Summer’s end marks a time of ‘Revolution’

My bi-monthly column for The Times Herald, September 30

If I had to sum up the summer of ’06, it would be this: biking, beaches and the Beatles.
I know it seems like this column is a few weeks late, with Labor Day already past, but a late vacation kept this theme going well into September.
What started out as a single ride along the Schuylkill River became a weekly tradition — 12 miles long — through Schuylkill Park, past the Philadelphia Museum of Art, up Kelly Drive, across the river and back down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive — or West River Drive, as the memorial name never really stuck.
A shame it hasn’t as Philadelphia went against the comedy of Chris Rock by putting the civil rights leader’s name on a street in a good part of town.
But Chris Rock is still 99.9 percent right and thereby better than any current politician. Chris Rock for political office!
Anyway.
The weekly bike ride became daily while on vacation in Massachusetts — it’s how I got to the beach, and so swimming became the second theme of summer ’06, even though I’m not the wildest about the beach.
It could be the whole Jersey thing — “down the shore” as they famously and incorrectly say every day.
I still managed to keep the beach going for a few Sundays after vacation ended, and in Jersey no less, but certainly not down anywhere. It was again up north where things were a bit, uh, out in the open.
The trip also re-introduced me to The Beatles, or more specifically, Breakfast with the Beatles, on whatever radio station it’s on.
Radio is practically dead to me, but it never hurts to be reminded just how great The Beatles were, and why. On more than one occasion the “other” take of a famous song proved they were on occasion just one take away from being lost in oblivion.
But, thankfully, they weren’t. And while John Lennon’s infamous quote about Jesus Christ was a black spot on the group, it wasn’t exactly incorrect.
The beach was interrupted for a bike ride along the St. Lawrence Seaway in our neighborhood to the north one weekend in August.
After a brief respite from the beach, my fall vacation to Europe landed me on a beach of the Spanish Riviera, in Sitges, Spain, just outside Barcelona.
About 100 feet into the sea, with the water still clear to the bottom, I managed to look back over the beach to the centuries-old town — somewhere in there was the train and station that delivered me to this oasis — and then on to the mountains. It was a view unlike any other I’ve managed to set my eyes on.
It was the ride back, on rail service that the U.S. should be doing nearly anything — except President George W. Bush’s plan — to have, that the themes of my summer came to end.
My vacation didn’t, but what followed fell short of what Barcelona gave me.
So, summer has ended and fall is here, which annoyingly equates to election season and skewered facts. I believe an analogy of politics to hunting season is due.
But I’ll instead end with The Beatles’ “Revolution” playing through my head and offer a resource for the Americans who are going to give some thought to who will get there votes rather than vote along party lines in November.
Check out Project Vote Smart at www.vote-smart.org/index.htm. It includes basic information on candidates, including third parties, something woefully missing from the election coverage everywhere else.

An Awkward Moment of Note

The TV is playing in the background. The commercial is for e-Harmony.com. You've seen them, the ads about finding true love. The conversation happening with the TV in background? A talk among significant others about ending a relationship.

Eek!

Mark Twain Gets It Right, Again

So I'm under the impression that religion will lead to World War III.

Islam, Christianity and Judaism are so ungodly intermingled, you'd think the situations each has landed in with the other would be unthinkable. And the extremist ends of the spectrum of each religion seems to prevent any sort of chance of agreement.

But so be it. World War III, 3 religions.

This is a tad off base from the headline above, but a stumbled across a quote from Mark Twain and thought it summed up why why I have this feeling.

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
- Mark Twain

The parts of the Scripture and religious texts of other religions that are understood seem to be to blame. Perhaps it's from the contradictions with other understood passages, I don't know.

Twilight Zone?

I came in to work early today for my TV debut: A spot on The Times Herald's public access "Meet the Press" sort of show.

I walked into Suburban Station shortly after 11 a.m. to catch the 11:25 train to Norristown. Four hours later I learn there was an underground fire casued by some blown wires and transformers about a block away from the where I was in the train.

Doesn't sound too odd, yet, does it?

Except that I was very confused this morning while underground. As I remember it, and I told my coworker this long before learning anything else odd happened, I don't know how I got to work today.

The train was not on the track I remember usually boarding from. The direction of the train seemed wrong to me, yet the signage all said it was correct, even though it wasn't where I remember it usually being.

When we finally pulled into Market East, the next stop, I was still uncertain of how the train got there, because I remember the train pulling into the station from that direction, not pointing toward it.

Did my brain short out with the power lines, or was something else afoot?

Confessions of a New Age late bloomer

My bi-monthly column for The Times Herald, September 16

Hippie. Liberal. Quack.
Some of you are thinking this and you’ve only just gotten through the headline.
But not so, at least not for that reason.
My parents had no influence over this; I was thoroughly disappointed that despite my mother’s bell bottoms, clogs and ponytail days, she was never a flower child. In fact, the worst thing she ever did when skipping school was to smoke a cigar. It was also her last time to smoke one of those.
I only wore the John Lennon glasses for a single summer. Sometimes at night, I must admit.
It was actually the only period during my life that I ever really wore sunglasses.
I have pounds of rocks at home, but none of them are there to enrich any part of my life with their mystical properties, but perhaps they do, I don’t know. The rocks are leftovers from my “I want to be a geologist … no, paleontologist … no, astronaut days.”
That phase fit in between my firefighter days of yore and architect days of high school.
Probably the most “different” thing I got into while growing up in the sticks of Western Pennsylvania was rap and hip-hop music, which certainly didn’t go over well with the parent.
So it seems I was destined to grow up without falling far from the tree.
Until college.
With zero prodding, I was suddenly reading Zen and Buddhism books. My musical interest nudged up a decade to the ’70s — thank God I found Napster and worked at a record store during these years.
My father destroyed his music collection from this era. It was part of some spiritual enlightenment. God told him to throw his original Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Rolling Stones, etc. etc., collection in the garbage.
So I got to start my own collection from scratch.
Of course, a lot of this change for me seems expected for a college student, at least for someone finally existing in the much larger world of Philadelphia.
But it fit so well, so I ran with it.
I took a stress management class at my first college — it was a “gym” class with lots of quietly resting your head on the desk with the lightest amount of yoga happening. The fact that I got into the class was amazing because it was the must-have class every semester. It didn’t transfer to Temple, but I didn’t need a gym class to be a journalist.
Stress management class was enough of an introduction to yoga that I wanted to take it further, but that didn’t happen. Perhaps I didn’t want to go too far into the “New Age” realm.
I have trouble throwing myself too far into anything. I become wary of joining the fringes. And all that mystical stuff, while sometimes seemingly easier to grasp than the whole unexplainable creation of God aspect to religion, isn’t entirely me.
I’m much more of an amalgamation of different things. And it works, so why limit myself to one thing?
But just as likely, I couldn’t afford to pay for yoga classes or a gym membership.
Another reason I put off yoga was that because I was only just introduced to it in 1998, it seemed like it was still in fad phase. Fad is a very bad word for me. It throws up warning signals everywhere I turn.
This spring I finally went to a yoga class at my gym — one of my 2005 goals, I think, that I was quickly losing interest in.
That one visit became a once-a-week thing, then twice a week and now three times a week. Having a good teacher is certainly part of the reason, but I think it’s making some sort of difference.
And, with my interest increasing over the past half a year, I have trouble seeing it waning.
It doesn’t sound exactly amazing, but considering the class forces me to get up at 8 a.m., hours before I usually wake up, and even more hours before I generally become active, this must be something quite real.
I might be a late bloomer into New Age 101, but it’s sticking and working for me.
And in the words of Martha Stewart, that’s a good thing.

Back and Bathed

My God, how a sponge and wash cloth feel good after days without them in Europe. And I thought they were more sophisticated!!

More to come!

European Vacation

I'm making my 2nd trip to Europe this year. This one is far more extensive, 11 days beginning in Barcelona, Spain, on Sept. 8 and ending in London, England, on Sept. 18. In between with Paris, France.

This could be another whirlwind one; it certainly seems it. But I've got some travel to catch up on.

It will take me in the Mediterranean Sea and under and English Channel. I will see some Dali and DaVinci and I will be eating a lot of new food. My mouth is watering.

More importantly, it will take me away from my job for an amount of time not surely to happen until 2007.

My passport is ready, but my luggage is still empty. So much to do these last few days.

Pawns can win a chess game

My bi-monthly column for The Times Herald, September 2

I was reading my recently “unshackled” hometown newspaper this past week, after yoga and walking the dogs, when what should appear on the inside pages but a story about how President George W. Bush’s approval ratings among the so-called “Religious Right” were falling.
Of course this story was based on a poll that will be disregarded as biased and inaccurate by detractors who praise polls that support their ideas.
Funny thing, but slightly off topic.
So humor me, one and all, and let’s go with what is.
Has the Religious Right gone cynical? Are they and I in the same mindset now? Heaven forbid!
Perhaps the newly politicized — you know, compared to say, women or blacks — among them have grown tired of the empty promises that fell upon them in the months leading up to Novembers 2000 and 2004.
The promises propelled the winner to victory — what the president has called a “mandate” — despite a victory only by the slightest of margins.
The promises had to be made because those few hundred thousands the last time around made all the difference.
One promise included a gay marriage ban — which these people wanted more than health, happiness and fairness for all Americans. Very Jesus-like indeed. But that ban never materialized.
It’s come up twice in Congress and has failed both times, and why? The aforementioned poll detractors will be quick to note a slimming majority of Americans don’t support gay marriage — so say polls — but that doesn’t mean a slim majority of people support changing the Constitution to ban it.
And so it has failed, as it should have, because a slim majority shouldn’t pull the weight of a two-thirds majority.
On the other side of this is another group of people who are tired of political fodder, and they would be the homosexuals. You know, those people who live across the street without kids who are paying for your child’s education?
So again, we have seemingly opposites on the same wavelength. This is getting a little disturbing, no?
It’s starting to remind me of another situation, the tensions, to put it mildly, between Jews and Muslims. So similar in a majority of ways, but so many of them can’t live beside each other without attacking one another.
But I digress.
Of course, the list of political pawns goes on and on, but the other notable group of 2006 are the illegal immigrants — specifically Mexicans, who for some reason are destroying Norristown — but not a current murderer among them — and somehow preventing people from leaving their homes.
That last bit is a true belief by someone in this paper’s coverage area. Because illegal immigration isn’t going stop, perhaps this person would rather the aliens come here and stay inside and not do any work.
Also, specifically Mexicans, because why would a Canadian want to come to live in the States? And should they, they would be undetectable to the racist or simple-minded eye.
So a good many people are tired of playing pawn, especially when it turns as vicious, political and hollow as it has become.
It’s gotten out of hand, I’d say, and maybe — fingers crossed — enough people who are stuck as pawns will realize pawns can checkmate a king.
November elections are upon us; who has kept their promises and who can turn promises into action? Think of that before casting your vote two months from now.