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.

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.

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.

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?

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."

 

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.

"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.