Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The Retired English Teacher Raves

William Safire died on September 27.  So passed the consummate lover and protector of the English language.  ADMITTEDLY, I didn't always agree with his politics.  He was a Nixon speechwriter after all, and when he was hired by the NY TIMES, some bright person said, that it was "like setting a hawk loose among doves."  HOPEFULLY, he will be remembered for his wonderful columns on our language.
In his memory, I would like to discuss two word that I despise.  If you haven't already guessed, they are "hopefully" and "admittedly."  First let's talk about that bastard of a word "hopefully."  Athletes love it.  "Hopefully, we'll win today."  Politicians feel the same. "Hopefully, this is the dawn of a new era.  What they are saying or think they are saying, of course is, "I hope we'll win today"  and "I hope this is the dawn of a new era."  Only problem is, "HOPEFULLY" DOES NOT MEAN "I HOPE."  It means what it says, which is basically "full of hope." If one wants to say that one is hoping for victory then say, "I hope we'll win today." That's what one means.  If one looks at "hopefully" as an adjective in the sentence, "Hopefully, well win today," then one is saying, I guess, "A bunch of guys are standing around with hearts or stomachs full of hope trying to win."  If one uses "hopefully" as an adverb in that little sentence, then one is saying, "We''ll win full of hope today."  Neither of those sentences are what one meant to say.  A time when one could logically use the word "hopefully" would be in a sentence like, "Hopefully, we joined together, praying that he would recover completely."  In that sentence, "hopefully" is not pretending to mean "I hope."  It means what it means, that some people have joined together and they are "full of hope."
If you think I don't like "hopefully" wait until you hear how I feel about "admittedly." There is no reason for such a fargin' word.  Lazy speakers and writers have coined it to make their attempts at transition easier.  I know transition can be tough, be it from pre-teen to puberty or paragraph one to paragraph two.  Let us consider how "ly" ending words generally work at the beginning of sentences.  In the sentence, "Happily, the little children danced in the town square," "happily" is functioning as an adverb saying HOW the kids danced.  But on his weather broadcast, when Dave Eichorn used to say nearly every night something to the effect of "Admittedly, the rain started a couple hours earlier than predicted," what was he saying?  He thought he was saying "I admit the rain started a couple of hours earlier than predicted," but he wasn't.  I don't know what he was saying.  That the rain admitted to starting early, maybe.  The only way I can think of to make "admittedly" work would be in a sentence like, "Admittedly, the boy confessed to the crimes."   What am I saying?  That wouldn't work!  There is no reason for the word ADMITTEDLY!
Enough of my blithering.  One will choose what one will choose in one's writing and speech.  But I admit that I hope this little blog will make some of you "ones" think twice about those two awful words.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Hallmark Cards and Serial Killers

One of my favorite creative writing activities back in the day, (although I'm not sure if it was a favorite of my students), was composing poems that featured specific types of people or things or events in a rather nonsensical way.  I got the idea from a poet, whose name I have lost, who wrote one that featured famous people from American history.  It had images like a "Walt Whitman rocking chair" and a "Teddy Roosevelt mustache cup."  Those aren't exactly right, but you get the idea.
Anyway, I was digging through some boxes again.  Consigning some items to my closet, some to my filing cabinet, and a lot to the basement, when I came upon the two examples of those type/nonsense poems that I had written along with my classes.  The first is about Christmas, and the theme of sorts is the commercial orientation of that holiday.  But the theme isn't important.  It's just kind sweet of sweet, I hope.  The second is told by some very twisted narrator, but remember I'm a fan of DEXTER.  I thought I would share them.

Hallmark Card Christmas

For Christmas, father bought us boys
"Preparation H" t-shirts
and for the girls
"Gravy Train" barrettes to wear in their hair.
We always went to Grandma's for Christmas dinner.
I remember the "Dinty Moore" warmth of her kitchen,
And how we'd ride in
Grandpa's sleigh with the picture
of the "Campbell Soup Kids" on the side
and cross the bridge over the "Franco-American Spaghetti" River
where children were skating,
spinning around like little "Pillsbury Doughboys."
When we got home
all "Eskimo Pie" cold,
Grandma would have hung the stockings
from the mantel that Grandpa,
in an "Air-Wyck" mood
had carved to look like the "Maytag Repairman."
On each toe of each stocking
Grandma embroidered our names and,
in tiny letters, "Patent pending."
And we knew that, in the morning, when
we stuck our little "Lemon Joy" hands 
in our stockings
we would find presents
and tiny pieces of paper saying,
"Inspected by #38."


31 Serial Flavors

Today, Susie and I went for ice cream.
We went to the Son of Sam Ice Cream Shoppe
and Book Depository.
She ordered two scoops of 
Charlie Manson Crunch, and 
I ordered a Jeffrey Dahmer Surprise Sundae
with raspberry sauce and
sprinkles shaped like tiny body parts.
The man in line behind us was
smoking a Juan Corona Cigar.
The smoke got in our eyes and made
us squint like Ted Bundy did
when he was electrocuted.
As we walked away, I heard
a man say, "I'll have a lone scoop of
Lee Harvey Oswald Brickle
and my wife will have
the Mark David Chapman Split
with low-fat hot fudge.
Susie whined, "we should have gone inside
and sat in a John Wilkes Booth Booth."
So, I killed her and all the other whiners, too.
Now, I'm the 32nd flavor.

You might try writing one of these bits of verse.  They're fun to write, even the twisted ones.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

The Legend of The "Do" Boys

  Writing about my first dog Mittens made me think more about growing up in Webster, NY, fifty + years ago.  One thought had only a bit to do with Mittens, but a lot to do with how myths and legends, even minor ones, come about.
One place where Mittens always accompanied me was a hill that was great for sled riding not far from the Big Woods.  The slope was called "Do Boy Hill," and it featured two fine places to slide, a gentle slope for the sissies, and a steep trail through some trees, which we called "Old Suicide."  Old Suicide brought about the untimely demise of many toboggans.
Do Boy Hill was both a fun and noisy place, what with all the kids laughing and shouting on their sleds, and their dogs barking happily as they ran down the hills beside them.  The only problem about Do Boy Hill was its name.  Kids wondered just what was a Do Boy and why was there a hill named after him.
And this wonderment birthed a legend, a legend that existed even before I moved to Webster, a legend that my friends who had lived there longer, and other kids from nearby streets, were eager to share with the new kids that moved onto Pineview Drive or Apple Orchard Lane or Adams Road.  The Do Boys, legend had it, were a gang!  A gang of big boys, teenagers probably, that prowled the streets of our neighborhood and the paths of the Pines and the Big Woods.  Why were they called Do Boys?  Why because they "DID" things, of course. Did things to little kids.  Awful things!  So awful that no one knew what kind of awful things they actually were.
It's not like we little kids spent a lot of time worrying about the Do Boys, but their frightening name did occasionally come up.  I remember one time when a friend of mine said, "Did you hear that the Do Boys burned down a garage last night?"  "No," we all said in hushed tones, fearful that a nearby Do Boy might hear us.  And it never crossed our 7 or 8 year old minds that no garage had burned down in the area in recent memory.  Heck, most of our houses didn't even have garages.  Another time, I asked one of my friends just what he knew about the Do Boys.  He told me that he thought they wore numbers on their backs.  I almost passed out one day when I happened to turn around and see bicycling toward me, a big kid wearing a football jersey.
But time goes by, and the legends of little kidhood are put aside.  No one mentioned the Do Boys as we grew older.  I guess we had all decided without conferring that the Boys had either grown up and joined the Army or had never existed at all.  One day, when I was about 17, I was driving down Klem Road.  "Do Boy Hill" was quite nearby.  I happened to glance at a mailbox in front of an old farm house.  On the mailbox, in fading paint, was the word "Dubois."  Suddenly, a legend from my youth was demystified, or perhaps, demythified.  Do Boy Hill wasn't named for a gang of psychotic, number-wearing, garage burning teenagers.  It was named for the owners of the property, the Dubois family, who had apparently chosen to Anglify the pronunciation of their last name to Du-boyse, rather than sticking with the French Du-bwa.
I'm glad I was 17 when I found out about it.  If when I was 7, someone had said to me, "Hey, idiot, there's no gang called the Do Boys.  The hill belongs to the Dubois family," I'm sure I would have been really disappointed.  Legends and myths are important to little kids, and one that's right in your own neighborhood, no matter how scary, is pretty tough to give up.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Mittens, The Dog Who Ate Mice

     I couldn't fall asleep last night.  When I can't, I try to set activities for my mind that I hope will distract me from wakefulness and send me to dreamland.  Last night's mind activity was "Things to Blog About."  I am an inveterate dog lover, and Linda always says she enjoys hearing me talk about the dogs I have owned, and that I should write about them, so that's what I decided I would do.  I would blog about my dogs.  Still, I didn't fall asleep, but at least, I had a blog topic.
    I don't really remember my first dog.  When I was 3, I shared ownership of a nasty cocker spaniel named Sport with my aunt.  My mom and dad and I lived in an apartment in the rear of my grandmother's house.  Sport lived in the main house with my grandmother and my aunt Barb, who was probably 10 or 11.  One day Sport bit the paperboy, and so he had to go to Lollipop Farm.  Lollipop Farm is not a euphemism for euthanasia.  It's the name of the ASPCA branch in Rochester.  So exited Sport from our lives.
     My first real dog that counted was Mittens.  She came to be my dog in the spring of 1956.  I know it was then because I was a Wolf in Cub Scout terminology, which meant I was 8 years old.  My cub scout den mother's dog had had puppies and there was one left, a little black female, probably the runt of the litter, with white paws, a brown slash across her chest, and one oozing, very blue eye.  Mrs. Tracy, the den mother, said I could have the puppy if my mom said it was O.K.  I ran home as fast as I could to ask my mother.  Another cub scout, who already had a dog, had said maybe he would come back and take the puppy.  I wasn't going to let that happen.
     My poor Mom didn't have a chance.  She wasn't then, and still isn't, a real dog person.  But, we had talked for a long time about getting a dog.  Suddenly, here was this available puppy.  Mom couldn't say no.  I ran back to the Tracy's, even faster than I had run to our house, and in a few minutes, I was carrying the little black puppy home.
     On the way home with my puppy, I stopped to show her to a couple of my friends. They were playing with a real bow and arrows.  You have to remember, this was 1956. Kids played with real bows and arrows and real bb guns, and I even know a kid who really got his eye put out.  One of my friends, and they really were friends, said he might just use my puppy for target practice.  I scurried home.
     My mom named the puppy Mittens for her four white paws.  We couldn't name her Bootsie, because a beagle of that name already lived up the street.  When my dad, got home from work, I showed the puppy to him and pointed out Mittens' running blue eye.  My dad said, "That's what's called a 'blue eye,' and some of the greatest race horses of all times had them.  It'll go away in no time."  I still don't know if he had made up the part about the race horses, but sure enough, Mittens' eye was better, and brown just like the other one, in no time.
     In those days, most dogs didn't have the run of the house.  Mittens was confined to the kitchen and the cellar.  She immediately took to this arrangement and to her new family.  She was as sweet and playful and smart a puppy as you would ever want to meet.  She was strong and fast and full of life, although we did have one scary night with her.  This was before dog vaccinations for distemper, and we hadn't had Mittens very long, before she got the disease.  My dad and I took her over to the local vet., who had his office in his basement.  He gave poor, sick Mittens an antibiotic shot and told my dad to feed her some calf's liver.  He also told my dad that she had two strikes against her, but if she made it through the night, she'd be O.K. Fortunately, I didn't hear that part.  So we got some liver, took her home and fed it to her, and put her in her bed in the basement.  When my dad got up the next morning, he was afraid to go downstairs to see if our puppy was still alive. But when he went down, Mittens was sitting there as fine as could be.
     For the first couple of months, Mittens spent more time playing outside with my brother Tim, who was only four, than she spent with me.  This didn't please me then, but in looking back on it, I realize that Tim and his friends were puppy-sized persons perfect for a puppy to play with.  By fall, Mittens had latched on to me as tightly as I latched onto her, and she had grown to be a medium-sized dog, perfect for a kid of a median sort of age.
     Back in the 50's there were no leash laws in suburbia.  Dogs roamed with their kids everywhere.  One of my favorite childhood memories is how all the neighborhood dogs would walk us kids to the bus stop in the morning, and, then go home after the bus came and picked us up. When the bus arrived back at 3:00 or so in the afternoon, all the dogs would be waiting to pick up their kids.
     When I was outdoors, Mittens was always at my side.  This made playing hide and seek difficult, because, Mittens liked to hide with me, and she just couldn't keep still . We kids had two favorite places to play.  A little woods called the Pines, and a big woods called, you guessed it, the Big Woods.  Mittens and the other dogs trotted along beside us as we rode our bikes down to the Big Woods, which had a creek full of frogs and tadpoles and little crawfish.  It was a great creek into which my friends and I were always stepping or falling and getting what we called "soakers."  Mittens was in the creek from the time we got to the big woods chasing whatever creatures were swimming around.  She always got a soaker.
     The title of this posting comes from Mittens' truly carnivorous nature.  We used to play in an idle farmer's field (the field was idle not the farmer, although he was retired).  We called the field Putt Putt's field after the sound that the farmer's tractor had once made.  In fact, we called the farmer Putt Putt and made up stories about how mean he probably was and how he would probably chase us with his tractor and catch us and imprison us, although his tractor hadn't been out in a couple of years.  In fact, when we finally met him, we found him to be a sweet and gentle man.  (Sorry for that excess information, but I wanted to share it.) Anyway, Mittens loved to run in Putt Putt's field, and twice I saw her chase a mouse, catch it in her mouth, and gobble it up alive.  This amazed my friends, whose dogs did not eat mice.  I was very proud of Mittens.
My friends were envious of Mittens for other reasons, too.  For example, if she couldn't jump a fence, she'd find a way to climb it.  Really!  When I pulled our wagon down the street, Mittens would hop in the wagon and take a ride.  The other dogs were afraid to do such a human thing.
Our adult neighbors loved Mittens, too.  Bob Beardsley, who lived behind us, was very deaf.  It was difficult, sometimes, to understand him when he spoke.  But he loved our dog, and a couple of times a week, he'd step out on his back porch and call, "Mitten!  Mitten!" Bob couldn't hear his esses.  "Mitten" would trot over, and Bob would have a bone or some other treat for her.  Also, Mittens had the run of the house at my best friend Fred's.  I'd walk in the living room, and Mittens would be stretched out on the living room rug next to Fred's father's chair.  And Fred's father would be scratching Mittens' ears.
Mittens was also monogamous.  Her best friend and mate for life was a collie named Pepper.  Pepper's owners, Terry and Jack Butler, were the same age as Tim and I.  Pepper was a beautiful pedigreed dog and Mittens was a mutt.  I like to think they fell in love.  In the late 50's, Bob Barker wasn't on TV telling folks to fix their dogs.  In fact, the host of PRICE IS RIGHT was a guy named Bill Cullen.  A fertile Mittens and Pepper produced puppies.  Three lovely litters over the years, a total of sixteen puppies, I believe.  
Mittens' first litter was six puppies, but when we went down to the basement the morning after they were born, and saw Mittens and her babies in the nest she had made for them, we knew something was wrong.  One of the puppies wasn't properly formed.  One of its front legs was misshapen, and the puppy was sick.  The problem was that mother Mittens was spending all her time trying to take care of the sick one, and ignoring the healthy pups.  I remember standing above the nest, seeing the sick puppy trying to nurse and then spitting up all the milk it had suckled.  My dad took the little puppy upstairs, and when it soon died, we buried it in the backyard.  Mittens went back to being a good mother to her other five.  One of the great experiences of my childhood was watching Mittens take care of her puppies and playing with the bundles of fur when they were old enough.  We found homes for all of them, and several resided with families in our neighborhood.
Even in her death, Mittens taught us lessons.  When she was eight, and her mate Pepper had died, Mittens was cornered by another neighborhood dog who wanted to mate with her.  I saw it happening and tried to stop it, but when dogs want to, they really want to.  Sadly, Mittens fourth litter came when she was too old.  She got an infection in her womb, and after only two days of caring for her puppies, she had to be taken to the vet and had to stay there.  The job then went to my brother and sisters and mom and dad and me to feed and care for 6 newborns.  My dad built dividers to separate the puppies, because they would nurse on each other's ears or legs if left together. We fed them condensed milk from baby doll bottles and learned how to burp them by rubbing their stomachs.  It was another amazing experience brought to us by Mittens.
     After we took Mittens to the vet, I never saw her again.  I was a junior in high school, hoping desperately that she would somehow survive.  Each day, I'd come home from school to get the report from the vet.  I recall being so happy the day that the vet said, "Mittens had taken a little water."  I vividly remember coming home from school one afternoon, and having my mom tell me that Mittens had died.  I went up to my room, and for some reason I still don't understand, forced myself not to cry.  It is a great regret that I never cried for my amazing dog Mittens, a dog who was cool enough to eat mice.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Flip Flops!

Because I know I won't get to blog tomorrow, and I didn't blog yesterday, I want to post just a paragraph or two today.  Man, the weather was pretty magnificent today! Now if I were younger, I might have said, "Dude, the weather was pretty magnificent today!"  So, let this be a question from the "Man" generation to the "Dude" generation: What is the fascination with flip flops?  It seems to be all that some people wear on their feet.  They offer no support and barely any sole, and yet I see people walking on them for. . .what must be miles.  I took an unscientific observation poll at the Fair.    I can't begin to guess the number of kids, (mostly girls), who were wearing flip flops! And one does a lot of walking at the Fair.
I admit to being a flip flop hater.  I tried wearing them long ago, and I hated the way the little piece of plastic stuck between your toes.  Plus, let's face it, if there was going to be a contest for the ugliest part of the human body, feet would win in a walk.
This question came to mind, and not for the first time, at the Chittenango football game last night.  The Bears won! Hooray!  It was pretty cold at the game.  The bleachers are made of metal.  The grass was wet with condensation.  Still tons of kids were wearing flip flops.  Now dammit, their feet had to be freezing!
So that's my question. Why the flip flops?  What possible fascination can their be in displaying unattractive feet in all kinds of weather?  If anyone could offer an opinion, I'd be pleased. 

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Correction

Like the POST STANDARD, I must occasionally post a correction.  Linda wants everyone to know that she does like football (especially when Donovan McNabb) is playing but thinks that games should be a set 2 hours long.  When I wrote about the first SU game, I didn't mean to suggest she didn't like football.  After all, we go to Colgate football all the time and love it.  Actually, all I said was, "she isn't a great football fan," but what I should have said is my wife is a remarkable sports fan.  We watch all sorts of sports together on TV, (even golf when Tiger is playing), and attend every SU lacrosse game we can get to.  Linda is rabid SU basketball fan, who worries about Jerry McNamara's career like he was a relative.  We also love the Cape Cod Baseball League, an occasional trip to a Chief's game, but both agree that watching baseball on TV should be disallowed by the Geneva Convention as a form of torture. In conclusion, I should have said, that my wife Linda is the greatest sports fan-wife a sports fan like me could have.

Monday, September 14, 2009

A Wonderful Wedding and LMAO Misinterpreted

I wish I had something to talk about concerning my writing, but I haven't heard from either of the publishers who have my plays or the agents that I queried.  I have to accept the "no news is good news" philosophy, I guess.   I'm doing some rewriting, trying to get back to ZOMBIES ARE US, and thinking about SUMMERPLAY 2010.
Congratulations to Anna and Andrew, who are probably in Aruba by now.  My niece was married on Saturday.  It was a beautiful ceremony complete with gorgeous bride and nervous groom.  The reception was fun and the food was tasty, and it was terrific seeing so many relatives we don't get to see that often.  There was only one, how shall I put it, "unique" activity at the reception.  The D.J. called all the mothers and daughters to the dance floor for a mother/daughter dance.  I had never before seen one of these.  And the ladies all scurried up to the front and began dancing wildly.  Soon it evolved into a big circle dance with much clapping and bouncing.  Even my 86 year old mother was involved.  Is womenhood a secret cult?  I was frightened that the DJ would next call for a father/son dance, and I was not going to dance with my son-in-law.
Well, I know I provided a few laughs for people today when, on FACEBOOK, I asked just what IMAO, which I had been seeing in postings, meant. I soon received several replies.  Now I know that it wasn't IMAO but LMAO, which means "laughing my ass off," which I'm sure everyone who saw my question was doing at me.  I decided to counter my mistake, with a campaign in favor of "IMAO."  I suggested that to a poison ivy victim, it could mean "itching my ass off."  A person who had taken a nasty fall on his bum might be "icing my ass off."  That could also apply to a bakery worker who was overwhelmed by a huge cupcake order.  Pity the farmer who must "irrigate my ass off."  Or the mimic who must constantly "imitate my ass off."  Then there is the luggage checker at the airport who claims I must "inspect my ass off."  I once knew a special ed. teacher who said everyday I have to "individualize my ass off."  Legend has it that above his laboratory door in Menlo Park, Thomas Edison had a sign which read "In This Place I Invent My Ass Off.  Andd at this point I am done iterating my ass off!

Friday, September 11, 2009

9/11/09

     Just a brief blog today.  According to Wikipedia, the 9/11 death toll was either 2993 or 3017 people, kind of unsure which isn't strange for a Wikipedia entry.  Either number is horrible, but when I think back to that day, when newspeople were suggesting fifteen or twenty thousand deaths, I wonder if it is logical to say it could have been a lot worse.  I don't think so.  The casualties of 9/11 continue today in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that doesn't even include the social casualties in the death of so much public trust.
     I'm sure I've blogged about this before, for which I apologize, but this is about my 90th blog, so I'm afraid there will be some overlap.  Plus it is 9/11 today.  When I think back 8 years ago, I recall the moment when I heard about the towers for the first time.  It was in my 10th grade honors class.  I'm pretty sure Ali Stankavage first said to me that terrorists had flown a jet into the towers.  I know it was Jill Tirabassi who confirmed it, because she had been out of school for an appointment and had heard about it on the radio.  That moment is as indelibly imprinted on my psyche as the moment in Mrs. Hassett's 11th grade English class in R.L. Thomas High School when I heard that John F. Kennedy had been shot.  I've said before, what a wonderful class Ali and Jill were in. They are special because it was my final year of teaching.  But I think another reason that I so appreciate the memories and the people in that class was the terrible news I first heard in their presence.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Back from the Forest Primeval


We returned from Lake Placid this afternoon, having spent three days where Uncas, and Chingachgook, and Natty Bumppo once walked in James Fenimore Cooper's very active but overly wordy imagination.  It's still great here, even though there's a Gap Outlet, where Pathfinder once found paths and Deerslayer once slew deer.
We stayed at the Golden Arrow Hotel right on Mirror Lake.  It's a really nice place with great hospitaliy, and we've been there so often they gave us a gift bag upon arrival.  It contained water, granola bars, two coin shaped chocolates wrapped in gold foil, some stationery, and a souvenir coaster made of Adirondack wood.  All in all, very thoughtful.
It was a big biker weekend in the mountains.  Harleys roared through the high peaks. Quite a few bikers stayed where we stayed, but not your Hell's Angel variety.  Our biker couples arrived on gorgeous tricycle Harleys that pulled little trailers for their clothes.  When they removed their helmets and leather, many of our bikers emerged as apparently well-to-do senior citizens wearing Ralph Lauren and Armani and Prada and stuff.  Very nice folks.  One carried a copy of Kamus under his arm, perhaps to suggest that he was not only "biker" hip but intellectual hip as well.  I didn't tell him that Kamus is a little dated.
  I had wanted to make a couple more points about the SU game from last Saturday.  The first involves the new t-shirts being sported by the students and fans.  One style suggests "A New Beginning" is upon us.  We'll have to see about that one. Another, popular with upperclassmen, announces that like Prada, "The Devil Wears Orange."  My favorite t-shirt, though, was the one given to every freshman.  On the front was a picture of a little house with an arrow leading from it to a tiny likeness of the Carrier Dome.  Below it were the words "Home to Dome." On the back it announced that he or she was a member of the SU Class of 2013.   The freshmen don't get to sit in the large student section, instead they are sent to the upper reaches of the dome all over the stadium.  A bunch sat behind where I was sitting and they all wore their Home to Dome Shirts. Some freshman seemed very confident, and at ease.  A few girls had even seductively torn their new t's so they could let them drape suggestively over one shoulder and half a cleavage.  I appreciated the frightened ones, though.  It was their first football game, and they looked like deer caught in the headlights.  And God bless 'em, a lot of the scared ones had their backpacks with them.  Just like ninth graders, they appeared to be afraid to put them down.  I get a kick out of that kind of innocence.
I also saw three people there who I hadn't seen in a while.  First, I saw Dave Cooke, who used to teach math at Chittenango.  I remember when he and his wife Melissa had baby Madison.  Madison is 10 or 11 now, and Dave has gray hair.  Then I saw Mike Sandore.  Having been briefly retired, Mike has taken a job as principal at Notre Dame/Bishop Gibbons School in Schenectady.  It's a 6-12 school with only 300 kids.  He and his wife have rented an apartment in Schenectady but are keeping their house here, too.  And finally, I saw Ellen Pollock and her mom, and Ellen told me she's going to SUNY Binghamton to get her masters in English Education.  That's great news.  Education needs great people like Ellen.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Never send a man to do a boy's job!

We're heading out for our first day of school annual getaway tomorrow so I wanted to be sure to get a blog in today.  I went to the SU game yesterday, and despite the disappointing loss, I had a good time. Had it not been for the horrible, stifling humidity and heat in the dome, I might have truly enjoyed the experience.
 I really need to go back a few years to explain my take on  SU football games.  For years we were season ticket holders for both football and basketball.  Now we only get b'ball tickets, and the main reason for our dropping the football tickets was the dpr ration in the section where we sat.  If you're not familiar with the dpr, it's the drunks per row ratio.  I'm pretty sure we had one of the highest ratios in the dome.
But the high dpr didn't occur until our second set of football tickets.  For a couple of years, we sat high up in the northeast corner, and behind us sat "ObnoxiousMan."  OM not only drank too much, but he was uncommonly loud and profane.  When the Orange were doing poorly, he cursed them out.  When they were successful, he barked like a dog through cupped hands so loudly that the entire section cringed.  After two years of being seated in front of OM, we went to the ticket office and requested a change of venue for our seats.  I relayed the story of OM to the sympathetic ticket lady who set us up with great new seats in the northwest corner and only 5 or 6 rows from the edge of the 3rd level.  
The first day we went to those new seats, I was overjoyed.  Our seats were wonderful, and  Donovan McNabb was quarterback.  True, the man who sat next to us on one side, had had a heart attack and died in his seat the year before, happily to be brought back by CPR.  That's the first thing the people who sat on our other side told us about.  So Linda told the story of the OM and how we had joyfully moved away to these seats.  Several minutes went by, and I sat happily smiling in my new football perch.  Then, up the steps came the OM and put his ample butt down in the seat directly behind us.  He, too, had requested a new seat, apparently, and the sympathetic lady had put him behind us.  Linda laughed at the irony.  I did not.
For the next two years, everyone in our section grew to hate the OM.  The lady to my left often turned around and scolded him for his antics.  Finally, after two or three years, he gave up his tickets.  
Things should have been swell, then, but we soon became aware of the DPR.  To our right and one row in front sat the drunken teachers.  Two guys who taught in a district that I will not name on the west side of the city came every game bearing flasks.  They bought beer and spiked their beer with booze, and got obnoxiously but quietly drunk.  This might have been OK if not for the yuppie drunks in front of them.  Extremely well dressed lushes, the guys got loaded during each game until their wives got angry.  But the saddest drunk was the old drunk in front of us.  He drank four beers during the first half, two beers while leaning against the wall in the hall during halftime, and four more beers in the second half.  On top of that, he always arrived at the game drunk, having come with his wife by charter bus.  The poor fellow had such bad knees that he had to crawl up the six steps to where he sat and then back down at intermission.
On our final day of attending football games as season ticket holders, all three of these drunken elements came together.  In the second half, the drunken teachers apparently said something nasty about the drunken yuppie's wives.  This caused the drunken yuppies to rise in shock and threaten bodily harm to the teachers.  I had had it!  I put on my "only get mad a couple times each year" voice and told them to sit the hell down, at which point both drunk groups began pleading their cases to me like I was a judge.  The crowning moment came when the old drunk turned to me and said in the most slurred, alcoholic voice you could imagine, "Forget about'em.  There jush a bunsh of ashholes!"  And you know, he was right. So, even though we had a couple games left that year, we stopped going and when our ticket renewal came, we did not renew it.
Linda has never been a great football fan.  Even when we had season tickets she used to bring a book, and she believes that football games should have three fifteen-minute thirds and that baseball games should have only five or six innings.  She did teach me one thing, though.  If the game is slow or disappointing, you can always people watch.  That's what I did yesterday, along with cheering on the Orange in what was a really classy effort.
Sitting right in front of me was a cute little family.  There was a little dad, a little mom, a little girl, and a little boy.  I knew they wouldn't get drunk.  The little girl was darling and was wearing her new school glasses, which had frames like the kid from AMERICAN IDOL always wore.  To my left was a man from Australia.  He was with an American friend, and the poor mate didn't have any idea what was happening on the field.  He plugged his ears when the cheering got loud.  So did the little girl in front of me.  To my left was a very nice couple who seemed very professorial but still very involved in the game.  Behind me sat the doofus, a fellow who announced loudly from the beginning that he didn't like Greg Paulus or Doug Marrone even though he loved the Orange.  He was just like a republican pulling for the president to fail.  He said things like, "I don't care too much for this nickel package" to sound like he was experienced.  He also could find no good in anything the Golden Gophers of Minnesota did.  When the Gopher QB fired a beautiful pass to a barely open receiver who caught it, the doofus declared that it was all the fault of the SU defense, and that, in fact, he could have thrown that pass.  I wanted to turn around and tell him, "No you couldn't you #@$%#$ idiot."  But I didn't.  When the little family left, the little boy had somehow removed his shoes and socks and the mom had to put them on.
 This blog has gone longer than I thought.  I'll have to continue when we come back from Lake Placid.  I must explain the title of today's piece, though.  When the game was over and I was walking back down Euclid toward my car, I was followed by an SU coed and two of her friends.  She was cute, probably nineteen, and an orange-bleeding fan, and she was terribly upset.  Like too many other people, she blamed Greg Paulus for the loss, but her reasoning was unique.  She said, "What's he playing for anyway?  He's a man.  He's like twenty-three.  A nineteen year old kid should be playing quarterback.  Then we'd win. Paulus ought to hang up his cleats."  So as I said in the title, never send a man to do a boy's job.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Brief Blog

I went to the SU game to day and will blog about that experience tomorrow.  I only have a couple of minutes tonight, and I've had this particular thing on my mind for awhile and want to share it.  There are three TV commercial creations that totally creep me out and to which I wouldn't mind doing bodily harm.  I just wonder if anyone else feels the same way.  My third most hated commercial creation are those stupid Dean Witter people who have been made into cartoons for no friggin' reason whatsoever.  I growl every time I see them.  My second most hated is that mutant Little Bit of Luck in the lottery commercials.  If I saw a twisted little man like that, I'd run down the street screaming.  Finally, and most hated is the giant Burger King with the plastic face and ceaseless smile.  That big son of a pup has to give little kids nightmares.  There. now I have vented.  Does anyone else feel this way or am I the only one so affected?

Friday, September 4, 2009

Coffee and a Walk

Yesterday morning was a fine one.  There are many things that can make for such a fine morning.  For example, the weather.  I love a sunny morning with a nothing but blue sky and dew still on the grass.  In the winter, reading a story about SU Basketball winning the night before can make the morning fine. Of course, a fine morning can't be great without fine coffee.*
I was at Panera's yesterday at one of my several usual tables.  I was sipping their fine coffee and eating what I eat virtually every weekday morning, a whole grain bagel. Yesterday I had jelly on it.   Now, if you've eaten whole grain bagels, you know they are not unlike a combination of cardboard and sawdust.  But they're good for you, so what you put on them is important.  It makes them palatable.  As I sat there, a young woman walked in the door, and I realized I recognized her.  It was Melanie Davies, who I haven't seen for ages. Melanie was in my 10th Grade Honors English class the year that I retired.  She looks wonderful and  has a job in Boston, which is a great place to live and work.  I believe the place she works is called the Boston Harbor Hotel, which if you live in Boston, might be pronounced the Baahston Hahbah Hotel. She lives near the hahbah, too.  So, step 1 on my fine morning was seeing Melanie.
When I got home I went for a walk/jog.  At the playground in Sullivan Park, I met Kaitlyn Cox.  Kaitlyn was also a English 10H student a few years before Melanie was.  Kaitlyn has two darling little boys.  Seeing her and the boys was delightful.  I also met Dale Devendorf's wife and their darling son. That was step 2 on my fine morning.
Step 3 happened in the high school parking lot.  I was cutting through on my walk, and I met Beth Carpenter, CHS science teacher.  I think Beth teaches both Chem and Physics, but I'm not positive.  Whatever it is she does teach, she teaches both well and joyfully.  She told me she just couldn't wait for year to begin, which was fine to hear.  Her students are blessed. 
So you see, a morning could hardly be finer than one on which you happen upon three fine young women, for whom you hope only the finest.  And what guarantees the fineness of that A.M. is that all three seem to be living life in a very fine way.

*Those of you who recall TWIN PEAKS, remember how FBI Agent Dale Whatever always used to say, "Now that's a damn fine cup of coffee."
 

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Who's the Jester in the Fraternity Jacket?

Several people who responded to last night's Final Jeopardy question were technically correct.  But I won't be able to award the lavish grand prize because none of you phrased it in the form of a question:  What is CAMELOT?
Also, a couple of people have asked me in the past couple of weeks, (and they must be people who read my blog at the Blue Moon Grille website), who the little guy on the right hand side of the page is.  The little guy is a court jester, and court jester clothing is called "motley."  The web address for "The Blue Moon Grille" is wwwmotleyplayer.blogspot.com, with no (.) after the w's in honor of the CHS Motley Players of olde.
Planning my fraternity reunion has been tremendously enjoyable.  Of course, I still imagine most of the guys as they looked 40 years ago.  We certainly weren't the wildest fraternity at SUNY Albany back then, but I did have fraternity brothers with great nicknames like the Rock, the Pimp, the Red Rose of Tel Aviv, Stain, the Wad, and the Mole.  My nickname was a relatively tame "G" or perhaps "Big G" so as not to confuse me with my roommate "Little G.  And the brothers of Alpha Lambda Chi did occasionally get a little rambunctious of a Saturday night. 
Well, when it got time to plan on what to have for a buffet at the hotel on reunion weekend, I asked the opinion of several of my once rambunctious old brothers about the various choices the hotel had to offer.  One choice was the All-American Barbecue Buffet featuring roasted garlic sirloin burgers, St. Louis Style pork ribs, horseradish cole slaw, etc. When this option was offered, the brothers questioned declined.  Kind of hard on the stomach, they thought.  Didn't know if the wives would care for it.  These were the same guys who subsisted on Walt's submarines, Central Avenue Pizza and Hedrick's Beer.  We opted for the more stomach pleasing Classic Buffet, which should be the best for me seeing that I am recently short one gall bladder.
 When it came  to choosing a style for our reunion t-shirts, I had a great time.  One design I suggested would have featured part of the chant we chanted after every intramural football or softball victory.  To give you an idea, the last two lines read, "flim flam #%@$@#, who the $@%#$ do you think we am."  Wonderful grammar!  No way, the brothers thought, even with the asterisk euphemisms.  Couldn't very well wear that walking down Main Street or to the Lions Club meeting.  Another suggestion would have shown the words "Albany State's Finest," with a picture of a beer bottle below it, and below that the words 100% ALC (ALC referring to Alpha Lambda Chi).  I knew that probably wouldn't make it, but it was fun thinking it up.  Finally, Jan created the design we will use.  A tasteful pocket logo on the front, and on the back, our fraternity crest with the words "Forty-two years later and still on double secret probation" below to suggest our occasional rambunctious natures.
My great old friends with names like the Rock, the Stain, or the Pimp, are the same but different.  Everyone can't wait for the weekend of the reunion to arrive, and I know that once we are together, it will be like we were never apart.  But the guys who might have once reacted kind of rambunctiously, instead reacted in a way that was, as Linda suggested,kind of  "cute." Cute in a social security checks/winters in the South kind of way.  I have to say I'm glad about it, because I guess that's the way it ought to be, and it makes me even more excited about seeing my new old friends.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

"And You Can Take Me to the Fair"

Your final jeopardy question!  "The line used as my blog title is from this musical."  Remember, your answer must be in the form of a question. 
Thanks to Katie S. and Kelly C., the first my niece, the second my buddy, for telling me they enjoy reading my blog.  Oh, Peg, too, I forgot.  It feels good to know I'm being read and enjoyed.  Thanks to everybody who exchanges words with me in response to my blog as well.
Joy to all of you about to start the school year, be you high school student, college student, graduate student, medical student, school nurse, or teacher of any kind.  May your academic year be both fun and fruitful.  I send out special hugs to the new teachers among you, Sarah and Kendra and anyone else I'm missing.  The first year is a great year.  I sort of envy those of you about to go back for those first foul faculty meetings, but not an awful lot.  Had I been able to teach just one class of English 10 Honors and one of Drama (playwriting, maybe) each day, I might be teaching still.  But probably not.  I don't think they'd let me take all the days I want to take off.  In the years prior to retirement, when on a gorgeous fall day the fire drill bell would ring, Linda and I would meet while keeping kids corraled and say to each other, "Wouldn't this be a great day to go to Cape Cod."  Now we go!  That's hard to beat. . . being a teacher is pretty hard to beat, too.
We went to the movie about Woodstock that's playing at the Manlius.  I can't remember the title, maybe TAKING WOODSTOCK or MAKING WOODSTOCK, but whatever the name, I really liked it.  The fact that the only really good review I read of the movie was by Roger Ebert doesn't surprise me.  Roger Ebert is just a few years older than I am.  The other reviews I read or heard were by people much younger, and they all wanted more of the music included.  Those of us who were alive and aware in 1969 heard the music often enough, but we like to be reminded of the way life was then.
This is my fair suggestion for the next three year period.  It is a multi-year suggestion because we only go about every third year.  Share everything you eat.  We shared Italian Ice, chicken wings, a cup of clam chowder, and an Italian sandwich.  All the flavor and half the calories.  We really had a good time at the fair, too.  It didn't seem like so many inbred, beer-swigging, dirty-t-shirted types were wandering around for one thing.  That was an awful thing to say wasn't it?  Shame on me.  Also, the weather was cool and the place wasn't too crowded.
No news from any of the literary agents I mailed.  
I think my next blog will be about a couple of interesting difficulties for planning a reunion of your old fraternity brothers forty years after we were so young.