Loving Life

“You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around – and why his parents will always wave back.” - William D. Tammeus

The Glimmer

“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator

The Greatest Generation

I took my parents to breakfast at McDonalds this A.M. We were joined by 3 of my parent's friends, two of whom, besides my father, are military veterans of the WWII period. Collectively, their average age range was mid to late eighties.

I asked one of my father's friends what his father did for a living, and this triggered a series of memories from all of them about growing up during the Great Depression. The detail was priceless; you had to be there. But here's a crude summary:

B's father had owned a hardware store which he lost due to the Depression. After that, his father went to work digging ditches for the WPA (Works Progress Administration).

B2 grew up in Queens in NYC. His father never had steady work from 1931-1940. He had to hustle for day labor jobs for 10 years.

B told me that he saw a picture that someone published that showed what a typical child looked like during the Great Depression. He said the child was dirty, was wearing clothes that people would be ashamed to wear today and that the children had holes (plural!) in their shoes. B said that when he saw the photo, he said, that was me!

B, B2, and my father told about going to the movies during the Depression. A movie ticket was ten cents. One of the advantages of going to the movies was that the theater had air conditioning (residences did not have air conditioning back then). B2 said that after you bought your ticket, they handed you a coca cola as you went in! B said in his town at every showing, the theater had a lottery with the movie stubs and the winner got a new bicycle. He said that used to drool over the prospects of winning a bicycle.

B2 told of asking people at the supermarket to carry their groceries him. For that they would tip him fifteen cents. That covered a movie ticket AND a banana split. He said that in those days, when "you didn't know where your next meal was coming from" and to be able to buy a banana split was just about the greatest treat imaginable. He said the taste was Indescribably good and you made that banana split last as long as possible.

B said the same thing about simply getting an ice cream cone--it was like the greatest thing in the world and you tried to make it last as long as possible.

B and B2 said that during the Depression they grew vegetables for food out of necessity. My father's father's job was driving a truck delivering vegetable to markets in the Bronx, so they never lacked for vegetable. But with my father's family, there were long stretches where the only time they got to eat meat was when a neighbor in the building thought to invited them over for Sunday dinner.

Have you ever seen or eaten a McDonalds biscuit? I wouldn't give you 2 cents for one. For breakfast at McDonalds Mr. B bought himself one biscuit and a cup of coffee. I watched him. With enthusiasm, he cuts the biscuit in half horizontally. Then he methodically puts butter on, then he methodically spreads jelly on top of the butter. And I'm just looking askance at this worthless biscuit while he does this. And then Mr B eats it with all of the the relish of a kid who loves it. And he tells me how great it is.

B and B2 said that during the Great Depression they ate sugar sandwiches, mayonnaise sandwiches, and ketchup sandwiches, all on white bread of course. And they told em that you always bought 2 day old bread because it was a little cheaper.

Before and during the war: My mother had previously told me that if a young man's draft classification was 4F, you would look at them and wonder what was wrong with them. B2 said that none of the girls would have anything to do with a guy that was 4F. B2 had good friend who was classified as 4F who then left home and committed suicide. B2 said that the suicide rate among 4Fs was quite high.

B stressed to me that starting even before the war, once you hit your mid to late teens, the subject of your immediate future weighed on you. You knew you had to register for the draft. You didn't know what your classification would be. You didn't know what branch of the military you would end up in. You didn't where you would be sent. And then once the war started, you started to heard that 5,000 were killed here and 8,000 there, etc. And you were being sent to the same place.

You could enlist ahead of being drafted, which many people did. That gave you only a little more control over what branch you went into but not much.

Incidentally, my father was in the 8th grade and in a movie theater when word swept through the audience that the radio had reported that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. He also said that when war officially declared on Japan, that when school was let out that day students were saying that Japanese planes were circling the Empire State Building.

Mr. B2 told me that when he was at Forrest Hills high school, that all of the gym classes were based on what you had to do in boot camp and basic training. So he said his boot camp was a easy. He went Navy. Most of the Navy guys from NYC were sent to Sampson NY for boot camp. My father was sent there too. I think it was near Utica but am not sure. My father was a multi-sport and all-NYC athlete, so for him boot camp and PT were nothing.

B2 told me that a few years ago he had been talking to an insurance company about some issue with a policy he had. The person serving him was a 26 year old girl. B2 politely asked the girl if he got any kind of discount for being a Veteran. This girl told him that they did not believe in discounts for Veterans. B2 politely told the girl that if it wasn't for people like him that she and everyone else would have been speaking German or Japanese today. B2 said that the girl did not know what he was talking about.

My father told me that one colleague who was a veteran but had not gone overseas told people that my father had not been on Guam in WWII. I assume it was meant as some sort of joke. But someone else, a third person, who heard it took extreme offense and told them that they better watch it. And even in telling it to me today, I could tell that my father was very offended by the slanderous statement from years ago.

B said that whenever anyone talks about "the good old days" the blood in his brain does a rapid boil. He says there was nothing good about the old days. I told B that I took exception to that. I said to him that it built character. He agreed with that.

All of my parents friends stressed that living through the Depression has made them very careful with money. But they all have a scrupulous work ethic which they take for granted.

B went on to say that if it wasn't for the war, and the GI Bill afterwards, none of the 3 veterans at the table would have been able to go to college. He pointed out I and my 6 brothers/sisters were all able to go to college because my father was able to.

The war changed America completely.

New Year's Eve at the Bauer's

Happy New Year to my amazingly diverse and motley crew of friends and family. God put you all in my life for a reason, and God knows what the reason was, all humorous sarcasm intended. New Year's eve crept up on me--I kept thinking it was tomorrow. New Years aspirations which I will certainly fail if, as they say, the past is prologue to the future--never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. And the key to happiness for every married man--do whatever you wife tells you to do, when she tells you. Don't talk to me about diet and exercise. 

Else: My wife cooks a great deal every day, almost always on the stove-top, including frequent stir-fry, very little baking/broiling. She is from Hong Kong after all. When we moved into our house, we had a commercial exhaust system installed over the stove which vents to the outside. Nevertheless, it is common for the smoke alarms to go off when my wife cooks. She likes to cook but doesn't clean. Cleaning the stove has been my purgatory. Between my wife's cooking and my cleaning methods, we destroyed our old stove, more-or-less. Last Saturday, my wife went to Sears and bought a new stove and a new dishwasher which were delivered yesterday. She bought a stove with an all stainless-steel top because we know from experience in the distant past that it is far easier to clean stainless steel. She got up at 05:00 A.M. this morning and started cooking for the New Year's eve party.

The smoke alarms started going off intermittently at about 6:30. I'm used to this. But I was trying to do Rosetta Stone Spanish which the alarms made impossible, and of course it woke our two sons up. Needless to say, the whole house smelled like the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant. We opened the door to the garage to get some fresh air air in which usually helps but not this time. By 07:00 the smoke alarms were going non-stop. From bed, my oldest son yelled, "What in the hell is going on!" and then kept repeating that about every two minuets. 

I remembered that the smoke alarms were all on a single circuit breaker, and so I went in the garage and after moving a bicycle, a rake, and a rototiller out of the way to get to the the circuit breaker box, I shut the breaker off, except that I accidentally threw the main circuit breaker for the house, after which my younger son, possessive of an excessive sense of entitlement, who had been playing a video game, then complained that I should have given advance warning about shutting the power off. My explanation that it was an accident didn't mollify him, but it did quiet the smoke alarms. I had previously removed the backup batteries and have procrastinated in replacing them. My wife's explanation for the smoke alarm aural torture was that the new stove is more powerful than the old, and I certainly hope it is. 

But my younger son, ever analytical, came downstairs and appraised the situation. He observed that the new stove is deeper horizontally than our old stove and that the front burners are not completely under the range hood. I tell my wife the obvious which is to use the back burners.

All of this was mixed in with illogical conversations between my wife and myself about who is going to pick up who and when, for going to the New Year's eve party. I explained to my wife what the optimal transportation plan for the day was, at which time she says no and explains to me what the plan will be, to which I respond that she is saying the exact same thing which I was saying to her, to which she replies yes and no. 

As soon as my wife was done cooking and the stove top cooled, I took a sponge and some paper towels and cleaned the entire stove top, making it look like new again. I will do this every single day. I don't need to make a New Year's resolution for this. My wife cooked six dishes this morning, five of which are for the New Year's eve party, before she left for work at 8:45 A.M.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving

I read the original short story last week. I love the old fashioned language, especially in the beginning, as well as the harkening back to the days of Dutch New York. I also listened to an audio recording of the tale on Youtube--the rhythm is very flowing and jazz like. But some of that may have been due to the actor who read it.

The written story has a tongue-in-cheek tone and is understated humor. The headless horseman is actually a humorous hoax, with the joke being on Ichabod Crane.

By contrast, in so many of the cultural adaptations, the story is usually presented as actual acts of horror. The 1999 movie starring Johnny Depp has numerous camera shots of decapitations. I much prefer the kind of fear that is suggestive and the product of the imagination. In the original story, no one literally loses their head.

This is the kind of fiction I would like to be able to write.

The Written Text:

Ihttps://archive.org/stream/thelegendofsleep00041gut/sleep11.txt

The Audio of Reading: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BOYRr48GFY

Why I Don't Subscribe to N+1

N+1 is a silo by and for graduates of MFA and English Lit programs. It serves to
reinforce the clan's smug snobbery and assuages their unconscious insecurity that they may not be members of the intellectually elite.

I'll take my chances in the street.

LukeLive

At my parish, I recently attended a Christian mission which was a three night, interactive theater performance called Lukelive. It was created and is performed by Fr James Diluzio, CSP, who has a background in singing, acting, and the theater. He has memorized the gospel of Luke.  In the Lukelive performance at my parish, he acted the first six chapters of the gospel of Luke (because of Advent I presume). He acts out each character in the story. The performance is intermingled with prayer, song, teaching, and even some breathing and movement exercises. In between each biblical story, he stops and teaches about the story and accepts questions. People gave personal witnesses without even being asked. It was very explicitly Holy Spirit oriented and filled. We in the audience were completely disarmed. His teaching/interpretation/spiritual coaching/insights are high quality and astonishing. 

In particular, he teaches about how to evangelize people who do not share our beliefs. That was particularly empowering for me. It was generalizable into how to deal with encounters with people in general, including ourselves, relating to empathy, listening, and interpersonal relationships. I have had everything backwards, but I sort of knew that already! But he framed the interpersonal skills issues in such a way that I was able to take them as an "action item" for myself--for personal growth.

He spoke of our own experiences. His characterization of Zechariah was particularly vivid to me. His explanation of the meaning of the Incarnation was acutely insightful. He even quoted "the Glory of God is man fully alive." This had my rapt attention throughout. It was an amazing evangelization towards myself. I would go anywhere in the metropolitan area to see it again.