Dates

Dates … These are not really exactly dates, like maybe April 13th. My dates indicate changes, not nailed to one certain day, but rather a date “in parenthesis,” you might say.

Take, for instance, Labor Day. It is an icon of sorts that comes up on your mental screen as ''Summer's End.'' We simmer in this period of time in a pre-autumnal mood, not really wanting to accept the fact that it is all over for another year, for about a month when we see a first leaf appear on the lawn.

Suddenly it is Hallowe'en and the very next day, the pumpkins are out for collection and up here in Canada, out comes the Christmas decorations and the stores are changing their Seasonal Department items from rakes, orange leaf bags and sales on old flowers over to 4' plastic Christmas trees, Prestone sales and winter tires.

November 1st, c'mon, you can't be serious. I just last week did a steak on my BBQ, or was it, yes it was, it was in September! In the States, this occurs the day after Thanksgiving; Christmas is everywhere and by the time the Manger is occupied we are so fed up with it all, we begin simmering, something like a stew in a crock pot.

Come Valentine's Day, out comes the bright advent of better times, Easter, that period of awakening, the renaissance of warm sun and promises of ''I can't-wait-for-Memorial-Day''. Out of the blue it is again Labor Day and . . . sadly, we are a year older and up pops that dumb icon again. -- Jim Carten, Quebec

James Riddle, Robert Strange

Kennesaw Mountain and Vermont Connecticut.

Stay tuned.

We Don't Speak German Or Japanese

We nearly did.

2012

Should you renew your magazine subscriptions? Short answer: Yes. Ain’t nothing going to happen by the end of the year. At least, nothing that destroys the world, its credit cards and disputes with your neighbor. Jesus isn’t going to ride across the sky, the Jewish Messiah isn’t going to restore Israel to its former glory. Forget it.

I do believe that the world will come to an end and there will be a judgement on all man- and woman-kind. But just not at the winter solstice three years from now.

For me, I like movies where cities blow up, dams burst, the moon explodes and Kansas becomes beachfront property. Always look for a man having an affair, an old lady, a boy with his dog and a prominent landmark. (If you happen to be somewhere and see this combination, run for your lives; you are about to be in deep, deep trouble. The deepest trouble ever.)

My theory: Somewhere out there is a giant asteroid and it has our name on it. As we go spinning around the sun, so does it. Around and around the two of us go until, one fine day, we both happen to be headed toward the exact spot in the solar real estate and =BOOM= people don’t need to ask “What the **** was that??”

As James Baldwin wrote, “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time.” So the earth catches fire and burns long and deep. Even the survivalists don’t last more than a minute longer than the rest of us. And out of the skies, just before the hit, we hear: “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks.”

It Pays To Keep Trying

There is much to be said for persistence, for standing behind your principles, for never giving up. It’s just sometimes you need to hang on longer than most people, perhaps a lot longer. Consider the case of Cha Sa-soon, who would have her driver’s license and needed patience, lots of it.

SEOUL, South Korea - A woman in South Korea who tried to pass the written exam for a driver's license with near-daily attempts since April 2005 has finally succeeded on her 950th time.

The aspiring driver spent more than $4,200 in application fees, but until now had failed to score the minimum 60 out of a possible 100 points needed to get behind the wheel for a driving test. Cha Sa-soon, 68, finally passed the written exam with a score of 60.

It’s not all downhill from here. Ms. Cha needs to pass the driving test first and I don’t want to guess how many times it will take. Maybe she will get lucky and pass it on the first try. Or the tenth. Or whenever. Perhaps the inspector will go easy on her, which I hope never happens.

How would you like to be in front of, behind or next to someone who barely passed her written exam and, perhaps, her road test? This is not my idea of a safe place to be, especially in a country which does not have a tradition of driving and/or road rules. I’ll take the bus, thank you.

That's Not Funny At All

Stephen Colbert, moderator of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” is a parody of Bill O’Reilly – and does a good job of being a pompous right-winger.

He’s also a good actor, as I found out one night when someone showed a snippet of a tv show he was in. I don’t know the name, nor the plot, but it turned out his character was very good at forging signatures of famous historical people. Stephen played a very different person than what he does four nights a week on his show.

Many years ago, I watched another tv drama, about a traveling salesman who heard stuff in his head. If there was much of a plot, I missed it, but it turned out fairly well at the end. Never heard of the star, but he was a very good dramatic actor. Later on, I saw him as a comedian, name of Don Rickles. He could have done both, equally well.

Yet another tv drama centered on a clothing manufacturer whose factory was struck by its workers. The owner was out on the line with them, arguing and showing that he could do their work as well as they. Another good performance by a talented dramatic actor, name of Jerry Lewis. Not “the kid” anymore, but very involved in this performance.

You’ve never heard of the big British comedian Kenneth More. Everyone thought it was a huge mistake to cast him in a dramatic film, but he turned out to be just the best fit for the starring role in the first Titanic epic, “A Night To Remember” (1958), still regarded as the best of those films.

Dead Man Walking

(CNN) -- On the holiday known as the Day of the Dead, a Brazilian bricklayer walked into his own funeral.

The sight of Ademir Jorge Goncalves alive shocked relatives, some of whom tried to jump out of the windows of the funeral home in southern Brazil.

"In my 10 years in this business, I have never witnessed a scene like this," said Natanael Honorato, manager of the funeral home in the Parana state.

On November 1, some family members and friends had identified the victim of a car crash as the 59-year-old Goncalves. They scheduled his funeral for the following day, Dia de Finados, a holiday when Brazilians remember loved ones who have died.

What Goncalves' family did not know is that he had spent the night drinking at a bar near the site of the crash, but he was not the victim.

When the bricklayer got word of his funeral, he showed up at the Funeraria Rainha das Colinas funeral home Monday morning.

Later that day, the mystery was solved when a family in a neighboring town came inquiring about a son who was missing. The family recognized the body -- and took it away for burial.

The Light That Wouldn't Change

Some things never change. The traffic light at North Main and Union, for instance: if you are crossing Main on Union, you can sit there until Jesus comes again in glory, at least at night. Even a cop told me to blow the light, as they have called for repairs many times and nobody has fixed it.

I only went thru it once and the rest of the time I make a right, do a U’ie and proceed up the street. Last night, I did this and a cop was coming; he never stopped me.

We had a light near my place that would stay red for close to five minutes. I saw a cop blow it after a couple of minutes; you and I would get a ticket, but the guy who gives tickets seems to be immune to them. It’s like Typhoid Mary, who spread the disease but never caught it herself. Typhoid Cops; a good name for them.

Back home, we had two main roads that intersected. You have to understand what we mean by “main roads” in this burg: you could stand in the middle of either one and not get hit by a car for several minutes. You could stand in the intersection and you would still be safe. We lived at the end of nowhere.

So there was a blinking yellow light which did its job and still had time off. Then someone decided we needed a regular red-yellow-green light; nobody else in town held that opinion. Now we have a traffic light with nothing to do and a Councilman who can boast how he made everyone safe. He can do it in the middle of the intersection.

Why Not "Indian Winter"?

Let's assume there could be a cold snap in the middle of Spring. After all, we have warm snaps in the middle of Fall, so why not? After some nice days =bang= it’s cold.

Indian Winter, we call it. No, let’s not blame our More Native Than Us population. How about “Wooly Mastodon Spring”? Every time I think of those beasts, I am reminded of nothing but frigid, deep snow winters. They came across the ice bridge from the frozen tundra of Russia, or something like that; who knows?

Ok, so it’s Wooly Mastodon Spring. We’re enjoying a very nice, slowly warming sunny period. All is fine with the world and we are putting away our winter duds. There is a God and (gender unknown, if there is a gender) is smiling down on us. Suddenly, we get two weeks of Wooly Mastodon Spring and the winter gear comes out again.

How could Mr., Ms., or Neuter God do this to us? A cruel twist of meteorological fate that crushes our hopes and makes us bundle up against the forces of nature. In the distance we see the giant tusked animal swaying along in the sudden snow blast, laughing as only the Mastodon can laugh.

That night, as we relax with mugs of hot chocolate, the tv weather forecast is something like this: “Ok, folks, we just got hit with an Alberta Clipper, a Yukon Yunker, a Vancouver Voomer and a Manitoba Momma all at once. Bundle up, because it’s gonna be with us for most of next week. Sports after this.”

I Wonder If He's A Queer?

Someone on the local radio message board wants to know if the local tv weatherman is gay. All I want to know is if he’s accurate; I don’t want to sleep with him.

What’s the fascination with someone’s, uh, personal life? I knew a guy who decorated windows in some big Boston department store. In his small town, he went around looking like Klinger from M*A*S*H and it never bothered anyone. He went his way, lived his life; the rest of us did likewise, but in our own style.

Someone else on the board said he’s a public figure and “we can and should” ask these questions. Not so sure about that. Our media has turned itself into a prying eye, fed by the “oh, tsk tsk” of a voyeuristic society who covers its eyes while spreading its fingers just enough to take a peek at the scandal.

When was the last time (in hours?) you spread some juicy gossip about a neighbor or co-worker that nobody needed to know? That you had no right to mention? That you “just had to tell someone” and “don’t repeat this”? It’s going to be repeated as fast as you did when someone said the same thing to you.

So if he’s gay, does that change the forecast? Nah. If he gets married, does that affect the institution? No; Elvis characters in Vegas are worse, people pulling into the Little White Wedding Chapel in the back seat of a taxi -- those affect the institution. Not gays (unless they get married by Elvis, or in the back of a taxi at the Wedding Chapel).

He Rode A White Horse

In my room resides not only me, but a photo of a cute little boy of eight, astride a white horse, in his Cub Scout uniform. Confident, not at all scared of being on the beast.

Someone commented on how well I handled the animal and didn’t look at all uneasy. I pointed out to him how the horse was actually fake and the fence next to me hid the stairs which allowed us to get up on the contraption. “No,” he said, “that’s a real horse; I can tell.” He can tell? Really? How perceptive.

“You are quite mistaken,” I replied. “It’s fake; I was there. I went up the stairs behind that fence and onto the lifelike horse. I was there and you weren’t. It was in Howland’s Department Store basement, in Bridgeport.” He was insistent, knowing far more than I about real horses (and not much about fakes).

I wonder what he would have thought of the picture next to it, of younger me in a cowboy outfit, gun in hand. I remember that weapon of terror; it wasn’t a cap gun like all the other kids had; this one punched perforations in a roll of paper and made a mighty good sound. It was also hard to pull the trigger, but the result was worth it.

“That’s a real cowboy,” I can imagine him saying. “A little on the short side, and he must have been photographed in a western grove town where there are trees.” Silly me; my brother posed in a baseball uniform and I got the cowboy duds. He was professional while I looked as if I’d nail you first chance I got.

If I Were An Astronomer...

So here you are: A giant asteroid, the mother and father of all asteroids, is heading toward the only piece of real estate we have. It’s showtime and the curtain is about to go up. Or down, depending on your take. Jesus is getting ready to saddle up and gallop across the sky like a brilliant Santa Claus without Rudolf leading the way.

You and a very few other astronomers are vowed to secrecy because you don’t want to start a panic. Suppose you are wrong? Suppose you are right?

If you are wrong, you will have begun the worse panic on earth. Maybe there have been others, but the population was fewer and communication was slow and barely existed. It would have taken months, years, for the word to get around and even then, you would have been stoned to death for bringing such bad news.

If you are right, there would be instant panic worldwide in a matter of hours. People do strange things when they are about to die. Looting stores for stuff they can’t use; filling churches they never went to; killing themselves and their families. It is the greatest announcement in the history of the world.

Asteroids are notoriously hard to see when they are coming straight at us. You and your fellows are the only people who know it will hit in a matter of days and there is nowhere to hide. Do you let people go about their business? Or warn them? My choice: Let life go on because there is nothing anybody can do.

The Day Of All Saints

I really like the Catholic idea of All Saints Day. No, not those guys and gals with halos over their heads, the official saints and, also no, we don’t worship them or silly things like that. They’re only people who we are encouraged to emulate. Much like the pictures of Washington and Lincoln we hang up in schools.

The saints I like are the people who have made it to eternal life, also known as heaven. I mean, people who have a checkered past, people who maybe got it all together, or those who never did get it right. Those are the saints; they tried; that's all it takes. Nobody’s perfect and only nuns in cloistered closed-off convents walk in unscathed.

I prefer to think that I’ll arrive at the Pearly Gates on a stretcher with the Angelic Emergency Room staff shouting out: “Here’s another one. Pretty beat up from stuff that happened in his life, but he’s going to make it. Give me a pint of grace, three pints of forgiveness and a visit from the Divine Healer.”

Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for. We all have checkered pasts, all of us. Hey – you, too. Yeah, you over there, look at me. You’ve got some stuff. We all do.

I’m willing to bet the Official Saints, if we asked them about their titles and their church canonization, would say, “Oh, pleeeeze, I didn’t ask for it and, if you ask my opinion, it’s pretty embarrassing. I just did what I felt was necessary in my life, hoped nobody would catch my weak moments, and I would be treated kindly at the end. That’s all.”

The E'en Of All Hallows

Hallow… Holy. The holy ones in Heaven. All of them.
E’en… Evening, the evening before.
Hallow E’en: The evening before All the Holy Saints’ Day.
Halloween: Costume and candy night.

It’s a long way from children going from cottage to cottage in Ireland, dressed as their favorite saints, with lighted turnips, begging for soul cakes –to- children in the USA dressed in pirate costumes or the latest movie characters ringing doorbells and holding out bags for candy. The centuries and the cultures have made big changes.

Has the holiday gone out of hand? Is it a case where the children (and, if they are small enough, their parents) no longer have any idea what it’s about?

Ok, Labor Day. When is the last time you thought about the working class, the people who dig ditches, build bridges and haul the garbage? Nah; it’s just a three-day weekend, the end of summer, a time for picnics. Ask anybody, even those for whom the day was invented, and see what they say. The holiday is long forgotten.

Fourth of July. Can anyone tell the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights? Ask anyone when the D. of I. was actually sent out to the world (July 2, in case you wondered) and how long it took for everyone to sign it (quite a while, and not all at once as you might think). It’s just fireworks and picnics now.

No Armored Cars At Cemeteries

“He’s the richest man in St. Michael’s Cemetery,” my father said to me about Old Man Ryan. The guy owned some rather important land, which had been sold to a rather important developer for some rather important money. But, sorry to say, Old Man Ryan found he couldn’t take it with him. There were no armored cars at the cemetery.

I don’t begrudge someone having money; I certainly don’t mind *me* having a little stockpile of dead presidents on green pieces of paper. The coin of the realm is always welcome in my little home by the side of the road. Like Dolly Levi, in the musical, snuggling up to her cash register, “It’s a little lumpy, but it rings.”

Yet, I wonder about these rich people whose wealth is measured in far more than they can possibly spend. Money is meant to be used, like food.

Maybe it’s a million dollars, maybe more, maybe lots less. But there’s no sense at all in having $50 million late in life when all you can do with it is have your accountant tell you how much you have. Scrooge McDuck was like that: large buildings full of money, but too cheap to have fun with it.

H. L. Hunt, the billionaire, went to his grave having never given a cent to charity; he was afraid it might somehow benefit the communists. Others worked hard until they died and I wonder if they ever thought of the vacations they missed because they put everything off in search of that extra million.

My Production Studio Arrived

You don’t always do radio from a “live” studio. I prefer that way, mostly because it reminds me of how I did the magic for so many years. But sometimes it just can’t be done in real time, or portions need to be done in advance; that’s where a production studio (or booth) comes in handy.

My radio program is done essentially “live” in terms the FCC accepts: recorded in one take and broadcast the next day. A show 60 minutes long, done in exactly 60 minutes.

So I have the regular studio, which had to be moved due to renovations in the building it shares with another office. That’s in a location which is ideal at night, but very loud during the daytime. The new production studio, where people who can’t be around at night, do the pre-records, is in a different location – my room.

It works well, but I needed to equip it professionally; what I had been using was hardly fit for more than one person. There would be three of us in the new setting. So I bought a new mixer and two new microphones. The MiniDisc recorder was already in place and we were pretty much set to go. It all worked, and worked well.

Cheaply, too: even a professional mixer comes in at quite a reasonably price these days. This one provides for three mics and two “line” inputs (for tape or cd’s) and has a bunch of features included. What they’re able to build, and put into a small package, these days is amazing. Forget the good old days.

Maybe, Just Maybe, It's Too Big

The new ship, Oasis of the Seas, is five times as long as the Titanic and is designed to stay afloat regardless of hull damage. It will be its own lifeboat and make it to shore safely. I don’t like those words; we’ve heard them before nearly 98 years ago and the ship’s luxury back then lulled people into complacency.

What have we got here? 2.7 million square feet of deck space, 26,000 seats of various types for passengers. An average of 6,000 passengers and over 2,100 crew. There are 16,000 sprinkler heads connected to the water supply by 62 miles of pipe. And more than 81,000 cubic feet of water in the ships 21 pools and whirlpools.

The ship has what they call "neighborhoods." Different parts of the ship, totally separate and separately themed. One is named Central Park, which features a square with boutiques, restaurants and bars, including a bar that moves up and down three decks, allowing customers to get on and off at different levels.

With a ship such as that, would you be better off at a resort? Do you really benefit from the cruise experience, where you hang out on the decks, look at the ocean, lie on a deck chair at night and just look at the stars? There is much to be said when the water is occasionally a bit rough, when you can easily see outside and know you’re moving.

It’s a cruise, after all, not a day at the mall, an afternoon at Disneyland or some exquisite watering-hole after you’ve dropped the kids off hundreds of feet away.

Those Lovely Autumn Leaves

It’s Autumn and the colors are delightful up here in Northeastern Pennsylvania. When I lived in Vermont, it was much the same but I was on the side of a mountain and we saw far more trees from our house; the valley and the mountain on the other side was as full of color as it was with tourists and their cameras.

Years ago, in grammar school days and earlier, we walked through the deep piles of leaves (deeper then than now, as was the snow, the beds and the tables). We didn’t really walk through them as much as swish. Some trees dropped more leaves than other; some were more swishable; a few were just skinny, rather quiet, leaves.

I wish we could have made leafballs, like snowballs. They would have a whole different set of throwing (and packing) characteristics, but it still would be fun.

Now that I’m older, I still enjoy swishing through the leaves, but I also realize how the tree I park under has its ways. It keeps me and the car cool and dry in the summer, but it sheds an awful lot of leaves in the fall. I think it sucks up leaves from other trees just to drop them on my car; it couldn’t have that many on its branches.

Other trees, on other cars, drop their missiles as “donk … donk … donk” on the roof. Mine doesn’t, but if leaves made a noise, it would be intolerable. Theirs have no lasting proof of the falling nuts, as the squirrels carry them off; no known creature cares for the leftovers from my vehicle except, perhaps, my rake.

What's The Difference Between . . .

Q: What’s the difference between Yankee Franks and Fenway Franks?
A: You can buy Yankee Franks in October.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, and it’s not very likely that I will be in the future, a follower of any kind of sports. Neither a follower nor fan am I. When a bunch of us from the radio show went to a Triple A game up here, one of the crew had to explain to me what was going on.

And this for a person who was an enthusiastic sports announcer for the evening news and I was often the guy giving the results and summarizing the plays. Did not give a rat’s *** and, when I left the studio to attend night school around the corner, people were amazed at how gung-ho I was. I just read what the AP sent and faked it.

But I’ve always had a special, if hidden, place for the Yankees. I don’t know why; they shared much of the same real estate as the Dodgers, the Giants and, much later, the Mets. But those three teams never made it with me. The Yankees, most certainly. They had, in my mind, the sparkle that was major league baseball.

Maybe it’s because I heard Babe Ruth’s memorial program on the radio. Or some such thing about him. I think he retired before I started showing up on the planet, but there was some other event and I remember writing his name up in the attic circa 1947. He was the Yankees, and the Yankees were baseball.

And To Further My Remarks...

Continuing with yesterday’s thoughts, even though this is also being written on the 27th, here is the second part of “Oh, no … I have to move the studio.”

The program I do for the blind is actually done in two separate “takes.” One of them is put together in the morning, when my daytime readers drop by to record their inserts for the show. I have already cut up, and pasted onto scrap paper, each item they will read. Then we go along and lay down maybe 15 or 18 tracks.

Once or twice a week, there can be a night-time reader who comes in when I am actually putting the show together. The daytime person does seven cuts, the night person does seven and I pick up what’s left. The inserts already done are fed into the show with what I hope are seamless joins, as if they are actually there.

The pre-records are done in a “production booth” in my room. It’s not really a booth, as such, but a mixer, three mics and a MiniDisc recorder on a desk. It works well and is quieter in the daytime than being in the regular studio (which is quieter at night). We make the best of both situations and it works well.

I’m waiting for a better mic mixer, due any day now from a new supplier just a few miles up the road. A mixer, another mic stand and a couple of connectors. I could use a better mic for one of the readers; my new supplier might help, or I could always go to Radio Shack for one of their $35 models.