Trickle of Semi-consciousness

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belfastcowboy75 at 1:35:57 PM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 13 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

When I was about thirteen, I stayed for a while with my Aunt and Uncle in Rancho Palos Verdes near Los Angeles. My two cousins, Paul (who would later become a champion surfer and move to Australia) and Billy (who would later work as a crewman on ocean racing yachts) had recently taken up a new sport that involved something resembling a small skimboard on wheels. They would place one foot on the board, push off a few times with the other, and then glide down the street.

Skateboarding was new then, and the gravity and common sense-defying skater park tricks hadn’t been invented yet. I was a pretty fair skimboarder (skimboards are used at low tide on sand flats--you throw them ahead of you in very shallow water, then catch up and jump on), so I thought I’d give it a try. To my surprise and the chagrin of my cousins, who were hoping for at least a pair of bloodied knees, I was successful on my very first attempt, even negotiating the steep hill on Golden Arrow Drive without mishap.

I returned to Massachusetts, determined to parlay this skill into California Surfer Coolness and Chick Magnetism (even then I was obsessed). The problem was, I had no skateboard. The fad hadn’t hit New England yet, and the stores didn’t even stock skateboards.

Not to be deterred, I examined one of my sister’s old roller skates, the kind that used to clamp onto your shoes, the kind Melanie Safka sang about in her overtly phallic “I’ve got a brand new pair of roller skates, you’ve got a brand new key” song. The skates were adjustable and came apart. I took the two sets of wheels from one skate and screwed them onto a two-foot length of #2 pine I found in the cellar. Then I used magic markers to draw a design, involving flames and lightning bolts, on the board.

There was a hill outside of my house, and I took my invention to the top. With several of the neighborhood kids (but no chicks) watching, I hurtled down the hill, past the houses of the Boyds, the Mullens, the MacLeods, and the Thorntons. As I began to slow I managed a turn into the Days’ driveway. The machine worked.

My friend Allen, the only other neighborhood kid who, like me, sledded that hill in the winter standing up on the sled, wanted in. Figuring I would need a wingman once the surfer groupies began to gather, I gave him mysister’s other roller skate, and we fashioned a second skateboard from a piece of plywood we found in his father’s workshop. After a few tentative forays, Allen got the hang of it, and soon we were weaving our way down the hill, waiting for word of our California Coolness to spread.

Unbeknownst to us, we were being watched--surveiled by a sinister presence behind the draperies in the Mullens' house. It was Richard Mullen, the spoiled brat of the neighborhood, whose father owned a Piper Cub and a cabin cruiser. Richard’s stern Lutheran mother, who used to summon him in at dusk with a piercing whistle, was not going to stand by while the Irish Catholic hooligan next door was outstripping her son in the possible next big thing. I should point out here that, although Richard was bigger than me, I pummeled him semi-regularly, usually when he tried to pick on my little brother. So Mrs. Mullen’s characterization of me had some basis in fact.

Allen and I had been skateboarding the hill for about two weeks when Richard showed up with an authentic, store-bought skateboard shipped from California. He smirked at our home-made creations, which did indeed look pathetic next to his tapered, gaudily painted professional model. Richard placed the skateboard on the pavement, and stepped on.

It was over so quickly. The skateboard shot out from under his considerable weight, and he rolled his ankle as he crashed to the street. His eyeglasses (I always thought he wore them just so I wouldn’t hit him) flew off and shattered. Richard lay there in a heap, sobbing, his ankle broken. His skateboarding career had lasted less than one second.

Allen and I went on skateboarding that year until the wheel bearings gave out. We were always careful to look California Cool, wearing our Beach Boys in Concert outfits and wraparound shades. But other than Kenny Rawson’s little sister, the chicks never materialized; the hill was never lined with adoring babes. Well, it was their loss.

belfastcowboy75 at 11:11:14 PM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 3 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

It’s Wednesday, two days after the monstrous storm shredded the lives of thousands in the South and of the millions who care about them. The wind here is Massachusetts is gusting this afternoon, a warm wind carrying the tropical mugginess of remnants of the hurricane and of those lives. Thunderheads are building, and there are warnings of tropical downpours, flash floods and severe thunderstorms. A tornado watch, almost unheard of in New England, is possible, even likely, for this evening.

This wind, this rain, are mere echoes of the catastrophe that has befallen those in the South. Oh, I resented them last November, but I embrace them now. I will do what I can, as puny as that seems in the face of such staggering need.

I am one usually energized by weather, but not today. Today the wind seems insidious, seeking out a few last bits of damage to cause before it dies out over Canada. The clouds wait for unmanageable amounts of water content to re-form before bursting anew. Yet I do not romanticize the weather. I don’t think of it as magical or mythic; meteorology can explain it, or should be able to explain it. But weather is no longer purely a natural phenomenon. Emissions and greenhouse gases have seen to that.

I have no patience with those who speak with platitudes and bromides such as “things happen for a reason." Spare me from any sanctimonious morons who talk about this horrific loss of life and dreams being “God’s will” or “The work of the devil." Already, there are those who use the misdeeds of the ruthless few as a reason to ignore the pleas of the desperate and the dispossessed.

The Earth is in our care, and so now also are these thousands of victims.

belfastcowboy75 at 6:19:54 PM EDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 15 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

I bought a new fishing rod the other day. It’s a moderate power, medium fast-action graphite two piece St. Croix. I know of no finer surfcastng rod on the market. As I paid, the store owner asked what reel I would be using with the rod. When I answered, "A Shakespeare Sigma," there was an almost imperceptible wince. “You’re right,” I said. “Give me that Penn 550ssg there.”

I had almost done it again. I’d almost stopped short of getting what I really wanted in order to save a few bucks. I never worry about being short-changed by strangers, because I do it to myself.

Extreme parsimony is one of the vestigial characteristics of growing up with depression-era parents. My grandparents taught my parents to eke every last mil out of every dollar, and they never forgot the lesson. For my father, it took the form of never paying for a service if there was the remote possibility he could do it himself. He was his own plumber, electrician, builder, landscaper, painter, auto mechanic, and even architect. My mother’s penurious habits focused on the food budget. Meat was expensive; potatoes were cheap. Frankfurters went twice as far if you split them down the middle, as did ground beef if you added an equal measure of bread crumbs. No sandwich ever required more than one slice of bologna.

When my father deviated from this pattern, it was for one of two reasons: my mother; or the children’s education (although I’ll admit that in those days, being female, my sister got short shrift). My mother deviated for one reason: my mother. She had a taste for diamond jewelry, the gaudier the better, and was an inveterate gambler. Whether it was the daily number, Bingo, the lottery, or later trips to Foxwoods Casino, she always seemed to find the cash for games of chance.

I have inherited a bit from each. Like my father, I will bust a gut doing something myself rather than spend a few dollars to bring in an expert. Like my mother, I’ll often settle for mediocrity rather than spend for high quality. These patterns are so ingrained that I don’t even realize that I’m following them. The exceptions are travel and my kids. To those, I’d like to add a boat purchase, but I keep finding reasons--dockage, storage, towing--to put it off.

I had already owned a bunch of fishing rods. All of them had been purchased at places like Ocean State Job Lot (everything you need to fish for $36.00). The St. Croix is a start.

belfastcowboy75 at 1:01:23 PM EDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 12 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

I have reached the point in my life where I no longer have to work during the summer. This situation is not as stress-free as it sounds, however. It is amazing how my free days can fill up with have-to’s and should-do’s (hello, Mum) so that I have to schedule in…well, doing nothing.

Take today. I thought I had perfected the Art of the Pool Read. The last two weeks have been hot (not Arizona hot, but hot) and humid (not Georgia humid, but humid), and I established a routine that I thought was flawless. I have two extraordinarily comfortable floating chaises. They are full of air and prone to leaking, so I have taken to calling them Rummy and Karl.

Anyway, the routine goes like this. At the shallow end of the pool opposite the ladder, I pile a towel, my book, and a beverage. I bring Rummy or Karl over to the ladder and flop backwards into position (I confess this might appear somewhat ungainly to the untrained eye). The momentum of the reverse flop carries me across the pool, where I take the beverage and position it in the cup holder, dry off my hands, pick up the book, and cast off.

The pool water has a counter-clockwise circulation. It takes about five minutes to complete a circumnavigation, half of which is spent in the sun and half in shade from the house. This technique served me well last week through a complete reading of The Kite Runner, and I expected it would serve equally this week for a book I picked up on a whim, Skinny Dip.

So what went wrong? After I’d spent the relative cool of the morning scraping wallpaper, I began to align the supplies for a Pool Read, and--Skinny Dip had disappeared! I searched the whole house to no avail. The horror! The angst! It’s as if Skinny had Dipped through a dimensional door into Bizarro-World, or, like Billy Pilgrim, had entered the Chrono-Synclastic Infindibulum.

Luckily, from my childhood of being served frankfurts halved lengthwise and sandwiches filled with Cain’s Sandwich Spread all by itself, I have developed strong coping skills. I will adjust. Rummy, Karl, do you hear? I will be back.

Meanwhile, wherever Skinny Dip has run off to, I hope she and A. C. Remote are very happy together.

Friday update: I opened the linen closet yesterday to get a fresh pool towel,and there was Skinny Dip. A. C. Remote remains at large.

belfastcowboy75 at 4:17:24 PM EDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 18 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

Today was day two of the madness known as the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment, the state’s response to the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Once the Bush administration removed almost all of the promised funding, what remains are a stultifying eight days of testing that totally disrupt the educational activities in the schools.

The Massachusetts DOE demands perfection in the handling of the 32 cartons of questionnaires, tests, formula cards, and answer booklets it sends to us, but seems to hold its testing contractors to a lower standard. Despite a 30 million dollar payoff, these companies year after year send out tests with flawed items; there are items with no correct answers, and items with more than one answer. The principal’s manual (more than 250 pages) and test administrator’s manuals come with enough “errata notices” to wallpaper a room. But misplace one of their thousands of forms, and your license is at risk.

What I hate the most is what these tests do to kids. Even if the tests were not flawed, they would be damaging, but being so flawed, they are actually abusive. Today a test administrator came to my office to tell me a girl was hysterical because the last section of questions made no sense to her. I went up to examine her booklet, and realized that the testing company had neglected to include the reading passage upon which the questions were based. The poor girl thought her diploma was going up in smoke.

I reassured the girl that I would take care of the problem. I called mcasservicecenter, knowing from past experience that the person I would reach would be (a.) incompetent, (b.) fatuous, or (c.) both. Well, it seemed that Form 46 of the test had that problem, I was told. “We just found out about it this morning.”

“Well, what are you planning to do about it?” I demanded.

“The DOE is sending out an e-mail.”

“An E-mail…An E-MAIL?” I was getting nasty now. “Hey, lady, I’ve got kids crying here. What do I tell them?”

“I didn’t print the test, you know.”

Two years ago, the Harcourt Company of Texas sent about one third of the Massachusetts tests to the wrong cities and towns. Somehow, the Boston Globe got wind of the story and ran it on page one, much to the dismay of the DOE. I heard that theinformation came from an anonymous tip.

The Globe already knows about Form 46. The tipster has struck again.

 

belfastcowboy75 at 10:23:20 PM EDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 19 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

Ocean City borders Delaware to the north, where a lighthouse and a plaque mark the eastern origin of the Mason/Dixon line. Ocean City is one of those resorts that is past its prime, a place where surpassing natural beauty is juxtaposed with images of glitz and honky-tonk. The sound of a calliope plays counterpoint to the rolling thunder of the surf; the salt air is tinged with the saccharine smells of cotton candy and fried dough.

The center of activity in the spring is the reawakening boardwalk, where early vacationers expose their winter legs and waists while slurping their first frozen yogurts of the season. The pier offers an expansive view of the beach but the east wind limits the viewers. Thrill machines in the amusement park suffer repair and inspection in silence as they await the arrival of the intrepid and the skeptical…the screams of joy and fear wait to be heard..

As I walk the boardwalk in Ocean City, the year could be 1957 or 1969. I could be at Old Orchard or Nantasket or Seaside Heights. I know the feel of these times and places: I know the greasers, the bleached blondes, the seaside Romeos, the honky-tonk women. Pensioners at skee-ball and pierced youths in the video arcade share an uneasy truce, their affinity for the boardwalk stronger than their mutual mistrust.

 The boardwalk life has a soundtrack, and I discover that as I walk I am humming Springsteen‘s “Sandy” and “Jersey Girl”.   

             Thrill machines in the amusement park

              Ripley's first visitor of the season

            An artist/minister sculpts his Savior in sand

belfastcowboy75 at 4:51:24 PM EDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 26 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

                                    Sunset over Indian River Bay

Delaware has a limited amount of frontage along the Atlantic, but the state has done a superb job balancing public and private interests. At the north end is Rehobeth Beach, the most well-known resort, complete with the obligatory outlet/chain restaurant strip, quaint shops and bistros, and a world-class beach. A bit south on U. S. 1 is funkier Dewey Beach, where the Bottle and Cork proclaims itself “the best rock’n’roll bar in the world” and the Rusty Rudder hosts the annual April music festival. Each fall, Dewey puts down newspaper for an annual gathering of hundreds of rescued greyhounds and their obedient owners.

                                The Entrance to Bethany Beach

South of Dewey Beach, miles of seashore surrounding the Indian River inlet have been preserved as a state park. The park includes a lifesaving museum and a bird sanctuary. Still farther south are the towns of Bethany Beach and Fenwick Island, which bill themselves as “the quiet resorts.” Fenwick abuts the Maryland border and Ocean City.

                                  Bethany Boardwalk

My brother’s beach house is actually a three-level townhouse that overlooks an estuary known as the SaltPond. The Salt Pond connects to a network of canals that allow you to kayak to the beach or to the Indian River inlet. My brother is a collector of adult toys, and the garage is jammed full with a Boston Whaler jetboat, three kayaks, three bicycles, and a sailing dinghy; his Melonseed skiff, La Belle Noire, is stored at boat club on the bay.

           The Salt Pond from the second-floor balcony, morning

I always look forward to the Middle Atlantic cuisine when I visit, but this time found that the blue crab harvest was way down and the price of local crabs had tripled. Most of the crabs being served here, even this close to Chesapeake Bay, had been flown in from Louisiana--a disturbing harbinger of things to come. I contented myself with crab cakes on this trip, although my brother and I dealt a serious dint to the local oyster population.

belfastcowboy75 at 3:41:52 PM EDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 17 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

So I guess it's time for another vacation. Not one to disappoint the Grammy, I decided on another freeloading adventure, this time a return to my brother's beach house at Bethany Beach on the Delaware shore. There are kayaks to be paddled, stripers (they call them "rockfish" in Delaware) to be caught, and Old Bay bluecrabs to be eaten.

I'll also get a chance to visit my son and his girlfriend in Georgetown. I haven't seen their house yet. I'll bring the Nikon.

belfastcowboy75 at 3:29:30 PM EDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 23 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
(Edmund Burke).

I have conflicting emotions over the passing of John Paul. He seemed a good man. He was willing and eager to embrace the lame, the halt, the poor. He cared deeply about the downtrodden. He was a man of peace who was unafraid to criticize makers of war, no matter where they were to be found. Under his leadership, Catholicism made major incursions into Africa and South America, usually through extensive charitable work.

Nevertheless, in terms of doctrine, John Paul was a strict constructionist. Many of the policies and beliefs that drove me from the Catholic Church in the first place were reaffirmed during his papacy. I wish that John Paul had done more to address problems such as the world AIDS epidemic and the status of women in the church. The Church continues to condemn not only abortion, but even birth control. The Church continues to teach that gays and Lesbians are not merely forbidden to marry; they are, by virtue of their sexual orientation, intrinsically sinful. The list goes on. 

I believe that many practicing Catholics pick and choose the tenets of the faith that they find reasonable. That is what I would do, if I still practiced the religion. The Church, however, does not accept picking and choosing. Cardinal Bernard Law, that paragon of moral authority who presided over the clergy sexual abuse scandals here in Boston, said it plainly: follow the teachings of the Church to the letter, or get out. I, for one, got out.

The sorrow I felt over John Paul's passing was tempered by the chilling re-emergence of Bernard Law at the Vatican in recent days. He has been sheltered there since resigning in disgrace. Law's practice of reassigning and hiding pedophile priests in the Boston Archdiocese is well-documented--currently, dozens of parish churches face closure to pay the cost of Law's malfeasance. No one knows how many children were subjected to additional molestation due to his failure to address this outrage.

I do not know at what point John Paul became aware of the extent of the horror in Boston, but I do know that his response was one of passivity. In the crucible of the abuse crisis in Boston, John Paul was a good man...who did nothing.

 

For more on this topic, go here.

belfastcowboy75 at 4:46:39 PM EDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 20 comments: Show Recent | Add your own