The Continuing Saga of Flower

Unable to find inspiration to write about anything of significance, and since I am obsessively concerned with Flower’s welfare I thought I would catalog my continuing adventures in that regard.

For the last several days I have walked early in the A.M. and called her name as I approached the new venue of her choice. She usually appears from the jungle of the growth which surrounds the place, a so-called “Florida lawn”, of leafy plants and wild grasses, which I, and apparently Flower much approve of. I bring her food which she eats gratefully, rolls a bit, and then with an air of quiet dismissal concentrates on washing, my signal to depart, no longer with any expectation that she will follow.

I have made the acquaintance of the lady of the house who has informed me that Flower has been resident in her yard for the last two years but understands that she lives elsewhere, in a house up the street, this information based on her recent conversation with Becky.

We knew that for some time this was the point where we encountered Flower on our daily walks when she would accompany us home but I was unaware of how Flower had really made herself at home here. The householder, Mel by name, told me she pets Flower for a few minutes each day but doesn’t feed her; however, today I informed her that Flower has no longer returned to our house and I have undertaken to bring her food on my walks, less the poor animal starve. Mel has joined in my concern and furnished me with a bowl, to replace the coffee filters I was using as plates as well as finding a better location for me to place the food so it would not dry out in the sun. Flower ate with gusto while we talked, pausing occasionally to determine whether she should join in the conversation. I remember that for some time, an earlier time, she had made an abandoned boat trailer in a vacant lot her alternative venue but this time it seems more serious (and apparently permanent).

Still my affection for the weird cat, has not abated so I fear I will be delivering a can of meow mix on a virtual daily basis for the foreseeable future. Saturday morning as I left at 7 A.M. Becky seemed surprised that I made to walk around the block rather than making straight away for Flower to deliver her food. I fear I am now regarded as the “food guy,” a “meal on wheels” for my favorite feline. I prefer to think of it as a sort of a delivery of alimony in kind, Flower not yet having mastered the intricacies of our electronic banking (though not beyond her ability to comprehend.) Still she was sitting in her usual spot and recognized me before I made any sign or signal. Payment due for years of enthusiastic attention, now to be delivered rather than awarded after a walk up the block. Having experienced this attitude in other, former relationships, I understood it implicitly.

If we understand that our dogs and cats employ their intelligence in influencing the people in their world to do things for them that they cannot really do for themselves and have, through many trial and error encounters, learned to manipulate our behavior on their behalf, we are light years ahead of those who think they employ their intelligence just to please us.

My Teachers

From time to time I have realized that I have an unacknowledged debt to those wonderful people who stood (or sat) at the front of the room and endeavored to communicate with me and infuse me with some knowledge or understanding of the world.

Firstly, there was Miss Dotell, first grade (P.S. 6) who I accused of hitting me in order to get some attention when my brother was born. To her great credit she never retaliated against an insecure, stuttering child after the confrontation by mother, and my confession that I made the whole thing up.

My second grade teacher, Miss Eagan, (P.S. 36) I remember dimly, she of the soft lisp and the frozen face who also was my mother’s teacher in some distant past. The rest of P.S. 36 is vague, but something must have stuck since I can now do long division.

Next came a seismic move from East to West Bronx, (P.S. 26)where the formidable principal, Miss Healy, who informed me they did not tolerate wise guys. My lasting impression of that lady was she was vastly more suitable to serve across the street as Mother Superior in the Holy Spirit School. Mr. Pascal, my first fifth grade teacher, urban, spent most of the time drying 8 X 10 glossy prints on the radiator, only to bail out midterm, becoming a successful something or other on Broadway, but then P.S. 26 was where Mrs. Webber , she of the wonderful soft breast, who came to regard me as her favorite, and ranted at Bronx crudity and bad manners as “Burnside Avenue style,” but gave me my earliest feelings of being special and perhaps, even loved.

Junior high school, McCombs (P.S. 82) just up the street came next, with some wonderful, memorable people stepped into my reality. These was Miss Riley, who shared with me the fact that our fathers were both serving in the Navy, and on that connection came early several mornings to tutor me in Algebra, raising my grade from 30 at the midterm to a soaring 98 by the end of the term. The elegant Mr. Middleton, who resembled a dissipated Walter Pidgeon, in his glen plaid suit, good tweeds, brilliant, if cutting wit, who conjugated the name Ludacer as if it were a French verb with “er” ending. English teachers names , now forgotten who motivated me to read short stories, novels, histories, putting my feet on the path of being a lifetime learner. Shop teachers, giving me some rudimentary skills in electricity, carpentry, and the art of printing although never attaining a skill level worthy of mention, still thanks !

Briefly, commuting to DeWitt Clinton High School, a large foreboding building resembling Attica, where I first developed some creative writing skill, only to be accused of plagerism. The rest of that year largely blurred, becoming a pretend “tough guy” in the service of serf-preservation, commuting to downtown Manhattan at 3 P.M. to a variety of part time jobs. Then moving to Arizona, the return and .........

Baldwin HIgh School where I finally found new friendships which have lasted a lifetime and a nice life in a great little town. Teachers like, Mr. Hillman, who read history one chapter ahead of the class; Mr. Reed, who made math understandable; others supportive rather than critical. I began to develop some social skills and develop a persona but still wore a variety of masks. Naval Reserve time where old salts taught me seamanship.

A wasted semester at Toledo University, with no memory of my teachers, which I have already chronicled. Lastly the University of Florida, a freshman at age 23, obsessed with maximizing my GI benefits , and catching up with my peer group, carrying too many credits, making, mostly A grades, and having no memory of having fun, no social life. An academic monk. My only clear memory of teachers were the ones who treated me unfairly, withholding A grades, reserved for graduates students looking for easy credits, as Dr. Vedder, phony who taught criminology. Still, I managed to do 3 years of work in 2.

Then law school under a special admission policy for veterans. There I worked my ass off, graduated second in my class. Professors like Ernie Jones and Frank Maloney putting a critical edge on my thinking.

Still in sum, I remain grateful to all of those wonderful people who with chalk-stained suits, stood at the front of the room, overcame my resistance, and instilled in me a love of knowledge.

MSNBC

Trying an end run on the old adage that you can’t make a silk purse out of a ssow’s ear, MSNBC now continues to try to make a pundit out of Joe Scarboro, an unreconstructed redneck, Alabama football fan, whose sole claim to fame is he snuck into Congress behind a Newt Gingrich “surge”, is now presented as Morning Joe, an expert in politics, economics, foreign affairs and sports.

Posing in fashion flixs with his co-host and traveling largely on her good looks, Joe with the aid of a wardrobe consult is packaged in the A.M. as the new voice of middle of the road “enlightenment “; despite his obdurate insistence on his paleolithic views on politics and his constant references to 1994 as proof of his judgments.

Hey - she’s great but....BASTA !

Visions

It is early in the morning of election day and I cringe in expectation of the perpetual onslaught of the political pundits and pollsters in their final orgasms of opinion once more, their last chance to pummel my brain with their witless forecasts of tea party expectations, statistical satire and the rest, like a sunami of verbal bullshit advancing toward a shore of helpless listeners. The have battered my brain with their ceaseless harangues for months and have inculcated a litany of nonsense into my fore conscience.Instead I will search the corners of long, almost forgotten past for images of amusement or concerns to wait for first light and the routines of retirement, of sorting my weekly wash, coffee, the therapeutic walk and brief visit with Flower, the cat of my heart, all before curling up before the TV for an hour of “Will & Grace”, my latest addiction to well-written comedy.

I am back in the east Bronx, about a block from the intersection of Tremont Ave and Southern Blvd, where the overhang of the subway station casts a great shadow over the busy confusion of cars, trolley cars and pedestrians, all scurrying about on some serious mission. My eye finds, with delight, one of the many moving vans of the,( wait for it,) “The Seven Santini Brothers” and my imagination sees a group of muscular, young men on the stage of the Loews Paradise, posing in their formfitting purple tights before performing 10 minutes of acrobatic exhibitions, hand to hand stands, tumbling and the like until they all link hands and join in a final unified bow as they leave the stage. Knowing that the glory of applause and the footlights will not last forever they wisely repair to the east Bronx and the “Seven Santinis Moving Company” is born. To this day a vision of a big van with that name emblazoned on its side brings a grin to my face. Mayflower, and the others be dammed, its the Santini Brothers for me.

After a moments reflection and a sip of coffee, my memory reveals the dark side, linked to the visit with the Wieners, my long time friends, my former analyst and his Dutch wife now in their 80’s and struggling with the disabilities visited by advancing age. Beth, struggling with her knee operation, a recent repair Stan, his memory and brilliant insight now sliding down the slippery slope of early dementia or alzheimer’s which I cannot guess. He usually asks me if I still carry a pistol, which I make sure to do on my visits, and display for him my latest firearm, while we reminisce about our old days of playful target shooting and related misadventures, such as the time we assisted the deputy sheriff in subduing a prisoner. He grins, but has no memory of the event. Sad. Always he responds to my carrying with an enthusiastic “good,” glad that his aging friend is still armed and my mind turns to the poem by Martin Niemoeller, to the effect, that:

“,,, they came first for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist, then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up “....and I spare you the rest of the litany, now very well known to every thinking person. Beth, who lived through the Nazi occupation of her beloved Amsterdam, Stan who grew up in the Yiddish dominated Crown Heights of Brooklyn and is well familiar with our Jewish history, still my source for the occasional translation of a Yiddish expression I find drifting in my memory. Stan knows the gun in my pocket is my personal answer for “Speaking up” if once again they come for the Jews. I long ago decided my personal response would not to be taken willing, but rather than write a poem I would punctuate my protest with whatever Smith and Wesson or Sig Sauer happened to ride in my hip pocket at that moment. My personal “Masada” would take a few latter day centurions with me.

But those are dark corners, and today is election day, and if I prayed , (and I do not) I would pray that the electors will have enough vision and sense to see through the fog of disinformation and posturing, provocations and prevarication's and vote sensibly, without rancor or anger and give us a wise Congress for the next 2 years. Until the results are in, I will try to avoid the pundits and their daily production of their misguided predictions.

Octogenarians

When I told my proctologist I just passed my 80th birthday he informed me that the “scoping” which he urged every three years was now “optional,” and after some perplexed reflection I opted not. On further reflection however I wondered what further implications I might find in this relaxed attitude on the part of the medical community. Is causa mortis for my age group now to be easily dismissed as “natural causes” unless a car crash or a bullet hole is inconveniently interjected into the causal chain ? Might I now expect a somewhat cavalier attitude from other practitioners of the curative arts if prognosis or prescriptions become a touch less precise?

Having now reached the age of 80; probably largely due to nature, nurture and good luck, rather than pills and nostrums, but the medics, now take full credit for my longevity, expect continued lavish expressions of gratitude despite their now dismissive, “Oh well, soon or later “ attitudes. What wonders - I wonder ?