The Sunday Morning Muse, March 4, 2018

So...before we were rudely interrupted..... now what was it we were going on about? Well, let's just begin anew.  It's Sunday and the sun is rising above the city and I'm feeling this inner stirring to
write again.  I'll need a few posts to find my bearings, so bear with me. :)

"It's a cocky old world," Aunt Millie used to say.  Yes, it is dear.  Oh, if you had lived to see what it's become! I'm still here on your hill, the land where your father settled on at the turn of the last century.  Since that time, many are gone. First went those who remembered World War I,  and now the last few veterans of World War II are disappearing. You counted the widows on the hill remaining of your generation, and now the next generation of widows are dying off  as the cycle continues.

Some things remain.  The daffodils still come back each spring where the steps used to be going up to the old "Bum" School.  The bulbs planted sometime in the 40's or 50's..... no way to tell. The school
is long gone, the land overrun by thickets and locust trees.... but the path of the steps is laid out each year for a short time.  The path of daffodils.

Waiting for spring again.  The birds are up this morning, their songs carrying in the cold air as I took
food out to Yellow Cat.  (More about him later.)

It's good to be back.

The Sunday Morning Muse, September 15, 2013

It's Sunday morning. Fog again over the valley. Sigh. Summer slipping away into furnace season.

Musing on my Google history. I notice that I am often "signed in" to Google based on my signing into this
blog site and that no matter where I search somehow I am still "signed in" and getting ads based on what I search for. I get that. But I wonder what someone will do with this information someday. If a real human being looks at my Google history and tries to speculate about my interests, my whims, my purchases, etc
and come up with some sort of profile, they are in for a lot of head scratching.

This week, along with searching for my usual assortment of various medical maladies,  I have spent a fair amount of time studying The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke, a painting by Richard Dadd.  I bought an album by Queen over thirty years ago (Queen II). On a whim I searched for the meaning of the Fairy Feller song and discovered it was based on the painting. The words truly never made sense to me and now they somewhat do. It is a complicated song with a lot of overdubs, and I read somewhere that they never performed it in concert. Enough said on this really, except for the "Dragonfly trumpeter" mentioned in the song really IS a Dragonfly trumpeter.

I spent a lot of time searching for old photographs of our town. I enjoy looking at the flood of 1913 and the "big snow" of 1950 and old black and white cemetary photos.

The other thing I like about Google is that I saw the face of an actor I had a crush on in high school on a TV promo for the old "Emergency" TV show. Not all that long ago you had to strain your brain to try to come up with a name for the face, or ask people if they remember.  Now all you do is search the IMDB for Emergency and figure out who he is and then find out what other TV shows/movies he was in that I would remember him from.  And I did.  He was on an old soap opera called "Loving."  Richard Mantooth. I don't find him all that attractive now. Don't really know why I did then.

What did I buy this week?  Well Google, you can quit showing me ads with kitchen wall fixtures.  Also I did order the book "Pain Free" because 350 people gave it  5 stars, so don't show me that one anymore. Keep on showing me console tables, but it is highly unlikely I'll buy one off the internet.  I prefer the used furniture store.

Oh, and I looked up a saying, an expression that Aunt Millie used to use.  "If you are born to hang, you won't drown."  Apparently this is an English Idiom and she didn't make it up herself. An expression of fate.

So there you go.

Asking for a Sign

I went to Millie's grave today. It was a whim. On the way home. I just wanted to see if the perennials came up. They did. Nothing was really blooming yet, but  the grave looked nice, and I was glad. 


I looked around the quiet cemetery. A gorgeous day. White puffy clouds, a blue sky....and that little
stream of sun streaming through the branches of a tree. And I thought: Millie, if you can, why don't you send me a sign?

The thought was there. You've had those thoughts haven't you? Mostly they are right after someone died. You still feel close to them, and you think....if there is a way...could they....would they contact me? And you remember Houdini and "Rosabelle... Believe."   (Mrs. Houdini kept trying for 10 years, wanting to hear from her husband. Nothing was proven.)

She later said after she herself died, anyone who claimed to hear from her would be a fraud, because when she dies, she will be gone for good.

So I was standing there at the grave, looking at that beam of light and I actually said it aloud. I was quiet, so that no one would think I was crazy, but I said, Millie, I really need to know right now if my life is on the right track. I need a sign from you. Anything will do. Something I will KNOW.

I left the cemetery, and went about my business for the day. Actually I completely forgot about Millie. I wasn't feeling well, and all my mental effort was in trying to make myself feel well enough to attend a party later in the day. Once there, of course I felt fine. I was enjoying the beautiful flowers, good company, and delicious food, and the music.

And then suddenly there it was.

The DJ, who had played Jimmy Buffett, 80's rock, and reggae music all afternoon, out of nowhere played
Brother Louie. From 1973. Looieeee looieeeee looieee, looo- weeeee!!! Millie hated that song. I even wrote a post, years ago, about how she hated that song. "What do you young people"see in this music????" She would exclaim.

This was my sign. It's the one and only song that screams MILLIE to me anytime I hear it. (which is seldom)
I can go YEARS without ever hearing that song.

Do I really believe in such things? That Millie is up there and can hear me? That somehow we do survive
life after death?Heck, I'm not sure of anything. But it did make me smile.

And I needed to let someone know about Brother Louie. The song Millie hated.



(Photo is Me and Millie. About 1970.)

Pray for Good, Look for Worse

And thou shalt own a gun and shoot to kill if someone tries to steal your television set. So sayeth the Lord.
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New Booty Newty was at the NRA convention today pandering to the gun faithful-making the contorted argument that gun rights come from God.
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Hmm. The same one with the commandments? Thou shall not kill? Probably a loophole in there somewhere I don't see. I don't have a problem with the self defense arguments. I don't care if you want to own a gun. But tying the whole religion thing with it...God? Really? A God given right? What about "turn the other cheek?" I'm just sayin'. Howzat all fit in with this argument?

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Tornadoes in Alabama destroy homes and businesses and kill hundreds of people. The first interview I see is with an old woman who crawled into a hole and survived, and is now praising the Lord she is alive. (Kind of unfair the woman's dead neighbors can't be interviewed to hear what they thought of the Lord's decision on their behalf.) Either the Lord heard their prayers too and killed them anyway, or He had no choice in the matter at all. So some died and some lived. Can't have it both ways. I honestly don't know what good prayer does at this point. People suffer. People lose everything they have. People die. Some people don't. It seems awful random to me. Aunt Millie always said "pray for good, look for worse." There was 80 years of wisdom behind those thoughts. She was onto something.

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Finally...the beautiful wedding of William and Kate. A happy occasion and a good time had by all.

Blessed by the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. I don't really know what the Holy Ghost is, even though I had to spend all those days in Sunday School. It was a three in one thing. That's all I remember. All three... in one.

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Happy Birthday Aunt Millie

I often think of you Millie. Today on what would have been your 101st birthday, you'd be pleased that the forsythia bushes your brother planted are in full bloom and the same daffodils and hyacinths are still coming up where they always did in the yard...after all these years. Some of those bulbs must be 50 years old.

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Every year I look--and sure enough, even the ones that used to line the steps where the old "bum" school was...are still there, partially hidden, in a straight line up the hill to where the school once sat. Though the school was demolished way before my time, and the steps are gone, too, but you can see the pretty yellow daffodils in the now overgrown lot.

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One of your neighbors managed to make it to 100 years old.

They played the Helena Polka on the radio this week for Helen. I saw her walking the street up until a few years ago.

Now she is in the nursing home.

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I remember our days picking blackberries when I was a kid, and I especially miss the home made pierogies every Friday during Lent. I picked up a dozen from the Polish Church today.

Seven dollars a dozen! You'd be appalled. A little flour, some potatoes. But who has the time now to make them yourself?

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I remember how you used to tell me to "live forward" not "backwards." That's as good of advice as anyone has given me. But sometimes I do look back...at old pictures. I think about how

life changes so quickly...and suddenly the people you care about are just gone.

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And you miss them forever.

The Sunday Morning Muse, February 20, 2011

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.--Albert Ellis

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The cat and I wait for the sunrise this peaceful Sunday, with the second cup of coffee by my side. I'm thinking about the marches going on in cities in the mideast and how each day brings new hope and also new tensions. The daily lives of those people are in total upheaval. Their future so unclear. Lots of worry and uncertainty. Danger. My advice to them: Go after your dreams. Promote peace and dignity and democracy for all and by all means, get educated and also do everything you can for women's rights.

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Meanwhile the endless news cycle here is focused on our nation being broke. Day after day it's the same thing. How many times have I seen the orange face who leads the Congress telling us.... We are broke. That the poor have to pay, the poor have to receive fewer services, teachers are the problem, unions are the problem, education has to be cut etc. -

Oh really? It's like Aunt Millie used to say. The poor stay poor and the rich get richer. That's the way the mop flops.

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Aunt Millie didn't trust the fatcats much. She wouldn't have understood the derivatives and the mortgage scheme and all the corruption in our banking system, but she did understand the need to educate our children. And our country is sadly falling behind other countries, who "get it."

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Mother Teresa once said she would not go to an anti-war protest, but she would go to a peace rally. It's all in how you look at things. Instead of all this energy expended with blame, what if we turned on the news and instead saw Congressmen and women joining together to actually solve problems rather than pick and choose scapegoats and give dramatic speeches against abortion or public televison. Is this the model of democracy we want to show the world?

When someone dies a house gets cleaned out and everything in it scatters to the winds like leaves off of an old tree. Of course the furniture gets snatched up or auctioned off. But the little things, the bits of paper inside drawers, or momentos put in little cupboards, etc. Now that is where the true remainders of a person's life are to be found.
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Or in this case, remainders of deaths.
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I have a box of prayer cards of Aunt Millie's. The funeral home cards you get at the door before you sign in and go view the body. She kept dozens and dozens of them in an old transitor radio box. Why it didn't get thrown away all those years ago, I'll never know. But I have cards that go back a good 60 or more years. Each a remembrance of a relative or neighbor of Millie's and mine... since I never really left the neighborhood.
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By now you are wondering how Kennedy got in there. I sure did. So I called up Bo, my friend in the funeral business and he said that when Kennedy died, local funeral directors put out these prayer cards. 1963. I wasn't even born yet.
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Of course I checked EBAY and laughed when I saw some imbecile who wanted $89.99 plus $14.50 shipping for one. Then I searched again and saw normal auctions where the card went for under 5 bucks.
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I wonder who will get the prayer box when I die. Maybe the Kennedy card will be worth more by then. Hopefully a long time from now.

Here's a Toast to Aunt Millie

Aunt Millie would have been 99 years old. I drank a toast to her today with a friend. I came across an old journal where I jotted down a couple of her sayings. Her favorite was.....

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"We are all God's children living on borrowed time."

The Sunday Morning Muse, March 8, 2009

"Pray for good, look for worse,"
Aunt Millie preached as she
walked to church
in her blue dress,
carrying her pocketbook.

Overweight and bow-legged
down the highway
and over the hill.

--
Her mantra is as applicable today as it was then. In the 1980's Millie was enjoying her retirement. It wasn't a great time economically here. The Steel industry was going bust, and also the pottery where she spent 40 years of her life would soon also go belly up. But Millie spent her days in good spirits. She attended to odd jobs at the house, or puttered in the garden, ending the afternoon on the porch with a few beers. She never had all that much, but it didn't matter to her. The things she DID have are what counted. I came across her old bible recently. In the front, on a blank page, I saw the beginnings of her last will and testament. Her short list of belongings included, of all things..... her roaster. I can't imagine too many wills mention a roaster. It must have meant a lot to her.

If I had to Write a Speech for the Convention. . .

I'm writing this before THE BIG SPEECH tonight at the Democratic National Convention. I can't imagine sitting down with a blank sheet of paper trying to come up with a speech to accept the nomination for President. It would be agonizing. Here is the thought process I'd put into it:

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1. Well, I better not talk more than a half hour because I'll lose my voice...and everyone's attention. Keep it short. Short words, short sentences. Short. Don't Rabbit Trail all over the place.

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2. I suppose I could look at all the "old" speeches and see what they did. But this is a two edged sword...because even if I don't intentionally plagiarize something, I may still unintentionally do so because my own ideas about what to say will naturally be in the same ball park, since these speeches say basically the same things but in different ways. I did this in third grade. I had to write song for music class and it sounded curiously like some a minuet I learned playing piano.

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3. Do I drum up personal hard luck stories of people whom I have met on the campaign trail? (You know... like the poor mother in Idaho with 10 kids and a poodle who lives on SSI since she got hurt from her job at the plant before it closed and 2000 people were left jobless....and then her husband got killed when their trailer fell on him when he was trying to put in new copper pipe after thieves stole the old pipes?)

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4. Do I tell people what I really want to do with the country or hold back a bit so as not to upset my political enemies who are chomping at the bit to criticize every idea I have and every word I say?

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5. How much religion should I throw in? The whole God Bless America thing is wearing thin on me. It seems self serving somehow. Maybe Tiny Tim's "God Bless us--- Everyone." But that's plagiarism. Oh well.

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6. And how much personal stuff do I put in? Thanking people is a slippery slope. You always forget someone.

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7. Bill Clinton was always good with a clever turn of the phrase... like last night's 'power of example' versus 'example of our power' thing. And who can forget Kennedy- "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country!" Aunt Millie picked up on that and I remember as a kid, whenever Millie would get ready to leave our house after a party, she'd say... "Well, I'd better go...and see what I can do for my country!" And she'd laugh.... usually she was full of Schlitz beer, so it was funny when she said it. Probably not as funny reading it here.

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8. Finally, I'd need a big ending. The media is so overhyped on everything, it's hard to really suprize anyone anymore, or come across with something genuinely new. Maybe that's why they all just still go with God Bless America, anyway. I'd probably end up saying that, too, simply because I have spent so much time writing it, that I just want to get done.

The Sunday Morning Muse, June 29, 2008

Great Aunt Millie used to 'count the widows' on the hill. She'd get the local newspaper delivered everyday and look to see who died. She noted one by one, the women she knew who outlived their men. Just as she outlived her own husband. She was way into the double digits before she died in 1988. All those widows living alone.

Those widows were the first generation Polish Immigrants. Many ended up in poverty--living on Social Security combined with a meager pension. Sitting on porches, making periogies, and walking to the neighborhood Polish church was their life. Every year fewer second and third generation children of that generation remain here.

Twenty years after Millie's death, I'm still in the neighborhood counting the widows. The widows themselves from her generation are pretty much all gone now. I swear I'm down to the last one.... a 98 year old woman who lives beside me. I saw her on the street walking with her cane. She laments that no one talks to anybody anymore. She still sits on her porch, and she still makes pierogies. "The young people don't have time," she said. I know she doesn't walk to church anymore. It was sold a few years ago.

The last vestige of a dying neighborhood.

Brother Louie

I remember hearing this song on the radio all the time in the 1970s... and my dear Aunt Millie absolutely HATED it. She'd say "What do you young people see in this music? All they do is yell Looooieee,looooieeee,looieee!"

What's great are some of the COMMENTS I've read on this video. Someone said the singer looks like Ray Sharkey in a Wig, and another person admited they always thought it was a black chick singing this song. Too funny. It's so great to find stuff like this on YouTube.

The Sunday Morning Muse, April 13, 2008

The Russians are coming
and they will lead us
into boxcars.

Aunt Millie worried
all the time
about them.

She kept an orderly house and
made pierogies on Fridays
during Lent.

Babushska around her head
and polyester pants
splitting apart in the back,
I saw her on the porch roof
painting the overhang.

When the Russians come,
she said,
They will say
Millie had a nice roof.

---
MJ Copyright, 1987

Aunt Millie would have been 98 years old this week. I wrote this as a tribute to her. I remember when I was growing up she took the Cold War seriously. Of course I always wondered where she thought the Russians would take us in those boxcars. Cleveland? After all this wasn't Nazi Germany.