Aunt Elizabeth

So, in the summer of 1964, my Aunt Elizabeth offers to take my brother Ron and me to the NY World's Fair. Whether the offer was gracious or begrudged remains a point of contention in family lore, but that’s off the point…

Ron was 13 at the time and I was 8. How exciting! My mother, who was likely chain smoking in bed, perpetually unable to interact with most of the real world and fresh from winning the Zelda Fitzgerald Emotional Stability Award for the 9th consecutive year, somehow mustered up the wherewithal to connect us with Elizabeth and we spend Friday night in her big, very cool house in Brooklyn. Elizabeth was 61 years old at that time, long divorced and estranged almost as long from her adult son, an economics professor at Columbia University.

We wolfed down a rushed breakfast overshadowed by the anticipation of the day that lay ahead. We packed our stuff into the car and Elizabeth carefully backed her car out of the garage. On command, I wildly leapt from the back seat to close the garage door, and with energy apparently summoned forth by the copious preoccupation-driven adrenalin, I yanked the rope so hard that it snapped, causing the pulley mechanism to come crashing to the ground.

The garage door slammed down as well.

Aunt Elizabeth is very pissed off. Undeniably, with good reason because I wasn't even the slightest bit careful and in one careless moment, busted her garage door.

Gigantic home repair hassle.

Silence for the better part of the ride to Queens.

We arrive and of course, the World’s Fair is packed to the gills. The iconic unisphere rose tall, glistening in the warm summer sun and we saw signs pointing the way to “Futurama”.

Ronnie, likely unbeknownst to Elizabeth, had this major pathological, completely intense and thoroughly overwhelming fear of flashbulbs, to the point where he’d freak out and run away in hysterics at even the slightest hint of a popping flashbulb.

His phobia was traced back to his infancy, when my mother had to be hospitalized with post-partum depression, and the nurse who’d been hired to attend to my newborn brother apparently had a habit of checking in on him during the night wielding a bright flashlight. Pop psychology? Who knows. The alternate theory (my people are really into “analysis”) is that his weirdness with the flashbulbs somehow connects to the hernia surgery he underwent at less than a year-old, you know, bright operating room lights and all.

Needless to say, we’re barely out of the car and the flashbulbs are popping like fireworks on the 4th of July and Ron just takes off in mortal terror…just like that! And of course, he runs into a virtual sea of humanity.

To sum up: Her garage door mechanism is busted and one of the two kids in her charge has fled in the midst of a gigantic panic attack at the age of 13. And there are a zillion people packed in like sardines.

And, in all likelihood, I was pestering the crap out of her, making sure she knew that I was hungry again.

I’m surprised, in retrospect, that she didn’t just cave and give us the big F.U. right then and there.

I recall ending up at the security station, finally locating Ronnie hours later, probably just before Elizabeth called my Mother with the regrettable news that she’d lost her firstborn son at the 1964 World’s Fair.

Hope I Die Before I Get Old

The news broke today that The Eagles are releasing their first studio album in 28 years....through an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart, now the largest retail "record store" in the United States.

VERY provocative! What do you think about this trend? The music business is morphing quicker than Keanu Reeves in one of those dreadful Matrix movies. I still have my sizable collection of vinyl albums and 45s on home-made wooden shelves, untouched for the last 4 years. I have a separate closet which houses my CD collection, numbering in the hundreds. In between I still have boxes and boxes of cassette tapes, all but abandoned.

Feeling ambitious, and prompted by a friend's successful urging that I buy an external hard drive, I have transferred roughly 75% of my CDs (which represent approximately 60% duplication of my vinyl) onto my computer, using ITUNES, which I have come to love...I still listen to music for literally hours each day, between my Ipod in the truck and "random" shuffle on my PC...It is like a 20-hour soundtrack of music I love. I find little pleasure anymore in listening to the radio, other than specific genre non-commercial radio.

I almost feel (don't hit me!) that I've pretty much got what I need and my insatiable thirst for the exciting and latest and greatest new music was quenched somewhere around the time the Ramones called it quits. Sure, there is the occasional new song that I simply MUST have, but in such cases, I usually drop 99 cents for the track at Itunes or just swipe it for free using Limewire. At the ripe young/old age of 51, the media suits me fine, though the aural quality of all those zeros and ones is less--IMHO--than what I used to get through my Technics turntable and my beloved Marantz receiver and those delicious, responsive JBL speakers that followed me through my 20s and 30s.

So what's the future?...More selective tune by tune migration to my ITUNES?...A resurgence of passion for modern recorded music (a New Wave, as they once called it?)?....

When I hear the Eagles are releasing a new album through an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart and Joni Mitchell is contracting with Starbucks, I wonder if I haven't outlived my usefullness....

Just a few thoughts...Thanks for listening....Maybe I can download some software and record this as a Podcast....Maybe the Miracle Ear corporation is interested in what a geezer like me has to say and I can swing something lucrative.....Whaddya think?

Long live rock and roll...

The Price Of Seclusion

Took the afternoon off to meet Jean for lunch and spend some time together.
A (guarded) celebration of sorts; she met with her lawyer and the
judge and signed on the dotted line, thus settling her workers' comp
case, which has been active for 4 years. A pretty decent chunk of
change and since she's feeling better (her neck and back), figured the
time was right. With her physical health returning, the old law of
diminishing returns was inevitable and rather than be declared
"healthy" and dropped, they pay her/us to go away quietly.

Been very unsettling out here in the country battling mice, as we seem
to do each year at this time. Snagged three in traps and it seems
quiet now. Maybe they're all gone. I HATE HATE HATE RODENTIA! And to
make it a perfect week, what with my own obsessive health concerns, we
awoke Wednesday night about 1:00am to a bat or a bird flying around the
bedroom. I was melting down, but after we opened the sliding doors off
our bedroom, we both thought the thing had flow n away and out. All
was quiet on the Western front...until last night (Thursday), when Jean
woke me again around 1:30am cause he was back again. It was a bat and
he hadn't left the night before. Sooo, we (Jean, really--I cowered)
chased him from wall to wall and eventually stunned him to the ground,
where we plopped Max's former water bowl (it's actually a standing
tribute since he can no longer make it up the stairs) and I leapt into
action, bagging him in a trash bag, and then bagging him again in a
heavier trash bag, as he yelped and cried. Ghastly. Brought him down
to the outside garbage cans and properly deposited him away for the
ages (angels?). Called the Health Department today and because we
apparently slept Wednesday night with a bat in our bedroom, they want
to examine the damn thing, and suggest we both start with rabies shots.

Went to the garbage can this afternoon and he was still sturdily
bagged, but still alive. Not sure what to do now, but I have to
somehow get him to the Health Department on Monday morning.

Dian Fossey didn't deal with this much wildlife!

The Roches

I think I probably heard tracks from The Roches debut album soon after it was released in 1979. While I can’t pinpoint the source, it might have been the airplay on WFMU. But I really fell in love with the record (they were records then!) after repeated plays at my friend Maryclaire’s apartment in Montclair. I was 23 and Maryclaire was a “sophisticated” 25 year-old I worked with at a monolithic corporate goliath in Parsippany.

Anyway, MC, as she was legendarily known, had this crummy, walk down apartment somewhere in Montclair--the exact location has become fuzzy over the decades since, and mostly irrelevant to this tale. Whenever a group of us would gather at her place for afterwork socializing and wind down time, the album would invariably end up on the turntable, in heavy rotation with the likes of Jackson Browne’s “The Pretender” and something or other by Joni Mitchell.

The Roches’ album became a very specific soundtrack at a very particular time in my life--a very formative and impressionable time, I might add. Maryclaire and I never became wholly intimate--I was too awkward and inhibited and wholly unprepared, thus nothing really ever developed. Our paths drifted with the din and distraction of adult responsibilities, different life paths and even partners. I ended up with Jean and MC ended up with Marc, a nice enough lad who married her and took her away to Ohio where a great job awaited him. I always wondered about the destiny of different endings to the story…

We continued to correspond throughout the next few years, until one evening, around suppertime, the phone rang. It was Marc, regrettably informing me that MC had been killed in an automobile accident on her way to Ohio State early that morning, where she continued to work toward her degree. She left her husband and two year-old Emily. It was beyond tragic and I was deeply affected.

That was probably toward the late ‘80s.

I still listen to The Roches album, although it’s now it’s constructed of zeros and ones, on an Ipod or my computer, having given up the crusade to keep the vinyl experience alive many years ago.

The intimacy of the collection of songs still affects me deeply, the potent harmonies stronger today than ever, it seems. From the whimsical “We” to the ambient and beautiful “Hammond Song”, straight through to the stunning and haunting “Pretty and High”, which concludes the opus. We don’t live in the shadow of New York City anymore, opting for a quieter environment just outside Ithaca, New York. It is, by the way, an absolutely splendid place to grow older (I’m now approaching 52) and smell the flowers, as they say.

As time goes on, I often reflect on those days, MC’s apartment, my own awkward and unfulfilled youth. I even think often and with sadness of the glory of New York City. And while the Towers have come and gone and the world has turned a dark, angry tone, the soundtrack is always the same.

That first, timeless record by Maggie, Terre and Suzzy Roche.

This Can't Be Happening...

Went downtown Thursday evening for the Ithaca Festival Parade, which kicks off the annualcelebrations. Jean and I were watching from under a big, comfortable tree as the procession marched past. Dancing Tofu, the Red and Purple Ladies, the Chainsaw Club, the Dancing Volvos. Lesbians Against (fill in the blank: WAR, OIL, GEORGE BUSH, HEALTH CARE), The Composting Contingent, which was seemingly adorned in something that looked eerily like a large, animated colon slithering back and forth across Cayuga Street to loud, favorable applause. I wasn't sure if the applause was for composting or the slithering colon. We were standing right behind a 30-something couple both wearing matching "Socialist Party Of America" tshirts. Can I get those at Wal-Mart?

Then the rains came....and came...and came....The tree protected us for about 10 minutes, by which time we were thoroughly drenched...We hightailed it under a vendor's tent, where we stood huddling close, trying to keep warm, since the temperature plummeted from 89 degrees to about 66 degrees in roughly 40 minutes. Sadly, the parade fizzled like a Bromo in a glass of water, participants scrambling for cover. It was funny to see the Dancing Tofu people running to avoid the storm....

In the waning rain, we limped back to the truck and, teeth chattering, turned the heat on for the ride home.

Just another topsy turvy adventure that defines Life In Ithaca....

What's On Your Mind...?

First off, I gotta tell you that I pretty much reject the whole notion of "blogging". Why in the world would I want to publish my thoughts and opinions, presuming interest on the part of anyone who doesn't know me? I suppose that's a primary reason for the popularity of this activity. The false concept that what we have to say is definitive and/or has meaning and purpose. Or that we're all charming, witty and droll in an entertaining way. Arrogance, I tell ya.

In a major way.

But, perhaps this will be a way to stimulate myself to think harder, ask tougher questions and work toward an even lower level of confidence that what I believe is really "true" or "right". After all, isn't that the goal?....Not to come up with the answers, but to ask better and more provocative questions?...Kinda like baseball to me. The Red Sox won the World Series in, what, 2004. Now what is there to root for?

Am I alone in that while I found their long sought-after World Series victory thrilling as Edgar Renteria, curiously enough wearing the number 3 (read into it, baby) on his uniform, made the last out for the impotent Cardinals. But wasn't it equally (and ultimately) unsatisfying? The 86 year quest was over. Now what...?

Maybe this is more revealing than I would actually prefer to admit.

I've always gravitated to people who ask more questions than those who have answers. Underconfidence is supremely more alluring to me that cockiness.

Arrogance, I tell ya.

Listening to an old Chick Webb track ("If Dreams Come True") through Itunes.

I'm thinking about a movie I saw last weekend, Year Of The Dog. I liked it very much. Saw it in small theatre (20 seats?) with about 15 others. J was with me. One thing we do share is an affection for dogs (and animals in general) and this was something I suspected we would enjoy together. And we did. For 90 minutes, I felt very stimulated by thoughtful questions of right and wrong, responsibility and selfishness. In the final analysis, there were some missteps, but overall, it was time and money well spent.

Watched "Casino Royale" a week or so back. Probably cost 100 times what Year Of The Dog cost, and was entirely dismissable.

Did you read Cindy Sheehan's open letter to the public this week? I found it a beautifully expressed, sad concession of disappointment. Clearly, the Democratic Party has abandoned it's constituency and continues on as Republican Lite, as it were. But I don't want to rattle on about stuff this large. I want this to be small and intimate.

More next time about Ithaca....