Saturday, October 10, 2020
It's been a decade since I last blogged ... MOON MEN - amusingly serious progressive music
Monday, August 9, 2010
Before I Can No Longer Remember: The Great American Testimony, 1982-1985
Upon graduating from 'Madstop' - S.U.N.Y. Potsdam in the Spring of 1982, with a B.A. in English/Art, I found myself saddled with about $10,000 in college loans. New York State was experiencing high unemployment and the best my college degree was able to parlay for me in its economy was a 40-hour, 11PM-7AM, short-order cook position at Mario's Little Gem Diner in Syracuse. The job had its enjoyments and I learned to cook efficiently for groups. However, it paid poorly, I was living with my parents and driving a beater of a car, and the future looked like a big, meaningless void. And along came the payback cycle of the loans, which left me in a fix.
My childhood friend, Jim Irwin, had just enlisted in the Army and would be going to helicopter repair school after boot camp. He told me about the benefits and pay; far better than what I was making. I began speaking to recruiters to see what was out there for a college grad with my degree.
The Navy appealed to me most, to a great extent because I'd heard my dad's Korean War Navy stories for years, seen photographs and some funny 8mm footage from his travels, and had always admired the medals he kept in a cigar box on his dresser.
I won't go too deeply into the baloney (gotta get that quota to be promoted) a North Syracuse recruiter fed me about "the modern Navy" and it's "need for technical degrees" and how my education had little use to the Officer Corps. Suffice it to say that I signed up for a four year tour as an enlisted man, found out three years later that I had been the victim of recruitment fraud, and that "it would be dealt with"; this by the Navy Captain who I found myself, entirely by chance, eating lunch and chatting with one Saturday afternoon at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. He just happened to be 2nd in command of naval recruitment in these United States. I'd hate to have been that Senior Chief when he got called onto the carpet.
In April of '83, I got on a plane for the Recruit Training Center in San Diego, California. I was assigned to a "drill company", which meant that our company of 80+ guys would learn all of the gun twirling and flag marching stuff that would happen during the eventual graduation ceremony. This made things a bit more fun, as the time we spent doing this training circumvented doing something worse. Boot camp was about physical fitness, learning about the US Navy and its regulations and principles, learning how to accept and follow directions, cleanliness, developing personal responsibility, and putting a sharp point on one's coping skills. We ran, swam, marched, sang, stood at attention or 'parade rest' for what felt like hours, ate mediocre food, got yelled at, washed clothes, studied for tests, and were shepherded through a process that, in effect, built character and erased social distinction. I would recommend these lessons for anyone. They sure shaped some of what endures in me as useful. We graduated and were officially sailors, ready for "A-School', where we would obtain the foundations of our chosen job fields.
Next, off to the The Presidio of Monterey, located in Monterey, California, an active US Army installation that is the home of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLI-FLC). I lived and mustered with about 200 other sailors, men and women, studying several languages through speaking, listening, and writing. We ate, discussed, worked out, and partied together. Intellect, youthful energy, and fun were in the air. Some of the best cookouts and pick-up basketball games ever took place in the shade of our barracks. Olympic amounts of imported beer were downed. Guitars were plugged in and noise was made. The Presidio is built high on a coastal hill, with the stunningly beautiful Monterey Bay below and pine trees and deer above. Idyllic. John Steinbeck wrote many of his manuscripts in a cathouse called Kalisa's down on Cannery Row. No longer a whorehouse, Kalisa's was now a great Greek restaurant with live music and poetry readings in the evening; with Kalisa herself still hostess of the establishment! I bought my first 4-track recording deck at a Monterey music shop and built my first homemade instrument in the Army wood shop on-post.
When I arrived, I didn't even know the real nature of the job I'd be doing for the government with the language, as it was classified and we didn't yet have "the need to know". Having tested with a high score on the Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB), I was given the choice of any offered course of language study. What language should I choose? I took an opportunity to talk with the Command Master Chief, a 25+ year Russian linguist and asked him, if he could do it all over again and was in my position, what language would he have chosen and why?
He said, "If I were in your shoes, I'd choose Korean. It is the only language you can study here that sends you to a place where you can actually speak it with people. Russian, Chinese, and Arabic linguists never get sent to those countries to do the job we do."
So I chose to become a Korean Linguist, in typical military obfuscation, titled 'Cryptologic Technician - Interpretive' in publications. I spent the next 60 weeks studying Korean language, culture, and grammar, 8 hours a day, five days a week. It was tough. The two Korean alphabets are either pictographic (Chinese - used in newspapers) or employ strange phonetic sound-symbols that are assembled on the page like complex fractions, rather than linearly as is English. INTENSE. Eight in our class graduated of the forty we started with. Waiting for the next Korean class to also graduate so a group could be sent to the next school, I was imported into a 'level two' Korean class for 16 weeks before shipping out for technological training in Texas.
Goodfellow Air Force Base is located in the western part of the state, just outside of a dust town called San Angelo. There, I was taught how to use a host of high-tech gear essential to the job and how to type 60wpm. We were in the DESERT. I saw snakes and jack rabbits out there while running the base perimeter that were monstrous. Living life near cities had always obscured the night's stars and I had never seen a sky so giant and clear. The food was dreadful and I will never be able to shake the memory of the huge keg of a breakfast cook in the mess hall who would, daily, shower the eggs and bacon she was flipping with a rain of sweat from her forehead. A Chinese linguist, Pete Nickless, turned me on to the music of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band during my six months there. What an epiphany! Every form of indigenous American music thrown into a blender and made into...what? Great stuff and really influential on my own slide guitar playing. I developed a burrito addiction, plowing through tens of them every week. There was a shallow river crawling through San Angelo that you could always see snakes in. The place was brown and dry; very like a scene from a cowboy movie. Towns-people and many of us from on-base would get together at a huge concrete sluice/dam that was nearby, just out of town. I had some extreme good times out there. Aerosmith and Zeppelin from boomboxes would bounce and echo like crazy in that place, and there was a long, smooth incline to the cool and calm water below. It reminded me of something from Clockwork Orange, minus the violence. Eventually, when our trainers deemed us capable of using the expensive equipment and not breaking it, we graduated from tech school.
Aircrew Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida's Naval Air Station came next. My Navy life was a slow and often arduous succession of trainings and schools. I opted for becoming an Aircrewman, it is voluntary, because the pay was better and the travel opportunities opened considerably. You'll notice that I'm not getting into any detail about my job. That is because I may not do so. Period. Until I die. That's just how it works. Our intelligence work was conducted from many platforms, military aircraft being one. There are things to know and be able to do when your job is on an airplane that could crash of be shot down. Swimming. Running. Not getting electrocuted during a rescue or drowned by your own parachute. Properly exiting an aircraft that is underwater (I almost drowned during this test, for the harness had a faulty buckle that got stuck and had to be cut by a scuba diver after I'd been under for over a minute and a half. Thank God for all the swimming I'd done at the Bayberry Pool as a kid!). We swam and we ran. We ran in dry sand, less traction. We ran timed trials through a tough obstacle course that involved climbing, crawling, balancing, dodging, and avoiding things. We studied necessary texts. And we slept like logs at night. Things like that. My mind was becoming completely able to not expect much enjoyment from work, but rather "to get through this and on to that, and then off-base tonight for some clams and beers." My parents had taught me "to cope", but the Navy was like a graduate course. Eight weeks later, we graduated and got to wear the winged uniform patch and embroidered ballcap representing induction to aircrew status. These things mattered and matter. My medals, ribbons, and letters of commendation signify accomplishment and having paid my dues to earn something. They remind me that I have been an adult and met a difficult criteria, not always possible.
The last phase of becoming an airman is completing P.O.W. Training in the California mountains. In three words: Incredibly Not Fun. SERE is a United States military acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, a program that provides military personnel, Department of Defense civilians and private military contractors with training in evading capture, survival skills and the military code of conduct. A "what if?" scenario, we were given tattered uniforms to wear, a knife and compass, and set down in the mountains. We were told that we were to avoid being caught, but not to get ourselves killed if we were "captured by the enemy". We were also told that being caught was inevitable. Humvees and other armed vehicles, firing blanks, we later found out, prowled everywhere, and the enemy (camouflaged Navy SEALS dressed as Russian soldiers) knew the lay of the land. We were given an initial clue to a second location, which would have a clue to a third and so on. Any of us (about 50) who located the "safe house" would be fed and sheltered for a spell. Two other guys and I made it to the safe house and had, maybe, three minutes to eat from a pot of cooked vegetables before the house was overrun and we, too, were caught. Without going into too much of it, the next few days were a test of each man's will to keep a secret, and to be taken to the place where you had to choose between injury and survival. One jarhead invited extra torment by getting his back up and sassing a guy they called "Bruiser" (Two days before while we were 'evading' in the mountains, the same Marine caught, cooked, and shared a rabbit he'd snared with some of us. Then, he put his hand up inside the skin, head still attached, and did a "puppet show" that had us rolling on the ground laughing.) One man tried to escape and ended up breaking his leg. I'll never forget the rice with way too much salt they made us eat. I spent the better part of an afternoon in a (working and ventilated) refrigerator, and another being thrown against a wall. It sucked, but we made it through the ordeal, and it was an ordeal.
Before 'shipping out', I had three days of "R & R" in San Diego during 1985. Besides the usual walking around between beers one does in a strange town, in the evenings I wrote this long, surreal narrative poem about my life and the changes I'd taken myself through.
==================================================
THE GREAT AMERICAN TESTIMONY
I. On Improvisational Living
I have thrown it with all my strength
it arcs around the planet in silent acceleration
over oasis and plant life
blowing hats and turbans from heads
then it reappears in my trouser pocket
the one with the hole in it
'Hello' is repeated over and over
while the other digits dance through
at a rate and intervals governed by temperature
something big and creamy is still knocking at the door
cold smoke anthems puff freely
beneath chairs and tables
an aluminum can keeps falling to the floor
with a luminous thud
between love and lust lies like,
but what lies between like and want?
more trips to the public urinal in the club
with those cigarette frigates and oysters
that won't go down
my feet fall apart slowly, like mica
and pack small windows into my shoes
in a place where wind erodes a bit of red sandstone
until it is the shape of a rose
and dinosaur fragments litter the site
of a faulty flashlight pool
now I'm in a favorite place
up there
on the very top of New York State
where a friendly princess in a rocking chair
smiles
asks how I've been
and sells me a book.
it's like apple and oranges
there are no truly red oranges
there are no truly orange apples
all red apples are apples
all orange oranges are oranges
apples are not oranges
and vice-versa
apples and oranges have this in common
we put them in our mouths
here's a seedless orange for you
do you have a wormless apple for me?
I am an American
I am an artist
I am an American artist
I am, therefore, at an advantage
you see, bad man only had one idea
some drone got himself a new attitude
and then got mad about it
"This cube is such a hell!"
at the hospital, a sign said
"Problems are 90% attitude
and 10% external occurrence."
the ears enjoy whales
the hole is tobacco-stained
foreign shapes come out of it
affection is inverted, heart-holes out
producing beautiful patterns on warped tablet
Mr. Lobster is getting pretty accustomed
to taking drugs which
never really brace him for that bathtub
men with birds on their shoulders
sit at an adjacent table
and let cigar smoke pour from their face-holes
some noble creature with buttocks
sticking out of its collar
is struggling with a necktie
as his bedecked wife paints
navy-blue eyeliner under her one brown eye
my skin is stretched and spread
over color zones
and feeds noisily
with all of its holes
snappin' and gnashin'
a blue pen goes dry
bringing to mind an easy metaphor
and her hair in candlelight
carp mimic salmon and dash their brains out
in currents of ill-positioned ego
and a very false sense of
"What the people want from their Art"
tears flow from rusty spigots
in their foreheads
"WHY HIM?!", she convulsed under his table
and said, "DON'T!"
too drugged to pause, he filleted the salmon
and drew from its ovary
a string of tiny human hands
connected thumb-to-pinky
the snack was re-hydrated and filled
with crunchy goodness
as I looked from a window in tears
a cork-board laden with notes
and photos
and clippings
rustles with the sound of a passing marsupial
a little pink beanbaby leans forward
and out come pink bubbles
to be carried away by doves
the Long Wait is a map
leading to an orchard
with friendly beasts baying in stereo
This is the Great American Testimony
No purple mountains majesty to speak of here
only farts and fools and futures
and countless false starts
You are proud of it
==================================
On a Sunday, I got carried my dufflebag onto a C-130 for duty in the Pacific.
Oh boy.
My childhood friend, Jim Irwin, had just enlisted in the Army and would be going to helicopter repair school after boot camp. He told me about the benefits and pay; far better than what I was making. I began speaking to recruiters to see what was out there for a college grad with my degree.
The Navy appealed to me most, to a great extent because I'd heard my dad's Korean War Navy stories for years, seen photographs and some funny 8mm footage from his travels, and had always admired the medals he kept in a cigar box on his dresser.
I won't go too deeply into the baloney (gotta get that quota to be promoted) a North Syracuse recruiter fed me about "the modern Navy" and it's "need for technical degrees" and how my education had little use to the Officer Corps. Suffice it to say that I signed up for a four year tour as an enlisted man, found out three years later that I had been the victim of recruitment fraud, and that "it would be dealt with"; this by the Navy Captain who I found myself, entirely by chance, eating lunch and chatting with one Saturday afternoon at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. He just happened to be 2nd in command of naval recruitment in these United States. I'd hate to have been that Senior Chief when he got called onto the carpet.
In April of '83, I got on a plane for the Recruit Training Center in San Diego, California. I was assigned to a "drill company", which meant that our company of 80+ guys would learn all of the gun twirling and flag marching stuff that would happen during the eventual graduation ceremony. This made things a bit more fun, as the time we spent doing this training circumvented doing something worse. Boot camp was about physical fitness, learning about the US Navy and its regulations and principles, learning how to accept and follow directions, cleanliness, developing personal responsibility, and putting a sharp point on one's coping skills. We ran, swam, marched, sang, stood at attention or 'parade rest' for what felt like hours, ate mediocre food, got yelled at, washed clothes, studied for tests, and were shepherded through a process that, in effect, built character and erased social distinction. I would recommend these lessons for anyone. They sure shaped some of what endures in me as useful. We graduated and were officially sailors, ready for "A-School', where we would obtain the foundations of our chosen job fields.
Next, off to the The Presidio of Monterey, located in Monterey, California, an active US Army installation that is the home of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLI-FLC). I lived and mustered with about 200 other sailors, men and women, studying several languages through speaking, listening, and writing. We ate, discussed, worked out, and partied together. Intellect, youthful energy, and fun were in the air. Some of the best cookouts and pick-up basketball games ever took place in the shade of our barracks. Olympic amounts of imported beer were downed. Guitars were plugged in and noise was made. The Presidio is built high on a coastal hill, with the stunningly beautiful Monterey Bay below and pine trees and deer above. Idyllic. John Steinbeck wrote many of his manuscripts in a cathouse called Kalisa's down on Cannery Row. No longer a whorehouse, Kalisa's was now a great Greek restaurant with live music and poetry readings in the evening; with Kalisa herself still hostess of the establishment! I bought my first 4-track recording deck at a Monterey music shop and built my first homemade instrument in the Army wood shop on-post.
When I arrived, I didn't even know the real nature of the job I'd be doing for the government with the language, as it was classified and we didn't yet have "the need to know". Having tested with a high score on the Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB), I was given the choice of any offered course of language study. What language should I choose? I took an opportunity to talk with the Command Master Chief, a 25+ year Russian linguist and asked him, if he could do it all over again and was in my position, what language would he have chosen and why?
He said, "If I were in your shoes, I'd choose Korean. It is the only language you can study here that sends you to a place where you can actually speak it with people. Russian, Chinese, and Arabic linguists never get sent to those countries to do the job we do."
So I chose to become a Korean Linguist, in typical military obfuscation, titled 'Cryptologic Technician - Interpretive' in publications. I spent the next 60 weeks studying Korean language, culture, and grammar, 8 hours a day, five days a week. It was tough. The two Korean alphabets are either pictographic (Chinese - used in newspapers) or employ strange phonetic sound-symbols that are assembled on the page like complex fractions, rather than linearly as is English. INTENSE. Eight in our class graduated of the forty we started with. Waiting for the next Korean class to also graduate so a group could be sent to the next school, I was imported into a 'level two' Korean class for 16 weeks before shipping out for technological training in Texas.
Goodfellow Air Force Base is located in the western part of the state, just outside of a dust town called San Angelo. There, I was taught how to use a host of high-tech gear essential to the job and how to type 60wpm. We were in the DESERT. I saw snakes and jack rabbits out there while running the base perimeter that were monstrous. Living life near cities had always obscured the night's stars and I had never seen a sky so giant and clear. The food was dreadful and I will never be able to shake the memory of the huge keg of a breakfast cook in the mess hall who would, daily, shower the eggs and bacon she was flipping with a rain of sweat from her forehead. A Chinese linguist, Pete Nickless, turned me on to the music of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band during my six months there. What an epiphany! Every form of indigenous American music thrown into a blender and made into...what? Great stuff and really influential on my own slide guitar playing. I developed a burrito addiction, plowing through tens of them every week. There was a shallow river crawling through San Angelo that you could always see snakes in. The place was brown and dry; very like a scene from a cowboy movie. Towns-people and many of us from on-base would get together at a huge concrete sluice/dam that was nearby, just out of town. I had some extreme good times out there. Aerosmith and Zeppelin from boomboxes would bounce and echo like crazy in that place, and there was a long, smooth incline to the cool and calm water below. It reminded me of something from Clockwork Orange, minus the violence. Eventually, when our trainers deemed us capable of using the expensive equipment and not breaking it, we graduated from tech school.
Aircrew Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida's Naval Air Station came next. My Navy life was a slow and often arduous succession of trainings and schools. I opted for becoming an Aircrewman, it is voluntary, because the pay was better and the travel opportunities opened considerably. You'll notice that I'm not getting into any detail about my job. That is because I may not do so. Period. Until I die. That's just how it works. Our intelligence work was conducted from many platforms, military aircraft being one. There are things to know and be able to do when your job is on an airplane that could crash of be shot down. Swimming. Running. Not getting electrocuted during a rescue or drowned by your own parachute. Properly exiting an aircraft that is underwater (I almost drowned during this test, for the harness had a faulty buckle that got stuck and had to be cut by a scuba diver after I'd been under for over a minute and a half. Thank God for all the swimming I'd done at the Bayberry Pool as a kid!). We swam and we ran. We ran in dry sand, less traction. We ran timed trials through a tough obstacle course that involved climbing, crawling, balancing, dodging, and avoiding things. We studied necessary texts. And we slept like logs at night. Things like that. My mind was becoming completely able to not expect much enjoyment from work, but rather "to get through this and on to that, and then off-base tonight for some clams and beers." My parents had taught me "to cope", but the Navy was like a graduate course. Eight weeks later, we graduated and got to wear the winged uniform patch and embroidered ballcap representing induction to aircrew status. These things mattered and matter. My medals, ribbons, and letters of commendation signify accomplishment and having paid my dues to earn something. They remind me that I have been an adult and met a difficult criteria, not always possible.
The last phase of becoming an airman is completing P.O.W. Training in the California mountains. In three words: Incredibly Not Fun. SERE is a United States military acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, a program that provides military personnel, Department of Defense civilians and private military contractors with training in evading capture, survival skills and the military code of conduct. A "what if?" scenario, we were given tattered uniforms to wear, a knife and compass, and set down in the mountains. We were told that we were to avoid being caught, but not to get ourselves killed if we were "captured by the enemy". We were also told that being caught was inevitable. Humvees and other armed vehicles, firing blanks, we later found out, prowled everywhere, and the enemy (camouflaged Navy SEALS dressed as Russian soldiers) knew the lay of the land. We were given an initial clue to a second location, which would have a clue to a third and so on. Any of us (about 50) who located the "safe house" would be fed and sheltered for a spell. Two other guys and I made it to the safe house and had, maybe, three minutes to eat from a pot of cooked vegetables before the house was overrun and we, too, were caught. Without going into too much of it, the next few days were a test of each man's will to keep a secret, and to be taken to the place where you had to choose between injury and survival. One jarhead invited extra torment by getting his back up and sassing a guy they called "Bruiser" (Two days before while we were 'evading' in the mountains, the same Marine caught, cooked, and shared a rabbit he'd snared with some of us. Then, he put his hand up inside the skin, head still attached, and did a "puppet show" that had us rolling on the ground laughing.) One man tried to escape and ended up breaking his leg. I'll never forget the rice with way too much salt they made us eat. I spent the better part of an afternoon in a (working and ventilated) refrigerator, and another being thrown against a wall. It sucked, but we made it through the ordeal, and it was an ordeal.
Before 'shipping out', I had three days of "R & R" in San Diego during 1985. Besides the usual walking around between beers one does in a strange town, in the evenings I wrote this long, surreal narrative poem about my life and the changes I'd taken myself through.
==================================================
THE GREAT AMERICAN TESTIMONY
I. On Improvisational Living
I have thrown it with all my strength
it arcs around the planet in silent acceleration
over oasis and plant life
blowing hats and turbans from heads
then it reappears in my trouser pocket
the one with the hole in it
'Hello' is repeated over and over
while the other digits dance through
at a rate and intervals governed by temperature
something big and creamy is still knocking at the door
cold smoke anthems puff freely
beneath chairs and tables
an aluminum can keeps falling to the floor
with a luminous thud
between love and lust lies like,
but what lies between like and want?
more trips to the public urinal in the club
with those cigarette frigates and oysters
that won't go down
my feet fall apart slowly, like mica
and pack small windows into my shoes
in a place where wind erodes a bit of red sandstone
until it is the shape of a rose
and dinosaur fragments litter the site
of a faulty flashlight pool
now I'm in a favorite place
up there
on the very top of New York State
where a friendly princess in a rocking chair
smiles
asks how I've been
and sells me a book.
it's like apple and oranges
there are no truly red oranges
there are no truly orange apples
all red apples are apples
all orange oranges are oranges
apples are not oranges
and vice-versa
apples and oranges have this in common
we put them in our mouths
here's a seedless orange for you
do you have a wormless apple for me?
I am an American
I am an artist
I am an American artist
I am, therefore, at an advantage
you see, bad man only had one idea
some drone got himself a new attitude
and then got mad about it
"This cube is such a hell!"
at the hospital, a sign said
"Problems are 90% attitude
and 10% external occurrence."
the ears enjoy whales
the hole is tobacco-stained
foreign shapes come out of it
affection is inverted, heart-holes out
producing beautiful patterns on warped tablet
Mr. Lobster is getting pretty accustomed
to taking drugs which
never really brace him for that bathtub
men with birds on their shoulders
sit at an adjacent table
and let cigar smoke pour from their face-holes
some noble creature with buttocks
sticking out of its collar
is struggling with a necktie
as his bedecked wife paints
navy-blue eyeliner under her one brown eye
my skin is stretched and spread
over color zones
and feeds noisily
with all of its holes
snappin' and gnashin'
a blue pen goes dry
bringing to mind an easy metaphor
and her hair in candlelight
carp mimic salmon and dash their brains out
in currents of ill-positioned ego
and a very false sense of
"What the people want from their Art"
tears flow from rusty spigots
in their foreheads
"WHY HIM?!", she convulsed under his table
and said, "DON'T!"
too drugged to pause, he filleted the salmon
and drew from its ovary
a string of tiny human hands
connected thumb-to-pinky
the snack was re-hydrated and filled
with crunchy goodness
as I looked from a window in tears
a cork-board laden with notes
and photos
and clippings
rustles with the sound of a passing marsupial
a little pink beanbaby leans forward
and out come pink bubbles
to be carried away by doves
the Long Wait is a map
leading to an orchard
with friendly beasts baying in stereo
This is the Great American Testimony
No purple mountains majesty to speak of here
only farts and fools and futures
and countless false starts
You are proud of it
==================================
On a Sunday, I got carried my dufflebag onto a C-130 for duty in the Pacific.
Oh boy.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Colors
Colors
We are stories.
This is my meditation on color.
My parents are white.
I am white.
My sister is white.
But when I think about the three or four black and white photographs
That I have seen,
Of my Grandfather Hart’s mother,
Cora Mills Hart,
I wonder if I may also be a little bit black.
I consider her powerful build,
The same crossed arms,
The “Just Try It and See What Happens” posture,
That facial structure,
That fierce workplace look,
Under and radiating from her inarguably white skin,
Like a warning.
I remember hearing that when her husband died,
In Cohocton, New York
“During the tuberculosis epidemic”,
As well as her sister’s husband,
Leaving a throng of unfathered cousins
And little hope,
That she took the whole local bloodline in
To her refurbished chicken coop of a home,
Just as black grandmothers so often do,
And provided a spiritual beacon
And a strong back,
At the turn of the last century,
During a terrible economic time,
For that flock .
And my grandfather,
Who was born in 1897,
Looked very much like his mother,
Who was widowed
When he was
Only seven
During the 1960’s,
We would drive the forty minutes
North-west to Naples, New York
To fish for pike and pickerel and sunnies
In one of the Finger Lakes;
Or in that river,
Bookended by fat vineyards,
Where a boy might wrestle-in a battered salmon
Every once in a great while.
And it was magical;
One of many childhood memories that I share with millions of men,
All around the world.
Fishing with Grandfather.
Sometimes we would stop
At Uncle Ward and Aunt Onnolee’s little house.
The mailbox said “Artlip”.
They lived on the Hornell-side of Naples
Onnolee was my grandmother’s younger sister.
During the Depression, they had to move-in with my grandparents
“Ward didn’t like working, much.”
One Christmas, a customer of grandpa’s bakery
Gave him a two-tied box of one hundred Cuban cigars.
“Your Uncle Ward asked me if he could have a cigar
Every now and again.”
The following April,
The top tier of cigars being almost gone
Grandpa lifted out the separating paper-thin piece of redwood
To discover that there were no cigars beneath
In the empty, lower tier
“I think your Uncle Ward helped himself to a few extra cigars.”
These are the kind of stories I’d hear
While returning from fishing.
And then we would be driving back to Hornell
It would be late-afternoon and cooling
And sometimes we’d stop at a produce stand
And buy ripe fruit for baking
For pocket change
From the vegetable man with the slimy green moss on his teeth
And his surreal, hyena-like smile;
And I would get to wrestle a glass-bottle RC Cola,
Out of one of those old, horizontal, refrigerator-sized, vending machines,
To sip on the way home
And Grandpa Hart’s Olds 98 would
Grip the hills like a champ
With those steep slopes to the right
And no-longer managed apple orchards
“Probably no good for eating.”
Thick and grassy dairy pastures
“Hey, Girls!”
And fruit and vegetable farms
In the verdant valley below.
Pennsylvania-Dutch circular mandalas
on many of the barns.
And on one of those farms,
There were often a score of black fieldworkers
In the verdant valley below.
I saw them at intervals;
Maybe during the summers when I was 6, 7, 9 and 11.
Some women and children,
Straw hats and plaid cotton shirts,
Suspenders,
Bent and harvesting.
I always figured they lived nearby.
And my grandfather would
Invariably say the same thing as we passed,
Looking out the passenger side windows at them working,
“Bret, take a look at your colored cousins.”
We are stories.
This is my meditation on color.
My parents are white.
I am white.
My sister is white.
But when I think about the three or four black and white photographs
That I have seen,
Of my Grandfather Hart’s mother,
Cora Mills Hart,
I wonder if I may also be a little bit black.
I consider her powerful build,
The same crossed arms,
The “Just Try It and See What Happens” posture,
That facial structure,
That fierce workplace look,
Under and radiating from her inarguably white skin,
Like a warning.
I remember hearing that when her husband died,
In Cohocton, New York
“During the tuberculosis epidemic”,
As well as her sister’s husband,
Leaving a throng of unfathered cousins
And little hope,
That she took the whole local bloodline in
To her refurbished chicken coop of a home,
Just as black grandmothers so often do,
And provided a spiritual beacon
And a strong back,
At the turn of the last century,
During a terrible economic time,
For that flock .
And my grandfather,
Who was born in 1897,
Looked very much like his mother,
Who was widowed
When he was
Only seven
During the 1960’s,
We would drive the forty minutes
North-west to Naples, New York
To fish for pike and pickerel and sunnies
In one of the Finger Lakes;
Or in that river,
Bookended by fat vineyards,
Where a boy might wrestle-in a battered salmon
Every once in a great while.
And it was magical;
One of many childhood memories that I share with millions of men,
All around the world.
Fishing with Grandfather.
Sometimes we would stop
At Uncle Ward and Aunt Onnolee’s little house.
The mailbox said “Artlip”.
They lived on the Hornell-side of Naples
Onnolee was my grandmother’s younger sister.
During the Depression, they had to move-in with my grandparents
“Ward didn’t like working, much.”
One Christmas, a customer of grandpa’s bakery
Gave him a two-tied box of one hundred Cuban cigars.
“Your Uncle Ward asked me if he could have a cigar
Every now and again.”
The following April,
The top tier of cigars being almost gone
Grandpa lifted out the separating paper-thin piece of redwood
To discover that there were no cigars beneath
In the empty, lower tier
“I think your Uncle Ward helped himself to a few extra cigars.”
These are the kind of stories I’d hear
While returning from fishing.
And then we would be driving back to Hornell
It would be late-afternoon and cooling
And sometimes we’d stop at a produce stand
And buy ripe fruit for baking
For pocket change
From the vegetable man with the slimy green moss on his teeth
And his surreal, hyena-like smile;
And I would get to wrestle a glass-bottle RC Cola,
Out of one of those old, horizontal, refrigerator-sized, vending machines,
To sip on the way home
And Grandpa Hart’s Olds 98 would
Grip the hills like a champ
With those steep slopes to the right
And no-longer managed apple orchards
“Probably no good for eating.”
Thick and grassy dairy pastures
“Hey, Girls!”
And fruit and vegetable farms
In the verdant valley below.
Pennsylvania-Dutch circular mandalas
on many of the barns.
And on one of those farms,
There were often a score of black fieldworkers
In the verdant valley below.
I saw them at intervals;
Maybe during the summers when I was 6, 7, 9 and 11.
Some women and children,
Straw hats and plaid cotton shirts,
Suspenders,
Bent and harvesting.
I always figured they lived nearby.
And my grandfather would
Invariably say the same thing as we passed,
Looking out the passenger side windows at them working,
“Bret, take a look at your colored cousins.”
Sunday, August 1, 2010
The Nuts in my Life
I like nuts. Everybody in this home does.
Tina came home from grocery shopping with a can of cashews and a jar of Planter's Dry Roasted Peanuts on Friday. Both were open before bedtime.
I like nuts. Everybody in this home does.
I know a guy who had his gall bladder taken out. Someone told me, or I heard on The People's Pharmacy, that in order to digest nuts, you've gotta have the ol' gall bladder. The gall bladder is one of those tonsil/appendix type things in your body "that you can live without"; but I would like mine to stay put for as long as possible.
"Gallbladder: A pear-shaped organ just below the liver that stores the bile secreted by the liver. During a fatty meal, the gallbladder contracts, delivering the bile through the bile ducts into the intestines to help with digestion. Abnormal composition of bile leads to formation of gallstones, a process termed cholelithiasis. The gallstones cause cholecystitis, inflammation of the gallbladder." http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=3536
I like nuts. Everybody in this home does.
One of Emmy's bedtime stall-techniques is the "I'm hungry. Can I have a handful of peanuts?" She's been plowing through the jar of nuts. Once the lid's off, it's just bound to happen. Just forget about getting any if the jar's been opened and brought to the living room during a good movie. Gone before you think of wanting some...
...which could make a lesser man become angry and fill his heart with BILE.
"In the medical theories prevalent in the West from Classical Antiquity up to the Middle Ages, the body's health depended on the equilibrium between four "humors" or vital fluids: blood, phlegm, "yellow bile" (or ichor) and "black bile". Excesses of the last two humors were supposed to produce aggression and depression..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile
I like nuts. Everybody in this home does.
I have watched Tina find the bottom of a can of cashews in a single evening, usually with some help from me. Does anyone else eat the halves first, saving the whole ones for the end?
I like nuts. Everybody in this home does.
In January of 2001, and a couple of times since, I've mined through too many Christmas nuts too enthusiastically and ended up with diverticulitis. That winter, I poured a big bag of pistachios into myself, wound-up in the hospital, and had to endure a camera in the tail.. not fun, and a really boring movie. Thankfully, I've studied up and found homeopathic remedies that nip it in the bud before it gets the upper-hand and keep me out of the clinic. Whew!
Nuts are weird; they're somewhere in between vegetables and wood.
Tina came home from grocery shopping with a can of cashews and a jar of Planter's Dry Roasted Peanuts on Friday. Both were open before bedtime.
I like nuts. Everybody in this home does.
I know a guy who had his gall bladder taken out. Someone told me, or I heard on The People's Pharmacy, that in order to digest nuts, you've gotta have the ol' gall bladder. The gall bladder is one of those tonsil/appendix type things in your body "that you can live without"; but I would like mine to stay put for as long as possible.
"Gallbladder: A pear-shaped organ just below the liver that stores the bile secreted by the liver. During a fatty meal, the gallbladder contracts, delivering the bile through the bile ducts into the intestines to help with digestion. Abnormal composition of bile leads to formation of gallstones, a process termed cholelithiasis. The gallstones cause cholecystitis, inflammation of the gallbladder." http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=3536
I like nuts. Everybody in this home does.
One of Emmy's bedtime stall-techniques is the "I'm hungry. Can I have a handful of peanuts?" She's been plowing through the jar of nuts. Once the lid's off, it's just bound to happen. Just forget about getting any if the jar's been opened and brought to the living room during a good movie. Gone before you think of wanting some...
...which could make a lesser man become angry and fill his heart with BILE.
"In the medical theories prevalent in the West from Classical Antiquity up to the Middle Ages, the body's health depended on the equilibrium between four "humors" or vital fluids: blood, phlegm, "yellow bile" (or ichor) and "black bile". Excesses of the last two humors were supposed to produce aggression and depression..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile
I like nuts. Everybody in this home does.
I have watched Tina find the bottom of a can of cashews in a single evening, usually with some help from me. Does anyone else eat the halves first, saving the whole ones for the end?
I like nuts. Everybody in this home does.
In January of 2001, and a couple of times since, I've mined through too many Christmas nuts too enthusiastically and ended up with diverticulitis. That winter, I poured a big bag of pistachios into myself, wound-up in the hospital, and had to endure a camera in the tail.. not fun, and a really boring movie. Thankfully, I've studied up and found homeopathic remedies that nip it in the bud before it gets the upper-hand and keep me out of the clinic. Whew!
Nuts are weird; they're somewhere in between vegetables and wood.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Before I Can No Longer Remember: 2 - My K-5 Schools
I often remember and think about the many schools I attended as an itinerant kid who wasn't much interested in what other kids were interested in. Fads always seemed completely stupid to me and I avoided a lot of stuff simply because it was popular. So much happened in those schools, so many choices, so much boredom, so many challenges being the new kid over and over again. Let's see...(counting on my fingers)...'off-hand', I count sixteen campuses during my lifetime. Some years come in more clearly than others. I'm hoping that more of the past will come into focus as I work through this. My blogs are improvised.
1964 – Kindergarten @ East End Firehall, Poughkeepsie, New York.
While the new elementary school was being built, kids were farmed-out to other locations. The left side of this building was a single large classroom run by an old lady named Mrs. Donato who would hit you on the hand with a ruler if you misbehaved. The right side of the building was a functioning firehouse with fire trucks, siren, a dog, the whole deal. Yesterday, I contacted a couple of people in the Wappingers Falls and Poughkeepsie Public School systems to try and get a photograph of the place, if it still stands. I remember a few occasions when the fire siren would sound and the whole class would exit the room to the large field behind for an unexpected extra recess. We weren't supposed to go into the woods. There was an adjacent house with raspberries growing in its backyard. We could get at them through the chain-link fence. There was also a big apple tree back there, but the apples were always buggy and blemished. Mrs. Donato would sometimes fall asleep at her desk when we were quietly engaged in desk-activities. One time, while she was dozing - resulting in my first spanking - I sneaked into the bathroom with my friend Janet and did face-painting with her – unfortunately for me, with permanent markers.
1965 - 1st Grade @ Sheafe Road School, Wappingers Falls, New York
While looking up info, I read that the approximate median home value this school now serves is $319,200! I don't remember being upper middle class back then. This was a tiny, 20-classroom, one-level elementary school on a low hill that had been built the year before, the one we had been displaced to a firehouse from. It had athletic fields behind, but I don't remember spending a moment on them during that year. For reasons which I will not go into here, I have very little recollection of 1st and 2nd Grade. At some point, I did something that warranted a paddling, and remember my father having to come to the Principal's Office to retrieve me. I can't remember my 1st grade teacher's name.
I had just one friend during our two years in Wappingers Falls, a girl named Janet Taylor. Her parents lived in the closest thing to The Munsters' or Addams Family's house I have ever seen. The huge 19th century Gothic mansion sat atop a tall, wooded hill accessible only by a twisting and rutted road, once paved. My dominant memory there is of shade and moisture. It must have once belonged to a wealthy individual. The ruins of an in-ground swimming pool were used as a pen for their Great Dane dogs and the large surrounding property was private, grassy, and covered with tall old-growth trees. The house was gigantic and had many rooms. Janet and her sister's bedroom was easily 25' long with a sun room along one side and had a “secret staircase”, only about 2' wide, that led steeply down to the kitchen. I remember them having lots of musical instruments and a piano in the dining room, a winding staircase in the main room, and fireplaces that I could stand upright in. Her house was a great place to play and Janet's father was building a canoe by hand in the cobwebby basement, the only part of the house that gave me the creeps enough not to explore. Near the end of 2nd Grade, while we were playing on the wrap-around porch. Janet walked out with a new board game called 'Mystery Date'. UH-oh.
1966-1968 2nd & 3rd Grade @ Brookside Elementary School, Indianapolis, Indiana
Mostly a blur, the school that I walked to in Indiana was a flat, X-shaped, recently-built complex with a tall cafeteria and dying grass nearly all around. The Art Teacher would come to classroom with a rolling cart full of paper, scissors, and paint. My recess was usually spent on the swings, competition for the best of which often led to fights. A bully named 'Hank' was a frequent opponent. On the way to lunch one time, a kid tripped and drove the point of the pencil he was carrying into my knee. I can still see the mark. My two teachers were Mrs. Klopfenstein (2nd) and Mrs. Shook (3rd), neither memorable. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what we kids called Mrs. Klopfenstein behind her back. I was sent to the office a few times those years, usually because I had defended myself from someone “too much”.
We lived in a small ranch house on a concrete slab, no basement. This always struck me as stupid because tornadoes were frequent. I witnessed one up close when I was eight. It sent aluminum sheds tumbling over fences and sucked picnic table umbrellas straight into the sky while we watched from the bathroom window. The next day on TV, a reporter showed a tree trunk that had a McDonald's drinking straw sticking all the way through it. YIKES! Some neighbors at the “rich kid end of the street” had concrete storm shelters in their yards, like in the Wizard of Oz. Whenever I got to look or go inside one of them, it was a special thing to see all of the "survival stuff".
There were two apple trees in our backyard, also bearing buggy and blemished fruit; but good for climbing. I got my first bicycle, a Schwinn Stingray with a banana seat, the first summer. I taught myself how to “pop wheelies”, “do skids”, and ride pretty well with no hands. I had three friends in the neighborhood, although I felt as though I was always the one who had to set up playing with them. Back then, kids could buy firecrackers all year long in the local drug store: from tiny 'Black Cats' to big cherry bombs and 'M-80's' that could take a finger off, sparklers, smoke bombs and "snakes". A really mean big kid lived across the street. I remember his name – Jim Dent. The property was littered with debris, beer bottles, and broken cars. He would kick my ass every chance he got. He was chasing me once and cornered me at the gate to our backyard before I could open it. In the midst of the beating, I remember my mom magically appearing, clobbering him, and rescuing me. I kept pet mice in a covered terrarium in my bedroom. My little sister Liz convinced me to let her hold one once. She accidentally squeezed it like a toy and its eyes popped out. Oops.
There was a cute girl, two or three years older than me, who lived two doors from the Dents. Sometimes I would go over to her house to look at the fish in the big aquarium in their living room. Occasionally, she babysat me and my sister when our folks went out. I can clearly remember the time she brought over a colorful record album that opened up and had really neat pictures called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I made her play the songs 'Fixing a Hole' and “A Day in the Life” again and again for me while I examined the album cover. My entrance into Rock and Roll.
Parents were not hung-up and terrified about kidnapping and child-molestation back then. My folks allowed me enough freedom to explore and enjoy the areas we lived in. There was a dusty city park just a bike ride away. One day while we were playing at the park, a kid stepped on a board with a long rusty nail in it that went all the way through his sneaker and foot. I ran and got a grocery cart from the strip mall next door and we pushed him home in it. We thought he needed to go to the hospital, but his dad simply yanked the thing off and said, “Stay here. I'll get some iodine.”
1969 - 4th Grade @ John T. Roberts Elementary School, Syracuse, New York
Dad was transferred back to New York State the summer before 4th Grade and we moved into the top floor of an old 3-decker on Colvin Avenue in an older residential area in the city. Directly behind our house and its surrounding 12' high chain-link fence was stately old Onondaga Park, with tennis courts, tall trees and trails, swings, merry-go-rounds, and see-saws, concrete water fountains, unkempt garden areas with their strange lichen-covered statues and algae and moss-overrun reflecting pools, places to fly kites, carp-fishing, and summer swimming in, and winter skating on, the Hiawatha Lake Pool. I spent most of my free time in that park and knew it like the back of my hand. There was an old brick firehouse at the top of Summit Avenue, with a shiny brass pole and a real dalmatian dog. The firemen would teach us kids how to play cards and give us free sodas from the machine (they had a key to open it).
Roberts Elementary was an old, 2-story, brick edifice, still in operation all these 42 years since! Our house was only about six blocks away, so I was a “walker”. 5th Graders were chosen to be crossing guards at intersections and wore orange fluorescent vests with a little stamped metal badge on them. My 4th Grade teacher's name was Mrs. Nolan.
In 1968, you didn't get out of your seat without permission. That would be “asking for trouble”, something I was already good at. I remember the day that a riot broke out in Corcoran High School behind Roberts. It was before lunch. Our class was on the second-floor and we had been able to hear fire trucks and police cars zooming down the access road directly below our window to the high school campus behind. I was wondering what was going on, when the Principal came over the school intercom and made this announcement. I remember it like it happened this morning. “Students, At this time, if you ride the bus to school, please go quickly to your bus at this time. If you walk to school, run home now.” When we were excused to leave, I got up, looked out the window, and saw smoke coming from the windows of the high school. A couple of cars in the parking lot were burning and I saw someone get pushed out an upstairs window of the school. You bet I ran home.
Living in the city had its downside. We were quite close to some of the most violent parts of the city. "South Ave...where ya cud get yer throat cut for a dime", was just a few blocks down below Colvin. I had some near-calls with gangs of knuckleheads in the park on occasion, and the house we lived in, frankly, sucked. My bedroom was half of the attic, separated only by a door that would not stay shut. Not pleasant on windy nights. Once, I was playing a glow-in-the-dark board game called 'Green Ghost' in my bedroom closet and the doorknob came off in my hand when I tried to exit. My mom was three floors below in the basement doing laundry and it seemed like an eternity of beating on the door and drywall, after the flashlight battery died, before she was able to hear me and let me out of there. It was my first glimpse into the claustrophobia of many of Edgar Allen Poe's horror stories and something I share with my 7th Graders before we read Poe "to make it personal".
1970 - 5th Grade @ Craven Crawford Elementary School, Liverpool, New York
The summer before 5th Grade, our family bought a split-level ranch in the Bayberry Community a few miles down Route 57 from Liverpool, about 12 miles out of Syracuse. During my first week in the neighborhood, I was riding my bike around and a kid sped by a few times on his. He said, “I know you.” and sped off again. I raced after him and after a short talk realized that this kid named Jim Falk, who lived a few doors away where Finch and Gull Paths met, had also lived in the Valley Court Apartments (“the projects” in Syracuse) as we had in 1963-64. We had known each other and looked for critters in the same stream six years before! Cool. Bayberry in the 1970's was a paradise if you enjoyed playing in the woods and outdoor activities. The developers had incorporated “green areas” into the community, where there was lots of room to play, ride mini-bikes, fly kites, and so forth. It was excellent.
Craven Crawford Elementary was another one-level school, maybe ten years old, serving a suburb that was bursting with kids my age. My 5th Grade teacher, Mrs. Winifred Hurst, and I were in frequent conflict, as any classmate would attest. It was at “Craven” that we realized that my Math abilities were below grade level, this owing to having spent two years in Indiana where standards were a year behind New York State. The foundational stuff I needed to succeed in Math, I had never been taught. As such, my folks consented to having me receive math remediation "in the Resource Room", which I hated. This led me to make dopey choices and I often found myself on the receiving end of Mrs. Hurst's wrath. One time, she picked me right up out of my seat by one of my ears. No lie.
The first teacher that ever made a difference in my life – a 20-something groovy guy named Stuart Lisson who drove a rusty blue Ford Bronco – taught Art there. Art was something I was good at and Lisson told Hurst, “If Hart gives you any trouble, send him down to the Art Room to cool-down.” When I was sent down, I would collate and organize supplies, load and operate the ceramic kiln, sweep and empty trash, and then be allowed to "do art" after the chores were done. When things got boring upstairs, I would provoke a quarantine to be able to go to the Art Room and hang out with Mr. Lisson.
Near the end of the school year, Lisson encouraged me to enter one of my drawings in the annual Mutual of New York Student Art Competition. He helped me matte it and fill-out the paperwork, and off it went. A few weeks later I was informed that I was one of eight 5th Graders from the Syracuse-metropolitan area who had won. The prize? A summer of Studio Art 101 with the college kids at Syracuse University...wow! The winners were enrolled right along with the big kids and got the same instruction for 90 minutes on Monday and Wednesday mornings at 9.
It was fantastic. The classroom was big and old and very cool to me. It had a complete cow skeleton in it, a soda machine (!), and a darkroom. The college girls in the class had me sit at their table and always bought me an Orange Crush at the start of class. They were really nice, liked the things I was making, and made it even more fun to be there. Every session taught me something new, fun, and mysterious, really opening my head to what art could be. This early college experience was the catalyst that placed me firmly on the path to making and creating things for the rest of my life.
I've tried to track Stuart Lisson down to express my appreciation for his mentoring at that lonely and confused time of my life, but have yet to find him.
**********************************************************************************************
1964 – Kindergarten @ East End Firehall, Poughkeepsie, New York.
While the new elementary school was being built, kids were farmed-out to other locations. The left side of this building was a single large classroom run by an old lady named Mrs. Donato who would hit you on the hand with a ruler if you misbehaved. The right side of the building was a functioning firehouse with fire trucks, siren, a dog, the whole deal. Yesterday, I contacted a couple of people in the Wappingers Falls and Poughkeepsie Public School systems to try and get a photograph of the place, if it still stands. I remember a few occasions when the fire siren would sound and the whole class would exit the room to the large field behind for an unexpected extra recess. We weren't supposed to go into the woods. There was an adjacent house with raspberries growing in its backyard. We could get at them through the chain-link fence. There was also a big apple tree back there, but the apples were always buggy and blemished. Mrs. Donato would sometimes fall asleep at her desk when we were quietly engaged in desk-activities. One time, while she was dozing - resulting in my first spanking - I sneaked into the bathroom with my friend Janet and did face-painting with her – unfortunately for me, with permanent markers.
1965 - 1st Grade @ Sheafe Road School, Wappingers Falls, New York
While looking up info, I read that the approximate median home value this school now serves is $319,200! I don't remember being upper middle class back then. This was a tiny, 20-classroom, one-level elementary school on a low hill that had been built the year before, the one we had been displaced to a firehouse from. It had athletic fields behind, but I don't remember spending a moment on them during that year. For reasons which I will not go into here, I have very little recollection of 1st and 2nd Grade. At some point, I did something that warranted a paddling, and remember my father having to come to the Principal's Office to retrieve me. I can't remember my 1st grade teacher's name.
I had just one friend during our two years in Wappingers Falls, a girl named Janet Taylor. Her parents lived in the closest thing to The Munsters' or Addams Family's house I have ever seen. The huge 19th century Gothic mansion sat atop a tall, wooded hill accessible only by a twisting and rutted road, once paved. My dominant memory there is of shade and moisture. It must have once belonged to a wealthy individual. The ruins of an in-ground swimming pool were used as a pen for their Great Dane dogs and the large surrounding property was private, grassy, and covered with tall old-growth trees. The house was gigantic and had many rooms. Janet and her sister's bedroom was easily 25' long with a sun room along one side and had a “secret staircase”, only about 2' wide, that led steeply down to the kitchen. I remember them having lots of musical instruments and a piano in the dining room, a winding staircase in the main room, and fireplaces that I could stand upright in. Her house was a great place to play and Janet's father was building a canoe by hand in the cobwebby basement, the only part of the house that gave me the creeps enough not to explore. Near the end of 2nd Grade, while we were playing on the wrap-around porch. Janet walked out with a new board game called 'Mystery Date'. UH-oh.
1966-1968 2nd & 3rd Grade @ Brookside Elementary School, Indianapolis, Indiana
Mostly a blur, the school that I walked to in Indiana was a flat, X-shaped, recently-built complex with a tall cafeteria and dying grass nearly all around. The Art Teacher would come to classroom with a rolling cart full of paper, scissors, and paint. My recess was usually spent on the swings, competition for the best of which often led to fights. A bully named 'Hank' was a frequent opponent. On the way to lunch one time, a kid tripped and drove the point of the pencil he was carrying into my knee. I can still see the mark. My two teachers were Mrs. Klopfenstein (2nd) and Mrs. Shook (3rd), neither memorable. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what we kids called Mrs. Klopfenstein behind her back. I was sent to the office a few times those years, usually because I had defended myself from someone “too much”.
We lived in a small ranch house on a concrete slab, no basement. This always struck me as stupid because tornadoes were frequent. I witnessed one up close when I was eight. It sent aluminum sheds tumbling over fences and sucked picnic table umbrellas straight into the sky while we watched from the bathroom window. The next day on TV, a reporter showed a tree trunk that had a McDonald's drinking straw sticking all the way through it. YIKES! Some neighbors at the “rich kid end of the street” had concrete storm shelters in their yards, like in the Wizard of Oz. Whenever I got to look or go inside one of them, it was a special thing to see all of the "survival stuff".
There were two apple trees in our backyard, also bearing buggy and blemished fruit; but good for climbing. I got my first bicycle, a Schwinn Stingray with a banana seat, the first summer. I taught myself how to “pop wheelies”, “do skids”, and ride pretty well with no hands. I had three friends in the neighborhood, although I felt as though I was always the one who had to set up playing with them. Back then, kids could buy firecrackers all year long in the local drug store: from tiny 'Black Cats' to big cherry bombs and 'M-80's' that could take a finger off, sparklers, smoke bombs and "snakes". A really mean big kid lived across the street. I remember his name – Jim Dent. The property was littered with debris, beer bottles, and broken cars. He would kick my ass every chance he got. He was chasing me once and cornered me at the gate to our backyard before I could open it. In the midst of the beating, I remember my mom magically appearing, clobbering him, and rescuing me. I kept pet mice in a covered terrarium in my bedroom. My little sister Liz convinced me to let her hold one once. She accidentally squeezed it like a toy and its eyes popped out. Oops.
There was a cute girl, two or three years older than me, who lived two doors from the Dents. Sometimes I would go over to her house to look at the fish in the big aquarium in their living room. Occasionally, she babysat me and my sister when our folks went out. I can clearly remember the time she brought over a colorful record album that opened up and had really neat pictures called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I made her play the songs 'Fixing a Hole' and “A Day in the Life” again and again for me while I examined the album cover. My entrance into Rock and Roll.
Parents were not hung-up and terrified about kidnapping and child-molestation back then. My folks allowed me enough freedom to explore and enjoy the areas we lived in. There was a dusty city park just a bike ride away. One day while we were playing at the park, a kid stepped on a board with a long rusty nail in it that went all the way through his sneaker and foot. I ran and got a grocery cart from the strip mall next door and we pushed him home in it. We thought he needed to go to the hospital, but his dad simply yanked the thing off and said, “Stay here. I'll get some iodine.”
1969 - 4th Grade @ John T. Roberts Elementary School, Syracuse, New York
Dad was transferred back to New York State the summer before 4th Grade and we moved into the top floor of an old 3-decker on Colvin Avenue in an older residential area in the city. Directly behind our house and its surrounding 12' high chain-link fence was stately old Onondaga Park, with tennis courts, tall trees and trails, swings, merry-go-rounds, and see-saws, concrete water fountains, unkempt garden areas with their strange lichen-covered statues and algae and moss-overrun reflecting pools, places to fly kites, carp-fishing, and summer swimming in, and winter skating on, the Hiawatha Lake Pool. I spent most of my free time in that park and knew it like the back of my hand. There was an old brick firehouse at the top of Summit Avenue, with a shiny brass pole and a real dalmatian dog. The firemen would teach us kids how to play cards and give us free sodas from the machine (they had a key to open it).
Roberts Elementary was an old, 2-story, brick edifice, still in operation all these 42 years since! Our house was only about six blocks away, so I was a “walker”. 5th Graders were chosen to be crossing guards at intersections and wore orange fluorescent vests with a little stamped metal badge on them. My 4th Grade teacher's name was Mrs. Nolan.
In 1968, you didn't get out of your seat without permission. That would be “asking for trouble”, something I was already good at. I remember the day that a riot broke out in Corcoran High School behind Roberts. It was before lunch. Our class was on the second-floor and we had been able to hear fire trucks and police cars zooming down the access road directly below our window to the high school campus behind. I was wondering what was going on, when the Principal came over the school intercom and made this announcement. I remember it like it happened this morning. “Students, At this time, if you ride the bus to school, please go quickly to your bus at this time. If you walk to school, run home now.” When we were excused to leave, I got up, looked out the window, and saw smoke coming from the windows of the high school. A couple of cars in the parking lot were burning and I saw someone get pushed out an upstairs window of the school. You bet I ran home.
Living in the city had its downside. We were quite close to some of the most violent parts of the city. "South Ave...where ya cud get yer throat cut for a dime", was just a few blocks down below Colvin. I had some near-calls with gangs of knuckleheads in the park on occasion, and the house we lived in, frankly, sucked. My bedroom was half of the attic, separated only by a door that would not stay shut. Not pleasant on windy nights. Once, I was playing a glow-in-the-dark board game called 'Green Ghost' in my bedroom closet and the doorknob came off in my hand when I tried to exit. My mom was three floors below in the basement doing laundry and it seemed like an eternity of beating on the door and drywall, after the flashlight battery died, before she was able to hear me and let me out of there. It was my first glimpse into the claustrophobia of many of Edgar Allen Poe's horror stories and something I share with my 7th Graders before we read Poe "to make it personal".
1970 - 5th Grade @ Craven Crawford Elementary School, Liverpool, New York
The summer before 5th Grade, our family bought a split-level ranch in the Bayberry Community a few miles down Route 57 from Liverpool, about 12 miles out of Syracuse. During my first week in the neighborhood, I was riding my bike around and a kid sped by a few times on his. He said, “I know you.” and sped off again. I raced after him and after a short talk realized that this kid named Jim Falk, who lived a few doors away where Finch and Gull Paths met, had also lived in the Valley Court Apartments (“the projects” in Syracuse) as we had in 1963-64. We had known each other and looked for critters in the same stream six years before! Cool. Bayberry in the 1970's was a paradise if you enjoyed playing in the woods and outdoor activities. The developers had incorporated “green areas” into the community, where there was lots of room to play, ride mini-bikes, fly kites, and so forth. It was excellent.
Craven Crawford Elementary was another one-level school, maybe ten years old, serving a suburb that was bursting with kids my age. My 5th Grade teacher, Mrs. Winifred Hurst, and I were in frequent conflict, as any classmate would attest. It was at “Craven” that we realized that my Math abilities were below grade level, this owing to having spent two years in Indiana where standards were a year behind New York State. The foundational stuff I needed to succeed in Math, I had never been taught. As such, my folks consented to having me receive math remediation "in the Resource Room", which I hated. This led me to make dopey choices and I often found myself on the receiving end of Mrs. Hurst's wrath. One time, she picked me right up out of my seat by one of my ears. No lie.
The first teacher that ever made a difference in my life – a 20-something groovy guy named Stuart Lisson who drove a rusty blue Ford Bronco – taught Art there. Art was something I was good at and Lisson told Hurst, “If Hart gives you any trouble, send him down to the Art Room to cool-down.” When I was sent down, I would collate and organize supplies, load and operate the ceramic kiln, sweep and empty trash, and then be allowed to "do art" after the chores were done. When things got boring upstairs, I would provoke a quarantine to be able to go to the Art Room and hang out with Mr. Lisson.
Near the end of the school year, Lisson encouraged me to enter one of my drawings in the annual Mutual of New York Student Art Competition. He helped me matte it and fill-out the paperwork, and off it went. A few weeks later I was informed that I was one of eight 5th Graders from the Syracuse-metropolitan area who had won. The prize? A summer of Studio Art 101 with the college kids at Syracuse University...wow! The winners were enrolled right along with the big kids and got the same instruction for 90 minutes on Monday and Wednesday mornings at 9.
It was fantastic. The classroom was big and old and very cool to me. It had a complete cow skeleton in it, a soda machine (!), and a darkroom. The college girls in the class had me sit at their table and always bought me an Orange Crush at the start of class. They were really nice, liked the things I was making, and made it even more fun to be there. Every session taught me something new, fun, and mysterious, really opening my head to what art could be. This early college experience was the catalyst that placed me firmly on the path to making and creating things for the rest of my life.
I've tried to track Stuart Lisson down to express my appreciation for his mentoring at that lonely and confused time of my life, but have yet to find him.
**********************************************************************************************
Oysterland: A Parable
Once upon a time, there was a dreadful problem that made many unhappy.
There had been an explosion at the blob-pumping station, located many miles off the coast of Oysterland. Unrefined power-blobs, previously extracted slowly from rich lodes of blobstone beneath the ocean's surface through a complicated process, were now exiting a fissure in the seafloor at an astronomical rate. With nothing to pump these blobs to the surface where commercial blob boats could harvest them, thick, flat blobflows spread out and lounged lazily on the seafloor, gazing up through the blue-green miles of seawater above.
This would not be a problem, but for the billion-strong annual population of oysters that now lay, blind and immobile, beneath them. After all, the Oysterland economy depended wholly upon these oysters and their ability to find their way ashore when mature, to volunteer at area eateries.
Something had to be done; so the King of Oysterland demanded a hearing with the Decision Man at Blob Power Inclobberated. The King ordered The Decision Man to think this problem through and act upon it quickly. All of the Big Thinkers at Blob Power Inclobberated convened and decided to invent a solution.
They would build a vast octagonal blob-containment chamber around the leaky undersea fissure, which, combined with a powerful blobgas-aeration device, would capture and make buoyant escaping power-blobs, which would then rise to the surface where they could be harvested by blob boats and balloon-cranes.
And it worked...
...but the oysters went on strike.
There had been an explosion at the blob-pumping station, located many miles off the coast of Oysterland. Unrefined power-blobs, previously extracted slowly from rich lodes of blobstone beneath the ocean's surface through a complicated process, were now exiting a fissure in the seafloor at an astronomical rate. With nothing to pump these blobs to the surface where commercial blob boats could harvest them, thick, flat blobflows spread out and lounged lazily on the seafloor, gazing up through the blue-green miles of seawater above.
This would not be a problem, but for the billion-strong annual population of oysters that now lay, blind and immobile, beneath them. After all, the Oysterland economy depended wholly upon these oysters and their ability to find their way ashore when mature, to volunteer at area eateries.
Something had to be done; so the King of Oysterland demanded a hearing with the Decision Man at Blob Power Inclobberated. The King ordered The Decision Man to think this problem through and act upon it quickly. All of the Big Thinkers at Blob Power Inclobberated convened and decided to invent a solution.
They would build a vast octagonal blob-containment chamber around the leaky undersea fissure, which, combined with a powerful blobgas-aeration device, would capture and make buoyant escaping power-blobs, which would then rise to the surface where they could be harvested by blob boats and balloon-cranes.
And it worked...
...but the oysters went on strike.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Before I Can No Longer Remember: 1
In a couple of weeks, I'll be 51.
Someone who loves me may someday want to know who I was.
It is time.
My hands, ankles, neck and spine hurt continuously, my hearing is as bad as ever, my eyesight has gone to hell, and I usually have trouble remembering the names of people I don't interact with often. Other things don't work as well as they used to. Some people I have known for years allege that they "know me" and understand my motivations. Not only are they wrong, but if they are not psychic, they are arrogant.
While I've never had a professional diagnosis for Asberger's Syndrome, my graduate work in special education and many years working with learning-, emotionally-, and socially-disabled children has informed me that I fit the paradigm like a glove and, as such, realize that there's pretty much no one, outside my wife and daughter, who I've truly ever allowed behind the veil. And I have grown to know that that's not only unavoidable, but OK.
"Asperger's Disorder was first described in the 1940s by Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger who observed autistic-like behaviors and difficulties with social and communication skills in boys who had normal intelligence and language development. Many professionals felt Asperger's Disorder was simply a milder form of autism and used the term "high-functioning autism" to describe these individuals...What distinguishes Asperger's Disorder from Autism Disorder is the severity of the symptoms and the absence of language delays. Children with Asperger's Disorder may be only mildly affected and frequently have good language and cognitive skills. To the untrained observer, a child with Asperger's Disorder may just seem like a normal child behaving differently.
Children with autism are frequently seen as aloof and uninterested in others. This is not the case with Asperger's Disorder. Individuals with Asperger's Disorder usually want to fit in and have interaction with others; they simply don't know how to do it. They may be socially awkward, not understanding of conventional social rules, or show a lack of empathy. They may have limited eye contact, seem to be unengaged in a conversation, and not understand the use of gestures.
Interests in a particular subject may border on the obsessive. Children with Asperger's Disorder frequently like to collect categories of things, such as rocks or bottle caps. They may be proficient in knowing categories of information, such as baseball statistics or Latin names of flowers. While they may have good rote memory skills, they have difficulty with abstract concepts.
One of the major differences between Asperger's Disorder and autism is that, by definition, there is no speech delay in Asperger's. In fact, children with Asperger's Disorder frequently have good language skills; they simply use language in different ways. Speech patterns may be unusual, lack inflection or have a rhythmic nature, or it may be formal, but too loud or high pitched. Children with Asperger's Disorder may not understand the subtleties of language, such as irony and humor, or they may not understand the give-and-take nature of a conversation.
Another distinction between Asperger's Disorder and autism concerns cognitive ability. While some individuals with autism experience mental retardation, by definition a person with Asperger's Disorder cannot possess a "clinically significant" cognitive delay and most possess average to above average intelligence." [http://www.autism-society.org]
If we have ever been friends, consider that description, and then compare it with what you remember about our friendship. Spot-on, eh?
I don't know how other people feel about themselves and their social interactions, but not being 'known' used to bring me a lot of angst. Still does, just not so severely. My school years were an endless anguish. The risks and chances I would take to feel accepted nearly cost me my life on a number of occasions. I fought my way through childhood and got my ass handed to me plenty. As a kid, and sometimes today, I do not only feel generally disliked, but one to be avoided as much as possible. The "funny guy" is a mask that requires work and focus to keep from falling off. I cry easily. My chronic sadness, battles with alcoholism, drug-experimentation, tens of failed relationships, and numerous careers have their roots firmly planted in an existential loneliness that goes back to kindergarten. My sister once defined me as a "serial dater", which brilliantly encapsulates this longing to belong that has characterized my half-century of striving. Fifty years of striving to feel a part of something lasting and loving has everything to do with the matters of faith that I will flesh out later.
It took decades to realize that, in so many ways, it has been a blessing to not be widely knowable. It takes a lot of pressure off and delivers vast horizons of freedom that the popular and forever-immersed-in-chatter simply cannot enjoy. Being unknowable is not the same as being unable to know others, and I believe that one of the upsides of being a stationary island is that the ocean and sky can be studied over time from that vantage point and, perhaps, eventually comprehended and appreciated from that perspective.
"The Golden Rule" makes absolute sense to me. Because I know hurt, I don't like to hurt others. This does not mean that I do not hurt others. I have dreadfully hurt others. Rather, it means that I regret when my good intentions, haphazardly deployed, cause hurt in others. I regret when my rage supersedes my judgment and I defend myself clumsily at the expense of the recipient.
This attempt at autobiography reads as though I have gone off-the-tracks and has become a treatise on mild autism. Not so. One cannot build a house on sand and the foundation of my adultfe
Someone who loves me may someday want to know who I was.
It is time.
My hands, ankles, neck and spine hurt continuously, my hearing is as bad as ever, my eyesight has gone to hell, and I usually have trouble remembering the names of people I don't interact with often. Other things don't work as well as they used to. Some people I have known for years allege that they "know me" and understand my motivations. Not only are they wrong, but if they are not psychic, they are arrogant.
While I've never had a professional diagnosis for Asberger's Syndrome, my graduate work in special education and many years working with learning-, emotionally-, and socially-disabled children has informed me that I fit the paradigm like a glove and, as such, realize that there's pretty much no one, outside my wife and daughter, who I've truly ever allowed behind the veil. And I have grown to know that that's not only unavoidable, but OK.
"Asperger's Disorder was first described in the 1940s by Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger who observed autistic-like behaviors and difficulties with social and communication skills in boys who had normal intelligence and language development. Many professionals felt Asperger's Disorder was simply a milder form of autism and used the term "high-functioning autism" to describe these individuals...What distinguishes Asperger's Disorder from Autism Disorder is the severity of the symptoms and the absence of language delays. Children with Asperger's Disorder may be only mildly affected and frequently have good language and cognitive skills. To the untrained observer, a child with Asperger's Disorder may just seem like a normal child behaving differently.
Children with autism are frequently seen as aloof and uninterested in others. This is not the case with Asperger's Disorder. Individuals with Asperger's Disorder usually want to fit in and have interaction with others; they simply don't know how to do it. They may be socially awkward, not understanding of conventional social rules, or show a lack of empathy. They may have limited eye contact, seem to be unengaged in a conversation, and not understand the use of gestures.
Interests in a particular subject may border on the obsessive. Children with Asperger's Disorder frequently like to collect categories of things, such as rocks or bottle caps. They may be proficient in knowing categories of information, such as baseball statistics or Latin names of flowers. While they may have good rote memory skills, they have difficulty with abstract concepts.
One of the major differences between Asperger's Disorder and autism is that, by definition, there is no speech delay in Asperger's. In fact, children with Asperger's Disorder frequently have good language skills; they simply use language in different ways. Speech patterns may be unusual, lack inflection or have a rhythmic nature, or it may be formal, but too loud or high pitched. Children with Asperger's Disorder may not understand the subtleties of language, such as irony and humor, or they may not understand the give-and-take nature of a conversation.
Another distinction between Asperger's Disorder and autism concerns cognitive ability. While some individuals with autism experience mental retardation, by definition a person with Asperger's Disorder cannot possess a "clinically significant" cognitive delay and most possess average to above average intelligence." [http://www.autism-society.org]
If we have ever been friends, consider that description, and then compare it with what you remember about our friendship. Spot-on, eh?
I don't know how other people feel about themselves and their social interactions, but not being 'known' used to bring me a lot of angst. Still does, just not so severely. My school years were an endless anguish. The risks and chances I would take to feel accepted nearly cost me my life on a number of occasions. I fought my way through childhood and got my ass handed to me plenty. As a kid, and sometimes today, I do not only feel generally disliked, but one to be avoided as much as possible. The "funny guy" is a mask that requires work and focus to keep from falling off. I cry easily. My chronic sadness, battles with alcoholism, drug-experimentation, tens of failed relationships, and numerous careers have their roots firmly planted in an existential loneliness that goes back to kindergarten. My sister once defined me as a "serial dater", which brilliantly encapsulates this longing to belong that has characterized my half-century of striving. Fifty years of striving to feel a part of something lasting and loving has everything to do with the matters of faith that I will flesh out later.
It took decades to realize that, in so many ways, it has been a blessing to not be widely knowable. It takes a lot of pressure off and delivers vast horizons of freedom that the popular and forever-immersed-in-chatter simply cannot enjoy. Being unknowable is not the same as being unable to know others, and I believe that one of the upsides of being a stationary island is that the ocean and sky can be studied over time from that vantage point and, perhaps, eventually comprehended and appreciated from that perspective.
"The Golden Rule" makes absolute sense to me. Because I know hurt, I don't like to hurt others. This does not mean that I do not hurt others. I have dreadfully hurt others. Rather, it means that I regret when my good intentions, haphazardly deployed, cause hurt in others. I regret when my rage supersedes my judgment and I defend myself clumsily at the expense of the recipient.
This attempt at autobiography reads as though I have gone off-the-tracks and has become a treatise on mild autism. Not so. One cannot build a house on sand and the foundation of my adultfe
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