Oh Snap!

Hello there, blog.  Has it been four and a half years since I’ve visited you?  Hard to believe it’s been that long!  Perhaps it’s time to add something new to you.  Plenty of Life has passed under the bridge since we last talked, much of which would have made great fodder for blog entries, so where to begin?  I think I know where.

The road to this story really begins back in 2008 (maybe it was 2009…hell, I don’t remember exactly, parenthood has taken its toll on my memory) when my daughter started taking taekwondo classes.  By the end of 2011, after a few years worth of classes, discipline, and testing, she stood on the verge of earning her first degree black belt.  It was also around that time it occurred to me that, other than the dog, I was the only male member of the household; and of the two females, one was about her earn a black belt.  Not wanting to be totally defenseless, I decided to begin taking taekwondo classes at the same dojo my daughter attended starting in January 2012.

With the new year came the start of my classes.  That first evening I got set up with my dobok, the uniform worn by those participating in Korean martial arts.  It seemed a little big on me, but either it would shrink or I would grow – it was all good.  With the uniform came the white belt that all new students wear.  That first night was a harsh reminder of just how out of shape I was as just the stretches and other warm up activities came close to killing me.  But I somehow I managed to survive that class, along with the next handful of classes.

January 14, 2012 was a Saturday, and a pretty one at that.  Although it was cold outside, the sun was out and the sky was clear – an absolutely gorgeous winter’s day.  I threw on a pair of running shorts and a blue Under Armour shirt, grabbed my dobok, and headed off for class that morning.  Following the usual warm ups, the class took a brief water break before starting on our first activity, one that is intended to help with your sparring technique, especially your footwork.  It involved the heavy bag, which hangs near the middle of the classroom, swinging back and forth.  The object was to move forward as the bag swung backwards, and then back pedal as the bag came forward, all the while getting as close as you could to the bag without it making contact.  Easy enough.  My turn in line finally came, and I was ready to go.  Forward…back…forward…back…forward…ba….

The sound.  It’s the sound that I remember most.  More than three years later it’s still a memory that makes me cringe each and every time.  I’ve been told the injury I had just experienced is a painful one, but it’s the sound that I recall most.  It was as if a large, half inch wide rubber band had just broken, and the sound echoed off the classroom walls.  Immediately my right leg collapsed under my weight and I landed on the padded floor.  I looked up at my classmates behind me, wondering who had just hit me in the back of my leg, because that’s exactly what it felt like.  The shocked looks on their faces told me instantly that nobody had hit me – something more serious had happened.

Now seated on the floor I grabbed my right ankle, and instinctively I knew what had just happened.  The back of my ankle, which is normally pretty firm when the Achilles tendon is intact, was very pliable – the tendon was not there. “Shit,” I thought, “the tendon’s ruptured.”  My next thought was my wife was going to kill me in spite of what self-defense techniques I had managed to learn to that point.  In THE most boned-headed decision I’ve ever made, I had decided a couple of months prior to drop my health insurance for a year.  I was in good health, what prescriptions I did take were generic and cheap…ditch the insurance for a year, use the extra money to catch up on some bills…what could go wrong?

A couple of the black belts in class helped me get to a chair just outside the classroom, and one of the owners/instructors of the dojo gave me a bag of ice.  I called my wife to let her know I had hurt myself in class and asked if she could stop by with an Ace bandage to wrap my ankle.  When she arrived there was a brief discussion of my insurance situation.  Fortunately she didn’t kill me, but if looks could kill I’d be feeding the tree right now.  A visit to the orthopedist confirmed the Achilles rupture.  The tear was complete, so there was no way things would improve without surgery.  When you’re without insurance, that’s exactly what you want to hear.  For weeks I walked about wearing an air cast boot on my leg while I tried to figure out how to creatively finance the surgery.  Luckily my wife and I had enough in savings to cover the expense and then some, but I didn’t want to take that much money out of our account due to my stupidity.  In the end we figured things out and I called to get my surgery scheduled for the morning of Tuesday, March 6.

In the interim there were many lessons to be learned about how much of a role your Achilles plays in your everyday life and you don’t even realize it.  Without it, lifting up on your toes is all but impossible, as is walking normally, running, even driving a car is tricky because you cannot push on the accelerator with your toes – you push down on the pedal using your whole leg.  Almost all of the strength in your lower leg comes from your Achilles connecting your foot to your calf muscle.  Found that out the hard way.

For whatever reason I didn’t sleep all that well the evening of March 5, but I did manage to fall asleep on the couch for a couple of hours.  The orthopedic clinic I went to has a separate surgical center building, and that’s where I had my procedure performed.  Once back in the pre-op waiting room I got ready for my very first cut-me-open surgery.  Oh, sure, I had my tonsils taken out back at the beginning of 1979, but this was something completely different.  I sat on the gurney, looking at my leg, wondering what the scar would look like, and paying attention to the dimple on the back of my ankle caused by the tendon not being there to provide structure and support.  A few nurses came in and out of the room, one asked how I was doing.  “A little nervous,” I replied.  As if she anticipated that, she said, “I’m about to give you something for that.”

Shortly after that my memory becomes a little fuzzy.  I do remember the anesthesiologist coming in to give me a nerve block in my right hamstring.  It was a strange sensation when he located the correct nerve as my lower leg started twitching.  Not long after that it was showtime, and I was rolled to the OR.  Before the anesthesia was injected into my IV, I offered to slide from the gurney to the table to make it a little easier on the nursing staff.  For an Achilles repair you lie face down on the table so the surgeon can easily access the back of your leg.  But they said it was okay, they would move me to the table once I was out.  So instead I thanked them for fixing me about the time the anesthesia was administered by IV.  The anesthesia really made my hand ache, and the last thing I said before fading to black was, “Wow, that’s really uncomfortable.”

I regained consciousness as a nurse was getting me dressed to go home.  Normally being in a bed, in your underwear, next to a pretty woman, is a good thing.  I can’t say that in this instance.  My leg was elevated and in a soft cast from the knee down.  Basically a soft cast is a crap load of cotton and gauze wrapped around your leg, surrounded by an Ace wrap bandage. I kinda-sorta remember my wife telling me that the doctor had to make a longer incision than usual to fix the tendon.  But it wasn’t until two weeks later at my first follow up appointment that I found out just how far he had to cut.  At that visit my soft cast was cut off before they put me in the hard cast I would wear for the next six weeks.  Of course I had to look at my leg, and was dumbfounded to see that the incision went from my heel to mid-calf, nearly a foot long trail of sutures and staples.  That was when I first gave a name to my new soon-to-be-scar: Frankenankle.  I’ll spare you the picture I took…or should I?

The hard cast came off at the end of April, 2012, and the staples and sutures were removed (a combined total of 34 of them).  It was very surprising to see how much my calf muscle had atrophied after only a couple of months in a cast.  I didn’t have a lot of extra money for physical therapy but in the sessions I did have, they showed me exercises to help rehab the ankle and bring the strength back.  The one saving grace is that my right leg is the stronger of the two, so once the tendon was reattached there was some strength (albeit only a little) available to work with.  Of course there were follow up visits with the orthopedist (the doctor liked the Frankenankle nickname), but generally the remainder of 2012 was spent doing rehab exercises, swimming, and walking (lots of walking).

I made my return to taekwondo at the end of March, 2013, almost fifteen months after my injury.  As of this writing I'm not too far away from being a black belt candidate myself.  Most white belts move onto to their yellow belts within three months; I like to joke that I wanted to spend as much time as a white belt as possible.  I wince now whenever I hear of someone injuring their Achilles as I know what they’re in for in terms of repair and rehab, and it’s a tough experience to go through.  And as today is the third anniversary of the surgery to repair the tendon, a Happy Birthday to Frankenankle!!

Oh, and that Under Armour shirt I was wearing the day of my injury? Haven't worn it since.  Superstitious?  Oh yeah, very much so.

The shutter bug

It was a warm, though not altogether hot, June day back in 1971, a time when my family still lived in New York. This particular day was special, as I was graduating from kindergarten from Cedar Street School in Uniondale. The school no longer stands, being razed a year later and eventually turned into a park. It should also be noted that the original building of the high school I graduated from was torn down in 2001. The bookends of where I started and ended my compulsory public education are both gone forever. I do not recall much of my kindergarten graduation day, but what I do remember is that my great-grandmother was on hand to see it. Not many people have the opportunity to know at least one of their great-grandparents, so I consider myself lucky to have known and to have clear memories of her.

Following whatever ceremony I’m sure they conducted that day, my great-grandmother presented me with a gift, and not just in the physical, material sense. On that day she gave me my first, working camera along with a roll of black and white film. I stood by eagerly as somebody helped load the film into the camera. The very first picture I ever shot was of my great-grandmother standing on the steps of my school. I remember it well, though I haven’t seen the picture in many, many years. It may be gone for good, or it could be lost in one of the large boxes of photographs my mother has at her place. I’m hoping the latter is true as I would love to have that picture enlarged and framed.

What I was given that day nearly forty years ago was not just a camera, but a first taste of what would become my love of photography and photographs in general. Over the years I would enjoy looking at photographs in books but only occasionally got to shoot any photos myself. There would be chances to shoot during trips and vacations using my grandparent’s Kodak Instamatic camera that required you to manually advance the film. And let’s not forget the square flashcube that sat on top, with four single-use bulbs inside. After you were done with one flashcube, you’d pop it off and put a new one on. If you remember those features, you really are showing your age, as am I.

It wasn’t until the rise of digital camera that I began to shoot pictures in earnest. My first one was a low resolution Sony Mavica which stored images on a floppy disc. The camera that replaced that one was also a Sony, though with a much higher image resolution and stored images onto memory sticks. It was with that camera that I really began giving thought to how to compose shots, though I wasn’t really learning photography per se. It wasn’t until Christmas 2004 that that all changed. That year my wife gave me my first real camera, a Canon 300D DSLR. It was a bit overwhelming at first, reading the instructional manual and trying to figure out what all those buttons and settings were used for. None of it made any sense and didn’t for quite some time.

I had perused pictures shot locally on Flickr for a while, debated whether or not to start an account there. There were quite a number of local photographers whose skills and talents intimidated me to the point where I just didn’t want to be embarrassed by posting mediocre pictures. By September 2007 I had decided to take the plunge and join the ranks on Flickr. By that time I had been experimenting with using shutter speed and aperture size with mixed success. Usually I could save an image by correcting it in Photoshop, though not always. It also occurred to me that by adding myself to the list of local photographers on Flickr, it would compel me to learn my camera inside and out—and it did. The epiphany came while shooting an old red barn not too far from my house. A number of the pictures I took on that day just weren’t turning out like I had hoped they would. I had just finished reading a book on DSLR cameras, and the light clicked on in my head to set the shutter speed and aperture settings in conjunction with each other instead of independently of each other. Suddenly the pictures I was shooting looked just like I wanted them to.

For the past three years I’ve been fairly aggressively pursuing my hobby, shooting primarily landscapes and structures (abandoned and/or historic) while branching out into other types of imaging, such as high dynamic resolution and infrared images. My camera has seen a lot of use in the almost six years I’ve had it. But of late my hobby has seemed less of a hobby and more of a job—and an unpaid one at that. The things I’ve found fun, such as traveling to small towns or heading out into the countryside to find things to document (either solo or with others) have been replaced by not so fun stuff that are completely at odds with my sense of independence and desire to be alone for a few hours at a time with my camera, hoping that the dirt road I’m driving down holds something that would make a really good subject for a picture or two. There was also frustration that I wanted to do more than shoot landscapes and buildings, but the idea of moving into portraits just makes me really uneasy for a number of reasons. Things just got to the point where I did something I’ve never done before: put my camera in its bag, put the bag away, and did not touch either for a couple of months. Stopped carrying my camera around just in case, no desire to take any pictures of anything, all but closed down my Flickr account, just a total disconnect from anything dealing with photography.

But it’s time to pick the camera up again. The motivation and inspiration to do so came from a couple of sources, one being someone who has no idea they were a motivating factor and I’m not about to tell them. The other being it’s fall. To pass up a chance to get outdoors and document the trees as the leaves change color, I’d be crazy to pass up such an opportunity—though some will simply say I’m just crazy regardless of the opportunity at hand. You could say the shutter bug is back, and now I want to get out and shoot for fun.

I had the chance to visit my great-grandmother’s gravesite a couple of years ago while on a trip back to New York. Her granite marker is the closest I can come to a face-to-face with her, so I took a picture of it. She was the subject for the very first picture I took; I wonder how she’d feel knowing she was also picture number 19,090 that I took with my Canon camera?

You Can't Go Home Again: the conclusion

The weather improved somewhat the day after our excursion into Manhattan, enough to allow me to take my daughter to Jones Beach to swim in the ocean. As I watched her play in the water as I did more than thirty-five years earlier, numerous memories came back to me: of splashing about the water and usually winding up with a mouth full of salt water at some point. Memories of trips to the beach with my grandparents and at least one trip with my aunt. Searching for seashells in the sand, and one occasion where a very strong wind blew in from the ocean creating a sandstorm while sending the large beach umbrellas flying through the air. But at least my daughter got to experience swimming at Jones Beach like her father had done decades before.

For some reason, I can’t recall where we went after the beach or what we did. I do remember that Monday was the reason I originally gave serious consideration for a trip back home. That evening was the varsity awards banquet for Baldwin High School. Each year since 1951, just months after he died, the school included an award named after my grandfather, originally bestowed to the most outstanding two-sport athlete. After the award banquet that evening I met a woman who had won the award in the 1970s, but now the award is only handed out to male athletes.

I arrived at the banquet that evening with no clue who was receiving the award or any background information about them. As it turned out, that relatively important information was emailed to me as our flight was enroute to New York. Fortunately, the director of athletics at the school jotted down the name of that year’s recipient, what sports they participated in, opinions of him by teammates, and where he was heading to college after graduating. Using just those few sentences, I set about drafting my presentation. As the award named for my grandfather is considered the most prestigious, it is the last one presented, giving me plenty of time to come up with something off the top of my head when my time came. For the next couple of hours I wrote and rewrote what I wanted to say, crafting something worthy of the award itself. The big challenge, though, was going to be the presentation itself, not having any opportunity to rehearse in advance; what I was going to say would be my speech’s trial run. I was just hoping I wouldn’t screw it up.

I’m not a big fan of crowds, wary of people I don’t know, and there I was facing both of those personal quirks while giving a public speech. Theoretically I should’ve been nervous, but the jitters were just not there. I was on a mission, to present an award named after a family member, I had to get it right with a presentation that would’ve made my grandfather proud, that would’ve made my father proud. Eventually my turn came to stand up behind the podium.

My speech began by introducing myself and how glad I was to be there that evening (usually just lip service, but I really was glad to be there). I pointed out that in years past two of my grandfather’s children had been there to present the award; that evening I was standing in place of my dad, my grandfather’s eldest child, who had passed away and could not be there that evening. That was immediately followed by how I never knew my grandfather, having died fifteen years before I was born. Nonetheless, I had come to know him in a way through the newspaper clippings in the scrapbook he kept, and by a first hand account from one of his few living contemporaries whom he had played high school football with in the 1930s. Through all these vicarious memories, he still lived for me, he still threw the football with great precision to his favorite receiver, Jerry McHugh, he still continued to pummel the defenses of the opposition. At that point I began the overview of the award’s recipient for 2008. Perhaps five minutes and all was said and done, speech given, award presented. With that the banquet was over. A number of people introduced themselves to me afterwards, but damned if I remember any names as overwhelmed I was feeling at that moment. Hopefully my presentation was good enough to make my father and grandfather proud.

The next day was wind down day, time to get ready for the flight home the next day. But there were promises to keep, and miles to go before I slept. Kept the promise to myself of shopping at Modells before we left town. Visited the Broadway Mall where my wife bought souvenirs for family back home, and I got to pick up a replica 1939 Brooklyn Dodgers hat and visit the New York Islanders store (heaven, pure heaven to me). That evening my aunt and uncle took us to dinner at a delicious Italian restaurant, whose name and location completely escape me that the moment. After returning to her house, my aunt completely surprised me by breaking out a bunch of old family photos, of my father, my aunt and uncle, grandparents, great-grandparents, for me a treasure trove of family history. Not having access to a scanner and not being able to take the pictures with my, I did what I needed to do in that situation: I took pictures of the pictures. Hey, it worked, and I have my own set of those photos.

Our flight left from the same runway at LaGuardia that we had landed on a week before. After a delay (go figure) our plane began its race down the runway. The “Welcome to New York” sign off to the side of the runway raced past the window as I looked to my right. The plane started to bank to the left as it climbed to altitude. Out the port side windows I could clearly see Manhattan, essentially the whole island. My heart ached, like I was leaving home for good. New York was once my home, it isn’t now. Everything’s changed and the places I knew and remembered as a child have permanently and irrevocably changed. But it had been a really great visit and more of a revelation of family history than I could have ever had hoped for. As the landscape below lost its details, becoming a tapestry of various shades of green, I knew then that it would not be thirty years before my next visit back.

You can't go home again, Part II

Our first full day on Long Island was very much a Día de los Muertos. I wanted to go pay my respects to my paternal grandparents, but as things turned out, it was a bit more than that. With my aunt in tow as my GPS system, we headed off for our first destination, St. Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale. I knew my grandmother was interred there, but I had no idea of how many other family members were as well. We parked in the road next to the row where my grandmother’s grave is located. I knew in advance that her name was not on the plot, and I have a good idea why, but that’s another story for another time. As we approached the plot, I was taken aback when I read the headstone and its inscription. In large letters was the family name, beneath in smaller lettering, Elizabeth 1893-1956. True, my grandmother’s name isn’t on the headstone, but my great-grandmother’s is, and they were buried in the same plot. I had no clue and wasn’t expecting that, but was very pleasantly surprised. As many people do, I left a rock on the headstone as a sign that someone had visited the gravesite. But that wasn’t to be the last surprise. Located either a few plots away or a short distance away were the graves of more great-grandparents and my great aunt (my grandfather’s sister). My great-grandmother Curry gave me my very first camera when I graduated from kindergarten many years ago. I feel very lucky to have vivid memories of her. She died when I was eight, so I never got to go to her funeral, never got to say goodbye. And I didn’t say goodbye on this particular day either, simply a “Hello again, Grandma.”

From there we traveled a short distance up Wellwood Avenue to the Long Island National Cemetery, where my grandfather is buried. I’ve no recollection of being to visit his gravesite when we lived on Long Island many years ago. Actually, I don’t think I even knew he ever existed until 1978 when my grandmother passed away and his scrapbook of newspaper clippings was sent to my dad. Before we left for our trip to LI, I had printed out the plot number from the cemetery’s site. The problem then became locating his grave in section L. Row upon row of nearly perfectly lined up white marble headstone, each identical in size, every one potentially the one we were looking for. We parked and began wandering about the headstones, looking for the particular number that was his, etched on the back of the stone. As it turned out, I was the one to find him. There I was, for the first time, standing over the grave of my grandfather, a man I never got to know but wished I had the chance to do so. My second impression at that moment was just how rough and abrasive those headstones are. You see pictures of the rows of marble stones at national cemeteries and just automatically assume they’re all smooth. Nothing’s further from the truth. I took some photos of his headstone, and of the area around it. I wanted a shot of the headstones heading off at an angle, but with each step I took the perspective changed. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. We left rocks on his headstone and headed back to my aunt’s house.

My uncle and his wife came up that afternoon to see us, which was a nice inclusion to the trip. Unlike my aunt, I last saw my uncle in 2004 when he made an extra trip to come see my wife (to be at the time) and me a few days before our wedding. The day pretty much wrapped up with everyone heading out to a pizzeria near my aunt’s house, where my uncles (by blood and my aunt’s husband) and me ate pizza and drank pitchers of beer. Amongst family again, and it felt really good.

Everyone was up early the next day…no time to rest…time to drive to Manhasset and catch the Long Island Railroad to Penn Station and Manhattan. After a couple of transfers in the subway system, my uncle acting as a superb guide (as I would have definitely gotten us lost), we finally came to the South Ferry/Whitehall Street station, which is right on the edge of Battery Park on the very southern tip of Manhattan. I know Atlanta likes to call itself a city, but it’s not; it’s in essence a few tall buildings with a lot of suburban sprawl. Places like New York and Chicago, where you can snap your neck looking up at buildings literally reaching for the sky, now those are cities.

Our first destination was Ellis Island, but first we had to wait in a line that stretched back to where 12th Avenue and Battery Place meet. Waiting at the back of the line, looking up 12th Street, I could see the cranes at work where the World Trade Center used to stand. Being accustomed to living in places with a smaller sense of scale, I thought it looked like it was only a couple of blocks away. Later I discovered looking at maps that it’s closer to a 7-8 block walk. No quick jaunt in the park, to be certain. But I didn’t get the chance to visit “The Hole” on this particular visit.

After our prerequisite wait and veritable body cavity search security screening, we loaded onto the ferry and headed out into New York Harbor. The ferry stopped first at Liberty Island, home of the Statue of Liberty. The whole time we lived in New York I had only seen the statue from a distance; this was the first time I got to see her up close. The green patina of her oxidized copper skin stood out from the hazy skies that day. From there it was a relatively quick trip to Ellis Island, where the wonderfully restored Renaissance Revival main building awaited. The next few hours were spent wandering the halls, looking at displays of items brought by immigrants, pictures and logs from ships that carried them across the sea, and of items found during the restoration of the building that were left behind when Ellis closed in 1954. I particularly taken by the Great Hall in the main building, a substantially sized room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling where immigrants were processed after arriving. There were wooden benches along the sides, but during the height of the period of “new immigration” from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, those wooden benches would’ve been set across the room, in multiple rows, seating hundreds of people.

We caught one of the last ferrys back to Manhattan, having used up a better portion of our day on the island. Once back, we took the subway north to Times Square, “The Crossroads of the World.” Once upon a time that area was named Longacre Square, until April, 1904, when the New York Times moved its headquarters to the area and the crossroads were renamed Times Square. As a kid I had been to the city a few times, but never to this place. After one look, who wouldn’t want to live in New York City? The lights, the buildings, countless people all heading off to destinations unknown…except for me, as I broke out my camera and started snapping off shots. Our destination at that moment was on West 44th Street – Carmine’s Italian Restaurant. If you’re ever in New York City, I highly recommend it. It’s kind of pricey, but it’s really worth the money. We no sooner got into the restaurant when the sky opened up with a monsoon-like downpour. The vendors who had been selling t-shirts on the street corners just moments before suddenly had supplies of umbrellas for sale. Crafty fellows, those vendors.

By the time we were done ingesting massive amounts of Italian food, the rain had let up. My daughter wanted to head across the street to the world’s largest Toys R Us store. As we walked into the store, I could have sworn I felt the credit card in my wallet cringe in fear: four stories of toys and games, a full sized ferris wheel, a 20 foot tall animatronic T-Rex, a Barbie playhouse. Certainly potential financial ruin lay in wait here. I was starting to feel like a three-legged gazelle on the Serengeti. She and my wife rode the ferris wheel as I browsed around the store, as I’m basically just a big kid only my toys are more expensive these days. Not long before we were ready to go, the skies once again opened up with another downpour. We staked out a place near the front door as people began congregating there. I noticed that if I looked over the handrail I could see part of the electronics section on the first floor. I also noticed that there were employees down there with mops and buckets, as the first floor was beginning to flood. And there, just outside the front door, were the vendors; and the t-shirts they were once again selling when the rain stopped completely disappeared, replaced by umbrellas.

It was a rainy run to the subway a few blocks away, and a rainy train ride back to Manhasset where we had parked. A completely unfitting end to a great day. But there’s so much to see and do in the city, that to try and take in as much as possible in one day, well, the city just sits on your head until you scream uncle.

To be concluded.

You can't go home again, Part I

You can’t go home again, so the adage goes, but you can sure as hell try. I’ve observed and experienced a sort of disconnect when someone or someplace ceases to be part of your life for a while, only to re-enter it at a later date. There’s the familiarity, but it’s not the same. Your life has moved on, their life has moved on, new friends have entered your inner-sanctum, replacing those who have left your orbit. Places change, whether it be in terms of demographics or ceasing to exist at all. Perhaps the closest example would be a child who goes off to college and returns home for a visit, only to find that their parents have turned their old bedroom into a den or worse, some sort of S&M dungeon. Sure, that’s the space you’re familiar with, it’s just not yours anymore—you’re on your own.

I’ve written before of my life living on Long Island before my family moved to Georgia (you’re going to have to look into my blog’s archives to find it). But I have yet to write about returning to Long Island for a visit after thirty years. For many years I had wanted to go back, but never did. I don’t remember what spurred me on to seriously consider going back a few years ago, perhaps it was my desire to show my daughter the places where I lived and roamed about as a kid. What I do remember was the initial idea that set my mind in motion about a visit.

My grandfather played any sport that ended with –ball at Baldwin High School on LI. In particular he excelled at playing football and baseball. He died before I was born, but I do have a scrapbook full of old newspaper clippings and other items from his playing days. He was good enough to entertain offers from the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Football Giants (not to be confused with the baseball team at the time). Recently my uncle sent me one of my grandfather’s varsity letters and a knit cap of blue and gold (the school’s colors), which have quickly moved into the “most cherished possessions” category as they’re the only items I know belonged to either of my paternal grandparents. After he was killed in a train crash in 1950, Baldwin High began offering an award in his name at their varsity sports banquet at the end of each school year. My aunt and uncle had both attended in the past to present the award, but in 2008 nobody from the family would be going. That’s when I decided it was my turn to do so.

By February, 2008, things were all set: I had made the flight reservations, reserved a car rental, the school knew I’d be on hand to present the award. I wasn’t sure about lodging, but my aunt was gracious enough to let my wife, daughter, and me stay at her place for our week long stay. The morning of June 12 broke early, and I do mean early. My wife had everyone up at 2:30 in the morning to be sure we got to Hartsfield-Jackson International in plenty of time for our flight, which was scheduled to leave at 8 am. Needless to say we got there with plenty of time to spare.

On an aside, if you ever fly on AirTran, be sure to check which gate your flight is departing on when you get to the airport. They’re apparently notorious for changing gate assignments at the last moment from what is listed on your reservations. Because of this, we had to haul ass from one terminal to another at practically the last minute.

My daughter was quite looking forward to the trip, especially the flight—her first. Speaking for myself, I was looking forward to being back in New York, though not necessarily thrilled with our method of travel. Flying combines some of my worst fears, those of heights and dying. My first time flying was back in 1993 traveling from Atlanta to Dallas…through a storm front. Half an hour into that flight we hit a downburst, and you could feel yourself going weightless as the plane was pushed downwards. So my experience with flying wasn’t reassuring prior to our flight to New York.

We pushed back from the gate after a not too long wait after boarding, a wait which still managed to bring protests from my ever patient daughter. The wait on the taxiway was short, too, and before we knew it we were airborne. My daughter loved watching things on the ground get smaller and smaller as we climbed to altitude. Me, not so much. I think I may have asked her to close her window for a little bit. I’m okay once were at 35,000 feet, as you can’t see any details that giveaway how high you are. The flight landed at LaGuardia a little earlier than scheduled. As we rolled down the runway, we passed the “Welcome to New York” embedded in the grass on the right hand side. I turned to my wife and quietly said, “I’m home,” and it felt good to be back and under happier circumstances. My prior visit to New York was for my grandmother’s funeral in May, 1978.

While planning our trip, I made a vow to avoid the Long Island Expressway at all costs. It seemed that every other day there was a story on Newsday’s web site (back when they didn’t charge you for their crappy content) about yet another serious accident. Not long after we got our rental car, while looking for the Northern Boulevard, I made one wrong turn and wound up, of all places, on the LIE. Crap. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Sharing the roads with crappy drivers in a college town more than adequately prepared me for New York traffic. I followed the signs to Uniondale, the place where my family had lived. After stopping for lunch, we found ourselves on a road I was finally familiar with: Front Street. I knew that road would take us right to our first destination, that being California Avenue School. I hadn’t been inside the school since I walked out on the last day of class in June, 1974. It was very nice to be walking the halls again, but everything was so much SMALLER than I remembered. From there we drove over to my old neighborhood, and got to see not only our old house, but one of our neighbors who still lived next door. She didn’t recognize me at first, obviously, but once I told her I had lived next door her eyes lit up. We had a wonderful time talking and getting caught up, and my daughter enjoyed playing with her Scottish terrier, Angus.

From there we visited the park where the school I attended kindergarten once stood. It was torn down in 1972, a year after I finished there. I had heard stories that the park’s main building had pictures inside of the old school, but that wasn’t to be. The afternoon was getting away and it was time to drive to Long Island’s north shore to my aunt’s house. We passed a Modell’s along the way, and I made a mental note that we needed to stop there before we left. My aunt was waiting for us when we parked in front of her house. I hadn’t seen her in thirteen years, and, again, this time was for a happier reason. The last time I had seen her was at the end of 1995 for my father’s funeral. We unloaded our bags, and walked a block to the beach, which is different than what you’d expect. Instead of sand, the beach is covered in small but smooth rocks. The current there doesn’t bring sand to the shore as it does on the southern side of LI. I took a number of pictures on the beach as the sun began its descent to the horizon. I was also planning what I wanted to see and show my family, and where to go.

To write, perchance something coherent

The hardest part, for me at least, of keeping a blog is coming up with topics to write about. I like my privacy and would prefer to keep vast portions of myself to myself and not out there on the intertubes--though sometimes I've given thought to creating a second blog, random and anonymous, to write about my dark side. To those who have already thought it, no, this isn't my dark side.

Perhaps I could write about my job, which I actually like even if it can be a pain in the ass every now and again. Haven't done that in a while, but with a new and better boss, life is far less frustrating with even fewer topics for blogger fodder. No, I wont' write about that. Maybe I could write about the near total lack of driving skills at my daughter's school and generally in town. But I've written about that more than once on the blog, so one more entry would just be whining about something I have no control over--not without an M1A1 tank, that is. No, I won't write about that.

Maybe I could write my observations on politics, and how Karen Handel handily beat Nathan Deal in the GOP primary for governor, only to lose to him in the runoff election, and how that sends a message to women across the state that you're good enough to be secretaries (of State, of Education), but not governor. No, I won't write about that.

Quick, somebody throw me a topic! Oh, wait, I've got one! You can still offer up topics if you want to. I'll try to write something on it, even if I have to embellish things. Hey, if embellishing is good enough for the NY Times and the Washington Times, it's good enough for my blog.

Notice I just wrote on the topic of not having a topic. I'm a friggin' genius!

An Ode to U-Haul

It’s that time again. U-Haul trucks are much more prevalent on the streets of town. They’re back—roughly 32,000 students are descending on town after three months of relative quiet in town. Certainly the local merchants are glad to see the students, and their wallets, return. For us locals, we kind of get used to the lack of traffic on the roads and not having long waits at local restaurants. All of that will change this week.

The start of fall semester brings an air of anticipation as well as trepidation that the start of spring simply lacks. You have the incoming freshman beginning their university experience, for the most part unaware that the coming four years will shape their lives and careers forever. There’s also the collective attaching of everyone’s ego to the football team and the promise of the upcoming season. Plus there are all the experiences that go along with football games: tailgating, eating & drinking with friends, cheering the team on in Sanford Stadium, puking on the sidewalk post-game while a friend takes your picture on their cell phone and then immediately posts it on Facebook with the caption, “Dude! Look at who’s blowing chunks!”

For me, the start of fall semester is like hearing the whistle of an incoming artillery shell—I just duck, close my eyes, and hope for the best. There’s just so much that can go wrong to a class schedule in the weeks leading up to the beginning of the semester. Multiple classes have been scheduled for the same classroom, students have been confused because I forgot to update a room assignment in the course scheduling system, or the worst case scenario, having an instructor back out of a course—that has a full enrollment of students—just a couple of weeks before classes start. Yes, that did happen to me last year. Fortunately we were able to find a replacement instructor at the last minute and salvage the class. It will be harder to do that this year as we’re only one month into the fiscal year and already have had a 4% budget cut.

So quiet time is over for our little town. Now don’t get me wrong; students add a lot to this place, usually in a positive way, though not always. Fall leases for apartments took effect as of August 1, and the dorms open in a couple of days. If you are looking for me within the next week, I’ll either be dodging U-Haul trucks or in the corner of my office, ducking, eyes closed, hoping for the best.

Not so finished as I thought

February 2009 - that's the last time I posted an entry to my blog. At the time I had nothing more to write about, or so I thought. There's only so much mileage you can get writing about politics or the crappy drivers at my daughter's school. Add to that other distractions, in particular focusing more on digital photography and trying to become better at that hobby, and, well, the blog took a back seat. So eighteen months ago I decided to close up shop.

It wasn't until recently that I started thinking about restarting the blog, realizing that my problem wasn't a lack of topics, but I stopped making my observations about the human condition. What really changed my mind was a recent stop one evening with the family at a local Baskin Robbins. In addition to us were two other couples, a husband and wife who live locally and two friends, we were to discover later, visiting from North Carolina. The conversation at their table was dominated by the gentleman who lives locally. His voice boomed off every surface possible, so it was hard to ignore him. As we sat eating out ice cream, my wife and I would exchange occasional looks, telling each other via facial expression that we wished he would be quiet. But at the same time we were both fascinated by his conversational skills.

He truly belongs to a rapidly disappearing generation. The art of conversation is one that is falling by the wayside given the rise and popularity of social media sites. For example, I've reconnected with many old friends from childhood when I lived in New York. Exchanged a number of messages with them. But I could be a bilateral amputee and still have enough fingers to count the number of times I've actually talked to them. And that is what fascinated me about Baskin Robbins Man. In an era of electronic interpersonal connections, he's a complete anachronism. He belongs to a time now passed when men gathered at a local store to talk about news or the weather or how the crop harvest for the current growing season was looking. And that realization was not lost on me.

Conversely, you also have people who engage in conversation, but are not very good at it. I must include myself in this category, not because I don't want to talk, it's just that I enjoy my privacy which makes it hard to engage other people. Recently the family and me enjoyed an evening out for dinner at a local "family-oriented sports restaurant." Bellied up to the bar were two gentlemen enjoying a few beers and some food. They struck me as two businessmen-wanna be types who fancied themselves ladies men as they talked to the largely female waitstaff, sitting at the bar after a long day of racking up sales and responding to Equal Opportunity Office sexual harassment complaints. I really wasn't paying attention to them until one of them decided to make a hard to ignore comment to one of the waitresses. "Do you mind if I ask you something, which I don't want you to find insulting...but 92% of people with cold sores have herpes." Really, dude? Is that the direction you want the conversation to take? First, I take issue with you asking about asking a question, and just making a comment instead. Second, when I'm in a restaurant I really don't want to hear you or anyone else talking about herpes, and certainly don't want to hear the people handling my food discussing it as well. So perhaps I'll be adding this place to my "No Fly" restaurant list along with the downtown Five Guys and that creepy toothless woman who works the register. But that's another story for another time.

I'm finished!

After some careful consideration, I've decided that three years of keeping this blog is enough. I thought I could make it to a fourth year, but that won't happen. There are other venues for writing that have been keeping me occupied of late, and that's where I'll be. So it's time to take out the proverbial bowling pin and beat this blog over the head. Thanks for reading.

That tickles!

This should be enough to psychologically scar the average toddler.