MY FIRST ABORTION

It really wasn't my abortion because I was in Sixth Grade and couldn't fully understand what an abortion is or was.  I didn't even know anything about parts.
Memory is a funny thing.  Events that happen to us years ago re-surface when we have the capacity to process them or examine them.  This was my first exposure to abortion while I was in sixth grade.

We always played on the street and my parents deliberately bought a house that abutted the playground of our elementary school. We had a wide open place to run around and bike around. We were always outside, winter or summer. This was on the shores of Lake Erie, East of Cleveland.

The housing development was plopped down on a former golf course where my Dad used to play golf when he was single.  Now, he was raising his family on the land where he used to divot.  All the streets were named after golfing terms.  We lived on Fairway Blvd. The next street over was "High Tee". And, yes, there was a "Divot Drive".

Although High Tee was the next street over, there was no through access to Fairway Blvd. so we never went over there to play with kids on that block.  There were plenty of kids on our block so we didn't really have to venture that far off to find com-padres in crime.

So, it was quite unusual one day when Eddie Melbasa came over from High Tee. He seemed upset & I couldn't figure why he came over.  I was distracted. My younger brother was horsing around with his friends & my charge was to keep an eye on him & them, participate, but keep all of us out of trouble.

I knew Eddie from school but he never hung with us at home. He began to tell me how his grandmother had scraped a baby out of his mother. He told me that his mother was in a great deal of pain. He told me there was a lot of blood.  I did not know what Eddie was talking about. I didn't yet know women bled from there.  It was just the week before that the girls were taken out of class for some mysterious reason and all the boys got to go outside.

Eddie told me his grandmother put the baby in a Tupperware container and put it on the curb with the garbage.  For the life of me, I could not fathom what Eddie came over to tell me or why. Now I know.

Eddie had witnessed his mother having an abortion at home.

Now, in the era of Facebook, my sixth grade classmates are posting our class pictures and re-surfacing in my life. Maybe this is why this memory from sixth grade has come back.

Churches Don't Have Helicopters

Have you ever heard of a church that owns a helicopter? I haven't and I've been to a number of churches in various places in the United States.  Governments, (local, state, federal) own helicopters, not churches. Some private entities own helicopters. Some businesses own helicopters. 

Yet, as we approach the seven year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we need to remember people perched on rooftops waiting for rescues that never got to them.  The response of the Bush administration was that the government wasn't really tasked with doing this type of work, the faith based community was supposed to take care of it.  And they did.  In the aftermath of the hurricane, churches marshaled resources to provide relief in New Orleans. 

Also, FEMA, The Federal Emergency Management Agency, worked admirably during the Clinton Administration. Under Bush, FEMA was "administered" by Brownie, some horse guy that W said was doing a heck of a job.  What is it with Republicans and horses? 

However, good church work, does not let government off the hook. Taxpayers paid for helicopters of the coast guard, national guard and other components of government.  We expect government to appropriately use our resources that we paid for with our tax dollars to assist us our citizens. The same concept applies to all levels of government, like automobiles owned by the City of Schenectady. Paid for by taxpayers, we expect our resources to be used to serve the public, the people that paid for them. 

The Picture below was taken in Garret County Maryland, Western Maryland, McHenry at the August County Fair 2008.  I was staffing the Democratic Exhibit Booth on the Fairgrounds.

Roma Tomatoes and Russian Kale from my 2012 garden in Niskayuna New York.

I lived in Massachusetts for many years.  This is one spot I returned to time and again.  I never tired of the visual variations of light, weather and time of year that make this scene totally different every time I saw it.
Rockport, Massachusetts "Motif #1"

Peaches picked from my 3 year old Peach Tree grown in my backyard in Grantsville, Maryland.  No pesticides were used, flawless peaches, ripe off the tree.

Ohio's Electorate Problem

" I Know I got Snookered (at the Polls)". "That Weren't Nice"....."Oh, well".......disenfranchised Ohio voter

I was raised in Ohio, in the suburbs on the East side of Cleveland. I went to college in Athens and Columbus and have traveled through the south west area and western areas of Ohio extensively.  I still have family in Cleveland, Akron and Canton, and Cincinnati.  I know this state and I know its people.  When reports come in that voters were disenfranchised, I know the neighborhoods, I lived there. When Mitt Romney has a photo opportunity with coal miners, I know the place and the people.  They were my classmates in school.  I visited their small towns and the mines, even though I was a city boy. When voters were disenfranchised in Ohio back in 2004, I visited Cleveland to spend some time with family. When I told my father about the voting problems downstate, he replied: "We didn't have any problem here" (in the affluent suburbs east of Cleveland).  Sigh. I didn't even try to explain it.  Honest "plain dealers" [Plain Dealer is the Cleveland newspaper] are not wired to believe that dirty tricks can disenfranchise people, especially since they did not have a problem where they live.  They choose to believe smooth sailing prevailed everywhere.  This is the complacency of the Ohio citizen:  "Don't confront with me any truths."

What was even more amazing was that there was absolutely no coverage of the downstate problems in the Cleveland media market.
NONE!

I LOVE TRAINS - Who is John Galt? Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged

Its Sat.evening, 7:30 & I hear a train going by my home.This gives me hope that goods are being transported & there IS an economy.I sleep better when I hear them throughout the night. It calms me. It tells me there is an economy despite the naysayers and there is at least one guy working.Who is John Galt? (Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand) 

It angers me too that other countries have better trains than we do.

As a boy of 5 years old, I rode the train from Cleveland,Ohio to Detroit, Michigan by myself. My parents put me on in Cleveland & my grandparents met me at the station in Detroit and vice versa. 

The conductor kept an eye on me en route. I usually slept on the large bench lying down. It was a whole lot better than the back seat of my Dad's Pontiac Starchief because I didn't get carsick.

The Lake Shore Limited Amtrak Train making its way along the Hudson River in New York

 


 Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Ohio near Toledo often talks about a resurgence of trains rolling through her congressional district laden with rolled steel headed for a revived auto industry in Detroit, my birthplace.  With all the negatives of air travel, Amtrak from Schenectady to Cleveland on "The Lake Shore Limited" is the way to travel now that gasoline is pushing $4 a gallon again. 

 John Galt is a fictional character in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged (1957). Although he is not identified by name until the last third of the novel, he is the object of its often-repeated question "Who is John Galt?" and of the quest to discover the answer. Trains, powerful, swift, innovative also are central to this nove.  Its funny the Republicans embrace this book while at the same time refuse to support Amtrak or improve train travel in America. 


 If you haven't read "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, "Who is John Galt"? you need to read it to learn why it is so pivotal to the ideologues in this current Presidential election. The movie  Planes Trains and Automobiles with John Candy and Steve Martin, and some great Train Scenes in the movie "Only the Lonely" with John Candy.  I love trains

Movie/DVD - The Widow of St. Pierre

The title is a little misleading. Are you avoiding the movie because you don't want to see the beautiful lead actress, Juliette Binoche as a widow? "Widow" doesnt refer to a person, so see this lovely, tragic, romantic, humanistic movie. Daniel Auteil plays Binoche's husband and both are passionate lovers as husband and wife.

The cinematography, shot in Nova Scotia, is magnificent.

Lovin' Richard Russo's Books

I met the Author Richard Russo recently at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont. He signed his new book, "Bridge of Sighs" for me.

I am enjoying his book tremendously.

If you haven't read Russo yet, start with a movie called "Nobody's Fool" starring Paul Newman, Jessica Tandy, Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith.
This movie and the corresponding novel by Russo will introduce you to the type of "UPSTATE NEW YORK" writing that Russo crafts eloquently.

HIS BOOKS ARE TO BE SAVORED.

Hear here & here Russo discuss his book with Joe Donahue and Julia Taylor of WAMC radio in Albany.

Itinerant Franciscans

On my way into Massachusetts from Vermont today, I picked up two itinerant Franciscan monks, one a brother, the other a priest. We traveled about 70 miles together and had a great time talking and praying before we had to part company. I gave the Priest my address and phone number and hope to see them again when they return to Vermont. I told Father Joseph that I was wearing a new scapular and he dug around in his backpack and took out some prayer books in the back seat of my car and entered me into the scapular with a prayer from the book while we were driving along.

November 2007:

Its been a year since I picked these monks up on the side of the road. I asked Father Joseph to be my spiritual director and he agreed. We have met in Vermont and Massachusetts when he passes through and I have enjoyed having him as my first spiritual director. It has been helpful in my journey to see him every couple of months.

I met him twice at a lumber mill along side a road in a gorgeous valley. The lumber mill is owned by Catholics and Father Joseph has permission to enter the offices when he passes through to minister to people. Also, I have had to transport him and other monks to Williams College in Williamstown Massachusetts as he ministers there.

Upstate New York as “Appalachia”

Wow I had to edit that essay down quite a bit:

Here is the revised essay as read on the air: You can listen to it here:

UPSTATE NEW YORK IS APPALACHIAN - GOVERNOR ELIOT SPITZER IS CORRECT!!!

Eliot Spitzer, Democrat, Governor New York State

During May of 2006 I wrote an essay about Eliot Spitzer and produced it on the radio at Public Radio Albany New York,WAMC FM 90.3 on the FM Dial

I wanted to post the original version of the essay which was way too long to read on the air in the 3 minute time requirement.

Here is the text of the original version. I will post a link to listen to the essay on the air too.

Upstate New York as “Appalachia”

Earlier this spring, Attorney General Eliott Spitzer referred to Upstate New York as “Appalachian”. When I heard this comment reported on the radio, I shouted: “Yes, Yes, Finally!” Someone has said what I’ve been thinking for quite some time. You see, I went to college in Appalachia: - the “real” Appalachia, not Upstate New York.

I was born in Detroit, Michigan, the grandson of Italian immigrant auto workers. My grandmother wired dashboards by hand. My parents moved to the suburbs of Cleveland Ohio and as a youngster, I traveled back and forth between Detroit and Cleveland, sometimes by train and sometimes by bus.

I often stayed in Detroit with my grandparents during the formative years of the Motown sound, and it was great. Stevie Wonder was often on TV and radio, and he was just a little guy, like me. There were only 3 channels on TV and grandma translated the boring political conventions on TV every four years for me. She had to know all about that to become a citizen – I learned about government, politics and labor unions from her.

At 17 years old, I went away to college in the Appalachian Mountains. Appalachia was quite different from the cities that I was accustomed to and understood. In a city, I could figure out how people “got by, and how they earned a living, even though I always wondered what went on in those factories billowing smoke with their putrid sulphuric smells. But, I couldn’t understand how people “got by” in the Appalachians.

As a boy In Detroit, I had wondered how dandelions came up, survived and even thrived through the cracks of so much concrete. I wondered why the wonderful, cooling, magnificent, arching, elm trees, on our street in center city Detroit were afflicted with the dreaded malady, Dutch elm disease –dying right there in front of me as each summer passed.

During my training as a natural scientist in college, I often made forays into the Appalachian Mountains. With professors and fellow students, I started to learn about the land, what grew on the land and how that land was used – or abused.

In Appalachia, I saw a strip mine and a humongous steam shovel. That steam shovel could hold an entire college marching band inside its bucket. I saw what that machine did to the land to wrestle from that resting place a once living substance called coal. A few miles away, I had to study an experiment where pillaged land, scarred from mining, was being reclaimed, with hopes that someday, it could be healed and restored – although it would never again yield coal.

A few miles away from that, I studied a virgin forest with huge, magnificent, healthy trees older than our country. Somehow, by chance, and then by conscious effort, this small virgin forest was protected and I was grateful to learn what a forest looked like that had never been cut for lumber or cleared for farmland or stripped for coal.

After a while, I learned how to go out and explore the countryside on my own.

I learned how to hunt and gather the prized delicacy morel mushroom in the foothills of the Appalachians and how to use these wonderful mushrooms in cooking. I made sassafras tea from sassafras root I collected in the Appalachians.

For spending money I worked with a nursery business. We often had to take truckloads of trees and shrubs to our customers. A part time minister worked with me and drove the truck. Now, I started to learn about the people of Appalachia: - a proud people. The minister would often stop the truck way off the beaten path, and, I have to admit, the sound track from the movie “Deliverance” often came to my mind.

He would yodel call out of the window of the truck and bounce his voice off the hills in a hollowed out valley. I learned these protected coves of trees & earth were called “hollers”. His call let members of his congregation know that he was passing through praying for them and we always heard a call back yodel, letting the pastor know, translated, that, “everything was fine, see you on Sunday, God willin’. “

Asleep in my college dormitory one night, I woke in the morning to learn that the hospital (about a mile away) had cared for some people during the night that had been bitten by rattlesnakes. One bitten person died while I slept. In our college newspaper the college students were warned not to participate in local religious services where rattlesnakes were used to bite the faithful. Whoa! I thought! Appalachia is WAY different from the city!

After graduate school, I moved to Boston, and worked as a research scientist in the fledgling biotechnology industry. Now, I made frequent trips on Interstate 90 in Massachusetts & the New York Thruway to get back to Cleveland.

The Thruway drive was always boring and I found myself looking off to each side of the road, wondering about the real NY countryside, not the artificial thruway.

I decided to get off the thruway, and discover the real New York State. I took my time and traveled the back roads through New York State. I saw some beautiful country in New York, once I worked up the courage to get off the thruway.

I started to wonder about the people of upstate New York the same way I wondered about the people of Appalachia. In the Adirondacks, I met a young single mother who lived in a very small home, reminiscent of the shacks I photographed in the Appalachians as a college student. This home was nearby a gorgeous lake, and looked like it had been a camp house meant to be lived in by vacationing sportsmen. Now this mother lives in this camp home year round and has a beautiful 7 year old boy – with autism. I had worked with autistic boys in cities, where resources are available …but how does a young mother find help up in this beautiful countryside for her son?

I met another lady who is a widow in the Adirondacks. She had lived in a wonderful Victorian farm house on a farm of many acres and raised her kids there. Now, her life was shoehorned into a few small rooms of a rectangular trailer, her head reeling and spinning on how quickly her life had changed so dramatically when her husband passed.

It started to occur to me that economic deprivation could be found in Upstate New York, in a very similar way to the economic deprivation of Appalachia. There were many, many places in New York where I wondered how people “got by” and I found many remnants of past economic boom times, now rotting and rusting. As I traveled throughout the United States, I saw cities booming economically and the boom seems so uneven throughout the United States, missing our area here in the Northeast.

I left Cleveland last year on Labor Day, drove back roads into the Fingerlakes and passed picnic after picnic in back yards across New York State of New Yorkers celebrating their labor and their Labor Day holiday. I saw picnic tables, card tables, folding chairs and folding tables in many, many, garages and horse shoe playing and badminton in the yards as I crept along the NY countryside. These people obviously were at home in their New York countryside and they seemed to be proud of their homes, their friends and family and their labor – not too different from the Appalachian people I used to know.

Maybe we don’t like being referred to as Appalachian here because of stereotypes borne from the likes of Li’l Abner and the Beverly Hillbillies .

But, Poverty [in the real Appalachia] is a text book word. The poor don’t know they are poor and in Appalachia – pride and dignity fill a half empty stomach.

If “Appalachian” means having the courage to somehow contribute to our community when that economic boom has gone by us, and stay here and stand four square as we face that reality and enjoy our “poverty with a view”. . . . Then, I don’t mind, I take no offense from Mr. Spitzer’s comment.

Our home here is defiantly beautiful and all of us have pride and dignity for this place we call home, just like the people in Appalachia have pride and dignity for their home too.

Spring in Vermont?

Sunny today. The LIGHT in the daytime sky has changed. The days are lengthening. I saw many robins yesterday. Took a jaunt over to Hoosick Falls NY.

JESUSLAND - The Book

I'm reading JESUSLAND. The story takes place in Lafayette Indiana. I am quite familiar with Lafayette and the surrounding area having visited the area many times while residing in Chicago. In this book, a young white woman has two African American brothers. Her two black brothers were adopted by her parents and the older of the two is molesting the girl, the narrator of the story.


Julia Scheeres in the author,,,she has a great blog too.