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BACK IN THE CHAIR

In many of my older postings I used to make reference to my “thinking chair.”  It wasn’t really any kind of extraordinary chair and it certainly didn’t have any special or magical thought process (that was me) embedded within its structure.  Truth be told, it was an ordinary lawn chair that sat out on the patio on the back side of my house.  One true note, however, I did spend a lot of time sitting in it and, yes, thinking as I did.  Much of that thinking wound up being fodder for my postings.

I don’t spend as much time in my thinking chair since we moved across the state over two years ago. Oh, it’s still here and rests out back on our lanai.  I liked its environment on the other house’s patio more than I do where it sits on this house’s lanai.  I think it may have something to do with “lanai” vs. “patio” which I view similar to the old vase/vahse conflict by which proper pronunciation or choice of word is dictated by cost. But I digress.

The entire thinking chair process has been upended by my physical move across the state from the dark side.  That’s what Rosemarie calls the East coast of Florida. The transition has been a bit traumatic, especially since we lived in the first house for over 28 years and even more especially since it was here that I took the infamous fall that physically changed everything we used to think of as normal.

It has all resulted in a sort of domino effect in that I do not spend nearly close to the same amount of time sitting in my thinking chair since the move.  Therefore, I am not thinking as much, hence the reduced amount of fodder produced and this has led to far less blogging on my part.

Anyway, I was sitting in my thinking chair today and this is what I wound up thinking about. The irony is, it still led to fodder for a posting on my blog…whoddah thunk?

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IAN’S LESSON

It has been an eventful week to say the least.  If you have never lived in a hurricane environment it may be difficult for you to really grasp the torment mother nature can thrust upon you.  I suspect those of you who live in areas susceptible to earthquakes or tornadoes share the experience.

I have lived in the southern regions of Florida since 1983 and hurricanes, by now, are simply an element that residents here learn to live with.  Some of us take hurricanes seriously and easily reach panic stage as soon as one launches off the coast of Africa and heads in our direction.  Others pay little attention to them, putting off any kind of preparation until the skies begin to darken and the hardware store and supermarket shelves have been stripped bare of supplies.  Still, a vast number of others rest somewhere in the middle, respecting the seriousness of a hurricane, but withholding response to an appropriate time when they feel it’s when.   I am among this group.

Hurricanes are always threatening, that’s for sure, no matter what the category.  I’ve had as much damage to my property by a mere tropical storm as I have had with a “cat 3” hurricane.  Like a real estate market, how well you survive a hurricane is a matter of location, location, location. Then too, the location may have been good one minute and terrifying the next.

My location for Hurricane Ian was pretty much a no-mention in the week leading up to storm’s landfall on the Florida coast. Watching the infamous Cone of Death (as we hurricane vets call it) I lived clearly on its edge—smack dab on its edge!  But that wasn’t enough to warrant the slightest mention by the media and, as such, my concern was a little bit slack.  As it turned out, my community took a solid punch, being situated nary a sneeze south of Ian’s bullseye, Fort Myers.  I live in Naples.

Our house is four miles in from the Gulf of Mexico and that was just enough to be excluded from the evacuation zone and maybe the serious flood zone too.  Yes “maybe,” but this was all determined late, too late for me to make a worthy decision to flee or stay.  So we were stuck—at our age and physical state this was not the best circumstance to be left with.  I loaded up the most interior room, the master bath, with everything I could think of in the event we had to assume the hunker down option. 

I won’t keep you in suspense, we survived without so much as a windburn.  In fact, this was one of the least upsetting hurricanes I’ve ever lived through, even though it was the scariest.

And when the winds died down and Ian’s true wrath was realized just minutes away, just down the road a bit from where I live, did I realize like never before how lucky I was to escape this particular hurricane.

If I’ve learned one thing from living in Hurricane alley, it’s that every storm has its lesson.  I won’t poo-poo the weather folk–in fact I think they do a reasonably good job at predicting where these storms will go.  What puzzles me is why people who are warned to get out choose to stay.  I wasn’t told to leave and, but for a little last-minute wiggle in Ian’s path, I certainly would have been instructed to evacuate, and I certainly would have. 

Ian’s lesson for me: when in doubt, get out.  This means many of us who live in a hurricane zone should really spend as much time planning and preparing for an escape trip in addition to our prep to stay.  Leaving is rarely planned for and becomes a last-minute, cumbersome decision to make because there are too many unknowns. The car should be packed and a destination pre-arranged. Because it’s given such little thought in advance of the storm’s arrival, the “leave” option is usually not chosen despite the fact the correct answer is right there in front of you, my friend…it’s blowin’ in the wind.

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WHAT’S IN YOUR DRAWERS?

I stopped procrastinating the other day and finally got around to cleaning up my work area.  This includes my desk, its top and its drawers.  Mind you, I am a pretty compulsive neatnick, at least that’s my default setting.  But I am not perfect. I will, at times, ignore my orderly tendencies and leave a pencil out of the pencil cup or maybe go so far as to leave an empty ice cream bowl on top of the printer…stuff like that. 

That said, even I was surprised how messed up I allowed my desk drawers to become over the past few years.  Lots of things were not in the drawer in which they belonged.  A few sparse cookie parts populated the bottom of at least three drawers.  I even discovered a pair of scissors I thought was (were?) long gone.  The drawers were so far out of control I considered declaring a state of emergency and applying for a government grant to restore them to their original pristine state.  There were ten drawers all toll with only one that didn’t need any attention.  So, I had my work cut out for me and I decided right there and then I would put them back in order.  It would take me the rest of the day.

There were lots of decisions to be made. I wanted to keep related items together like the stapler, electric pencil sharpener, tape dispenser, for example.  I have all kinds of paper—different stock, different colors and finishes. I have a rather large collection of envelopes too.  I use these materials for marketing my books. Then too, I stopped buying greeting cards years ago.  Store-bought cards frustrate the hell out of me.  Nine times out of ten it is impossible to find the card you want.  So, I began making my own.  They are always personalized for the people receiving them.  Usually, they feature a short poem and some kind of illustration like their picture.  All the grandkids and some of my grownup friends now “expect” to get a “marccard” on their birthday.  That’s what I call them.  They even have a logo as pictured above.

As I have a habit of being ruthless when I clean, I went on a royal purge in each drawer. No one will ever accuse me of hoarding. If it was something that met my criteria, it went directly into the trash pronto, before I gave myself time to second guess.  The criteria? First, it had to be something I hadn’t used since I put it in the drawer a few years ago and, second, it wouldn’t be worth much or worth the trouble, if I attempted to sell it.  The things I kept went back into the desk, though not necessarily the same drawer.  I have to tell you, there is nothing more satisfying to an anal compulsive type than to have his/her stuff “anal compulsive-ized,” meaning it’s organized, ready for use and properly stored in its own assigned location.

There was one reoccurring issue that kept coming up and that was loose change, mostly pennies.  Pennies and I don’t get along.  I find them a nuisance.  In fact, I think the government should discontinue making pennies.  They just get in the way and serve no practical use except to fill up penny jars.  I just toss them in a drawer and hope they go away.

Pennies were once a critical commodity, especially for kids who used them to buy penny candy.  But penny candy isn’t around much anymore.  So, it was no wonder I kept finding pennies in all the drawers and since they met the criteria, more or less, into the trash they went…until I began remembering. 

Somewhere along one of the pathways of life, I vaguely recall that trashing U.S. currency is a crime. I bet it’s probably punishable by as much as ten years in jail and being fined three hundred gazillion dollars and 99 cents.  Believe it or not, I went digging through the trash and retrieved the coins I had thrown out. No wonder they put Honest Abe on this coin.  Hmmmm, what to do?  A penny for your thoughts…but just a penny. I’m not asking for your two cents….

*****

Married Married

When I am asked if I am married I usually respond by saying, “Yes, I am married married.” I say it twice because it’s my way of stressing how long. “Exactly how long?” you ask. Well it just so happens Rosemarie and I are married 55 years today, September 9th.  Happy anniversary to us and, yes, that’s us in the picture back in 1967. Now, I cannot razzle-dazzle you with expert marriage counseling but if you want some tips on making your duo dynamic, read on.

There are many ingredients that must blend in just the right way to support a thriving partnership that lasts over 50 years.  When I am asked to divulge the secret to such a long marriage as ours, I explain it all boils down to two words: “yes dear.”  That usually brings a few chuckles, but over the years I’ve learned the comment has great validity if you attribute it to both husband and wife.  Each should have a default desire to say yes to the other.  The “yes dears” need to be shared more or less equally between spouses…it’s called COMPROMISE. 

Rosemarie and I make another joke about the strength of our marital bond, one that centers on the children—we have two.  There were times that we admitted we flunked parenting and wondered why we simply didn’t settle for a nice puppy instead. I know many parents have that feeling at one time or another.  We actually used it to help make our marriage stronger, or at least last as long as it took for the kids to reach adulthood and go off on their own.  Early on, Rosemarie and I pinkly-swore that whoever even made mention of the “D” word, that person would automatically get full custody of the children.  This agreement makes a marriage rock solid.

On a more serious note, there are some critical attributes that make up the foundation of a strong relationship if it is to truly last “until death do us part.”  They read like a scout manual:  commitment, loyalty, empathy, sharing, respect and, that ultimate contrivance, The Golden Rule.  For all this stuff to work, you have to treat these words to be more than just words.  They are concepts that have to be adhered to, with guerrilla glue if necessary.  And that’s often the problem with many people—they aren’t sticky.  They give up too easily if things don’t go their way, and then off they go.  It is why I think that wedding vows today would be more accurately stated if they read “until death or divorce do us part.”

But for sure, if I were to lock in on any one “must-have” element for a lasting marriage it would have to be TRUST.  The faith in one another as husband and wife needs to be impenetrable, otherwise, TRUE LOVE does not exist and without true love there is no lasting marriage. It is as simple as that…and as difficult as that. I’ll end with a fitting note taken from that famous author, Marc Kuhn, in his book, Again…   

“True love is an inseparable bond that repels all obstacles and holds no regard for time or place. It seamlessly transcends from past to present and proceeds unimpeded into the future.

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SKULL!

I don’t drink. I never liked the taste of liquor, beer or wine. The odor of empty beer bottles piled up in the trash makes me nauseous.   Wine, meanwhile, has a medicinal taste that I find has no relationship to the word, “fine.”  And the harder stuff like scotch and bourbon? Forget it.  I hasten to add that I have absolutely no objection to people drinking, assuming they are responsible about it.

I attribute my distaste for alcohol to my genetic makeup.  Just as one’s DNA dictates every aspect of your body, well then too, I think my genes lined up in such a way that booze and I just don’t enjoy each other.  I simply…don’t… like…the…taste.  Simple as that.

I know I may have been an embarrassment to my father and some others in my family, all accomplished beer cognisors. Co-workers probably thought I was anti-social.  I admit sometimes I had given in to that pressure, usually when it involved a gathering with some form of a business setting.  I would half-fake having a drink if discretion outweighed my personal choice.

Like most people, I have my share of relatives dangling up there on the branches of my family tree who couldn’t control their drinking.  Some were able to coral their discipline, or lack thereof, to certain time periods.  Maybe they drank only on weekends or when the boss got on their nerves or, worse yet, when their spouse said “enough!”   I joke once in a while that I wish I did like to drink.  I have sorrows like anyone else and at times I’d be happy to drown them in a good bottle of booze.   In fact, the escape may do me well.

As noted, my father was a respectable beer drinker. He always had a case of longnecks in one corner of the kitchen, the odor from which left me with a fragrant and hostile memory.  As a youngster, one of my weekly chores was to gather the household trash every Sunday night and put it out for collection the next morning. Always, as part of the task, there was the sickening aroma of warm beer that dribbled on me and my clothes and would remain through the night. Oddly, despite this haunting remembrance, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second today to have the chance of sitting down and having a bottle of beer with my dad.  I know he would have liked that…and I too.

As much as I hold a certain disdain for people who cannot control their liquor, I do understand the problem.  You may laugh, but I truly have an addiction to ice cream.  I plan my life with my ice cream supply always in mind.  I monitor it regularly, ensuring that I have enough that I will not be caught with an empty stash.  Throughout the day I often stop by the freezer to spoon a much-needed dose to satisfy my craving.  There have been times when I attempted to go without ice cream, as is the case right now as I need to embark on a serious mission to lose weight.  Like an addict, I am already feeling the anxiety of my withdrawal. I have tried this before, going “cold” turkey (is there another way to give up ice cream?)  My determination usually lasts a week or two and then I fall off the cart.  This time I hope to make it longer. Wish me luck.  It’s important to my health and, hey, I’ll drink to that!

OH THE THINGS YOU CAN SEE

Once you live on the Florida coast for a few years you could find yourself taking some of nature’s best offerings for granted.  Well, not really.  You’d have to be pretty much an insensitive stone to ignore how unique and beautiful mother nature can be.  Just having an ocean sunrise or sunset available to see almost daily is a sight that never grows old. Then there’s all the wildlife that’s flying, crawling or perched just outside your doorstep. For this posting, I focus on some birds that hang out around my neighborhood…these are everyday sights where I live now, certainly not to be taken for granted by this Philly boy.

So here’s a common sight for me…but not so common really. No way can you take it for granted.

True, almost every place, be it a big city or small country town, has some kind of environmental feature to showcase.  But, based on my limited exposure, I’d have to choose the Sunshine State as having one of the most bountiful collection of animals and sites to behold.  That said, here on display are some photos I’ve taken over the years.

Seagulls, I’ve always felt, are the pigeons of the ocean beach: they don’t get much respect. Yet, how incomplete would any audio or video scene of the ocean be without their presence? If we’re walking on the beach it usually isn’t long before a seagull or two, or three, or fifty show up to check us out for any kind of food offering we might have. Or when haven’t you walked along a pier without seeing them perched atop the bollards? Here’s the after-lunch crowd on Ft. Lauderdale Beach.

And finally, below are two pictures of the famous Blue Heron, in and out of flight. To the right watching all over this, in addition to looking for a little 4-legged morsel running between the bushes, is a Red Shouldered Hawk.

These are just a handful–make that nestful–of the birdlife on exhibit every day, just outside my door. What a great treat! I wonder if the wildlife here ever reminds each other to, every once in a while, stop and smell the humans!

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TRUTH BE TOLD

Honesty, I think, is the most critical element of any relationship.  It goes hand-in-hand with trust.  People have different interpretations for honesty and trust.  Some go through life having no trouble (meaning no guilt) telling lies big and small.  Others, meanwhile, subscribe to the George Washington cherry tree standard and simply cannot bring themselves to tell a mistruth.

As a parent, I stressed honesty as a most worthy endeavor.  Sometimes I wonder if I achieved that goal.  My mother, on the other hand, did.  I’ve written about this before here on my blog, and too, in my book, Lois Unboxed.  It’s a good story worth repeating, not to mention a fond memory.

When I was a youngster, a young mother’s role was pretty much defined.  She was to stay at home and tend to the household chores and watch over the children.  My mother wasn’t buying that.  She was well educated and independent.  So, she did what came naturally: she got a job. Our neighbors probably didn’t think much of my mother as a mother.  After all, she left both my brother and me to be on our own after school until she and my dad arrived home from work.  I was eight when the routine started.  My brother was ten.  I loved it.  I developed a keen sense of independence and self-reliance that helped me get through many tough moments that followed.

What the neighbors didn’t know is that my brother and I were never really abandoned.  We had a mandatory check-in phone call to Mom upon arrival home each afternoon.  Add to that a few daily chores, including getting dinner ready for everyone, and there really wasn’t too much time for us to get into trouble.  That’s not to say we didn’t from time to time, but no more than the kids whose mothers were home.

I picked up at an early age that my mother guided my behavior pattern on a foundation of trust.  Rarely were there lectures or hard time spent confined to my room.  Instead, there was a subtle consciousness present at all times…sort of like the proverbial good and evil characters each sitting on my shoulders in easy earshot of my guilt hormones.  Mom knew well how to manipulate and control these.

A case in point was an incident that took place at a summer camp I attended when I was nine years old.  I and another camper were out exploring after dinner one night when our path led to the dining hall, now left cleaned and vacant by the kitchen staff.  Doors were never locked in this environ so when we spotted the ice cream freezer just inside, it was too much for us to resist. 

The ice cream at camp was always served in square slices with a waffle cookie on each side.  By my eyes, there were at least six hundred thousand slices in the freezer that evening so my friend and I figured our each taking one would cause no damage. 

We strolled off, onto the wooded path that led back to our cabin, licking our ice cream and feelin’ fine…until Mr. Radcliff came like a raging guerilla out from the overgrowth of bushes and trees.  Mr. Radcliff was the owner of the camp—the ultimate head counselor—and I suspect he must have just finished up writing checks to cover the monthly bills because he kept mumbling how my buddy and I had no appreciation for how much it costs to run a camp and how outrageous, how dishonest it was that we helped ourselves to ice cream. We each took a turn on Mr. Radcliff knee as he belted out on our butts an embarrassing portion of payback for our sins.

A few weeks later during one of the parents’ visiting weekends, I couldn’t find something in my footlocker that I wanted to show my mother.  I said something to the effect that not all the kids could be trusted so maybe someone took it. I cannot remember at all what it was I wanted to show her, but to this day I pretty much recall her response to what I said: “Well you should know about helping yourself to something that’s not yours for the taking.” My world collapsed. She knew. Obviously, she had to. Even though the concept of spanking was far far different from today, Mr. Radcliff certainly must have called my parents to tell them of the incident and I am quite positive my parents endorsed his handling of it. Nothing more ever was, nor had to be said about the great ice cream caper. The looks on our faces that my mother and I shared at that moment of revelation, said everything that needed to be said…for as long as I shall live.

*****

WARDROBE WOES

The subject is clothing and surprisingly how little time and money I spend on it these days—another victim of the aging process. 

I realized the other day that I do not have any formal clothes that fit me.  This is a bit unusual considering I was raised in the 50’s and 60’s when office workers scurried off to work every morning maybe not dressed for a wedding, but darn close.  If anything, my mom made sure my brother and I were always appropriately dressed for the occasion. We never lacked a nice suit, a collection of ties and a couple of white shirts, buttoned-down collar preferred.

I rarely saw my father outside the house without a tie. He’d even run weekend errands in a suit and tie.  Find a picture of a major league baseball game back in the 40’s-50’s and you’ll see almost every man in the stands is wearing a suit and tie. It was simply the way many men dressed back then.   

Like my father, I wore a suit as standard dress through most of the first half of my career.  That all changed when we moved to South Florida in the 1980’s.  After maintaining my “proper” business attire for several weeks, my boss pulled me aside and suggested I would blend in more easily, or perhaps I should say more seamlessly, if I dropped the fancy 3-piecer for a much cooler polo shirt and khaki slacks.  You know what?  He was right.  I still have 2-3 suits hanging somewhere in a closet in the house but given their age and my expanded waste line there’s no way any of them would fit.

All this surfaced two weeks ago when I was considering attending the funeral service of a former friend and colleague.  I was embarrassed to say “but I have nothing to wear!” How ridiculous is that?  It turned out my current medical limitations prohibited me from attending the service anyway. But for sure I would have had to buy some new clothes.

Fact is, my daily “uniform,” regardless of the season, is a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.  My clothing allowance has just about disappeared entirely.  I suppose if “clothes make the man” I am a bit of a wuss these days.  What is interesting is that my one-time preoccupation with looking respectable doesn’t much concern me lately.  Dressing for success just isn’t on the to-do list anymore.  I do admit, however, that even if I am dressed in a t-shirt and shorts I still have enough pride to make sure they are clean and neat, well reasonably.  In the meantime, I’ll just have to hope I have no weddings or funerals to attend.

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SHOTS FROM THE FAMILY TREE

At the moment, I am once more poking around my family tree in my on-again/off-again attempt to chronicle my family.  I am lucky to have a nice collection of photos some of which I’ll share here.  I’ve posted some of them in the past.  My mother’s side of the family tree has been filling out nicely, while my dad’s side has been elusive.  I know there was a printing company co-owned by one of my great-greats on my dad’s side and that it was located in Leipzig, Germany. I cannot help but wonder if some of the descendants in my father’s family may have been enemies we fought against in World II.

Then too, in the back of my mind is a comment my father often made, warning me that digging too deeply into the family history may only turn up a bunch of horse thieves. Low ‘n behold, among the family photos I have in my collection is this one of some of the menfolk on my father’s side.  You don’t think?  Naaaah…

Having your picture taken a few generations back was a pretty formal occurrence, certainly not the same atmosphere as today as we snap our cell phone cameras indiscriminately.  The oldest family photographs I have are those of my great grandparents on my mother’s side, Elias Harris and his wife Rachael DeGroot. She was born in 1844 and died when she was 52.  Elias, on the other hand, was seven years older than Rachael and lived until 1911, making him 74 at the time of his death.

Elias and Rachael… I don’t think they were instructed to say “cheese” when they had their pictures taken. 

Unfortunately, I never met my mother’s parents, Louis DeGroot Harris and Hanna (pictured left).  What is sad is that I remember my mother speaking of the various personalities of our family, but I never paid much attention, nor was our history ever written down.   You may not have much interest in your past at this stage of your life, but don’t make the same mistake.  Gather the info now if you still have some folks alive who have the knowledge.  I wish I had.

While there are no photos, the family tree on my mother’s side has been traced as far back as Rachael’ grandparents on both sides of her family. Her mother’s and father’s parents (my great, great, great grandparents) can be traced back to the 1700’s. Whew!

My Mom and Dad as I remember them most.

Back over to my father’s branches, here are my parents, Edward William Kuhn, Jr and Lois Harris (pictured right). And, oh yeah, another great shot is this one below of my dapper grandfather (Edward, Sr.) holding up a utility pole in downtown Baltimore.

The family tree on my father’s side can be traced back to my great x3 grandparents but I just have names and nothing else. I am hoping some newly uncovered documents have surfaced since I last searched a few years ago. 

In the meantime, I leave you with my most cherished family picture. I have posted it in the past so forgive me for hauling it out once more, but it’s just so perfect I can’t help myself.  The lady in the uniform is Aunt May.  She was one of eight (!) siblings my great, great grandparents produced in their spare time.  Aunt May was a train caller.  I can just imagine hearing her rattle off the destinations for the 8:10 from Philly to Boston with all the stops in between and ending with a crescendoing, “all aboard!”  I’d buy a ticket just to hear that!

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