Birthday Boy

 So today is my birthday. 59 laps around the sun. Normally, I don't make a big deal out of my birthday. And today is really no exception. Except that there's something that feels final about 59. Because next year is, well, lets just say it's a year that end in a zero and that is always somebody's idea of a big deal.

Anyway, this morning, as I have done every November 14 for the last 30 years or so, I played this song - "Birthday Boy" by Chicago.  But today, the lyrics hit me harder than they have in the past. 

So, I share them here for you to consider. 

"Birthday Boy" by Danny Seraphine and David J. Wolinski

Birthday boy, blow out the candles;
Good friends around you, you should feel O.K.
Don't look so sad and blue;
Don't act forsaken, this day's for you.
Good days are coming, my friend;
Life can be easy 'til the end.
Birthday boy, don't fear tomorrow;
Changes before you; years drift away.
You see life as pictures, frame to frame;
Many years wasted, what a shame.
Good days are coming, my friend;
Life can be easy 'til the end, 'til the end.
That empty feeling won't go away;
Caught up in hurting, day after day;
When will you see the joy in your life?
It's there for you, it's there for you.
Don't look so sad and blue;
Don't act forsaken, this day's for you.
Good days are coming, once you stop running;
Life could be easy, easy for you.

Again. And Again. And Again.

 It happened again. Again, I sit here with my head in my hands as I try to come to grips with still another mass school shooting.  18 lives taken in Texas. 18 more!!

At what point do we finally wake up, America? At what point do we, whether we are "red" or "blue", finally decide that enough is enough. No more. No more mass shootings. No more gunmen in supermarkets.  No more gunmen on subways. And,  dammit, no more gunmen in schools!!  When does it end?

And don't hand me that Second Amendment bullshit either, because there is no way in Hell that our founding fathers ever thought we'd have access to weapons, for our personal use, that had more firepower than any Colonial general ever had at any battle, with ALL of their weapons combined.  So for all of you who are purists to the Constitution, I say if you want guns, get muskets.  And while you're at it, turn off your damned electric lights, and park your F150 at the curb and grab some candles and a horse or two. You want to live by the exact words of 1787? Then live LIKE it's 1787.

I'm a teacher. And tomorrow I have to go into my school. And, once again, I will look cross-eyed at anyone who approaches my building and is not 100 percent familiar to me. Once again, we will have police cars parked outside the building. And once again, I will listen to the bullshit about "thoughts and prayers."  Well I for one am sick of all the "thoughts and prayers."

It's time to get our country back. And don't tell me we can get there on prayer alone.  No, we need some gutsy legislators to put themselves out there and propose gun legislation that makes sense. Gun legislation that will finally do something about all of these mass shootings. Because while we may consider our country to be head and shoulders above all the others - and yes, in many ways we are - we are so far behind on common sense gun legislation it makes my head spin.

The Supreme Court will, in a few weeks, overturn Roe v Wade, which will effectively put an end to abortion in so many states. Why? Because, according to many, life begins at conception and therefore needs to be preserved.  Well listen, geniuses - life is also supposed to continue beyond birth. Preferably to an old age.  So if you want to preserve all life - especially you Conservatives that go on and on about no abortions but how we need to keep our guns - it's time for you all to pull your heads out of your respective asses and put your money where you mouth is.

Gun control. NOW. Not later. 

RIP Beverly Cleary

    Early in my school career, I discovered my favorite of all places in whatever school I was attending at the time - the library. I absolutely loved the library.  What I remember of kindergarten library visits were mostly the picture books (what else can you read in kindergarten) but by first grade,  I remember visiting and being able to borrow a book. For free!! As long as you returned it two weeks later.

    We moved before second grade and that was when my fondness for the school library really took off. Because I was considered “advanced” as a learner - perhaps because I actually paid attention in first grade - I was able to get additional library privileges. This meant I could go pretty much whenever I wanted - which I did.  And I read and read. So much so that, by the time I was in sixth grade, I was asked to help the librarian choose new books by being able to preview the new ones that had just come in.  What a thrill for a library lover like me.

    Later, in junior high school, I ventured beyond the usual fiction and non-fiction fare, and explored biographies of those who were far less known to me. One in particular - Alone by Richard Byrd - stood out. I always wondered what it would be like to live completely alone under the ice.  Perhaps that was inspired by my two brothers and one sister, ensuring I didn’t know what “alone” meant.

    By high school, the library had gotten bigger and I had discovered the music room - a huge room full of records, more than I could ever imagine. I started borrowing them and, thanks to the arrival of a new cassette recorder, I started to expand my own music library - while still stopping by to borrow a book from time to time.

    What inspired this trip down memory lane was the news this week that Beverly Cleary, the creator of my all time favorite character, Henry Huggins, had died at the age of 104. Of all the books I borrowed as a kid, none excited me as much as the Cleary books. I loved them. The stories were relatable, the characters were realistic and funny and they were just a good way to pass the time. I remember wishing I could live with the Huggins family on Kilkitat Street - it just seemed like a better place to live than wherever I was at the time.

    Beverly Cleary was an inspiration to me, and one that I still call upon today as a teacher. I remember buying my own children their copies of the Cleary classics (“Here, read these. You’ll love them” I said. And along came Harry Potter to prove me wrong.)  Cleary was a living link back to my childhood. I thought she’d live forever.

    It’s  been, in all honesty, only a few months since I last read one of her stories. Henry and the Paper Route to be precise. I think I’ll take one down from the shelf tonight and take another trip down memory lane.  Rest in peace, Mrs. Cleary. And thank you for everything.

HR1, School Elections, and the power of a Lollipop

When I was in elementary school, my best friend decided he wanted to run for student council president. Not that he had any experience in being IN student council, but he thought it might be fun to be president of something. I, being his best friend, was enlisted to be his campaign manager.

We spent hours strategizing on how to best win the election. We focused on promises. Lots and lots of promises. We promised better quality of school lunches. We promised more recess time. We promised free ice cream on Fridays. We even promised no homework on days that ended  in Y. In other words, we patterned our campaign after the real political campaigns of the day.

We handed out lollipops, which was only possible because my dad owned a candy store. We even handed out unopened baseball card packs to select “organizers”, who promised they could influence certain groups of voters. Again, just like real political campaigns.

But when the votes were counted, we lost. And, to be honest, it wasn’t even close.  We didn’t ask for a recount - there was no reason to. I realized that all our voters were only in it for the lollipops.

But, if we had run today instead of 40 years ago, things might have been different. Because I would have taken a page from the Republican party and, instead of trying to get AS MANY votes as possible, I would have sought out ways to suppress the vote. Keep the voters AWAY and we would win!!  What a brilliant strategy.

Hey you, third grader. You just moved here 2 months ago. You can’t vote.  You, kid with the accent. How do I know you’re eligible?? Out you go. You, tall kid in the 6th grade - are you REALLY a student here?? No vote for you.  Had we followed this new strategy, we might have actually won. And we wouldn’t have had to promise free Yoo-Hoo to every student on Mondays.

As juvenile as this strategy sounds, it’s actually the Republican approach to winning elections these days. It’s why HR-1 is so vehemently opposed by the GOP. In other words, don’t try to “persuade” voters to vote for you by promising things that they may actually want (or by offering up real ideas to improve their lives - not by promising more pizza on the lunch menu!). No. Instead, keep voters for the opposition OUT of the election process. Make things more difficult. Basically, suppress the vote!

That is the entirety of the GOP strategy. It’s not about bringing “integrity” to the election process. It’s about bringing smaller numbers of Democrats out to vote. It’s not about improving the messaging or the positioning of the party but rather fighting the fact that the Democrats are making more and more inroads with the middle class.  Make no mistake - the GOP is not about improving the election process. It’s about “fixing” the process to their benefit.

Perhaps I should have borrowed some of their tactics. After all, had we forced the third grade to take a spelling test before voting, that may have swung the election our way. Who knows how things may have changed for us?  Yoo-hoo anyone?

Hey - I bought a new pen!!!

I bought a new pen today.  Which to the average human being is not such a big deal. But if you would have seen how long I agonized over this ridiculously simple decision, I think you might have decided to call the men in the white coats to take me away.  I bought a new pen because I just lost my most recent “favorite pen”, which was pressed into service when I actually did lose my most favorite pen, for which I haven’t been able to find a replacement.

Confused yet?

My most favorite pen is a Parker Jotter. Specifically, a Parker Jotter with a blue barrel and a silver top. Specifically, a Parker Jotter with a blue barrel and a silver top that contains blue ink, because I am partial to blue ink. I had two of them. One had, over the years, somehow gone “out of round” and the clicker mechanism sticks. The second - my go-to pen - somehow disappeared somewhere between my car and my school (or perhaps my school and my car, depending on when I lost it).  Anyway, it’s gone.

And replacing it has been a pain, because all of my trips to the office supply store have turned up fruitless. No Parker Jotter with a blue barrel and a sliver top (none of them have blue ink, by the way. You just have to buy that separately). So, needing to write, I have set off in search of a suitable replacement. (Now I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, “why don’t you just order a replacement from Amazon?” And one of these days, I’m going to write my entry on why I am trying to wean myself off of Amazon, but at the end of the day the simple answer is because it seems like a ridiculous amount of effort to simply have a pen delivered to my home. A picker to a packer to a driver to a pilot to a driver to a warehouseman to a packer to a driver just to get to my home?? This is almost as ridiculous as how much time I wasted buying my new pen in the first place!!)

I’ve had other pens over the years. My previous absolute favorite was my Cross retractable ballpoint pen. I had several of those - still have one or two - but I went off of them because I found them to be annoyingly slim. Built like a tank, but two delicate for my everyday use (but it did look good in my pocket during my Wall Street years).

I also liked the Pentel G7 pens. I like that they are refillable and the purple ones are my favorite for grading. I like the blue ones too, but I find that sometimes the gel ink gets smudged.  But, in a pinch, it’s a good pen. EXCEPT - for the clip. The plastic clip never seems to last, which seems to render the refillability somewhat moot.

For Christmas, my daughter bought me two Beatles pens. These are the retractable kind, which I like, and, right off the bat, a lot better than the Beatles pens I bought on a trip to Epcot Center several years ago, which write like crap and had an annoying sticker that left a horrendous residue on the barrel of what was a very attractive pen.

But, as well as they wrote, I was still partial to the Parker. Until that got lost, and the Beatles pen was pushed into service.  And I know why they sell two at a time. Because #1 fell apart (literally) after about a week, rendering it useless.  Into the garbage it went.

And out came #2. And I discovered something remarkable. I discovered that if I replaced the cheap ink refill with a Parker refill, I had a reasonable facsimile of my Parker Jotter - at least as far as ink was concerned. The workmanship was lacking, but hey, it worked.

And worked it did. Right up until this past Thursday, when it went missing. It’s got to be somewhere, but I don’t know where.

So I struggled with a stick pen on Friday, which is an abomination as far as I’m concerned. Taking off a cap and replacing a cap is only a sure fire way to LOSE a cap.  Which led me to Walmart - or at least that’s where I was today when I decided I had to buy some pens.

I looked and looked. I don’t like Pentech pens for some reason. And there were no Pentel pens in blue. And a million stick pens. Finally, after like 15 minutes (really, 15 minutes to pick out a package of $3 pens), I decided on the Bic Atlantis.  It’s blue, it’s medium point, it’s retractable, and it has a metal clip. And it was made in France, just like my beloved Jotter.

As for how it works as a pen, we’ll see. But if I lose this one - there’s still 4 more in the package.

Say goodbye to Glamour

I read earlier today that Glamour magazine was going to be suspending producing print publications. Another magazine goes by the wayside.

Now, as anyone who knows me will attest to, I am definitely NOT a Glamour magazine reader. My sense of style tends more toward plain white button-collar dress shirts, two pairs of Levi’s and several assorted t-shirts with various logos on them. So I will definitely NOT miss the monthly issue of Glamour.

But that’s not the point. The point is that, if you love words as much as I do, losing still another familiar print publication is just one more blow to the writing and publishing industry. There have been way too many publications that have ceased to exist on our newstands. So many, in fact, that I often wonder why we still have newsstands!!

So, if you love words - both the writing of and the reading of - I have one simple request. Go buy a magazine. A real honest-to-goodness, glossy magazine. And read it. From cover to cover. And, if you are so inclined, subscribe to a magazine. And while  you’re at it, subscribe to a newspaper too. The real ink-on-my-hands kind. The kind that is a pain in the ass to read on the subway.

And maybe, if that works for you , buy a book. From a bookstore. And here you are probably expecting me to say from a local bookstore, but to be honest it’s to the point that I don’t care if it’s the Barnes and Noble at the mall, just go buy a book. (I know Amazon is so convenient, but bookstores are so nice). And if money is tight, go the library instead. And check out a book or two.

Because it is those of us who love words who have to do all we can to try to save the printed word. In an age when a Tweet (is that right?) is considered “official White House correspondence”, I feel we need to make a stand for ink on paper.  The magazine you save just may be your own.

Now where’s my GQ? Didn’t they just have an article on denim?

By all means, don't let the law get in the way....

As published in the NY Times today:

“If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries,” Mr. Trump said. “I should have fired him right after the convention. Say, ‘I don’t want that guy.’ Or at least fired him the first day on the job.”


Is that the way it works? Win a primary, fire anyone you want? Or is it win a nomination, fire anyone you want. Even if you aren't in charge. Even if the person doesn't actually work for you since you don't actually have the job yet.

Of course, had he said he was going to fire Comey the day after the Republican Convention, perhaps Mr. Comey wouldn't have made the ill-timed "reopening the Clinton investigation" decision. And who knows how that might have affected things.

Nevertheless, I think it is an interesting insight into the mind of the person occupying the Oval Office in that he thinks his power extends far beyond the power of the law. Don't let something as trivial as an election get in the way of your aspirations!!

I aspire to own the New York Mets someday. Can I please fire someone - today!?!