This was originally written last August before the flood devastated our mountain top and took precedence over everything else. People are still out of their homes, some for good. Prattsville is struggling to survive. Some believe it will. Some don't. The homeless are a topic of conversation now that winter is for sure here. One woman's reaction? "Let them live in tents."
Outside my office window, the first snowfall -- heavy and wet -- is blinding white in the afternoon sun. I think I'll send this now.
Our old farmhouse has a huge wrap-around screen porch that separates us from the insects but not the sounds and sights of the valley. I sit there every morning I can with my first coffee of the day (laced with a spoonful of hot chocolate and too much sugar) and gradually reach lift-off. The other day I heard a sound I should not have heard this time of year, barely into August. Blue jays! They’re at least a month early – a cold weather bird – but they were out there shrieking to mar the peace of that morning. But why are they here now, and why are the seedpod propellers dry and ready to fall from the maples, and why am I beginning to see red and copper leaves already in grass that’s still tall and green? Just askin’…
I live where there is peace, yes, but very little silence. Only after a three day blizzard when the river is frozen and covered over with five feet of snow is there quiet – shh, the whole world white and still. When I’m in the city sounds tend to muddy together like a child’s fingerprint painting with too many colors. So many sounds out here, too, but they seem distinct to me. Like a medieval book of hours different sounds at different times help define the day. Each waking thing makes a sound. Each waking thing joins the world at its appointed time. Human sounds are the ones least heard, such as the occasional car or truck that passes our place. Like the residents of wartime London who could tell the type of plane flying over by the sound of its engines, I can tell which neighbor is driving by the house without looking. Max always honks, but still I know him by the squeaks and rattles of the tow-trailer behind his Dodge truck. I can tell who’s brush-hogging their field, who’s using the chainsaw, who’s building a new shed, who’s sighting in for hunting season. You get to know the valley’s dogs, too, especially at night when a bear walks across their property or the coyotes yip and howl, but the sound of an owl at sunset is the sound I treasure most.
I have a secret place. It’s on the mountain behind my house, an old stone wall in the woods, once a field, now second growth timber. I wander up there often and sit, look out over the valley and smile because no one knows where I am. Last Spring I sat there at dusk and heard an owl call from across the valley – hoo, hoo – haunting – and another owl from the woods somewhere around me called back. I don’t know what they were saying but they said it a lot, back and forth, their calls echoing across the valley. The river was too far down the mountain to hear, and the woods were as quiet as always when night comes on. But the owls were calling. And then they weren’t. I waited until I was satisfied that they had gone somewhere else, and then I walked home in the darkness, the only sound being that of my boots as they pushed aside the dry grass.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
IRENE -- FLOOD -- AFTERMATH
“Losing your house means everything to people. I know that, but if you’ve lost your child…” She shrugs. “What does it mean? When it looked like we would have to evacuate, all I took were my son’s ashes and his pictures. I couldn’t have lived without them. The rest doesn’t matter.”
Sandy Kiley and I stood talking in the spacious wooden shed that serves as their family’s farm stand. They grow the best fingerling potatoes in Greene County, and service the finest restaurants on the mountaintop which is what we call our small nook of the world. Sandy and Bob, her husband, owners of RSK Farms, consider it fortunate that they’ll have potatoes for the next two months. Their other crops were destroyed in the flood caused by Hurricane Irene. Their lower fields, the ones bordering the river, a flood plain, yes, but the best soil, those lower fields are nothing now but twenty-eight acres of fist sized gravel. What will the Kileys do? Sandy shrugs. “One day at a time,” she says.
The Kileys live and farm in Prattsville, New York, the hardest hit village on the mountaintop, a small, old town of 650 where I often shop at Jim’s American Supermarket and the Agway, Prattsville, now gone. The Kileys along with the rest of the town are in survival mode. Main St. with its FEMA tent, portable showers, food pantry, clothing drop-off, and port-a-potties looks like a refugee camp. Houses gape open. Porches in shreds. X’s spray painted on houses set for demolition. Small mountains of muddy debris outside of ruined homes display contents that were once belongings: waterlogged rugs, splintered furniture, possessions now junk, less than junk, worthless. Mud all over. What will these people do?
They are doing it. They are not the type to back down. Rebuild or what? They see no choice. One family, completely isolated from the road, constructed a make-shift bridge across the water. The DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) came in and ordered them to take it down. The family refused. This is how they had been surviving. A confrontation brewed. The National Guard called in the state troopers who were thought to back the DEC, of course. Not at all. The troopers arrived and backed the locals, their neighbors, and told them to continue doing whatever they needed to survive. Morale is surprisingly high. Neighbors help neighbors, and there are volunteers from as far away as Michigan. In my valley, twenty-eight neighbors trapped for a week without phone or electricity, cooked dinner as best they could and ate with each other every night.
Certainly, the horror stories are many: the Chassidic old man who watched his wife drown in their kitchen when he waded out to snag a boat and couldn’t get back to her; she had been a Holocaust survivor; the farmer who watched two hundred dairy cows drown; houses literally floated away; trailers torn in two. But the aftermath – how these people are surviving and rebuilding – is an equally compelling story. The core values of these people, when not inflamed by irresponsible politicians, are strong and resilient, the kind of work ethic that made the United States the dominant industrial power in the world. Rosie the Riveter, tillers of Victory Gardens, teen-aged members of the Civil Air Patrol, Junior Achievement (Remember that?) – these are symbols of American strength. These are the people of Prattsville working to rebuild their lives in the face of a national economic crisis as well as a natural disaster, now caught in a political shoot-out between wealthy politicos who tie emergency aid to cuts in job programs. True, FEMA has a large tent in town as its headquarters. They are here to help, but word is getting around that a woman who lost her home valued at $102,000 was handed a check for $560. People are angry. No one seems resigned. The goal is to survive, to survive and go one better, and that’s what they will continue to do. Most do not want to go anywhere else. This is home. There are so many entities at play here. Other nearby towns suffered dreadful devastation as well: Lexington, Windham, Fleischman’s, Margaretville, Arkville. Looks on faces are the looks of the shell-shocked. Still, they are determined to go on, to make it better than it was before. I am privileged to be in the midst of them. People want me to tell their stories, and I intend to do just that.
Sandy Kiley and I stood talking in the spacious wooden shed that serves as their family’s farm stand. They grow the best fingerling potatoes in Greene County, and service the finest restaurants on the mountaintop which is what we call our small nook of the world. Sandy and Bob, her husband, owners of RSK Farms, consider it fortunate that they’ll have potatoes for the next two months. Their other crops were destroyed in the flood caused by Hurricane Irene. Their lower fields, the ones bordering the river, a flood plain, yes, but the best soil, those lower fields are nothing now but twenty-eight acres of fist sized gravel. What will the Kileys do? Sandy shrugs. “One day at a time,” she says.
The Kileys live and farm in Prattsville, New York, the hardest hit village on the mountaintop, a small, old town of 650 where I often shop at Jim’s American Supermarket and the Agway, Prattsville, now gone. The Kileys along with the rest of the town are in survival mode. Main St. with its FEMA tent, portable showers, food pantry, clothing drop-off, and port-a-potties looks like a refugee camp. Houses gape open. Porches in shreds. X’s spray painted on houses set for demolition. Small mountains of muddy debris outside of ruined homes display contents that were once belongings: waterlogged rugs, splintered furniture, possessions now junk, less than junk, worthless. Mud all over. What will these people do?
They are doing it. They are not the type to back down. Rebuild or what? They see no choice. One family, completely isolated from the road, constructed a make-shift bridge across the water. The DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) came in and ordered them to take it down. The family refused. This is how they had been surviving. A confrontation brewed. The National Guard called in the state troopers who were thought to back the DEC, of course. Not at all. The troopers arrived and backed the locals, their neighbors, and told them to continue doing whatever they needed to survive. Morale is surprisingly high. Neighbors help neighbors, and there are volunteers from as far away as Michigan. In my valley, twenty-eight neighbors trapped for a week without phone or electricity, cooked dinner as best they could and ate with each other every night.
Certainly, the horror stories are many: the Chassidic old man who watched his wife drown in their kitchen when he waded out to snag a boat and couldn’t get back to her; she had been a Holocaust survivor; the farmer who watched two hundred dairy cows drown; houses literally floated away; trailers torn in two. But the aftermath – how these people are surviving and rebuilding – is an equally compelling story. The core values of these people, when not inflamed by irresponsible politicians, are strong and resilient, the kind of work ethic that made the United States the dominant industrial power in the world. Rosie the Riveter, tillers of Victory Gardens, teen-aged members of the Civil Air Patrol, Junior Achievement (Remember that?) – these are symbols of American strength. These are the people of Prattsville working to rebuild their lives in the face of a national economic crisis as well as a natural disaster, now caught in a political shoot-out between wealthy politicos who tie emergency aid to cuts in job programs. True, FEMA has a large tent in town as its headquarters. They are here to help, but word is getting around that a woman who lost her home valued at $102,000 was handed a check for $560. People are angry. No one seems resigned. The goal is to survive, to survive and go one better, and that’s what they will continue to do. Most do not want to go anywhere else. This is home. There are so many entities at play here. Other nearby towns suffered dreadful devastation as well: Lexington, Windham, Fleischman’s, Margaretville, Arkville. Looks on faces are the looks of the shell-shocked. Still, they are determined to go on, to make it better than it was before. I am privileged to be in the midst of them. People want me to tell their stories, and I intend to do just that.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
IT WASN'T KATRINA. IT WAS IRENE
August 30, 2011
The following was intended to be a brief response to an e-mail from my friend, Ellen Stern, who'd seen the news that my piece of the mountain had taken a pounding and wanted to know how we'd fared. Judging by the length, I guess I got carried away, but so did Irene. We've seen many a Catskill mountain thunderstorm, tyrannical things with sheets and bolts of lightning coming from both earth and sky, an awesome show of force. But they don't last very long. Then came Irene: no thunder, no lightning, not even much wind, just relentless rain. Twelve straight and constant hours of it. It was like being trapped in a room as the water rises above your neck. In some cases, that's exactly what happened. A Poe story. The Titanic. I was going to say that other natural disasters, like earthquakes, are, at least, quick, hit and run, over fast, but they really aren't at all, only the earthquake, and that feels like eternity.
This seems to be more of a blog than an e-mail, so let's call it that. A blog. Working on a computer almost as old as my daughter and can't access usual blog format. So this is it. I'm writing in Boston as the phone and power are still out back home in Spruceton Valley. I'm a little discombobulated due to the evacuation -- can't quite get my bearings -- but the kids are their usually sterling selves making me feel very comfortable. I do feel uneasy at having left some of the neighbors behind. My intent had been to stay as well. The storm was over. The river was dropping. The danger passed. Why not? The weather was exquisite.
The morning after the rain subsided I was out on what used to be the road lugging flotsam to the creek side when my neighbor from the lovely little horse farm up the road walked down drinking her morning mug of coffee. We bad-mouthed Irene for awhile as she slurped her coffee, and I started salivating because I hadn't had coffee in three days. "God, what I wouldn't give for a cup of coffee," I cried. "Wait here," she said, walked back to her house (She had a generator and was using it two hours a day), and returned in a few minutes with a pot and a mug, lots of 1/2 & 1/2 and sugar, just like I like it. Two of our young volunteer firemen managed to get up the valley in ATV's to check on us. They came up during that seven foot blizzard, too. The owner of a small cabin down the road collected firewood tossed up by the river, lit a bonfire, and invited the rest of us. At another time his place was the one room schoolhouse. That night the sky was radiant.
Jamie, from her side of the country, followed the news on both CNN and the LATimes. She'd heard reports of old people trapped on back roads and figured I must be one of them. Might've been trapped. Didn't feel old.
As for her side of the country, I'll be there soon, 9/13-9/21, speaking at the Screenwriting Expo, Friday, 9/16, 4pm, LAX Westin Hotel. Topic: Your Screenplay;Your Novel. Hope to see some of you there and elsewhere.
Sorry for the digression. Had to get that in there.
Now.
A few of you have already seen a version of the following. It has been tinkered with, however, so not exactly the same. I wouldn't mind if you checked it out again.
Dear Ellen:
No matter the adventure, it usually comes down to this: don't mess with Mother Nature. Of course, Michelle Bachman said it was a message from G-d to cut the budget. From my POV the message from G-d was: you're on your own, Stevo. I'm fine and now in Boston with the kids, but this Irene lady was the real thing. Our house survived with no damage but a flood in the basement, but the old, hand-built stone retaining wall to the stream next to the house was turned into rubble, and the water came over the bank and inched toward the house as the downpour dribbled out: fourteen inches! Twelve hours. The river in front of the house slammed at a harsh angle into our stream emptying into it, and the road basically buckled and blew. At one point I watched the river breach the bank it had just battered away -- this was fast stuff, wave-like, no trickle, no slow flow -- hammer its way over the bridge, and make the road its own. Move over, sucka! Road never had a chance. Mind blowing destruction everywhere. A farmer nearby watched 200 of his cows drown when the river took out his pasture. Prattsville, where I often find myself, was destroyed. Not an exaggeration. Jim's American Market took in four feet of water. Agway pushed off its foundation and filled with mud, friends stuck on the roof watching the water rise as the Nat'l Guard sent for more boats. Jamie followed the flood on the news from Los Angeles! Over in Windham, the Catskill Mountain Country Store -- you, Katie, & I ate lunch there -- gone. Drew, the owner, watched a wave push a car through his building. It's transfixing to watch big maples and ash trees churn by at high speed as boulders grind along the bottom. You have to believe what you are seeing but you can't. Power and phone were (and are) out in Spruceton Valley. Friends stranded up the valley walked out to where they could be evacuated by the Nat'l Guard who were everywhere they could be although that wasn't nearly as many places as they were needed. I opted to stay figuring I had enough food and water for a week which was the estimate we were given. There would be others within walking distance, and, anyway, I had to find a way to the auto mechanic to have my brakes fixed at 8am next.
I hear of a possible route, so, fingers crossed, I drive down the valley astonished at the destruction, cross the final bridge past a sign I ignored, and took a bunch of back roads (cf: Robert Mitchum, Thunder Road, ca. 1953) which eventually got me to Haines Falls Auto. Palenville, one more town down the mountain, could no longer be reached due to landslide and blow-down. OK. Got the brakes fixed, bought food and dog food, and headed back over the mountains to a great view of the valley, but, more importantly, I thought I could get cell reception there, did, called Jamie who was relieved and said the family wanted me to pack up and drive to Boston. I know the kids love me but are they gonna love me for twelve days in a row? After that I'm going to LA to give a talk at the Screenwriting Expo.I wouldn't be home for weeks! I told her to tell everyone I was fine and so was the house but let me think about it. I just bought food, etc. etc. So I drive back to the valley conflicted, reach bridge #1 -- Remember the sign I ignored? -- am stopped by a roadblock of state police, Nat'l Guard, and highway guys who tell me that if I go in I can't get out for a week plus I had to leave my car and walk. Not one more vehicle was going over that bridge. Four miles up through a flood zone? With shopping bags in one hand and my ancient, crippled dachshund under the arm opposite? "Come on, Brad!" (I know the fellow. His father used to have a dairy farm on Jenkins Flats). It didn't matter I knew him. Or his father. The bridge had a one foot tear in it since I crossed that morning and was twisting counter clockwise. A plan developed. There was a government truck on the other side of the bridge. He'd give me a ride up and leave me there, or he'd wait fifteen minutes for me to pack my bag. OK. Seven days ("Maybe," said Brad). Seven days -- maybe more was Brad's subtext -- seven days without being able to communicate with the family, and the family having no idea what's going on. "Twenty minutes, " I said to Brad. "Fifteen." "Come on!" "Just go." Twenty minutes later after packing a bag and turning off all the power switches so the sudden whenever-it-would-come surge of electricity wouldn't blow our whole house out the instant Central Hudson gets it going, I'm in a truck being evacuated from my own home. Who said we were in charge? The good stuff was neighbors helping each other out. The only service station with gas and power jacked his prices up a dollar a gallon. A caller announced this on local radio, and when I finally drove out of here I saw his prices were again the same as everyone else's. So now I'm in Boston with the kids, on my small level a refugee having been given 15 minutes to pack and leave, but this is by no means the worst of what could have happened to me, did happen to many of my neighbors, or what has happened other times and other places. I'm the fortunate one, but I can imagine those times and places like I never have before. So much stuff to remember to pack. So much stuff forgotten. I left my computer glasses on my desk and a Hebrew National salami in a beer cooler on the front porch. A Chassidic man in his eighties watched as his wife of a lifetime drowned in the kitchen. He'd waded out to snag a boat and couldn't get back to her. She had been a Holocaust survivor.
The following was intended to be a brief response to an e-mail from my friend, Ellen Stern, who'd seen the news that my piece of the mountain had taken a pounding and wanted to know how we'd fared. Judging by the length, I guess I got carried away, but so did Irene. We've seen many a Catskill mountain thunderstorm, tyrannical things with sheets and bolts of lightning coming from both earth and sky, an awesome show of force. But they don't last very long. Then came Irene: no thunder, no lightning, not even much wind, just relentless rain. Twelve straight and constant hours of it. It was like being trapped in a room as the water rises above your neck. In some cases, that's exactly what happened. A Poe story. The Titanic. I was going to say that other natural disasters, like earthquakes, are, at least, quick, hit and run, over fast, but they really aren't at all, only the earthquake, and that feels like eternity.
This seems to be more of a blog than an e-mail, so let's call it that. A blog. Working on a computer almost as old as my daughter and can't access usual blog format. So this is it. I'm writing in Boston as the phone and power are still out back home in Spruceton Valley. I'm a little discombobulated due to the evacuation -- can't quite get my bearings -- but the kids are their usually sterling selves making me feel very comfortable. I do feel uneasy at having left some of the neighbors behind. My intent had been to stay as well. The storm was over. The river was dropping. The danger passed. Why not? The weather was exquisite.
The morning after the rain subsided I was out on what used to be the road lugging flotsam to the creek side when my neighbor from the lovely little horse farm up the road walked down drinking her morning mug of coffee. We bad-mouthed Irene for awhile as she slurped her coffee, and I started salivating because I hadn't had coffee in three days. "God, what I wouldn't give for a cup of coffee," I cried. "Wait here," she said, walked back to her house (She had a generator and was using it two hours a day), and returned in a few minutes with a pot and a mug, lots of 1/2 & 1/2 and sugar, just like I like it. Two of our young volunteer firemen managed to get up the valley in ATV's to check on us. They came up during that seven foot blizzard, too. The owner of a small cabin down the road collected firewood tossed up by the river, lit a bonfire, and invited the rest of us. At another time his place was the one room schoolhouse. That night the sky was radiant.
Jamie, from her side of the country, followed the news on both CNN and the LATimes. She'd heard reports of old people trapped on back roads and figured I must be one of them. Might've been trapped. Didn't feel old.
As for her side of the country, I'll be there soon, 9/13-9/21, speaking at the Screenwriting Expo, Friday, 9/16, 4pm, LAX Westin Hotel. Topic: Your Screenplay;Your Novel. Hope to see some of you there and elsewhere.
Sorry for the digression. Had to get that in there.
Now.
A few of you have already seen a version of the following. It has been tinkered with, however, so not exactly the same. I wouldn't mind if you checked it out again.
Dear Ellen:
No matter the adventure, it usually comes down to this: don't mess with Mother Nature. Of course, Michelle Bachman said it was a message from G-d to cut the budget. From my POV the message from G-d was: you're on your own, Stevo. I'm fine and now in Boston with the kids, but this Irene lady was the real thing. Our house survived with no damage but a flood in the basement, but the old, hand-built stone retaining wall to the stream next to the house was turned into rubble, and the water came over the bank and inched toward the house as the downpour dribbled out: fourteen inches! Twelve hours. The river in front of the house slammed at a harsh angle into our stream emptying into it, and the road basically buckled and blew. At one point I watched the river breach the bank it had just battered away -- this was fast stuff, wave-like, no trickle, no slow flow -- hammer its way over the bridge, and make the road its own. Move over, sucka! Road never had a chance. Mind blowing destruction everywhere. A farmer nearby watched 200 of his cows drown when the river took out his pasture. Prattsville, where I often find myself, was destroyed. Not an exaggeration. Jim's American Market took in four feet of water. Agway pushed off its foundation and filled with mud, friends stuck on the roof watching the water rise as the Nat'l Guard sent for more boats. Jamie followed the flood on the news from Los Angeles! Over in Windham, the Catskill Mountain Country Store -- you, Katie, & I ate lunch there -- gone. Drew, the owner, watched a wave push a car through his building. It's transfixing to watch big maples and ash trees churn by at high speed as boulders grind along the bottom. You have to believe what you are seeing but you can't. Power and phone were (and are) out in Spruceton Valley. Friends stranded up the valley walked out to where they could be evacuated by the Nat'l Guard who were everywhere they could be although that wasn't nearly as many places as they were needed. I opted to stay figuring I had enough food and water for a week which was the estimate we were given. There would be others within walking distance, and, anyway, I had to find a way to the auto mechanic to have my brakes fixed at 8am next.
I hear of a possible route, so, fingers crossed, I drive down the valley astonished at the destruction, cross the final bridge past a sign I ignored, and took a bunch of back roads (cf: Robert Mitchum, Thunder Road, ca. 1953) which eventually got me to Haines Falls Auto. Palenville, one more town down the mountain, could no longer be reached due to landslide and blow-down. OK. Got the brakes fixed, bought food and dog food, and headed back over the mountains to a great view of the valley, but, more importantly, I thought I could get cell reception there, did, called Jamie who was relieved and said the family wanted me to pack up and drive to Boston. I know the kids love me but are they gonna love me for twelve days in a row? After that I'm going to LA to give a talk at the Screenwriting Expo.I wouldn't be home for weeks! I told her to tell everyone I was fine and so was the house but let me think about it. I just bought food, etc. etc. So I drive back to the valley conflicted, reach bridge #1 -- Remember the sign I ignored? -- am stopped by a roadblock of state police, Nat'l Guard, and highway guys who tell me that if I go in I can't get out for a week plus I had to leave my car and walk. Not one more vehicle was going over that bridge. Four miles up through a flood zone? With shopping bags in one hand and my ancient, crippled dachshund under the arm opposite? "Come on, Brad!" (I know the fellow. His father used to have a dairy farm on Jenkins Flats). It didn't matter I knew him. Or his father. The bridge had a one foot tear in it since I crossed that morning and was twisting counter clockwise. A plan developed. There was a government truck on the other side of the bridge. He'd give me a ride up and leave me there, or he'd wait fifteen minutes for me to pack my bag. OK. Seven days ("Maybe," said Brad). Seven days -- maybe more was Brad's subtext -- seven days without being able to communicate with the family, and the family having no idea what's going on. "Twenty minutes, " I said to Brad. "Fifteen." "Come on!" "Just go." Twenty minutes later after packing a bag and turning off all the power switches so the sudden whenever-it-would-come surge of electricity wouldn't blow our whole house out the instant Central Hudson gets it going, I'm in a truck being evacuated from my own home. Who said we were in charge? The good stuff was neighbors helping each other out. The only service station with gas and power jacked his prices up a dollar a gallon. A caller announced this on local radio, and when I finally drove out of here I saw his prices were again the same as everyone else's. So now I'm in Boston with the kids, on my small level a refugee having been given 15 minutes to pack and leave, but this is by no means the worst of what could have happened to me, did happen to many of my neighbors, or what has happened other times and other places. I'm the fortunate one, but I can imagine those times and places like I never have before. So much stuff to remember to pack. So much stuff forgotten. I left my computer glasses on my desk and a Hebrew National salami in a beer cooler on the front porch. A Chassidic man in his eighties watched as his wife of a lifetime drowned in the kitchen. He'd waded out to snag a boat and couldn't get back to her. She had been a Holocaust survivor.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Who Loves Ya, Baby?
Seven small and smaller towns constitute what we call the mountaintop, and Maureen Heffernan-Rich lives on a seriously back road west of one of them. I live seventeen miles away in a hamlet of a village of a town, so the only time I see her is when I bring my dog to board or be groomed. Maureen owns Siam Kennels and has boarded three generations of our family's canines: Hank, Mike, and, now, Bliss (Guess which one my daughter named?) Maureen could be mistaken for a drill sergeant if she doesn't like you with a stare that could weaken a smackdown bully, but, if she does like you, she presents a big hearted side and an off the wall sense of humor. Dog spoken here. The other day I took Bliss over there for a toenail clipping. I could have done it myself, but Maureen's fun to talk to, and I don't know anyone else like her, so I drove over. That day Maureen was ecstatic. She had finally figured out a way to make her fortune. A small test available to any married couple should do it. She intended to sell it mail order. That's what she said. Check it out.
HOW TO TELL WHO LOVES YOU MORE: YOUR WIFE OR YOUR DOG.
Lock your wife and your dog in the trunk of your car; wait one hour; let them out; now see which one is happy to see you.
HOW TO TELL WHO LOVES YOU MORE: YOUR WIFE OR YOUR DOG.
Lock your wife and your dog in the trunk of your car; wait one hour; let them out; now see which one is happy to see you.
Monday, August 15, 2011
TEIRESIAS & ME
In classical Greek mythology we meet a seer named Teiresias, a very old man who can see into the future. One day it occurred to me that the reason Teiresias could tell what was going to happen was because he knew what had already happened. He had already lived through it. He knew that history is cyclical and events repeat themselves albeit in different forms. Now that I am older and can look back over a wide spread of years, I extrapolate about a future that will include my children and their children. I sadly admit that I am not one of the hopeful. I see the Klan in other robes. I see globalization as the next incarnation of the plantation system, international conglomerates taking the place of elected governments. I see mercenary armies fighting myriad wars when they’re not stationed in D.C. clearing us out from Pennsylvania Ave. I do not relish the world my children will inherit. Ignorance reigns. It continues to astonish me, this willful ignorance, and as long as that willful ignorance is attached to fundamental, radical religion it will continue to grow more dangerous. Michelle Bachman and her ilk are real. She is not acting. The lady is a true believer, a religious fanatic, the kind that kills, and just look at her popularity. Please understand I mean only honor and respect to any creed that has at its heart the dignity and humanity of the rest of us, but most of my life I’ve felt that the true danger to the United States came from within, like beetles boring through the heart of an oak tree. Forget sharia law. It’s the beliefs of the radical right that worry me. On talk shows one hears these people whine and complain about being persecuted, but throughout the history of the western world they are the persecutors and always have been (Check out the Crusades, the Inquisition, lynch mobs, concentration camps, and pogroms for starters), militant and aggressive about a way of life that would set the United States back centuries and end life here as we know it. They are among us, folks, organized into a rabid cabal of self-anointed Dominionists and devotees of the New Apostolic Reformation (Rick Perry being one of their self-confessed prophets), with the aim of infiltrating our government so as to enforce their beliefs on us all.Please explain to me how this is different from radical Islam? I fear civil war. I fear a time when people who disagree with the government will be “disappeared”. I fear witches will once again be hung. I am firm in my conviction that anyone who believes Jezebel and three demons are in control of the United States (told to the press by another moron from Perry’s Response day) is a menace to our society. A huge part of me believes there is little we can do to stop this political and social (r)evolution, but another part of me believes in fighting back as heartily as possible. We are in a battle for the very soul of the United States of America. To co-opt a popular right wing slogan, “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned. Believe it.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Shelly On My Mind When Max Came By
I wondered why, after so many years of ever since,I was thinking about Shelly -- Shelly with the long black hair and heavily made up eyes -- Amy Winehouse eyes! Her death must have triggered this memory of the beatnik chick who worked the audiences of the coffee houses after I read my poems with a bread basket intoning "Bread for the poet. Bread for the poet." It was the beginning of my career -- I believe we made seven dollars one night -- and I thought she loved me. It actually was, I realize, the beginning of my career(nowadays seven bucks a night is looking good again), but Shelly, ah, dark-eyed, black haired sorceress, ran off to South America with a drummer. Is it a half a century now? More. Is she even alive? My guess is she's not still with that drummer in South America.
So I'm thinking about Shelly and Amy when Max comes by all pissed off and huffing in a way I've rarely seen him. Now, you'd have to search far and wide to find a guy as nice as Max. He makes a mighty effort to be fair and tolerant to all comers, but his new neighbor pushed him to the limit. You see, Max has a pot bellied pig among a variety of critters on his farm: cats, goats, horses, chickens, the pig, maybe a parrot (though I'm not sure about the parrot but wouldn't be surprised). And the pig crawled under a fence onto his neighbor's property. His neighbor is a newcomer from the city unused to the pace and ways of life here. He's also a drunk -- loud, pugnacious, intolerant, and as full of himself as he is with the whiskey -- the worst kind of urban invader who comes to these parts to drink himself blind until he needs to go back to the city on Monday morning. This is a specific breed, an invasive species in our corner of the Catskills. He arrogantly signaled for Max to come over on his property to talk, and Max said, "You wanna talk to me? Come talk to me," and plants himself in place. The guy's eyes bulged like an old cow's. He stood and stared like a slack jawed dummy, but that's all he did. If you've ever seen Max mad, you wouldn't move either. His body is hard work powerful with a low center of gravity, and he favors Harley t-shirts and tattoos. Of course, Max has a heart of cream of wheat, but you wouldn't know this by looking at him. So far, Max's neighbor has not taken him up on the offer of a pow-wow on Max's side of the fence. a good thing, too, because Max is near mad enough to..."If that guy comes over here," fumed Max, "I'm gonna kick his ass, drag him into my house, call the police and tell him the guy broke in drunk. You're a witness, right?" he said. "Gimme a call," I said. That's what neighbors are for.
Then we stopped talking about this bullshit because Max wanted to get off it. He didn't like feeling this way and insisted I follow him to a back pasture so he could show me how beautifully he had mowed it with the fallen grass arranged as if it were a hay field before bailing. Max was proud of how he had done it, and, indeed, it was as beautiful as a Brueghel painting. We stood there in silence. There was a breeze and a blue jay in the apple tree. "Well," he said after awhile, "Cheryl's gonna want me to start dinner. Burn 'er, bub," which is how Max says goodbye. "Burn 'er, bub." He walked back to his truck, and I stayed in the field. The aroma of fresh mown grass was intoxicating.
So I'm thinking about Shelly and Amy when Max comes by all pissed off and huffing in a way I've rarely seen him. Now, you'd have to search far and wide to find a guy as nice as Max. He makes a mighty effort to be fair and tolerant to all comers, but his new neighbor pushed him to the limit. You see, Max has a pot bellied pig among a variety of critters on his farm: cats, goats, horses, chickens, the pig, maybe a parrot (though I'm not sure about the parrot but wouldn't be surprised). And the pig crawled under a fence onto his neighbor's property. His neighbor is a newcomer from the city unused to the pace and ways of life here. He's also a drunk -- loud, pugnacious, intolerant, and as full of himself as he is with the whiskey -- the worst kind of urban invader who comes to these parts to drink himself blind until he needs to go back to the city on Monday morning. This is a specific breed, an invasive species in our corner of the Catskills. He arrogantly signaled for Max to come over on his property to talk, and Max said, "You wanna talk to me? Come talk to me," and plants himself in place. The guy's eyes bulged like an old cow's. He stood and stared like a slack jawed dummy, but that's all he did. If you've ever seen Max mad, you wouldn't move either. His body is hard work powerful with a low center of gravity, and he favors Harley t-shirts and tattoos. Of course, Max has a heart of cream of wheat, but you wouldn't know this by looking at him. So far, Max's neighbor has not taken him up on the offer of a pow-wow on Max's side of the fence. a good thing, too, because Max is near mad enough to..."If that guy comes over here," fumed Max, "I'm gonna kick his ass, drag him into my house, call the police and tell him the guy broke in drunk. You're a witness, right?" he said. "Gimme a call," I said. That's what neighbors are for.
Then we stopped talking about this bullshit because Max wanted to get off it. He didn't like feeling this way and insisted I follow him to a back pasture so he could show me how beautifully he had mowed it with the fallen grass arranged as if it were a hay field before bailing. Max was proud of how he had done it, and, indeed, it was as beautiful as a Brueghel painting. We stood there in silence. There was a breeze and a blue jay in the apple tree. "Well," he said after awhile, "Cheryl's gonna want me to start dinner. Burn 'er, bub," which is how Max says goodbye. "Burn 'er, bub." He walked back to his truck, and I stayed in the field. The aroma of fresh mown grass was intoxicating.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
On Being An Older Father
This past February I saw a beautiful theatre piece at the Geffen in LA produced by an old friend, Susan Rose Lafer. It was called In Mother’s Words: four electric actresses reading the words of playwrights who are also mothers, compelling words about different aspects of mothering from a purely personal point of view. So it set me to thinking: how about a few words from fathers which led me to remember a few words I’d already written when my kids were tiny and tinier. This essay was originally published in Newsweek and picked up internationally. It was years ago, like I said, tiny and tinier, but here comes Father’s Day, so I’m putting it out there again. Yo y'all!
ON BEING AN OLDER FATHER
Recently, at the wedding of the daughter of a close friend, a thought struck me: "My God," I said to my wife, "When our kid gets married, we're going to be so old we'll have to have it catered by Meals-On-Wheels!" My son, you see, is only two. When he is thirteen, I will be sixty, and the twenty-first century will be here. You can do the rest of the arithmetic yourself. I'll tell you this, however: it's a strange thing to suddenly find yourself reading the obituary section and Parents Magazine at the same time.
Sevi, my son, was a long time coming. I first began trying to have him one marriage and many lifetimes ago, and discovered myself infertile. It felt as if someone had died. That marriage died, too, but not before a harrowing assault by a battalion of fertility specialists. A man spends his entire life trying to protect his gonads then offers them up to a breed of medical practitioner equaled in cold-hearted arrogance only by Porsche mechanics. At least, a Porsche runs after a tuneup. No matter what those doctors did, my sperm count remained among the lowest on earth. So, I counterattacked with vengeance. I set about fashioning a life that took me anywhere I wanted to go. A child had no place in it. And I married a woman hell-bent as myself. She was also infertile. Children were out of the question. It was, we thought, the basis of our relationship until that night, years later, when the issue was suddenly, once again, as alive and insistent as an infant crying in the next room. I don't remember how it came up. We were driving home along rural roads in a rainstorm when my wife said, "You really do want a child, don't you?", and the thought came to me that not once in my entire life had I really felt that I would never be a father. The underlying assumption was simple: someday, somehow I would be.
"Yes," I answered, "Yes, yes, yes."
And, at that moment, I knew I would have one. It was overwhelming. My wife couldn't see or hear me in the utter darkness and driving rain, but I was crying.
The video taken when our adopted son was first handed to us shows a man with silver hair taking a baby into his arms. I don't think I look like a grandfather, yet most of my peers look like this, and their children are in college. But I'm fit and fairly certain of my powers. In some sense, I feel as if I've been in training for this all my life. What I've done is to reverse the time frame. My child rearing years will be the last third of my life instead of the middle third. I've been fortunate. While others my age were struggling with their careers and raising families, I was living a life of textbook adventure. My heroes had always been men like Gordon, explorer of the Nile, and Lawrence of Arabia. I don't mean to imply that I operated on their scale or with their skill; but, like these men, I was driven to pit myself against myself in exotic places. There is a photograph of me from this period that shows a man with a week's growth of beard leaning against a tree in a jungle. A cigarette dangles from his mouth. He wears a headband. His eyes look out at you with some amusement and more appraisal, the kind of guy, the sergeants say, you'd want beside you in a firefight. But I'm not sure I like him. The picture hides a lot. There is too much swagger. What I remember most vividly from those times, really, is the loneliness. I was attached to no one. I was building nothing to pass on. Nowadays everything I do has taken on a whole new dimension. Let me explain. Last Fall I put my son in a pack on my back and climbed the mountain behind our house to look for blackberries. Hank, our springer spaniel, who loves wild berries almost as much as he loves flushing pheasant, went with us. We saw deer and porcupine, the tracks of coon and coyote. Lightning had hit a tree I liked, and its roots had erupted from the ground, brown and tangled like a mass of wire. We found the blackberries, thousands of them, and I could not have been more happy and satisfied if the juicy berries had been the Holy Grail.
True, the adjustment to parenthood is not always easy, and, yes, being a father takes up an enormous amount of time. But who would I rather spend it with? I'm not a man who's interested in accumulating companies or commanding an army. I've served my time in the trenches of masculinity, and I don't have many illusions about these things. I fail to see where beating someone up is more satisfying than showing my son where to find the echo or suddenly hearing him speak a sentence where before he only dabbled in isolated words. He has enabled me to touch reserves of strength and love I never knew existed. Nothing is more basic. I will give my child a safe place to sleep. I will give him the food he needs. I will teach him to survive as best I can. And I will protect him with my life. There is a certain serenity in the simplicity of this formula. Sure, sometimes, it's a drag to get up so early in the morning; but, then again, I get to see his face at an hour when it is most innocent, when it is most open. To me he is a work of art, a creation as intense as the Sistine Chapel. The purity of his rage and joy astonishes me. If I can teach him to love, if I can put him into this world with the ability to handle it yet without the feeling that he must subjugate it, then, I believe, I will have done my job.
Am I a better father now than I would have been when I was younger? Yes. Would I recommend that every man wait to have children? Not necessarily. I believe it happened to me at the right time. I cannot speak for anyone else. I do worry about staying healthy and agile enough to be the parent I want to be, and I worry about what will happen when Sevi reaches his teens and begins pulling away at a time when, perhaps more than younger parents, I will want to hold him close. More than anything else, I am afraid that I might die when he needs me the most. However I have this feeling that I'm going to be around for a long time, that I might even get to be a grandfather, for God's sake. I wouldn't be surprised, but like the pitcher going into the fifth inning with a no hitter, I don't think I should talk about it.
Does there have to be more to life than this, I wonder? I guess so, because my wife and I just received word that our infant daughter is waiting for us to come and pick her up. We're told she has red hair, and I cannot wait to have her in my arms.
ON BEING AN OLDER FATHER
Recently, at the wedding of the daughter of a close friend, a thought struck me: "My God," I said to my wife, "When our kid gets married, we're going to be so old we'll have to have it catered by Meals-On-Wheels!" My son, you see, is only two. When he is thirteen, I will be sixty, and the twenty-first century will be here. You can do the rest of the arithmetic yourself. I'll tell you this, however: it's a strange thing to suddenly find yourself reading the obituary section and Parents Magazine at the same time.
Sevi, my son, was a long time coming. I first began trying to have him one marriage and many lifetimes ago, and discovered myself infertile. It felt as if someone had died. That marriage died, too, but not before a harrowing assault by a battalion of fertility specialists. A man spends his entire life trying to protect his gonads then offers them up to a breed of medical practitioner equaled in cold-hearted arrogance only by Porsche mechanics. At least, a Porsche runs after a tuneup. No matter what those doctors did, my sperm count remained among the lowest on earth. So, I counterattacked with vengeance. I set about fashioning a life that took me anywhere I wanted to go. A child had no place in it. And I married a woman hell-bent as myself. She was also infertile. Children were out of the question. It was, we thought, the basis of our relationship until that night, years later, when the issue was suddenly, once again, as alive and insistent as an infant crying in the next room. I don't remember how it came up. We were driving home along rural roads in a rainstorm when my wife said, "You really do want a child, don't you?", and the thought came to me that not once in my entire life had I really felt that I would never be a father. The underlying assumption was simple: someday, somehow I would be.
"Yes," I answered, "Yes, yes, yes."
And, at that moment, I knew I would have one. It was overwhelming. My wife couldn't see or hear me in the utter darkness and driving rain, but I was crying.
The video taken when our adopted son was first handed to us shows a man with silver hair taking a baby into his arms. I don't think I look like a grandfather, yet most of my peers look like this, and their children are in college. But I'm fit and fairly certain of my powers. In some sense, I feel as if I've been in training for this all my life. What I've done is to reverse the time frame. My child rearing years will be the last third of my life instead of the middle third. I've been fortunate. While others my age were struggling with their careers and raising families, I was living a life of textbook adventure. My heroes had always been men like Gordon, explorer of the Nile, and Lawrence of Arabia. I don't mean to imply that I operated on their scale or with their skill; but, like these men, I was driven to pit myself against myself in exotic places. There is a photograph of me from this period that shows a man with a week's growth of beard leaning against a tree in a jungle. A cigarette dangles from his mouth. He wears a headband. His eyes look out at you with some amusement and more appraisal, the kind of guy, the sergeants say, you'd want beside you in a firefight. But I'm not sure I like him. The picture hides a lot. There is too much swagger. What I remember most vividly from those times, really, is the loneliness. I was attached to no one. I was building nothing to pass on. Nowadays everything I do has taken on a whole new dimension. Let me explain. Last Fall I put my son in a pack on my back and climbed the mountain behind our house to look for blackberries. Hank, our springer spaniel, who loves wild berries almost as much as he loves flushing pheasant, went with us. We saw deer and porcupine, the tracks of coon and coyote. Lightning had hit a tree I liked, and its roots had erupted from the ground, brown and tangled like a mass of wire. We found the blackberries, thousands of them, and I could not have been more happy and satisfied if the juicy berries had been the Holy Grail.
True, the adjustment to parenthood is not always easy, and, yes, being a father takes up an enormous amount of time. But who would I rather spend it with? I'm not a man who's interested in accumulating companies or commanding an army. I've served my time in the trenches of masculinity, and I don't have many illusions about these things. I fail to see where beating someone up is more satisfying than showing my son where to find the echo or suddenly hearing him speak a sentence where before he only dabbled in isolated words. He has enabled me to touch reserves of strength and love I never knew existed. Nothing is more basic. I will give my child a safe place to sleep. I will give him the food he needs. I will teach him to survive as best I can. And I will protect him with my life. There is a certain serenity in the simplicity of this formula. Sure, sometimes, it's a drag to get up so early in the morning; but, then again, I get to see his face at an hour when it is most innocent, when it is most open. To me he is a work of art, a creation as intense as the Sistine Chapel. The purity of his rage and joy astonishes me. If I can teach him to love, if I can put him into this world with the ability to handle it yet without the feeling that he must subjugate it, then, I believe, I will have done my job.
Am I a better father now than I would have been when I was younger? Yes. Would I recommend that every man wait to have children? Not necessarily. I believe it happened to me at the right time. I cannot speak for anyone else. I do worry about staying healthy and agile enough to be the parent I want to be, and I worry about what will happen when Sevi reaches his teens and begins pulling away at a time when, perhaps more than younger parents, I will want to hold him close. More than anything else, I am afraid that I might die when he needs me the most. However I have this feeling that I'm going to be around for a long time, that I might even get to be a grandfather, for God's sake. I wouldn't be surprised, but like the pitcher going into the fifth inning with a no hitter, I don't think I should talk about it.
Does there have to be more to life than this, I wonder? I guess so, because my wife and I just received word that our infant daughter is waiting for us to come and pick her up. We're told she has red hair, and I cannot wait to have her in my arms.
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