Time is a Circle

2011 Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T12:52:00.000-05:00

A profound sense of emotion brought on by the death of someone dear to me, haunts me this Christmas Eve. It would be easy to turn back fifteen months and look at myself standing graveside with a small group of mourners, blame that one moment in time for how I feel. It would also be wrong.

My wife suffers from losing her mother and, too, watching, feeling helpless about the silent intensity of her father’s pain. He moves through his days with an effort weighed down by his personal suffering and loss.

My oldest daughter suffers from losing her boyfriend to a single rash act, a moment in her life so pivotal as to be staggering in its profundity.

This Christmas Eve, it seems to me, moments of the past strung together like bitter pearls of minutes of missed opportunity slowly steal the future, or, at least, tarnish the possible shine of a new day with the anger they bear with them. The mirror of images viewed so frequently becomes smeared with regret and what is then seen instead appears more like a future filled with sorrow than a chance for life’s opportunity and joys, the past a cocoon of comfort, not a smothering haven of mixed and faded memories.

Now I am not one to stare into crystal balls, or read cards spread across a tabletop. I do not attempt to convince myself that a miracle awaits around corners where demons hide to deter access. I do not believe in the simplicity of answers born from the misery of the past, or of the pretension that if I do nothing but seek solace in the errors I once made, I will somehow find the key to changing the indelible truth of it all.

Honestly, I am not sure there is such a truth, but do know the past is irrefutable. I suppose the more I stare backwards the more I see, but also see less of what was and more of what I wish could have been. Perhaps that is the way we hope to change our failures instead of learning and applying that to how we live now.

Pain seems to be more attractive, drawing us into its inescapable spiderweb of tangled horror, than the pleasure drawn from possibility is.

I do not believe that life must make some kind of rational sense, that loss stops the flow of what is good like the love surrounding me. I do not want to or need to stifle the mystery of it all. Sure pain and loss stagger me, but if that is what we live for, a reaction to that which overwhelms, instead of trying to enjoy all that remains, then I can only wonder how any person finds any joy in today, Christmas Eve.

The 2011 Christmas Story

2011-12-11T10:20:00.005-05:00

Death and Christmas seemed incompatible. Yet as I stood at the foot of the grave, still unmarked by a headstone, acceptance quivered around me as if riding the thin snowflakes as they landed like individuals determined to blanket the past.

It bothered me that I would no longer hear her voice, her footsteps as she entered the room where we waited. It bothered me that seasonal customs suddenly seemed more about who she was and what she had wanted when alive. Did we ever want something else? Was her desires a definition of us, our beliefs, too? Had her past determined her future so thoroughly that she could not redefine it for herself, as we seemed unable to do for ourselves?

Perhaps she knew more about living, or more about acceptance. Her life led her through a time and places long gone. Neither offered experiences we could meld into our own without her there to show us the way.

I brushed the accumulating snow with the edge of my boot as if attempting to draw a snow angel without the commitment of laying in it. Then drew a weak Christmas tree shape and knew that I wanted to ignore my feelings instead of sorting through how crippled I felt by them.

There was a chance, I knew, that the true meaning of Christmas was locked into experiences and memories of Christmas' past that I suddenly felt I no longer knew how to access. How sad was it that I felt the season was now an aimless trek from store to store, with a brief visit here and there. The droning overhead music sounded trapped in a bubble that appeared on an earlier date each year. The songs ran together without definition.

A cold wind snapped at the collar of my coat. I stuffed my hands into my pockets hoping for some warmth and knew the warmth I needed came from somewhere else.

The wreath I brought with me looked festive, colors brilliant. Unlike the withered wreath forgotten on a marked grave in the back of the cemetery. That one seemed as old as I felt.

I squatted, and smoothed the snow off the red ribbon, then quickly jammed my hand back in my pocket.

Behind me, a car horn sounded impatiently, along with the roar of an engine, chirping tires. Even a place as remote as a cemetery offered little escape from the bleating crowds that did not care for meaning beyond the gifts they bought and received.

Expression sat in ribbon festooned boxes, piled under decorated trees that, come the day after Christmas, meant nothing more than landfill.

I began to understand what truly bothered me. I was feeling that there was no reason to celebrate Christmas. All the effort provided nothing. We stress giving as the meaning for the season, yet it seems that it's receiving we care most about.

I don't think she ever felt that way. I think she understood giving in a way others did not.

Giving to receive is not giving, but is receiving only.

Okay, I thought. Maybe that's part of it, a place to start.

The snow fell steadily, thicker flakes that piled up and buried my drawn tree. I could feel it on my head, trickling down my neck and with a final quiet message I did not want to speak aloud, I turned and walked the snow buried path and hoped I could now begin to find a Christmas I might call my own.

Alien Pod Lands on Thanksgiving Day

2011-11-26T13:29:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving Slaughter

2011-11-24T08:09:00.000-05:00

Here in coastal south carolina, the only species on planet Earth that kills for joy, for pleasure - humans - are blasting 14 ounce ducks to death with 12 gauge shotguns.

And we wonder why we cannot live in peace.
God wept.

Empty celebrations

2011-11-23T13:15:00.000-05:00

My yearly update for 11-11-11

2011-11-12T09:49:00.003-05:00

Our families veterans from the first war through Vietnam:

240 years of American wartime veterans from our families as of 11 November 2011

Morris, Lewis
Captain
NJ Militia, Continental Army
Revolutionary War

Pangborn, Lines KIA (Died while on guard duty 30 Dec. 1781)
Private, NJ Militia
Revolutionary War

Pangborn, Nathaniel
Private, NJ Militia
Revolutionary War

Herbert, James
    Private NJ Militia, Continental Army
    Revolutionary War

Herbert, Thomas
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Crawford, William
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Suydam, Richard
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Hillyer, John
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Hillyer, William
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

VanDeventer, Peter
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Emley, Jonathan
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Emley, Joseph
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Emley, Samuel
    Private NJ State Troops
    Revolutionary War

Morris, Joseph
Private, Infantry
NJ Indian War 1791, War of 1812

Schwarz, Hermann
Private, 12th Calvary Regiment (New York)
Grand Army of the Republic
Civil War

Wilson, Anson
    Seaman, Navy
    Grand Army of the Republic

Wilson, Edward
    Private, Infantry
Grand Army of the Republic
    Civil War

Schliessmann, John Joseph
Pvt Co A 146th Regiment Indiana Infantry
Grand Army of the Republic
Civil War

Schliessmann, Philip
Pvt Co H 21st Infantry Regiment
U. S. Army
1875-1879

Steiniger, Louis P.
    Pvt. US Army
    World War I

Lappe, Frank Emil
    Pvt. US Army
    World War I

Koch, William
    Pvt. US Army
    World War I

Morris, William
    Pvt. US Army
    World War I

Schliessman: Henry Hugo
Battery A 5 B Trench Artillery
PFC US Army
World War I

Schliessman, John
US Army
World War I

Schliessman, Louis
23 Co. MT Detachment
Pvt US Army World War I

Schliessmann: Peter
US Army
World War I

Schliessmann William (wounded in action)
    8 Co. 152 Dep. Brigade / Co. F 315 Infantry
Pvt US Army World War I

Lappe, Charles H.
    WO US Army
    World War II

Lappe, Herman C.
    Warrant Officer US Army
    World War II

Schliessman, Charles
    Warrant Officer US Army
World War II

Schliessmann, John J. Jr
SSGT US Army
World War II

Schliessman, Lawrence F. Sr
CPL US Army Air Corp
World War II

Schliessman, Martin A Jr
Private US Army
World War II

Schliessmann. W.E. (KIA - Killed in Action)
    PFC US Army
    World War II

Schliessman, Walter H
National Guard
World War II

Schliessmann, Donald Sr.
    Captain US Army Medical
    World War II

Schliessmann, Robert Mark
    CWO4   US Army
    World War II, Korea

Wilson, Louis Philip
Private US Army
Occupied Japan Post WWII

Cater, Alma Schliessman
    LTC US Army
    Korea, Vietnam

Schliessman, Edward
    US Army
    Vietnam

Schliessmann, Donald Joseph Jr
    US Army
    Vietnam

Schliesman, Jerrold J. K.I.A. (Killed In Action)
Sgt US Army
B Company1ST Battalion 5th US Calvary
Vietnam

The Simple Request of Why

2011-07-18T09:25:00.000-04:00

The Simple Request of Why
Gabriel F. W. Koch

Strong wind carried scents of Queen Anne's Lace, layered over freshly cut Rosemary. I was then a boy in search, but not aware if I would discover something worthy. I just knew the search was my quest.

Each day I asked myself why, but could not always put words behind the query so why hung as a suspended moment that enticed the need to search further.
Wandering through forests not yet tamed by metal dozers of economic promise, a falling leaf, a rustled branch, or sparkling water in a small pond I felt certain lay as an undiscovered find. Yet why remained elusive, like a shadow seen at noon not at midnight. I knew it would reappear at sunrise.

Silent examination, patience's companion, rode my shoulder when I left nature's protection as if it knew I needed advise, or guidance when passing along trails trod by many people before me.

There was deep meaninglessness to their civilized hast, a confusion of chatter fired out like static lines of invisible whys. I was not sure they cared for their answers, but rather sought a definition for escape. The people around me seemed to cling to the refuge their questions wove around them like a garden spider's five-foot web.

The search walked me through childhood, carried me into manhood until confronted with an answer I did not anticipate.

In war, I expended ammunition at an often-unseen enemy while we both responded to the call of life. Why never left me, yet again never resolved, but the silence after conclusion rang with repercussions. The why of war bridges reality and passes into severed spirit. The unseen blood left dripping is like the breeze bearing gifts of Queen Anne's Lace, and freshly cut Rosemary, impossible to recapture and hold on the palm of peace, but balances perfectly on a blade of thorn.

Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved.

The Spider, Kurt Vonnegut, and Life

2011-03-17T10:44:00.003-04:00

I do not wax as eloquently as many other writers. The words do not slide from brain to fingertips, but require a forced effort that feels a bit painful at times. I’m slightly dyslexic, hate then and than, and find commas troubling.

A Kurt Vonnegut fan asked him to write down where he got his ideas. Very successful writers hear questions like this with what must be a tiring amount of regularity. I suppose wannabe writers hope to glean a thread of the mystery behind success, hoping it will appear in the response so they can then weave that thread through the tapestry of their lives and, therefore, succeed themselves.

Kurt Vonnegut normally replied with a humorous retort about how, as a young man, he quickly learned he was not good at anything else. I always enjoyed that answer, but once, if not more, he responded with what may’ve been closer to the heart of his need to write, because all true writers sit before a keyboard for one reason alone. They must write, or wither. It's an emotional drive with roots in places that surprises some people, and often ourselves too.

The response he wrote regarding his source of ideas, that I found terrific enough to have it hanging on the wall of my office is this:

“Where do I get my ideas from? You might have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music.

“I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.”

I agree, and I agree and write because I would rather not wither and die, because civilization depends on the words and ideas of those driven to express them in whatever way possible.

My wife and I have traveled through the last two plus years ducking and dodging life’s deadly assault. She attended six funerals since 2009, family and very close friends. I was with her for four of them. There would’ve been a seventh, but my dear uncle Louis Wilson died in Vermont during the middle of winter.

His death was brutal for me, made more so by the passing of my wonderful mother-in-law. Losing two souls like them was the same as having stars one depends on for life’s navigation suddenly, unexpectedly, extinguished. The loss left me stumbling around in a type of darkness hitherto unthinkable.

The day after my mother-in-law’s funeral, I sat on our ground floor open porch watching a creature my wife and I had nurtured and encouraged since she wove an eight foot web across the porch’s left side where it opens into the backyard.

I sat that day with a blank lined yellow pad and a pen hoping for some revelation to spring forth and save me from the pain choking my heart and mind. The golden spider, a silk weaver whose scientific name escapes me right now, stoically awaited the next insect to cross her path.

Beyond her, the sky darkened, meeting my emotions head on yet the pen remained capped and the yellow pad blank.

Long moments passed as I watched our spider wondering how she dealt with the short life bestowed on her at birth.

Then, the black sky opened and streaks of silver rain pummeled the earth. The cap came off the pen and words formed on the yellow pad.

However, it’s not the words I wrote then that I write about now. It’s the spider that needs a bit of tribute. After that terrible day, we watched and encouraged her. When she failed to get enough water because she wove her web far under the eave so rain did not reach it, we used a misting spray bottle to help her. Each time, her initial reaction was to pull back in a defensive position until she understood what we did. We talked to her before spraying and in time, it seemed, she understood that when she heard those sounds, it meant watering time. She drank greedily, using the water to carefully wash her legs and carapace. So like people in distress, fearful of outcome, longing for a comforting hug, but pulling back as if afraid the hug-giver might also clutch a knife. These are troubling times.

If the spider failed to get an insect for a day or two, we’d trap one and toss it into her web, and received the same defensive reaction from her. But she ate the insects and drank the water. Finally, she deposited eggs into an egg sack she wove. After, she looked shrunken and close to dying. We weren’t ready to lose her too, so resumed supplementing her diet and a few days later, she looked restored.

She left a total of four egg sacks, which we declared we would protect and defend after she was gone. I know that sounds ridiculous, but honestly who cares? At least, we felt, here is some life we can preserve, protect, and see develop. So unlike the people around us struggling against a machine that dissolves their freedom and independence.

The scientific community declares that animals and insects cannot understand or communicate with humans or even other animal and insect species. Yet, on what level do they understand intelligence? Human only. A catastrophic event ended the age of dinosaurs, they say, which made it possible for humans to evolve. This, to the scientific mind was a series of coincidences, not events planned by a force greater then the human mind as if no such force could exist only because the human mind declares it so. Such arrogance. Where did human thought originate?

But life, to me and what I’m writing about is not due to a series of coincidences, or the terminology of correctness such as the scientific name for the yellow garden spider. If you chose to rattle around in the cage of semantics you will miss the values of ordinary life expressed, most often, inarticulately by ordinary voices.

One morning the garden spider was gone. It was late autumn. Her life ended. We then began our daily vigilance, driving off nature’s carnivores when they approached the egg sacks. We succeeded and winter arrived, leaving the unborn to the mercy of cold weather.

Now, with the rebirth of spring, three of the four egg sacks produced dozens of tiny, and I do mean tiny, spiders. They wander around in clusters of ten to twenty, piling up at night when it is cold, and then the next day move further from their “womb”. Their goals are unknown, as is the way they seem to know what to do to reach them.

I suppose all of this has reaffirmed, for me, that life is about the living, not the dying. My father-in-law told a joke last night. It went like this:

A doctor checked on the baby he delivered earlier in the day. He leaned over the bassinet and said softly, “You’ll never escape this alive.”

We will not, not one of us. In time everything that occurs in our lifetimes will become forgotten footnotes to human history. Even the digital age will not, cannot prevent that from happening. But what each of us can do, if we chose, is live life each day with honor and dignity, care for those around us, the less fortunate, the disabled, the elderly.

The greed of the few who think they can determine our destinations should be ignored, and in time they’re squawking and maliciousness will turn to whispers and groveling under the downfall of hope’s life-affirming silver rain.

They speak and act without honor or dignity. And honestly, isn’t that just ridiculous? Like the garden spider, or Kurt Vonnegut’s dry wit, each of us should and must serve the purpose of common good -- life on Earth.

A Glimpse Into The Past

2010-12-23T13:21:00.001-05:00

I am a genealogist. Not a terribly profound statement, but by making it, I acknowledge a greater weakness. I love history, particularly forgotten family history. Nothing tells the story of a people, their country and family better than what a genealogist finds searching old handwritten documents that might normally be trashed, but, for reasons I do not care to explore right now, often are not.

Recently, I renewed my efforts on the Whalen family of Howard County, Maryland and came across the following letter. It was written by a young Rebeckah Jane Whalen to her mother after she visited her brother's ill child.

I'll let the letter tell you more, and comment after you have the opportunity to read what she wrote.

Incidentally, I asked for and received permission from a Whalen family member to post this letter.

Rebeckah, at the time she wrote the letter, was about eighteen years old. The child -- Jane Whalen -- she wrote about was just over one year old. Jane died soon after the letter was written.

Perhaps this post is not that pleasant to read, but it demonstrates several different things. Emotion communicated through writing was and is powerful. Rebeckah was clearly intelligent, loving, and badly hurt by what she saw. I know from family members that this was a major turning point in her life and, perhaps, influenced many decisions she made afterwards.

Also, I think this is very pertinent now, and less obvious too. The digital age will not produce anything like it. One hundred years from now, Tweets, emails, and text messages, etc., will be long gone and long forgotten.

History is better served when written in a format that will not be lost or altered to please those who follow.

240 years of American wartime veterans from our families as of 11 November 2010

2010-11-07T07:05:00.002-05:00

Morris, Lewis
Captain
NJ Militia, Continental Army
Revolutionary War

Pangborn, Lines (Died while on guard duty 30 Dec. 1781)
Private, NJ Militia
Revolutionary War

Pangborn, Nathaniel
Private, NJ Militia
Revolutionary War

Herbert, James
    Private NJ Militia, Continental Army
    Revolutionary War

Herbert, Thomas
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Crawford, William
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Suydam, Richard
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Hillyer, John
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Hillyer, William
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

VanDeventer, Peter
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Emley, Jonathan
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Emley, Joseph
    Private NJ Militia
    Revolutionary War

Emley, Samuel
    Private NJ State Troops
    Revolutionary War

Morris, Joseph
Private, Infantry
NJ Indian War 1791, War of 1812

Schwarz, Hermann
Private, 12th Calvary Regiment (New York)
Grand Army of the Republic
Civil War

Wilson, Anson
    Seaman, Navy
    Grand Army of the Republic

Wilson, Edward
    Private, Infantry
Grand Army of the Republic
    Civil War

Schliessmann, John Joseph
Pvt Co A 146th Regiment Indiana Infantry
Grand Army of the Republic
Civil War

Schliessmann, Philip
Pvt Co H 21st Infantry Regiment
U. S. Army
1875-1879

Steiniger, Louis P.
    Pvt. US Army
    World War I

Lappe, Frank Emil
    Pvt. US Army
    World War I

Koch, William
    Pvt. US Army
    World War I

Schliessman: Henry Hugo
Battery A 5 B Trench Artillery
PFC US Army
World War I

Schliessman, John
US Army
World War I

Schliessman, Louis
23 Co. MT Detachment
Pvt US Army World War I

Schliessmann: Peter
US Army
World War I

Schliessmann William (wounded in action)
    8 Co. 152 Dep. Brigade / Co. F 315 Infantry
Pvt US Army World War I

Lappe, Charles H.
    WO US Army
    World War II

Lappe, Herman C.
    WO US Army
    World War II

Schliessman, Charles
World War II

Schliessmann, John J. Jr
SSGT US Army
World War II

Schliessman, Lawrence F. Sr
CPL US Army Air Corp
World War II

Schliessman, Martin A Jr
World War II

Schliessmann. W.E. (KIA - Killed in Action)
    PFC US Army
    World War II

Schliessman, Walter H
National Guard
World War II

Schliessmann, Donald Sr.
    Captain
    World War II

Schliessmann, Robert Mark
    CWO4   US Army
    World War II, Korea

Wilson, Louis Philip
Private US Army
Occupied Japan Post WWII

Cater, Alma Schliessman
    LTC US Army
    Korea, Vietnam

Schliessman, Edward
    US Army
    Vietnam

Schliessmann, Donald Joseph Jr
    US Army
    Vietnam

Schliesman, Jerrold J. K.I.A. (Killed In Action)
Sgt US Army
B Company1ST Battalion 5th US Calvary
Vietnam

Schliessmann, Lawrence F
    Sgt US Army
3/60th Infantry 9th Division/493 MI
    Vietnam

Autumn's dawn fog on the inlet creek

2010-11-06T10:04:00.000-04:00

In the Whisper of Your Passage

2010-07-30T12:18:00.002-04:00

Wildflower meadows combed the walls of the valley, flowing to meet the meandering river below. No trail marked my passage, no bent green blade, fallen leaf, or barked limb. Birds toiled their world, feeding fledglings, mending nests, bathing in dusty earth. If they noticed my presence, I did not influence them.

At water's edge, toads and distantly, bullfrogs chirped and grunted speaking language unknown by me but somehow as haunting as a quiet primal flute whistling the lamentations of youth bygone. Dragonflies wove wings of crystal sunshine spiraling to seek their destinies.

Higher on the valley wall, berries sprayed the thorny ridge of its backbone. Their red blue vitality evident between my fingers, staining today with yesterday's promise.

I wandered over and through my temptation, stopping, sampling, hoping to learn more, knowing the lesson past, that time taught all.

Higher still, oak and maple boughs bore the rewards of summer's fullness, shading, nurturing, providing. Scurrying among them, life raced along unaware of passage, unaware of endings, or the promise of new beginnings.

I knew I would do well to heed those lessons. Even when turning in confusion's circle, I move in but one direction. I may see all around me, but miss what is vital. Unless I focus to ask the question, I most desire to know.

Through mourning, I celebrate life, as songbirds voice afternoon's glory, and the dove the break of dawn.

Copyright Larry Schliessmann July 31, 2010
All Rights Reserved

20 Winters Later . . .

2010-02-13T14:45:00.006-05:00

In 1989, when I first moved to South Carolina Hurricane Hugo slammed ashore just north of where I lived in Hilton Head. Come Christmastime, since I was alone feeling homesick, I went up north to visit my parents.

Hilton Head was buried in snow, New Jersey not a flake.

Now 20 winters later, at last!

Some events are worth waiting for.

The Two That Got Away

2009-12-09T07:34:00.001-05:00

The week after Thanksgiving. . .

"So, you hear the one about the hunters?"

"No, tell me."

Two hunters walked into a bar. . ."

Teddy Roosevelt and the 1907 New York Herald

2009-10-07T14:48:00.010-04:00

The first president to understand the importance of working class Americans was TR. No wonder he was adored by so many.

Here are two original cartoons from the 1907 New York Herald Newspaper.

This is the lighter side of politics. Yes, that's what I said and isn't it about time we all lightened up?

Good, now read and enjoy.

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Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina Rationing Health Care

2009-10-01T12:23:00.007-04:00

Two months ago, my wife and I began health care coverage with Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina. The monthly payment was $499.00 for $5000.00 deductible on a 60/40 plan, which means after the deductible amount is met, they pay 60 we pay 40%.

Today, I received the pictured letter in the mail, notifying me our monthly payment amount would increase to $528.00, or about a 6% increase.

We have not used our Blue Cross Blue Shield health care, period. Not once for any reason.

Along with the increased monthly payment amount, Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina will now be rationing MRI, MRA, CT, and PET procedures. Read the letter I've posted to learn more.

We need the public option to stop this. But do not count on South Carolina's U.S. Senators, or Republican Congressmen, they receive serious campaign contributions from the heath care industry.

Note this too:

Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina overcharged Medicare 6 million dollars to pay for executive pensions. This in one of the states with the highest number of uninsured, one of the worst overall health care systems in the country. However, BCBS CEO is one of the best-paid and financially compensated HMO executives in America.

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Fear is not Freedom

2009-08-09T06:59:00.009-04:00

Fear is the mind killer, Frank Herbert wrote. However, fear is but half the equation of domination. The second half is hopelessness.

We saw, clearly demonstrated in the early years of this century, the ease with which fear and hopelessness saturates freedom.

The insane activities of a single man ignited another's drive for revenge, which bled into the thoughts of the people. Led by his fanatic need for retribution millions clamored around his cause, feeding on the fear he stoked to maintain the frenzy of the innocent.

The fervor rose in pitch until it permeated society through the multiple channels of media driven by online faces and spaces, bloggers, and cable network news. Discussions removed from civility, evolved into catastrophic verbal brawls and occasional physical confrontation.

The death of innocents, once a rare horror viewed with complete disbelief, became commonplace as parents killed not only each other, but also their entire families without cause it seemed, or any form of justification beyond that of fear and hopelessness.

As if this was not sufficient to satisfy, leaders twisted by the quest for apocalypse targeted the welfare of the less fortunate in contradiction to their religious teacher's words. Then, they flooded other lands with the quagmire of their venomous hatred of common decency.

Spiraling in the frenzy of fear's hatred, their followers attacked any person or idea they now believed with the conviction of the insane, affronted the concepts they allegedly upheld.

The welfare and health of all citizens no longer stood as a moral foundation of freedom, but instead, according to the few leaders now on platforms of greed and personal desire for fame, undermined the principles that so many combat heroes sacrificed lives and futures to create more than two centuries earlier and since.

Solutions no longer seem to exist, excluding the most radical, which dissect the diseased remains of a nation once held in the highest esteem by all others. When finished, discard, or allow secession to root out those leaders who will call their followers to lemming-like retreats on the rock-strewn shores of religious persecution.

Those leaders, thinking themselves elite aristocrats, noblemen, and princes, will gather armies to corral and control their followers once those drones declare their error and plead with outsiders for humane retreat.

Of course, there are alternatives, but none with fear and hopelessness interwoven through the fabric of order.

Acceptance and hope, like that which created democracy from the ashes of monarchy, and the voices of men and women who understand and uphold equality and morality are what is needed now.

Yet, I now wonder if this society can be rescued from the damage severing the arteries of peaceful dialogue. A few men with wealth and power created a tidal wave, and like any tsunami, the waters of misunderstanding mindlessly roil and churn, swallowing the good and evil together.

I am afraid that the future holds only division, since the two sides now represented in town hall meetings do not care to find common ground. Each seeks the higher level, the path most walked on rather than the trail trod by those who listen to the beat of a distant, and it seems forgotten drummer. As they do, the least among us die and starve, which is the ultimate demise of democracy and freedom.
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A Soldier's Bond

2009-07-19T07:31:00.006-04:00

When I walked into his room, I knew he was dying. His face looked gaunt, as if the muscles that once pulled a frown, and parted a smile chased by laughter had dried up. Yet, he managed a weak smile when he saw me in uniform.

As I approached the side of his bed, I smelled his death as if it clung to the air around him like an apparition, patiently awaiting its final embrace. The scent of it was different from combat death. In war, death is liquid red, raw flesh, shattered bone. It smelled as if life lingered, the passing soul shocked by the awareness that twenty was the totality of its years.

He spoke softly, greeted me, and sounded as if he truly felt happy I survived something I was not sure I cared to have survived.

Survival is not living, I wanted to tell him, but he would not have understood. On the other hand, if he had, he might have misconstrued my intent.

I took his frail hand, grasped it expecting the strength it once revealed, and found him unable to grip my fingers. When I was a boy, he would act as if he planned to crush my hand, squeezing enough to water my eyes. As a master carpenter, he wielded a hammer, and I watched in awe as he drove sixteen-penny nails into two by fours with three blows.

We spoke, innocuous subjects avoiding the past. While we did, my mind wandered. Two weeks earlier, I slept in a combat zone, discussed killing the enemy with the appreciation only a soldier might comprehend. Them or us, we knew. They used the cover of night, falling rain, and boldness to assault our sandbag lined shelters.

Gunfire, artillery rounds roared at 3a.m. like locomotives racing fifty feet overhead. The heated rounds ignited air molecules as they forced their bulk along a path destined to terminate fifteen or more lives.

Since I ordered the attack, I listed with headphones to the sound of incoming, heard the heated rounds whistling to the earth as if it was a movie. They exploded over the electronic sensors planted on an enemy infiltration trail through the jungle blasting the voices I had heard minutes earlier while they talked and laughed, the voices that alerted me that the enemy moved in our direction.

I listened to them die, died with them, roughly removed the headphones and realized I could no longer see the world I knew that afternoon. Nature's darkness quivered around me, the room's light, too, seemed to fade. With a shock-steadied hand, I lit a cigarette, stared into the flame, wondered why it did not extinguish when I blew on it.

His weak fingers found strength enough to close on mine as if even though he was dying, he understood the place I had just visited. I looked into his northern German blue eyes; saw him studying me with a wisdom I once wished I might share with a man from his generation.

Now, his words did not form, but then I no longer needed them. What flowed silently between us felt stronger, like a bond given from an older man to a younger man as had been done for a thousand generations. Warriors walked the same path, through the same history, and when we glanced over our shoulders, saw those who strode before us. The trail was a long narrow corridor of time strewn with the fallen.

He did not know, that I at twenty-one knew I was older than he was, at seventy-five.

Facing death in combat left me indifferent to death outside of the battlefield. I struggled to move into a civilian life, and never again spent time with him that passed more than a casual greeting.

He died three weeks to the day after I returned home, six or more months beyond the time his doctor told him he had left to live.

And, I mourn him still.
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Spider and Snake

2009-06-25T13:38:00.003-04:00

None shall know
of the zephyr’s passage
or the secret story
its passing foretells,
it drifts through ancient rafters
rustling webs among the eaves
awakening a lazy brown spider
at the center of her tattered web,
legs flexing
fluid spinning
she dances in preparation
for the coming generation.

This homespun globe spirals
into the sun
with a lamb upon a spit
once tender flesh crackles
above glowing embers,
while the hungry sit and watch
their tired tongues flickering
in the desert sun
their stretched bodies slither and writhe
sliding over crystalline sand
as they flee the unforgiving.

Yet that glowing global ember
grows even larger
until it slowly settles in the sea
orange light spilling
drifting through the rafters
through cracks in the walls,
and the brown spider
hunger now abated
curling her legs beneath her
patiently awaits the next zephyr.

If the Past Held the Future

2009-06-15T09:09:00.005-04:00

If I strolled along the crest of hill overlooking the sand dunes hiding the beach from view, you would not see my passing. Yet, if I walked where you saw me as you had long in the past, you would not know me. Memories are cellophane wrappers carefully applied to preserve what we experienced.

They rattle when we touch them, as if in warning, telling us that if we peel away their protection, what we discover once exposed to the light of present day might not reveal the knowledge we anticipated so anxiously.

Alternatively, if knowledge was not our desire, but a comparison between then and now, we might learn that what we left behind was a tenuous crystal egg of time. Within it lies trapped the fragile innocence of youth we then believed filled with the wisdom reserved for those who lived long enough to understand the true definition of tolerance, upon, which wisdom roots itself most securely.

Moreover, if we sought fondness along with those echoing whispered promises of joy and forever, we might discover that promises were a moment's gift, and forever ended a moment later.

Haunted by the why of yesterday, we might learn that the why of today is but the precursor. Perhaps every why goes unanswered when definition is proven unnecessary. Asking may be a delay, but not a query.

The sand across the top of the dunes swirled under a stiff breeze's persuasion, rattling across my feet as I moved forward. I will not walk where you might see me. I do not want to see you. Let the rustling cellophane of memory fade as a hawk's feathers shivering the air do, when he drops to strike his prey.
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Returning from War

2009-06-08T07:21:00.006-04:00

Landing at New York's JFK airport felt normal enough. I had flown several times over the span of the previous two years. Before then, I never stepped foot aboard an airplane.

Required to wear my dress uniform, despite my formal discharge from active duty, was not bothersome. Although I'd heard of returning soldiers being spit on, cursed as baby killers, threatened too, I felt no shame for my actions. Because of that, I'd spent enough time at the PX buying every ribbon, braid, and medal I'd earned and wore them proudly as if they might shield me from something unanticipated.

I suppose, I wanted to make my WWII father proud of his only son, maybe even a little envious since the award I felt most proud of was awarded only to infantrymen who saw actual combat. Dodging bullets, or squirming in the mud while rounds hissed the air overhead. Our enemy used red tracers. Every third one lit up like Satan's saliva. Lift your head two, three inches and die.

Of course, we were not always face down in the mud. Often we gave better than we got. My greatest accomplishment, I knew as I walked along the concourse returning to life as a civilian, was that I lived to do it. The heroes did not walk, were carried under the drapery of the Stars and Stripes.

Clearly, I recall standing at the top of that last flight of steps and seeing my entire family below watching for me. At first, they did not see me. Then, my mother did and all of them did.

I also recall how I felt. Emotionless. I expected to feel joyous, wanted to feel exuberant. Even the smile that moved my mouth, failed my eyes. I looked down a flight of steps and saw strangers and I did not understand why.

There was something very wrong. Not a thing I could see really. Everyone appeared to be the same as they had looked a year earlier.

As if standing outside myself, I watched our interaction, felt myself doing the expected, heard myself speaking the proper words, but that cold calculation of the survivor witnessed this return to life without touching its warmth. Something had died within me and until that moment, I had not missed it and by then, I knew it was too late to regain it.

Perhaps my family and later my friends had anticipated actions or reactions from me that were not forthcoming. Or what they saw of me was obviously not who I'd been before joining the Army.

I did not know, but knew some impenetrable barrier erected itself between us. That's not to say they treated me differently, but yet pulled inward as if wondering who returned in my shoes.

A worm had hatched deep inside me in dark recesses where once streamers of happiness took root to radiate out in uncontrolled laughter. Childhood memories and the black footprints of their passing into oblivion absorbed more than light. I resided in a place where two of me lived.

Days into weeks, and I discarded old friends, my old employer, old girlfriend, found new people who never knew me before an M16 became my closest friend, a belt of ammunition suspended my ego.

Waking me unexpectedly proved threatening as combat wariness drove me to reach for my weapon, fight without if needed.

Dreams drove tomorrow into the trenches of yesterday's deaths. The sound of helicopters raised goose bumps as fear and readiness drilled hot pulses of adrenaline through me. I can recall falling to the floor at mealtime when someone dropped a plate and the noise explosively filled my mind with fight or flight.

The worm in my head demanded more than I had to give, and soon the only solution was attempting to drown the bastard. At first, it was beer, then whiskey, then drugs, and back to alcohol. Sleep rode waves of liquid oblivion. On the flipside, rode shimmering flames of rage.

I feared owning a gun and drove my car fast enough to rattle every loose bolt. My music was loud, insulting, ripping apart the layers of society that dared approach me.

Yet, most people who knew me never saw what I experienced, never knew of my extreme anger, the need to run, to crawl into those dark recesses, and dig archaeologically for a past that could never again exist.

Ten years. I spent ten years living as a ghost. I learned to co-exist and formed true friendships, but always the hand on my back drove me relentlessly off the path and deeper into a forest without sunlight.

Finally, I awoke in a city nearly on the opposite side on the continent. Physical pain crippled me. Crawling to the bathroom, I wept for the first time. I wept for what I'd done in war. I wept for release, wept for forgiveness, wept for the everlasting embrace of death, or the opportunity to finally, live a true life.

Begging a God I felt sure turned His back on me the first time I raised a weapon, aimed, and pulled the trigger with the intention of killing an unknown man or woman, something changed.

A spark lit the dark recesses, where childhood dreams hid under a low small bed with sailboats on the blanket, and small toy car waiting where I might reach them when moonlight woke me in the middle of the night to witness the wonders that lay entwined by billions of stars.

Hope peeled away a first onionskin layer of pain. I prayed then, feeling God's gentle and encouraging touch maybe for the first time in my life. I promised to give up using chemicals that numbed, drown, and muffled my emotions. Promised to walk whatever path He laid before me without reaching for false assistance; walk it without questioning its destination and attempting to fulfill the deeds passed to me along the way.

The pain that crippled me lifted, and I fled to the nearest emergency room. When I returned to my dreadful underground apartment, which had matched the place I lived in my mind, I did the unthinkable. I poured out six bottles of beer, and never touched one for any reason since. Promise kept.

Yet, I cannot say that the dark recesses glow only with embers of past joy, and hope for the future. The memories of war weigh like cast iron chains, and require serious effort to lift and move them at 2 a.m. An effort that those I love ease with their love, and the path lies open, fogged in by occasional doubt, but clear enough for the next step.
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Who is afraid of L Ron Hubbard?

2009-06-01T07:33:00.006-04:00

What is it about Scientology that frightens people? Especially, it seems certain Frenchmen, the Catholic Church and assorted Christian denominations.

Do they honestly believe that Scientologists want to destroy the Christian faith or the world?

After centuries of rumors and historical fact left in the wake of the Vatican and its henchmen, one might think Catholics, especially in France -- think 14th century French Inquisition -- would want to avoid closer scrutiny.

Perhaps this all sounds simplistic, but I am making a simple point. If Christians desire to eliminate every philosophy that might contradict their own religious teachings, they should start with the mirror.

Show me documentation exposing anything Scientologists have done that casts a sliver of shadow across the torrent of violence Christians committed during the fourth crusade and many times before and since then.

My experiences have brought me directly into contact with hundreds of Christians from various denominations.

In addition, I have spent time with Scientologists.

Radical Christians threaten those who disagree with them using words, and occasionally vile deeds. I have experienced this personally.

Cult Christianity demonstrated its violence in Kansas yesterday.

Never, have I read or heard about Scientologists harming another human being for any reason in any way.

* * *

Now about L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, the man who started it all. The man some people fear.

It turns out that L. Ron Hubbard was a writer first, a good one. While he wrote successfully as a young man, he discovered something he found quite disturbing. Publishers did not want to take a chance on new writers. They only wanted to publish writers they considered tried and true. Risk free sales.

He decided to change the status quo, and assisted writers he knew so they too might be published. He succeeded and perhaps because of his efforts, much of subsequent science fiction became available to the reading public. Likewise, if he had not cared, science fiction and fantasy probably would not have thrived as both have.

The success of his efforts back then, drove him later in life to again endeavor to help unknown writers become known and to have a chance at success. He created the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest.

Entry was and is free, and the winners, twelve per year, received both publication in a special volume of short stories, and a cash prize. How could he do it? He personally financed the endeavor. Then, he asked published science fiction authors to act as judges. They did.

A few years after the contest began, L. Ron Hubbard decided to add artists, and again he was a man leagues ahead of his time.

The contest became extremely successful and since its inception in 1984 has developed into the most important contest of its kind in the world.

L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was a brilliant man with a huge heart. He cared deeply about others. He did not ask for anything in return. His generosity has helped many struggling writers and artists, and outside of the Sundance Film Festival, there is nothing that compares to his efforts.

Yet, so many fear him it makes me question their values not L. Ron Hubbard's values. His actions have shouted across the years since his demise. The philosophy he created, Scientology is also part of his legacy. It too has helped hundreds live a better life guided from within not without.

I am not a scientologist.

However, my personal experience with Scientologists came when the contest administration team flew me to Los Angeles to receive my award for being one of twelve writers to win the Writers of the Future contest in 2004.

I went without preconceived expectations. I am not driven particularly by religion, politics, and or structured prejudices. I do not mean that as an indictment, but as a statement of my beliefs.

I have my own philosophy for life, part of which is to attempt to keep an open mind, learn, and do what I am here to accomplish even if I do not understand what that might be. Narrow thoughts lead to a narrow unfulfilled life.

Within two days of my arrival in LA, I had the distinct feeling that I associated with some of the finest people I might ever know. It was not just, because of how they treated my wife, and me, which was exceptional. It was the way they conducted themselves, worked together as if meshed by something more than employment that radiated from them and led me to believe that they knew something about themselves and living, which I did not know about me.

Later, I wondered how I might have reacted if a church taught me to fear Scientologists. Then, I knew the answer. No one who could fear people as kind and generous as those that I met in LA -- people very much like L. Ron Hubbard -- would consider writing science fiction or fantasy.

Thank you, L. Ron Hubbard! I knew there was an answer.
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Psalm for a Lost Seeker

2009-05-08T13:43:00.008-04:00

I wanted to call across time while the music played a lonely haunting cry through the mouths of long wooden pipes. Their hollow whistling notes seemed to beckon to love lost, like forlorn hearts.

Their chiming echoes calling, "Seeker, can't you hear me?"

The musician was not visible. The tune heard across a gulf I could not bridge another way. Reaching out to touch someone through time reminded me how nearly impossible I found it to remember their appearance, the resonance of their laughter while their eyes glowed with joy's remembrance.

A subterranean reverberation of drums vibrated Earth's atmosphere as if to summon those absent souls. Ice tumbled down the face of mountains, falling to collect in a pool where the sun could melt it, and like the blood of those wounded in war's battles, the liquid would leach into the single entity of its beginning.
That was what we were given and that was what we lost.

I helplessly watched as you bled. Your life flowed and collected around the seat of your spirit while you shriveled as if wanting to die. However, life is too strong and your power too much interlocked with mine for either of us to flee this Earth before our tasks are completed.

"Seeker, can’t you hear me?"

Crickets stirred sound that brushed dew-laden grasses. It is too soon to mow, too late to harvest. Their song evoked confusion, but within their message laid the answer, we sought. Listen to them dance with nature’s cymbals entwining their limbs, chiming each step, each heartbeat. The crickets spoke softly to us to stop hiding and continue the quest.

They sang stories written but forgotten in archives tucked between stones along the stream that feeds the Pool of Life. Stories once recited by the Giver of Knowledge as the tree bore fruit offered to the Creator in thanks for the opportunity to live and prosper under the grace of enveloping sustenance.

Stories of battles won and lost, lives forfeit for the sake of the quest without the knowledge that the quest was preservation of life. Stories of warriors those Seekers struggling against foes uninvited, and therefore unintended.

However, cold rain persisted, the crickets fled, their songs muffled and forgotten. The pipers resumed their hollow whispering calls into the wilderness of lost time and love.

One unknown man crawled across the wet, slippery surface of the life summit, having climbed to become what a man must be in his lifetime, and found that a man would not have to prove himself a man if he were to become one.

The rain carried him down the mountain as if now discarding the remnants of the unnecessary and dropped him in the Pool of Life.

There the man found his purpose.

Rain pelted all living things, killing some with the fruits of salvation while others received nurturing from the same bounty. Bodies drifted along unnatural streams gouged into the Earth to flush the ruined dreams of Seekers who had given up their quest before reaching their goals; given up when a lifetime's completion remained only a heartbeat's distance. A single step a small caress a smile or hand held out in kindness.

It is easy to quit, but difficult to succeed.

Small child-sized bodies lie in the sun
I watched to make certain I wasn't one
the soldier standing, holding a gun
was the person who might have won.

Footsteps rustled leaves even though wet
and life moved forward without regret.
We're taught stories, a fragmented vignette
of hollow tales and another's need to forget.

Standing, I knew I must move away
the soldier had lowered his gun to pray
the bullet he fired tumbled the day
turning light into words he dared not say.

I can watch and see his sorrow and tears
his shoulders shudder under so many years
and while his features blur with the cheers
the crowd walked away, and like me disappears.

Time danced with our lives and taunted us to challenge it with deeds. However, those tasks set by others were never to be completed. It is within our grasp to control the flow of time by calculating emanation of our thoughts. Chaos ruled only within the context of undisciplined attitudes, flowing into mountainous drifts, crossing the paths we selected as our own. A stiff current of unexpected events, life's promised fulfillment, churned a heartbeat into arrhythmic palpitation that drew breath from a floundering body. But a spirit at peace is a calming influence on all it embraced, on all it touched, and on all who ask, "Is this the way we should walk this path?"

"Seeker, can you hear me?”
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We get winter too

2009-04-30T10:00:00.008-04:00

Here in coastal South Carolina, we get winter too. This is the inlet marsh in February layered with ice, which hung around until the sun rose to 10am high.

Okay, it's not much winter, but shoot, it is enuf for me.

See, it's not all fire and brimstone in the deep south, there's a few progressives too, which I guess might explain the ice. See, hell did freeze over! Whoops, weren't supposed to announce that one. My bad!

How to keep from screaming during these difficult time - get a real hobby

2009-04-30T09:34:00.003-04:00

A good hands on hobby will help during difficult times, and just for relaxation. This is one I especially enjoy.
http://tinyurl.com/c9aw26

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Red rose of spring

2009-04-26T14:46:00.002-04:00

Southern Rain

2009-04-25T12:47:00.003-04:00

Late last summer after a long dry spell . . . relief!

Singing Mockingbird

2009-04-25T10:57:00.004-04:00

The pic part of this video is not cool, but it's the song that counts.

Snowy Egret in flight

2009-04-22T08:56:00.005-04:00

Yeah, I know, who cares. What does it matter if there is anything but humans alive on this planet. Like one Republican congressman said last year about trees: "Who needs them? They don't do anything."

Animals can't text, don't rely on cell phones, twitter and the rest. So who needs them right? They don't do anything.

Well, not to worry. Global climate change will eliminate the problem for you in your lifetime.

Endangered Woodstorks feeding

2009-04-21T15:33:00.005-04:00

This was shot behind our house in a semi-protected inlet creek along the South Carolina coastline.

Copyright property of L F Schliessmann

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Cancilleri's Law excerpt

2009-04-18T10:43:00.003-04:00

Cancilleri's Law

Waxman swore she lived, but you would be hard pressed to prove it to me. I saw no sign of breathing, not a twitch of muscle. Not once during the long hours I sat and watched from across the primitive wood-slab table, did she blink. A rough, hand woven scarf shrouded her lower face and hair -- part of her period costume, Waxman had told me. The material's color matched her crystalline blue eyes.
Unless I touch her, I thought, despite my knowledge of her situation, how can I be certain she's real?
She stood poised in a half-squat of indecision as if trapped before her thoughts had time enough to sift evidence. Her room was constructed from pale gray sound-deadening plastics. Light strips around the baseboards subdued the space into the dusk of her original departure.
The furniture, one table and chairs padded and upholstered in dark ruby velvet, sat on a floor carpeted with a thick pile, blood red synthetic both soft and resilient -- except where her feet touched bare earth grown over with knee high wheat or barley.
I stood and went around the table. She did not move. By then, I wanted to believe I witnessed a mirage, a holographic prank. I could still hear my mates at the Advanced Chrono Sciences Lab laughing at my naiveté when I had announced I would be the one, the person to bring her the rest of the way through.
However, the woman was a frozen mannequin, incredibly life-like and frighteningly human. The briefing data provided by the Loyal Order of the Keepers had not exaggerated.
I rounded the table's corner to close the distance between us. I could smell her, but could not identify the sweet sickly aroma.
Her unblinking eyes remained fixed on the place where I had been sitting. I studied my hand as I reached to touch her, and stopped. Will she suddenly come to life and attack me? Will she scream? Or will nothing happen?
I lowered my hand, and decided to stare directly in her eyes before I touched her. I could only see shadows below her scarf; the highlights across her cheekbone, the swirls of her right ear, and of course her eyes.
The briefing data said her life span had reached thirty years when the accident occurred over two hundred years ago; she had not and would not age.
I moved closer and saw strands of blue-black hair poking from beneath the scarf. The woman was stunningly beautiful. I felt there was something hauntingly familiar about her, which increased her mysteriousness. I wondered, maybe she's ... Then thought, No. It's not possible.

As Helpless as Beached Dolphins

2009-04-09T09:55:00.005-04:00

I’ve often beaten the bushes trying to understand concepts and ideas that once were logical but now seem less so. The internet, for all its promise, has become a cyber world of scammers for whom logic is a means to an end only. Their ends, using us for its means.

The old time snake oil salesman lives on. Anything and everything you might find interesting, is now laid out like an autopsy. Why bother investigating, researching, and truly learning a subject when with a click or two all of what you would’ve learned through meticulous and careful observation, is there before you. Forget about the journey of learning or the disciplined thought acquired through old fashioned education.

Oh, that’s a good thing? Is it really? Can one actually learn and retain details using this method? (Right, bookmarks, I forgot) Do you still get the thrill of success you would’ve received doing research the old way? (Oh, yeah, bookmarks) Is instant satisfaction really satisfying? Or is it merely instant gratification? The type one might need from the first drink after a day of cubicle living.

The exponential expansion of online life, devours time, and erases days while never quite filling the needs we might’ve once felt were there to answer some basic questions such as what is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What are we supposed to accomplish while we are?

I know, sex, eating, talking, texting, chatting, tweeting, and oh, yeah sleeping. Did I say eating? As in pigging out? Oh, and working too, I forgot. Full days ahead. Whoopee!

Internet living deletes those questions with its quasi-reality of just out of reach promises, and the more massive this new “world” becomes, the more likely we are to be absorbed, ignored, cast out, and forgotten. Kind of like yesterday’s news only the modern version of yesterday lasts 15 microseconds.

In the same way that religion replaced addiction for some of us, so does the internet for others, cell phone communications for many. How much time do you truly spend alone in your own mind without any type of outside interference or interruption?

I imagine the answer is very little. Who among us can afford to live that way? We are so linked in to technology that we know we cannot live without it. In another decade, will any of us care?

That will be the time that the plug gets pulled leaving the majority of us as helpless as beached dolphins.

For more and better information about this, go here: http://tinyurl.com/cwt2th

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A Progressive Democrat living in the Deep Sourh

2009-04-02T09:39:00.003-04:00

A Progressive Democrat living in the Deep South

Typing that felt weirdly satisfying. Since moving to Coastal South Carolina in 2000, I’ve slowly found myself withdrawing from public activities. No joke. It’s downright, well, otherworldly to hear people discussing Jesus at lunch while they gorge themselves with enough food to feed a starving family of four for two days. Of course they bow their heads and recite prayer first. Then, they leave their server with a miniscule tip of less than five percent.

It’s as if the version of the New Testament I read while a child and their version are totally different.

In 2004, I won an International writer’s award and did book signings. When I sat to sign books at a local Books-A-Million, I confronted a few radical right Evangelicals who not only expressed what was wrong with Science Fiction, but that the founder of the contest, L. Ron Hubbard, was the Devil’s agent.

Yikes! What the heck do you do with statements like that? Shoot (as they say down here versus what we’d say in NY which starts and ends the same letters but with only 4 total) I don’t even believe in the Devil and Hell. I think people like the ones who made the “informed” statements, are an example of hell on earth, but that‘s another matter entirely.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m walking through an Evangelical version of Disney World. The Appian Way lined with crucified Progressives. The Believers’ golden road to their version of heaven. Yes, they do think there are angels playing harps for God’s entertainment. Wonder what happens if they miss a note?

So, I decided I needed to blog this since so much of my time and mental energy has been entrapped by a religious philosophy I cannot entertain as applicable to my life; one that is twisted off the parchment and tangled into tall tales of loathing. Evangelicals seem to despise, or worse, every person who does not conform to their standards. Yet they all walk around babbling into cell phones and forget about their driving skills. It’s do or die!

I really am uninterested in spending time wading through other people’s spiritual dilemmas. Hence my posts on spiritual belief.

Naturally, any Evangelical who reads this post will advise me that if I don’t like it, I should move back to New York. A tongue in cheek method of proving my point and the true reason that Christianity is a failing religion. Intolerance, exclusion, and even violent behavior towards those who disagree with them.

My response to them? Well, bless your heart!

Corning Ware, one of life’s simple pleasures.

2009-03-30T14:57:00.007-04:00

I enjoy cooking, which is good since my wife informed me that the skill was one of several requirements for marriage (strong sarcastic sense of humor was another). Seems a man in the kitchen is worth two behind lawn mowers or six watching football.

Of course, the plan might’ve run aground since on our first Thanksgiving (the one before we wed), I managed to punch a hole in the roasting pan filled with hot turkey drippings while it was in the hot gas oven. A smoking puddle formed across the bottom of the oven. Yes, oh my, or perhaps OMG!

With less luck, I might’ve burned down the apartment complex, but as it worked out, I reacted fast enough to smother it, the turkey was delicious and Ruth forgiving. Okay, at first, I groveled some, but she still allows me to cook turkey, demanding however, that I not use an aluminum throwaway roasting pan.

All of this brings me to the point of this discourse. Recently, I discovered a Corning Ware Electomatic skillet on EBay. This was a necessity in our home when I was a boy. My mother used hers until it exploded, or something, which required fifteen years of continuous daily use, probably.

When I sent the link to Ruth, the skillet became a must have. We did, got it, and I discovered a couple of things.

First, why my mother loved hers. It’s terrific, easy to use and turns out a well-prepared meal, meaning not under- or overcooked.

Second, what is wrong with corporate America (no that‘s not the new name of our nation, yet. Give the CEOs enough time and leverage, billion dollar bonuses, and. . .).

What I believe corporations have done is to put low costs and high profits ahead of customers and their ultimate satisfaction. Corporate marketers led us down the crimson path of promises--or would that be a yellow brick road--with advertising designed to brainwash us into buying whatever stupid, cheap crap they designed and manufactured.

Like disposable aluminum roasting pans.

Sometime back about 10 to 15 years ago, Corning Ware veered off the path of stable success (less profitable perhaps) and joined the fad parade. Instead of sticking with the tried and true, they abandoned it for high profits and low cost.

Don’t think it’s true? How is Corning Ware doing today?

I say bring back items such as the Corning Ware Electromatics line of kitchenware. Make it so it will last for a decade or more and see what happens.

The throwaway mentality that brought us to the brink of financial destruction should die a thousand painful deaths and be forgotten.

A Second Walk Through the Garden of Faith - Part 1

2009-03-30T07:28:00.004-04:00

I had no plan to revisit this issue until I read in today’s paper, an article regarding the revision of Christianity due to the many discrepancies in the bible.

I regard the Old Testament as a cultural history of a line of kings, their followers and the means of keeping the status quo of the time. This required using God as a weapon. Of course their understanding of a Supreme Being was vastly different than if the concept were first verbalized now.

Three to four thousand years ago, a flash of lightning was frightening. When a child was snatched off a riverbank by a Nile crocodile, it was deemed an act of God. Disease decimated populations repeatedly. Without an understanding of the cause, the effect needed to be explained to keep communities from fragmenting.

Certain foods poisoned people if not prepared safely, or cooked thoroughly, so laws of God were written to keep people alive. Circumcision prevented disease; therefore it was mandated by God. The list goes on, and people lived longer and healthier.

One might think that God got bad press due to all of this, but I believe the opposite is true. Who is not awed by the sight of a star filled sky at night? Who is not awed by the idea that two single cells can join and create a human or any other living thing? The entire process is magnificent!

Yet it is troubling too. The creation of sentient life creates a vacuum. A void where questions dominate and demand answers. Why life? Why am I here? What should I do? Why is anything alive? Does life serve some purpose for us or not? If not does it serve a purpose for the Creator of the universe? If that’s the answer, why should I care, or do I have no other option but to care?

Here’s where the founders of religion saved us all. They recognized that all humans had faith. Faith that there was purpose, hope, dream fulfillment. Okay, some of them used others for personal gain. Some committed crimes in the name of religion, distorted faith into a tool for evil. Others created Hell to explain and balance such behavior against its opposite.

The words written down to explain all of this and more were penned by men. Some were faithful to the original ideals, some were not. We cannot separate the two from the documents we now possess. We can recognize this simple truth and use faith to interpret what we read and believe to fit our personal needs on a daily basis.

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A Second Walk Through the Garden of Faith - Part 2

2009-03-30T07:24:00.002-04:00

The foundation of Christianity took what was then known about faith and God to a new level. A man many of us believe to be the Son of God, once walked the earth among a people of faith who were downtrodden by both the occupiers of their country and their own religious leaders.

It was a horribly difficult time for a majority of the people. There was no middle class. 95% of the population could not read or write at all and many who could had skills limited to what was absolutely essential for their daily existence--existence being the key word. They obeyed, or suffered. There was no middle of the road to walk that might provide a better life for them and their families. There was no escape. You were either a member of the ruling religious class/sect, or not. A Roman citizen or a servant/slave.

Then, one man preached that He knew a better way. Follow me, He claims, and I will give you salvation. Skeptics abounded, but a few for whatever personal reason, decided He offered them a choice worth trying.

What was His plan? Its foundation was simple. Every man and woman is equal in the “eyes” of God. Therefore, the rulers were wrong and needed to be excised from society. Yet, He understood the impossibility of His mission or ministry (most of what people knew back then fell into one of two categories: commerce or religion).

He also knew that everyone had faith, needed to draw on faith to survive.

As more people followed Him, listening to His words, experiencing acceptance in ways never before available, sharing and nurturing each other, His small original group became a movement. But like anything new, there were detractors within who began to feel threatened. They understood that the authorities would not allow this new movement to prosper and grow. All men and women could not be equals.

At the time, the detractors won, but that time, killing the leader only strengthened to movement. Perhaps, this is where the power that created us all stepped in, and the faith based movement became an indelible religion that grew exponentially, underground at first, until it conquered Rome itself.

The New Testament became the documentation of all that transpired during those early years. And like anything written by men, it too was edited repeatedly until truth, half-truths and untruths blended into a homogenized version of the original oral histories.

The debate rages eternally onward regarding the divinity of the religion’s founder. For me, this is distraction from the message.

All men and woman are equals.

The founder’s purpose was the recreation of society so all of us might live together in peace and harmony. Some might see this as an impossible utopia or a threat to their way of life. The founder did not, nor did His followers.

Unfortunately, by creating religion, the ideals were honed and sculpted to fit the criteria of the men who did the creating, which was empire building. Empires do not get built by a society of equals. It gets built on the backs of the less fortunate, such as the uneducated and superstitious. It is built on their blood and sacrifice so the ruling elite can once again reign supreme.

I do not claim knowledge about, nor do I refute the claim that the founder was divine or if claiming His divinity guarantees afterlife salvation. I do state categorically, that His message has been and still is being ignored, or convoluted, and therefore, it and the religion created around it, may die the slow death of history.

Remember this: All men and women are equals. No exceptions.

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What are you doing?

2009-03-27T10:03:00.003-04:00

Only about five years ago, when a stranger asked “What are you doing?” the answer, if they got one at all, was often: “It’s really none of your business.” Now, we’re obligated to respond if we want to participate in the new world of communication.

The internet has given family, friends, and strangers access to our lives in ways that feeds the voyeur in us all. Cell phones too are tools for voyeurism. Never in history could we or would we interrupt another person’s life as frequently and for such triviality as we do now.

“Hi, I’m in the post office, or Wal-Mart, or anywhere standing on line, what are you doing?” Answer: “Oh, do you know anyone there?” or some such miscellaneous chatter. Perhaps the answer should be, “Being forced to listen to your verbal diarrhea. Call back when you have something important to talk about.”

The irony is that so many of us seem pleased even excited about these changes. Apparently, the concept of privacy was misguided in its conception and application until now when privacy is lost as soon as you answer the question, “What are you doing?” Or answer the phone standing in line anywhere.

The younger generation of adults, Gen-X, cannot now escape their parents. Unlike in the past, when young adults could be alone whenever and often wherever they wanted, now the internet and cell phones have stripped that away.

Technology has blended generations into a homogeneous melting pot of opinions so we are all of one generation spanning ages 5 to 105. This too was once unimaginable and, I think, undesirable--at least by the youngest among us--but now inescapable.

Not only is Big Brother watching, but so too are mom and dad, grandmother, grandfather, sisters, brothers and even your ex.

Google and Yahoo, MSN all kept records of where you go, what you do there, the words you write, pictures you post so they can sell that information to advertisers who will then use your innocent desire to express yourself against you.

Oh, it’s a brave new world, Yuk yuk. Wait! Is that you Google Earth pictured while nude sunbathing in the privacy of your backyard?

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A Wolf in the Family

2009-03-21T10:06:00.006-04:00

Several days ago, I discovered that I had a German ancestor (okay, I have thousands of German ancestors, and in fact, most of my ancestors are German) with the surname Wolf.

Well, that’s cool, I thought. Maybe it signifies something important like a brutal warrior.

Not long ago, I wrote a blog entry about a practical joke my father pulled on my sister and me when we were too young to do anything, other than scream, wet our pants and run like hell, once we got our legs working again. You see, the Wolf I found in my family history is on his side of the tree and not really that many branches over his head.

Of course, since I was looking at a German surname with its roots in Wolff, Wolffe, Wulf, and Wulfe, there was a better than even chance the English definition would be something like barn door, close it quickly ‘cause the wolf is approaching and the hens are loose.

After several minutes of digging through piles of books, file folders and reams of loose paper, I found my copy of German American Names by George Jones (yes, Jones, and that is his real name, I think) and settled back into an antique midwife’s rocker (no, no need for a midwife in our house unless she can organize 5000 plus books, etc, then she‘s hired).

With the anticipation of a scratch-off lottery ticket addict, I paged into the book seeking the section of W surnames. And finally, there it was Wolff, Wolfe, Wulf and Wolf meant, well wolf. Originating from Wolfanger, which is Wolf catcher, or from a guy who really needed a body shave.

After anticipating the heroic adventures of an old time knight with a ferocious beast emblazoned across his breast plate and shield, I felt let down. But, then I considered the wolf in nature, and imagined the courage required to catch a wolf 1000 years ago, and vindication pulsed through my blogging veins.

What a difference between then and now!

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How to Save the USPS

2009-03-09T07:22:00.010-04:00

Two years ago, the leadership of the USPS decided to raise rates for international shipping by as much as 500%. For a small business such as our internet store, the result was an immediate 50% reduction of international sales. Since those sales represented 30% of our overall sales, that hurt and still does hurt our business’ bottom line.

Of course, the leadership also raised domestic rates, including the use of a clever tactic termed Flat Rate Priority Mail. Often, the flat rate costs substantially more to ship an item than normal calculated-by-weight priority mail. In order to even offer an item for sale, we must not only weigh the item, but also determine which rate to use.

The leadership also authorized the purchase of priority mail boxes that would be free to consumers. These boxes should be eliminated.

The rate for the service termed delivery confirmation was increased by 100+percentage from $.35 to $.75. For us, as small business owners, that meant we could no longer afford a service we had previously used on every package we shipped. Now, we use this service only when we ship to areas where we experienced a high lost-package rate, such as NYC.

USPS leadership designed several new forms for additional services. Some of these are basically duplicates of other forms needed such as insurance. There is now one form for items valued at under $200.00 and one for items valued over $200.00, even though the forms carry the same information and are virtually identical. The same is true for several other services, like customs forms (above forms should be made into one form).

Last week we had a customer visiting Canada ask if we could ship a book to arrive by week’s end. We investigated and learned the cost for global express mail would total 64.25. Surprisingly, our customer agreed and was excited she would have the book in time for her husband’s birthday last Friday.
♦
We took the book to post office, filled in two forms and sent it off believing that we had made a new customer happy.

Thursday, the book was returned because the USPS has an arrangement with Fed-Ex to deliver global express mail and Fed-Ex has yet a third form that needed to be used to complete the transaction.

We lost a customer, which is not something any business can afford right now. Because of this and despite the fact that we were refunded the shipping charges, we will not offer global express mail to a customer in the future.

What happened? No one at our local post office was trained in the redundant paperwork needed to be done to complete this transaction. Three different employees confirmed they they’d never before seen that third form.

Here is another way to fix USPS: use one form for everything. Surely, there is someone clever enough to design such a form and include on it data that works for Fed-Ex too. As they are now, most forms ask exactly the same information: sender, recipient, contents and value.

Of course, an additional way to save USPS money would be to eliminate layers of high and middle management. Many post offices have several supervisors along with a postmaster. None of the supervisory staff work the counters when customers are lined up waiting for service.

Simplification of forms, elimination of duplication, elimination of free shipping boxes, and a reduction of top-heavy management will all help bring USPS into the black.

However, there is one more ingredient, lower prices! Internet sales are the future of business. All of us business people using the internet depend on services such as USPS, and lose customers every time those service providers increase the cost of shipping. We lose, you lose.

We can only afford to absorb a certain amount before we are forced to pass on rate hikes to our customers. As far as I am concerned, I do not think we should have to absorb a penny of those costs since the increases have to do more with paying salaries such as the $850,000.00 for the Postmaster General, and all of the other items I have described above.

<--------------- Combine into one form.

More on Mickey Spillane

2009-03-03T14:50:00.001-05:00

During the short span of time I spent with him, I learned that Mickey was determined to be true to his own vision of himself. It sounds easy, but I think many of us get distracted and don’t succeed to the degree we might want to, if we cared about the concept to begin with.

It seems that when he felt his ego was guiding him, rather than the better forces of nature, he would do some clean up work at his church, or some other mundane task you might think a world famous writer would avoid.

When it was pointed out to him once, he admitted that he hadn’t been feeling very humble and believed that to be weakness he didn’t value in himself. So he picked up a rake and cleared leaves from the church property’s front yard.

He also had a strong New York sense of humor. Which, I think of as often subtle, yet takes advantage of presented absurdity when such can be exploited.

Mickey expressed this perfectly while participating in a writer’s conference. I believe he was 80 at the time. An attendee handed Mickey a postcard and asked him to write on the back his secret for living a long life.

I own the card, and have included it for you to see his answer: Don’t Die!

Of course, he signed it too, as if to be certain that no one was mistaken about who provided the astute response.

Like a Film of Oil on Still Water - Defining Faith

2009-03-02T07:30:00.004-05:00

Robert Persig, in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance revealed that quality happens in the moment before one consciously accepts the quality of an observation.

Understanding the concept requires reaching into an area of thought without a physical realm supporting it. I can feel the moment inside, but I cannot touch it or define where it lies. For me it is rather eerie in an exciting way. It makes me feel joyful, fills me with a brief glimpse of wonder, knowledge that there is so much more to know and learn than what we detect with our five physical senses.

There is a strong parallel between the knowledge of quality and faith. Therefore, like quality, one does not need to define faith. I mean, faith is assuming that when you go to bed you will wake the following day. Faith lies beneath the surface. It is not an object, a concept, or even a definition.

While still a small boy, I learned the story of the mustard seed. Once I comprehended the meaning of the parable, I knew the truth of faith, and later declared all other attempts at defining faith to be false.

As a boy, I began questioning religion while I went about the tasks of following the teachers who seemed to contradict that knowledge. What the mustard seed taught called into question the teachings of men. The candles I carried to the altar burned brightly, shimmered gold statues, and cast wavering shadows that I thought hid something with each breath cast by speakers.

Then, I knew that no one could preach faith. Nor could one teach faith and certainly one could not use the threat of punishment as a means of enforcing faith, or forcing a nonbeliever to believe and gain faith.

Declaring that an intermediary god or God can and will lead one to a life of faith and the alleged rewards after life is completed, reminds me of a thin film of oil on still water.

Such faith shimmers under sunlight, offering rainbows of hope through an addiction of need fulfillment. However, if you desire to get a taste of true faith, you must first gently brush aside the oil, as you would do to relieve thirst. What is revealed is something profoundly intangible as is the life sustaining nourishment provided by water. Not something, that can be learned, or taught.

While we travel through life, we walk a chosen path. This is easily understood by revisiting the small seemingly unimportant events or decisions that led each of us to where we are right now. Some we could have avoided, some not.

Events as simple as walking through the wrong door and meeting a person we would not have met should we have taken the correct door fill everyday life. The question now is which was the correct door and why did I choose it?

We all have faith. We are born with it, and we will die with it, but will we use it correctly between the two ends?

If you have true faith, you do not have fear. They cannot coexist.

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When Fire Engines were OMG

2009-02-24T15:12:00.004-05:00

Fire engines were not always today's high tech wonders. This one looks as if it was once a 1890s horse drawn and then converted to horsepower drawn. Diesel or gasoline? Who knows. I'd guess the conversion, if it was converted, took place in the 1920s.

Looks like it was a bear to steer, and God knows how you pumped water from the tank. Guess they used that old fashioned kind of power once termed elbow grease, or man power.

Of course, the pump may've been driven by the engine hidden from sight under the Snoopy nose dangling four feet over open space.

I do not know who is standing proudly in front of the behemoth, but I suspect he didn't drive it. At least not dressed in a suit right out of the 1950s.

All I know about the photo is that it was taken in Westville, New Jersey, by someone who was, yup, from Jersey.

A Common Tree Dwelling Marsupial Mammal AKA Opossum or How to Trap an Opossum

2009-02-20T10:07:00.004-05:00

The first time it happened, Scooter the cat missed all the action. When I discovered the results, Scooter's food dish stood empty, and his water was dirty. To me, it was the markings of home invasion, particularly of the raccoon kind.

The second time it happened, Scooter chased after the invader driving him into the woods behind the house. Scooter returned tail high, a sure sign of victory and a good time had by him.

The third time it happened, the trash was spread across the garage floor, and Scooter missed it all.

The fifth time it happened, I set the trap with a pig's knuckle treat inside. The invader got in and out with the treat without setting off the trap, therefore foiling my plan for his removal.

The sixth time it happened, the invader was leaving the basement as I entered. The near miss was the last straw.

The seventh time it happened, I baited the trap with a slice of medium rare roast beef (thinly sliced mind you).

The following morning proved that the roast beef foiled the invader's plans. Score one for Scooter and his human!

Random selection challenge

2009-02-17T14:38:00.005-05:00

The 4th of the 4th challenge was fun, but how does one take the next step? What is the next step? Random selection. Open any photo folder and without using thumbnails, without reading titles, randomly select a picture and write about it.

Okay, here goes. Hm, more of a challenge than I anticipated. The first selection was data (can't imagine how it got there). The second was a picture sent to me that I cannot use here (no, it's not one of those). The one on the right is the third attempt and may prove more of a challenge than I wanted.

Ruth and I bought a house in Mount Holly, New Jersey in the 1990s. It had a small backyard, no front yard and one ten foot wide side yard. The house was post Victorian and had, during the mid-20th century, been used as a general store, toy store and candy store. Not necessarily in that order.

I grew up in a New York suburb with more lawn than any preteen or teenage boy might want to tend from spring to autumn. Some years I felt certain that I spent more time mowing, raking, edging and clipping tall grass around trees and garden borders (we didn't have power tools for these chores) than I spent enjoying summer vacation in ways I thought were fun.

When we moved into our Mount Holly home, I told Ruth that although we had a patch of lawn about fifty by fifty, that was fifty by fifty too much for me. Thankfully, she agreed, and we removed every useless blade of grass out there and replace the lawn with a garden.

The garden would've been difficult to tend without some kind of walkway, so we purchased the stones you see in the picture and divided the yard into quarters. In the top right hand corner you can see the fish pond we dug and installed for a finishing touch, stocked with Koa and some plants and one other species of fish, the name of which, I don't recall (truth be told, I hate using Latin designations for anything. A rose is a rose by any other name unless it's in Latin, and then who know what it is).

Perhaps the gardens required more effort than mowing a lawn weekly, but once planted with roses and other flowering plants, it looked and smelled great. The fish thrived and had young several times.

I do have one warning to share. Never never plant Oregano without borders and I mean the type of borders that will block roots from spreading outside the designated area. The second year after I planted a small herb garden, with a tiny patch of Oregano, it invaded and took over the entire yard. I was pulling it up for months and found out that no one wanted fresh Oregano. Guess they had herb gardens of their own.

The 4th of the 4th Challenge

2009-02-15T09:43:00.016-05:00

The challenge is to open your fourth picture folder and write something about the fourth photograph in that folder. I did part one and here is the photo ---->

As you can see, the Blue Ridge Mountains are the photo's theme. Herein lies the problem. Everybody, their mothers, fathers, sisters. brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and all of their friends who have ever visited the Blue Ridge Mountains in Western North Carolina, have written pages and pages of drooling or ogling prose in an attempt to describe the experience of seeing firsthand what you see in the photo on the right.

Despite the remote temptation to be the one billionth person to conceive of yet another boring travelogue saga regarding these fabulous mountains, I say no, not today, not ever!

Instead, let me tell you about why my wife and I stood in a location where the view is enough to give any person a reason to pause and contemplate their existence.

We decided to visit Little Switzerland. The name sounded romantic in an 18th century European way. Okay, to me it did, I'm not sure about Ruth. I pictured chalets, steep A-frame homes clinging to the sides of the mountains where January snow piled high against their red tiled roofs. Yodeling would echo from peak to peak, and the people would speak with a distinct accent (they did, NC southern). Skis would be propped alongside huge stone fireplaces like rifles around fire pits from the days of gentleman warfare.

Kind of like that--------------------->

Sorry, I didn't take a photo of a fireplace, but we found one that was quite satisfactory at the Switzerland Inn (no this is not a commercial plug for a truly cool hotel in the Blue Ridge Mountains). We couldn't find stacked skis or rifles either, but you get the idea. And anyway, it wasn't winter.

Once we'd reached the highest summit, we both felt awed by what the Grand Designer, the Ultimate Creator crafted at that location (okay, I did for sure, but I can't swear to how Ruth felt. She did seem somewhat taken by it all).

Unfortunately, we did not hear any yodeling. I'm afraid it was replaced by the sounds of a G--D---! leaf blower!!!

Sigh, we got back in the car and drove down the mountain, filled with memories and a buzz in my ears.

Would I do it again? Absolutely! In a heartbeat! Would I live there if given the opportunity? How could you ask such a question? Look again at the photo at the top of the page and you'll see the answer.

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Appalachian Java Coffee Shoppe

2009-02-14T10:03:00.002-05:00

It was a cool rainy morning and we planned to leave the wonderful town of Burnsville, North Carolina that day so the weather felt right. We'd spent the better part of an October week there enjoying the wonderful countryside and the people we met.

Occasionally, departures are loaded with emotions difficult to define. This was one of those. Ruth and I had not taken a vacation for more than two years due to many of those challenges that life throws in one path quite unexpectedly. However, the fact didn't explain the way I felt, and when I glanced over at my wife, knew she felt too.

This was something more, but to this day I cannot find words to describe what that something more might've been. We both loved the area and are determined to return as soon as possible and as often as possible until we might finally put down roots there. And maybe that explains of best of all.

Western North Carolina is the best of several worlds from my past. The environment reminded me of summers I spent in Vermont with and Aunt and Uncle still dear to me today. The town of Burnsville and the people who live and work there reminded me of the town I lived in as a small boy, Patchogue, New York.

I posted a photo of the Appalachian Java Coffee Shoppe as what in my mind best represented Burnsville. Ruth and I went there each morning for tea-- no we don't drink coffee-- and a buttered bagel. Despite the hour or the weather, we were greeted and served by some truly fine people. They represented their town as well as their place of employment. And they shared their humor and warmth with unabashed pleasure.

So, again to all of you whom we met during one week in October, Thank you, and we'll see you again!

Moving South 20 Years Later...Stave 2

2009-01-20T09:49:00.003-05:00

Driving from New York heading south, I believed, would be boring but not require more than a day. The grinding wet and cold winter I left propelled me along, but stayed at my heels until I’d crossed the Virginia/North Carolina border.

If you’ve never driven I-95 through North Carolina, you’ve missed out. The countryside is beautiful and the roads, at least back then, not heavily traveled.

I stopped at a scenic rest stop about a third of the way into the state, got out of my car, which bore the usual winter traces of salt and dirty road stuff thrown up while driving through slush and snow. To my surprise, I was suddenly overdressed. Shedding my heavy winter coat was the same as unloading a burden I hadn’t known I carried. By the time I reached South of the Border, in Dillon, South Carolina, the air was downright balmy. Somehow, my spirit seemed lighter too, but just then, I hadn’t quite noticed the difference.

Arriving at my destination, a condo that Low Country Guild leased for my use, I felt something shift inside. It was a small difference of emotion. The air smelled cleaner, stars filled the sky, and Palmetto trees lined the roads. I saw and smelled all of that, but was exhausted and anxious to meet my obligations with my temporary employer.

The condo was clean and bright with a view of the Atlantic Ocean. I noticed this too, but fell into a deep sleep. An experience I’d not had in many months.

Moving South 20 . . . Years Later

2009-01-19T09:41:00.003-05:00

20 years ago, this coming March, I was confronted with both a dilemma and an opportunity. The dilemma was a shortage of good paying jobs where I lived in New York, a lingering recession, and a family to care for. Complicated by a spouse who believed that bar-hopping and all it implied was preferable to staying home nights. With that the dilemma deepened into a crisis of both values and faith. Two small children, who were, and as adults now still are, dear to my heart--I’d waited until turning 35 to become a father--stretched the dilemma into a nearly insurmountable challenge.

Since I did home repairs to earn a living, I was offered the opportunity to repair a roof leak in a building that housed a business--Delano Studios--where I once worked.

While attending to the repair, I learned the business was for sale, and decided that since I’d truly enjoyed the work previously, I would attempt to buy the company. As luck would have it, an offer that bested mine won out and the company was sold to a South Carolina corporation named Low Country Guild in Bluffton, SC.

To my surprise, the new owner requested that I travel to South Carolina and help get Delano Studios re-established. It was an offer not only too good to refuse at a time of diminishing employment, but exactly the challenge and change I needed. I was to work with Low Country Guild for 2-3 months and then return to New York.

We loaded two moving vans with Delano Studios and headed south. I left a cold wet New York in early March, hoping that two different goals might be accomplished. One, that I would earn some badly needed cash, and two, that the family dilemma mentioned at the beginning of this tale could be dealt with through change and opportunity.

End Part One

New Year's Most Important Question

2009-01-02T09:51:00.004-05:00

For me, this is one of the most important and one of the most profound questions I've ever been asked. I thought I'd share it with anyone who is interested.

How would you live your life if you did not know your age?

Happy New Year!

Southern Christmas Part 3 - The Christmas, Un-Christmas Tree

2008-12-26T10:14:00.009-05:00

Twas two weeks before Christmas and all through our house stood boxes of last year’s decorations packaged with care now awaiting our attention. The living room ceiling was partially hung with red and green construction paper chains, and the red crepe paper bells were nowhere to be found.

The miniature Jesus nestled in tissue paper slept the slumber of off-season hibernation. Our artificial made-in-America Christmas tree remained in the basement awaiting its fifth call to duty.

Despite the disarray, my wife and I sat outside on a warm southern winter afternoon discussing the fact that several live oak trees had grown too close to a retaining wall meant to protect the rear yard from surge tide should such protection be needed.

I concluded that I must cut them down and decided then was the time.

“But wait,” she cried out with enough pain to give pause to the first brutal saw cut.

After turning to her, I saw deep concern in her eyes and said, “I’ll be careful,” thinking she was concerned that I might get injured. It was a large tree, six plus feet tall and about eight in diameter.

“I want to save the tree,” she continued as if to move quickly beyond what I thought she originally implied.

I looked at her and knew she was not only serious, but very upset over the real possibility that the tree might soon die.

“Enough trees are killed around here,” she added hurriedly as if thinking I would proceed despite her plea for clemency. “If we can save the tree, well, that’s all I want for Christmas.”

“I guess I could move it if you’ll help,” I returned thinking that might change her mind, but knowing we were beyond that.

“Okay,” she said and added, “Do we have two shovels?”

Trapped, I thought. Foiled again! Rats!

“Yes, we have two,” I said calmly and collected our tools, rolled up my sleeves.

For the next hour and a half we dug up three to five feet long surface roots and bundles of short tap roots.

We prepared a hole in the center of the backyard to match the trees’ root pattern and carried, half-dragged the 200 pound tree to its new home.

Finally, almost two hours after the first discussion, the tree stood planted. We managed to avoid losing any large roots, cracked one which should heal fine, and we both felt like something good had been accomplished.

Now, every day, my beautiful wife waters her tree and it seems quite pleased with its new home and the attention she provides, despite the occasional “Well, Bless your heart,” that she cried sarcastically when she got sprayed by a leaky hose.

And about Christmas? We decorated more grandly this year than any past, cut back on gifts, and truly enjoyed our day together with family and friends.

__________________________________________________________________________

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Old Time Southern Christmas Part 2

2008-12-16T16:40:00.001-05:00

It is likely that I’m not terribly objective regarding living in the south. Christmas is a reminder for me as to what appeals most down this way.

Normally, my wife and I adopt a family in need each year to help them have a better Christmas. I felt certain that due to the economic crisis we are all living through that more families would need assistance this year.

We went to the church where we usually go to adopt a family and discovered that all of them, and there were nearly 300 this year--more than most years--had been adopted already. Despite the suffering a recession delivers to each doorstep, no one forgot those in need, and I am sure some of the people who adopted families will give as much as possible even if they are required to have less for themselves.

No one gets injured shopping at Wal-Mart. No one fights in stores for the last toy or last special dress like we once witnessed at a Macy’s in New York. People always greet you, hold doors for you and smile as if they are really happy to see you. The best part of it all? It’s contagious. If you live here long enough you’ll catch yourself doing the same to strangers and friends alike.

Old Time Southern Christmas Part 1

2008-12-14T09:45:00.004-05:00

Regardless of what you believe about the origins of Christmas, this is a time of year filled with magic and wonder. I've seen the holidays turn cynicism away and the cynic into a reveler if for only a few days or weeks.

As a Yankee living in the deep south for most of the previous 20 years, I've grown to appreciate the southern way of celebrating just about everything there is to celebrate. But when it comes to Christmas, there are few places in the world that do it better.

No, we don't use fake snow. Heck, most folks from around here never saw the real thing until 1989 when, after Hurricane Hugo, it snowed for Christmas. God's little joke right there, I'm telling you.

That was my first year living in the Coastal Carolinas, so I drove north to be with family in New Jersey, where it did not snow. Go figure! It has not snowed down this way since, which is fine with me. I had enough before moving here.

Christmas in the south, as you might've guessed, is about Christmas first, gift giving sure, but that is not the reason for the season in the south.

Stay tuned to more.

Who was George of Autumn People Circa 1966?

2008-12-04T13:49:00.005-05:00

As a used bookseller/buyer, occasionally, I find a gem among the ordinary. While searching through shelves of Science Fiction paperbacks about 8 years ago, I spied a hard to find 1st edition book by Ray Bradbury titled Autumn People.

Without flipping it open, I dropped it in the box I planned to fill with used books in very-good or better condition I would sell later.

Several weeks went by before I opened Autumn People to read the back of the title page. When I did, I discovered a time capsule, which I have copied below. Some of the surnames might be misspelled, and if so, I apologize in advance.

If any of the people listed here are interested in the book, it is yours for a simple fee. I want to know why and when it was autographed and just who the heck is George?

Front Cover:
George Grisson

Inside Front Cover:
Little Burt
Phil Sickles alias Cous
Chris Brahney Lots of luck George

Front Flyleaf:
Hughie Baby

Title Page:
Good Luck, Mary Beth

ISBN Page:
Patti Vidulich

First page of intro:
Joe Leather

Was An old Woman title page:
Kathe T.
Lots of Luck!

To You George from Andy (on page 28-29)

See you this summer, George. Linn Palt (page 67)

Jay (on page80)

Cindy (on page 112)

Jane Eccleston (on page 113)
Doug (on page 113)
Laurie (on page 113)

Let’s Play Poison title page:
Lots of Luck in Future Years!
Cathy Blasco (on page 165)

THE END
Beverly Hulsart
Lots of Luck (on page 188)

Inside Rear Cover:
Meele (with two flowers)

Have lots of fun in the summer, Mary

Ann Kirh

Have a hell of a lot of fun, Gerry

Outside Rear Cover:
Margorie Ward

____________________________________________________________________________
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Honoring Korean War Veterans

2008-11-11T15:02:00.003-05:00

Never forget those who fought in America's Forgotten War!

Schliessman(n) Family Veterans 140 Year History

2008-11-11T07:34:00.003-05:00

SCHLIESSMANN, JOHN JOSEPH
PVT CO A 146TH REGIMENT INDIANA INF
CIVIL WAR
DATE OF BIRTH: 1835
DATE OF DEATH: 17 APR 1922

SCHLIESSMANN, PHILIP JOHANN
PVT CO H 21ST INF REGIMENT
1875-1879
DATE OF BIRTH: 09 OCT 1857
DATE OF DEATH: 30 AUG 1917

SCHLIESSMAN: HENRY HUGO
PVT US ARMY
WORLD WAR I
DATE OF BIRTH: 15 SEPT 1898
DATE OF DEATH: 10 JAN 1967

SCHLIESSMAN, JOHN
US ARMY
WORLD WAR I
DATE OF BIRTH:
DATE OF DEATH:

SCHLIESSMAN, LOUIS
PVT US ARMY WORLD WAR I
DATE OF BIRTH: 04 MAR 1895
DATE OF DEATH: 24 JU 1964

SCHLIESSMANN: PETER
US ARMY
WORLD WAR I
DATE OF BIRTH:
DATE OF DEATH:

SCHLIESSMAN, WILLIAM
PVT US ARMY WORLD WAR I
DATE OF BIRTH: 23 AUG 1896
DATE OF DEATH: 23 JAN 1923

SCHLIESSMAN, CHARLES
WORLD WAR II

SCHLIESSMANN, JOHN J. JR
SSGT US ARMY
WORLD WAR II
DATE OF BIRTH: 1914

SCHLIESSMAN, LAWRENCE F. SR
CPL US ARMY AIR CORP
WORLD WAR II
DATE OF BIRTH: 06 NOV 1921

SCHLIESSMAN, MARTIN A JR
WORLD WAR II

SCHLIESSMAN, WALTER H
NATIONAL GUARD
WORLD WAR II

SCHLIESSMANN, DONALD JOSEPH Sr.
CAPT.
WORLD WAR II

CATER, NORMA (NEE SCHLIESSMAN)
LT COL. KOREA, VIETNAM

SCHLIESSMANN, ROBERT MARK
CWO4 US ARMY
WORLD WAR II, KOREA
DATE OF BIRTH: 05/18/1914
DATE OF DEATH: 03/27/1989

SCHLIESSMANN, DONALD JOSEPH Jr
US ARMY
VIETNAM
DATE OF BIRTH: 09/20/1945
DATE OF DEATH: 07/18/2006

SCHLIESMAN, JERROLD J.
SGT US ARMY
B COMPANY 1ST BATTALION 5TH US CALVARY
VIETNAM
DATE OF BIRTH:
DATE OF DEATH: 17 NOV. 1965

SCHLIESSMANN, LAWRENCE F
SGT US ARMY
3/60TH INF 9TH DIV/493 MI
VIETNAM
DATE OF BIRTH: 16 SEPT 1948

David Wetherill - Honoring Veterans Part 2 Poppy Field Found

2008-11-09T10:04:00.002-05:00

Poppy Field Found
Dave Wetherill
Copilot, 571st

In the fall 1995 issue of our Newsletter I included an article, entitled “Poppy Field” in which I told about an American soldier discovering, in a poppy field, George Massa’s grave, how the people of Dietersheim had recovered his body and provided a proper burial, after our plane had been shot down. (Pilot, Crew 91, 571st Sqdn.) My story mentioned that I had been unable to locate Dietersheim. In that same issue of the Newsletter we included a letter from A. Verwaal, of the Netherlands, in which he described his work in researching the crash landing of one of our planes. Because Mr. Verwaal’s letter appeared in the paper, we made sure to send him a copy. Of course, then, he got to read both his letter and my story, and he got busy locating the town of Dietersheim and corresponding with me about his efforts. As a consequence, I learned that Dietersheim is a suburb of Bingen.*

One of my desires has been to visit the area of our shoot-down and capture. In March, Jean and I were able to make the trip. We arrived on German soil at Frankfurt Airport, picked up a brand new Opel, and, even though we were feeling the effects of the overnight flight, decided to head for Bingen and possibly Dietersheim.

Jean had studied German in college and has, generally, a good language aptitude and a good ear. Even though I knew all of this, I was still amazed at how well she picked up the language. (Thank goodness, because I’m almost a complete dud when it comes to communicating in a foreign tongue.) And, we soon discovered, the highway signs in Germany are very well planned and displayed. Even I had little trouble navigating. We arrived in Budesheim, another of Bingen’s suburbs, and found a place to have some lunch and sample some German food in an Italian restaurant.

After lunch, we went on to Dietersheim, where, with only a little trouble, we found the Catholic Church. We parked our car and looked around. The church doors were locked, but through a window, we spotted a man working at a desk. We attracted his attention and got him to come talk with us. Outside the church we explained, actually Jean explained, the purpose of our mission and he invited us inside. Father Eberhard Otto then excused himself and went into his office. In a moment, he returned with a file folder. As he opened the folder, I saw a letter, in English that had words in it that I had written. It turned out that he had received a letter from Leo Massa, George’s brother, in which my “Poppy field” was quoted. I opened my envelope of stuff I’d been carrying and pulled out a copy of that piece and handed it to him. He glanced at it and then back at me, with an expression of surprise. From that point on we had no trouble holding his interest in our mission.

He explained that he had no personal knowledge of George’s burial as he had come to that area after the war. He did, however, know of a place that might be what we were looking for. During Hitler’s time, he explained, no enemy could have been buried in a sanctified cemetery. That had been strictly verboten. He told us to look for a bus turn-around, out near the edge of town, where, then, we would see a cemetery. Beyond that cemetery, he told us, is a field. Maybe there.

Father Otto then took us on a tour of his church. Of particular interest to us were the beautiful stained glass windows and a hewn stone altar that dated back more than a thousand years.

We drove the short distance to the cemetery. The main gate was closed so we walked along outside of the stone wall that surrounded the place. At the rear, looking out beyond the wall, we could see a field, probably twenty or thirty acres in size. Beyond the field, we could see the Nahe River and a highway, and beyond the highway, wooded hills. We wondered if the burials had taken place out there somewhere, but jet lag was getting to us and it was late. We decided to postpone further searching.

It took us a week and a half of visiting other points of interest before we got back to our search for George Massa’s gravesite. We went directly to the cemetery and went in. A monument to military heroes and the inscriptions on the head stones told we were in a cemetery for war veterans. While we were admiring the graves, we saw a woman walking a dog. As we watched, she tethered her dog to the gatepost and entered the cemetery. She smiled and walked on past us to one of the graves. After a few moments, we greeted her and learned that she was on one of her regular visits to her husband’s grave. His head stone was inscribed, “Heinz Eckert, 1929-1996”.

To Jean, I said, “Tell her why we’re here; ask if she knows anything about the grave.” Jean, in her recently reborn German, broached the subject. Well, the lady knew something, all right. She brightened right up and began to talk, gesturing, and pointing to the field beyond the wall. “Mein mann hat es gefunden.”

“What did she say?” I wanted to know. Somehow, we had lucked out. She told us her husband had found that grave. She had met her husband after the war. He had told her about having found this grave and shown her where it was. But the grave isn’t still there, of course. No, we said, George’s body has since been moved to a National Cemetery on Long Island, near where he had lived. But, she said, there could have been other graves there, for French, Polish, and American airmen, but not any more. Not for many years. But she could tell us how to find the spot. Our elation was almost palpable. Go back through that field, along that path until you get to the dike. Then turn right and walk along the dike. Over there, near the bridge. That’s where they were buried.

Well, we thanked Frau Eckert for her help and started out. Because we could see a fence between us and our goal, we turned left to get to another path that would take us, on the other side of a new highway bridge, to where we could get to the dike. We looked back, and there was the woman, waving at us. She had taken the dog home and had returned on a bike. Apparently, she wanted to make sure we found the spot. She waved and pointed. She was indicating that we should go over, now, to our right. We walked under and past the bridge, and there she was, now having moved to where she could again follow our progress. She was nodding her head and still pointing.

We walked on and discovered what must have been the poppy field in 1944. We were walking along a low dike. Our guide was still on duty, waving us on. Soon, when we were pretty close to the ruins of a bombed out bridge, I looked back and saw that she was vigorously nodding her head and waving her fist above her head. We had come to the sacred place. She waved goodbye and got on her bike and, as we waved our thanks, she peddled away. We turned toward our find.

We saw a large field between the dike and the Nahe. There may have been graves there once. A lot can happen to a place in fifty-three years. We felt confident that we had found what we’d been looking for. We walked around saying a silent prayer. Mission accomplished!

*A few months later, I received correspondence from Marshall Shore, of our association, who is quite familiar with Dietersheim, telling me more about the place.

David Wetherill and The Poppy Field - Honoring Veterans

2008-11-08T08:55:00.008-05:00

David Wetherill's Poppy Field.

I've been fortunate so far in life. Due to my veteran status and past employment, I've known many combat veterans from all branches of service and from several wars. Each one I knew had an inner strength forged during a time in life when he underwent duress the average civilian would never experience. The more severe their ordeal, it seemed, the greater the strength.

Perhaps that's a product of the will to live, or maybe inner strength is the will to live brought to the surface of personal reality. And too, I think a strong spiritual conviction is necessary to keep inner strength from abandoning us when we need it the most.

Whatever it is, Dave Wetherill was a man with an inner strength that drew others to him. He expressed that strength in many ways. You could hear it in his words, his laughter, and read it in his eyes. He spoke of family and friends, of sharing his love of music, and his pride in fellow veterans.

I found him to be a quiet gentle man. A man I liked almost at once. And I'm the kind of combat veteran who shuns crowds, feels most comfortable sitting facing a door when I'm in an unfamiliar place. Normally, I don't warm up to strangers. But oddly, Dave was not a stranger when we first met. Not that I knew him from the past. I didn't.

My wife and I started a small writer's group in Mount Holly, New Jersey, posted a flyer at local libraries, ran a small reader ad in a local paper, and Dave called to join us.

He attended weekly, offered kind advice, like the fact that clouds scud across the sky. They don't drift. He shared with us the newsletters he edited for his WWII outfit, the 571st Squadron. He was a co-pilot Crew 91. Their B-17 bomber was shot down over Germany. David was badly injured, and spent many months in Stalag Luft One. He spoke of other members of their organization, and about their dwindling numbers.

Then, one night he gave us a copy of two articles he'd written for the newsletter. It seemed there was one member he missed more than any other. The man who didn't live to join, the hero who was left behind.

His pilot went down with the plane, and David never forgot him, never stopped honoring his friend George Massa.

With his family's permission, I'm posting his articles in two parts. The first is titled: Poppy Field and is below. I'll post the follow-up titled Poppy Field Found tomorrow and let you meet this extraordinary man.

This Veterans Day, let's all honor the silent heroes that live among us, like my friend David Wetherill. And remember that those men and women honor the fallen every day as Dave's articles explain.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NEWSLETTER FALL 1995 Page 19

Poppy Field
by David W. Wetherill

On Memorial Day last year, I was interrupted in my studio by the ringing of my phone. I’d been at work for more than an hour, so the disturbance came as a small relief.

“Hello.”

A man’s voice said, “Is there a David Wetherill there?”

“Yes. Who wants him?”

The voice continued, “I’m looking for a David Wetherill who was a copilot on a B-l7 flying over Germany in World War Two.”

“I am such a person. Who are you?”

“My name is Leo Massa..." My heart fairly leaped. “and I’m looking for the man who was my brother’s copilot. My brother’s name was George, George Massa, and..."

“I guess I’m your man. I was copilot on George Massa’s crew.”

Leo became very enthusiastic. Almost overjoyed. We talked for nearly an hour and ended our conversation after each had promised the other that an early meeting would take place.

The meeting was set for a couple of weeks later, with Jean and me driving to the Massa home in North Jersey. We planned to leave home in time to eat lunch on the way and arrive by 2 PM. Quite naturally, we fell into a discussion of the interesting news we’d picked up from my phone conversations with Leo. It was possible, I decided, that I had met Leo on the occasion of my meeting with George’s parents, at their Brooklyn home, in the summer of 1945. That was my first move after arriving home from my stay in Stalag Luft One.

Although I had realized, from the report I had received from Bill Reulbach, our toggleer, at the time of our first meeting on German soil, at Dulag Luft, that George had to have still been on board our B-17, still carrying its bomb load, when it hit the ground, I knew that no official word of his KIA status had reached the Massas. It, therefore, had become my first duty to meet with them and tell what I knew.

He had been only fifteen at the time, but Leo was sure that he had been present at that meeting, and when I mentioned some of the details, he became more convinced of it. I had reminded him that George’s sweetheart, Lisa, a beautiful Finnish girl, had been present. He remembered Lisa but has long since lost touch with her. I had mentioned to Leo that only after my visit to the American Military Cemetery at Cambridge, England, in 1984, and my subsequent inquiries in Washington, that I had learned that George’s body had been identified and brought home to be buried in the Military Cemetery on Long Island.

Leo had then explained to me that the identification must have taken place after a period of time, because he had information about a grave in Germany that had been George’s first stopping place. I was eagerly looking forward to more details.

We arrived at the Massa’s lovely suburban home at about the appointed time. As we parked our car, Leo appeared in the driveway, followed by his wife, Sinikka. A warm greeting then took place. At first, I saw only slight resemblance in Leo to George, but as the afternoon slipped by, I was able to see certain characteristics that I had come to know in George. And, it occurred to me, George would have looked some different by now, if he were still alive.

I answered many questions from Leo about what kind of a pilot, airplane commander, officer, soldier, and man George had been. My answers were all confirming that he had been the best in each category. Then I wanted to know more about the burial that had taken place in Germany. Leo handed me two sheets of lined paper with a penciled letter written on them. This letter, and its subject, had been mentioned on the phone, earlier.

The letter is quoted, in its entirety, below:

I was a member of Co. K-3rd Inf. 424th Division, which arrived in Dietersheim, Germany in May 1945, as a guard unit to 150,000 German war.

Just outside of Dietersheim, in the Rhine Valley, was a beautiful poppy field. As I walked among the flowers, I came upon a lone grave of an American soldier. It was so beautiful I came back to it each day.

I was curious to know more of this boy who rested alone in the quiet of the hills, and I learned he was buried by the townspeople of Dietersheim with full church services. They made him a large crude cross from the deep forest close by, and each day they came to water the potted plants, which they placed upon his grave.

I wondered about his parents, and how pleased they would be if they could only see this final resting place of their boy. As I had no camera, I decided to make a sketch - perhaps locate his family and give it to them. I had only an old German map, on the back of which I made this drawing.

I have also a few poppies, which I picked from the grave when we were ready to leave. It's been a long time ago, but I still keep thinking of MASSA, his grave, the good people of Dietersheim, and his family. I should like to go back some day and visit that grave again.

B. Kruczek, ---- St., Cleveland, Ohio

While I was reading the letter, Leo left the room, and returned in a moment with a framed picture that had been hanging on the wall just inside his front door. I took it and examined it. It was a beautifully drawn pen and ink rendering of the grave described in the letter. After spending some minutes admiring the picture and appreciating the thoughtfulness of the artist/discoverer, we talked about Leo’s heretofore unsuccessful attempts to locate the man who had been so caring and thoughtful and we talked about the town, so far not totally identified, whose people so caringly took George’s body and provided so lovely a resting place for it.

In a little while, Leo produced George’s diary. It seems George had kept a record of his impressions of his daily encounters. I haven’t yet held the diary in my hand, but Leo has promised me he will give me the opportunity to do that on our next meeting. He did read certain pages to me, such as George’s feelings about one particularly frightful mission (11/30/44— “Oh, the prop wash! I was so scared I couldn’t stop shaking.”), and my introduction to him (7/7/44—”I met my copilot today. He’s a swell guy.”)

There were emotional pings and pangs all afternoon, and I guess there will be a few more before this subject is filed away. To quote one observer of our reactions to all of this, “It’s amazing how the need to know survives 50 years later.”

Note: Although Leo Massa has searched, and Bill Reulbach, our crew’s toggleer who lives in the Cleveland area, has more recently searched, B. Kruczek hasn't been located. Nor has the town of Dietersheim.
____________________________________________________________________________

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My Father the Wolf

2008-10-25T14:39:00.005-04:00

Halloween along Grove Avenue, Patchogue, New York haunted each small footstep. Cold October night air greeted warm breath with a balloon cloud of dissipating fog. Enough early evening moonlight shivered through the bare branches that we believed our costumes were more real than imagined. I the cowboy, my sister the Indian princess slowly worked the streets calling Trick of Treat, not really understanding the implied consequences of the phrase.

We were young, filled with wonder that so many adults willingly opened their homes and showered us with gifts of candy, coins, and fruit.

Of course, we knew that our father manned the front door to greet the children who would visit our house while we were away. All lights except one table lamp and the porch light were off, and the door remained closed until someone knocked or called out Trick or Treat. He would protect our home.

By the time we walked several blocks--our mother not far behind--with other kids from the neighborhood, our sacks, used pillowcases, were laden with treasure. We were anxious to return home to examine our spoils, and exhaustion brought on by both excitement and exertion, added to our desire.

As we plodded up the front sidewalk, which led to our small stoop overhung with leafless vines, our mother called out, "Let's go in the back door and surprise your father."

The idea lit a spark of excitement that we consumed with glee. My sister led the way, as she often did being the oldest, and we rounded the driveway side of the house. Suddenly the darkness seemed more oppressive, and our steps faltered. We peered into the night and wondered that moonlight failed to illuminate the space between our house and the neighbor's home.

But our mother was not far behind and we had a mission. Sneak up on dad.

Then, as we rounded the house's back corner a tall and menacing figure emerged from the rear yard. Its huge arms lifted to the sky, its claws scrapped the air, and from its long snout, filled with rows of sharp dagger teeth a growl rocked us both. The wolf that ate Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother was about to eat us too.

My legs felt like rubber as my feet scrabbled to grip the driveway, a surface that moments earlier was concrete not Jell-O. The scream that ripped from my sister's throat became mine and together we alerted the entire town that a wolf was on the loose.

We dropped our well-earned loot and bolted back the way we came, past my stunned mother, and into the house, not stopping to realize that the front door was now open, that the lights were now on and didn't slow until we reached the safety of our rooms.

It was decades before I finally realized who wore that mask, and when I confronted my father the delight that filled his eyes, and the laugh he could no longer hold back, told me I was correct.

So dad, Happy Halloween! Now the world knows that my father was the wolf!

_____________________________________________________________________________________

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How to keep your car from being robbed

2008-08-13T10:37:00.003-04:00

The Night the Car was Robbed and How to Turn Away Thieves

It was a dark and stormy night, well, okay; it wasn’t stormy and not particularly dark with a three quarter moon and no clouds.

Strange noise wakes me during the night. The sound might be as quiet as one of the cats deciding to try out a new box as a hideout, or the slam of a tree limb against the side of the house.

Normally, I roll over after deciding that what I heard was not worth investigation, until one night in early July.

At 3:35am, I woke when I heard something odd. It had sounded like a car door closing. However, my wife was up and heading to the bathroom, so I concluded that she must’ve bumped into something, and went back to sleep.

When I got out of bed after sunrise, I went about my usual chores, which ends with letting our indoor/outdoor cat, who spends the night in, outside. After he is satisfied that no other cats or strange animals have dared to invade his territory during the previous night, he wanders off to do his daily border inspections.

At this point, I retrieve the newspaper, which is never in the driveway (free whine moment here). As I did, I felt stunned to see that the car’s trunk lid was up.

But mistakes happen, so I went over and closed it, only it didn’t close because a box in the trunk sat beneath the hinge and blocked it. That should’ve been an alert. I never leave boxes in the way of the hinge.

I moved the box, shut the trunk lid, and then as I strolled past the car, glanced inside and froze. Everything in the glove box was on the passenger seat, and all the CD’s were scattered around as were various papers and debris we left in the car.

In shock, I opened the car door and then thought about calling the police. After phoning them, I told my wife about the problem and the two of us investigated to learn what was missing.

Well, they didn’t take the insurance card, or the registration card. And, much to my utter surprise, they didn’t want any of our Cds! I was shocked and insulted that our taste in music failed the test of robbery! Why, how dare they ignore Mozart! What kind of idiots don’t want Beethoven? What in God’s name is wrong with the Lord of the Rings, or the Narna soundtracks!?! And those fools don’t listen to Norah Jones? Saywhat!?!

So here’s the lessons we learned. Prop up some classic Cds in plain sight, don’t leave any cash in the car (they did take the single quarter I left in the car, but not the four copper pennies (can you say really stupid thieves?), and never leave keys that open something.

Instead give them a thrill and leave that old key you have for a house you once rented in another state, or an old car key that doesn’t fit in the ignition.

And if you have to leave a package in the car or trunk, leave one filled with last night’s trash, neatly wrapped of course.

After all of the above, they’ll write you off the list and not return to rob you a second time. I mean, really, they didn’t get but 25 cents the first time, right? And the local cops got their prints!

Tales of Swan Lake in East Patchogue

2008-08-02T10:23:00.003-04:00

The name Swan Lake represented both mystery and romance when I was a boy. Although the romance part was an unknown concept in my child’s mind, just the name alone evoked a picture of swans swimming and princesses drifting alone gentle currents that guided them to secret rendezvous where they would. . . Well, that was as far as an eight year old boy’s mind knew to travel, which is just as well, I guess.

The mystery was easier to frame. Along the eastern banks of the lake dark shaded alcoves hid their secrets among boulders and rotting logs, and overhanging trees shaded deep pools where any type of monster might lurk to capture and devour a boy if he swam too close, or fell out of a canoe.

The streams that fed the lake twisted off into a distance too far for a boy to fathom, but I knew that back there somewhere pirates had hid treasures, and a lost family like the Swiss Family Robinson lived in a fabulous tree house.

I watched butterflies and dragonflies in the summer, and winter ice slowly solidify and claim the lake’s life as it created a solitude that defied imagination, not unlike Superman‘s Fortress of Solitude but without a super hero, or was it?

My mother was born in a house on Main Street in Center Moriches, grew up in Mastic on Mastic Road. When she was a girl, her family used the hills along the eastern bank of the lake for sleigh riding. They skated on the lake’s thick January ice, and fished its waters after spring thaw.

So it was only logical that I took my two daughters to Swan Lake for an opportunity to share in the experiences of two previous generations. We rented a boat with oars. Since they were too young to row, I put my back into the effort and quickly discovered what I’d forgotten. Rowing a boat is serious labor.

But we had the entire day, so off we went to explore the farthest reaches of the lake’s north side. We discovered small islands, and the overhanging trees I once dreamed about, and finally when exhaustion began to claim my arms, shoulders and back, we spotted a swan family.

This is not always the safest place to be. Swan mothers and fathers are notorious for protecting their young. I had two brothers-in-law who accidentally confronted a swan family while canoeing not far from where the girls and I rowed. Angrily, the male swan flew at them, but went over their heads to warn them away. Several years earlier, a man in a boat died from a broken neck when a male swan’s wing clipped him as the huge bird defended his own.

I stopped rowing and told the girls to be very quiet so we didn’t get the mother and father angry at our intrusion. They remained quiet as we drifted within twenty feet of a line of baby swans paddling feverishly to keep up with mom. They went around the end of the small island where the nest they’d recently left sat now abandoned.

I managed to snap several good photos and then decided that it was time to head off in a different direction, with a feeling inside that told me for one brief moment the boy who once thought of Swan Lake as a mysterious and romantic place now had shared those emotions with a new generation through an experience that happened back where pirates hid treasures and a lost family lived in a fabulous tree house.

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More on Bay Avenue Elementary School

2008-07-29T09:32:00.004-04:00

We lived on Grove Avenue. Our neighbors the Westbrooks were good gentle people. My best friend Paul Crabtree and I flipped baseball cards under the fire escape at the school during recess.

My father took me and my oldest sister Louise with him every Friday after he came home from work to buy Cod Fish cakes at the small deli on, I think, the corner of Bay Avenue and Main Street. My mother cooked them in stewed tomatoes, which I then thought was the only way to make them edible.

After every Thanksgiving Day, we walked into town to the Sears Roebuck Store, where as kids, we dreamed and imagined about gifts under the tree at Christmas time.

Our family went to the Robert Hall Clothing store in Coram, New York for our yearly Easter clothing.

We attended St Paul's church in Patchogue. And I still remember feeling like I entered a jail each time we visited the post office for stamps or to mail packages. The stone building looked huge to me, had bars on the windows, or I imagined that it did, and the ceilings were quite high. Of course, I was quite short.

I vividly recall when the four corner's fire made us think that the safety of our hometown wasn't quite what it had been the day before. But the community came together as so many Long Island communities did back then and encouraged business owners to rebuild. When they did, we all shopped there again.

When I married my wife Ruth, who grew up in NC, I took her upstairs at Sweezy's Department Store so she could experience the wavy floors, the different levels that seemed to have been built in as the building expanded over the years.

Growing up in Patchogue, although my family moved to the North Shore when I was 8, instilled a love of neighbors and friends I've never found elsewhere. Maybe that feeling had to do with my age at the time, the innocence of those postwar decades.

Or perhaps, it was more about the place and the people who lived there. This is what I chose to believe. I have lived in several different states in all corners of America, and never found what I experienced when I lived and grew in my first hometown.

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Mitchell Paul Feinberg

2008-07-20T17:10:00.003-04:00

Mitchell Paul Feinberg

I took this picture during a trip Mitch and I took to New England to do a photo essay on covered bridges.

It is possible that on this same trip, we also drove up to Maine first to look at a house that needed a roof. Unfortunately, the concrete block walls wavered like the Great Wall of China, so adding a roof seemed a waste of time and money.

I knew a woman named Jill (she had a cat named Embly) in Burlington, Vermont and we stayed at her house one night. As it happened, the next morning, the headlines announced that Richard Nixon had resigned. Since all of us Leftist Pinko Commies (as the right wing framed our politics back then) worked to see Nixon run out of town, the news was a cause for celebration.

The paper was sold out everywhere we went locally! We needed to search out newsstands in the center of Burlington before we finally found the paper that Mitch holds in the photo while sitting on Jill‘s house’s front steps.

On our return home to New York, we passed a huge field of corn. Mitch suggested we stop and gather up some corn to take with us. I stopped alongside the wire fence and we both ran between rows of corn. Yes, I got lost, but I don’t know if Mitch did. We called to each other until we found the road and the car parked several hundred feet away. After that, we loaded the rear floor of the car with dozens of ears of corn and drove off as we heard a truck approaching from behind.

When we reached the Feinberg home in Port Jefferson, Mitch’s father took one look at the corn and announced, “You can’t eat that, its feed corn.”

It seems that we raided the wrong farm! But we got dozens of terrific covered bridge photos including the one posted here.

(The bridge photo posted is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any manner digital or otherwise without the express written permission of L. Schliessmann).

Bay Avenue Elementary School, Patchogue, New York 1957

2008-07-19T16:37:00.002-04:00

This great photo was shot as a class picture in 1957. I'm standing alongside my best friend at the time Paul Crabtree. However, I have not heard from him or any of the rest of the class since then and can only wonder where they are, what they've done and, embarrassingly, what their names might be.

Rodney Rhodes - Korean War Veteran

2007-06-06T09:53:00.000-04:00

A man to ride the river with.

Rodney Rhodes hailed from the Louisiana Bayou country where he was born and raised. He worked as an electrician in NYC after serving his nation during the Korean War. Rodney went through some of the toughest fighting of the Forgotten War and like so many other men and women who served with honor doing that conflict deserves recognition for his service.

However, I am including him here because he became a good friend while I worked at the Trenton, New Jersey Vet Center on Jersey Street. He was a quiet good natured guy who always had time to chat, and in fact visited the Vet Center many days for that purpose alone.

We shared coffee and donuts and discussed his war and mine (Vietnam) and what life became for us after returning home to learn that although we had changed beyond self-recognition, everyone else seemed like the same folks we left behind.

I always told people who asked my age that I was 22 --or whatever I was at the time-- going on 90. He not only found this funny, he knew exactly how I felt and what I meant.

When the Vet Center helped set up a tribute to Korean War veterans to honor them and the local Korean population at the Olympic baseball game between the USA and Korea in Trenton, Rodney was a great supporter and helped in every way possible.

At some point within the years he came to the Vet Center, he visited Washington DC and stopped at the Wall to honor Vietnam dead. He took a terrific photo, had it framed and presented it to me at a ceremony at the Vet Center.

I made him sign the back, which he did including the inscription I used to open this post. When I asked him what he meant, Rodney said, "Where I'm from, riding the river is a way of life. A man to ride the river with is a man you can trust your life to."

Then he told me about a friend of his who he rode the river with years ago. They passed under a low hanging live oak tree. As they did, a snake dropped from the tree into the boat. It wasn't the type of snake anyone might want to have that close since it was a water moccasin. His friend pulled out a pistol he always carried and blasted a couple shots at the snake. He missed the snake, but sank the boat. They remained friends because he knew the man shot at the snake to keep them both from getting poisoned many miles away from the nearest hospital.

Rodney had a way of smiling that told more than his words. After that story, I knew a lot more about him and his values than I had before and knew that he too was a man to ride the river with.

Katie Hess

2007-06-04T16:40:00.001-04:00

Katie Hess

Katie was an Irish Setter with a human heart and the ability to understand almost empathically, human emotion.

I can’t recall when I first met her. She was part of the Hess family of Poquott, New York. Brad and Kevin Hess were good friends.

Kevin introduced me to the Who. I was sitting down on the beach under an inverted sailboat that belonged to Mimi Rattigan (Mimi died in a car crash several years later). It was a rainy afternoon, so the beach was empty. Kevin showed up, crawled under the boat with Katie, and said he had heard the most amazing new album titled Tommy by the Who.

I fell into a quagmire of Abbott and Costello and asked Tommy the Who? thinking I’d misunderstood him.

Kevin grinned and I should’ve understood, but due to what I’d been inhaling, I failed the test. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s right.”

We went back and forth a few times and I finally figured it out when he started laughing and pointing at me like I was a beached flounder.

Not long after, I went through a bad break-up that drove me into a stupor of self-doubt and misunderstanding.

The rock in the picture was once used by local Native American women to grind corn while watching their men in the harbor fishing.

That boulder, dragged into location by a glacier, became a place for me to retreat when I needed time to think and stare at the blasted movies, which insisted on grinding through my head explaining what-ifs and such.

Every day I sat on the rock, Katie would show up and in her casual way demand attention until she decided to drape herself on the rock alongside me and relax with a possessiveness only an animal like she could get away with. She helped me re-evaluate my opinions and get on with attempting to live a worthwhile life.

She was a good friend and deserves recognition.

2007-05-26T19:31:00.001-04:00

Sandra Diane Strassenburg

2007-05-26T19:30:00.001-04:00

His loneliness can be found in the tree reaching upward
Touching the sky in dark silence
A naked splendor
His deepest loves remain within the heart
Truth the makings of the soul
A timeless image
His passions are hidden from all but the wind
Who travels the nights
In search of nature’s purity
A simple beauty
His innocent birth reflects upon the aging earth
As the morning explodes in glory
And a proud shadow
Echoes the creation of man

Sandra Diane Strassenburg - Winter 1971

What love have you to touch my dawn
With dew moist lips upon my own
The world sleeps
So we may be alone with the parting night
At peace with ourselves . . .
I have given my love to you and the day
What heart have you to turn away?

Sandra Diane Strassenburg - Spring 1972

If ever I knew a person whose life was a fragile gift like a thistle’s seed on the wind that person would be Sandy. She lived with personal demons created for her by well meaning adults when she was twelve years old.

She was informed that she would not live to see her thirtieth birthday due to a birth defect received while in her mother’s womb. At the time, the early 1950s the new drug thalidomide (side effects either unknown or kept from patients for obvious reasons) to assist mothers dealing with the extreme discomfort of pregnancy, created severe physical defects in fetuses. Many of our generation were scarred by this, as were their parents emotionally.

She is the one person that fills me with deep regret caused by my inconsistent behavior while she and I were married. We met the year I returned from Vietnam.

I was filled with the nightmares of PTSD brought on by combat experiences impossible to forget without chemical assistance. The aid I chose was alcohol, which kept me in its fog throughout the years she and I lived together and beyond.

This is not an excuse, but a fact. None-the-less the remorse I still feel eleven years after her death is as real now as it was the last time I saw and spoke with her.

That night, Christmas Eve 1981, I had visited my Aunt Betty Titmus at Saint Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, New York. The weather was cold and wet, but not cold enough for snow. As I drove my old 1962 Mercedes Benz along 25A where it runs past Port Jeff harbor, I saw a woman hitch hiking. She wore a short skirt and a light spring jacket. I slowed and stopped to pick her up.

As the car rolled by her, I saw her face and wondered if she would get in. She did and made some kind of comment about how weird it was that I was the person who stopped.

I felt the same way.

I had completed more than two years of sobriety by practicing the 12 step of AA by then. Sandy was drunk and had had a fight with her family, walked out of the house determined to get to The Four Corners Bar in Setauket. My AA sponsor would’ve told me to try to get her sober, which I did by delaying the drive, and parking behind the bar to talk for around three hours.

We discussed what happened with her and her family, and the harder I tried to persuade her stay out of the bar, to go home and spend Christmas night where I thought she should, the more determined she became to do the opposite.

She finally left the car when she had gotten disgusted with my attempts and like a moth drawn to light, entered the bar without a glance back to see if I watched.

Alan W. Walker - Al-V

2006-09-08T14:32:00.000-04:00

Some people knew him as Fast Al from his stockcar days in New Hampshire. I met Al-V in High School auto shop class and quickly discovered that we had many things in common. We became best friends.

Over the next few years we founded a Hot Rod club named Vandal Speed Incorporated. VSI grew in membership to about 35 within two years while we built hot rods from Al-V's Burgandy 1957 Chevy to my '62 Ford red and white Sunliner convertible, to Danny Davis' White Whale 1958 Chevy convertible.

We spent many late nights and weekends in his parents garage in the house on the hill across from smoker's corner outside E.L Vendermeulen High School in Port Jefferson, NY. His parents were terrific, feeding us and allowing us to enjoy a few cold ones as we reconstructed his '57.

Al died about 12 years ago. I admit that we grew apart after my tour of duty in Vietnam, but I believe our feeling of brotherhood remained with us both until he died, with me still. My wife Ruth and I visited his grave site around 6 years ago and was pleased to see the wolve's cut into his marker.

His father Edgar (a quiet, patient and funny man), died within a few weeks of Al's dying and is buried alongside him.

Some people go through life touching others in positive ways that they never understand while doing so. Al was one of them as were his parents, Emily and Ed.

Hope you found peace, Al.

More later.

2006-08-20T13:28:00.000-04:00

Photographed August 20, 2006 at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, SC
by Larry Schliessmann

2006-08-20T13:24:00.000-04:00

Anna Hyatt Huntington's Don Quixote at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, SC. Photographed August 20, 2006 by Larry Schliessmann

Ward Clarke Campbell

2006-08-19T09:50:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I received a letter from an old friend Helen Belnick. She informed me that a good friend, Ward Clarke Campbell had died.

I had not spoken to him in a year or two, but only because I'm in South Carolina and he was in New York, and life has a way of pressing ahead, filling days and weeks quickly enough that time slips into a rhythm that blurs everything but the immediate.

Back in 1980, at the age of 31, I was struggling to rebuild a life that alcohol abuse had ruined. I had been sober through AA for less than 6 months, but was determined to make it. The first step I needed to make beyond not drinking, was finding a job.

After reading the want ads in The Village Times, for several weeks, I spotted an ad for Delano Studios. They needed someone to run kilns and assist with shipping. Nervously, I applied, was interviewed and waited.

A few days passed before I received a call from Laurene Sama. She told me that the job had been filled by an earlier applicant, but that they would file my application for future openings.

Yeah, right, I thought, and resumed my search.

However, two weeks later, Mrs Sama called and said that Mr. Campbell (everybody called him Mr Campbell (to his amusement it turned out)) wanted to interview me again.

The interview went better than expected, and I got the job.

Working at Delano Studios was like being adopted into a new family of people who all cared about each other, celebrated life and its events.

My supervisor was Linda Speiser from Stony Brook. Through her and Ward Campbell, I learned about the business, and about life.

Ward had a way of nurturing a person, treating them with respect and kindness. He never tried to dominate or control his employees, but did befriend most of us.

Years later, after I had left Delano Studios, lived in Oregon where I attempted to build Geodesic homes (did get one up and sold in a bad mid-80s real estate market), I returned to New York to live. I visited Delano Studios and learned that Ward was selling, retiring.

I suppose that when I worked with him earlier, that the idea of him retiring seemed unlikely. How naive are we when we are young?

I wanted to buy the company, but could not. Instead, he recommended to the new buyer, G Stuart Smith of Low Country Guild, Bluffton, South Carolina, that I go down and help them set-up Delano Studios in its new location. I went and stayed.

Once again, Ward Campbell set into motion events that changed my life in ways inconceivable at the time, creating an opportunity for me to make a lot of new friends, live in a place that really is God's country, and work doing one thing I loved.

I owe Ward Campbell a lot of thanks, and am pleased to have known him, to have called him a friend.

More later.

A Visit With Mickey Spillane

2006-08-19T09:25:00.000-04:00

The first time I spoke with Mickey Spillane was the day after his 86th birthday party held here in Murrells Inlet, SC. We provided a movie poster to be displayed in the banquet hall.

Ruth and I had been invited to share in the celebration. During the evening, we invited Mickey to stop by our bookstore in town.

I admit I did not think he would. After all, we had opened the store nearly a year earlier, displayed some of his movie posters in the front windows, and knew he drove by a time or two every day.

However, Mickey walked through the front door around 11am and wandered around looking at displays of books and toy cars, something he collected, and finally stopped at the counter.

I had an original I, The Jury movie poster under the counter, which I took out and showed him. He broke into a grin, shook his head and said, "Biff." He clearly didn't think that Biff Elliott was a great Mike Hammer (he played the part in the original movie). After a moment of hesitation, I asked him to sign the poster. He looked at me and I read his reluctance, and watched him sign despite how he might've felt. I promised him then that I would not ask him to sign anything else, and never did.

As a long time fan of Mike Hammer, I had collected many items related to his career, including some books written by other authors who he had helped promote by sending their work to his agent.

We talked about a man named Garrety who wrote some hardboiled cop books. When I asked him what happened to this writer, he told me he had died young, and by his tone, I surmised that Garrety died due to behavior Mickey did not agree with.

After walking around the store with him, showing him collections writers that few people read anymore, both mysteries and science fiction, he turned to me and said, "So many of them are gone now. Death just doesn't make sense."

I'd never thought about death in that way, but had to agree and still do.

By the time he left, around an hour later, he had invited Ruth and me to visit him at home, which we did and started a brief but good friendship.

More on Mickey later.