Happy 20th Anniversary!

If anyone were to ask my advice about how to make a marriage work, I wouldn't dare tell the whole truth, that for our 20th wedding anniversary, Tasha and I bought a set of twin mattresses. Yep--separate beds. Truth be told, Tasha can't stand sleeping with me. She says she's had twenty years too many of my twitching wildly, pulling the covers off her, hogging too much space and tossing and turning all night long. Plenty of nights I lie awake, fearful that I may roll over and wake her, to which she might respond with a right jab to my solar plexus or a brisk smack to the head. So, I agreed that separate beds might not be such a bad idea.

If anyone asked my advice, I'd probably tell them to throw the 50/50 relationship theory out the window. Decisions are made on a 100/100 basis. If Tasha or I don't completely agree about a decision, we don't move forward until we do. I'd never suggest that anyone attempt to make a cross-cultural marriage like ours work. Ours works not out of love or romance or any such poetic pipe dream, but out of patience and respect for our differences. Tasha and I have always agreed how we would raise our kids, with hope and understanding that our cultural differences promise to influence them to be good citizens of the world. Still, nothing has prevented them from making many of the same bad decisions I made as a teenager. Evidently, our first two have been cursed with my dominant knucklehead gene traits.

Twas a nice visit to Mom and Dad's place in Granville today. Lana and Samantha were there with all of us. Mom made a nice big salad and some fruit punch. Tasha cooked duck and Lana brought lasagna. Mom made seafood lasagna which was excellent even though she thought it came out a little bit soupy. Lots of cookies and genuine Turkish baklava made by our friend Ann made for plenty to eat. Dad showed us his new project, a pin hole camera that he built from a few small pieces of plywood. If it doesn't take good pictures, he says it could easily be converted to a box trap.
After lunch, we all went to the movies in State College. Tasha, Mom, Dad and I watched "Doubt" starring Merle Streep and Phillip Seymore Hoffman. This film was a rare value for the price of admission which left us with plenty to think about afterwards. I am still contemplating the line "Doubt is a bond as sustaining as certainty".

Merry Christmas to all and Thank you for 20 glorious years Natasha!

and here's an interesting feel good story from Hollywood to help us remember 2008:

Winter Break begins

A few schools had the good sense to take Monday and Tuesday off this week. Those that didn't, are less interested in educating their students than they are about putting in the required 180 days. This short week in school was a complete waste of time and tax payer dollars. From what I see in the elementary grades, kids learn little to nothing as their teachers babysit them with Disney movies and Xmas parties for two days.
Elmira's 3rd grade class at MV had an SPCA Xmas party fund drive. Now that we have solved world hunger, ended the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, and found a cure for the AIDS virus, we should be able to focus our fundraising efforts on the unwanted pit bulls this Christmas.
Maybe I'm too cynical. The SPCA is a valuable organization, and they need our donations. Fund drives at the elementary school level probably help teach kids civic duty, and I agree that the way we treat our animals is a reflection on how we treat each other. Then again, I know that you couldn't swing a cat without hitting an elderly person who is living alone and worried about how she's going to afford her groceries, her heating bills and medical prescriptions.
More later..

Those Winter Sundays

Weather is cold in the low teens and windy today. Tasha, Elmira and I picked up Tika from the trainstation this afternoon. We did some shopping for bed frames, and had dinner at the Japanese/Chinese restaurant. Ianniq spent the afternoon splitting firewood.

Obviously,this first day of winter happens to be a Sunday this year. The wind is howling outside and the draft through these antique windows is keeping the furnace warm, if nothing else. I can think of no better occasion to post my favorite poem of all time, and one of the finest poems ever written in the English language: "Those Winter Sundays" The poem puts me in mind of the little white house, and those winter evenings when Dad would rest up after the evening news, hunched over on that dining table pine bench, trying to straighten out his back before he went out into the "blue back cold", to head off for the barn. Tied to the clocks of cows' udders, Sunday afternoons from roughly 2PM until 9 or 10PM were the extent of our family weekends. Sometimes, Dad would go downstairs and split those locust logs and fire the Ben Franklin stove before he left. Then, when he came home from milking, late after midnight he'd split some more and fire it up again.

"Those Winter Sundays" is proof that poetry doesn't need big words and flowery language. Robert Haydn's language is simple and quiet. A black poet from Wisconsin, Haydn bounced around from several foster homes, group homes and orphanages growing up. No time to research it now, but it seems to me he had many health problems as a boy and he may have been nearly blind as well. At any rate, if you can read this poem without getting a lump in your throat, you might want to have somebody check your pulse.



Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Haydn

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

So long, Dock

I just read the news that one of my all-time favorite Pittsburgh Pirates died today. Dock Ellis was a flamboyant pitcher. I can still see his rapid fire jaws chewing gum like a madman, with a huge symetrical afro, bulging from beneath his yellow Pirate hat. His hair was big, I remember. He used to wear curlers in his hair and one time on his way to the ballpark in Cincinnati, Ellis was pepper sprayed by a security guard. The guard said Ellis refused to identify himself and claimed Ellis was waving his fists in a threatening manner. I always considered Ellis to be the National League's better answer to the Red Sox eccentric pot smoking left hander, Bill "Space Man" Lee. A little known fact about Dock is that he holds the Major League record for hitting the most consecutive batters. He set the record of three back in 1974 when he intentionally loaded the bases in the first inning pitching against the Cincinnati Reds. The fourth hitter, Tony Perez avoided being hit and drew a walk. Ellis' first two pitches to fifth hitter, Johnny Bench nearly took Bench's head off, before Manager, Danny Murtaugh finally pulled Ellis out of the game. Ellis's line read as follows: 0 IP 0 H 1 R 1 ER 1 BB 0 K
I suspect this is how he came to be known as the "first militant of Professional baseball".

Ellis was probably best known for pitching a no-hitter under the influence of LSD. I highly recommend you visit Chuck Brodsky's i-tunes site
and download his great folk song Dock Ellis' No No in Dock's honor. There are plenty of other versions of the song out there and most of them are pretty good. But Brodsky wrote it and his version is probably the best.

Here is an excerpt from his autobiography:

We flew into San Diego and I asked the manager could I go home, because we had an off day. And he said, "Yeah."

So I took some LSD at the airport because I knew where it would hit me -- I'd be in my own little area and I'd know where to go. That's how I got to my friend's girlfriend's house.

She said, "What's wrong with you?"

I said, "I'm high as a Georgia pine."

The next day -- or what I thought was the next day -- she told me, "You better get up, you gotta go pitch!"

I said, "Pitch? What are you talking about, I pitch tomorrow." Because I had got up in the middle of the morning and took some more acid.

She grabbed the paper and showed me the sports page. I said, "Oh wow! What happened to yesterday?"

She said, "I don't know but you better get to that airport."

Now this was in the 1970s and "greenies" was Dexamyl. That was the drug of choice back then, a stimulant.

When I got to the game, there was a lady down there in San Diego, used to always have the bennies for me -- Benzedrine -- another stimulant. I went out to the dugout and reached up, because she was standing over the rail -- she always stood over the rail -- and had a pretty little gold pouch.

So I got the bennies, went on back in the clubhouse, took them.

The game started and a mist started, a misty rain. So all during the game was a little mist. The opposing team and my teammates, they knew I was high, but they didn't know what I was high on. They had no idea what LSD was other than what they see on TV with the hippies.

I didn't see the hitters. All I could tell was if they were on the right side or the left side. The catcher put tape on his fingers so I could see the signals.

There were times when the ball was hit back at me, I jumped because I thought it was coming fast, but the ball was coming slow. Third baseman came by and grabbed the ball, threw somebody out.

I never caught a ball from the catcher with two hands, because I thought that was a big ol' ball! And then sometimes it looks small. One time I covered first base, and I caught the ball and I tagged the base, all in one motion and I said, "Oh, I just made a touchdown."

We had a rookie on the team at that particular time named Dave Cash, and he kept saying after the first inning, "you got a no-no going"--a no-hitter.

I said, "Yeah, right," and I'd look.

Then around the forth inning he'd say it again. "You got a no-no going."

I look. "Yep."

But I could also feel the pressure from other players wanting to tell him to shut up. It's a superstition thing where you're not supposed to say nothing if somebody's throwin' a no-hitter. It's bad luck.

I didn't pay no attention to the score, you know. I'm trying to get the batters out. And I'm throwin' a crazy game. I'm hittin' people, walkin' people, throwin' balls in the dirt. They going everywhere!

It was easier to pitch with the LSD because I was so used to medicating myself. That's the way I was dealing with the fear of failure, the fear of losing, the fear of winning. Over 90 percent of the Major League was using Dexamyl when I was playing. It was part of the game, you know.

Announcer: Everybody in our bullpen is standing, walking around nervously. They wanna run and grab Dock. Now two balls and two strikes, and here's the pitch. Strike three! A no hitter! They're goin' after him. He got it! They're mobbing Dock Ellis on a no-hitter. They're from all over the place. They got him on a strikeout!

Another Ice Storm and another Hitler

Ice storm. School cancelled. Elmira dental. Ianniq to Clearfield. Took back library books, saw Joe F, and the talkative TSS Jim D. Lowe's for breakers and saw Jack R the electrical shop teacher at Votech. Walmart and saw Tom M. Roads were a lot worse with about 4 inches of icy slop over the streets in Clearfield.

Apparently there is a 3 yr old in Easton, PA, who is named Adolf Hitler. The local grocery store bakery refused to decorate his birthday cake,but Walmart did: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Walmart-Taking-Heat-for-Adolf-Hitler-Cake.html His parents said they wanted to give their kids names that nobody else would have. Hello? I'm pretty sure somebody already used that name about a hundred years ago. It's too bad the original Adolf did such a royal job of spoiling the name for the birthday boy.

Spent the afternoon adding some electrical outlets in the master bedroom. This is always a challenge in an old house, but everything worked out pretty well in the end. It took me longer than it should have though.

Watched "Beowolf" again today. I enjoyed this much more than I expected I would. Excellent visual effects bring this dreadful old English poem to life. I give it a solid 3 stars out of 5.

The Show

The concert was well worth the price of tickets. It was loud with lots of lights special effects and great guitar, drums and violin riffs. The music was so loud, in fact, that I kept reaching into my pocket thinking my cell phone was vibrating. Some 14 -17 players on stage at any given time made for an always entertaining spectacle. The first half of the show was more like a Christmas pageant rock opera. The second half was more like a hair band rock concert. The lighting was the most spectacular part of the show, I think. Tasha and I thought the excessive use of fire and smoke during the second half was a bit odd. She said it added a little satanic undertone to the holiday season.
We had a few problems with the seating arrangements and as we tried to straighten it out, we were a little noisy during some of the show's narration. One pompous gentleman and his prudish wife sitting just in front of us sort of turned around and barked at Tasha and me. Little did they know how much Tasha relishes opportunities to be passive aggressive. So Tasha screamed at every opportunity and we clapped really loud right in his ear throughout the rest of the show. While I was in the back, discussing the seating arrangement with one of the ushers, who let me know he has been working at the Mellon Arena for 21 years, another couple shouted at us for talking too loud during the narration. The usher pulled me aside, "I don't know why these people are getting so bent out of shape," he said. "The narration is the only part of this show I don't like. The black guy talks to goddamn much!" he said. Only in the Mellon Arena could you find such colorful language from an usher during a Christmas pageant, I thought. Maybe the guy has worked a few too many Penguins games.

Afterwards, Nick suggested the Green Mango Thai restaurant in Monroeville. I had roasted duck curry, which was fantastic. Everyone else enjoyed theirs too. Lana Randy and Samantha opted out of the dinner, and drove straight home. Hope they made it safely.

Icy, Trans Siberian Day

It's an icy day to be going to Pittsburgh. Most of the local schools have issued 2 hour delays or are closed altogether. We have tickets for the Trans Siberian Orchestra show at the Mellon Arena. The entire family will be going with Mom, Dad, Lana, Randy, Samantha, and Tika's boyfriend, Nick.

If the weather cooperates and all the ice melts off the roads, it should be a fun day.