Hey guess what ? I don’t have a single tattoo nor did I ever want one. I am in the minority here. There is one industry that has not been hurt by the awful current recession and that is the tattoo business.

I was born in 1963 which makes me 49 going on 50 and when I was a teenager, only sailors, prisoners, and just really bad guys got them, now everyone has one, even grandma ( well sadly inasmuch as we are all getting older, there are a lot of grandmas and grandpas who listen to The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and may even smoke weed – lol)

What I find interesting is that a whole lot of women get tattoos – I just don’t get it. Surely an innocent rose on a gal’s ankle will certainly not affect her physical appearance in any sort of positive or negative way, but when a woman paints 50 % of her body I am just stunned and ask myself, why ? Another growing number of folks getting tattoos are black athletes, which actually in my opinion does make them look “badass” and cool.

So another simple and short blog – now WhaDaYaThink ? What do you think ? Do you like tattoos? I, personally think it’s old hat not unlike when men started wearing earrings,  you were making a statement – I am my own person, I don’t follow the rules, I’m rebellious, and I’m just simply anti – establishment. But listen folks, it’s OVER !!! When everyone has tats, you no longer stand out.

Last Father’s Day I wrote about my father. This year I thought I’d do the same for my grandfather. I never knew my father’s father but my mother’s lived with us for a couple of years or so  when I was very young. He emigrated from Austria along with his wife, four daughter’s and their husbands. Some of his grandkids (my older cousins and 10 month old brother) were also in tow. Earlier on, his son had moved further west to settle in Ohio. Like a lot of immigrants back then, they crossed the ocean via ship. To this day my mother hates boats. Everyone was apparently very seasick for the whole of the journey. Lady Liberty held her torch high over the stench of vomit with one hand while holding her nose with the other. Everyone was very happy to see her in spite of her unusual pose.

Back in his homeland, my grandfather was a forest ranger by trade. By the time he moved to the states however, he was already retired. But his love of animals stayed with him and carried over in his day to day life. From my earliest recollection I can see him feeding the squirrels; they’d always eat right out of his outstretched palm. He was never once bitten. He even got my aunt into the act but she only went so far as to leave peanuts on the kitchen windowsill and then close the window as we’d watch “Hansi” eat them from the safety of the glass between us. This went on for several weeks until one day Hansi peed on the window ledge and that was that.

One day my grandfather won a pig at one of the family events we always seemed to be going to. We all thought it was a great big side of ham or something until we were informed that we had to go and pick it up at a farm in New Jersey. While there, a certain little fox terrier took a shine to my grandfather and the farmer told him he could take the dog along with the pig. “Tiny”, as she was called, never left my grandfather’s lap for the remainder of her life. When he removed his pants at night she was always stuck to them until the next morning when he’d put them on again. Occasionally, they’d have to be washed so she was included in the wash, rinse, spin cycle. She adored him and would always yip yip yip any time someone tried to get near him. She didn’t even mind his cigars or that pipe he smoked.

That pipe. That’s another very early memory. When we were quite small, we celebrated the Feast Day of St. Nicholas on the sixth of December. On the evening before, my mom would place our shoes outside the front door and Lo and Behold, the next morning they’d be filled with chocolate, oranges and maybe even a coloring book along with a brand new box of crayons. We either had very large feet or somehow my mother had a real sense of ingenuity and managed to stuff them all in with the aid of a shoe horn. Anyway, on one particular December 6th, mom told us to “Run to the window and look outside!” It was already dark, and our window, two flights up, faced the backyard. She was screaming “It’s Saint Nicholas! It’s Saint Nicholas!” I hadn’t a clue what she was yelling about. All I could see was the glowing embers of my grandfather’s pipe and called out to him wondering what in the world was he doing out there in the dark with Saint Nicholas? This was followed by his deep raspy laugh which meant “Don’t I feel silly”.

Once when I was about 4 or 5, he gave me a tiny gold ring with the initial “M” engraved on the top of it. I was totally amazed. Where did you get it? I naively asked, still too young to know you could go out and purchase these things and they didn’t just magically appear. I found it, he replied. Wow! Imagaine that. He found a ring perfectly sized to my finger that just happens to have my initial on it! It was my prized possession, which I didn’t have too many of at the time, that lasted for about two days. On that second day, I was washing my hands with soap at the bathroom sink when  it slipped off my finger and tinkled down the drain! I was horrified! I can still hear the delicate tune it played all the way down “tink-a-tink-alee-tink-a-tink-tink” translated to “aren’t-you-a-stupid-little-girl”. My heart sank. I didn’t tell anyone. I was too ashamed. I was hoping he’d never ask what happened to it and he never did. But looking back, had I said something, they could have removed the J pipe  where it probably sat for a bit until it was washed out to sea. The same sea they journeyed over on all those years ago. Any chance it may have slipped onto Lady Liberty’s little toe? No, her feet are definitely too big. Her shoe may have been the boat they came over on.

“Before I slip into unconsciousness, I’d like to have another kiss … ” Jim Morrison was obsessed with death and talked, sang, and wrote about it his whole short life right up until he met his very own end on July 3, 1971 in Paris – he was only 27. Jim died peacefully in the bathtub they say of – excess, alcoholism, pneumonia, a heroin overdose (though Jim didn’t like the drug) a heart attack … nobody knows for sure. There are conspiracy theories galore and they’re all over the web including the possibility that his death was a fake (another Elvis thing) but sadly Jim Morrison did in fact die and the sad truth is that those who knew him well were not in the least bit surprised; Jim was coughing and throwing  up blood months before and why there was no autopsy and more importantly why his loved ones didn’t help him get some sort of medical attention is a mystery. Nevertheless, Jim and the Doors died in 1971 despite 2 of the remaining band members – Ray Manzarek  (Magdalena wrote an obit. A couple of weeks ago regarding his death) and Robby Krieger tried to revive The Doors with Stewart Copeland as drummer and well …that’s another story.
Since Magdalena’s blog about the death of the amazing keyboardist/bassist Ray Manzarek, I’ve not been able to pull myself away from listening, reading , and researching all about this incredibly original rock band who not only were way before their time but explored death, chaos, edge, uncertainty, revolution, etc. like no other group before – as some people would say, they were the Yang of Yin, the Beatles talked and sang about love and The Doors threw in our face Vietnam and darkness.

Certainly for me, at the age of 49, there are better, more educated writers who can quench my existential thirst, but The Doors were special – no doubt about it. The members of the band were educated and thoughtful; they actually named the group after Aldous Huxley’s ‘Doors Of Perception’ and were heavily influenced by the poet William Blake and the beat writers: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, etc. and Jim read all of Nietzsche’s work. I liked what critic, Henry Collins, had to say about the singing of Jim Morrison – his voice was controlled, rich, masculine, almost balladeer (believe it or not, Jim loved the crooners i.e. Frank Sinatra) and then that tenderness would morph into this wild, feral and ferocious animal!!!
The band really began with a chance encounter with Ray Mancerek and Jim Morrison meeting at UCLA film school – both were never really that serious about EVER becoming rock stars (Jim always wanted to be a poet and Ray contemplated practicing law) but as we all know… the rest is history.
Well, WhaDaYaThink ? What do you think ? Are/were you a Doors fan? What I enjoyed the most was Morrison’s improvisational style; you never knew what he would do next, he was a dangerous, scary, exciting Adonis. The band was also not your three chord, typical boogie back then, the music was jazzy, bluesy and simultaneously beautiful and very odd.

My mother is 85 years old. She drives her own car, does her own shopping, gardens, knits, feeds the birds, tends to the chickens (upstate), cooks and cleans, bakes like nobody’s business, and a multitude of other things too numerous to mention that would put most people half her age to shame. She not only does all these things, but she does them all well. She’s an expert in her craft. She is selfless.
Recently, I was at a low point in my life. I’m still struggling but recovering and know that when I emerge from my gray state, I will never be what I once was. I will be changed. A different type of butterfly, muted in color, but I will still carry my damaged wings with certainty and an element of grace.  Wish me luck on my journey from here to there, for indeed, I will be on the move if not in the physical sense, most decidely in the spiritual.
My mother, sensing my profound loss, drove herself the 40 minutes to my house armed with her ammunition of flowering plants to detonate in my then empty garden. I helped of course, half heartedly, but before too long I was actually smiling and feeling better. Nothing like a mother’s love to set things to right. Nature possesses a balm that brings us back to ourselves. She knows this.
When we had finished, we sat in the middle of our private sanctuary enjoying the afternoon sun. She looked down at her wrinkled hands, splotched with age and remarked on their ugliness. I was taken aback and said nothing. I thought about it after she’d gone home. Hers are the hands that had just performed a miracle. Not merely in the finesse she had just distributed throughout my garden, but in her selfless act to replant the something missing in my heart.
Hers are the hands that are never without expression.  She can make something out of nothing. She will take something that you gave her and give it back to you a year later ten times more beautiful. When she arrives, her hands are never empty bringing armloads of groceries you didn’t know you needed. Hers are the hands that lay folded in her lap listening to your every word. The hands that pray when you need it most.
Sometimes, after she’s left, I find a folded bill her hands tucked somewhere where I could find it. I smile and shake my head. She’s something else.
There are hands that are smooth, young, and unblemished by life’s troubles but none are more beautiful than my mother’s hands. She wears the ring of angels. Her touch is golden.

To understand all is to forgive all. Do you believe in this? I think only an omniscient benevolent god-like entity can truly both completely understand and ultimately forgive absolutely everything for example – a child murderer. This is an adage I very often have trouble wrapping my mind around but it is something to which I must cling with all my heart in order to move on and carry on in the face of abject evil.
Everything happens for a reason is another optimistic way to think about the world in which we live. This is almost impossible to swallow when tragedy and unspeakable horror happens but I do absolutely believe in cause and effect even if we don’t understand it. In fact from a strictly speaking scientific perspective everything as an antecedent however as a side note what happened before the big bang???
All life is precious. Well I guess you would have to say – it depends. A pernicious carcinoma is alive albeit the fact that it will have viciously hijacked your DNA and continue to suck the life out of you until you die. Hence what we mean by “all life” we’re referring to humans, mammals, and some invertebrate.

So Whadayathink ? What do you think ? We all have our little terse sayings and general truths that we carry along with us throughout our lives. What are some of yours?

Growing up, and even through my twenties, I had a lot of friends. There were always three or four especially good ones I could confide in. But then life moves on and we develop closer bonds with our spouses, and if we have children the circle widens to include the parents of their friends and so on. Relatives, once the staple in the branching of the family nucleus, either move away or broaden their horizons much the way our former friends had. If, like me, you don’t have children, you might seek the companionship of the ever loyal canine, or in my case, have a predisposition to feline fancy. As a kid, I always loved them and still do, now more than ever.
What is it about cats that I admire more so than most people? For one thing, they’re adorably cute. How many adults can you say that about? They don’t tell you what to do and they do what they want. Wait. Let me rephrase that. They do tell you what to do and they do what they want but you don’t mind doing it (most of the time). They’re resourceful. If it’s raining out and you’re not home to let them in, they’ll wait it out under the awning or under a bush and never bellyache about it. They don’t whine the way people do and unlike people who are easily distracted or pretend to care, when you talk to your pets they actually listen. They may not know what you’re saying but a gentle rub against the knee does more to console than anything anyone can say. I could go on and on about the attributes of my sphinxlike friends. Why is it then, they’re so hated by some people?
They don’t come when you call them? How would you like to come running every time someone goes, spss, spss, spss? They poop in your garden? Consider it free fertilizer and a lot less expensive than what you can purchase at The Home Depot, or be a man and dispose of it with your wife’s cute little garden gloves. You pick up dog poop, don’t you? It’s a lot less smellier. At least the stuff disintegrates, not like the junk people have no qualms about dumping everywhere they go: trash in parks, preserves and beaches, all manner of unwanted household furnishings thrown guiltlessly into rivers, oceans, and roadsides, cups and food wrappers from the local Wendy’s or Taco Bell stuffed into a neighbor’s hedge or simply tossed out the window of a passing car on a highway.
In recent days (turning into weeks now) three of my five outdoor cats went missing in less than a week’s time. They rarely leave the yard except for perhaps the occassional visit to your backyard. They didn’t go for a walk to never come back. Some heartless (I won’t even call neighbor) thing living in close proximity decided to take them for a walk, either in the literal or not so literal sense. I don’t know who you are but I want you to know that I despise you. You’re not fit to walk the earth and share breathing space with the rest of humanity, you evil, decrepit, soul-less entity. Now that I’ve purged myself somewhat from weeks of uncontrollable crying maybe, just maybe, I can move ahead with grace, one of the traits I’ve adopted from my furry children. We’re survivalists. What in hell are you?

26 miles and 385 yards – that’s insanity!!! People point their finger at me and say that I’m a fan of a brutal sport (MMA –Mixed Martial Arts) but not a single person has ever died in the UFC octagon; and though I don’t have the exact statistics, invariably every year or so, one hears that a person has died of a heart attack running the outrageously long race.

Why does the race have to be that long ? And, who are the morons who elect to participate in such a deleterious sporting event? It’s a medical fact that engaging in any cardiovascular activity for more than an hour provides no further benefits to one’s health and in fact pushing oneself beyond 40 minutes to an hour without pause is simply put – dangerous. I find it quite interesting to note that these professional marathon runners do not look in any way shape or form  – healthy; in fact they look sickly and in need of a good highly – caloric meal.

I do respect the gutsy toughness of the runners, but can’t they cut it down to 13 miles, instead of 26 ??? Wouldn’t that make sense?

So, WhaDaYaThink ? What do you think ?