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Veterans Day memories Nov. 11, 2025

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 We got just a bit of snow today, a flurry that dusted the roof of the shed in our back yard, and left bits of white on the still-green remnants of grass. Snow is a four letter word, and yet, I’m still nostalgic about it, as we stagger into the Christmas season and I still have fond memories of a time when the holidays meant something, people still in my life that made it special. This is also Veterans Day with all the associated events I’m still scrambling to cover, with the head of the local VFW still asking me for a picture of me when I was in service, which I am reluctant to give him since I spent so little time there. I’m still shocked at the promotion I got when I left, and the medal they awarded me because my service came during a time of war. I’m not like my ancestors – Robert and William – who fought in wars at the start of the last century, one in the Army, one in the Navy, both meeting up oddly enough on a battle field in Mexico at one point, an unexpected reunion ...
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Not our world anymore Nov. 7, 2025

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   The cold came with a bang this week after we got remnants of a massive hurricane over Jamaca. Not frigid, not yet, but with enough of a bite that I’m forced to put on layers of clothing. This is always a nostalgic time of year, after Halloween and headed into the holiday season, when I start reminiscing about family and friends, all mostly gone. Worse is the fear that the world is changing drastically, and that we are seeing the next generation take charge after so many decades of having the baby boomers in control of it all, not by our outstanding philosophy so much as by the sheer weight of numbers. Now as we fade, a less populous generation takes charge, filled with all of the misguided notions we somehow managed to abandon. We have no way to know if these kids who are so infatuated with socialism will survive to learn from their mistakes the way we have or will they do inreparable harm to the world as we know it, turning it all in shitshow from which something...
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The last days of Puffin the cat April 22, 2025

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   Got Puffin’s ashes back from the vet yesterday when I brought one of our outside cats in for surgery. Puffin was fading for a few weeks before she became to weak to fight my getting her treatment, though even after she savagely bit my hand as I tried to get her into the carrier, she was already on death’s door, one last act of defiance before accepting fate. She did not have a happy life, even though she was part of the last batch of outside kittens we managed to collect while still living in our old house, and because we had run out of names after having fostered so many feral cats, she, her sister and her brother took on the names of Muffin, Puffin and Onion. Muffin was a long haired tiger colored cat, who outgoing personality managed to get him adopted right away, while Puffin, a short haired tiger cat and her sister, Onion, a black cat, were so unsociable they would not come out of hiding except for meals, barely socializing with our long time cats, except Ginger ...
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End of the band Nov. 1, 1982

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   What happened exactly Friday night, I’m at a loss to explain. The impact, pushing me deeper into depression, was obvious, in particular the silence – like a horrible storm cloud hanging over me – by Pauly and the band members, suggested their fear to say anything about it. How does someone describe disaster: the end of a band that had barely gotten started. The first moments came well before we got to the club, when Pauly, back the house he lived in up on the mountain, held up several vests, asking me to choose which one was best. “The first half of the night I’ll wear a sweater,” he said, unveiling his white wool sweater with a six-inch blue line down each side.   “Then, when things really get cooking, I’ll need one of these.” By which he meant once of two vests, one made of corduroy, though both had silk backing. I picked this one since it seem better fit with Pauly’s persona. Unlike other members of the band, Pauly tended to dress conservative from p...
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Downsized March 15, 2025

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    “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans,” says a paraphrase of a John Lennon song, who stole the saying from a poet whose name I have forgotten. This is never so true as to the events going on with the federal government these days as the new administration makes massive cuts to funding of not-for-profits and other organizations. Just when you think life is secure, when you have all your ducks in a row (as the old cliché goes), something mucks up the works (another cliché) and you end up scrambling to put your life back together, but don’t quite yet know how.   Although correct in theory, the idea of reducing the work force has an unexpected impact on the people involved. People make plans; they assume they can get on with their lives securely. They believe that if they had put enough time into their careers, they will be rewarded, and perhaps get on pursuing their own interest, dreams they had since childhood for the first time poss...
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Death of a cat March 1, 2025

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   Puffin’s dead. She was one of three kittens we brought in at our old house in Jersey City. So standoffish, we could not get her adopted the way we did her overly affection brother Muffin. A tiger striped short-haired domestic, she remained unaffectionate towards humans right up to the point when we were forced to put her down yesterday. She liked cats more than humans in particular our eldest cat, Ginger, who she cuddled up to frequently. She was not particularly close to her sister, Onion, although there were times when she got Onion wrapped up in her plots against us. They had their own secret language and when we heard them talking together, we had to watch out. Puffin did not have a happy life. We managed to get her into a vet as a young kitten for her initial shots, but could not catch her to get her fixed, which became a problem when we brought in Junior, who we found abandoned on the street a block away from our current house. While we got Junior his ...
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All or nothing or nothing at all Feb. 9, 2025

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  “It’s all or nothing,” my childhood friend once told me in describing how he gambles, at the race track, in Atlantic City casinos, or for that matter, life itself. “Why hold back when you really have nothing to lose.” By this he meant if he couldn’t get what he wanted, couldn’t win the jackpot, then he’s already lost and keeping something in reserve seemed stupid to him. Sop was the idea of settling for something less than what he wanted in the first place. “What’s the point?” he told me. “If you don’t go for it all; you won’t get it all. I asked him what if he ended up getting nothing at the end of the game. He just shrugged. “We’re all going to end up in the same place eventually,” he said. “Then it won’t matter if you’ve won or lost, rich or poor. Part of the fun is knowing you might break out at any moment, get something you want, and if you lose it again, who cares? At least, you tried, and maybe got it once, on your own terms.” How all this panned out for him ...
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