Watch it, DVR it, Whatever

I apologize for not writing. I will get back to it soon. However Life on Mars returns to ABC tonight. This is good TV. Gretchen Mol, the original bad lieutenant and the guy who plays Sam all give solid performances. Give it a try.

And Now More from the Experts at Duh (A Think Tank for the Obvious)

The Wall Street Journal noticed today that there might be something flawed in using 401 K plans to fund employee retirements. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123137714796462913.html Duh! 401K plans were never a real benefit for employees except as an adjunct to retirement savings. When in an effort to cheap out employers made these plans "the retirement" for their employees it was once again the case of greed getting Washington's ear. Once again the wealthy and powerful acted to gut the middle class and got away with it. So nice of the WSJ to notice now.

Random Thoughts

Waking was late in coming to me this morning. Reasons existed, as they always do, for my missing most of the pre-noon hours of this Sunday. Primus and my wife arrived home late having been to a college hockey game. Boo, hiss the opponents vanquished our local heroes. Still I was not sleepy when they got home so I looked for some entertainment on the television. Primus headed off to be and my wife and I watched a cooking/travel program set in Spain. One hour of food pornography is the best way to describe this program.

Watching beautiful people eat food is a very guilty pleasure of mine. Part of me is repulsed by the money that had to be expended on the creation of this series. Clearly the monies spent would have been far more wisely used in delivering social welfare to the needy. Two movies stars, two TV/print personalities, a pop star, a Bentley and several Mercedes Benz vehicles all traveling for several months throughout the whole of Spain eating at top restaurants and staying in sumptuous lodgings could not have been anything other than expensive. On the other hand there was the food and the scenery. Did I mention the tapas? OMG!

Small plates have in the past decade or so be a favorite of mine. In Toronto there are several good spots for this kind of food. The nearest tapas place to where I live is an hour away in Grand Rapids. It is fine but not worth the expense of the trip for us. I may get there once this year if we have a hockey game at the right time and if there is no snow storm.

Last night one of the couples went to a tapas place in Barcelona that apparently is one of the best restaurants in Spain. The food, even the anchovies looked wonderful. While this clearly kept my attention the part of the program that really had me was the seafood portion. There came a point where the food critic writer and the young nubile actress were ferried out to a restaurant on stilts in the middle of a bay. Once disembarked in this veritable floating world the food critic chowed down on oysters. Me, I was drooling. When the critic responded to a question as to how many oysters he had ever eaten in a sitting with the number 48 I thought to myself, you wimp. I know I have probably tossed back more but on the raw oyster count/steamed oyster count I never kept track. I know I have eaten that many fried oysters at one time as my maximum of that variant of the delicacy. Lacking a gallbladder the consumption of 48 fried oysters is probably never going to be on my horizon again.

Here in the Midwest because of the obvious distance to the nearest ocean, 48-50 oysters would cost easily $150-200 dollars for good ones. Clearly I opted to move here and thus made my choice on locale vs. lunch options. Still, it doesn’t mean I cannot mourn my lack of access to oysters. Food porn, it is the stuff that memories and dreams are made of.

Well after the Spanish food interlude I headed off for bed. Between bad dreams and Francie’s restlessness quality sleep did not arrive until late. When I last looked at the clock it was about 4 a.m. Having only fallen into the dark dreamless world just before the sunrise I stayed in bed until about 11 a.m.

Due to the late hour of my rising I missed listening to the radio news programs. This was probably a good thing. When I dialed up some music I heard the announcer indicating that the fighting in Gaza was continuing. Could the news be anything else? I am fifty two years old and the earliest snippets of news I remember concerned the 67 Arab-Israeli conflict. Has anything really changed? Has anything in this battle really changed in the last half millennium?

Until there is a fundamental shift in both party’s perceptions as to their rights and entitlements in the sand that compromises the Middle East nothing will ever be resolved. It is not a question of who goes first. Both the Arabs and the Jews must realize they are people first and live in this world and do not have claims as God’s anointed to anything including land and power other than their humanity or the bodies will continue to pile up. With the weapons at play in the Middle East the body count could increase exponentially. As I said it is not a question of who must act first in good faith, they both must.

Sorry for that rant, I am tired.

Today I made the bass go first. The French horn followed. Later, much later, will come the piano practice. How do you communicate to children the value in both learning an instrument and learning the discipline to practice and instrument? My parents did not push me and I gave the clarinet up pretty early. To this day I regret I did not master any musical instrument.

Late Night Writing Tutorial

So last night as I was heading to bed I sat down to check my e-mail. The version of browser I use is Firefox 3.x something. In recent days I have added Stumbleon as a component. Thinking “what the hay” I hit the button to stumble. What I came to was a site called 1, 2, 5ver. Here is the link http://www.onetwofiver.com/ This is a creative writing site that uses a very simple strategy to get your creative juices flowing. This is what I created in about an hour, both the original typing and some editing this morning.

I would challenge you all to go out to this site and give it a try. Post some of what you create. Me I enjoyed the test of trying to do something within the strictures of the site. I have decided upon names for the characters now. He is Max Garst. She is Alana (Ali) Lindon. I will replace the *s soon.



Radiance, filled with light from within. Cold and crisp indigo blue was the color of the smooth soft fluted vase that stood upon this mantle, in an otherwise sterile still gray room.

Entry to this dour parlor was implied. After gaining his way in by being buzzed in at the immense but well worn old wooden entrance no door but the one to the left of the entryway was open. Locks were either jammed or set on all the others.

Coming alone this late at night was at best an odd idea, the kind of irrational action sometimes induced by a fever. Walking in the cool damp dark of this forgotten section of the old town set his nerves on edge but charged his senses with energy he had not felt in years. Common sense would have dictated he stay at his flat and wait until morning. When the morning came the question would remain, do what?

Darkness, anxious, unnerving was a key part of what this place was, of what this evening was. Darkness as he made his way through the worn and ill kempt streets left him with his neck hairs raised. The half light of this room while less unnerving was not in any way comforting.

Looking into the empty storefronts he remembered the clerks’ faces. Most of these working class people were aged and worn from years of repetitive motions; muscle and tone were gained and then lost from placing boxes and cans into sacks. After the years had passed, shoulders and faces sagged. Complexions were colorless and dispositions were for the large part humorless. Of course there were exceptions but on the whole he had no warm memories of this place and it denizens.

Fifteen or maybe twenty years the economy turned sour here. First the stores on tight margins closed. Then the stores that had survived past downturns on savings and the owners' personalities became victims of money's rapid flight. Finally only a few convenience stores with marginal staff and questionable practices remained. In hard times like these such places thrived.

He had left before things got dark. He had not been here on these streets at the start of the bad times through a combination of luck and drive. She had remained for the whole gut wrenching downward spiral. He had not really left her so much as she had let him drift on without her presence in his life. One morning he woke up and realized she was no longer an active part in his life. While a picture of her with long tresses and a smile remained in his bedroom, it was on that day he knew she would never again take up the hours and days and weeks that had been their shared world. On that day as he drank morning’s first coffee he felt he had an inarticulate sense of the why of her absence. Still through the years he had never been able to speak it aloud.

Richard Thompson sings a song that described her partially, “She was a rare thing, fine as a bee’s wing". Indeed a rare thing, but not fragile in the classic storybook sense she lived directly and connected to the world she inhabited. Of all the women he had ever known she had a moral center that was the most sound. Politics did not matter to her, but justice did. Love was valued but ethical behavior was more important in her heart.

In the days before this place saw money fold up its tent and move away she had been the rare young clerk at a green grocer. The owners a couple in their sixties could sense right from their first meeting her honesty and passion. She knew the store’s clientele well having lived on these streets all of her life. She could read the spark in the eye of a good child with impish tendencies, in such a case there would be offered a bit of penny candy as a bribe for calm inside the store while the youth's mum shopped. Just as easily she could read the darkness that is in some children from the day they are born. These were the ones she steered to the front of the store, to the east side near the plate glass window where she could keep her eye on their hands and pockets. Filled with bulk produce it was a place in which little of value could go missing. It was always an agony for her to know children like this existed as a seeming matter of course in nature.

Calls are proper up until the late news begins. A phone ringing once the announcer has begun to drone about today’s crisis in a country that even he is struggling to name without mispronunciation means one of three things. If the hand set is flipped open there will invariably be a drunken dialer (known or unknown), or a quiet voice with unwanted news or what had become the usual for him in recent years a period of silence that after his. No voice being heard despite a quick query of ‘who is this’ third kind of call turned into a dial tone. Tonight’s caller was not drunk and a voice was heard and acknowledged.

Some many questions swirled about in his head as he entered the still room. Sparely furnished and cold it was a space that seemed decorated by a dowager or a committee of a Luddite sect. Why did he feel the need to be here now? His presence would not change a thing. How had she come to be among these people? Such dour settings were not her preference.

He knew of the people that ran this place. Following a credo of simplicity and care they worked several tiers down in the charity/social welfare hierarchy. It seemed to him that they must shun publicity and that they must also be sincere. Scanning the papers you never saw the group’s name tied to sex scandals or to hot button issues of the day. Only if you had lived in this part of the city, or in similar parts of other old industrial cities would you ever heard of their common sense acts of compassion.

Looking toward the mantel he wondered where had he seen the vase before? It had a familiarity about it that called him to come in closer for a careful inspection, but he dared not. The vase might be a clue (or not) but its softly curved shapes held his eye in a way that suggested this art piece had connection with the two of them and the circumstances now in play. Crisp and elegant the vase had no right to be in this room, God's truth be told.

A tall man in a well worn dark suit entered the room from what had been a closed door to the right of the mantel and some distance down the wall. "I thank you for coming at this late hour. Honestly, morning would have been fine, but perhaps something will come of your prompt response."

What are the rules to be followed at this hour of night when you answer a call that simply cries out this is an urgent situation that must be addressed by its mere existence? There are no Emily Post or Ms. Manners' drafted conventions on how you respond. What exists that will direct all your movements and actions is the stuff that you are made of. All the small and large incidents in your life that have taught you the obligations, perils and ultimate consequences of acting honorably create the framework of your response. The books that you have read, the sermons that you have listened to week after week, the proverbs and homilies that you heard while at your parents’ side create the framework of morality but it is your accumulated experience that makes your decision as whether to act or not.

Hearing the quiet but deep concern in the speaker's voice and knowing only the most rudimentary details he set off at once. With a quick glance around the room he quickly grabbed the essentials, his wallet, credit cards, thank God he had a decent bit of cash about and his smart phone with names, addresses and the power of the internet should his human connections fail him. On his way out he looked the door with his key, he might not be back for awhile and it would not be good to allow too many people easy access to his place not with issues this might raise on the horizon
He never wrote the address down, but he knew would not forget it. The building number was 36 and the street was Old Queen's Way. Not having travelled in that part of town in decades he was sure to a certainty he could still find his way about the place to the address even if his phone’s GPS were to fail him. Twenty five years ago he was as well known in the streets there as anyone was. Twenty five years ago? How had the time slipped away so quickly?

Thinking back he was not completely sure when he had last seen her. It could have been in that little trendy restaurant when he was just sitting down to dinner. He had been surrounded that night by a different set of people than those they knew in common. Was he serious with someone then? Was there a serious someone with him that night? He didn't remember.

What he remembered was that it clearly had been a chance meeting for the now long gone restaurant was not her kind of place. It had too many pretentions for her to even have deigned to enter it. She was clearly there to humor another. Seeing him sitting there surrounded by his new friends, her eyes flashed. For the life of him he could not remember if that flash meant anger or simply warm surprise. She was different then; the years of living unfettered had left a mark but it was not damage he saw in her. Looking at him with clarity of vision he rarely saw used by another human being he sensed she had a world weary awareness of all the pretense and artifice that he had allowed to seep in and strangle his life.

Why had he not stopped her then to talk? Why hadn't he gone over and bought her a drink? Why?

Calm, and it was both forced and necessary arising under pressure but with purpose. His thought, rational and matched with value driven actions were going to be a clear necessity tonight. Twenty five years without meaningful contact, maybe two or three chance meetings and now he was here, he was doing this.

Brought into the room where her prone form was stretched out on what for all the world looked like a psychiatrist’s coach, only quite old, it was clear she was not dead. Few signs of physical trauma were apparent; a purple bruise somewhat matching the pattern of a hand gripped tightly was on her left arm half way between her wrist and elbow. Looking at her clothes it was clear she had not been wearing particular garments long. Clean and pressed but well worn they hung loosely about her frame.
Looking for guidance he searched the face of the man in the suit for any sign of emotion or concern. Nothing stood out. After several minutes in the room, a time marked and measured by her shallow but steady breathing, the inscrutable man began to speak without looking up. His eyes seemed focused on a point well below the wooden floorboards of this room.

"In most likelihood you are wondering why we called you. Such a thing would be of utmost concern to most people given the harsh nature of this particular situation. In reality the reason we called you has very little to do with whom or what you are now. What prompted us to act was our memory of who you were then when you knew her of course.

Coughing to clear his throat but still not looking up the man continued. "You do not remember me, but I remember you. Every day when you would swing by the green grocers to pick up * it was clear that she loved you in a deeper way that most men will ever get to experience from anyone. About fifteen minutes before her shift would end sprightliness would come over *. Oh understand she was always upbeat and usually happier that circumstances would warrant. But as her shift came to a point where it was almost ended and when she saw the clocks hands at 5:45 her soul would just seem to be set aglow. When she went outside to roll up the awning her head would swing to and fro as she scanned the street for your approach."

"Every day I watched this transformation occur and it was wonderful. Now mind you she was always kind to me. Her apron always had an extra bit of candy for me, candy that my parents would have disapproved of. What matter should it have been to them, it was one piece of candy? It was not as if the store would live or die on the cost of that one piece of hard butterscotch."

He knew now who this man was, but he did not know him, *'s memory was blank for a youthful image of this now drab figure. It was clear that the man was the son of the shopkeepers who had run the store where * had worked. He was seven or eight years younger than * and their paths never crossed in school. Having no younger brothers (or sisters for that matter) the age difference would have insured no contact between the two of them socially. * may have seen the man as a child any number of times when he stopped in for the short moment or two to pick * up, but their contact was nothing that would have mattered to him and would quickly have been discarded from memory. Perspective is what determines the strength of memory isn't it?

The man continued his speaking in the low unchanging voice he had been using from the start. "As I was saying she changed in a wonderful way when you can about the store. I envied you because she was a magical person and it was clear that she was deeply in love with you."

"She worked at my parents store for as long as they could pay her. * was such a part of the place that she was the last to go before the place closed. The place was gone an empty façade with broken glass and debris a mere six months after she was let go. The economy did the store in as it finished off every other real place of business in these parts. The fair work/fair wage and food riots finished the neighborhood off, but can you blame them. What else were people without hope to do with their pent up rage?"

"In those years right before the store folded it was clear to me that you had left her life. She remained kind and compassionate and she never gave my parents other than a full day of solid effort. However the electricity that she would seem to have in that last part of the day in the earlier years was gone. Those of us around * still received the same wonderful treatment from her but it was clear that she was not feeling the same way she had in the past toward herself."

The man stopped for a moment. When he began to speak again his voice was softer or maybe just lower. "Nobody blamed you for anything. We all knew that this life is simply a river of endless change. Clearly those are not the terms we used but we had the innate knowledge of that sentiment. In the quiet times of my day just before I extinguish the light I read. I try to read things that are not tied to my work. Over the years I have read much about the life of the Buddha and most likely my phrasing has come from that. We were sad for her but there was very little we could do, now was there I mean I ask you?"

"As the years past I kept track of you both. *, well I watched out for her on the streets and in local haunts because she was the wonderful person I have tried to describe to you. As for you, it was part of my job you see to know what you were up to. Shortly after my parents store folded I came to work here. In my role as sort of a business affairs liaison it was incumbent upon me to know who we could trust outside of these streets and also to keep abreast of those whom upon their departure from these blocks of empty buildings had been met with the smiling face of good fortune. In modern charities and the like I would be known as an informal development officer. You were a clear success story."