I don’t come from a religious family. My mom may have gone to church on an occasional Easter or Christmas, not every one though.  My mom would drag me along. Actually it wasn’t dragging. I kind of liked it. The building. The stained glass windows. The gold (and we weren’t even Catholics!). My dad never attended. Never.

So my childhood memories of Easter are more of the Easter Bunny type, not the Christ is risen type. Not that there is anything wrong with that!

The first memory is of helping my mom make Easter candy. We would get coconuts from the grocery store, bring them home and smash them with a hammer. I got to do the smashing! Then we would scrape the coconut off the shell in big chunks which we fed to a hand grinder. My dad had the job of turning the crank on the grinder. Man’s work! Haha. Then we added sugar to the ground coconut, mixed them together and formed them into little egg shaped balls and dipped them into hot melted chocolate!  I couldn’t wait until they cooled off! I was the official taste tester. Yum.

The second memory is about greed and gluttony. Remember, I was the “came way behind” child in my family. So when I was Easter basket age, my four siblings had left the home and had families of their own.  That meant I would not just get Easter baskets from my parents, but from four other households as well. I was awash in chocolate! I didn’t care if that Easter Bunny was solid or hollow! I liked white chocolate best. Still do. I know, it’s not really chocolate, but wow is it good!  I can remember one year having eleven Easter baskets. There is some thing to be said for being the baby of the family, especially one that came twelve years behind the rest!

Lastly, and leastly, there were the Easter egg hunts. I was a shy child, an introvert at five.  My mom would take me to Easter egg hunts and when the starter said go I would cling to my mom’s side. Like the Soup Nazi might say…no eggs for you!  My mom would get frustrated with my clinginess and my shyness. That theme continued until her death in my sophomore year in high school!  But, wow, she could make a mean coconut cream egg!

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter and that you spend some time thinking about your childhood Easter traditions. For me, that was a long, long time ago. But sometimes, like this morning, it feels like only last week.

That’s a line from a Buffalo Springfield song.  If I am quoting Buffalo Springfield, my mind must be wandering. It is. I have been having difficulty coming up with something to write about. This is my 213th post, so it could just be that I have only 212 stories to tell. For what it’s worth, that ain’t it!  My mind’s distracted and confused. Uh oh. Simon and Garfunkel just sneaked in.

Here is what I was starting to write about. Years ago I worked for The Program for Women and Families. We worked in an old funeral home and yes it was very creepy alone there at night. One day I was at my desk and Jennifer, my co-worker who sat in front of me, turned around and showed me the inside of her purse. “Don’t tell anyone, but it’s a mouse in a live trap. I don’t know what to do with it!”.  We laughed and whispered our possible plans. We came up with the idea that, at lunchtime, we would go to Trexler Park and set the mouse free in the little cabin in the middle of the park. We did and I’m sure the mouse was very happy!

So, normally I could go on writing about that story and the life lessons that could be learned from it. But I couldn’t. What jumped into my mind was “Who cares?”.

That’s what this pandemic has done to me. I find that I am turning from an optimist to a pessimist from a positive person to a negative person. To a cynic. I’m tired of the blathering of all political sides. I am tired of seeing the daily statistics and thinking that Pennsylvania dropped in the cases ranking to Illinois.  See, cynical.

This isn’t me. I don’t like it. Yet here I am. I just don’t care. Don’t get me wrong. I care about my family and my friends. I care about my clients and my colleagues. It’s me I don’t care about.

I am trying to remain grateful for what I have. I am healthy and I have a job where I can work from home. I know not a single person with Covid-19. I am great at giving advice to my clients on how to remain positive during the pandemic. But that same advice doesn’t seem to be working for me.

I’ll come out of it. I know that. I know this was a downer of  a post. So let me end with a joke. Me: Can I have fun?  2020: NO!  Me: ok.

I wish you all well and hope you are doing better than I am. As I always tell my daughter, Emma, everything has a lifespan. Even this pandemic.

“Money, money, money…always sunny…in a rich man’s world.” – Abba

“I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.” – The Beatles

These are two opposing views on a controversial topic. You know how, at a party, you aren’t supposed to talk about religion nor politics?  If you had to add a third taboo subject it is probably money. Back in the ’70s, I worked at Hess’s Department Store and I can remember a manager was fired because he revealed his salary to another employee. Whoa!

In our world there are savers and there are spenders. Here is where the cautionary tale comes in. On the saver/spender continuum, I’m way over on the spender side.  I caution you that senior citizenship sneaks up on you really really fast. It’s probably best to live your life on the saver side or at least in the middle.  Don’t worry. I’m fine!  But I could be finer!

I started out as a saver thanks to school savings accounts. Every week I would give my elementary school teacher  a little bit of money in a red plastic envelope with a green record card inside. Somehow it made it to the bank and my savings accrued. I got all the way up to $240! My mom always insisted this money was for college. Well, my mom died when I was fifteen. It was easy, at sixteen, to talk my dad into using it for a car instead. I got my dented up blue Corvair from a used car lot/junkyard outside of Walnutport. But that was probably an indicator that if there was something I wanted, savings could wait.

I worked for Pfizer for over a decade. They offered stock options (discounted shares of stock) to employees. I always bought the options. If I had just kept those stocks, I would be writing this blog from my lake house. But there was always some, not really great, reason to sell them and spend the profit.

I got married very young, twenty, and had a child right away. Those days, in my twenties, when I should have been saving money, I instead was buying diapers and formula. I think you all know just how expensive kids are! Yikes! Btw, I don’t regret having my children. I love them all!

So to all of my young readers out there, don’t marry too early and if you do, wait a long while for kids. Also, when you do marry, make sure it is going to last. Divorce is super expensive. Lawyers are pricey and you lose half your net worth! I know this from experience.

So my advice regarding money: save, save, and save some more. But do remember to have some fun and enjoy the fruits of your labor as well. Life is all about balance.

So how do I end this self revealing cautionary tale on a positive note? Why, Fiddler on the Roof, of course! In the show, Tevye sings out a universal truth. It’s something we can all aspire to: “All day long I’d biddy biddy bum, if I were a wealthy man!”.  Words to live by!

 

 

 

 

 

The pandemic is surely activating our creativity. The jokes on Facebook are fantastic. Laughing in the face of adversity.  People are thinking of ingenious ways to spend time. I understand that a staple from my childhood is making a comeback. Board games and cards! I’m mostly alone here, so my only option is solitaire.

Cards were big in my youth. I can remember my dad and I playing 500 Rummy for hours on end.  And of course there was always Old Maids, Crazy Eights, and War.  As a teen, my friends and I often played Pinochle while lying on blankets at the Northern Lehigh Swimming Pool.  I come from a Poker family. Penny Ante Poker was a regular and popular event in our home. I was too young for most of it, plus I had no money, but my parents, relatives, and family friends would play for hours on a weekend night.  I can remember it being loud and raucous. Ballantine beer was the beverage of choice. That’s where the loud and raucous came in!  Good times!

My dad taught me to play chess, a wonderful game that I wish I was better at. Checkers, Parcheesi, Scrabble, and Sorry were games we played often.  Then there was Monopoly. Oh, how I dislike that game. I can honestly say, that in the 67 years I have been on this planet, that I have never finished a game of Monopoly. Not one. Not ever. Why?  Because it is so slow and it takes soooo long!  Maybe my dislike of Monopoly is the reason I am not a big, gung ho capitalist today!

When I start to write these posts, I generally have an idea where I am going. But sometimes it brings back memories that were buried for decades. This is one of them. Dominoes! Not the pizza, the game.  What a fun game that I don’t think many people play anymore. I played Dominoes with my godmother and her mom in the little village of Emerald.  We would go there on a Sunday and play for hours. I remember how good the place smelled as my godmother’s mom was always baking something. What a nice memory. Unfortunately, I can’t remember my godmother’s mom’s name!

I hope you are all well and that your creative juices are flowing.  Maybe this blog post gave you some ideas of some games you can play during our stay at home mandate. My only caution:  if you are going to play Poker, I’d skip the Ballantine!

Anyone else have any game memories? Feel free to add your comments.

 

 

I love being outdoors. I love to walk along a lake trail in the fall. Beautiful. I find my religion when I am deep in a forest on a summer day.  Beautiful wildflowers along a meadow trail in the spring can make me excited about life.  Even walking a snowy trail on the side of a mountain fills me with joy.  So what is my conundrum? I am not a big animal fan and they are outdoors too. In fact, it is their home!

Don’t get me wrong. I want no harm to come to any animal. Well, maybe the turkey that will be on my Thanksgiving table! Animals are beautiful. I like seeing some animals, from a distance.  Some of them scare me, especially hiking alone.  Bears are now out of hibernation. Snakes are slithering again.  Bats are filling the twilight sky. All of those scare me. They are all unpredictable.

I think I can trace my fear of animals to a German Shepherd bite I received at the age of twelve.  I’ve written about that incident before. But there have been other animal encounters that support my fear. When I was in high school, my mom died, and my dad and I moved in with my brother Jim. We shared a small attic bedroom that attracted birds from somewhere. There is nothing more terrifying than being stuck in a small room with a crazy bird! Ask Alfred Hitchcock.  Then there was the time I was running at sunup and ran into a flock (?) of bats under a wooden bridge! I was about to enter a trail at French Creek State Park and was confronted by a ranger. Don’t go in there, he said, there is a rabid raccoon in there somewhere.  See what I mean!

To be fair, I have had good encounters too. Anytime I come across a deer, I stop and watch.  Last fall I saw a beautiful bald eagle on a dead tree at Lehigh Gap.  Watching the snow geese in the fields and skies of North Whitehall Township…wonderful!

So, I will continue to hike and enjoy the outdoors. I will continue to be vigilant, no… hyper vigilant, expecting the unexpected.  I shake my keys once in a while to warn the bears I am coming their way.  I watch my steps carefully so I do not step on a snake basking in the sun.  And the bats….I will try not to hike at night or dusk or dawn.

Speaking of animals, I recommend Tiger King on Netflix. On there it is not the animals that are unpredictable, it’s the people! Enjoy!

 

Two nights ago I watched the PBS documentary Woodstock. If you social distance long enough you can find some gems on Netflix, Prime, or Hulu! What struck me watching Woodstock was the similarity between that three day event and the weeks (months?)long public health crisis we are now in.

For you millenials who happen to read my blog, Woodstock was a three day outdoor concert, with many headline bands and solo performers. The unique characteristic about Woodstock was that the promoters were expecting maybe 50,000 attendees, but 400,000 showed up. 400,000 young people living on a few acres of land, for three days, without enough food, without enough medical supplies, and with no protection from the weather.

Sound familiar? Sure, we aren’t crammed into a few acres, instead we have our entire nation, from sea to shining sea!  But we were not prepared for this, much like Woodstock organizers were not prepared for their crisis. Many of us do not have enough food, because of the hoarding of others. Medical supplies are in very short supply because no one was expecting the breadth and depth of this.

But guess what! Woodstock proved that if we all work together and take care of each other, we can get through a crisis. There was no violence at Woodstock. There were three days of music and fun and mud…and even a few childbirths.  There was a belief, after Woodstock, that my generation was going to be different than all those that came before.  We were going to put greed aside. We were going to put war and violence aside. We were going to change the institutions of this nation to be sure we all had the chance to live happy and productive lives.  I think, personally, this is when and where my political beliefs took root and why today I still feel the Bern! But, my generation blew it! We changed some things for the better, for sure. But life, fairly quickly, got back to the normal way of doing things. Maybe that’s just human nature? I hope not.

Maybe our Coronavirus crisis is another chance for us to do it right. Have you noticed, except maybe for the hoarding, that people seem to be a little nicer to each other (from a safe distance, of course). There seems to be a little more of “we are all in this together” attitude. Much like Woodstock!  There is a huge economic bailout coming from the government. It is heartening to hear that how that bailout works is, at least in the open, being looked at with an eye on fairness instead of greed.  That would be wonderful.

Millenials, this is your chance! Create a nation that celebrates success but doesn’t villify vulnerabilities or differences. Be a generation that looks out for one another rather than looking down on others. Be Woodstock Nation for decades to come not just for a few days in August.

And most importantly….don’t hoard the damn toilet paper!

 

No. Not the movie. The Lehigh Valley, and I suppose the whole country. I ventured out for breakfast this morning. Almost no traffic and the diner was only about half full, on a Sunday morning.  Driving past churches with no cars in the parking lots, on a Sunday morning. Seeing Burger King closed, on a Sunday morning.

It’s a little eerie, in a science fiction sort of way. Think of “The Day the Earth Stood Still”.  Maybe I should be a little more worried about Covid-19 than I am. After all, I am in the over 60 age group that is supposed to be scared. But I have declared myself invincible! The only change I have made is washing my hands more often.  I don’t go out a lot anyway except to hike the hills and forests of eastern Pennsylvania. I get that this is not just about me. It’s about all of us. You know what does have me scared though? The financial piece.

Again, just focusing on myself (I hope I am not becoming narcissistic) it should be noted that in the psychological practice I work in, I am an independent contractor. That means that if all my clients cancel, out of fear of Covid-19, I will make no money. Luckily, I have Social Security and Medicare. Yes, the social safety net still exists. I know a lot of people have it worse, financially.  Lets be kind to them.

As you know, I tend to be an optimist and generally a positive person. I am making a concerted effort to stay that way through this public health crisis. This crisis is made for introverts! Stay home and read….yes, please!  Avoid being in large groups of people…sure, absolutely!   The Buddhist in me reminds me that all I have for certain is this moment. And in this moment, I am healthy and peaceful.  I am invincible…in this moment.

Good luck to all of you! We will all make it through this and maybe learn some valuable lessons from it. Like George Harrison wrote, “All Things Must Pass”.

One last thing. Wash your hands and stop hoarding the toilet paper!

 

 

Okay. That may be an exaggeration. Or, maybe not. First some background.

For eight years in the ’90s, I had a corporate Human Resources job where I got to travel a lot … nationally and internationally. One of the places I traveled to, four times, was France. A quick aside – my first trip to France was a fluke. Rental cars in France were only stick shift. My boss couldn’t drive stick. I could. “Denny, you’re going to France!”

The other three visits, I traveled alone. I flew into Limoges, famous for porcelain, and got a stick shift rental car and stayed in a charming French town called St. Junien. It was about the size of Emmaus , but much more charming. (No offense Emmaus people). I stayed in an old rustic hotel with a front desk like that in The Shady Rest Hotel in Hooterville.  Just off the desk was a small bar and small restaurant.  It was a lovely place.

My first morning there, I got up early and headed to our small plant in Saillat, a couple miles away.  I got to know our French employees very well. That day, one of our employees invited me to his home for dinner. He picked me up at my charming and rustic hotel and we went to his house for dinner. It was an old stone home, just what you would picture in the beautiful French countryside.  I met his lovely wife and toddler. I remember we had fish and baked potato and green beans (French style, of course). At the end of the evening, he took me back to my hotel. Have I mentioned it was rustic and charming? Now things take a bad turn.

The town is quiet, very quiet. It is only about 9 PM.  He drops me off in front of my hotel and quickly speeds off to the bucolic French countryside.  I go to the door of the hotel. It is locked. I have no key. I start to panic. What do I do now?  Do I wander around the town looking for help? I spoke zero French and this was before cell phones. Do I bang on the door and try to wake another sleeping guest? Not likely, with the thick walls and the layout of the place. Do I walk around and try to find a police station?  Again, I do not speak French!  Will I have to spend the night in a French jail?

I see a group of people walking on the street at the back of the hotel. Luckily, it was the front desk clerk, the bartender, and the waitress. I recognized the waitress. She looked like Bobby Jo, from Hooterville! They had just locked up for the night. They rescued me and the desk clerk apologized to me. She was supposed to have given me a key for just such circumstances. Whew! If I had arrived just a few minutes later I most likely would have been, for one night at least, a homeless person on the streets of St. Junien or spent the night in a French jail. Les Miserables!

One of the best things about my years of foreign travel was to see the everyday life of the citizens of whatever country I was in. One of the worst things was having to work and not see any tourist attractions. One exception was that first trip to France. We flew into Paris just to spend the night, before traveling in the stick shift car, to St. Junien. My boss, paid a taxi driver to take us around to see the major Paris attractions through the windows of the taxi. I got to see the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arch de Triumphe, and Notre Dame Cathedral (did not see the hunchback!).

But, like Simon and Garfunkel said “Gee but it’s great to be back home. Home is where I want to be.”

If you are reading this on Saturday, don’t forget to set your clocks ahead.

Happy first day of March and rabbit! rabbit!  The worst two months of the year, in my humble opinion, are behind us. While the chance for a big snow is still out there, that chance seems pretty slim. Maybe an onion snow at most. Anyone remember the term onion snow? I don’t think that was just a Slatington thing.

So what are these March decisions I refer to in the title? They start small and this one must be made in a few hours. What do I wear to a banquet I am attending later this evening? The banquet (Emma’s horse showing organization) is semi-formal. What does that even mean? I asked for opinions and got various answers. I googled it…same variety of answers. I don’t want to be overdressed nor under dressed. I know jeans and a t-shirt are out. Damn!

Another decision is how to get back to a healthy lifestyle now that restrictions from my colon resection are officially over.  I’ve gotten used to the “stay away from the healthy whole grains until your colon heals” format. I didn’t just get used to it. I embraced it!! If someone tells me eating donuts is okay, I am going to eat donuts. I did. I also enjoyed white bread and chocolate and Apple Jacks. I have gained 14 pounds. Still down 22 but trending upward.  I see my nutritionist tomorrow. We all know what she is going to say!

Another restriction that ends today is “don’t lift over 10 pounds and don’t exercise”.  I also embraced that. I’ve been a slug! I’ve been a sloth! I still feel tired when I expend even a small amount of energy. I’m not sure if that is still from the surgery or if inertia bred more inertia.  Anyway, something has to change. As soon as it gets just a little bit warmer, I am going to plan a hike. Do you need a piano moved? I am now your guy!

So a momentous March is upon me. Do I run again? Do I enter a 5k for my birthday in May? I’ve done that for many years. Do I buy what the nutritionist is selling lock, stock,  and barrel?  That’s what helped me lose 36 pounds and gave me more energy! But…I’d really miss those Apple Jacks! A very close female friend told me that when I was down the 36 pounds it made me look old. Hmmm? Does that enter in my decision making? I don’t want to look old!

Last night I realized that my grandson turns 8 this year. My daughter turns 18 this year. And I turn 68 this year! 888…play that in the lottery!

Thanks for letting me ramble a little bit. In the big picture, these decisions are relatively small. I am not deciding which building to hide in while bombs fall.  I am not deciding if I should eat or fill prescriptions. I am not deciding between radiation or chemo.

Enjoy your first day of March. And if this post was the first time you heard “rabbit rabbit” today, well that’s just more luck for me!

 

 

 

Those of you who know me, or know me through this blog, will not be surprised that today I have decided to write about words. Lyrics, in particular.  There is an ongoing argument on what is most important about a song, the music or the lyrics. I will always come down on the side of lyrics. Probably why I don’t like jazz!

If you think about the lyrics of most pop and rock songs, they are mostly about love in some form. I love you. Do you love me? Even, she loves you!

So there is the exuberant:  like Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect”. There is the sad : George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today”. The Universal: The Beatles’ “All You Need is Love”. The lustful: AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”.  And the sacrificial: Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”.

Love lyrics. Love lyrics. Love lyrics. Yes, I know there are songs about cars, and places, and dancing, and even one about cannibalism (“Timothy” by the Buoys.)

I like to pick out lyrics that I think are just perfect. “Our secrets sleep in winter clothes” from Neutral Milk Hotel. “I am a rock, I am an an island, and a rock feels no pain, and and island never cries” from Simon and Garfunkel. “The love you take is equal to the love you make” from The Beatles. “Kathy, I’m lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping” from Simon and Garfunkel.

My absolute favorite lyric comes from Deep Blue Something. The song is “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. It captures the feeling of desperation, to keep a relationship going, perfectly. Here is the chorus: “And I said, what about Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (the movie is important to him and he thinks it is important to her). “And she said, yes I think I remember the film and as I recall, I think we both kind of liked it”. (kind of liked it…not really important to her). “And I said, well that’s one thing we’ve got”. (desperation, I’ll even take that).

I wish I could write lyrics like that! I hope you enjoyed my little excursion into music reviewing. It most likely won’t happen again soon. This morning I heard “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and it was my muse. I’d love to hear any favorite lyrics of yours. Feel free to put them in the comments.