AWFUL MOMENTS

I’ve essentially turned off my television for the next week.  The new Time Magazine showed up in my mailbox today with the all-too-familiar picture of a Dallas motorcade on the cover.  It will be everywhere for the next seven days.  There are two such searing events in the lives of most of us, three for those of our parents’ generation, and each is burned into us in such a way as to become part of who we are.  This post appears in both my personal and my political blogs because of this duality, a national experience personally shared and experienced.

I first began to feel old when a group of co-workers and I were exchanging reminiscences of where we were that November day when the news came, and a bright young thing piped up: “I hadn’t been born yet”.  And in my mind I thought: ‘really, it’s been that long?’  I do, of course, remember that day with some embarrassment since I made some smart-assed remark to the first kid to stick his head in the 10^th grade geometry class window to say: “the president’s been shot”.  In my defense, none of us could believe the news at first, but I, always quick with the least appropriate statement, said something like: “who, Lincoln?”

Anyway, I still cannot view that Dallas footage, and so I’m giving up TV for a week, just as I do for the week after Labor Day each year, and as our parents do around the first week of December.  I can’t even look at the weather channel since I’m sure they’re planning a special on why good weather led to Kennedy’s shooting.  Even one of my favorite escapist TV shows – Bones – did an episode on the assassination once.

One of the main reasons I can’t watch is that I can’t take the barrage of ‘experts’, each claiming they’ve proven some conspiracy theory: there were two assassins; Roosevelt knew the Japanese were coming; the CIA/mob/Cubans killed Kennedy; Bush and Condoleezza Rice knew what the hijackers were planning, and so on.  In my mind, these wild-eyed fame-chasers are just a subset of our polarized, screaming society, where tables are being pounded and spittle is flying on every channel, from all sides of the political spectrum, on TV or You-Tube, and each has a more horrible allegation regarding his opponent than the next.

So now, especially now, by all the Gods you profess to believe in, can you all please just SHUT UP!

POMPEII EXHIBIT

My sister and I went to the new Pompeii exhibit at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and while it was nice enough, I’m afraid I was disappointed.  The exhibit does give a very clear picture of life in and around 79CE, mostly as enjoyed by wealthier Roman citizens.  There is a wide range of everyday items, like pots and fishing gear, as well as some astonishingly intricate gold and silver jewelry.  All of this is instructive and interesting, but all related to life.  What the exhibit fails to convey is the awful death these people suffered. 

Those who know me well know that I wear a silver ring containing a black piece of Vesuvius rock.  I bought this some 40 years ago when I visited Pompeii for real.  The ancient city and its attendant volcano were only a short bus-ride from the naval base at Naples, where my ship was home-ported.  I have tried and failed many times to convey how absolutely eerie it was to walk around in those deathly quiet streets.  Such tourists as there were spoke in hushed tones, partly because voices spoken aloud would echo through the empty streets and shops.  You could really feel the ghosts of the departed population.

The Franklin Institute tries to convey the destruction and terror, and largely fails.  A short film compressing an eruption lasting a day and a half into a few minutes was not very convincing, although the animated pyroclastic flow at the end was quite dramatic.  People actually coughed on the stage mist as though it were really dust.  But it was inadequate.  I also think that four were too few of the casts of the dead to really convey any scale.  Many thousands died.

The exhibit’s worth the price of admission, partly because you also get general admission to the Franklin Institute itself, and can play with the toys.  But if you get the chance, go and see the real thing.  Here are four pictures I took in my visit all those years ago.

This is the mosaic tile floor of the entryway to a residence, undoubtedly belonging to one of the wealthier residents.

This is how people crossed the streets, which for the most part were muddy sewers.  The breaks in the pathway were for wagons and chariots.

This is a sign painted on the wall.  It might be a street name or the business name.

Finally, here is a shot down one of the streets.  Dozens of similar street have been excavated, all in about the same state of destruction.  The silence was palpable.

AUTUMN WALK

As I often do on Sunday, I took my walk in Mill Creek park, where Cynthia and I would regularly go.  It's a 178-acre green space, which is a lot of area to take up in a township that's only 7.8 square miles, and about half of it is wooded.  It's also home to the deer herd that ravage our gardens from time to time.  It's a little late to see much color, and we've had an odd fall; it's been so warm.  But it's a beautiful walk, and I thought I'd share some pictures of this favorite spot.  The 25-foot hill on the right side of the picture is where I can get additional exercise.  After all, there are no hills in South Jersey to match the Palisades.

Here's the view from that little height, back over the pond.

There's a memorial garden near the entrance, and Cynthia has a tree here.  It's still small since the original, planted last fall, didn't survive Superstorm Sandy.

Not all markers are in the garden.  The gravel path around the pond is the Ben Levi walk, and at the high point of the walking path (which is along the tree line in the first picture) is this marker:

I never met Phil Goldin that I knew of, unfortunately, but I'm sure we passed one another on this path.  This is the view back towards the exercise hill.

It's a beautiful spot, and a great way to get a couple of miles under my belt (and there's a Dunkin' Donuts in the little shopping center outside the park, so I could reward myself with some coffee, because it was nippy today).

THE SECRET

While out walking today, I stopped to talk with one of my neighbors. He was struggling with the annual leaf dump in his yard, and looked as if he could use the interruption.  He was a delightful octogenarian, and we had a good visit.  As I was leaving, he asked my age, and when I told him, he said he was 83, and wanted to know if I wanted the secret of living to the age of 83.  Well, of course I did.  After looking around carefully, he leaned in and told me the secret, and if you scroll down, I'll repeat it for you.













































You're almost there, keep scrolling.










































The secret of living to age 83?


































DON'T DIE WHEN YOU'RE 82!

FLEA MARKET BUSINESS

I've been sort of easing myself into the business of buying and selling 'stuff''.  Understand that we're not talking about antiques, here.  Just everyday odds and ends that people both discard and collect.  I've been in this business since my teens when I had a store-front operation in Trenton (my father owned the building).

I actually got the bug at an estate sale when I was about twelve.  I had bid on a tray of stuff and got it for 50 cents.  I had wanted (and still own) some miniature books that were included.  On my way back to my seat a guy offered me $5 for a brass scale that was also on the tray.  I was flustered and didn't sell (I still have the scale, also), but I knew it was a good business.

After we returned to New Jersey in 1980, Cynthia and I used to sell at the Berlin market from time to time, and I kept a small inventory on a rack in the garage.  Over the past year I have been to three sales, most recently the Collingswood Book Fair, which I attended with the help of my sister, Sharon.  Although not normally a bookseller (I'm more of a book buyer, some would say hoarder), with Sharon's contributions we were able to set up a modest couple of tables and had a pretty fair day.

Now that I've been accustoming myself to the flea market world once again, I have ventured out in search of some inventory.  I have been using two online auction sites - RCI Auctions, which specializes in restaurant and bar liquidations and for me is a source of wall art, vases, etc., and GovDeals.com, which is a clearinghouse for many Federal, state and local jurisdictions offering everything from confiscated Bentleys to lost items like wallets.  In fact, I was in Edison the other day picking up a lot of 40 used men's and ladies' wallets I had bought for $26.  Since some of them are brand name items like Coach and Fossil, I expect a reasonable turnaround on these.  In any event, since I was already in North Jersey, I got a schedule of nearby storage unit auctions and attended thee of those.  Now these are much like the auctions you see on the show Storage Wars, without the cameras, drama, and drawn-out post mortems, but certainly with a cast of regular bidders with distinctive, sometimes odd, personalities.  Oh, and I sold a wallet.  I was sorting the box while waiting for one of the auctions to start and sold one to another bidder for $3.

Most lockers were heavy with furniture, which is not my business, but I did buy a small locker for $5 that everyone else turned up their noses at, and I have at least $25 in saleable stuff to show for it, without even going through everything yet.  The reason people passed was largely because the space included a rather nasty-looking mattress set, which I took to the dump for an $8 fee.  It was a large Tempurpedic mattress, which probably retailed for several grand.  But it looked like it had mold and I have no idea how it could be cleaned, and had no room to store it anyway, so into the dumpster it went, with a great lightening of spirit.  (Among other things - that mattress was heavy.)

And today I attended the holy of holies when it comes to auctions - the estate auction.  This is where the contents of a home are laid out on the lawn and a lot of the stuff is sold rapid-fire in box lots for only a few dollars each.  Nicer pieces, jewelry, toys, Lionel trains, and the like are sold by the piece, of course, as is the furniture.  I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 to get to this place in outer hicktown, PA, but it was worth it.  These are pretty rare, as most auctions are at fixed auction houses where the prices are normally rather higher.  This is what I brought home for $24.

It was so much fun I could hardly stand it, but I had run out of room (plus it was cold under those trees), so I came back in time to spend an hour at my local library's quarterly used book sale, which is where I feed my own demons as well as gather some inventory.

Over the next few days I will catalog, price and repack this stuff, and we'll see how well I really did.  More on this later.

XFINITY - LATIN FOR INCOMPETENT

Speaking of commercials, I find that I have astonishing amount of slack-jawed admiration for the depth of Xfinity’s (Comcast’s) corporate chutzpah!  They actually run commercials attempting to convince us that they are qualified to provide our home telephone service, or even more astonishingly, our home security systems.  Their announcers actually manage to do this with perfectly straight faces.  Now, that’s acting!  These offerings from a company that cannot reliably provide a television picture.  To say that the situation is ridiculous is too weak, the language simply hasn’t the words to express how disgusted this makes me feel.

It is, after all, a rare week that passes without having a program interrupted with Xfinity’s version of the old Microsoft ‘blue screen of death’, although Xfinity words theirs much more pleasantly – “Your service will be restored momentarily”.  Sometime yes, sometimes no. 

And now they have a new trick.  They kill the sound but not the picture.  They never do this during a commercial, of course, but at the critical moment near the end of a program when critical dialog is occurring.  The sound goes out just on that one show; just on that one station.  This seems to be more than incompetence; it feels like active sabotage.  If you call their ‘customer service’, they will offer to send a technician to your home in a day or two, when the error will of course no longer being occurring.  Just once I wish they would offer instead to investigate the issue where it obviously occurs, at their transmission station on Beverly-Rancocas Road.   

And what would we get if we are foolish enough to sign up for these Xfinity services?  I can just envision trying to make a 911 call when they pull the sound trick on the ‘phone service, or having my house robbed while their home security service is ‘temporarily interrupted’. 

Anyone ever fall for these pitches?  If so I have a can’t-lose investment strategy I’d like to sell you on.

COMMERCIALS

A number of the television shows I enjoy, like NCIS, Castle, and Rizzoli & Isles, run on the USA and TNT networks, which means I see a fairly large number of commercials.  I’m not sure if it’s my imagination, but the rhetoric employed seems to be getting a progressively weaker grasp on reality and truth.  One of my pet peeves is when a meaningless phrase is used to fool the listener into thinking something meaningful has been said.  My pet example is “real ingredients”.  As opposed to unreal ingredients?  What the advertiser wants you to think you heard, of course, is “real good ingredients”, but with the deniability that comes from having said nothing at all.

And, of course, I really love the commercials with fine print messages on the screen, where they give truth of the special car deal or the side effects of a drug.  Somehow, probably with liberal applications of money, the FCC has been conned into believing that these unreadable, and often unnoticed, flashes on the screen really satisfy the advertisers’ disclosure obligations.

Oh, and a note to the Lincoln concierge – a hole in the roof of a car, no matter how large, cannot be a “panoramic opening”.  A panorama is what we see out of the windows.  Panorama is Greek for ‘see all around’.  That hole in the roof is typically called a 'moon roof'.