidt would strike out 3 times and he’d need a police escort to get to his car. The next night he’d hit one 450 feet and he’d be a god again….the guy every little kid wanted to be when he grew up.

Pete Rose at first base, bouncing the ball high off the artificial turf at the end of each inning….slapping hits to all fields. When the Phillies needed a hit, it seemed Rose always came through. He’s the one guy on the team nobody ever booed. He played so hard and with so much enthusiasm, fans never dared. Santa Claus, yes. Rose, no. Schmidt carried his awesome gifts as a burden. You could almost feel the weight of expectations on his back. Rose was the old guy who managed to stay perpetually young. They were perfect for each other.

My Dad would take us to “Scranton Night at the Vet”….a bus trip filled with beer coolers for a tacky promotional night that consisted of a brief mention on the scoreboard in the 7th inning and seats so far back in left-field that even Mike Schmidt couldn’t reach us. One night he tried like hell though, and dropped a home run about 10 rows in front of us. It looked like a missile launch. Or somebody hitting a golf ball with a driver. You can take McGwire and all the needles he stuck in his ass, but I don’t think any human being ever hit a baseball farther than Mike Schmidt.

But my Pop was ever-resourceful. One year he wrote a nice column about the mayor of Philly, and in gratitude the mayor sent game tickets….with seats in the Mayor’s box. Enclosed in glass, with air-conditioning, private toilet, bar, bartender, free food, televisions, and piped in sound. And of course a private security guard at the door to keep the partisans away. We felt like Kings watching over the un-washed masses.

Those were indeed the days. But of course the Vet was dynamited eventually, which was entirely proper since the place was a sewer that just happened to have a diamond with fake grass in the center, but still you felt sorta bad about it. Worse was when Harry Kalas dropped dead a few years later in the broadcast booth. My youth wasn’t being chipped away…but gouged out in large chunks. And then Pop got sick.

I met Mike Schmidt at a celebrity golf tourney at the Scranton Country Club years ago. He still looked the magnificent specimen. Huge in person…..like heroes should be. Turns out he’s a complete asshole. Churlish and arrogant beyond belief. He could hit a golf ball about 6 miles, but all his drives ended up in left field. Guy had a wicked hook he could not control, and I found myself rooting for him to hit yet another out-of-bounds. It sucks to find out your idols are human, and I felt better about myself for booing the bum when he’d strike out all those years ago.

I think my Dad would like the current Phillies. An odd-ball assortment of silky-smooth vets and scruffy kids and live arms and a hayseed manager who won’t put up with any nonsense, and the larger than life Ryan Howard hitting the ball Schmidt-like distances…..or striking out and getting booed.

He’d miss the Vet though. And Harry Kalas. And Pete Rose’s head-first slides. And being able to procure tickets to the Mayor’s box in such a cool, understated way. My Dad was old-school. Naming stadiums after corporations never met his approval, no matter how gorgeous a place “Citizen’s Bank Park” might be. He’d still call it “The Vet”.

He’d miss it all.

But not as much as I miss him.

— Tom Flannery

A Friendly Food Fest (ms)

They are a rite of summer, the church bazaars and volunteer fire department picnics that go on virtually every day of every week. If a dedicated fan of such events were to try and go to each it would be a full-time job as would the time needed afterward to lose the weight gained. These are not low calorie gatherings to say the least.

A favorite church picnic of ours always has food galore and I enjoy it like everyone else. The potato pancake stand offers three for a dollar fifty and the oil is free. There is always a line of folks waiting patiently to get their official taste of summer as some would call it. My must have is something called elephant ears so named because they look like elephant ears, in a way. They are really fried dough sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and for some reason these little treats have become a must have each year. We all have our little dietary pitfalls. Beyond the food we go to the bazaar for the people who are there, those we know and those we don’t know.

There are always people there we have not seen for a whole year, since the last event actually. They come for the same reasons: to enjoy the food and the company, to catch up on friends and neighbors. Here is the place you find out the kids you remembered as stroller riders are now grown with families of their own. You find a friend who has changed jobs twice since last you saw him. It is like writing a years worth of diary entries in a single night.

Almost as interesting, though, is the opportunity to do some serious people watching. That is my hobby for my ideas often come from observing my fellow humans and what they do. At the church bazaar one of the best hangouts is right near the “Treasure Shop” as I like to call it. I don’t know if there is an actual name for it but it has been there as long as the bazaar. This is the place where you go to shop for things you never knew you needed until you see them. In truth it is a giant garage sale.

Weeks before the event we are all invited to drop off anything we think might sell. Dutifully we take over a few items and add them to the growing piles of stuff dropped off by other well intentioned folks who also happen to be looking for a place to put their treasured items. It’s perfect for that invaluable shot glass from the Bahamas or the highly sought Grand Canyon toothpick holder.

Of course we shop the sale as well and always manage to bring home a few things. There is that unwritten law, you know, which dictates an  amount of possibly useful stuff be brought into a house to replace the surely useless stuff taken out each year. It’s not written anywhere, this law of which I speak, but it is valid; a visit to any rite of summer on a warm evening will prove it so.

— Mike Stevens

Board Is Not Boring (tf)

Stevens loves to bring up the bad old days.

“Burger Time”. Good God. That wretched little man scampering across the screen like some crazed drug fiend desperate for another fix. It was hideous, and when our history is written”Burger Time” may indeed be pinpointed as the nadir of western civilization. Or at least the Reagan years. I think James Watt said it was damaging the morals of American youth. Or that may have been the Beach Boys Watt was talking about. There’s a bit of a haze over the 80s so I get confused. I’m sure you understand.

Thanks to Stevens and his love for subliminal torture methods, I now have the soundtrack of this vile game stuck in my head, and even banging my skull off the side of my desk won’t dislodge it. This is the type of thing that deranged people hear right before they pick up an ax and start decreasing the population. It’s positively demonic.

My brother became a wicked Burger Timer….and actually memorized patterns to where he could get to the 3rd or 4th level without even looking at the screen. He was very bored in those days and thankfully has come a long way since then. But at the time I thought him to be some sort of idiot savant, and I was, quite frankly, intimidated from going anywhere near the game.

Unless I was drunk. Late nights I’d get home during what Chuck Berry called the “wee wee hours”, and fire it up. Drunkenness and video games that make arcade-type noises and have dreadful graphics are the perfect combination. The brain has already shrunk from half a case of Rolling Rock and a few closing time chasers, so it’s the ideal size to be mesmerized by something sober people would normally find childish and inane.

I’d sit on the floor eating Doritos and controlling the little Burger Time troll as if the fate of the planet was at stake. I could play for hours, unless I got really sick and had to throw up. The next day I could never remember how far along in the game I’d gotten, but my guess is not very far, since my favorite part was watching the guy off the ledge. That’s obviously not the object of the game but it would always make me laugh. You know, the way being stoned on Bob Marley-esque stogies might make one laugh. Maniacally. The rolling on the floor type of laughing that nobody else understands. Just you and your ingested chemicals.

Not sure what happened to “Burger Time”. I vaguely remember graduating from college back in those days, and when that happens you’re not allowed to do half the things you used to do. Gradually the bottles of Rolling Rock decreased and video games seemed stupid again. Life intervened I suppose. One of life’s bitter ironies is that some of the best times we ever had were times when we had no life at all. When real living begins….you know….the kind that makes you get up early in the morning and pay bills and leaves a lot less time for AC/DC records….that’s when things get really dry and dull.

So, at the risk of giving Stevens an even larger head, I suppose I should thank him for reminding me of a time when my biggest concern was how hard a head had to slam against a bar to embed a bottle-cap in the forehead.

Yea….I was living the dream back then.

–Tom Flannery

Board Is Not Boring (ms)

Despite the best efforts of the companies that create and sell video games I have never been caught up in them save for one brief time.

A console hooked to our television drew my attention and I was soon intensely focused on Burger Time. I dove into it with little reservation. I was soon furiously building giant hamburg sandwiches with the fervor of a wild man while frantically avoiding the army of condiments threatening to send me back to the grill. Oh, there were desperate moments. Tell the truth, I became addicted. Fortunately I was able to wean myself from Burger Time before any permanent damage was done, while I still had a life beyond the confines of the television set.

After recovering from all that it occurred to me that the games to be played were board games. Some much younger acquaintances of mine might call them “bored games” for they do none of the things young people expect from their games. Neither do they trap you in front of a screen for hours at a time killing, maiming and blowing up that which you can’t kill or maim. Additionally they can take a player into the real world by requiring some imagination, a bit of mental acuity and the ability to personally interact with people eye to eye and not through a game console. Perhaps there are electronic games which allow a player to do all that; those I’ve seen do not.

We have many of our favorites still in their original boxes. Monopoly, Chinese Checkers, good old reliable original checkers, even a chess board which was largely unused for that was one game we never really achieved any competence in. The rest of them had a decent workout in the years before they went off to retirement.

The games we played, the board games, required thinking that went well beyond the basic yes or no level. We had to think far enough along to try blocking our opponents moves, we stared each other down while making our choices, we howled with glee when one proved correct. It was often not as simple as you might think.

There is a strategy game called Risk and it is especially complicated. It involves warfare on a global scale though the graphics are simple. The play involves creating armies then positioning them to defend your territory or attack others. We played most often with friends of ours and the games could go on for hours if we wanted. I recall stretching one nail biting war across two weekends but the norm was a night of fun and conversation, strategy and good natured ribbing when places like Kamchatka were taken over. Board games seem elementary at first glance but they are far from that.

This piece is not a tribute to board games nor a slam of their electronic counterparts; it is merely an observation that we’ve come a long way in the games we play. I fear sometimes that we have gone too far to the point where we’re trapping our imaginations and communications in one small box of soldered electronic parts.

–Mike Stevens

Weight No More (tf)

Exercise Smexercise. This nation is hemorrhaging cash, jobs, and its global reputation, and all anybody wants me to do about it is go to the gym. What for? So I can get stronger and lift more foreign-made televisions onto Wal-Mart shelves once my job gets sent to Sri Lanka? Last I checked people who exercise get old, then very sick, and then they die. The same things happen to people who spend their time reading on the couch. Sure….maybe you get an extra few years to live in a home where ladies making $7 an hour check you for bed-sores a few times a week, but I’d rather die earlier and avoid total strangers rolling me over to look at my ass. Perhaps you people painfully dragging yourselves and your way too-short shorts and obscenely expensive running shoes up and down my street in the unrelenting heat feel differently? It’s a free country after all. If you don’t die now, you’re gonna die later. It’s about the only thing we all agree on without blaming Bush, Obama, or global warming. Some take it a bit further of course, and assume a preponderance of Gold’s Gym franchises beyond the pearly gates, staffed with nubile virgins, but I’m not here to debate everlasting life. I’m here to rest, so I don’t make bad things worse. This world can be a mean place.

I don’t suggest becoming slothful like Brian Wilson was in the 70s and 80s….staying in bed and gorging on potato chips and hallucinogenic drugs. In retrospect there were worse ways to spend the days of Nixon and Reagan, but Brian may have overdone it just a bit. There is middle ground between keeping the blood flowing and willingly entering a permanent vegetative state, and if you try hard enough you can find it. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

I do think everybody should read more. Stop working on 6-pack abs, grab an actual 6-pack, and start filling your head with what you should know but don’t. I wish people in this country obsessed more with their astounding lack of, say, geographical knowledge, than they do with the size of their pants. Most high school kids can’t find Europe on a map. Europe. Forget asking them to pinpoint an actual country. We’re talking continents here. And I do think it should be illegal for the United States to be involved in a war unless every person of voting age in the US knows who we’re fighting, and where exactly the enemy is located. If US voters fail the quiz, they get drafted. Roosevelt asked our parents and grand-parents to sacrifice during a time of war. Today, we’re asked to shop more.

Ok, I seemed to have drifted some from the exercise thing. But that’s what happens when you have all this excess energy, like me.  If I was worn down by excessive barbell use, I’d have no energy for such verbal meanderings. And that would be a pity. Who wants to get from A to Z by going through the alphabet in order anyway? Organizational freaks, that’s who. Like runners.

And lo and behold. Lookee yonder. The clock. It’s time for my nap.

Happy sweating….

–Tom Flannery

Weight No More (ms)

Every day, it seems, someone comes out with a new diet for those of us who are weight challenged. The lucky few who aren’t constantly fighting fat simply continue snacking while we seek the salvation of weight loss promised by the next book or the newest magazine cover. I can speak with some experience here, Dear Reader, because I have been involved with my share over time.

At one point I followed a diet that had me drinking a lot of water each day; the drawback can be summed up in one phrase: what goes in must come out. One writer suggested I shouldn’t eat after three in the afternoon but my stomach and brain seemed to think it appropriate that eight hours later, at the awkward time of eleven, I needed to fill up. My conclusion is every diet offers a side dish of problems.

I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking this whole matter through and I can now proudly offer a plan that goes beyond the ordinary. Tell the truth, I can pretty much say that this is a foolproof plan and I am nearly certain I could get a doctors recommendation if only I could take the time out of my schedule to go to a doctor and present it. Perhaps the next AMA convention.

Anyway, I wanted you all to be the first to hear about this so I’ll concern myself with endorsements later on. I felt you should have first opportunity to sign up for: Mike’s Motivational Mowing March.

Now, we all know that exercise is key to any weight loss program; you need to burn off those calories even though you cut back on your intake. That body fat we’ve carefully stored away simply has to go and I want to help — here’s how.

For the low introductory rate of forty dollars an hour you can come to the ranch and walk at a GPS monitored rate behind my self-propelled lawn mower. Using the carefully designed diagram I’ve developed after years of painstaking study it is quite possible to assume you will burn off about four hundred calories, ten dollars a hundred. As it stands we must limit each participant to only one hour and that will continue until the fertilizer kicks in. We are working to strike an off-property deal with neighbors but that will involve a slightly higher fee. Additionally, for those seeking to maximize their workout, we will allow weed whacking once around for a mere ten dollars. Raking is twenty dollars more but you can take the cut grass home with you.

Now I’m sure you’re thinking this is radical stuff and it is but it seems to me that’s whats needed. By golly, we’ve got to take the bull by the horns or, in this case, the mower by the handles and I am offering my closest friends the opportunity to get in on the ground floor. Sitting still won’t cut it, ladies and gentlemen, but cutting it will.

Oh, and when you sign up, be sure to ask for your discount on our companion snow clearing winter program. Ask for it by name: Tummy Tightening Throwing. It’s another winner!

–Mike Stevens

Hot. Hot. Hot. (tf)

You can tell fall is almost here because football players are dropping like flies on the practice field from heat stroke. Ironic, no? Won’t be long now before drunk fat guys from Chicago and Green Bay will be painting their faces and not wearing much-needed shirts as the temps drop to single digits. You gotta love football. Nothing is better suited to chase away the wretched summer blues.

NFL pre-season games start next week. Meaningless games really….but hard not to watch, at least to see what huge star will get maimed and be out for the season on some freak hit by a savage 4th string rookie linebacker who’ll be spending his winter stocking shelves no matter how well he plays. Pre-Season games are even worse than the Pro-Bowl, and you don’t get much worse than that. But still, it’s football, with its promise of weekends on the couch and waffling by Brett Favre, perhaps the most blatant narcissistic personality even born to a woman. And certainly the one with the strongest arm.

I actually prefer college football. Every Saturday night I have a date with large pillows and Brent Musburger. But college games don’t start until the end of August.

This heat is infernal. When sitting makes you sweat through your shirt, something is drastically wrong.

This is the time of year I start glancing at baseball….mostly because I migrate to the basement where it’s cooler, and the TV is next to the fan. I noticed the Pirates…the Pirates, were actually in first place a little over a week ago. Then they lost a 19 inning game to Atlanta on a ghastly blown call at the plate, and ever since have been playing like drunken zombies….losing 6 or 7 in a row…..mostly by lopsided scores. You know….like the Pirates. It was fun while it lasted. For a time Pirate home games didn’t look like wakes for unpopular relatives. But as least Pittsburgh still has its beloved Steelers. A married Ben Roethlisberger is now at the helm, so at least local college co-eds can rest easier when they head to the ladies room.

And more irony. Baseball will end in late October, with the players wearing skull caps and hand warmers. Which reminds me of 1979, the last time the Pirates played in the world series. Some of the player’s wives showed their enthusiasm by blowing whistles in the stands….and one froze to the bottom lip of the center fielder’s wife. No wonder the Pirates take summers off.

But that’s a long way off. The heat of this summer continues to hover, like Mitt Romney does every 4 years. The words “debt ceiling”, which a week ago were on everybody’s lips, have now been assigned to the future Jeopardy answer file. How quickly we move on from near world-wide financial catastrophe. Maybe that’s ’cause of football too. Or perhaps it’s the guilty pleasure of “Shark Week”, where we all gather with the Discovery Channel to hear mangled survivors talk about nearly getting swallowed whole by large fish. I’ll admit I’m a huge “Shark Week” fan despite the goofiness of shows promoting the fact that Sharks don’t generally eat people by lining up poor wretches who have been partially eaten by Sharks. It seems self-defeating. But it makes for dumb TV at it’s finest….and has quickly turned into a cultural marvel. So what if you’re more likely to be devoured by a pack of rabid bees than eaten by a shark? Dramatic re-enactments of somebody getting eaten by bees would look stupid. But a good computer generated underwater camera shot of a shark with someone’s leg in his mouth? Now that’s entertainment.

But all this fun must end. Summer must burn itself out. The leaves will start to turn. Weekends will take on added significance. We will get into more debt. Brett Favre may or may not return. And the Pirates will finish in last place.

–Tom Flannery

Hot. Hot. Hot. (ms)

Seasons come and go but there are always little stops along the way worth noting. Take the dog days of summer.

No one outside of people who work in weather departments or those who write for a living pay attention to this critical time of summer. Too bad for it deserves a mention even if only for what it does: it slows things down…a lot. The last time we had a hot spell, think back to that.

Folks did as little as they could preferring to spend time indoors where if there wasn’t air conditioning fans might help at least a little. Of course if you had to work outside it was mighty rough. That spell of heat was nothing to fool with.

As happens in the dog days the wind seemed to come to a complete halt. Maybe it saw that it was hopeless and saved its breath for when it might do some good and really cool things down. The sun was bright and the clouds were few. If you were outside the only place for a break was under some trees and that didn’t do much good. Oh you were clear the sun all right but the grass was too hot to lie down in. The afternoons were the worst, I thought, when the heat seemed the highest and you could tell it was up there without even looking at a thermometer. As the old fellas used to say, it was so hot you could spit but it would burn away before it hit the ground.

Around about seven in the evening things lightened up a bit. The temperature came down a few degrees and you could sit on your porch and get some air. Walkers came by eager to get back into their routine and one brave soul was out jogging. I thought of the dog days of summer when a dog and his person came ambling up the street. The dog was big and had what would have been a nice coat for winter. He walked slowly, one paw in front of the other, head down, tongue hanging out. The walk was short, his companion said, because it’s just too hot. The dog looked up then with an expression that seemed to say, “You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. Let’s go home.” And off they went. That dog spoke for many of us during those days of high heat. “Let me alone. Don’t bother me. It’s too hot to do anything.”

The dog days of summer set us up, I think, for the change that comes with September. We’re almost eager to see the calendar page turn to reveal it. The kids get tired of summer, families have been vacationed out, we’ve seen the electric bill caused by the window air conditioner and we’ve about had it; time to move on like that old dog on my street.

Well, soon enough it’ll all be over and some would say good riddance. We might want to remind them of that say in January or February.

–Mike Stevens

The Solitary Game (tf)

Solitaire on the computer?! Eeeh Gadz! Stevens is so old school his blind spots are showing.

Everybody knows that Solitaire on the computer is what managers and their pet quislings play all day at their desks, in between cooking the books and spying on the rest of us and monitoring our internet usage. The very connotation of that wretched game is one of greedheads appointed by the man to step on the necks of the unwashed….allowing us freedom only on election day to go out and vote republican. It’s the kind of game that might be on the computer of every Royal behind the walls of Buckingham palace….to give them something to do when they’re not out murdering foxes and stomping on the Irish. Computer Solitaire has turned a harmless game which was the intellectual equivalent of running around in circles, into something positively Orwellian. Trust me on this. I know about these things.

You can’t “win” at Solitaire without cheating, as everybody knows but won’t admit. So there’s really no point in playing unless you’re the type who hits a golf ball sideways and then runs to find it and kick it back into the fairway before anybody else in your group can catch you. When Nixon played golf he’d stand on the first tee surrounded by savage looking Secret Service agents and hit drive after drive until one went straight and long. Then he’d pronounce all the previous shots “practice”. If anybody complained he’d simply have them audited by the IRS.

Nixon probably loved Solitaire. He may have been playing it when he was sitting in the Lincoln Room erasing 18 minutes of his tapes and drinking the top shelf scotch that he always saved for himself (he’d use cheap stuff for guests at White House dinners, ordering his kitchen help to cover the label with a napkin as they poured). If he didn’t win he’d just blame it on the Jewish press…..or throw a hissy fit and bomb Cambodia. Luckily he was so genetically dishonest and so addicted to the movie Patton (“The very thought of losing is HATEFUL to Americans”), a film he watched 3 times a night in the White House bunker, that we all know he devised a near-perfect system of treachery. You can look it up. It’s on the tapes.

I have it on good authority that Kissinger taught Mao Nixon’s version of the game, a fact that Henry couldn’t resist passing along to Brezhnev, who of course was mightily offended and started stockpiling warheads….detente be damned. How can anyone not consider such a game a threat to our national security?

And need I remind you that Solitaire was the game Richard Dreyfus was playing on deck of the Orca in the movie “Jaws” right before the shark began his quest to swallow Robert Shaw in one big gulp. The game is just creepy I tell you. It only leads to bad things.

So cease and desist this mind-numbing game that turns cheerful people into Manchurian Candidates. Read a book instead. If you’re illiterate, go outside and look for birds. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

I feel much better now. I’m off to send Stevens to a re-education camp.

–Tom Flannery

The Solitary Game (ms)

The old man’s fingers were pudgy though they had done their share of hard work in life. The index and middle fingers of his left hand were yellowed in the characteristic coloring of those who smoke cigarettes far too often. Overall though his hands were steady and held the deck of cards firmly, confidently. “Let’s go see if we can beat the devil”, the man said and riffled the deck of cards. Solitaire was his game and the evening had just begun; there was plenty of time to come out a winner.

My father played the game of solitaire forever, it was his favorite. I don’t know that he ever gambled as in a game of pitch at the annual beer garden clambake; his downfall in cards was the one-man game best played alone.

He worked the night shift and by the time he got home we were in bed. He would eat his evening meal and around about midnight, if I was still awake, I could hear the deck take its run through his fingers followed by the slap of the first card down on the table. This would go on for about an hour or so before he finally quit and went to bed. If asked the next morning who won the night before he would smile and say something like, “It was a draw.”

We have a few decks of cards here at the ranch but we never use them for our interest in card playing never really developed. We had friends who played bridge and some who played poker and pitch and though all offered to teach us the basics of the game we never took them up on their offer. When computers came along, well that was a different story altogether.

I discovered solitaire on the very first machine I bought and I’m still playing. I can add the sounds of the cards through the game if I want so it is something like the days of my kidhood listening to my father playing at the kitchen table.

Nearly every night I fire up a machine, click the icon for the game and deal a hand. My goal now is not to just win and beat the devil but to do it in record time. Truth be told I can become addicted to almost anything fairly quickly for I go by the old adage that if one is enough, two is twice is good but its really, really grand if you have a dozen. So it is with solitaire.

I don’t do a dozen games for by then I am too tired to see the cards straight but I go through a few. I can see how the Old Man got hooked on it for it soon becomes like playing with fifty-two old friends even if mine are of the electronic kind. I consider it something of a relaxing half-hour or so at a time of night too late for much more than the solitude found in solitaire, just me and the cards, fifty-two good friends and true.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, the contest always ends in a draw.

–Mike Stevens

The Debt Ceiling and Toy Trucks (tf)

I don’t understand the “debt ceiling”.

I sorta tried to understand it but gave up after a few minutes because I have a hard time taking anything seriously that involves John Boehner.

I suspect it’s monumentally important in some way, but Stevens, whose latest missive deals with his gaggle of toy trucks, is obviously unconcerned. I bow to his age and wisdom.

I guess we keep borrowing money and then borrowing more to pay off the penalty for not paying the first batch back. Or something to that effect. Meanwhile the US defense budget is $687,105,000,000, roughly 6 times as much as China, who we borrow much of our money from.

Hmmmm….

People with large brains get paid a lot of money to delve into things like this. Maybe it’s not as complicated as it’s made out to be.

$687 billion seems more than sufficient, yet 10 years ago a few guys with box cutters were able to bring this country to its knees with alarming ease, goading our government into hacking away at our civil liberties in the name of “freedom”…..which made sense to Dick Cheney and others like him, but mainly scared the rest of us into meek compliance. Even today none of us can board an airplane without stripping down, being poked and prodded like farm animals, and generally given the massive stink-eye by someone making $7 an hour. It’s all fairly depressing.

Over the last few years we’ve been bombarded with warnings that our nation is on the verge of economic collapse. Our first attempt to deal with the situation was to hand over billions of free money to the very people who botched things up so royally in the first place. Huge banks were thus saved, via government welfare, to rape and pillage some more, all in the name of the free market. Meanwhile, my mortgage bill kept coming (banks are very reliable in some respects), and every time I called my congressman to ask him to pay for it, he hung up on me.

I’m one of the lucky ones who can still pay my mortgage bill. My job hasn’t been off-loaded to Sri-Lanka yet. I can’t pay much more than my mortgage bill mind you, but still, I’ve got what I need and my kids are safe.

I should feel good about this….and I do. But then I don’t, because so many others are suffering and I’ve never been very good at ignoring the guy stuck on the side of the road. But when I see that the guy on the side of the road has a “Tea Party” sticker on his car…..that’s when I need pills and beer.

Fear can do all kinds of things to all kinds of people. Fear makes us want to blame somebody for our being scared. So the guy on the side of the road blames me and I blame the guy on the side of the road. Meanwhile, John Boehner gets re-elected and we still can’t bring mouthwash in our carry-on bag.

And we’re still on the verge of economic collapse.

And so now, it’s the “debt-ceiling”, which is a term I’ve never heard until this year. I suspect it will fade away eventually, much like “balanced budgets” and our fear of a depleted ozone layer. It’s amazing how there’s always something new to give us the willies.

Stevens is a wise old buzzard. He had it right all along.

I should be writing about toy trucks too. I can remember the one I got from that gas station in North Scranton….

–Tom Flannery

When They’re Gone They’re Gone (ms)

At one time in my life I imagined that those toy trucks found usually at  Christmas would someday become valuable collectors items. I envisioned a wonderful markup that would enable my retirement to some sunny island where I might take up a hobby like counting grains of sand at the beach. Alas, my planning went for naught.

Seems 135 million other folks had the same idea and the ever eager companies behind said trucks willingly met the demand and then some. The result was a glutted market that offered no space for huge profit margins. Rather, the selling price was barely able to claw its way up to the break even level. With my hopes and dreams for a fast million hopelessly dashed the trucks were resigned to shelves in various rooms as I set off in search of a new money making venture. Then, along came our first grandson.

Boys have, I think, an inherent interest in trucks, an interest which never really goes away no matter the age of the boy. It wasn’t long before he convinced me that it was better to play with the trucks than to simply look at their boxes stacked on the shelves. The boy is obviously wise beyond his years.

We brought them down a few at a time and grudgingly I would add one or two more each time he came to visit. Before long we had a virtual truck stop in a spare room.

I cannot begin to count the hours we have spent holding road races, building wood block towns for the trucks to drive in or simply crashing them together. I can report they’ve held up remarkably well though we have sent a few off to the garage for repairs. Now that a second grandson is coming of trucking age I expect a few more years of the same goings on much to our mutual delight.

This morning I ambled in to the spare room and decided to at least try make a reasonable pile of the tankers, fire trucks, old delivery wagons and the like which have made the floor of the room something of an obstacle course. I began stacking them as best I could (the boxes have long ago been destroyed) and fond memories of times well spent with nearly every one came to mind. The value of that play time far exceeds the value of the trucks on the open market.

The pile is formidable and rather shaky and will last only until the next time the grandsons come over. It will come apart in moments and I won’t say much about it. I realized a long time ago that we all go through stages in life and our grandkids are at the truck stage but soon the oldest one will move on followed shortly thereafter by the other. Truck play time will go with them.

I will be left with a tangle of ruined vehicles that have done their best to survive the imaginations of young children. I will also be left with some marvelous memories painted by two young boys and an older one of undetermined age.

–Mike Stevens