I was watching Anthony Bourdain a few days ago. He was in West Virginia and talking about coal. Coal. I hadn’t thought about coal in a long time. I have some roots in coal. My mom grew up in Mahanoy City, in coal country. My son lives just outside of Tamaqua, within two miles of Tamaqua Coal Pockets. While slate was very important to me in my childhood, coal also played a small part.

So what is that room in the dark corner? I’ll get to that. First, in my childhood we all had cellars. Cellars were usually dirt floor, furnace in the corner, cobwebby places that we would rather avoid. It wasn’t until my teens that most people started changing their cellars into basements, with actual floors and lots of drywall. I remember, in my early twenties, looking for a house to buy and viewing a house that still had the dirt floor cellar. The real estate agent said that those older Pennsylvania Dutch still like their cellars!

Picture that dirt floor cellar. Picture that old gasping furnace. Picture the cobwebs. Now in the darkest corner, usually toward the front of the house, was that room. The coal bin! A little scary to a small child. So black in there…black as coal! A room for a child, well at least this child, to stay away from. What else might be in there? Coal and rats? Coal and cats? Coal and ghosts? We didn’t know because it was so dark in there. Maybe it was the devil himself!

I did stay away from that room but I do have a pleasant memory of coal from my childhood. The arrival of a new load of coal. The truck would pull up out in front of the house. They would attach a chute from the truck to a small opening into the coal bin. I can still remember the sound of the gravelly coal going down the chute. I can remember the smell of the coal. I recall the workers that set up the chute and took it down when the bin was full. Good times from a good childhood.

I doubt that there are many homes in our area that still have coal bins and coal deliveries. It’s a little sad to know that they are gone. I can say that about a lot of things.

On a side note, this is my 250th blogpost. Thanks for continuing to read them!

I bet you thought I forgot a word in the title. If you are a Donovan fan, I know you did. But no, they don’t call me mellow yellow. Just mellow. You hear that word often as people age. Mellow. Even the word itself sounds mellow. Mellow. It’s not all jumpy and jaggedy like the word “excitable”. He was just an excitable boy, said the late great Warren Zevon.

What the heck am I talking about? I am reading a book, “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It’s about a slave in Virginia. Great book, by the way. In it, I saw these lines “I do not claim to have loved Sophia then, though I thought I did. I was young and love to me was a fuse that was lit, not a garden that was grown”. That struck a chord and took me back to my teenage years at Slatington High School.

Love as a teenage boy. A fuse that was lit. The excitement you felt when you saw her in the hall. Holding hands after school. Sitting together at a basketball game. All you could think about was her and how good she looked that day. Then when you got home and talked on the phone with her for hours, about nothing, but the hours flew by. You would write her love notes and fold them in that way we used to fold notes, long before Snapchat. You would look forward to the weekend and hope you got time alone with her at a place you would park to make out. First base. Second base! I’m not going any farther. This is a family blog. Just imagine Meatloaf and his amazing song. Yes, all of us teenage boys were looking for paradise by the dashboard light.

But, alas, those teen years are long gone. I’m single, but no longer an excitable boy. I am not looking for that love that knocks you off your feet. Like Coates said in his book, I’d like to have love grow, like a garden. A companionship, with benefits of course, I’m 68, not dead. A mellow love. Oh okay. I’ll go ahead and say it. They call me mellow yellow, quite rightly. Just waiting for saffron to come along.

Happy New Year everyone!

“Courage is knowing what not to fear.” Plato. Wow. I never expected to be quoting Plato in this blog. Yet here I am, quoting Plato. There is a reason for that particular quote. It is late Sunday night, past my usual bedtime. I am writing this post as a stalling tactic. I am dreading, and being a little fearful, about going to sleep tonight. For the last four consecutive nights I have been awakened by violent nightmares. In one, my three year old daughter throws my newborn hard against a wall. The newborn falls behind a bookcase. As I pull her out her eyes have a demonic stare. Yes, this woke me up! In another, some sort of swamp creature comes out of a Lake Nockamixon cove and takes two deer, and the woman I was walking with, into the water and they never surface. Yikes! I can’t remember the others. Probably a good thing.

Of course I googled nightmares and their causes. Not much help there. Anxiety? No more than the usual. Depression? Nope. Strange foods at strange times? No and no. Change in medications? No again. I am not a huge believer in dream interpretation, unless, of course, it is obvious. But if any of my readers would like to give it a try, I am willing to listen.

Here are some of my real life fears. I am afraid of bats and being mauled by a bear. I fear cancer. Who doesn’t? I am afraid of Alzheimer’s. I fear big dogs not on a leash. I fear dying alone. That is not a very big list. I may be missing something. But right now I have to add the fear of being awakened by a violent nightmare.

What are your fears? What are the things you think about when you are alone with your thoughts? Maybe your fear is being alone with your thoughts.

Well, I have stalled long enough. It’s time for bed. Wish me luck and a calm night’s sleep and no Edgar Allen Poe dreams for me. And again, any attempts at dream interpretation are most welcome. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz………

In a dark dusty corner of my roll top desk, in the farthest cubby to the right, lies a little blue cardboard box. The box is the size of a pack of cigarettes. That little fact about the size is important as you will soon see. I take the box out and open it maybe once a year. When I open it, it brings back a flood of memories. In the box is the closest memento I have of my dad who died thirty seven years ago the day after Christmas. It’s a Hamilton watch that was given to him by Jewel Tea Company for twenty five years of employment. It’s engraved on the back.

About ten years ago, I tried to get the watch up and running again. I thought I would wear it to have my dad close to me. Alas, it would have cost several hundred dollars to make it work. I decided to keep it just as a memento. Tough call. I really don’t have much from my dad. A few pictures, very few. I have some historical things, like Civil War draft notices, about our ancestors. But that was mostly from his mom. But I do have his watch. The watch that he wore on his wrist every day. Yet, there it is in the blue box, in the farthest cubby of a dusty corner of my roll top desk.

My dad, were he still alive, would have turned 110 last month. So, of course he wouldn’t be here now, but he was taken way too early. His smoking habit killed him. Too many L&Ms. It was a years long death of hacking coughs and difficulty breathing. Well, there is something I got from him… an aversion to smoking!! I’ve been thinking a lot about him lately as the anniversary of his death approaches.

I want to leave my children more than my dad left me. They won’t be getting any money! I want to leave them a written record of my life. I suppose this blog will be a part of that. I am starting to think about possessions I have that are important to me, so I can share them with Andy and Emma. My dad did leave me with a lot of memories. I hope my kids will be able to say that about me.

Don’t worry. I’m not depressed or anything. I tend to get nostalgic during the holiday season. I told you my dad died the day after Christmas. My mom died on Christmas Day in 1967. In spite of that, I wish you all a very merry Christmas. If you celebrate a holiday other than Christmas, I wish you lots of happiness, as well. Just think, 2021 is less that two weeks away!

I usually like watching college football better than watching the NFL. I like that the networks focus on the crowd and the band and the traditions. An example of a tradition is Penn State’s White Out. I really like at the end of a college game, when the players gather in front of the student section and they all sing the college’s Alma Mater. It seems like the song really matters to all of them.

I must be missing something. I don’t even know what Muhlenberg’s Alma Mater sounds like. Alma Mater is Latin for nourishing mother. Sounds pretty meaningful! Like if you are somewhere and you hear your Alma Mater, it would bring a tear to your eye.

I do remember my high school Alma Mater. And no, hearing it doesn’t bring a tear to my eye. It does, though, bring back great memories. Here are some verses:

Just above the winding Lehigh, Midst the mountains grand, Stands our dear old Alma Mater, Famed throughout the land. High school, high school, our own high school, dear old SHS.

In the ’80s, Slatington High School became Northern Lehigh High School. I guess they had to replace a quarter note with two eighth notes to make the S an NL in that last verse. Right, musicians?

My dad graduated from East Greenville High School, now Upper Perkiomen, in 1928. He never sang his Alma Mater to me, but here was his favorite cheer from football games: Baby in the high chair, who put him up there? Ma, Pa, Sis Boom Bah!

My how times have changed! I hope this post made you think back to your Alma Maters and that maybe it even brought a tear to your eye. Also, maybe you will not sleep tonight wondering who DID put the baby in the high chair!

I won’t be the first to link the four seasons of weather to the development of ourselves as human beings. I won’t be the last. Simon and Garfunkel did it in “Hazy Shade of Winter”. John Denver made the link in his beautiful “Season’s Suite”. Even Vivaldi had his turn with “Four Seasons”. One musical group who did not do this is The Four Seasons themselves! Frankie Valli was never really that deep.

This blogpost is my attempt to make that link using my own life as it has moved through the seasonal calendar.

Spring for me was wonderful, much like spring is for most of us. Full of growth and potential. Full of color and growing warmth. Spring in my life stretched from the day I was born until I graduated from high school. I grew up in a great little town. I got a good education in that same town. My family provided love and care. It was growing up in Slatington, in my family, that allowed me to confidently sow seeds of my future in the fertile spring soil of my little part of Pennsylvania.

Summer for me was productive and filled with growth. Much like the farmers fields of Washington Township grew in corn and potatoes, I grew as a husband and father. I grew as a worker, as my career took many turns. Those turn led me into the field of psychology where I feel I am doing my best work. My summer was filled with work and play. My summer was filled with energy and production. My summer ended when I reached the age of sixty. It was then that things started to change.

Autumn set in at sixty. Just like we begin to think of harvesting and growth slowing and then ending, I began to look back at my life with regrets and with pride. I was ready to slow down, but not stop. Just like we look at the changing leaves and those beautiful colors, I could look at my life and wish it could stay this way forever. But like they reminded us in Game of Thrones, winter is coming.

I am sixty eight and enjoying my autumn. But I know things are changing again. My sleeping patterns are changing. It takes me longer to recover from aches and pains. While still healthy, it takes much more work to stay that way. The hair I have left is growing whiter! My intention is to enjoy fall as long as I can. My intention is to hike and swim and read and camp and continue to explore my spiritual side and the wonders of the world. I intend to fight off winter. I’ll be like Dylan Thomas when he said to “rage against the dying of the light”.

There you have it. The four seasons of me. Trying to stay stuck in season three. I’d love to hear how you are handling the changing seasons of your life.

Not the sitcom that made Kirk Cameron and Alan Thicke big stars. But wasn’t Joanna Kerns beautiful?! Why yes! She was! I’m talking about the growing pains I get every time I drive by Lehigh Valley Hospital Cedar Crest. But first, a little background.

My favorite early childhood book is “The Little House, her story” by Virginia Lee Burton. It’s the story, told by a pretty little house on a hill in the country. It’s the sad story about how everything grew up around her and toward the later pages she is a frowning house in the middle of a big polluted city. She is rescued by a young family and moved to a little hill in the country. A fairy tale!

More background. As you all know, I grew up in Slatington and had to travel to Allentown for a lot of things. Back in my childhood, that drive was the occasional little village surrounded by woods and fields and more woods and fields, then Allentown. Now that same drive is almost housing development after housing development. Those woods and fields are almost as rare as the pheasants that used to live there.

Back to my ride past Lehigh Valley Hospital Cedar Crest. I remember when it was one building, called ASH, Allentown Sacred Heart Hospital. Sacred Heart bailed and has since gone out of business. Lehigh Valley Hospital has grown into a sprawling, massive, still growing complex. The same can be said for Lehigh Carbon Community College. I went there in 1970. It was one square building. Now the campus contains at least twenty buildings with locations elsewhere as well.

The Lehigh Valley Metropolitan area has grown to about a half million people, more than live in the city of Pittsburgh!

This also reminds me of my life. It started out so simple and all of my needs were taken care of by others. The came school, then a career, then marriage, then children, and all of the increasingly complicated responsibilities that come with all of that. Sometimes I feel like that little house that Virginia Lee Burton wrote about so long ago. How will my story continue? Will it be like author Burton’s fairy tale ending….for me, a cabin on a lake far from civilization? Or will my story be the story of Lehigh Valley Hospital…. increasingly complex and people filled? Time will tell. Either way, it’s all a wonderful adventure!

For all of my readers who grew up in the ’60s, you may be thinking of Jay and the Americans after reading that title. “This magic moment, so different and so new, was like any other, until I kissed you”. Good stuff. But no. I’m not writing about Jay. I’m not writing about the Americans. I do want to write about moments though. They are, after all, what our life is made of. Moments, both happy and sad and somewhere in between.

When we think about moments, we usually think about the big ones. First day of school is often our first one that we are aware of. That is followed by confirmation, first day of junior high (middle school for you younger folk), first date, first kiss, first you know what, and graduation day. Then the moment of truth when a hand is asked for, or given, in marriage. A big moment in most lives is the moment your first child is born. Just wow!

After that your biggest moments usually involve accomplishments of your kids and grandkids. But there is that last day you walk out of your career and into the whole new world of being a senior citizen. Hopefully, at that time, you don’t have too many “senior moments”.

But if you put all of those moments together, they would take up about 1.35% of the moments you get in life. What about the rest of them? Buddhists will tell you to be in each moment. Employers will tell you to be productive in each moment. Retailers will be telling you to spend in each moment. Customer service representatives will be telling you to please hold for those moments. But what you tell yourself in those moments is what really matters.

I have THIS moment. I just had a delicious breakfast. I am finishing this post which about sixty of you will read (thank you!). I am healthy. I have no need to shave today. The weather is perfect for this hiker. I have people who love me. I have a job that challenges me in a good way. I am content. Right now, what I choose to do with the rest of my day is entirely up to me!

A good adjective to describe this moment is MAGIC. I hope each of you enjoy the magic moments of your day and your life.

Don’t look for that on Spotify. I’m pretty sure you won’t find it. Of course, it could be a country song. Does it sound a little like the title of the soap opera “All My Children”? It should. This was the second place title possibility of a family newsletter I started over thirty years ago. The winning title was “By George!”. “All Bessie’s Children” was the pick of family members whose last name was not George. That would be my sister’s wing of our family. The Georges outnumbered the Semmels and “By George!” was born. By the way, Bessie was my mom!

“By George” lasted about five years. It carried family news and profiles. It contained recipes and reviews. It told family history and traditions. It was fun to put together. I was thinking about it recently when I saw some pictures on Facebook of a great great niece of mine whom I’ve never even met. Facebook is the new “By George”. But something is missing. What happened to that sense of family that at one time was so important? Maybe other families have kept this going. I think, though, it is a natural progression because of a family’s size, expanding geographical distances, and technology.

My mom and dad had five children. Those five had 15 children. Those fifteen had 22 children. And here is where I’ve lost track (except for pictures I see on Facebook and Instagram). That is a lot of people to keep “close knit”. My family, all Bessie’s children and more, are and have been located across the United States. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, California, Colorado, and Oklahoma. The military has sent some overseas. Those are some long distances to keep a family “close knit”.

As I look back on my ever shortening life, I often think of those times. The times of “By George!” and before. I love my family, as much as I ever did, but somehow I don’t feel connected to this expanded family as I did when my nieces and nephews were kids and young adults. I suppose that is natural. I’ve written often in this blog about how much I like change. Well, this is one change I don’t like.

My mom and dad were both born over 100 years ago. This scattered and expanding family is part of their legacy. I wish they were both here to see All Bessie’s Children. I know they would be proud. I am proud as well. Proud to be a George. Proud to have grown up during a wonderful time. Proud to have created the awesome family newsletter, “By George!”.

Keep your family close. Like Bob Dylan said “The Times ,They are A’changin”.

I can remember, back in elementary school, getting to the lesson on magnets. I also remember being lost from the very first mention of poles. I wasn’t then, nor am I now, a sciencey person. But the topic of magnets seemed to give me the most problems. Here is what I take from it. With magnets, likes repel and oppostites attract. Okay. But why? Then throw in the magnetic forces of the earth and something called electromagnets, and I am lost in the wildnerness.

But the thought of magnets intrigue me in a different context. We are drawn to things, like a magnet. Whether it is a lover, a hobby, a sports team, or even a particular food, we are attracted to some and not to others.

Here is another magnet context. Slatington High School, 1970. My beloved school sits on top of a steep hill at the very end of Diamond Street. Every morning it acted like a giant magnet drawing kids from near and far. The power of that magnet brought my classmates from Slatedale, Emerald, Friedens, Walnutport and both uptown and downtown Slatington. The power of that magnet crossed rivers and county lines! That magnet was far reaching in other ways too. The long lasting effects of friendships made, lessons learned, and, and in some cases, lifelong loves begun, started with that magnetic draw of Slatington High School.

Now, back to real magnets for a minute. I like car magnets and I had quite a collection on the back of my Kia Soul, like the ones you pick up in a souvenir shop when you visit someplace new. A little over a year ago, I traded in my Kia Soul for a Subaru Crosstrek. Explain this please, all you sciencey people. Why don’t my magnets stick to the Crosstrek!? Is Schnecksville too close to the Earth’s magnetic pole? I don’t think so, but then again, I don’t understand magnets!