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2012 Revisited

My daughter has started playing the clarinet. My wife has been playing with her.

One of those year-in-review quizzes from Jaquandor.

Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Maybe I’ll make some this year. This past year felt as though, if I could keep my head above water, it was good.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Not that I can recall.

Did anyone close to you die?

Three SBDC counselors died. Steve Amell of Binghamton I didn’t know well but liked (and he was 49 and died of ALS); Mike Heftka from Buffalo, a swell guy who I’d know for a long time, another youngish guy, who’d been battling cancer for quite a while; and Don Dods out of Kingston, who I’d known for years, who was a great counselor and a tremendous guy.

Joe Morehead, one of my library school professors. Sweet guy, and very bright. Learned a lot about government sources of data. I remember running into him at a tennis match in Schenectady after I had graduated, and I could speak with him as person to person, rather than as student to teacher.

Nate Erlbaum was this guy I would see at these NYS Data Center Affiliates meetings and he would drive me crazy, mostly because I had no idea what he was talking about. As I grew to know him better, though, I recognized how important getting the data correctly and with accessibility was so important. Any time he could help me, he would; he was a font of knowledge. He retired from the NYS Department of Transportation on April 23, having been diagnosed 15 months earlier with lung cancer, and had been receiving chemotherapy, though lots of people working alongside him didn’t even know. He died about a week later at the age of 61. I did mention him here.

Mary Durkot, mom of a friend of mine, was 91. I wrote about her extensively here.

Albert Wood, 57, was in my church choir. He also knew my wife separately, from where she used to work. While I mentioned him somewhat on this blog, I wrote about him more extensively here.

Finally, Avery Cahn, who was 20 months old. I wrote about him here. But the story gets worse. While the babysitter initially stated he accidentally suffocated the child, later he admitted to killing the toddler “because the child would not stop crying.” On the front page of the local section of the paper, we got to see the smothered baby’s relatives tell the court of their devastation, particularly Avery’s mother, who is a member of my church. As I noted earlier, I also feel for the paternal grandmother, who is a good friend of mine.

What countries did you visit?

I’m a real nowhere man. Didn’t even leave New York State, except for the spring trip to Rhode Island and Connecticut.

What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?

More optimism.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Denise Nesbitt gave me ABC Wednesday to run for this round, and I didn’t totally derail it.

What was your biggest failure?

Failing to get out of my own way.

What was the best thing you bought?

Nothing is coming to mind.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

Nate Silver, and anyone else who did math, or recognized the validity of science. Also, the voters who turned out those idiot legislators who talked about women who experienced “legitimate rape” who couldn’t get pregnant.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

The good news is that Donald Trump no longer annoys me; he’s so jumped the shark with his rants. But all of those other people after the election who talked about secession and revolution. Also, those climate change deniers – has Hurricane Sandy changed your mind? And political pundits, who go with their “gut feelings”; remember President Romney, Dick Morris?

Where did most of your money go?

The house. Even though the mortgage is paid, there are always repairs for an old residence.

What did you get really excited about?

My daughter has started playing the clarinet. My wife has been playing with her; I hadn’t heard her play in years, and in fact practically forgot that she even had her instrument.

What song will always remind you of 2012?

I hear so few new ones that stay with me. Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen was unavoidable. Especially when my daughter would dance to it while watching Dancing With the Stars, over and over and over…

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

Sadder. The body politic has worn me down.

Thinner or fatter?

Very slightly thinner, less than five pounds.

Richer or poorer?

Mixed bag. The mortgage is gone, but I had some dental bills at the end of the year that ate up those savings.

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Going to movies, always.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Thinking. Melancholy. Insomnia.

How did you spend Christmas?

Went to church, doing the gift thing.

Did you fall in love in 2012?

Yes, and it was the clarinet – her doing her art.

How many one-night stands?

As many as last year.

What was your favorite TV program?

CBS Sunday Morning, The Daily Show, Grey’s Anatomy (to my surprise).

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No, but willfully ignorant people continue to amaze me with their “skills.”

What was the best book you read?

11/22/63 by Stephen King.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

The music from Wicked.

What did you want and get?

I wanted music, both singing and buying recordings.

What did you want and not get?

Some dedicated time to blog. It’s still catch as catch can.

What were your favorite films of this year?

Argo.

What did you do on your birthday?

Well, I didn’t work; I probably ate Indian food.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012?

“Fashion” is silly. Function over form.

What kept you sane?

Writing; singing; listening to music; learning new stuff; and then I suddenly realized that the question ASSUMES that I AM sane, which may or may not be the case.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Jon Stewart; Nate Silver; the CBS News, which is the closest to a real news network left of the Big 3.

What political issue stirred you the most?

The search for real truth, not spin, or lies.

Who did you miss?

I miss my parents.

Who was the best new person you met?

I “met” one or two interesting folks online this year.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012:

I LOVE my answering machine and caller ID, and my DVR. The numbers of political calls and ads I missed, even in this reliably “blue” state, were astonishing.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

There’s an Elvis Costello song called 20% Amnesia [LISTEN]. I started making up new lyrics to it and calling it 21st Century Romnesia:

Mitt’s positions are like Etch-A-Sketch. (21st Century Romnesia)
What he really means, I just can’t catch. (21st Century Romnesia)

He bashes the 47 percent. (21st Century Romnesia)
Then says that’s not really what he meant. (21st Century Romnesia)

He comes up with a misleading auto ad. (21st Century Romnesia)
His misrepresentation makes me so mad. (21st Century Romnesia)

To try to win, he’ll even lie. (21st Century Romnesia)
I must say that it makes me want to cry. (21st Century Romnesia)

I wrote about a half dozen other verses that I’ve lost, but you get the idea. Every time I heard a Romney/Ryan “misrepresentation”, I’d sing to myself, “21st century Romnesia.”

Shades of the autumn of ’04

2004 was the first time I had been to three funerals in a year; 2012 is the second.

I came home Friday night and realized I had forgotten my antibiotic pills at the office, which I was supposed to take every six hours. Worse, I couldn’t find my stinkin’ badge to get back into the building, even if I had returned to work. Reluctantly, I called a friend from work, and she picked me up, got me into the building, and helped me get my medicine.

Saturday, I went over to another friend’s house. I had been surprised to discover that she and her husband were separating. We’d been to their wedding only a few years earlier. I had asked her, who I had known far longer, whether I could help him get some of his stuff out of the house, and she had readily agreed. But after we’d loaded the vehicle, he declined my invitation to go to his new place to unload. However, when another friend came with HIS vehicle, it was necessary to reveal the location, only about 10 minutes away, and I helped unpack that next load.

Coincidentally, his new abode was the very same apartment complex where my friend from paragraph one used to live, where she had held the party before Carol’s and my wedding back in 1999, the one where Carol guessed correctly that my favorite book was the World Almanac, but I had no idea hers was 100 Years of Solitude. I hadn’t been there in over seven years.

The further coincidence is that the two women in this story lost their husbands to illness in 2004, indeed in the fall of 2004. I went to three funerals in that span, the third being the mother of still another friend, and there were other friends who lost family members in that period as well. Also, my main boss at work suffered a heart attack during that period; his first appearance outside the hospital was at our work friend’s husband’s funeral.

Oh, and the two women, who I do not believe know each other, have the same first name.

Carol and I always remember that most unsettling period. That was the first time I had been to three funerals in a year; 2012 is the second. But those 2004 funerals were all packed in about a three-month period. I wouldn’t want to call it annus horribilis, or terrible year, since it was also the year the Daughter was born. But what would be the term for a truly awful thirteen weeks, quartus horriblis?

Curiouser and curiouser: 20 questions

Donald Trump, because he’s a twit. Planned Parenthood, because it’s constantly under attack.

There’s this website Curious as a Cat, and it asks one to three questions each week. Here are some from 2006 and 2007 I deigned to answer.

1. What is the one experience in your life that has caused the most pain?
Physical pain. Tie between a broken rib and oral surgery. Emotional, surely an affair of the heart.

2. If you had to pick one thing, what would you say is the single thing that can destroy a soul?
Telling so many lies that you start thinking it’s the truth.

3. What one thing always speaks deeply to you, to your spirit, no matter your mood or what else is going on in your life?
Music, always. I hear it all the time. Sometimes it’s something I’ve heard recently, but more often it’s a tune suitable for the moment.

4. What is the least appropriate thing to pray for?

Actually, the harm of someone else. But I get most irritated when sports figures seem to think that God was on THEIR side after a victory; I was reading a Guideposts magazine article recently, which said, and I agree, “God doesn’t care.”

5. If you could remove one of the current Supreme Court justices based on their moral positions, whom would you choose?
Tough. Clarence Thomas is SO awful, and ought to be impeached for ethical violations. But Antonin Scalia (pictured) tends to steer Thomas’ voting compass, so I guess I’ll say him; he ought to be checked out, too.

6. Name one event that changed your relationship with your family the most.
I think it was the rapprochement of my two sisters in the past few years, who used to argue a lot. They would (especially one of them) call me up and vent about the other. Now that that’s no longer the case, I get fewer calls.

7. If you were to make a collage to describe yourself to others, what sorts of pictures or symbols would you include?
Clearly, it would have a picture of red sneakers; I used to have a Christmas ornament of red sneakers, but it broke. A racquetball racquet, the picture of me as a duck, the cover of the Beatles Revolver album, the cover of a Howard the Duck comic book, a caricature of me singing several years ago, the front cover of the World Almanac, a picture of my two sisters and me when I was a kid, a picture of my parents, a picture of my wife & daughter & me.

8. Which year was the best of your life? How old were you? Would you want to live it again?
1978, when I moved to Schenectady, got a job I liked, had my first steady girlfriend in over two years. I was 25. Absolutely not.

9. What is your favorite way to travel?
By train. I like the light rail in San Diego a lot as well.

10. What spiritual concept, from any religion, is the hardest for you to understand? Is it something you have studied, or something you have only observed from the ‘outside’?
I think Christianity has a lot of difficult concepts: the virgin birth, the resurrection of the dead. But nothing seems to mystify as much as the notion of the Trinity, God in three persons. I’ve studied it a lot, but couldn’t explain it adequately if I tried. St. Patrick used to say it’s like the three-leaf clover, three flowers in one, but that falls short for me.

11. What is your earliest memory? Why do you think you have remembered that particular event or thing?
Trip to the now-closed Catskill Game Farm when I was three, which I remember because there were pictures. So it may be the pictures I recall, not the trip.

12. What position in any team sport is the hardest to play? Why? Have you played that position?
Catcher in baseball, and yes, I played it in a pickup league.

13. Imagine you could redesign your hands. Whose hands would you remodel yours to resemble?
Or would you keep the hands you’ve got?
I like my hands. I like the length of my fingers, the shape of my fingernails. I do which they didn’t have the vitiligo on the back.

14. What bothers you most in other people, generally?
Impatience. People four cars back beeping because the line isn’t moving, and it isn’t moving because some considerate driver’s actually letting an older pedestrian cross. Or the surge of shoppers at the front door on Black Friday openings, which is why I avoid that day like the Plague.

15. What one thing have you done that pleased your parents the most?
Graduating from college. Took five years. My one sister and I actually graduated on successive weekends, she from SUNY Binghamton and me from SUNY New Paltz, and my parents, who were by then living in Charlotte, NC, came up to both.

16. You have to choose one rich person to be forced to give all their money away to a cause or charity. Whom would you choose, and to which cause or charity will the money go?
Donald Trump, because he’s a twit. Planned Parenthood, because it’s constantly under attack.

17. Is there an emotion that you think has gotten stronger as you’ve aged? If so, why do you think that has happened?
I’m more of a sentimental sap, where songs or TV movies might make me a bit misty-eyed. I think it’s a function of the experiences, and the fragility, of life.

18. What kind of cowardice do you most despise?
Lack of conviction. I may hate Rick Santorum’s politics, but I believe he believes what he says (and that’s scary.) Whereas I think Mitt Romney will say just about anything to appeal to whomever he is speaking at the moment.

19. If the U.S. had to give up one state, which one would you pick? Why?
Texas. It was briefly its own country and still acts like it.

20. When were you most moved by a ceremony?
I’m often moved by ceremony – communion, weddings, a US naturalization. The funeral of a 20-month old, though…

Mary Durkot, R.I.P.

We have to to help each other remove the bindings of our collective grief.

I attended my third funeral of 2012 last week. But let me back up a bit.

Mary Durkot was the mother of one of my oldest friends, as in my friend and I went to kindergarten together. This means I knew Mrs. Durkot – I never referred to her by her first name – for over a half century. She lived in Binghamton, NY, my hometown, all of her 92 years.

One of the last times I saw her was when my daughter was a baby. She took such pleasure in seeing her, as though Lydia were one of her own grandchildren.

On June 30, the day before she passed, all four of her children, along with several of her grandchildren and great grandchildren, spent the day with her, as my friend put it, “laughing and cracking wise.” This was pretty remarkable in that only one of the children live in Binghamton, with the others in Boston, Brooklyn and near Baltimore.

Unsurprisingly, she had arranged and paid for her wake and funeral years earlier; she even picked out the dress she wanted to buried in.

The Wife and I arrived at the funeral home about 5:15 last Thursday evening. My friend did not know I was coming, since I was not 100% sure myself. She seemed shocked, but pleased with my presence. Some of our mutual friends came by, including the sister and the mother of our mutual friend Carol (not to be confused with my wife Carol). At 6:30, there was a prayer service. This was in the Russian Orthodox tradition, and while I had grown up in this Slavic neighborhood, this was likely the first funeral of this style I had attended. A lot of chant, a bit of repetition. I tried to pick up on the sonic rhythm, occasionally successfully.

Friday morning was the brief prayer event at the funeral home, followed by the 2/5s of a mile funeral procession to the church, which we found ourselves part of. More chanting and prayer, followed by a homily that I really liked. The narrative was based on the scripture where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. The priest noted that Jesus did not remove Lazarus’ burial cloth, and that Lazarus was unable to remove it himself. It was up to the others to help Lazarus. In the same manner, we have to to help each other remove the bindings of our collective grief.

During the procession to the cemetery, the hearse broke down! (On Clinton Street, for you Binghamtonians). The procession was scheduled to go past the house on Mygatt Street where Mrs. D lived for many years. The house was sold only last December. The running joke was that, while the house was very nice, the new owners kept the hedges THREE INCHES higher than Mary would have liked. Most of the cars went onto the cemetery, but the pallbearers returned to where the hearse broke down to put the coffin in the back of someone’s pickup truck. It WAS a nice pickup. There are several cellphone pictures of the back of the truck, with the flap down, showing the coffin and a bag of potting soil, to be used for the burial.

Afterwards, The Wife and I were invited to eat a very nice meal at the church with the extended family and then we went our separate ways, though my friend and I tacitly vowed to be more in touch; I hadn’t seen her since July 2011.

I must say that, while I went primarily for my friend, and for her mother’s memory, I also went a bit for myself as well. Celebrating the passing of someone in her tenth decade is a bit more expected – though the passing of a parent is NEVER expected, I’ve found – than the death of a 57-year old. Or a 20-month old.

Nora Ephron, Andy Griffith, and the sense of loss

Almost inevitably, I would get to know more about the deceased than I could have possibly imagined. Parts of their interesting lives to which I was not privy until it was too late.

I was looking at the situation all wrong. When Nora Ephron died last week, I was thinking about her top movie moments rather than her life. I was evaluating her films: liked Sleepless in Seattle, but You’ve Got Mail, not so much. Enjoyed Heartburn. Julie and Julia: Julia-yes, Julie-eh. Silkwood I enjoyed, but I wouldn’t even watch Bewitched.

Then I read John Blumenthal’s piece on how Nora Ephron took pity on him “as a lowly peon at Esquire magazine. Then she found me a job.” Or Dick Cavett’s Vamping With Nora, when a guest failed to appear on his talk show, and they had to fill 20 minutes. Plus some other pieces I didn’t cite. Or listening to Diane Sawyer talking about her friend on ABC News; I had no idea before she read the story that they even knew each other, but I could just tell, by her delivery.

And it reminded me of going to funerals of people I knew, or, more likely, people I didn’t know but attended the service because I knew a family member. Almost inevitably, I would get to know more about them than I could have possibly imagined. Parts of their interesting lives to which I was not privy until it was too late. And I feel sad, sad in a way I could not have possibly imagined. These people are losing this AMAZING person. I’d SO feel their pain, their sense of loss.

Oddly, with all the things I read about Nora Ephron, I was feeling the same way. I wish I HAD attended dinner parties with her, as someone had suggested because I’m now convinced she would have been wise and witty and entertaining. And so, I’m surprisingly sad that, at the age of 71, Nora Ephron has died of leukemia.

Mayberry

Whereas, my feeling about Andy Griffith, who died on July 3, was more immediate. My father and Andy were born in the same year, 1926. More than once, I wish my dad were more patient with me, liked Sheriff Andy Taylor was with his son Opie (Ron Howard). Not that he couldn’t be stern – the episode I remember the best is the one in which Opie kills a mother bird with his slingshot and is forced to become her babies’ surrogate mother. And Sheriff Andy believed in due process of the law.

For reasons I cannot clearly explain, I was a big fan of Matlock, with Griffith as a cornpone, but savvy lawyer in a light blue seersucker suit. I enjoyed his performance in the movie Waitress. But perhaps his greatest role was in the movie A Face in the Crowd, as Gordon noted.

Though beloved in his home state of North Carolina, I recall that Griffith took some heat for his support for an Obamacare proposal.

Read Mark Evanier’s remembrance, and check out these interviews with Andy Griffith.