You Dreamed That You Were Important Again

You Dreamed That You Were Important Again

Ah, I know that look, I've seen it before.
You woke up from a dream a single spirit had dreamed
to this age-old cosmic one we all share but ignore.
In this dream things were different, so they had seemed
we had big things to talk about, much more like before

Perhaps you imagined even more than you had--
before this twilight was tendered to live out your life,
'enjoying' things, just taking it easy, not sad.
Talk of peaceful things and memories, avoid all that strife

Did they know what so sorely you'd miss--
that life without strife is not always bliss
They can't know what it's like, how sorely you'd miss
those days you were needed, something always amiss.

To be heard, to have what you say regarded
to be offering more than just a complaint.
To think boldly, to synthesize what most others haven't
To talk, discuss, perhaps and even debate

Things that mattered,
Moves whose outcomes you'd see,
Not just knowing that you've joined a few others,
Flailing away at some faraway
Cause offered by all-knowing others,
those who feigned to sincerely seek out your voices,
but only for background noise, not for help making choices.

But from this cosmic dream, some day you'll awaken
Not feeling separate, isolatd, somehow mistaken
There's something beneath this or perhaps it surrounds us,
I know it, I feel it, I just haven't quite found it.

Getting Unstuck

Getting Unstuck

I've been stuck on Project 12, so I stopped writing daily as the challenge had been laid out.  Writing every day has not ever been a habit with me, usually one day out of three, sometimes twice or three times in a row.  It's supposed to be fun, after all, not a chore or a duty.  But this morning is beautiful out my window once more.  The hurricane blew past us, dumping on the Outer Banks, I'd imagine, unless it turned out to sea.  Once they sweep by, the hurricanes leave us with a couple of clear and bright days like this one.  We've come to expect it, but it is still fine as can be.  I'm waiting for my better half to join me in a beach walk--forget the shopping and other chores we must do and just walk.

No dice.  She's got "too much to do."  Oh well, I'll take some sort of walk just the same, while she shops.  I'll report on it later.

One More Clerihew, for my friend, Tom Durkin

One More Clerihew, for my friend, Tom Durkin

As I mentioned once before, as I was wandering through A Poet's Glossary by Edward Hirsch, I ran across a special term, a clerihew.  Anyway, it is right there on page 112, between "classic" and "cliche."  Quoting Mr. Hirsch, "It consists of a skewed quatrain--two rhyming couplets of unequal length that whimsically encapsulate a person's biography..."  (How can you not just love a book full of definitions like this one?)  Usually, the name of the person being sent up appears in the first couplet.  He offers this example--Today

Geoffrey Chaucer
Could hardly have been coarser
But this never harmed the sales
Of his Canterbury Tales 

Today, I pay tribute to an old friend of mine, the well-known racetrack announcer who called the Breeder's Cup races for many years and was the race caller for NBC Sports from 1984 thru 2010.  He capped his career by calling the Triple Crown races for ten years (thirty races, in all), until he gave it up in 2011.  Next month, he retires, calling his last race at New York's Saratoga Springs on August 31st.  Here is his clerihew--

Tom Durkin, he was a grand racetrack announcer,

All the races he’s called, I sure could nay count, sir.

He coined many a phrase, and polished his words,

Methinks wasting such work on those old railbirds. 

Congratulations, Tom.  The A and W's salute you.

It Could Happen....

I recently ran across a collection of survey results--some from fashion magazines, some from advertising firms and one made for peanut growers.  As you probably know, surveys are a lot like statistics, as in Mark Twain's wry observation that "there are liars, damned liars and statisticians."  A well-designed survey can tell you exactly what you want to hear.  If you want a "true" response in a series of true-false questions, make the alternative appear foolish, exaggerated, or somehow undesirable in some subtle way (or obviously so--but only if you have to).  Or insert it in a series of questions to which the answer is obviously true, and make it confusing, counting on the respondent to just mark this one true as a guess.  You might also try making the desired response sound a bit more clever, etc.  Anyway, once you've designed and conducted this well-designed survey, who do you turn it over to for analysis and interpretation?  Why, to statisticians, of course.  

One More Clerihew, for my friend, Tom Durkin

As I mentioned once before, as I was wandering through A Poet's Glossary by Edward Hirsch, I ran across a special term, a clerihew.  Anyway, it is right there on page 112, between "classic" and "cliche."  Quoting Mr. Hirsch, "It consists of a skewed quatrain--two rhyming couplets of unequal length that whimsically encapsulate a person's biography..."  (How can you not just love a book full of definitions like this one?)  Usually, the name of the person being sent up appears in the first couplet.  He offers this example--Today

Geoffrey Chaucer
Could hardly have been coarser
But this never harmed the sales
Of his Canterbury Tales 

Today, I pay tribute to an old friend of mine, the well-known racetrack announcer who called the Breeder's Cup races for many years and was the race caller for NBC Sports from 1984 thru 2010.  He capped his career by calling the Triple Crown races for ten years (thirty races, in all), until he gave it up in 2011.  Next month, he retires, calling his last race at New York's Saratoga Springs on August 31st.  Here is his clerihew--

Tom Durkin, he was a grand racetrack announcer,

All the races he’s called, I sure could nay count, sir.

He coined many a phrase, and polished his words,

Methinks wasting such work on those old railbirds. 

Congratulations, Tom.  The A and W's salute you.

But back to the surveys, among the surveys, I found three to be of particular interest.  The first was a survey among a group of potential  female customers at a furniture mart.  Respondents were asked to choose from among a series of fabric colors for leather desk chairs,  The respondents were asked to choose from cherry red, ivory and brown.  In the chair illustrating the question, the color of the leather seats and backs were brown).  The survey results, women preferred brown arms.  Next the women were shown three small jewelry chests, one made of plain-looking wood, another of hammered metal, and a third made of ivory, with very intricate carved designs.  Women loved the ivory chests.  I got bored with the obvious manipulation that the "helpful" illustrations were creating and moved on.

The next one was a "blind" taste test.  No, participants were not blindfolded, the products were set in three identical bowls and the respondents, a majority of whom were women (the surveyors chose a tea room for a surveying location).  The products were an assortment of peanuts, each from a different area of the country, including one packaged and shipped from a little township in Georgia called Red Neck (I am not making this up, I have seen the sign on the road between Atlanta and Athens).  In any event, the women from the tea rooms preferred the peanuts produced in Red Neck over all the others.

Wait a minute, women prefer brown arms, an ivory chest and red necks--"Women want a man with a farmer's tan." (from the musical "Pump Boys and Dinettes," words and music by Jim Wann)

I know, I know, it was awful, but once the outline occurred to me, I just couldn't help myself....

So, I Was Supposed To Describe Home At Twelve (project eleven)

So, I Was Supposed To Describe Home At Twelve  (project eleven)

Hmm, describe "home at twelve," eh?  Just to make it interesting, let's assume the question was to describe "home at twelve" on Saturday night.  These days, I'm always.  When I was twenty-two, the night was just beginning--we'd arrived at Chicago's Near North Side and spent an hour in the bar we'd agreed on as start.  Home at twelve meant we really didn't go out, one or all of us had to work the next day.  At twenty-two, there were nights we went to more bars than I remember.  I know, I know.  We marvel at the fact that we survived the ride home.

At thirty-two, home at twelve (on a weekend) meant we had hosted the evening's card game, half-listening for
fussing from our babies, asleep in the next room.  Often a playpen was acting as a portable bed for a child brought along to the game.  Too young to leave with a babysitter, or perhaps one's sitter had started having a life and was busy that night.  Mostly, no sitter meant too long between paydays to add that expense to gas, card game stakes, BYOB's et al.

At forty-two, home at twelve meant the evening in, or perhaps dinner, then dessert at home.  We had friends, mostly related to kids' teams.  Both were young teenagers, and we kept them occupied with soccer teams, and sometimes just stayed home watching over them.  They were a couple of years away from the nights they waited until we were asleep at twelve to push the car out of the driveway, and pop the clutch when they were far enough away that the noise would not wake us up.

So, on to twelve at home at age fifty-two.  By then, with both kids away at college or finished, we were no longer keeping any late night vigils to determine when or if they were coming home.  Granted, these days there is a new sort of teenage period that consumes the twenties, emergent adulthood.  Psychologist Jeffrey Arnett, who coined the term, says the profile of the “emergent adult” includes “identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between and a sense of possibilities.”

But the difference is that in their twenties, these are young adults in every way, except they have not found their ultimate career, marriage partner, had children, purchased a home, etc.  These are the markers of true adulthood, and most of my generation had covered all of them by their 27th birthday, but that was then.....  As young adults they must be "allowed to take care of themselves."  And this was just a long way of answering the question.  "Home at twelve" by the time I was fifty-two, I was sound asleep.

Finally, to round out the picture with the most recent, "home at twelve" at age sixty-two, I was most likely wide awake, struggling with insomnia.

Happy One Day in Three (Project 10)

Happy One Day in Three (Project 10)

One of the anomalies of growing up as a child of a fireman was that every third day, Pop was not home for dinner.  You see, as a fireman, he was on 24, then off 48 hours.  This could mean that we actually had hamburgers for dinner.  My father didn't like hamburgers, so when he was at home, Mom would never make hamburgers.  She still had to serve ground beef, so it was either spaghetti with meat sauce, or meatballs with kidney beans.

Whenever she served meatballs, we could pretend the meatballs were hamburgers.  This usually meant we put a couple of meatballs between two slices of bread and added whatever condiments you enjoyed on a hamburger.  In those years, I only liked mustard on my burgers, so that's what I'd have.  But this little compromise was less than satisfying on two fronts.  A meatball was baked (after being browned?), I think, in any case they were dry, dry, dry.  That's just not the same as a greasy burger, accompanied by potatoes that were not baked or mashed (more on this later).  Further, since Mom prepared the meatballs with kidney beans, you were expected to eat some of them, a disagreeable requirement indeed.

I formed the habit of making ground beef into sandwiches so firmly, that I later began eating spaghetti sandwiches.  Yes, I'd put a mound of spaghetti and meat sauce between two slices of bread and eat it.  This might explain why, when I discovered the Atkins Diet (no carbs, just protein), it performed so well for me.  Once I got off the bread, pasta and sugar, the pounds just melted away.  I remember losing twenty-five pounds the first time I went on Atkins.  I eventually had to quit that diet because I would have no energy at all when I had been deprived of sugar and carbs for more than four weeks.    

But back to those happy nights when Pop was not home for dinner.  We could have hamburgers made with Worcestershire sauce added to keep them moist, and--best of all--they were fried in a pan.  This all took place before there was even a McDonald's in our town.  As I recall it, that McDonald's opened the summer between my 7th and 8th grease years.  So our only chance for hamburgers was when Pop's work day fell on something other than Friday, because Friday had to be meatless for all us Catholics in those years.

I'm sure it was nice for Mom, even when it fell on Friday.  She was known to just make us scrambled eggs for supper on some Fridays.  Had to be an easy meal for her to make, since all suppers with Pop had to include potatoes (baked or mashed) and one of a very short list of vegetables--the aforementioned kidney beans, lima beans, peas and green beans.  Pop did not like broccoli, cauliflower, squash, including zucchini, and others that had never even occurred to us in those days as well, I'm sure.  So we got broccoli and cauliflower at times with our burgers.

Ah, but there was a down side to all this.  Mom loved liver and onions, and Pop didn't.  Consequently, there were a number of those suppers without Pop where Mom got to serve her favorite dish--no matter what the kids thought of liver--she loved it.  

I almost saved this one for another time, but the fireman's schedule produced another classic expression that survived even beyond his retirement after thirty years in the Chicago Fire Department--that was "Pop had a fire last night."  This was offered as an explanation for the occasional times my father had a short fuse.  If it was on the day after his working day in the rotation, he might or might not have slept, depending on whether or not there were a lot of calls.  "Pop had a fire last night" covered any time you got a serious bawling out over a minor offense of some kind.

Another useful expression took on greater meaning for us.  "Wait 'til your Father gets home" could be a long, seemingly interminable wait for your punishment for some offense or other--meaning part of the pain was the extended wait until your punishment actually took place.  I shudder just thinking about it.

Ah well, most of the time, being extra happy one day in three was a darn good thing.  Beats some weeks I can remember after I had grown up.

I Was Watching (Project Nine)

I Was Watching (Project Nine)

Each step brought us closer, just under two feet closer, to be accurate.  He was headed for the pool, hurrying to join the rest already there.  They were sitting in the shade, thank God.  He dropped his keys, the book and towel, and looked at the group.  I could see that some had no plans to move, leaning back, yakking, looking comfortable already.  The two grands were in the water, talking to (or over) each other as they bobbed on the top.  As he kicked off his sandals, I breathed a silent prayer of thanks.

He headed for the water, stepping down, holding the rail tentatively.  He's not as confident about steps  these days, it's just a given.  But quickly into the cool of the pool he plunged.  We all needed it as much as he did, I didn't need to take a poll.  The grands turned and grinned, paddling to keep their heads atop the water, with middling success.

I couldn't tell how well they were doing, since he was standing in the pool, sagging to get his shoulders into the water's cooling influence.  But he was happy, that I knew at once (and so was I).  He turned to see those sitting in the shade, teasing them about staying out and keeping dry.  They ignored him, so he stopped and eased back into the cooling water.  He didn't need them to know what he enjoyed.  But like most things these days, he found it pleased him only for a minute or two.

Soon, he had decided to step up and out, letting the water run off his chest and stomach, and down his calves, dripping from his trunks as well.   A shout made him turn, too quickly; scraping his toe, nearly tripping, too.  The youngest grand had swallowed when he should have breathed and was panicked.  He half-jumped, and didn't land, dipping below the water's surface for a moment.  He kept moving in their direction, his own panic starting up as well.  He grabbed, caught an arm and pulled, stomping his foot hard, banging the front knuckle, scraping the top as well....  Soon, neither were panicked, one was choking; soon both did.  One with some kind of physical relief--breathing air, the other relieved in his head, but just as surely feeling the relief.  All except for me, the toe, bleeding now, scraped, stubbed, and throbbing.