National ‘State’

Funny how President Obama took time during his ‘State of the Union’ address to explain the many ways in which we are divided as a country. Sadly, this is the case. Put a little ice cream on the fruit of our heartland and we’d have a ‘Nation split’. Having 42% of people entrenched into one party’s philosophy or the others isn’t a bad thing unless we want to pass a 10 question second grade math test. In this case, splitting the answers evenly wrong,  both sides would fail. This is the case now in America and KO Obama laid it out there plain and simple: we don’t lead the world in much any more-other nations have passed us in infrastructure development, power grid expansion, student test levels, health care, longevity expectancy and lastly, what should be first, in happiness and in a sense of well being. Darn it! It’s my gut feeling that within my lifetime this hasn’t always been the case…and I’m pissed about it. What to do? Yeah, this is the question.

I keep thinking the Vietnam demonstrations have more to do with our current failures than we might think. And this may be the exact result power people were looking for-that we wouldn’t ‘think’ it. You see the people in power saw right then what a good education might lead to: people protesting government involvement in our Nation’s intervening international actions which We, the people, didn’t want to be a part of. It wasn’t long after these protests we heard the news about additives missing from baby formula which might stem brain development; it wasn’t long after massive raiding on school appropriations began under the guise of lotto funding; it wasn’t long after budget cuts to education were presented as necessary putting sports, arts, music activities, those activities which are known to enhance some people’s learning skills, ‘out of bounds’ financially; it wasn’t long after teaching methods were turned from individual learning skill development to ‘test based’ progress only; it wasn’t long after that ‘no kid left behind’ financing policies ensured most would be. Now, what do we have? We have a whole country, the one so many have fought and died for, being ‘left behind’ by other world countries. Like it or not, you could spend a month reading the facts that support all of the above statements. This is our country; this is the ‘state’ of our Union today. I’m thinking dog poop here.

Buckle up for safety? We need more than that. We need to tighten up, fly right, step up, step out, charge a head, cover our backs, look forward, pedal to the metal, blast off, take off, zero in on and get on with it-the business of our country. Not the business of a party’s cheap bias, internal imaging, back up dialogues and convoluted reasoning. We need less crooks in Washington than we have in jail; we need honest, selfless people who wish to govern for our National good to run and break the 2 minute mile. We need leaders who will not sit on what has been led; we need leaders who will push us forward and beyond. We need a very large pooper scooper.

You just took an early exit from America if your next vote is simply along party lines. Why? Lobbyists can answer this question as they always do: with cash, that’s the ‘why’ of it. I don’t care whose name is on what party-look to see how they vote and who deposits their checks. Sure, there are, seemingly, some political differences between our party philosophies. Basically the Republicans like to siphon tax dollars through businesses on down to the middle class while the Democrats like to siphon tax dollars through government run programs on down to the middle class. Both party members slash at the money to get as much of it for them selves and for their backers as they can before it leaves their control. Simply though, history has shown we have enough crooks in congress to sink the titanic-that’s a problem. The middle class is asked to be the ‘life boat’ time and time again and we simply can not do this. We need leadership-I may have mentioned this.

I give Obama kudos for taking ‘down’ the Supreme Court members during his State of the Union speech. It is with guts he called their decision to allow corporate funding of our National elections a total disaster to America. But I have to say during his speech, over all, I thought I could smell the money being used in that room to oil our future. It doesn’t burn clean, money never does. But before I ask for more strawberries to go with that ‘Nation Split’ I have to peer around through the fog in search for a light like the one our Statue of Liberty holds. What I find is we’re not out of fuel yet, we just need a new wick. How to get that wick, how to trim it, how to light it-that’s the question we need to answer now.

Franque

Please enjoy this post if you have not read it:

HOLD THE CELL PHONE!

THE DREAM I LIVED

Bob Russo is one of my best friends. At fifteen we both played on our high school football and lacrosse teams. Often we’d hitch-hike the 10 miles home together after practices or just walk this distance, downing the stuff that makes kids grow- soft drinks, chips or ice creams. It was that summer of my fifteenth year when we decided to work as kitchen help at a camp located near Marlborough Vermont -the year was 1964.

This camp was built around half of a small lake. The other side of this lake had a girl’s camp on it-can it get any better than that? No, it really can’t. This feature matched another link Bob and I had together-girls. You see baseball games weren’t the only times we both were trying to steal bases. Girls had ‘bases’ too and we often keep busy trying to ‘steal’ them as well. The set up here seemed perfect. The only hurdle to getting employed by this camp was our interview for the job, but these questions were easy for us to answer-and we only lied about one of them, just one lie.

‘Back past’ now about eight years to 1956ish and I’m having the time of my life. It’s true Mrs. Rudden (darn you Mrs. Rudden) had called the cops on my brother and me. So what I say? Sure, my brother and me were dressing up like Indians and running around the neighborhood wearing only towels which ‘barely’ covered our ‘privates’? Who cares (besides her)? Hey-Indians certainly didn’t care about that stuff! Anyway, in spite of ol’ snoopy nose, Life was great! Now, where was I?  Here: simply, I was blessed with the ‘best’ Mom. All my friends crowded our house for snacks, games, sandbox adventures, tree climbing and beetle smashing. Why? Our house offered what other homes didn’t: freedom, that’s why. All of us were always free to be the children we were in my house-this made all the difference. So what’s not to like in my Life? Well, it was just a dream, just one dream.

The dream started when I was about eight. I had this dream many times and each time I would wake the next morning clearly remembering it. Funny, I don’t remember ever waking up during it. So if you put another quarter into the blog slot I’ll tell you about the dream-OK, I’ll tell you anyway. First off, the dream is about mountain climbing and to this day I hate heights-just ask my wife about me and movie watching. (I prefer to yodel in the bath tub). I can watch people getting chain sawed, chased by man eating frogs, blended into tomorrows dinner, filleted by swords, caught by the guy waiting in the dark, eaten by fungi, smashed by buildings, cars, trains and Godzilla type feet-none of this bothers or attracts me. But put a guy hanging by his fingers on a building ledge and I start squirming worse than a worm after it’s been run over-it’s bathroom break time for me, time to yodel. I think its ‘The Dream’ coming back doing this: “Doctor, it is just this one dream!”

So in this dream there are two best friends, one is me, mountain climbing in a snow storm. We are both dressed in heavy gear- the whole 18 yards of stuff. We are climbing when it becomes evident we’ve got to bed down for the night. And don’t worry-I’m not going the ‘Brokeback mountain’ way here. We find a ledge; I see the ledge quite clearly in my dream as a narrow, 40 foot long area holding about a 30 degree slope throughout it. The great thing about this ledge is that it is under a cliff like outcropping and due to this feature it is a snow free area. There’s no way, however, we feel comfortable to fall asleep on this ledge without tying on to it somehow. We devise a way to undo one shoe just enough to allow us to curl our toes up and hammer a spike through the shoe into the rock while still wearing the shoe. It’s not comfortable, but we feel safe: each of us feeling safe enough to fall asleep on this snow free ledge while being held fast by our spike driven shoe. But this is not the case; we are not safe.

Still dreaming-the morning comes and I awake to find my climbing buddy gone. Evidently he’d slipped out of his spiked shoe and now was presumably dead, having blown off the slope during the night. His spiked shoe remains as it was when we fell asleep-still spiked into the rock- but now it is empty. The laces on this shoe remain more undone than I had thought they should have been. I see the shoe close up and, then, the dream ends. How many times did I have this dream? I’d say I had this dream 50 or more times. But none of those times did me any good later, many years later.

Fast forward now to a wonderful summer in Vermont as two fifteen year old guys play sports and the ‘field’ of women living across the lake. Then an unexpected thing occurred. Bob had rowed across the lake at night hoping to ‘steal’ one of those female ‘bases’ located in the girls camp when he accidentally slipped off his boat and fell into the lake. Oddly, I’d heard the splash while sitting at the shore line that full moon night. Immediately I ran to get the help I’d heard him call for. Unfortunately, the one lie we had told was that Bob really didn’t swim that well. It took 3 days for divers to find him. My self?- I spent most of that night running through the camp and woods calling Bob’s name. It was about 4 AM that morning when I went to our bunk house and hugged his pillow knowing to expect the worst. But what’s this got to do with the dream I had so often years earlier? This night was my dream; I had just lived my dream.

You see Bob was found under a submerged ledge, stuck beneath it under 40 feet of water. He had one shoe off. His missing shoe, laces undone, was found on top of the same submerged ledge resting less than 20 feet underwater. They guessed he’d tried to take his shoes off in the hopes of being able to swim, but, in this effort, he only managed to get one undone. It took me a couple months after this event to realize what the shoe found on top of the submerged ledge was. This shoe, the one Bob had lost while trying to swim, the one with the laces undone, was the same shoe I found in my dream- the shoe spiked into the ledge next to me in the morning as I awoke in my dream to find my friend gone with nothing but an unlaced shoe left. No, it wasn’t snowing and heavy hiking gear was not a factor in his death, albeit the weight of his clothes certainly was… But snow is frozen water; a sneaker may be another man’s boot. Bob’s shoe laces were undone on just one shoe, undone on the shoe found on the top part of the underwater ledge. And a ledge is just that, be it under the water or high in the sky. But, for all of us, best friends can die in dreams and in real Life. This time, for me, it seems to have happened in both.

Certainly, as a young boy I had a reoccurring dream which now, in retrospect, seems to match many of the ways a best friend of mine did die later on in my Life. If not so, then why did I have this reoccurring dream? This question is ‘key’ to me. I couldn’t ‘shake’ this dream for the longest time during my younger years. This dream kept ‘calling’. Now, I think dreams are shadows, much like silhouettes, of our past, present or future waking hours. The good news is we own our dreams-a tremendous resource for us to hold. We just need ‘dream vision’; we need a way to tap into these ‘silhouettes’ in order to ‘see’ their meanings. And who can write of dreams and not mention Edward Casey, the Titanic or Joseph’s dreams of famine? These are people and events which take dream power to the umpteenth level.

Perhaps, after all, this was just one dream I had. Certainly there was just one lie. But most importantly this is about one best friend. I find no need to think of Bob as dead now, as people say, “Get over it” so you can “Move on” with your Life. I think it more important to “live with it”, so that’s what I do. He’s one of my best friends, still. He’s friends for ‘keeps’. Unfortunately, this dream of mine is for ‘keeps’ as well. It’s just one dream, the dream I lived…

So tell me: what have you been dreaming of lately?

Franque

This post belongs with several others in a ‘Spiritual’ type sub grouping. Please enjoy these other posts as well if you have not already read them:

Spirits in the Night

RED DOG FOREVER

Engines ‘In Tune’-Halloween

Grandma Franque Saves the Day(with help)!

40 in a 25 MPH ZONE

So, you’re coming up on 40. And all of us 40ish know what this means: you’re about to become much like the last soggy pickle choice in the refrigerator, congrats on that. Sure your mirror now has someone else’s crow’s feet in it but don’t worry-few people will be able to see your face through the pile of self denial you now live under. Oh I know you mean it when you tell your friends you’d love to be playing touch football if it weren’t for your chiropractic appointment but heads up!- The light you’re waiting at while making this cell call has changed twice already! You need to relax, take a step back. You deserve a break almost as much as you need one. It’s time now to  review what you’ve done so far with your Life and perhaps take a look at what you hope to accomplish from this point onward. (BTW, that’s not gum on your shoes you feel as you take a step back, that’s just how it feels to walk after 40). And I know, I know- most likely, even by now, you can’t remember much of what you may have done up till now.  But  don’t worry, I can help with this.

Basically, you’ve done nothing-nice job. Sure, you may have shoveled a few tons of steak, peas and garlic whipped potatoes into that mouth of yours but beyond this, not much. But there’s good news-now at forty most of your productive years, the good years, are over. No need to worry much about trying to ‘catch up’ to lost time, as if anyone can. Heck, you’re about to spend a year feeling like you’re doing 40 in a 25 MPH zone. Bro, it’s over, finished, fini, did and done, your creme burlee time is washed up, left for dead on the shores of your ‘what could have been’ Life. Still, you can cheer up-what you hold on to now amongst the waves of time, this nothingness of by-gone efforts, is far better than what is coming, trust me. So what’s coming?

Looking down the road of Life ahead what you should see, if your eyes have not yet gone bad, is a truck load of crap headed your way. Sorry but there’s no time to change course, it’s too late. Doctors from now on will explain the conditions you have are due to the fact of living this long-so enjoy them. The asthma, arthritis, glaucoma, trigger fingers, various fungi, slipped disc symptoms, hearing loss and dementia all come for free at this point. They’ll be plenty for you to share and talk about with your friends-those who are still living that is. So you might as well sit back and enjoy the view of the train coming down the track you’re tied to. My advice is to simply find a chair as most elders do and enjoy it. You should, however, try to a get a rocking chair so you’re sure to be able to get out of it when you need to-nothing like being ‘late’ for the bathroom-people get put away for that kind of  a ‘performance’ at your age.  Once it was important to make it to the church on time. Now, it’s the toilet clocking your time-don’t be late.

So what is there to do? I’ve got a few ideas for you that, unfortunately, will most likely help about as much as it usually does to tell a teenager to study instead of going out, drive slower or to wear a condom. I don’t know, perhaps the best advice I can give is that you pray the slippery slope your traveling down will remain well greased? Anyway, remaining optimistic I offer you these: first off start buying raised toilet seats, low step in showers, elevators for any stairs you might have, and huge screen TVs coupled with 300 watt amplifiers for sound. It’s important to begin writing notes for everything-record people’s names, places you go, where you keep your phone book, important birthdays, your wife’s name and even your own name (keep a note of where you have this name of yours hidden), and look in the mirror a lot. I know you look bad now, but keep telling yourself how much worse it’s gonna get as time goes by-this can be a great ‘ pick-me up’ in the morning for both sexes. Guys, you need to do yoga in hopes of not becoming a ‘B’ cup too early on.  Women, you need to do yoga in hopes of not becoming a living testament to the forces of gravity. That’s about it. There’s tons more to tell you but, hmmm, I’ve forgotten it all-there’s no hope of me finding the lists I made. Sorry.

Oh, one more thing- I can’t believe you’re Forty-I don’t care who you are! How bad is that? Darn it, now I’m older too! Thanks pal. It’s sort of like being stuck in the bottom of a roller-coaster while knowing the next train is already on its way. Great Job my friend-go a head, turn 40. See If I care. By the way-you really should write, every day, have I mentioned that? 40 year old people need to write…Get back on track; write a book about all the things you can’t remember, the World needs to hear from you. Really, they do. It’s not too late-most likely, with luck, you’ve got a couple of good months left and you’re  smart. Come to think of it, forget all that stuff I said about being 40-you still have potential! Heck, I’d say it’s  likely most of you have a great chance to make it to 50, maybe even past that!-go for it. Maybe that is just gum on your shoe after all? Not gum you say? What about Taffy?

Friends- Franque

Here’s a segway to  turning 60 for those who haven’t read it:

60: my speed limit.

What’s Up With People?

We as a people are just plain nuts- the ‘mixed-nut’ variety. Clearly there’s no point to willy-nilly around this fact or to dose-doe with History about it. A trail blazes right from many ‘nutty’ occasions to the perpetrator of these events: US. But why do I say this? I mean heck, we live in what is called the most successful society ever to exist during the History of Mankind. We are Capitalism at its best. In short: WE rule! Sure, we owe lots to other countries who are  currently buying up our countryside as if it were time-shares without maintenance fees but, over all, we are producers, controllers and self appointed leaders of the ‘free’ World. Besides, and I’ll let the bankers answer any questions on this one, we can just print more money if we ever have to really pay anyone back. So what’s ‘nuts’ about us, the big U.S. ? Hmmm, a word that’s coming to mind is: plenty.

Capitalism, for one, is ‘nuts’. But before you take Rush’s pills away from him and sic him on me let me add that Socialism, Communism, Monarchy’s, Democracy’s, Dictatorships, Republics, Theocracy’s, Parliamentary along with shear Anarchy’s are ‘nut’ filled systems as well. Why? Well, for one, it’s plainly true these ‘systems’ share a common link- people, you know, the ‘nuts’ I’m talking about. We’re ‘out of our tree’ and none of us fell very far away from it either. This is why, when taking the long view of Mans’ History, it is quite evident We as a people are ‘hell bent’ on killing one another with any weapon we might devise. Let’s be clear- we all agree if someone kills another for ten bucks there is only one final opinion to be held: people who do this sort of thing are nuts, crazy, bonkers, flying burritos, wacky wackos, half-baked weirdo’s, bizarre lunatics, un-hinged loonies, mad, an oar short with a screw loose, touched or simply bat-shit crazy. And it’s no wonder we have so many words for being so, since We as a people are one figure short of a totem pole ourselves. But if We act as a group on behalf of procuring something vastly more valuable than ten bucks then it’s a whole different ‘story’. We have historically, routinely, slaughtered, blown to smithereens (that’s along way off BTW), or simply annihilated people for various items We as one society or another thought WE needed. Nice. And this type of behavior has been, if not thought proper, at least thought to be acceptable by our societies. Can you spell N U T S?

But come on, what about the yin-yang of everything? There has to be an ‘upside’ to this entire chock full of nuts lifestyle we insist on ‘sharing’ with others? I suggest this ‘upside’ is Peace-now here’s a great societal concept. Peace! Here’s to the exact opposite of ,say, cutting each other’s head’s off over the ten million acres of land some one might live on which, by chance, has one of the Worlds largest oil reserves under it. Clearly Peace is a state of being which has no sister/brother or Mother/Father of being: oddly, it doesn’t evolve from dropping an atomic bomb, developing a star wars ray gun or from wearing bullet proof vest while wielding photo beam rocket launchers. Any of these afore mentioned items may keep anything out of harms way, but none of them can ‘birth’ Peace. In fact, I would think by any definition the use of these items, the development of them, all the time invested in the creation of these weapons is triumphantly insane, not to mention a saltier version of ‘nuts’.

It’s almost funny how as individuals it seems so easy to agree what ‘crazy’ is- but put us together as members of almost any large group and, suddenly ,it seems impossible for us to not act in such a fashion?! Case in point is the last century. We seemed to have all agreed with the killing of 99 million people during just the MAJOR wars and civil revolutions during the past century. Makes sense to me, right? The Second World War was very special: we killed approximately 55 million people (and on that special note-about 20 million of these deaths were soldiers-less than half of the actual killed number). This is NOT including the vast numbers of dead from lesser wars, North and South boarder line skirmishes, territorial transformations and arguments over lunch money. This number goes way up quickly, like the US debt does now, if we take all these types of deaths into consideration so lets not.  Though, you know, statistically it would have been a bit ‘cleaner’ perhaps to have reached the 100 million mark of deaths during the last century than have stalled at the 99 million mark. Oh well…

So we’re all crazy-just as crazy as we were on the first day of the invention of Capitalism. True this ‘first day’ event happened so long ago only an oral tradition remains of it. But I still think it relevant to discuss the ‘roots’ of problems in hopes of finding the solution to them so here’s the story. Plus, the guy who told me it said this was true:

‘You see the first day of capitalism happened a long time ago- about, oh, 160,000 years ago. It all started with the only guy who had a name: ‘Yes OK’. He lived with a woman in a cave. Her name was ‘Doit Now’. Anyway, Yes OK was minding Doit Now’s business one day when another male humanoid walked into his cave. The guy could draw well enough to express his desire to live in the cave too. Yes Ok, who had never had a thought before, realized right away this might have something to do with Doit Now and, before a butterfly could flutter, Yes OK proposed the first Capitalistic agreement in History. It was simple: all the new guy had to do in this agreement, in exchange for living in this cave, was kill the large animal that had been pooping up the place and then bring the meat to Yes OK.  Amazingly the guy did it! Unfortunately though, the animal had first eaten one of the new guys legs before the new guy had killed it. That night all three ate the meat together around the fire while watching the new guy bleed to death. (No local pharmacies were open yet). Yes OK knew he didn’t want any more ‘new guys’ coming around so he put the old ‘new guys’ head on a stake and put it in the ground at the entrance of his cave. This was his second thought in life-that this ‘head on a stake’ might make others stay away-making others think Yes OK was rough and tough. Oddly, it didn’t work out that way. You see that animal the old ‘new guy’ killed turned out to not be the only ‘lizard in the sea’ so to speak. Sure enough, about an hour later, another animal saw the head on a stake and thought it to look much like a corn-dog or some sort of fast food sign-like a McDonald’s sign. This animal came on up to the head on a stake, ate it, then proceeded into the cave, eating both Doit Now and Yes Ok as well.’

So that was it-the first day of capitalism. And it is odd that from this first day of capitalism three key phrases arose which still are associated with Capitalism: first, stay a ‘leg up’ is stalwartly advice still used today; secondly,  keep ‘ahead’ is a long honored philosophy and; lastly , ‘beware of false advertising’ is a well noted warning used for those who should take heed. You see? All three ideas came from this first, sad day.Simply, I’m saying capitalism has always been ‘nuts’ since it is based on using other people to get ‘a head’ (sorry) yourself. I suppose if you’re ‘top dog’ and you enjoy trickling down on others it might be a, ‘Yes, OK’ type system. But don’t look up if you’re not the ‘top dog’-that just makes it worse: the whole middle class of America knows that.

To be fair, which I hate, it is not, as I’ve said, Capitalism or any other system of Mankind that is to blame for the insanities done by societies in our past or present. I’m thinking both Adam and Eve must have fallen out of the Tree they were picking and hit their heads-who knew? And the sooner we all agree this is the case the less stress all of us will have. I mean really-this one fact about people, the fact that WE all are from ‘Bonkersville’, can explain so many things that have occurred. Accept this and quickly your neighbor’s propensity to use his chain saw every Sunday morning begins to sound like a musical serenade ; lime green or bright yellow houses take on a different hew; spandex on 400lb people makes perfect fashion sense and even the garbage on the lawn next door begins to look pretty attractive. Trust me. This concept will help explain not only your neighbors, but your teachers, politicians’, bosses and family members as well. Understanding the cause of any situation has to hold within it at least some sense of ‘peace’. Oh, but there’s that word again. You know the word-it’s the same word no system of mankind has yet to attain: Peace.

Oh gosh-one last thing-recently I saw Avatar and dreaded to see the huge tree of Trees come down at the hands of the mercenaries. But cheer up-I had forgotten! The World is going ‘Green’-meaning those mercenaries must have been contracted to plant a tree for every one they cut down. So in about 10,000 years, if all goes well, there will be another tree growing in its place! Avatar lives! But alas- didn’t Kermit sing a song about the trouble with being ‘Green’? Darn it!

Franque

After ‘Birth’ Potpourri

O.K. it’s fairly simple to say we don’t actually have consensus of opinion when delineating what day Christ was exactly born on. Many scholars suggest it was in the spring time while others say it was in the fall. Oddly Christians, excitingly and absolutely incongruent with these time frames, agree to celebrate Christ’s birth in the winter. Why is this exciting? It seems to me now interesting possibilities arise for all of us. You see the ‘rules’ of birthdays change on the basis of our acceptance and insistence upon celebrating anyone’s birth on a day most of us recognize as being reputedly irrelevant to the facts of it. Aren’t we all now open to freely choose for ourselves what our own birthdays might be? I think so. For an example let’s just say you were born in August and hate the heat? Well fine then-change your birthday to March, enjoy the wind, no problem. Perhaps you were a spring baby but want to end the year on a bang- December 31 sounds great to me! Come on! We all agree any day can do as a birthday bash so pick your birthday and let’s party. I’ll put up the lights, which brings me to another ‘problem’ with this particular ‘birthday’ in question: the lights.

I’m telling you, if I ever catch the guy who put up those 41 strands of Christmas lights around my house he’s gonna be in big trouble! O.K. so that guy might have been me-this still doesn’t change a thing. I am wondering though how an idea that seems so good on December 1^st can seem so wrong on January 3^rd? This must be akin to how Picketts men felt during the Civil War just about one minute after he yelled “charge!” Anyway, it didn’t help any to have temperatures here in Florida well below our norm during the five hours I spent taking these lights down. On the up side, as my cousin Jed likes to say, I did get to watch birds slam into our frozen bird bath hoping to get a much needed drink of water. Ouch, there goes another. I think of this as a localized version of American bird water boarding. Cruel? Yes! But still effective as birds lay strewn about my now dead flower beds. (And as an aside, isn’t that where America left the water board issue-Cruel but effective? Or has someone officially said it was just wrong and someone is being held accountable?) Err, now where in this hodgepodge was I?  hmmm, here I am, taking down Christmas lights…

Stepping over our Christmas tree’s carcass I move past the vast array of despair my wilted, dying fall garden displays. All this merely serves to heighten my chagrin as I climb to my house roof top. Up here, where eagles only dare to land, it’s easy to imagine Christmas decorations as a ploy to rid many marriages of the husbands. Me? I’m thinking about Santa as I hug the roof top while lying flat on my stomach in hopes of lessening my likelihood of flying head over heals into the azaleas down below. “Where the hell is Santa when I need him?” I exclaim. I could use him now to help with these lights and a few reindeer harnesses might come in handy too-I’d like ‘to tie one on’ as they say. But I know it’s pointless to complain. Just as Christmas is always on time, Santa is now outta here and back taking notes for next years’ light show. Great.

Surviving the light fiasco I now turn to the garbage of the Season. First off, I won’t need to lift weights for several months. I just hauled one thousand pounds of food into my house to cook for this Holiday and now I’m busy carrying mangled leftovers out. I still can’t decide about five opened salsa jars, seven bags of chips and several half eaten boxes of cookies: am I going to eat these?-the scale says ‘No’. Still these items remain along with others on the cusp of eating possibilities. Together these now all balance perilously close to the shelving edges of my packed refrigerator, making it nearly impossible to find any of the otherwise healthier to eat items now held in there as well. But now the trash is out so why worry about that? Now it’s time to do the boxes!

I’m certain I’ve just opened and crushed all the gift boxes needed to have dissembled, packed and shipped a mobile home safely to Iraq. Sure, there are a lot of Christmas lights boxes in this pile but these pale in comparison by number to the other zillion gift box varieties found here. And there’s one thing about tape: it can hold any box you intend to tear up together better than Murdock held on to his Ponzi scheme. This is not the case if you are shipping something-in this case the tape may give out. But try to dissemble taped boxes and the tape becomes a ‘bear’ any stock market could be proud of. Nixon said it best: I love tape.

And one last thing, the missing ‘thing’ that is. Every Christmas has its own lost items to claim as memories better left forgotten. This years’ memory is no exception. My wife has informed me she is looking for a missing, small brown box (of course it’s a box) containing a diamond necklace. Did I see it among the hoard of boxes I departed from existence? Of course not! So now the search begins-this could be better than Easter! I think this a perfect time to ‘wrap up’ Christmas til next year when, as Jackson Brown sings, we’ll “get up and do it again. Amen”! See you.

Franque

The Magic of Your Life

What is it about magic that seems to draw out hope, or at least attention, from even the very most ‘serious minded’ of people?  I don’t know. But let’s put it this way: while women have the power to turn necks and heads-magic can straighten both; show someone a feat that appears to be magical and their neck stiffens, their jaws tighten while their eyes narrow. Magic seems to make one wish to peer through the unknown into a consciousness of revelation. I’m thinking our interest in magic mirrors a hope within us to believe we are a People who ‘know’. And, in many ways, magic does mirror the truth, as it may currently best be defined, about our existence as a people on a world within the universe. Our existence is as awesome to think about as it is impossible to truly understand-indeed, it’s magical.

It’s not just the sleight of hand, pull the cards or count the numbers trick I’m writing about when referring to ‘magic’. It is also ‘bumping’ in to the friend we haven’t seen in twenty years on the very day we were for the first time in along time thinking about them; it’s about finding the very thing you will need before you even know you will need it. In fact, many moments in life may be thought of as being magical: a three day sky of rain breaks with a rainbow for a ceremony; money arrives when it is most needed; a friend pats you on the back when yours is sore from stress and worry; a heart turns your way and you realize they love you too; a lost kitten is found; a friend is o.k.; your loved ones arrive; a baby is born. And the best part of life’s magic is it is free for the viewing-we just have to take time to notice when it happens.

Disney may have had it right after all? Remember Snow White talking to the animals? Well, the more we learn the more we understand birds do recognize us and know who we are, the trees do communicate to one another through the use of pheromones, hearts do change lives and courage does build bridges between people, if not pumpkin coaches to ride to castles in. Simply, Disney’s’ ‘pitch’ on our magical universe turns out to be much like the ‘curve ball’ our reality is made of. Cartoon characters often remind us the ‘art’ of communication, of loving and living is to understand the magic in it all. We all know any internal fear we feel waits to be freed from worry and washed in certainty. So, as a people we should never meet a stranger; in our world we should never meet anything and think it ‘strange’.

Sure, that beetle or even that rock may look strange but both have, as much as any person, place or thing has, a time, a space and a place of their own. In this way, magically, everything has a Life, of sorts, of its own: our Native American brothers have known this forever; the Tao wrote it so. It’s this magical presence which should bind us together as like parts of our planet. And this binding time of ours, this time now, is a theatre of magic.

O.K.-so I’m not saying you need to run out into our yard, dig up a worm and start talking to it. You could wait a long time for a reply. Talking to lampposts, trees, rocks, mountains, lakes-none of that stuff works. I’ve tried it.  And don’t go ask your dog how they like your report unless you’ve left peanut butter prints on it. Is magic limited then? No, not really. Magic is only limited to the extent  our understanding of it is.  And, it’s important to note, our understandings are always changing. Think of magic as being much like our Universe or like our notion of Time-all three being infinite in their possibilities. Why is this important? It is important because this is Christmas. This is the time of stories about magic and a time of many questions too.

I’m asking here the next time you hear someone ask about Santa from eyes that do not know what you know, please, before you answer, think about what you really do know? First off, on the face of it, we all agree Santa doesn’t exist. Heck, I’ve been wrapping gifts long enough to feel pretty certain about this. But then again, Santa does exist in many ways. Certainly more has been written about Santa than will be written about, say, the life you or I will live. More people will believe in Santa sometime during their lifetime than people will believe in most any of us during ours. Santa moves in our collective consciences more hearts to hope, more spirits to rise, more joy to spring forth than, again, most any one ‘real’ person could ever hope to make do so. Santa has, after all, at least as much presence in our lives as a forest, waterfall or mountain range we have never seen and never expect to visit.

Can’t you just hear the jolly guy laughing ‘HOHOHO’ as he asks: “First tell what existence is and lets see if I ‘fit’ the bill?” If we were to balance everything that Santa can’t do with all the belief in his spirit provides, to which side would this scale tip? No, we may not be able to touch Santa, but you know what-more than likely, he has ‘touched’ you. Is Santa real? In so many ways, the ‘real’ answer is “Yes”.

Merry Christmas.

(Note): This is the last post in this blog for 2009. May Peace be with us all and may we all have a joyful time throughout all of our following years. Remember-watch for magic!

Franque

Holiday ‘Bulletin’ for You

I wish you the best of Holidays!

HOHOHO!

(click on the pictures for a better view)

I really loved doing this bulletin board this year and having you all read this blog as well! Thank You so much for reading.  Have a wonderful, safe and fun time.

Franque

Part 2: Day raids; Night raids. (Apples ‘on the side’)

The first thing I might hear while sitting inside would be various branches  swishing outside as if it were a windy day. Then the tales tell ‘snap’ of apples as they were yanked from their stems would drum roll my mind… I’d put down my soda float, chips and mad magazine to venture away from the TV, moving to a nearby lookout window while investigating further. Sure enough-a ‘raid’ would be in progress.

Night or Day neighborhood kids would run in ‘attack’ gangs performing daring ‘apple raids’ in our yard hoping to run away with shirts stuffed full of apples. For years we’d charge out the house, dog and all, ending this apple ‘slaughter’ until one year I came to a realization: heck, they could ‘raid’ apples from our yard till doomsday and we’d still have enough left over; they could back up a Sherman Tank for defense, load up a truck full of apples and my family would still be swimming in apples, pies and cider! So the ‘race’ was on.

I remember the day I charged out of the house and continued to chase the raiders past our property line-a highly unusual event. Finally, about two blocks later, I caught up to the ‘ring leader’. His eyes were as big as some beetles I’d smashed early that day and he seemed scared. Odd thing about this was we both knew he could ‘take’ me but this momentum thing they talk about in sports came into play here-he was running away and I chased, making me have an invisible upper hand on the matter. I grabbed his arm as my mouth ushered out yet another one of the dumbest things I’ve ever said. I told him about the one ton of apples in my basement and how he could just come and get some apples anytime. “Merry Christmas!” He turned to me with the most solemn expression. Slowly his gaze turned downward as I heard him whisper, “now you’ve wrecked everything.” “Oh great,” I thought, ” they LOVED stealing the apples!! Now I’ll have to pick all of them instead! What was I thinking?”- Oh ‘Mister Nice’ guy me! And I knew it wouldn’t be long before I’d hear my Dad’s voice call: “Son, I think there’s a bushel or so left on the Wine Sap.” Perfect.

Those were the days of apple picking, throwing and catching. One would be in the tree picking while the other would wait below with a baseball mitt catching the picked apples as they were thrown to the ground. The catcher would lay the apples in the bushels: one after the other, for hours on end. I did learn you can do a lot with an apple stuck between your top and lower jaw though, kinda looking like a stuffed roasted pig might with an apple in its mouth. I walked around like that often as I consumed 5 or 6 apples a day during picking time. And, of course, we rated each apple on its color, perfect shape and crispiness. We’d shine the apples on our shirts until we could see our reflections in them-this made the apples taste better.

In all I’d say none had a better time of it than we did as kids during apple season. But then, and of course, I’m speaking apples to apples here-our apples. It goes without saying that I now live in ‘Apple Hell’-a place where never again will I buy an apple that tastes much like a fresh one. Oh sure, sometimes in a great while, hopefully in late October, I can buy an apple that is edible. Mostly though, I just see apples in stores as table decorations of sorts. But I often recall those climbing days with the greatest of happiness as I pass rows and rows of apple decorations in stores. I guess, looking back on it, my Iowan Dad knew what he was doing? I’m thankful for that. I am surprised though, sort of, he didn’t try and stretch me at night, like put me on a rack or something, so I might be able to reach a little further out those apple tree limbs?

I guess I’m thankful for that also.

Franque,   ‘apple patroller’.

Christmas Apples to Apples

I’m not certain what my first job ever was. I’m thinking it might have been just after I was born. I can hear my Dad now, “Son, look at the mess you made! Get crackin’ and clean this after birth stuff up!” You see my Dad was from Iowa and although he hadn’t been raised on a farm he somehow got it into his system that young sons were meant to work the land. And work we did. Our house sat on a plot not much more than a ½ acre. Still, I believe my Dad had a growing assignment for every pebble found on our property. And I bet he kept a ‘little black book’ just to note the productivity of each pebble in comparison years as they passed. Even my friends knew there were times when I was just, well, busy.

We had rose gardens in both front and back yards with assorted Japanese silk trees, honey suckles, mums and other flowers surrounding our house. It was the rose beds, however, which provided my friends and me hours of entertainment. We’d sneak up on the roses (for no apparent reason) and snatch Japanese beetles out of them. After having examined the size and shear glueyness of each beetle we would without much ceremony slam the beetles onto patio bricks. You might not think beetle slaughtering can ‘glue’ kids together like peanut butter and jelly on warm toast, but it did. Clearly, we all had agreed, squashing beetles was immensely more fun than dropping hot wax on to ants as we could do any time of year-but these were good reasons to seek help back then, not to write a blog about now. In our defense, however, I have to say we were tortured-the ice cream truck came but once a day, TV featured only 13 channels and school had already been invented. Still, as bonded as my friends and I were, I did notice when it came harvest time they all were too busy squashing beetles in other yards to help us.

My Brother and I worked mostly alone as the apple trees waited. Inside, via an internal voice we both heard, our Dad’s voice would be calling us to get the job done while each of us knew full well Christmas was just ‘around the corner’. Our main task centered on harvesting our family’s vast array of apple trees which made our yard ‘famous’ in our community. I’ve spent years of my life dangling from, crawling on, falling out of, stretching out a limb on, and hanging on for dear life in these trees. There’s an art to hand picking apples and our full size McIntosh and Wine Sap trees along with two red dwarf Delicious trees plus the miniature ‘cooking ‘ apple tree gave us plenty of time to practice this ‘art’. This ‘art’ sounds like this: “AAAAaaaaarrrr” as my brother and I would balance falling with bouncing off of limbs while hearing, “Son, there’s a good looking one out on the end of the limb above your head.” Nice.

Our harvest was to the tune of about 30 plus bushels a year. We kept these apple bushels in our basement and ate them hard and crisp through Christmas time. Some we’d take to a nearby apple press, exchanging so many bushels for so many quarts of fresh cider. Lastly, the aroma of Mom’s apple pies would fill our house most weekends as she would make enough to last a week. Thanksgiving and Christmas time always take me back to the scents of apple pies cooling in our kitchen. Mind you, even at my young age, I could eat ½ of a fresh apple pie at one sitting. And oddly, my beetle squashing buddies seemed to have a nose for when to come back around to eat pie. All through the Fall and late into winter my family, friends and me simply ate a heck of a lot of apples. It was good- the neighborhood kids thought so too. And, as our stocking were hung at Christmas time, my family could all count on an apple being at the bottom of each Christmas stocking.

Many seasoned scents to you!

Franque

PS. part two ‘Apple Raids’ up next.

Sleighing and Sloshed

“ Please! Can we go sledding?” Heck, I’m sure all of us ‘kids’ now asking to get pulled behind some Dads car look like dogs asking for bones. But what’s the point of us having various types of ‘Lightning’ brand sleds with cross bar turning capabilities and dual action spring suspensions if we don’t go out sledding every possible moment? We are betting as a group of kids this is simple logic even our parents will understand. And, if we time it right, this question will hit our parents at about the same time the double martinis do. Too early and your parents will still have stuff to ‘do’ (drink), too late and you’ll be talking to a bag of spud potatoes slowly roasting with Perry Como by an open fire. Tonight at least one of us got the timing right. Quicker than we can change clothes when school is called on account of a Nor’easter a group of us gathers out by a street light waiting for our balding parents to get ‘a move on’. Finally the tire chains come out, the car pulls up and we tie our sleds into a line of sleds now hooked by a rope to a leading car.

I’m one of the smallest in the group so to me, after coaxing, it seems logical that I be the first one in line tied on to the pulling car. Now, looking back, I see this positioning as just another example and proof of my Dad having taken a very large insurance policy out on me. Gee, he may have had several policies? I mean let’s face it-if I’m the first one in a line of many sleds being pulled by a car and  I fall off my sled, how many sleds do I get run over by?  Sure, maybe one or two might miss but those would be well offset by the ones who run me over on purpose!  I’m tellin’ ya-I’m a living miracle, just ask my wife. “Doctor, is it odd to remember the holidays by thinking in terms of how much I might have been worth, well, dead?” Anyway, as you read now, none of these policies paid off. I can still hear the laughter’s of the parents who watch us as we pull away for a sleigh ride. And, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve little doubt they are taking bets on which of us might not ‘make it’ back. But now, on to sleighing.

“Am I in as much danger of sliding underneath the car ahead of me as I think?” is the mantra my mind mulls over as I stare ahead at a cars rear end exhaust pipe. Puzzling this question fades from my thoughts as the snow flings from my waxed runners. Our groups frozen hands hold tightly to our steering bars as our bellies bounce on top of our wood boarded sleds. “Most likely”, I continue to guess, “the driver of this car can not find the brake peddle even if they have to”. You see, by rule of thumb, the men of our community who routinely take us ‘kids’ out to sleigh ride are toasted, pickled, juiced up ,totally sauced, soused, under the table but still standing, intoxicated, stinko drunk, snockered not to mention cockeyed, 3 sheets to the wind inebriated as they do so. No doubt about it- as the children sleigh, the parents slosh!

Now, looking back, part of me thinks it’s just the way it was then; in part, I think the type of drinking my community of parents did then was  somehow a continuation of the past War-a psychological release from and, at the same time,  a return to the War. Tonight, however, the street lights flicker as we pass them and we hang on for ‘dear life’- it is no matter to any of us what the parents are ‘up’ to. Turns are only for the brave at heart; hills are unbelievably fast and slippery. Legs bobble about as stretch knitted hats begin to droop over our eyes. No time for adjustments, this is a ride of a lifetime-this is fun! “Step on it Dad”!!! “And hey, can I be in the middle next time?”

By nine PM it is all over. I take my frozen toes, nose and eyelashes inside so I can peel off the several layers of wet pants I have on. The hot bath first feels funny to my cold skin.  It’s still snowing outside. I can watch through my bedroom window as snow falls outside down below beneath the street light. “This could be good” I gander, “School might be closed tomorrow? That would be like Heaven-more sleigh rides!” Soon I’m in my pjs and in bed to sleep, perchance to dream of sleighing rides yet to come. I can still hear, as a faint whisper,  the sound of  us ‘kids’ praying for them.

Franque