Fiction: Sunset and Shadow

Sunset and Shadow
copyright 2013 by Harold Jenkins

We met on the internet. Well, I met her on the internet by way of her personal ad, though it was some time before I found her blog and we began chatting online.  We hit it off, as far as I could tell, but it took a few weeks of getting-to-know-you conversations before she agreed to meet face to face.

We got together early on a Saturday afternoon in a bookstore in Wilkes-Barre.  Seeing Lori in person was something of a shock, finally realizing just how far apart we were in age. She was small and pixie-ish, with bleached white hair and eyes so dark they might have been black. Her skin was pale and her face was alive and shining.  She dressed in a sort of Salvation Army chic, in a green prairie skirt and frilly cream blouse that hid her tiny figure, wrapped in a black wool jacket with shoulder pads that would have looked preposterous on anyone else. A black beret and a scarf that might have been a keffiyeh rounded out the ensemble, and she wore chunky black boots that weren't just for show - they could easily hold up to the snow and ice outside.  I knew she was a brilliant writer even from what she had put in her ad, and the stories I found on her blog confirmed this. She had the appearance of a giddy little girl, but her writing displayed a darkness and maturity that said there was much more to her.

I wondered how I looked to her: A man in his early forties, stocky but not quite fat, hair and beard and moustache all showing traces of gray. Blue-gray eyes behind lenses that, if you looked at them just right, revealed themselves as multifocals. Looking almost like a college professor, although I hadn't been involved in academia since a brief stint in grad school more than twenty years ago. I thought I looked close enough to the photos I had posted on my site, as she did to hers. But I really don't know what she saw with those big, dark eyes.

We drank hot chai and talked about writing, and our favorite authors, and our biggest influences. I asked her about school but she didn't want to talk about it much. She pried a few stories from me about my days in college, a quarter of a century earlier.

We had been talking for well over an hour and hadn't made any plans for the rest of the day. When she excused herself to use the bathroom I ordered a strawberry parfait, something that looked like one of the things she had posted to her blog. After Lori returned to our table one of the staff brought it over in a tall glass with two long spoons. Lori was surprised and delighted by the dessert. After that we wandered the bookstore for a while, pointing out books and authors to each other. I found an annotated edition of one of her favorite books and offered to buy it for her, but she took it from me and insisted she would pay for it herself. Fine, I said, taking the other copy from the shelf, laughing. Now we would both have one.

We exited the bookstore holding our identical purchases and stepped into the icy late-afternoon air.  I suggested we could drive around and continue our conversation. A glance at the clouds smeared across the western sky gave me an idea. The sun would be setting in an hour or so, and I knew a spot where it would put on a beautiful display. For a moment I thought she might not want to go, or might want to take her own car, wherever her car was. But she agreed and we both got into mine.

The sun was dipping behind the clouds as we drove. We were heading west, so the sun was mostly in front of us. Even through my sunglasses I could see the sun-dogs forming, mock suns positioned on either side of the real one, produced by the sort of ice crystals present in certain clouds. I pointed them out to Lori, and she pulled out her phone - wrapped in a Hello Kitty case - and took a picture. Her thumbs flew as she typed something on to the screen in a way I can't even begin to emulate. And then she did something else - posted the picture online, to her blog or Facebook or somewhere. I felt the generation gap yawning between us.

I had to maneuver a bit to get where I wanted us to be, but finally we got there. It was a steel truss bridge, more than seventy years old but still safe and sturdy enough to bear the traffic that crossed it. I had made it collapse once, in one of my stories, plunging dozens of cars and their drivers into the river below. We writers wield such power.

"Here?" she asked, as we parked in a dirt lot at one end of the bridge. Her tone said she wasn't afraid, just curious.

"Not here," I replied. "On the bridge. About halfway across we'll have a great view of the sunset."

She got out of the car, pushing her beret down on her head with one hand and clutching her book with the other. The bag crackled like it was threatening to shatter. I was glad we were both dressed for the weather. It got cold on the bridge in winter. Cold, and windy.

As we stepped onto the walkway Lori looked up, then around. "You've taken pictures here," she said. She was clutching her newly-purchased book in its bag and held her Hello Kitty phone in the other hand. "The ice on the river, and the shadows on the ice."

"Yep," I said. I had posted those photos half a year before I met her online. She had been doing her homework, reading my old blogs.

We walked out two hundred and fifty feet, or so - I've always been bad at estimating distances. Cars passed us once in a while, clattering and banging over the deck plates of the bridge, but the drivers didn't even notice us.

The sun hadn't started its show yet.

"Here is good," I said. Across the deck and through the girders and cables we could see downriver . The Susquehanna flowed from east to west along this stretch, so we had a relatively clear view of the sunset. The sun was sinking behind an old, disused railroad bridge and over the trees and rolling hills that edged one bank. The scene was reflected in the river below, where water flowed between great broken sheets of ice.

But none of that was what I wanted to show her.

"There," I said, looking but not pointing. "Above the sun. Do you see that patch of light pointing straight up, almost like a candle flame? Unless I'm reading the clouds wrong, that's going to stretch out into a sun pillar."

She looked at the bright white blur on the western horizon. The sun moved lower and lower behind the clouds. As the minutes passed the column of light above the sun stretched up, and up, looking like a biblical pillar of fire. It gradually deepened to orange and then red as the sun sank lower on the horizon.

Lori slid the handle of the bag from the bookstore over her wrist, raised her Hello Kitty camera and snapped a few more pictures. "I've never seen that before," she said.

"Most people haven't," I replied, and immediately realized I had relegated her to the realm of "most people." "Sun pillars aren't that common, so they don't happen with every sunset. And we're all so busy, how often do you get to watch a sunset?" I said, trying to recover.

"'How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?'" she said, quoting The Sheltering Sky. "'Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.'" Or maybe she was quoting Brandon Lee's quote of The Sheltering Sky. He was dead shortly after that interview.

"There's something else," I said. "Turn around. Look east."

A beautiful soft pink glow stretched across the eastern sky, just above the horizon. Above it, the sky was only a little darker than it had been a few minutes ago. Below it, the sky was a dark blue-gray above the cold Susquehanna.

"What is that?" Lori asked, raising her phone to take another picture.

"It's called the Belt of Venus," I told her. "The pink glow is the light of every sunset that's happening just beyond the horizon. The sunlight reddens as it passes through the thickest part of the atmosphere. We're seeing that red sunlight reflected back at us."

"And the dark part?"

"That's the shadow of the Earth. The Earth is casting a shadow through its own atmosphere. It'll rise, higher and higher, and become night."

She tapped some more information into her phone. I found that habit almost annoying. I wanted her to be here now, but she was busy sharing each moment with the world.

I'd been standing beside her, on her left as we watched the sunset, on her right when we turned to watch the light show in the east. But as we watched and talked, I had moved behind her.

Lori was short, nearly a  foot shorter than me. I placed my hands on her shoulders, on those ridiculous shoulder pads, Then I gradually slid them across so I was hugging her from behind, each hand on her opposite shoulder.

We stood like that in silence for a few minutes. A car drove past.  I barely noticed it.  The wind blew a bit from behind us, but I shielded Lori from the chill. We watched the colors in the eastern sky rise and begin to darken and fade.

"So what would you like to do next?" I asked.

She turned to face me, breaking my hold. She put her phone back in her coat pocket, but the book in its crinkly green bag still hung from her wrist. She looked up at me, her nearly-black eyes looking into mine.

Lori reached up and clutched the lapels of my black longcoat. She tugged me down gently, stood on the toes of her boots, and kissed me on the cheek.

"You're very sweet," she said. Continuing to stare at me, she said "Thank you for the sunset, and the shadow. But I have to go now."

I was dumbstruck. Crestfallen. And a million other words that only apply in such a situation. Finally I spoke. "I'll drive you back to the bookstore, if that's what you want."

She smiled and shook her head. "I have a ride."

The car that had driven past us was stopped at the end of the bridge, next to mine.

"Goodbye," she said. She released her grip on my coat and slid her hands slowly down my chest, stopping briefly to take my hands in hers. Then she let go, turned, and walked briskly to the waiting vehicle.

Lori got to the end of the bridge, opened the door to the waiting car, and got in. I couldn't tell if she looked back at me. Maybe she waved.

The car drove off and I was left alone on the bridge, as the last traces of sunset faded from the sky.

**************************

This is at least version eight of this story. The original was scribbled out in a little blue notebook as I waited to meet some friends for dinner.

The characters are based on real people, though the narrator is considerably prettied up from his real-life counterpart. The female character is a composite of many women I have known. It wasn't until after I had written the second draft with its detailed description of her appearance that I realized whose face I was seeing as I described her. (Someone I knew briefly in college, many years ago.)

All the locations and phenomena described in this story are real. In a previous draft I had detailed location information, but even now there's enough that you could probably get to the right spot on the right bridge from what I've said.

Sun dogs: I don't have any pictures of sun dogs that I've posted to my blog, partly because getting the whole effect requires a wide-angle lens. Here are some good images online:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_dog
http://www.meteoros.de/arten/ee02e.htm
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/parhelia.htm

Sun pillar: http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2006/04/untold-tales-sun-pillar.html
(this is a sun pillar at sunrise, so the sequence would be reversed for sunset)

The Belt of Venus: http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2009/02/susquehanna-at-sunset-february-13-2009.html
(taken from the location referenced in the story)

Ice on the river, shadows on the ice, and the railroad bridge:
http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2009/02/another-susquehanna-panorama.html
http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2009/02/susquehanna-panorama-february-5-2009.html
http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-from-susquehanna-river-february-5.html
(also from the locations referenced in the story)

Some shots of the river and the bridge itself, including some junked antique cars mentioned in an earlier draft:
http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2010/01/susquehanna-and-moon-january-27-2010.html

An Ode to Summer

At last month's edition of the Third Thursday Open Mic Poetry Night I read a poem about a child's experience of Spring that I had hastily thrown together in the hours before the reading. It went over relatively well. I decided to do a follow-up of sorts, about an adult's experience of Summer - particularly this Summer. Here it is.


An Ode to Summer

Screw you, Summer
we used to be friends
back when I was a kid playing on the swings
and you were all blue skies and puffy white clouds and gentle breezes.

What happened to you?
Now you're all about sweltering heat and humidity that makes the air feel like soup
not the good kind of soup that your grandmother made that made you feel better when you were sick
but the kind that you drown in when you fall face-first into the bowl after you get smacked in the head with a stray baseball.

You've shriveled up my garden, killed all my flowers
but you're real good at making the lawn grow
and the weeds, especially the weeds, appreciate what you've done

Some people like you, don't get me wrong
they celebrate you with fireworks on the Fourth
and the Fifth
and the Twelfth
and they'd better cut it out soon or I'm calling the cops.

It's not too late
you could mend your ways
you could give us the sort of Summer I remember from when I was a kid
you could, but you probably won't

So screw you, Summer
keep this crap up
and I'm gonna shave my head
and wait for Fall

What's the deal with parking in Scranton on a Saturday?

Ever since I began taking part in the weekly Saturday meetings of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective in Scranton I have been faced with the question: to pay, or not to pay?

The streets of Scranton are lined with parking meters, decades-old pieces of hardware with fancy new electronic displays for letting you (and parking enforcement officials) know when your time is up. Times and dates of operation are printed inside the half-domes enclosing the parking meter head, but these are usually too clouded by pollutants and ultraviolet radiation to be able to see clearly. When I first began attending meetings at the old location of the Vintage (then the Vintage Theater) the proprietor advised me after I had dropped a fistful of quarters into the meter that parking was free on Saturdays. That would have been in October 2011. Since then the Vintage has relocated to 326 Spruce Street in Scranton, the Scranton Parking Authority has been dissolved and parking meter management has been placed in the hands of outside vendors, and there has been some discussion of changing the hours of operation of meters in Scranton to include Saturdays.

The thing is, according to little slips of paper helpfully inserted into the half-domes of parking meters, those hours are already in effect.

It's hard to see in the original, but in this enhanced view you can read the two inch long slip of paper:

HOURS OF OPERATION

8AM TO 6PM

MONDAY THRU SATURDAY

There's a website helpfully included at the bottom of the slip of paper for those seeking more information, scrantonparking.com. Anyone visiting that URL is helpfully informed that the website may be available for purchase, but is otherwise inactive.

I've only ever received one ticket of any sort in my entire life so far, and that was a parking ticket for being at a meter too long. It was when I was parked at the Pennsylvania CareerLink in Wilkes-Barre, also known as the unemployment office. As I was unemployed, I had carefully doled out my coins for the typical length of one of our weekly Job Club meetings, plus a fifteen minute buffer. I did not realize that the guest speaker we had for our meeting that week was going to go on at great length with whatever it was she was presenting. I nervously checked my watch as the minutes dragged by, watching the time when my meter would run out approach, arrive, and pass by. As soon as the speaker finished I leaped out of my chair and gathered my stuff to head for the door. "Oh, am I keeping you from something?" she said sarcastically. "No, I need to feed the meter," I replied. "Don't want to get a ticket." But by then it was too late. The Wilkes-Barre meter attendants are particularly predatory when it comes to the meters outside of the CareerLink office, and will wait to watch a meter expire so they can ticket the offending vehicle immediately. Several other people at that Job Club meeting received tickets that day - including the guest speaker.

That was a sore spot for me, and I wound up giving the City of Wilkes-Barre ten dollars I could have used otherwise, ten dollars which I am sure did not go to any good use. I'd really rather not be paying money to the City of Scranton, either. Yet week after week as I arrive in downtown Scranton for our Saturday meeting, I notice cars sitting at meters that show remaining minutes - meters which have been fed. On a Saturday. Do these people know something I don't? I've been reasoning that they might, and the past few weeks I've been dropping two hours' worth of quarters into the coin slot. Better to waste two dollars than get fined ten, or twenty, or whatever the going rate in Scranton is.

The City of Scranton has not really done anything to clear up this matter officially. The city website is silent on the matter of parking (and does not have a search function built in to make things easier), and the scrantonparking.com website, as previously noted, does not exist at the time of this writing.

So what is the official position on the matter of parking in Scranton on a Saturday? The local newspaper says that parking is free on Saturdays, but articles in local newspapers are rarely seen as having the force of law. The little slip of paper inside the meter says parking meters are in effect on Saturday, but that slip of paper may be a relic of a bygone era - or a foretaste of things to come. Short of having an official, current, published pronouncement, it's anybody's guess. An officer of the law who chose to write tickets for vehicles parked at expired meters on a Saturday meed only poke a thumb at the little slips of paper in the meters to make his case for giving you a ticket.

I think Scranton has decided to have it all ways by officially keeping things vague and confusing. Without an official declaration that the meters are in effect on Saturdays, no one has cause to complain. Any ignorant fools who choose to feed the meters on Saturdays are providing the city with a little extra revenue. And anyone a police officer doesn't like the looks of may very well find himself on the receiving end of a fine for not putting coins in the meter during clearly posted hours of operation. It's a win-win-win situation - for the City of Scranton, at least.

Moon and Supermoon

The thing about the "Supermoon" is that it really isn't that much larger or brighter than a typical, non-Super full moon. The pictures making their way around the Internet in the weeks leading up to tonight's full moon were deliberately misleading: zoomed-in shots of the moon looming gigantically on the horizon. Heck, you can take a zoomed-in picture of, say, a pseudoscorpion, but that doesn't mean that we're in imminent danger of being eaten by gigantic versions of creatures whose earliest fossils date back over 400 million years.

Pseudoscorpion: Not actual size.

I got home tonight shortly after moonrise. I spotted the moon briefly as I maneuvered into the driveway. I realized that, Supermoon or not, every moonrise is special, and every moonrise should be observed. Remember the quote from The Sheltering Sky that Brandon Lee recounted in his final interview before he was killed on the set of The Crow:

 Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless...

So, after unloading the perishables from the car, I grabbed my tripod, attached my little old Nikon Coolpix L4, and went out to find the moon.

Summer moons rise low and stay low. I had to photograph this one through a gap between my neighbor's house and his shed. It's very difficult for me to photograph the moon with my little point-and-click camera, since the sensor is easily overwhelmed by the light of the moon. Fortunately it was early enough in the evening that the sky was still relatively bright. I set the camera to Sports mode, which does a series of high-speed shots - shorter exposure times reducing the saturation of the sensor - and clicked away.

I was not displeased with the results, even at a tighter zoom.

One thing I didn't do was see if I could blot out the Supermoon with a pencil eraser (the eraser that comes installed on the end of a pencil) held at arm's length. Most people seriously overestimate the apparent size of the moon. Even I might say it's no smaller than a quarter held at arm's length. In fact, it's much, much smaller than that. As soon as I'm done writing this I might run out and try the pencil trick.

If you missed tonight's moon, tomorrow's moon won't be much smaller. Or you could try next month. Just make a point to see it sometime soon. How many more times will you have the opportunity?



UPDATE, 6/23/2013: I did get out later, much later, to try the pencil trick, with a pencil from a bank that ceased to exist nearly twenty years ago. I held up the pencil at arm's length, maneuvered it to blot out the moon, and looked in surprise as the edges of the moon squeezed out all around the eraser. I have said that the difference in size of the Supermoon to a "regular" full moon was slight enough that observing it would require calibrated measurement instruments.  Well, I guess a standard-sized pencil eraser held at one personal arm's length is good enough. Now I'll have to try the same thing during another full moon.

I made an error in this post: FULL moons ride low in the sky in summer, but during other phases the moon will ride high and everywhere in between. This was pointed out in Guy Ottewell's Astronomical Calendar 2013 entry for this full moon.

A poem for the last day of Spring

Last night was the monthly Third Thursday Open Mic Poetry Night presented by my writing group, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective. As it was the last day of Spring, I thought it would be nice to read something appropriate for the occasion. So I wrote this. Less than two hours later I was reading it aloud at the Vintage in Scranton.

Springtime by the numbers

A three at the top of the page meant
cold, windy days, wet weather,
weeks of eating fish on Fridays and giving up candy

Four brought with it brighter days
and frosty mornings
a feast of chocolate
and a sense of change

Five meant things were wrapping up
the tests had a special sort of urgency
Flowers for the Virgin
put there by little girls in white dresses
Sunny mornings and sunnier evenings
that beckoned us to put our homework aside and play

Six, though, six was special
even the nuns didn't feel like working anymore
and they gave us extra sessions of recess to break up the day
A six at the top of a page or a test or a quiz thrilled you
and made you feel like it was a bad joke
Blue skies and cool breezes
Afternoons after school spent on the swing set
listening to the birds and watching the clouds drift by
and wanting to stay there forever.

Nickeled and dimed and dollar-fiftied

Or: the rich get richer by causing the poor to get poorer.

Today's Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice brought a story so shockingly outrageous that...well, you should read it for yourself:

Former worker sues McDonald's franchisee

BY BOB KALINOWSKIAND MICHAEL R. SISAK (STAFF WRITERS)

Published: June 14, 2013

OK, that's not exactly the most exciting or informative headline. It's the reason for the lawsuit that makes it so outrageous: A former employee of a local McDonald's franchise is suing her former employers because they only gave her one option for collecting her pay: not by paycheck, not by direct deposit, but by debit card. A debit card laden with fees of all sorts, fees for almost anything you could imagine. From the article:

The J.P. Morgan Chase payroll card carries fees for nearly every type of transaction, according to the lawsuit, including a $1.50 charge for ATM withdrawals, $5 for over-the-counter cash withdrawals, $1 to check the balance, 75 cents per online bill payment and $10 per month if the card is left inactive for more than three months.

$1 to check the balance? And that $1.50 charge is for ATM withdrawals at a Chase ATM - it's higher at "out of network" ATMs. The problem is that the closest Chase ATM to the person filing this suit is in New Jersey - more than sixty miles and at least one tollbooth away.

The suit is being filed because Pennsylvania law requires that wages be paid in "lawful money." Unfortunately, Pennsylvania law doesn't really define "lawful money." And then there's this:

In 2005, the state Department of Banking concluded the use of payroll cards did not violate any laws within its jurisdiction.

So, legally, this may not even be an issue. But wait, there's more:

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation estimated that $60 billion in wages will be distributed through payroll cards next year.

Walmart, the largest private employer in the U.S., switched to paperless pay in 2009, with about half its 1.4 million employees receiving direct deposit and half receiving paycheck cards. The Home Depot, Lowes, United Parcel Service, FedEx and hundreds of other large employers use payroll cards. The Chicago Public Schools system uses them to pay more than 4,000 student employees.

And that's the really outrageous part. Not only is there precedent to suggest that the use of fee-heavy debit cards as a means of distributing wages is legal, the cards are already in widespread use - to the tune of sixty billion dollars projected for next year.

I took a few minutes to absorb this over breakfast this morning when I realized that I've already had experience with this sort of thing myself. Not as a wage-earner - quite the opposite. Sometime before I lost my job in 2010, Pennsylvania changed its Unemployment Compensation system over from using paper checks and direct deposit to debit cards and direct deposit. I was wary of the direct deposit system (for some irrational, unexplained reason - was I afraid of the State of Pennsylvania getting access to my checking account? Like they don't already have that information?), and I opted for the debit card. I was aware of the fees involved, so I used the card in a way that would minimize the fees being charged. I saw the fees as the price of collecting unemployment - from a system I had been regularly paying into for the previous eighteen years - and didn't complain.

But I had a choice to use direct deposit if I wanted it. The employees of companies that offer no options but debit cards don't have a choice. And the financial institutions behind these debit cards enrich themselves by means of those fees, chipping away at the meager wages of the folks forced to use debit cards, quietly redistributing wealth seventy-five cents and a dollar and a dollar fifty and five dollars at a time. Sixty billion dollars worth of wages tied up on debit cards are bound to generate quite a lot of fees.

How soon until fee-laden payroll debit cards are the only way that wage earners will be able to collect their paychecks?

New shift

Tomorrow I start a new shift at work: 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM. I can't recall when the last time was that I worked a shift like that...maybe back in 2009, in my former place of employment, when I was doing some special statistical analysis stuff for a few months on a temporary basis. Even then, the commute to and from work was at least 40 minutes - which meant leaving an hour ahead of time to allow for traffic and construction. Now my commute is more like ten minutes, and I allow an extra five to ten for school buses and slow trucks and things like that.

I'm looking forward to seeing the sun rise tomorrow morning! And I've already got plans for my first few afternoons!

New fiction: The Lamentation of Cats

Here's my latest piece of fiction for my writing group. It still needs some work, but it was well-received. More notes follow the story.


The fluffy gray kitten played with the ball of yarn. She rolled in ecstasy, purring away with the pure joy of being a cat. She planned to play with her ball of yarn for a long time, and then maybe take a nap. Maybe two naps.

"Princess," said a voice. "We need to talk."

Princess stopped playing and looked up. It was Sugar, the Senior Cat. She had a very serious look on her face.

"Am I in trouble?" Princess asked.

Princess wasn't a kitten, not anymore. But at nearly fifteen months she was the youngest cat in the house, and she had chosen to hold onto her kittenhood as long as she could.

"No, you're not in trouble," Sugar said. "Though I do want you to stop pooping so much by the front door. You need to use the litter box."

"But I like pooping there," Princess protested. "And besides, Mom doesn't mind."

"Yes, she does. And you're making a lot of extra work for her, work she shouldn't be doing. But let's wait for Slinky before we discuss more."

"Here I am," came a muffled voice from the hallway. A young tabby padded out of the dark with the stealth that had inspired his name. He held something in his mouth, but set it down before he approached the other cats. "I was just checking on Mom," he said. "She's taking a nap."

"She sure takes a lot of naps lately," Princess said.

"Yes, she does," Sugar said.  "That's something I wanted to talk about today."

Princess cocked her head and looked at Sugar. Why would she want to have a meeting about Mom taking naps?

"Princess," said Sugar, "Mom is getting old and tired. She's taken real care good care of all of us, but someday - maybe soon, maybe not for a while - she won't be around anymore. We have to talk about what we're going to do when that happens."

Princess looked back and forth between the two other cats, confused. Sugar sat there, dignified as always, while Slinky chose that moment to start licking at his leg.

"What do you mean, 'won't be around anymore?'" Princess asked. "Where would she go? Maybe out to the country to visit Tommy and the kids?"

Slinky stopped licking and shook his head as if he had a bug in his ear.

"No, Princess," Sugar said. "I mean Mom's getting old and tired and is eventually going to die. Then she won't be around anymore to take care of us."

Princess tucked back her ears and put her chin on the carpet. She began to meow plaintively. "But...if Mom's not around, what are we going to do? Who's going to feed us, and change our water bowls, and clean up our poop?"

"There'd be a lot less poop to clean up if you used the damn litter boxes," Slinky said.

"But if Mom's not there to feed us, we'll starve!" Princess howled softly. "Unless...wait! I have an idea! We'll find a bag of food, and tear it open, and eat it!" She brightened up. "We've done it before, we can do it again!"

Sugar shook her head slowly. "It doesn't work that way, Princess. Somebody needs to buy those bags of food from the store and bring them into the house. Without Mom, there won't be any new bags of food."

"Then we're doomed," Princess cried. "Mom's gonna die and we're gonna starve."

Slinky chewed at his back foot for a little bit, then looked at Princess. "Maybe, maybe not. Sugar and I talked about some scenarios here. We figure there's three ways things can go, with variations of each."

Sugar nodded. "The first possibility is that after Mom dies, Tommy will take us to live with him in the country."

Slinky scratched at his ear and let this statement settle in. "Now, we'd like to think that this is the most likely scenario. But we've got reasons to think it's not gonna happen."

"Why?" asked Princess.

"Well...you.  Tommy found you when you were a newborn kitten, abandoned in his barn. From what I hear, you were darned cute as a kitten."

"I still am," replied Princess.

"The point is, he didn't keep you then. What makes us think he would take you in now? Plus an old cat like Sugar and a part-feral like me. It would be nice, but we've gotta consider that it might not happen."

"I like Tommy and the kids," said Princess.

Sugar and Slinky exchanged a glance. Sugar began again. "Scenario two is less pleasant to consider: After mom dies, we get sent away to the pound."

"What's a pound?" Princess asked.

Sugar thought a moment and responded "It's a place where unwanted dogs and cats get sent so other people can see them and adopt them."

"Well, that sounds nice," Princess said.

Slinky scoffed. "Sure, it sounds nice. Truth is, there's too many unwanted dogs and cats for them to handle. They need to free up space. If you don't get adopted in a few days, maybe a week, they put you to sleep."

"I like to sleep," said Princess.

Slinky hissed and spit. He was about to say something but Sugar interrupted. "'Put to sleep' doesn't mean what it sounds like," she said. "It means...well..."

"Dammit, it means they kill you," Slinky said. "Jab you with a needle or gas you in a box, then toss your body in a furnace with all the other cats and dogs they 'put to sleep.' And there's no waking up, not ever."

Princess began to whimper and cry. "First Mom dies, then we die? But I love Mom! I just want to take a nap and forget about all this."

"Slinky, you've frightened her."

"Dammit, Sugar, this is frightening stuff. It scares the hell out of me. I don't want to end up stuffed in a furnace either. So that brings us to scenario three."

"Is it worse than being put to sleep?" Princess asked.

"No," Sugar said. "If Tommy isn't going to take us, we wait until people are coming and going through the doors. They'll do that when Mom...when Mom is gone. And we wait for our chance, when maybe someone has a door open a little longer than usual, and we run away."

"Run away? Where?"

"There's a stable colony of ferals in this neighborhood," Slinky said. "I used to be a part of it. There's a lot fewer left than there were before, thanks to the poisoner who lives next door. We'll take our chances with them accepting us into the colony. If not, we move on."

"What do you think our chances are of being accepted?" Sugar asked.

"I...don't know." Slinky grew somber. "I was sick and dying when I left them last year. Mom took me in, made me better. But...I think they resent me for having left them and come in here. They might be more willing to accept the two of you. Or maybe none of us. Still, it's a better option than the pound."

The three cats sat in silence for a while. Finally Sugar spoke.

"That's a lot to think about, I know. And it might not happen for months, or even years. But we have to start thinking about it now. And there's more we need to discuss."

She looked at a reflected sunbeam on the ceiling for a moment, then continued. "If Tommy comes, he might want to take just you, Princess. He might decide to send me and Slinky off to the pound."

Slinky looked at her. "Well, we'd just run away then. Let Tommy take her, but the two of us can stick together."

Sugar shook her head. "I've been with Mom for fourteen years now, but I was already a grownup cat when she took me in. See, I was a pet who belonged to the people across the street. They let me wander the neighborhood. I got knocked up. I was almost ready to have my kittens when I found out my owners had moved away and left me behind."

Princess forgot about her problems for the moment. "But, why?" she asked.

Sugar shook her head. "They weren't good pet owners, and weren't ready to deal with a litter of kittens. I had my kittens next door, in the Bad Man's garden. That didn't turn out very well."

Slinky looked at her. "I didn't know. I had no idea."

"Most of them died, either from sickness or from drinking the bowls of antifreeze he put out for us. One or two got to grow up, at least survive long enough to strike out on their own. I don't know what became of them. Maybe one of them is your great-great-great-great-grandfather, Slinky."

She closed her eyes as the first traces of the afternoon sunbeam began to poke through the curtains. "My point is, I'm old. I've lived outside, until Mom took me in, and I'm not ready to live like that again. I'm too old for that sort of thing. Heck, maybe I'll die before Mom does." She looked at Princess with a steely gaze. "The thing is - if I die, or if I get taken off to the pound, you're the Senior Cat, Princess."

Princess looked shocked. "Me? But...but Slinky in older! At least nine months older, maybe more!"

"Seniority is based on years in the house, not age," said Sugar. "You've been in the house longer. Nearly a year longer. That makes you senior to Slinky. He understands this."

Slinky nodded somberly. "So the upshot is, after Sugar dies, I'm going to be looking to you for leadership and guidance."

"But...but if we have to go outside..."

"Then I'll give you whatever support and assistance I can," Slinky said. "But you'll still be the Senior Cat."

Princess meowed sadly and rested her head on her paws.

"Mom dying...you dying...all of us getting killed and burned up in a furnace, or running away and living in the wild..."

"This is all a bit much to take in all at once," said Sugar. "Let's adjourn this meeting for now. We can continue our discussion later. The sunbeam is about ready to show up. Why don't we all lay in it for the afternoon?"

Slinky turned away from the other cats and padded over to the thing he had dropped. He picked it up in his mouth and brought it back to where he he had been sitting.

"Lookee what I found in Mom's room," he said. "The catnip pillow we thought we lost last month. I thought we might need it after discussing all this heavy stuff. It's still good." He chewed and batted at it for a minute, then looked at the other two cats. "Want some?"

"No, thank you," said Sugar. "I quit that a while ago."

Princess looked at it sadly. "No, thanks," she said.

"Suit yourselves," Slinky replied, his eyes dilating.  He carried the catnip over to the spot on the floor where the sunbeam was already stretching out.

"Will you join us, Princess?" Sugar asked.

Princess stood up. "Maybe later," she said. "I think for now I'm going to go and check in on Mom. Maybe see if she needs some help taking a nap."


I was happy with my last story, involving a conversation - imagined or real - with a cat in a supermarket parking lot. I wanted to do more stuff with cats. Lovecraft had stories about cats meeting outdoors in the night, and flying off to secret places on the Moon. I had an idea that cats might communicate with each other over the Internet, and that's what they're doing every time they walk on your keyboard. But then I decided to do something simpler: what do housecats talk about while we're asleep? Here I decided that these cats would talk about mortality - both that of their "Mom" and their own mortality - and the consequences of death.

The seniority system in cats (and all housepets) is something I've observed over and over. Animals generally respect it, and recognize which animal has the highest seniority. I have sometimes seen a cat transform from a stunted adolescent into an adult within days of the death of the previous senior animal, much like a bull chimpanzee will develop different physical traits when it takes over its tribe. Some animals fail to respect the chain of seniority and get smacked down and put back in line by their fellow animals.

Sugar was a real cat, and a real sweetheart who would come up to me and nuzzle my legs as I was doing yard work. I knew her name because it was on a tag on her collar. I'm not sure if she was abandoned while she was pregnant, but her owners did move away. She eventually vanished from the neighborhood, as many feral cats do, but she had a daughter we named Socks, possibly with the black cat we called SpookyBear. Socks had Rachel (later Ray) and Gretchen, and then vanished. We took in Rachel and Gretchen after we realized that a neighbor was almost certainly poisoning the neighborhood ferals. Gretchen died as a kitten, but Ray is still with us.

Slinky is a less-lovable version of Homer. Princess is cut from whole cloth, but is based on a lot of cats I know who try to maintain their kittenhood throughout their lives.

Someone remarked that this upends the notion that cats can take us or leave us. But I have known many cats who have shown real concern for their human companions. Perhaps it all depends on the humans involved.

The title is based on something I remember from my childhood. My grandmother on my father's side had worked with children with severe birth defects, and there was one group that had a specific condition that caused them to cry constantly like howling cats. I believe the condition was referred to by a French phrase that translated into "the lamentation of cats.". I haven't been able to get any Google hits for that phrase, but now there will be at least one.

Happy belated blogiversary to meeeeeee

I was reading a story by the late Kage Baker called "The Angel in the Darkness" a little while ago. In it, a woman about my age deals with the death of her father. Reading about her reactions made me think about my own reactions to the death of my father back in 2005, reactions recorded and preserved here on my blog. That made me think about my blog, and all the events recorded here, all the thoughts that I wrote down and shared over the years, and it made me think about how I've been neglecting it lately, and made me think about how many years had passed since I started it. Then I realized that my blogiversary - the anniversary of the day I started blogging - was sometime in May. A quick check showed that my ninth blogiversary had, in fact, already been and gone. My first (official) blog post was written on May 14, 2004.

A lot has happened and been recorded on this blog in that time. It seemed like I had been blogging forever when my father died, but in fact I had been at it only fifteen months. Haley died, and Ashes, and Minnie. I went to the beach, I started an exercise routine with Haley, and I stopped after Haley died. I went to Ireland, for the third and last time, and visited London for the first time. I bought my grandmother's house. My house was robbed. I lost my job at the place I had worked at for fifteen years. I went back to work as a production worker a few months later, and lost that job three years later. I went back as a temporary and worked my butt off for a few weeks. Eventually I got a job at another place, much closer to home. I have racked up hundreds of thousands of miles on my car. I have studied photovoltaic technology. I have joined a writing group. I have started other blogs, and as a result of one of them I have appeared on TV almost every week for the past year and a half.

I've watched most of the bloggers who were blogging when I started shut down their blogs and move on with their lives. Even many of the blogs I started reading over the years have shut down. Blogs that are updated with any regularity are few and far between these days.

I don't know why this is for everybody else. Maybe blogging was just a fad. Maybe it was a phase that many of us outgrew. Maybe other social networking tools, like Facebook and Twitter, consume our precious Blogging Energy Units and leave use too spent to say anything new. Maybe modern computing tools, smartphones and iPads and things like that, have made it too tedious to type more than 140 characters at a time. Maybe we've said everything we've had to say.

I'm not done, not yet. I've got my reasons and excuses for not blogging, but I'm not ready to shut down Another Monkey. I don't know if I'll ever blog as much as I used to, when I maintained a post-a-day minimum. I don't know if the blogosphere will ever be what it once was, when it felt like there was an enormous global conversation going on, when I would read and comment on updates from friends in Norway, Australia, England, and all over the U.S. Maybe there are loads of vibrant new blogs out there just waiting to be discovered. Maybe my friends who have backed away from blogging will pick up the practice once again. Who knows? Who can say? We'll see where things stand a year from last Tuesday, when I'm celebrating - or forgetting - my tenth blogiversary.

Hyperbole and a Half is back

It is possible that somehow you missed the biggest news on the Internet this week. If you have, I'll fill you in: Hyperbole and a Half is back.

Hyperbole and a Half is one of the funniest and most popular blogs in existence. Written and illustrated by Allie Brosh, each longform piece is accompanied by crudely-drawn but idiosyncratic images that have spread throughout the Internet in the form of memes - usually presented without attribution, but easily recognized by her fans. I first became aware of Allie Brosh's brilliant blog through the post The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas. That was posted in December of 2010. There would only be five more posts from Allie through 2011, none in 2012, and nothing more from her until this week. Her final post in 2011, Adventures in Depression, gave some hint as to what was about to come.

Allie's silence was broken by occasional messages attributed to her that appeared on message boards during her absence, though their authenticity was disputed. There was even a Facebook page set up by her, or by someone else on her behalf, and that is where I first heard the news that Allie was coming back. That post gave a foretaste of the post that would follow.

On Thursday, May 9, 2013 Allie posted an account of what she's been going through during her absence. And it is brutal.

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two

I thought I had some sense of what depression was. I now realize I did not. Clearly Allie did not either, before going through all this herself: the exhilarating feeling of nobody-can-hurt-me, I-can-do-anything numbness she described in Adventures in Depression spread out into a nihilistic abyss of numbness and nothingness, a relentless, featureless plane with no sign of hope anywhere.

You should read her most recent post.

You should read the rest of her blog, too. The 81 posts she wrote and illustrated in 2009, the 80 in 2010, the five in 2011. They are fun and funny, and that sense is barely diminished by the knowledge of where Allie is now. Will the fun and funny Allie ever come back? No one can say. But her most recent post ends with a grain - literally, a kernel - of hope, that maybe there is something out there for her other than nothingness. And that kernel gives the rest of us hope, too.

FICTION: One Friday evening in a supermarket parking lot

The following is a true story. It has had some fictional elements added. Discerning truth from fiction is left as an exercise for the reader.


I almost forgot to go to the supermarket that night. It was about 9:30 and as I drove past I noticed the parking lot was mostly empty, and wondered briefly about what sort of people would be shopping there on a Friday night. About half a mile later I remembered that I wanted to pick up some ice cream there while it was still on sale, and maybe see if they had that Belgian Waffle mix I couldn't find anywhere else. So I turned around and headed back to the store.

As I drove through the parking lot a bedraggled orange cat dashed through my headlight beams. It looked wet - it had been pouring just an hour before, as my fellow bloggers and I huddled in a bar watching suspect #2 in the Boston Marathon Bombings get extracted from a boat. I parked my car and headed for the entrance. Ice cream, I thought. Belgian Waffle mix.

Hey, could you get me something while you're in there? a voice said.

I stopped, looked around. There was no one else in the lot. Nothing but some cars and the wet cat now sheltering in a cart corral.

I'm hungry, came the voice again. Couldja get me a can of something?

The cat was staring at me.

I hadn't had much to drink that night. One Yuengling that tasted sour. A Guinness that tasted like it was watered down. Another Guinness that I hadn't really wanted, but someone else had bought for me, so I drank it.

I turned to continue into the store.

Something nice, the voice said, fainter now. Not that store brand crap.

I was a little unnerved as I grabbed a cart. I didn't need a full-sized cart, but I didn't feel like carrying around containers of ice cream in my hands. I got two cartons of Rocky Road, still on sale, the one and a half quart size. They didn't have the store brand butterscotch swirl my mom likes, but that might get restocked in a few days, so I could get that for her then. Ice cream in cart, I began to search for the aisle with pancake syrup. Find the syrup, and the waffle mix might be nearby.

I stopped at the pet food aisle.

That cat did look hungry. Maybe it would still be outside.

I found a can of the stuff my cats like. Just one can. If the cat was still out there, I'd give it to him. If not, my cats would eat it.

A few minutes later I headed to the checkout. Two containers of Rocky Road ice cream. One box of Belgian Waffle mix. One can of cat food. Nearly ten o'clock on a Friday night. I wondered what the high school girl behind the register thought.

As I walked to my car I looked over at the cart corral. The orange cat was still there, staring at me.

Didja get it? a voice asked.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the can of cat food. I began to open it as I walked past my car towards the cat.

Just leave it and go, the voice said. The cat backed away as I approached.

I pulled the lid off the can, set can and lid on the pavement, and took a few steps back.

The cat scrambled over to the can and took a few tentative nibbles, then began to gobble away.

Oh, damn, this is good, I heard, muffled.

The cat stopped and looked up at me.

Well, whaddya want? Go away. I'm eating.

I kept watching. The cat arched its back slightly.

Seriously. Go away. I'll hurt you if you stay.

I took another step back. The cat continued to stare at me, then began eating again, more warily.

We were done here. I headed back to my car. I wanted to go home, maybe have some ice cream.

Hey, came a voice as I got back into my car. Thanks. Thank you for the food.

I tossed my bag on the passenger seat, started the car and pulled out of the lot. As I drove away I looked at the cart corral one last time. I could see the cat still there, eating.

I went home and had some ice cream.

Sideshow history

A few months ago the legendary (but very real) Todd Robbins created a Facebook group called Sideshow Spectrum. It's an invitation-only group, but any member can invite anyone into the group. The idea was that it would bring together the entire spectrum of the Sideshow world, from veterans and old showmen to current performers, up-and-comers, rookies, historians, fans, and even the merely Sideshow-curious. It's a fun place to be, with all the infighting, recriminations, and general chaos of a big, dysfunctional family getting together for Thanksgiving dinner. Sometimes it's an amazing resource to have access to, like when a friend accidentally swallowed a piece of glass last week (she found the glass bowl from which she was eating fruit had started to chip apart) and was wondering how worried she should be. I immediately took the issue up with a group of people who eat glass on a regular basis, and was able to get expert advice. (She was fine.)

Yesterday someone posted this to the group:

hoping someone can help....i want to learn more about the history of sideshow....can anyone suggest where to start.

Now, instead of the usual response (which would be to club him with a tent peg, take his wallet, shoes, and pants, and dump him somewhere in the next county), people actually supplied useful information. Even I was able to suggest a couple of resources, the things where I first learned about Sideshow, and some that I've come to know though my association with performers.

The top response is John Robinson's Sideshow World (http://www.sideshowworld.com/). The motto there is "Preserving the Past, Promoting the Future" - with a third item thrown in, "Enjoying the Present." Past, present, and future are all covered in the articles and interviews that appear with an alarming frequency, sometimes several times a day.  John and his staff  put a lot into this site, and you will get a lot out of it. You can easily get lost for many, many hours on this site, and they would all be hours well-spent.

Another response is James Taylor's Shocked and Amazed (http://www.shockedandamazed.com/) This site serves to promote the irregularly-produced Shocked and Amazed! On and Off the Midway  periodical - a book-length magazine that contains long articles covering every aspect of past and present sideshow. James is a historian, curator, and archivist (and not to be confused with a certain mellow music maker of the same name), and he and his staff gather information from far and wide for each edition. The next one is coming out soon, back issues of many of the previous ones are available, and rumors abound of a second "best of" compilation. (The first is, I believe, out of stock.)

Here's a nearly hour-long documentary based on Shocked and Amazed! from 2003, featuring many amazing performers who are still active a decade later:




Another suggestion is to simply connect with the giants, the living legends, the walking repositories of history. Folks like John "Red" Lawrence Stuart, Ward Hall, and the great Todd Robbins. I have only seen and heard Ward from a distance, I have been in touch with Todd online and was his designated "...that guy over there" at last year's Sideshow Gathering (as in "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,  and that guy over there"), but I have had the privilege of sitting down and talking with Red for a good long while behind the scenes at the first (and so far, only) sideshow I have attended, the World of Wonders at the Northeast Fair in Pittston, PA in 2011. I showed up just before they broke for lunch, and Red was watching the set while everyone else went to eat, so we got to sit and talk about all sorts of things - including how some wireless high-speed internet companies will slow you down to DSL download speeds once you exceed a certain monthly limit. (At least, I think that's what Red said! I wasn't following all the technical details.)

One other suggestion was to get a job with a sideshow. While this might not educate you in the history of the sideshow, aside from what you can pick up there or learn from the crew, it will certainly immerse you in the here-and-now of sideshow. As one participant in the discussion said, "You know how to get a job at a carnival? Just ask." Unfortunately, sideshows these days are few and far between, and you have to know when they're at a carnival or fair, because they're often not advertised.

I had some suggestions of my own. One is the excellent book American Sideshow by Marc Hartzman. This book is not just a history of sideshow in America, but was also my introduction to many of the sideshow performers I would later meet through the Sideshow Gathering, and my introduction to the Sideshow Gathering itself. (Actually I had heard of the Gathering years before, but had heard the whole affair advertised as more a sort of side-show to a tattoo convention - which, in fact, it is.)

Another fine book I recommended is the regrettably out-of-print Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women by Ricky Jay. This is an excellent history of sideshow and other performers from decades and centuries past.

Todd Robbins himself has a great blog that covers a lot of sideshow history. Confessions of a Glass Eater (http://coneyislandtodd.blogspot.com/) has not been updated in several years, but rest assured that Todd is as active as ever.

If you have not seen Tod Browning's "Freaks", you should, just for the sheer number of historically significant performers who appear in it. Plus it's an amazing film. The "One of us!" scene is required watching for anyone interested in sideshow. Here's the film in its entirety:




Then there is, of course, the Sideshow Gathering itself. In that place you can meet dozens of current performers, veterans, historians, and fellow fans. You'll have access to countless historical references and artifacts, many available for sale or for bid at auction. The death of founder and driving force Franco Kossa back in 2011 and the effects of Superstorm Sandy in 2012 (which resulted in extensive damage to the sideshow Mecca, Coney Island, and caused numerous guests and exhibitors to cancel their plans) were tremendous setbacks to the Gathering. Will there be another Gathering in 2013, or has it, too, passed into sideshow history? That remains to be seen.

Upcoming events in NEPA this week

If you live in Northeastern Pennsylvania (like all the cool kids do) here are some events coming up this week that you should check out:

Thursday, April 18: Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective presents the Third Thursday Poetry Readings. at The Vintage, 326 Spruce Street in Scranton. Admission is free and all are welcome. Readings begin at 8:30 PM. If you'd like to read some poetry, show up early to get on the list.

Thursday, April 18 through Saturday, April 20: Scranton Public Theatre presents A Spotlight on the Jason Miller Playwrights' Project. Two Dramatic Comedies, "Lou Gehrig Did Not Die of Cancer" by Jason Miller and "Taking Liberties with Peter Rozig" by K.K. Gordon, will be performed at the Olde Brick Theatre, 128 West Market Street in Scranton. Tickets are $12.50 for adults, $10.00 for students and senior citizens. Showtime is 8:15 PM. (Performances will also be held April 25-27.)

Friday, April 19: NEPA BlogFest, Spring 2013 edition, Rooney's Irish Pub, 67 South Main Street in Pittston starting at 6:00. Meet local bloggers and maybe even some candidates for office. Admission is free.

Sunday, April 21: Prose in Pubs @ The Vintage. Prose in Pubs temporarily relocates to The Vintage (see above for address) starting at 4:00 PM. Rae Bryant will be the feature.

Blog Fest is coming!

For full details, click here. See you there!

Redneck school shooting

Ayup. 'Round these parts, we don't need psychotics in combat gear to shoot up schools - just some rednecks doing a little target shooting uprange of an elementary school.


WNEP: Bullet hits elementary school

MIDDLE SMITHFIELD TOWNSHIP — State police in Monroe County said a stray bullet hit an elementary school on Thursday.

Troopers said the bullet struck a double-paned window at Resica Elementary School near Marshalls Creek. The school is in the East Stroudsburg School District.

It smashed through one pane of glass, but not through the second.

No one was hurt.

State police questioned four men who were target shooting nearby. They could face charges in Monroe County.



WBRE: Bullet Pierces Second Grade Class Window
(linked story includes video)

Middle Smithfield Township, Monroe County - A bullet hit the window of a class full of second graders Thursday. It happened at Resica Elementary School in Middle Smithfield Township, Monroe County.

...Police say people at 823 Resica Falls Road were target shooting and someone missed a target. The bullet traveled at least a half mile. It went over a road, through the woods, and across the school parking lot.

Forsyth said the teacher in the hit classroom jumped into action. He explained, "The classroom teacher immediately sheltered the children along a wall where they wouldn't be visible from the outside."

...School District Police Officer Marc Iannazzo found the people who were shooting. He said he discovered four young men in their late teens or early twenties doing target practice. He said, "They were shooting into the woods down the hill towards the school." He noted, "I saw multiple guns, about three or four rifles, a couple handguns, laying on the bed of a truck and they were shooting at targets tied to a tree."

Police are investigating the young men.

Eyewitness News tried to talk to the people at 823 Rescia Falls Road but a man started yelling as soon as a reporter and photographer pulled into the driveway. He demanded the crew leave.
The school district is holding a parent meeting about the situation at Resica Elementary School Friday at 3:45.


Four people investigated after stray bullet hits Resica Elementary | PoconoRecord.com

State police continue to investigate the incident that caused a stray bullet to hit Resica Elementary School. The school was not targeted for any criminal purpose, said police.

Patrol units located four people who were target shooting today after a bullet hit a second grade classroom window at the school on Route 402 in Middle Smithfield Township. All 20 students who were in the classroom are safe, according to superintendent Sharon Laverdure.

The people, ages 18 to 21, were target shooting about a half-mile from the school, according to Lt. Robert Bartal of Troop N State Police. Their names have not been released.

...Bartal said police would confer with Monroe County District Attorney David Christine to determine if charges will be filed.

“By all indications, they were just target practicing. It was not an intentional act,” Bartal said.

Yes. There's a term for that kind of unintentional act. It's called "criminal negligence."

The address given for the shooters is indicated by the red marker "A" at the top right. The elementary school is the cross-shaped building at lower left. Note the scale at bottom left, and the houses, road, and baseball field between the two. How could they have possibly known these things were there? File under "heroes of the NRA."

Shane Burcaw is dying - but first, he wants to make Ellen laugh

Shane Burcaw is a lot of things: a blogger, a student, an all-around great guy. He's the blogger behind Laughing at my Nightmare, and the founder of the organization LAMN.

He's also dying. He has a condition called Spinal Muscular Atrophy (Type 2.) He has had it since childhood, and it is gradually robbing him of his muscles and his ability to move. Eventually, it will take away his ability to breathe. Eventually, it will kill him.

He knows this. He has known it for a long time. He has decided to take an upbeat approach to it. He wants to leave a mark on the world. And he wants to make Ellen DeGeneres laugh.

You can help make this happen.

From his blog:

Operation Make Ellen Laugh

Here is the event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/629758860373302/

Since I started my blog almost two years ago, people have been telling me “YOU SHOULD GO ON ELLEN!” They scream it at me actually, hence the caps lock. My response was always “I’d love to, but she’s very difficult to get in touch with.” I kept the idea in the back of my mind until I felt it was the perfect time.

Well, my friends, now is the perfect time. And if it’s going to work, I’m going to need every single one of you to help me!

This Thursday at 11am (Eastern Time), Operation Make Ellen Laugh will begin, and if it is successful, my life and the future of LAMN could be changed forever.

We will conduct Operation Make Ellen Laugh the same way that we have successfully contacted other celebrities (Anthony Green, Alex Morgan, etc.): with a MASSIVE twitter/fb bomb that is too large for her to ignore. This time, however, we’re stepping up our game, because we refuse to let this Operation fail. Instead of getting hundreds of people to tweet her that day, we need to get thousands!

It’s very simple: starting at 11am on Thursday and continuing all day long, thousands of us will begin sending her a special tweet (I will post the tweet on Thursday morning). It will contain a link to some videos that explain who I am and why I’d like to be on her show.

I wrote a long time ago that my ultimate fear is being forgotten after I’m gone, leaving no impact on the world with my time here. Now I have a chance to truly put that fear to rest, as I believe the things we are accomplishing here at LAMN, Inc. are capable of making a significant positive impact on the world. Getting on Ellen would catapult us to new levels, and give us an unbelievable opportunity to affect the lives of millions of people.

All I’m asking is that you take some time to rally your friends to take part in this Operation. Please “Attend” this Facebook event to signify that you are committing to recruit as many tweeters/facebookers for April 11th as you can. Then share it on your wall so that your friends can read this and do the same thing

Together, we can pull this off, and I will be forever grateful.

I first learned of Shane Burcaw and his blog from Monica Madeja when we got to talking after one of my weekly appearances on PA Live! His blog may have been the first blog that we posted on NEPA Blogs that was in fact completely outside of Northeastern Pennsylvania - we stretched the definition to allow the Lehigh Valley. We featured him as the NEPA Blogs Blog of the Week just a few weeks later. Michelle and I actually got to meet him when we went to Allentown last year for the Allentown Morning Call's "Best Blogs of the Lehigh Valley" presentation ceremony. (He won his category!)

Help make this happen. Shane has been wanting to do this for a very long time. But he is operating with a time limit. He has recently noted that things he was capable of doing six months or a year ago are no longer possible. Please spread the word, and help him achieve his goal!

UPDATE, 4/11: This is the day, and Shane has posted these instructions:


Alright folks, the time is here! We have a few quick instructions to make sure that we're all doing this the same way and have the best chance possible of getting Ellen's attention (without annoying her TOO much in the process). It's pretty simple:

- PLEASE do NOT spam Ellen. We want to get her attention, not bludgeon her to death with tweets, so one tweet every few hours from each person should be MORE than enough
- No swearing, use your big person words
- Remember to reference Shane as @shaner528 and not just "Shane"

When constructing your tweets you will need to incorporate the following hashtag and link:

Hashtag: #MakeEllenLaugh
Link: http://s0.gd/7e

Sample Tweets

"Hey @TheEllenShow, have you laughed today? Put @shaner528 on your show and you will! http://s0.gd/7e #MakeEllenLaugh"

"@TheEllenShow if you want to have a good laugh, bring @shaner528 onto the show! http://s0.gd/7e #MakeEllenLaugh"

"Hey @TheEllenShow, while you're making others laugh, @shaner528 is after YOUR laughter. Laugh with him! http://s0.gd/7e #MakeEllenLaugh"


Finally, THANK YOU! In the end, we can't accomplish anything without the help of people like you, so from the bottom of our hearts thank you for helping us work to spread Shane's message of positivity to the world. Remember that we're going to stop bothering Ellen at 11pm US Eastern Time, and HAVE FUN!

Is the sequester a good thing?

The economy sucks, and it has been sucking for many years.

You can take it back as far as you want: say that the Clinton era of explosive growth an "irrational exuberance" was actually a bubble that began to collapse even before a victor was declared in the 2000 election. That George W. Bush's policy of getting rid of the surplus he had been burdened with by his predecessor put us on the path to collapse. Or that the September 11, 2001 attacks were a brilliant bit of asymmetric warfare which, for a very small investment of money and lives,* allowed a terrorist organization to provoke a series of predictable responses that resulted in global economic losses in the trillions of dollars.

For me it personally started to suck back in early 2007 when, after a series of contractions that had taken place over the course of years, I was finally squeezed right out of my lucrative position in the DVD industry. I spent the next six months searching for a job that paid anything close to what I had been making, until my old company finally contacted me and offered to take me back - as a production worker, making a little less than 2/3 of what I had been earning before. (Through the magic of overtime and at considerable personal expense I was able to bring in a decent paycheck from time to time.) That position lasted another three years - three years during which I kept my eyes peeled for anything better - until it went away in December 2010. In 2011 I was brought back again as a temporary employee (by a recently-hired personnel manager who would lose his own job just a few weeks after I met him), a job which lasted intermittently until in April of 2012 I finally accepted a full-time position in an entirely different industry - now making 40% of what I had been earning in 2007.

A few years ago a friend who works for the federal government in a place that could be discreetly described as "just outside the beltway" told me of a conversation she had come across between two fellow employees who were blithely discussing the prospects for the nation now that the recession was over** and the economy was improving. She pointed out to them that in places like Northeastern Pennsylvania the recession had not ended, that unemployment and the local economy were bad and were getting worse. And they looked at her like she was an idiot. Well, obviously they weren't concerning themselves with the peons in the sticks. For the people that counted, the recession was over, and things were looking great. The economy had winners and losers, and it's better to be a winner than a loser. You can't worry about the losers, baby.

Articles in magazines from around Washington, D.C. bore out this attitude. Employment in the region was great. Real estate sales and rental rates were as strong as ever, and prices were as high as ever. New restaurants and bars were opening all the time to separate federal employees, lobbyists, and the associated camp followers from their money. For those whose lives and jobs were entirely within the beltway bubble, the recession was over, and a new era of prosperity was at hand.

So has the sequester brought the hard times to Washington, D.C.? Maybe a little. I haven't heard much complaining from the privileged set down there, and I expect that they are as insulated from the sequester as they were from the other negative effects of the recession. It's not like any members of Congress or their staffs have been affected, and so it's likely that the bars and restaurants that they frequent are doing as well as ever. The pain is being felt by the lower-level employees of the federal government, but the professional bureaucracy is still doing just fine, thank you.

A few weeks ago a staunch opponent to gay marriage, Senator Robert Portman of Ohio, changed his position after discovering his son was gay. This news was given a generally cynical reception, as it was widely assumed that Portman only changed his mind because now he had a personal stake in the matter.*** But Portman's conversion suggests that perhaps the way to make members of Congress take a genuine interest in an issue is to bring the issue home to them. Since having their constituents suffer the effects of the continued economic downturn is clearly not enough to make them care about getting the economy back on track, perhaps having members of their own families lose their jobs, homes, and incomes will make the plight of the rest of the nation real for them?

Of course, if that happens, they will always be able to retreat to the insular bubble of Washington, D.C. to continue to focus on the winners, and continue to ignore the losers.


*That is to say, the nineteen terrorists who died on the planes that day.

**Technically, the recession ended several years ago. But as any economist who has the faintest idea what they're talking about knows, the effects are stll reverberating through the economy.

***Arizona Representative Matt Salmon has maintained his opposition to gay marriage despite having an openly gay son, suggesting a sort of integrity, or at least consistency.

Nominate NEPA Blogs as Best Local Blog!

This is by way of Michelle, my co-administrator at NEPA Blogs. The local weekly The Weekender is taking nominations for its annual "Best Of..." lists. In the past we've missed out on the nomination process, but this time Michelle caught it in time.

From her post:

We Want to Win!

The Weekender is holding their annual "Weekender Readers' Choice" nomination and awards.  We'd really love it if you'd take a moment to nominate NEPA Blogs for the honor of Best Local Blog.  The link to vote is located here:  http://www.theweekender.com/readerschoice/weekender-readers-choice-2013.

You must vote for at least 25 categories and only once to be counted.  You have until Tuesday, April 12th to cast your ballot.

We completely missed the nomination process last year while focusing on other things (mainly Spring BlogFest).  We want to win the whole kit caboodle this year, baybee!  

Please share with anyone who is casting a ballot.  A vote for us can help them make their quota of 25 entries!

If you live in NEPA, we'd love to have you nominate NEPA Blogs as best local blog! We do our darnedest to publicize blogs and blogging throughout Northeastern PA, and it's nice to get some recognition in return!

CAPTCHA off, then back on

I haven't been blogging here as much as I would like to be, or probably should be, but I am keeping up with other people's blogs. One of the blogs I read daily is "The REAL Blogger Status," written by a Blogger insider but full of helpful information and occasionally biting criticism regarding the Blogger platform.

A post yesterday advised blog authors to be cognizant of what they are putting potential commentors through when they are forced to solve CAPTCHAs, those annoying and occasionally unsolvable distorted word puzzles that can be set as a pre-requisite for anyone looking to leave a comment. CAPTCHAs, while viewed by some as a minor inconvenience and necessary evil to screen out robotically-posted spam comments, can also dramatically reduce the number of illegitimate comments being left on a blog. If you use moderation, the post suggests, it may be unnecessary to also use a CAPTCHA.

I use moderation, and have ever since a flood of racist and harassing comments were posted during the election of 2008. These comments were coming in during the day, when I was at work and unable to do anything about them for several hours; for those hours they were as much a part of my blog as anything I had written. After reading yesterday's post, I thought maybe it was time to back away from the CAPTCHA and loosen things up a little. Last night I turned that setting off to see what would happen.

About fifteen hours later I had fourteen new comments in moderation. Every one of them was spam.

Spam comments aren't merely annoying. A lot of blogs permit you to flag your comment to receive an email whenever someone comments after it. This is apparently part of the strategy for spam comments: the spammer also requests these follow-up emails so they can harvest email addresses - and possibly blog addresses - from anyone else who comments. This is explained in today's post on The REAL Blogger Status.

So: CAPTCHA back on. My apologies for the minor inconvenience.

How to dry out wet books

I woke Saturday morning to a sound thundering through the house: the sound of water flowing through the pipes at full blast. I stepped out of bed and directly into half an inch of water.

We've had basement flooding over the years, but the water has never accumulated to the point that it was Saturday morning, not since I had begun reacting to incoming flooding with active pumping. I ran into the downstairs bathroom and realized that the water was coming from there - but where? There was water dripping from the ceiling, but the leak didn't seem to be from above. I quickly discovered that the water inlet hose to the toilet was detached and blasting water full-force all over the place.  It took just a few seconds to shut off the valve, but immediately the problem of what to do with the water needed to be dealt with. Fortunately I always know where the pumps are, and set them up immediately to begin pumping the standing water down the nearest drains. I threw towels on the floor to begin absorbing the water that wasn't getting pumped. Then I stepped back to assess the damage.

I have always said that you could get a pretty decent education from the books in my bathroom. Dozens of books, magazines, comic books, plus numerous catalogs, mailings, and other assorted things that probably should have been thrown away long ago.

Many of them were now soaking wet.

When the hose detached - disassembled, really; the threaded fitting that holds the hose captive and directs it into the tank broke apart - the water sprayed everywhere, including onto the ceiling, and onto the rack that held my books and magazines. As soon as the immediate issues had been dealt with I began to sort through the books. Those that were completely dry - and there were many of these - were put into a Rubbermaid tote to be dealt with later. Those that were wet and worth salvaging - all the books and comic books and some of the magazines - were piled up to be dealt with quickly. Those that could be discarded, old magazines with no historical value, were bagged for recycling.

I got some drying racks and spread as many of the magazines and comic books as could fit over them, taking them down as they dried and replacing them with others. I grabbed the soaked books - a paperback of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (one of my least favorite recent reads) and an Irish-bought hardcover compendium of the complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, among others, and...did something that probably damaged them worse than they already were. Something I would not have done if I had followed these links first:

University of Delaware Library - How to Dry a Wet Book


How to Salvage Wet Books - University of Michigan

How to Dry a Wet Book | eHow.com

How To - How to Dry Wet Books in 7 Steps

How to Repair a Wet Book: 9 steps - wikiHow

There are other useful links out there, but they all have the same basic instructions, mostly. Essentially, what I should have done is stand the books upright on an absorbent base with absorbent papers tucked in the front and back covers and let gravity do the work. I'm hoping it's not too late to do that.

A side note: A lot of the water was absorbed by crap that I should have thrown away long ago. If I had, if it hadn't been there, then a lot more good books and magazines would have been damaged. As it is, I can just take my waterlogged seed catalogs from three years ago and Quality Paperback Book Club mailings from last year and toss them out.