November 2009 « Vichy Water

July 16, 2011

Paul McCartney. Curt Flood. Television: My ‘Curb’ of Un-enthusiasm and My First and only ‘Dear John’ Letter. Living to 150 years and beyond. July 17, 2011

Filed under: November 2009 — Tags: ewing, j.r., southside, wallpaper — earthood @ 9:38 pm

A bumpy anticipated night; cerebral road forks and subways of my mind; maybe this blog will make sense. I said last night at Grand Central Station, “I love the smell of New York subways, deep in the underbelly of the city; a musty aroma after a warm mid summer night’s dream.”

pix of midtown mime on way to McCartney concert at Yankee Stadium

pix of son and me. asking ourselves, are we really going to see McCartney. Answer is YES

If they made cologne encapsulating that smell, I’d buy. Kramer on Seinfeld wanted to bottle the smell of ‘beach;’ same idea. The headlights of an approaching train and I thought Harry Potter was about to scoot me away. J.K. Rowling wrote early ‘Harry Potter’ on the back of fast food napkins, so the legend grows. Yesterday was a mid summer night’s dream; went with wife, son and special sister-in-law to see Paul McCartney at Yankee Stadium.

How can I express the feeling of being there, filling all my senses, (yes even ‘Up in Smoke’ olfactory) marveling at this nearly 70 year old wondrous icon singing for nearly three hours without even a plastic bottle of water to the lips. ‘All My Loving’ of the man, his music, my youthful complacency never having seen the Beatles or Paul live or having gone to Woodstock. I languished in my discontented youth without purposeful direction. Why do I love my youthful complacency; because it taught me all the right moves for living now.

setting up concert stage

McCarney on stage. First song.

Paul’s music was a cyclonic explosion of a myriad of memories. Day tripping all over planet Tralfamadore; I was at a college frat party with a first girlfriend (a senior in high school), holding her hand, or ‘She Loves You’ while I was in the dorm preparing a cheat sheet for Botany or wondering about becoming a ‘Paperback Writer.’ I really did become a writer. Yankee Stadium rocked full. ‘Give Peace a Chance’ cerebrally echoed heading back to the subway; a fight broke-out nearby, while exiting because a guy accidentally bumped another guy’s wife. Ten thousand in that stadium hallway; somebody was getting bumped. I yelled-out the song’s name but it didn’t curb hostility and there wasn’t enough room to shrug my shoulders.

concert pyrotechnics.

Two nights ago I watched an HBO documentary on the life of baseball great Curt Flood. I should mention to you all that a long time ago in a galaxy far away, I watched my share of network television until CBS messed around with the show ‘Dallas.’ Being hooked on the show, wanting to be just like JR, I even bought a cowboy hat and strolled sidewalks of Jersey, proudly and ducking under most doorways because of my prohibitive 6′ 6″ height without the hat.

jr ewing in my hat

The next ‘Dallas’ season had a strange story line followed by the following season telling viewers, that the previous year was just a dream. I’d call that a mind-rape, abuse and a waste of time. For me that was the dramatic, happy ending of all network television forever. No corporate executive sitting on a soft sofa is going to waste my time ever again on insipid programming. So I took to a life of news, biography, science, talk, college sports and documentaries and of course old movies.

Curt Flood

Back to Curt Flood; once again I clench my fists of frustration that growing up, I did not pay enough attention to him and what he was valiantly fighting for. On January 16, 1970, Curt Flood shocked America and baseball by filing suit against Major League Baseball and its reserve clause. Baseball had faced legal challenges in the past, but never had a player of Flood’s caliber/class attempt to attack the game’s sacred reserve clause which effectively bound a player with contract to a team for life. The St. Louis Cardinals outfielder had three All-Star appearances, seven Gold Gloves, and a pair of World Series championships while he earned $100,000 a year, yet accused baseball of violating the 13th amendment, barring slavery and involuntary servitude. Most of the public and media initially reacted to Flood’s action in utter disbelief, branding the outfielder an ingrate, a destroyer, even a blasphemer. He gave his life and the rest of a high paid career to his principles. Only near the end of that precious life, did he get standing ovations by peers for his courage and what he accomplished(game changed and free agency) which he so needed; sometimes he cried at ovations. So I add Curt Flood to an ever growing list from my youth, of people I should’ve known. A lesson for millenials (mid-youth): Don’t let life pass you by. But it usually does. Sure, too bad youth is wasted on the young.

Back to television; I forgot, sometimes there are miscellaneous shows I’ll watch but mostly cable because bad words can be used. Bad words are life blood in the sharpened race, tinged with playground reality and fireside chat with speakers on. So I watch ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ occasionally. Of course no show is going to own me anymore.

On the recent season premier of ‘Curb’ there was a segment when a young girl gets her period for the first time in Larry David’s foyer. He ran upstairs for his soon to be ex-wife’s box of tampons and tries to instruct the girl through the closed door how to use it. He didn’t do well because what guy really knows. Why do I bring this up? Borrowing a Phillip Roth, ‘Goodbye Columbus’ story line; back in college in 1968, I had a rich doctor’s daughter girlfriend. Her parents liked me and lavished trappings of the good life on the poor son of an old fashioned shoe-salesman. Girlfriend and her mother were obsessively close. When her family took a month long cruise to the Greek Islands, they left Calvin with the family Lincoln Continental to use; it promptly died a mile from the ship terminal; a harbinger of things yet to be perhaps. When the family returned, doctor and wife sat me down, since I pinned their daughter by a romantic lake at the Jersey shore, and informed me that they will only let their daughter marry a doctor. I was two years away from being a pharmacist and was not changing careers. Seems like a forerunner of the Kyoto Protocol (curbing greenhouse gases); nobody budged. But I was smart enough to realize long term relationships do need a modicum of sexual compatibility and since we were both virgins, we’d have to address the issue.

By the fall, she was practice teaching near Niagara Falls and we planned the most clandestine secret assignation. I’d come to visit, no parents would ever know, we’d consummate in a cheap motel. I’d become a man and decide whether med school was in the wicked witch of the north’s crystal ball. Twenty minutes before leaving, her mother called and asked me to bring some sweaters; it was getting cool up there. I was devastated and still am; trust was all gone; my own bed and breakfast room waited that her mother booked for me. Alas, we got a motel room and we were just about ready for the deed, when she went to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, a sheepish voice came through the door, “I got my period. Do you know how to use tampons?” I still don’t. Another ten minutes, she emerged wearing no less than seven pair of underpants. On the long lonely winding drive back to Jersey, I heard ‘The Beatles’ sing “Hey Jude” for the first time and heard Paul sing it last night and goose-bumped.

“Hey Jude, don’t make it bad
take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better

Hey Jude, don’t be afraid
You were made to go out and get her
The minute you let her under your skin
Then you begin to make it better”

I knew what had to be done. I didn’t agree with all the lyrics but the melody killed. Truth told, I never forgot; maybe if I had the impetus, I’d lie down and talk to someone to see if I was scarred. Here’s what I wrote her:

8-25-68

“It seems I could only look back-look back on past yet recent memories. How ecstatic and carefree I feel now. It’s strange but now I see little children laughing and dancing gaily around and around a MAYpole-but so slowly they danced as if in slow motion. The sun was so very bright that I had to squint. Oh, but they are gone now.

Then I saw a great vast body of water-an ocean with its towering waves thrashing the sandy desolate beaches. The water was such a clear dark blue-its perfect union with the sky at the distant horizon was only upset when little ships sailed on by. But suddenly the sun vanished behind a great surge of dark gray ominous clouds; a storm came but then it passed.

Finally I saw a little girl with bright green eyes. She was running, dancing, and singing. She was so happy. Far away from the little girl, I also saw a little boy with searching brown eyes. He was running, jumping and climbing and he was so happy too. Then the two children were ushered home where they ate a nourishing and carefully planned meal. They had such a good time again after being dismissed from lunch. Later they prepared for sleep and dreamt of promising and pleasant things.

The children are running now and TIME is running so fast as if to overtake them. One day they bumped into one another while they were still running. The boy picked the girl up, looked deeply and apprehensively then affectionately into the pools of her green eyes and held her hand tightly for only a brief moment. She ran off again and so did he. This time they were running away from one another, on a straight, rigid, freshly paved road. Their backs were turned and they didn’t see each other crying. As long as the road remains straight, they won’t hurt each other again for they can’t bump into one another.

Maybe they will stop crying. Maybe they will get tired of running.

Oh, but it is so foggy now. It might snow or did they buy pop-corn or a box of candy. They will both be late for lunch; that would be terrible.”

Cal

I never saw or heard from her again after my Dear John letter. ‘Hey Jude’ helped change me. Life is full circle. Last night more ‘Hey Jude’. A few months ago, Facebook helped me find her. So I saw her again that night and then I went into the kitchen, hugged my wife and thanked her for being part of my synchronistic life.

As you know reading my blogs, I’ve been concerned with living to 150 years old; kind of a quest, Jason and the Argonauts and tinged with enough reality and caring that I am now joining an organization that is advocacy and research for unlimited life, which is becoming more plausible with every Moore’s Law year, as human knowledge doubles. For a recent newborn I told the parents, their child will more than likely live to 150 but with quality and extended time on tennis courts.

Part of the tools to help us all get there is spreading the word that this is a realistic goal. “Knowledge is Good.” From, ‘Animal House.’ Lions and Tigers. Oh my.

Here’s a link to the website; start exploring, expanding, digesting and growing younger and going to rock concerts and lengthening your telomeres. There is something in the hills.

http://www.imminst.org/

An easy way to sign off on today’s “Beatles” oriented blog; share a few words from ‘Imagine.’

“Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world”

John Lennon

Imagine ‘them’ just quietly solving the debt ceiling and doing the right thing for the economy and good and welfare of all upright standing beings.

CONTAC T INFORMATION

website: http://vichywater.net

Facebook: Cal Schwartz

Twitter: Earthood

Email: earthood@gmail.com

LINKS:

link to magical Jersey shore. Also check out the ‘Jersey Shore Icon Contest.

http://www.visitthejerseyshore.com/

and for special deals on Jersey shore rentals: (it’s never too late)

http://shorevacations.wordpress.com/

Vichy Water Book Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj2ko9gcC_M

Comments (1)

July 12, 2011

Fat is Cannabis Addictive? Synchronistic Headache. More Asbury Park and Jersey Shore Jetty (habit or hobbit?) Bashful. Sedona. Playing Chicken with a Newark Bus. July 12, 2011

Filed under: November 2009 — Tags: johnny, lyrics, salt, southside, wallpaper — earthood @ 1:42 pm

At 3:08 AM, Monday I finished watching ESPN’s replay coverage of USA Women’s Soccer(World Cup) vs Brazil. I knew the outcome but a high school buddy told me at a Sunday night oldies concert and fireworks display, that it was a must see. This great band, ‘Bronx Wanderers’ was doing a ‘Jersey Boys’ medley; we got up to dance with no shame, perhaps because we were among the youngest of the lawn chair seated audience. When we gyrated close to each other, he yelled into my congested ear, that I should see the soccer match replay.

you tube game tying goal. a must see

Abby Wambach after scoring game tying goal

When Abby Wambach headed that shot in, it was the same rush of excited disbelief as when Boston’s Bill Buckner let the ball roll through his legs during Game 6 of the 1986 World Series or when Al Michaels, with eleven seconds left in the 1980 Olympic Hockey game, USA vs Russia, proclaimed, “Do you believe in miracles?” Good stuff on a strange weekend. Saturday morning, I drifted out of body. If I explained in any depth now, I’d worry about losing readership. Maybe it’s like Sam Harris’s analogy about the hair dryer. Someone talks/prays to God through a hair dryer as if a microphone; it’s enough for a one-way trip to a ward at Bellevue. The same person prays out loud without the hairdryer and all is perfect mainstream acceptable.

Saturday night my wife and I were back in Asbury Park for dinner, a board walk, music, and a diet ice cream kiosk in Long Branch. Strange ice cream. Not many calories. You keep eating endlessly; it’s cold, sort of sweet but your tongue taste buds are not satisfied. Something is missing. I knew there was a paucity of fat; the stuff tastes good and is actually addicting. Really is.

addictive fat french fries

Fats in foods like potato chips and French fries make them nearly irresistible because they trigger natural marijuana-like chemicals in the body called, endocannabinoids, researchers at the University of California, Irvine have found. So dig this (my son probably thinks I sound like a dreaded hipster now). The researchers discovered that when rats tasted something fatty, cells in their upper gut started producing endocannabinoids, while sugars and proteins did not have this effect. McDonalds (Big Mac people) must’ve known about this compound for a long time. The adventure starts on the tongue, where fats in food generate a signal that travels to your brain first and then to your intestines. There, the signal stimulates the production of endocannabinoids, which initiates a surge in cellular signaling that prompts you to totally pig out — probably by initiating the release of digestive chemicals linked to hunger and not being full that compel us to eat more. And that leads to obesity, diabetes and cancer. Last weeks blog, I mentioned that 347 million people world-wide have diabetes now and more on the way. Funny thing; I don’t care anymore about legalizing marijuana. It’s not personal Sonny. Actually it is.

saturday night asbury park boardwalk

Back to a strange weekend: I finished a 1/2 cup of chocolate pudding flavored soft ice cream and was not satiated, so I threw the rest away. I want fat in my ice cream. Then (11 PM) something possessed me to drive around the block to an old account’s optical store in a small strip mall. For 25 years, I sold them eye glasses. The store was gone, replaced by a shiny white tiled, neon bright pizza place. Sure, it’s been three years since I saw them, but I was devastated; where and why have they gone. Later that night, Google told me they moved and I was relieved. Nobody likes change.

Back in the days of the wild-west and Grafton’s Merchantile Sundries and Saloon (a hangout in the movie ‘Shane;’ a western but one of the best movies ever and I can’t get my son to watch it. ‘Animal House,’ sure, 100 times) I once took a four day course in how to deal with ‘change.’ The following morning, my wife and I were back in our refurbished Conestoga wagon, on our way to a beach at the Jersey shore, up the road a spell from Asbury Park. After the wood bench, that I directed our team of horses from, gave me a splinter through my chaps, we hitched up and made it to the beach, depositing a $14.00 beach fee with a cigar-smoking rugged sheriff type character. Two hours of Ipod music later, I was on my jetty for a meditative session.

my mindful jetty sunday. no clouds on the horizon either.

It was a perfect ten day; blue sky, vitamin D absorption, heat, and gentle ocean. (I decided not to wear a bathing suit). I walked along the ocean, dodging cockles, empty mussel shells (some muscles too) and balls (beach). The walk took me south past places of beach privatization; just before that, the world went dark then nova bright. Thousands of people were huddled underneath umbrellas and sprawled on blankets and light weight chairs when suddenly, I saw the couple whose store I looked for the night before, strolling on the beach. My life is haunted with strange synchronicity; we hugged and reminisced. I recanted the night before. I had a new Facebook friend and more importantly, a curious buzzing headache which lasted all day.

idyllic beach unbrella scene

My mind was firing which is what I’m going to do in this blog; to give substance why I feel like I’m seeing and writing through a hair dryer. Please don’t tell on me. I hate second floor rooms with faded wall paper. Now I dislike Rupert Murdoch just as much. Can any of us imagine what he had his British tabloid do to violate human privacy and decency; for one, to hack the phone of a dead thirteen year old girl. This scandal will grow like a metastasis. I’m not surprised. Some companies do kill; their products and policies kill. Actuaries advise how to keep killing to make money like delaying a recall of dangerous products(cars, RX drugs). Humans are the cheapest renewable resource.

When was the last time someone called me bashful? Maybe it was Aunt Lillian. She was always comparing me to her son; arch rivals in a changing world and he looked like a young Lex Luthor. A small plane is flying overhead, pulling a banner, advertising ‘Reidel,’ a wine glass company. Is there such a demand? A man with a biceps tattoo, a few feet away on a blanket, lit a cigarette and gave one to his underage daughter (with a tattoo on her stomach). Cardiac cockles warmed to see true American family togetherness. I saw a commercial where just one lung cell, damaged from smoking, can start the cancer ball rolling. A phone call came from a Russian nurse (who looked like a blonde tennis player), watching my Uncle Joe (nearly four years ago). He had just passed and I needed to get there and sign papers. I knew Joe for sixty years and the image I’m stuck with was his diapered fetal position and cool skin to a parting touch.

The Da Nang River. and I do hear "A Whiter Shade of Pale"

I know where mental firing comes from. A funny silly comedy movie with surprising nudity was ‘Blame It On Rio,’ starring favorites Joe Bologna and Michael Caine. I blame my hair dryer mind on ‘Sedona, Arizona,’ not Rio. Twelve times over the years, I’ve been in Sedona; my first time, around seventeen years ago, with the family, driving up from Scottsdale, on a break from a national sales meeting. After two hours of driving, red mountains jumped out of nowhere and the world went breath silent. A red pile of dirt on the road side just past the Sedona 4500 feet elevation sign caused my rented white Cadillac to stop. In that pile of dirt, I rubbed red soil all over my tan arms. If there was magic in them hills, I wanted some. I got what I wanted (for life); permanent affectation. The best thing about being twelve and working for Meyer Kravitz, the grocer, was washing out the empty cole slaw tray. Small fingers picked out soggy cabbage remnants from opaque rivulets of watery mayonnaise and sugary vinegar. A loud EPA helicopter passed overhead. The earth moved. I saw the Da Nang River and heard ‘Whiter Shade of Pale;’ the power in those blades and in thinking under an umbrella. I don’t like sun on my body.

Walking up Columbus Avenue in Manhattan, past a Paris like side-walk cafe, I thought I saw Ann Coulter and Rachel Maddow having dinner together, wearing sunglasses but I still knew them. A side effect to Sedona intoxication is déjà-vu and hair dryer moments, perhaps too frequent. Wallpaper and flowers do sooth a soul. A man with a heavy southern accent phoned, offering to impregnate a young stabled girl for a fee. One day I woke up and knew I’d spend a Christmas Eve in Montana but in a snow storm. An hour went by and I stood motionless near the summit of a red vortex mountain off of Sedona’s Airport Road.

on a sedona mountain vortex. the sun was on my face.

Later my son and I took a Pink Jeep tour and when we got back to our car and did ignition, the clock read 4:44. I can’t forget that. Stephen Hawking said recently there is no spirit or God. And this morning, I read that preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease your back and joint pain for up to 80% of sufferers. I’m going to finish my novel one day disputing, refuting Mr. Hawking; maybe before that, physically levitating myself. A large obese teen, a few blankets over, un-wrapped a sub sandwich; long and soggy, it almost gave way from the middle. He caught it in time, spoiling my amusement. Minutes later, it all disappeared into a distended intestine. One Sedona trip, I drove passed Oak Creek Canyon and saw Native Americans on a mountain top, selling jewelry and silver artifacts. I stared at faces of endurance, warmth and compassion more than I did at what they sold. Native music of Incan Pan Pipes and Native American Flute has been part of me a long time.(Coyote Oldman’s ‘Tear of the Moon’) Why the attraction, I wonder. It’s a pulling and an inexplicable need to be there. A few months ago, my friend Ruth, a psychic, told me I was a Native American and I happily accepted.

Chief Seattle

video. you tube Tear of the Moon excerpt

father and son. belmar. truman president. jetty in background

On my refrigerator is a picture of my father and me (I was four) on the beach just a few miles away from my multi-colored umbrella. He was hugging me. In a shadow of my mind, I called the picture, ‘The Last Hug;’ it was black and white, obviously, just like the movie ‘The Last Picture Show.’ When I need oblivion fix and to feel desolate abandon, like sagebrush blowing down the main street, I watch that movie. It took me a long time to visit Texas. Last summer I visited my Uncle Joe’s best friend, cousin Stuart in Dallas.

What would I say to an old college girlfriend Ronnie, after nearly forty-two years, if I found her? Facebook helped me find her sister but she wasn’t her sister’s Facebook friend and she smoked a lot of ‘Newport’ cigarettes. A party fishing boat was chugging by just off shore. When I turned thirteen, my mother gave permission for me to spend the day with Uncle Herman (he wasn’t a real uncle) on a fishing boat. She warned me about sea sickness and my inexperienced legs (whatever that was). An hour into the sail, I realized how wise mother was. How can you throw-up for two straight hours? Can I be such a naive independent voter? President Clinton left office with a huge budget surplus. Eight Bush years later we were buried in debt. Politics is paradox, paradigm and parasailing off a Caribbean island when the tether breaks and you drift to Cuba. Would they believe me?

Einstein said the world was a dangerous place to live not because of people who are evil but because people don’t do anything about it. When I’m near this ocean in summer, I think about the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. Why didn’t I go? I was old enough (18). Dr. Prinz from Newark gave a speech just before Dr. King and said the most tragic thing about mankind is silence.

Pix to the right: Civil Rights Leaders before March on Washington August 28, 1963 with President Kennedy.

Summer of 1966, I was in Jersey City studying German on the second floor of a building off Journal Square rented by Rutgers; best college grades ever; straight A’s and I can’t remember what happened to that paisley shirt I wore all the time. My professor asked me if I wanted to study in Germany next semester. Politely, I declined. Another airplane was flying overhead pulling a banner. Bob Dylan is soon coming back to Asbury Park. Two years ago my son and I made it through the fifth song. Coca-Cola’s goal is for all bottles to be ‘PlantBottles’ by 2020. Bottles that I see now in the sand will still be here in six hundred years.

Chapel of the Holy Cross, Sedona

A small parking lot was filled as I walked up to the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona. Looking out at Cathedral Rock and Bell Rock through the window of my mind was wondrously ethereal. What a place to get married. Somewhere I heard that Senator Barry Goldwater helped get the chapel built. And I owe the Senator something. During his Presidential campaign, a bunch of us New Yorkers (implied easterners) didn’t let him get a quiet word in during his campaign speech in the Field House. Time Magazine said his Toledo appearance may’ve been the most disruptive of the campaign. Kids were worried if he got his hands on a bomb as Vietnam was becoming a war. A composite picture of some of those kids is right in front of me. The Republican administration of the college changed admitting policies the following year so no more New Yorkers. Warm diet peach tea quenched my dry mouth. Sun is setting. Tractors were beginning rounds to wipe out foot prints in the sand; time to pack up your sorrows. My head was still spinning with synchronistic thoughts and fragmentary ideas of birthing this blog. I think the most important thing I wanted to remember was the last time somebody said I was bashful. And I did. And I keep hoping that I captured and conveyed. Maybe somebody can piece things together. The name of the fishing boat I was on when I got sick was the ‘Marie S.’ My umbrella didn’t help; arms and face all red (a women’s lawyer?). What an expression; “I’d die of embarrassment.” Maybe I would, if Ronnie found this blog. I wonder what’s going to happen to the debt ceiling on August 2, 2011. Once I pedaled my bike towards a Newark bus, but chickened out a half block away.

The Newark bus I almost played chicken with

CONTACT INFORMATION

website: http://vichywater.net

Facebook: Cal Schwartz

Twitter: Earthood

Email: earthood@gmail.com

Vichy Water, a novel. Book Trailer link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj2ko9gcC_M

LINKS:

link to magical Jersey shore. Also check out the ‘Jersey Shore Icon Contest.

’http://www.visitthejerseyshore.com/

and for special deals on Jersey shore rentals: (it’s never too late)

http://shorevacations.wordpress.com/

Comments (4)

July 6, 2011

Fourth of July. Asbury Park, NJ: Forever Young, ‘The Stone Pony’, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.’ Diabetes. Exercise. More Absurdities. July 6, 2011

Filed under: November 2009 — Tags: general, george, johnny, southside, washington — earthood @ 12:07 am

: General George Washington

Somebody told me the other day that General George Washington ‘celebrated’ the first Fourth of July in 1778 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, just up the road from me, by directing his army to put “green boughs” in their hats, issuing them a double allowance of rum and ordering a Fourth of July artillery salute. When I was growing up in the fifties in Newark, New Jersey, my father used to take us to visit my grandmother in Plainfield, twenty miles south.

The Plainfield NJ Revolutionary War farm house

A thousand feet from my grandmother’s kitchen, where sumptuous fresh potato salad always waited, was an old Revolutionary War era farm house; General Washington was rumored to have slept there for one night. At the rear, adjacent to a vacant lot overrun by wild perhaps poisonous weeds, was supposedly an obscured entrance to a cave beneath the house.(built to help General Washington escape or hideout) Unfortunately for me, local urchins convinced me it was haunted; enough of a deterrent to last for decades. My loss; I can’t imagine all the rich history that waited in that dark dank cave. Years later, the farm house was restored but never found its just national historical place. Up until ten years ago I used to drive by my grandmother’s house, adjacent to an active railroad trestle, and I’d just sit in the car and stare down memories of 24/7 potato salad and a brave neat loving woman from the old country.

It was July third, ten years ago and I was heading home through Plainfield, but the house was gone; nothing was left except a patch of tired brown grass. I’ve never been back to Plainfield, angry that they took away my memories on the day before July fourth. A few July third’s before that, I was rushed to the hospital for jaw surgery; a few weeks prior, I was playing night tennis in Baltimore after having spent the day at the Vietnam War Memorial. After a lethal drop shot, barely clearing the net, my knees gave out valiantly and the energy of my body falling, concentrated on my chin, breaking both mandibles. A few weeks elapsed before correct diagnosis and hospital surgery in an attempt to redirect the healing process of my mandibles. This means, I was wired shut for two months. No talking, no tuna fish (solid food), no communication except grunting and signage to my ‘Clara Barton’ wife. Alas, somehow it was the best two communicative months of our marriage (up to then). Despite these two somewhat negative personal launches into our country’s birthday, July Fourth is pure patriotic magic for me.

My last few blogs I’ve been talking about Asbury Park, New Jersey, a real Jersey shore town that has undergone a renaissance from the blight of the sixties to become a place of youthful exuberance and musical expression; truly a place where the music lives. Last few weeks, I’ve been there regularly; perhaps a delayed reaction to not having gone to ‘Woodstock’ in 1969.

Woodstock 1969 (at Max Yasgurs Farm)

My hair was short for 1969 standards. I was out the door, running to a waiting car heading to Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, New York for three days of fun, peace and rock music. A door handle within reach, suddenly my fiancé calls out from our co-inhabited apartment, warning me that if I go to ‘Woodstock,’ she wouldn’t be there when I got back. So I went back and spent three more years with her and regretted every August not having been at that festival of a lifetime. (I could’ve also saved three years. Maybe) Much input swirls around my streams of consciousness; awareness of youth gone by, recapturing youth, refusing to move on, which means not acting my age. But Virginia, you know what, I know there is a Santa Claus, and actually I am acting and thinking my age. If there’s substance to living to 150 years old, which I’ve been blogging and plotting; then I’m still a youngster by those chronological standards. Where am I going with this? Two weeks ago I was visiting my son in his new apartment in Brooklyn and we saw on- line that ‘Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes’ were doing a live concert at the legendary ‘The Stone Pony‘ in Asbury Park over the Fourth of July Weekend.

We looked at each other, smiled and knew we were going to that concert; a young father and son thing to do. I was going to the ‘Stone Pony‘ for my first time. Where have I been all these years, Joe DiMaggio? I’m a late bloomer; accepted and lived with. Rather than do a long history of ‘The Stone Pony‘ here’s a history link: http://www.stoneponyonline.com/info/history.html

Appropriate to spend part of July Fourth there; I think of George Washington, that old farm house in Plainfield, where he slept one night and ‘The Stone Pony’ a Jersey shore ‘house’ which is to world musical history as Washington is to our country’s history. Cirrus clouds told us perfect weather. A parking deck attendant told us it’s free tonight. A local bar served up a Cajun shrimp dish on a bed of warm spicy grits. “What’s a grit?” my son chimed in, perfectly imitating Joe Pesci in ‘My Cousin Vinny.’

Excitement grew; it was near 8pm and ‘Southside Johnny’ concert starting time. Walking towards the beach and ‘The Pony,’ it was great to be alive, knowing you’re young (because of the exercise, 40 supplements a day and mental determination and attitude) and you’re hanging with your best friend (son).

A few blocks down, on the right was a lively vacant lot; a group of people formed a drum circle and played, so we listened for a while, deeply inhaling Asbury’s musical salt ocean air. Then I looked across the street at the back of an old green house. A young teen was playing a guitar by the back steps next to two huge urban paintings. Indeed this was a revived Asbury Park, the place where music lives.

an Asbury teen, a guitar and urban art.

From a distance, we saw the towering edifice of the ‘The Stone Pony’ summer stage and our walking pace accelerated. Thousands of people were as close to the stage as they could get. For me, the thrill of being in a place of rock history, was like the first time waiting to see Santa Claus at ‘Bamberger’s in Newark. All too frequently, I looked around at demographics and realized I was among the oldest but really as young as anybody else gyrating to ‘Southside Johnny.’ Damn. I was there and loving every minute. My son and I were busy high-fiving. It was great to be young and alive.

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes on stage

Then I thought about my father who took us to Asbury Park on weekends to boardwalk concessions. When he was fifty, as I recollected, while listening to ‘Southside Johnny’ and occasionally being tapped on the shoulder, asking me to move slightly right or left (I’m nearly 6′ 6″), my father resigned himself to old artery hardening age, and spent the next forty years of his life waiting for it to end, sitting in a chair in front of a television. Curse remote control in later years; it kept him motionless in his chair. Two weeks before, I went whitewater rafting with my son. During the intermission, I went inside and checked out ambience of purist music history; yeah, I ‘goose-bumped.’

As the second set began, security cleared a path just in front of me as Steven Van Zandt (E Street band) and actor and raconteur Steve Schirripa walked by. Van Zandt jumped on stage for a bunch of songs with Southside Johnny. Pure magic all around, everywhere the eye could see. Pure lessons of life; to palpate and participate, to “be the ball” as ‘Ty Webb’ said in ‘Caddyshack.’ My son won a texting contest and back stage we met most of the band. I remember Winston Zeddemore in ‘Ghostbusters’ proclaiming, “I love this city.”(New York) I do too and Asbury Park, the magical ‘The Stone Pony’ and my generation of baby boomers who ‘refused’ then and now.

son and I at concert

'Winston Zeddemore' from 'Ghostbusters' my son's favorite

Earlier I talked about my potato salad producing grandmother, who suffered from diabetes. The number of diabetics worldwide has more than doubled the last 30 years, jumping to an estimated 347 million people. Part of the increase is due to rising obesity rates. I wonder about all our obese kids here in America who won’t figure into the stats yet; they’re too young. Treatments are not great for diabetes. I’ve been working hard to avoid it as all four of my grandparents had it; a smoking gun to my furrowed contemplative brow. Massive exercise, supplements, magnesium, mental attitude again, may be helping me stay far away. I like to say, I’m not in the mood for it. I’m thinking about the older generation again, now disappearing; the old picture albums of ten people sitting around a table with flowers, dressed in finery, a small container filled with complementary cigarettes; all long gone now; distant memories and foreboding awareness. Back when they had the temerity to put cigarettes and engraved matches on tables in the catering hall, if you had a heart attack, the doctors told you to rest up for a few months then take it easy for the rest of your life. Today, a revolutionary approach tells you a few days after said heart attack, to start working out on a treadmill or bike, massively. The heart is a muscle; it wants work, just like the nine million Americans unemployed. I wonder, being an independent voter, if the other party does everything they can to better our living standards or do they do everything they can to derail and unseat the sitting President, in that quest for power, sacrificing American citizen’s good and welfare? Sometimes I think it’s awfully obvious; a ‘Moonstruck’ slap to all our oblivious faces.

Back on the absurdities (of modern life) ranch, I just read about the death of a Harley- Davidson biker near Syracuse, New York. He was riding, protesting the law requiring wearing helmets for biking. If he had a helmet when he went flying over his handlebars, he would’ve lived.

worker trying to contain Exxon-Mobil oil spill on our Yellowstone River

I’m getting tired of hearing about Exxon-Mobil and accidents. Hundreds of barrels of crude oil spilled into Montana’s Yellowstone River after an ExxonMobil pipeline beneath the riverbed ruptured, sending a plume 25 miles downstream and forcing temporary evacuations. Facebook is valued at $100 billion (it’s just data and a members list). Delta Airlines is worth $ 8 billion and Groupon who refused to sell out last year to Google for $6 billion is at $25 billion now. And an eyeglass (letter Z) on-line company is advertising a complete frame and lens for $6.95. What does that say? And I love the Utah guy who paid a $25 disputed medical bill in pennies and was cited for disorderly conduct, a fine five times the bill.

Two days ago, July Fourth, I was on the beach at the Jersey shore, alternating time sitting in a beached chair under a beach umbrella listening to my ipod music, (folk, opera, rock, new age) with sitting on a nice rocky horror jetty, talking to this neat group of gregarious seagulls and finally walking ocean side for a few blocks to the other jetty of my mind. As my mind does often, it fires away. The other day, I watched the finals of men’s and women’s Wimbledon tennis.

(virginia wade who was the last Briton to win wimbledon singles championship in 1977) I watched that match.

Fifteen years ago, I sat in the grandstand court at the US Open for the first week, seven days in a row and watched for twelve hours a day. I knew the rankings and pairings by heart. Fifty years ago, I knew the batting averages and team standings of the whole National League. On the beach of my mind Monday, I realized I knew only a handful of current tennis players and haven’t watched any television baseball yet since the last few games of the World Series last October and I haven’t been to the US Open, other than the Finals, in those ten or fifteen years. But I was at ‘The Stone Pony’ on Saturday for a rock concert so maybe, on this second day after the Fourth of July, in a year of my youth and expanded vital lung capacity and cerebral sharpness, I might plan a trip to Wimbledon next year or the US Open later this summer or Yankee Stadium or get back soon to the ‘Pony’ after all, the converse may be true to “you’re not getting any younger.” But maybe I am, in my mind, going back to the Jersey shore and not Carolina. Happy Sixth of July.

a parting shot from a magical night and place.

Backstage at 'The Stone Pony' with Richie "La Bamba" trombonist and from Conan O'Brien

CONTACT INFO:

website: http://vichywater.net

email: earthood@gmail.com

Facebook: Cal Schwartz

Twitter: Earthood

BOOK TRAILER(Vichy Water): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj2ko9gcC_M

LINKS TO JERSEY SHORE TOURISM:

http://www.visitthejerseyshore.com/

check out Jersey Shore Icon contest.

LINKS TO JERSEY SHORE VACATION RENTALS:

http://shorevacations.wordpress.com/

Comments (2)

June 28, 2011

Whitewater Rafting. How Green Is My Valley, Mind, State (NJ)(an environmental topic). Modern Absurdities. Welcome to Asbury Park(NJ). June 28, 2011

Filed under: November 2009 — Tags: jackie, quotes, res, robinson — earthood @ 2:00 pm

Firstly WWI began and ended on this day.

For the second year in a row, answering the call to expand consciousness and earthly experiences, I went whitewater rafting Sunday with a group of Rutgers alumni, an ex-Marine and my son, although I wonder who put in that ‘call;’ after all, I’ve been mostly an avowed land-lubber and weekend non-adventurist, save for some doubles tennis or precarious, rocky jetty sitting. Why do I go down the rapids of a river swelled with copious run-offs from a week’s heavy thunderstorms? Well, it’s really recent life’s call to grow; the same call to environmental awareness, living to 150 years, finding past and future life, vortexes in Sedona, Arizona, meditation on Fifth Avenue, live music at Asbury Park’s Stone Pony, or absorbing contemporary Rutgers campus life.

on a cerebral mountain top in Sedona, Arizona

The setting for the expedition on Sunday was the Lehigh River, nestled in dense woods off of Route 80’s exit 273, in northeast Pennsylvania. No, it wasn’t the Colorado River or even the Moose River in upstate New York, known for its intense category 5 spring time rapids, but it was problematical enough for me to go out and buy a helmet with a distinct Germanic look, so I was told, when modeling it for my rafting comrades, just before a life vest fitting. Clouds made for cool temperatures and chilly water. Last year it was hot and sunny; immersion was refreshing. People rented wet suits, an ominous prophecy of discomfort. Minutes later: the quick flowing river, jumping into the raft, securing chin strap of helmet and a four hour journey.

our gang rafting on Sunday(yours truly in grey helmet)

We were seven undaunted spirits, urging each other to paddle forward, steer quickly right, no left, to avoid large unfriendly life-ending rocks, and to bail out the raft, rapidly filling. Confession: fears were quickly dispelled as a raft with six girls (aged around eight something) and an adult passed which reminded me of Kansas’s Dorothy Gale with Toto waving hello to a couple of bikers in the middle of a tornado dream.

Dorothy & Toto just before the tornado hit.

If they can do it; enough said. It was good to be alive, catching your breath after an enemy raft passed close enough to heave buckets of cold water at us. Retaliation is sweet and energizing. When the river slowed, I absorbed nature. Symphonies of silence, rushing water and falls, fallen decaying trees from lightning, abandoned railroad trestles, islands in the stream, plant life growing between boulder cracks, two ducks hanging nearby; mother nature’s artistry filling every ocular vista. Last week’s blog was filled with notions of living in a remote cabin in Montana, in the middle of nature, fending, surviving and mostly escaping; Sunday I experimented with required ruggedness and I liked it a lot.

On May 22, 1970, I celebrated the first Earth Day and ever since, have marched more towards awareness of the planet’s frailty and our culpability. Vince Lombardi once said, (why didn’t I pay more attention to his greatness and leadership techniques of ascension when he was here?), “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” I say, “The environment isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Suppose if you put the two together; we’ll figure it out; winning, Earth, species, survival; everything is the environment which is going to catch us one day long after my Montana cabin blows away in the wind and the white dove finally ceases flying and New York City is under water.

Vince Lombardi. Early on coached at St. Ceclia High in Englewood, NJ

A few years ago I got involved in the New Jersey Environmental Federation and started going to their annual conferences at Rutgers-Newark Law School. In late 1968 (memory lane time), a few of my fellow Rutgers Pharmacy school (also nearby in Newark) comrades discovered the joys of studying in the silence of the law library. I think I shall never see a quieter place to study than amidst volumes of justice and law students chasing paper. Medical school, nursing, engineering libraries all were noisier. Been there, done them all.) A few weeks before Super Bowl III, the comrades were studying; using legal mind-elevating chemicals and having a good noisy time when suddenly, a man looking like George Washington, with long white wig, told us, the British were coming and that we had to evacuate permanently. We were kicked out. When I learned the NJ Environmental Conference was held at the Law School, it became the ‘Return of the Invisible Man’ for me. The past years of conferences introduced me to many new comrades in the environmental theatre of operations. So many devoted, dedicated and inspiring people I’ve met. Among that ‘Readers Digest’ List are two stand-outs, Jeff and David, one representing Sierra Club, the other, the lobbyist for NJ Environmental Federation. The movement needs cohesiveness and unity. So I learned yesterday, the two long time friends, on and off the playing field, are not talking; each endorsed a different candidate for Governor. David’s endorsement of Governor Christie went bust.

Governor Christie. Rolling back environmental progress?

Christie is rolling back clean energy goals and loosening regulations in my New Jersey. That Montana cabin is looking good; so good I’ve taken to collecting returnable bottles on roadsides and emptied a huge pantry cookie jar to keep all the found coin savings; a ‘Montana or Bust’ venture deal. Jeff endorsed Chris Daggett, an environmentalist who had no chance to win. Last month Christie pulled New Jersey out of a regional program to curb air pollution that causes climate change. Bill Bendix said in ‘The Life of Riley’ (a 50’s television sitcom), “What a revolting development.” Jeff and David probably won’t make up soon and the air that I breathe, water I drink here in New Jersey will be wedged into further pollution by policies of Christie. (perhaps any Governor. “It’s not personal Sonny, it’s strictly business.” It’s funny how that favorite movie quote slips into so many intelligent, relevant, contemporary conversations)

THE Tower of Babel. (babble?)

A few years ago, I was thinking about the global environmental movement or lack thereof and conjured up a term to describe what I saw from high(up) on a red spiritual mountain in Sedona, Arizona; a tower of babble (biblical Babel?) (to talk foolishly, irrationally). In Babel, everybody spoke a different language; today’s metaphor for different agendas and values. Why would China care about car exhaust(greenhouse gas) emissions when their citizens are finally able to buy cars? Remember the smog during the Beijing Olympics? Let the west (America) come up with ideas and sacrifices first (we’ve been using cars longer) And so forth and so on. Babble (Babel) (I wonder if this qualifies as a homophone). I’ve got a lazy eye on the Kyoto protocol (climate change). Rich and poor countries still disagree on the future of the second commitment period of the Kyoto

Protocol; the only international treaty binding nearly 40 industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The discrepancy between the two groups grew even wider during the previous round of climate change talks. I think Tower of Babble. Point being; right here in New Jersey, grass roots, green grass still all around, we’ve still got babble dissecting the environmental movement.

A smallmouth American bass fish. (a boy fish I think)

Moving on, I’m going to fire away on things which ‘move’ me. Lou Dobbs, radio and TV host recently said, “I am saying drill, I am saying mine, exploit and produce. We have so many rich deposits of fossil fuels…it is mindless and self-destructive not to pursue that goal.” I wonder about clean energy economy and environmental due diligence. Climate change will turn the Baltic Sea into an increasingly freshwater sea and devastate its marine life. Smallmouth male bass fish, which inhabit our freshwater lakes, have been found to have female germ cells (oocytes) in the testes of 82% to 100%. The boy fish’s endocrine systems are being ‘disrupted’ by chemical pollution of our water.

I love how science calls this ‘intersex fish;’ the same abuse of terminology as when Regan MacNeil in ‘The Exocist’ was possessed and the medical community called it ‘Tourettes,’ and juiced her up with ‘Halolperidol’ a powerful tranquilizer, the same way we get juiced up by the media. Think about the last fifty years of ingested hormones and other drug delicacies being flushed into the nearby Atlantic Ocean. An environmental group needed called ‘The Unflushables?” And speaking of oceans, the oceans are at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history. A deadly trio of factors – warming, acidification and lack of oxygen – is creating the conditions associated with every previous major extinction of species in Earth’s history. Marine scientists from institutions around the world recently met at Oxford University. New science indicates that pollutants such as flame retardants, fluorinated compounds and pharmaceuticals as well as synthetic musks found in detergents and personal care products have been located recently in the Canadian Arctic seas. Some are known to be endocrine disrupters (remember the small mouth bass fish) or can damage immune systems. “Enough, Calvin”

From environment to absurdities, one of my favorite blog ramblings: I get over a hundred health related emails (from a myriad of sources) a week informing me without charge (money) of latest developments and healthful tips. But I also get emails from Johns Hopkins, sometimes ten pages long; either promoting management strategies on Atrial Fibrillation for $39.95 or hawking ‘The Johns Hopkins Memory Bulletin’ subscription which is just $149 for four quarterly issues. I keep forgetting to cancel my emails from them; at this life stage I’m so into altruism and sincerity. Johns Hopkins kind of reminds me of network television breaking into programming to say a terrible virus is spreading all over the state, causing horrific symptoms, but there is something critical and timely that can be done to prevent it, so watch the news at 11PM, eleven hours away.

alan simpson. shame on him for denigrating senior citizens

Did Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming, call senior citizens the Greediest Generation as he compared “Social Security” to a Milk Cow with 310 million teats back in 2010? I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from my Day One, and now folks like Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan propose to change the rules of the game. Why? Because ‘someone’ mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an extent that they need to steal money from Medicare to pay the bills.

And speaking of bills: What does the U.S. military spend annually to stay cool on bases in the war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan? $20.2 billion, former Iraq war logistics chief Brigadier Gen. (Ret.) Steven Anderson said. A gallon of gas to power an air conditioner in Afghanistan must be shipped to Karachi, Pakistan, then spend 18 days travelling for 800 miles over land in fuel convoys, dangerous transportation.

Last week, I blogged about the old Brooklyn Dodgers and Jackie Robinson. It’s absurdly coincidental but embattled Dodgers owner Frank McCourt took the dramatic step of filing his franchise(LA Dodgers) for bankruptcy Monday, setting up a showdown with Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.

Google is actually the common name for a number with a million zeros. And is a bit of a war going on between Google and Facebook which has 600 million members now? Facebook took in $4 billion in revenue last year and the company’s private valuation is as high as $100 billion but it has two assets, data and members. Data is nothing unless you can make it something. Google has decided instead of paying for the right to access Facebook’s social data, they will just take it, because it’s there on the ‘free’ internet. And what about long term Facebook outlook? If history has taught us anything (right from ‘The Godfather’) it’s that people don’t stay with social networks forever. How over is MySpace? So over that even the guys who founded it can’t be bothered to update their own profiles. Hey, Mark Zuckerberg recently wore a suit and tie in Paris at the G8 summit where he gave a speech to world political and business leaders. He gets around, just like the ‘Beach Boys’ song ‘I Get Around.’ We can only imagine what data doors are opened just as I now wave at a vaporous apparition of ‘J. Edgar Hoover,’ sitting at my kitchen table.

j. edgar. hoover. everybody was afraid of him. can you imagine him with google and facebook

Soon, I’ll steal away to the Jersey shore at Belmar and take in some college basketball, summer league style at St. Rose High School, preceded by jalopeno pizza across the street at Federico’s. Swirling around my consciousness, is this recurring love affair with the city of Asbury Park, New Jersey. Two weeks ago: I had an amazing dinner there, spur of the moment, downtown Asbury, half-gallon of freshly made Sangria, trolley cars and salt air, lots of people under thirty, music coming from back alleys and store fronts, a crowded boardwalk, filled sidewalk cafes, bills posted about upcoming jazz and rock. A few blocks away, ‘The Stone Pony’ where Springsteen and ‘ Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ’ kicked off.

Asbury Park. old view from Ocean Grove

link to magical Jersey shore. Also check out the ‘Jersey Shore Icon Contest.’

http://www.visitthejerseyshore.com/

and for last minute special deals on Jersey shore rentals:

http://shorevacations.wordpress.com/

THE Stone Pony. Southside Johnny there on Saturday

The city was born in 1874 and in the 1920’s the Paramount Theatre and Convention Hall were built. In 1943 the Yankees held spring training in Asbury Park and in the 1950’s my parents took me on weekends for salt-water taffy, custard, boardwalk, Merry-go-round and to see ‘Tillie,’ the face of Palace Amusements, long gone. The city is coming back big time, rich in music history. Tony Bennett sang about leaving his heart in San Francisco and if I had a voice, I’d be singing about my heart at the Jersey Shore, Belmar’s jetty and Asbury Park’s rejuvenation, redolent salt air, gentrification, and haunting forces that keep pulling me. These last few weeks, I’ve had this internal battle going on. Remote Montana cabins call me. The Jersey Shore yells just as loud. If I can appropriately file environmental attacks on my beleaguered state of New Jersey and mind(cerebral), I’ll settle into notions of going west(Montana) to visit every now and then. Perhaps while roaming antique shops of the Jersey shore towns, I can find a Conestoga wagon and hitch-it up to an old Desoto, Edsel(wish I had just one now) or Nash-Rambler and head out west for only a few weeks, because in the final analysis, there is no place like home.

(ps. look below for a note on the asteroid which missed earth yesterday by 7500 miles)

LINKS:

New Jersey Environmental Federation:

http://www.njwea.org/

CONTACT INFO:

website: http://vichywater.net

Facebook: Cal Schwartz

twitter: Earthood

Vichy Water book trailer (65 seconds long):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj2ko9gcC_M

Oh regarding my novel, Vichy Water:

The twittersphere is abuzz over a school bus-sized asteroid that came within 7,500 miles of Earth yesterday (Monday), zooming even below some satellites. Noted science, technology, and news outlets on Twitter sensationalized the event with tweets about the asteroid being a “near miss” and “close shave” that “buzzed earth.” NASA says the asteroid–which scientists named 2011 MD–is so small by celestial standards that it would have burned up once it entered Earth’s atmosphere.

Comments (2)

June 21, 2011

Father’s Day (thoughts from a New Jersey jetty in 1955). Celebrating the ‘geographic’ Jersey Shore. Why I Think About a Cabin in Montana (political escapism or cerebral asylum?) Atlanta Radio Vitriol. Another movie review: ‘Section 60.’ Clarence Clemons Remembered. June 21, 2001

Filed under: November 2009 — Tags: high, jackie, quotes, res, robinson — earthood @ 10:58 am

President Eisenhower. a point of reference

Set sail in a heavy humid aromatic wind; for me, it provokes memories of childhood, father-son relationship notions and a Yankee-Baltimore Orioles baseball game on a Saturday in July when Eisenhower was President. I always pick on Eisenhower, it seems. He had a mistress you know and so did FDR. Senator Vitter solicited a prostitute. In a magazine interview way back, Jimmy Carter said that “he lusted.” I liked when President Carter told us in the 1970’s to go solar and get off oil. Now it’s windy; smoky dust gets in my eyes; I wonder if published ‘lust’ is different than sending picture tweets on the internet.

Christmas snowstorm(blizzard?); thoughts piled eye high

All of a sudden, its Christmas week and we had that terrible snowstorm (some media folk insist it was a blizzard) and I keep shoveling streams of pure consciousness into huge piles, as tall as eye level. Everywhere, there are huge drifts, piles of snow and double societal standards. Hot dog! (Exclamation of sarcastic excitement): are we entering a new world of revelations and redefining of politician’s private lives? I took a double take last week when my Governor Christie was interviewed locally on television and during the call-in segment; a woman asked why he sent his kids to parochial schools. He replied, “It’s none of your business.” I liked that response because he’s ‘politically’ right.

Governor Christie: "It's none of your business."

I just rubbed a strange striped stone from the Bay of Fundy last summer. A tour guide said some stones, near a big red cave, have magical powers. If I had the resources, I’d graciously send a stone to each member of the House of Representatives. Ah, but it’s Father’s Day so I need to get back to that baseball game.

pix of me standing near my jetty in Hurricane Earl last year.

When I was ten years old, my parents rented a bungalow in Belmar at the real Jersey shore for the month of August. There weren’t a lot of kids my age, so I found ways to amuse myself; notably in a pinball amusement place. When no one was looking, as if I was a local street urchin, but I was, I crawled underneath the machines, and foraged for dropped nickels and dimes. Hey, it was a living. When I finished accumulating daily wealth, I walked to the beach, checked-in with my mother and baby sisters, then I disappeared to my ‘Walden Pond,’ the jetty at the Shark River inlet, where I’d sit for hours, dreaming, staring down ships heading to Kilimanjaro and places Blackbeard would frequent. Sometimes you can’t explain why things buried deep inside your brain just randomly fire away. Lamentation: why I wasn’t ‘afflicted’ with “superior autobiographical memory;” imagine having total recall of every day of your life. CBS/Sixty Minutes did a report on this condition which has only recently come to light. A handful of people, including actress Marilu Henner have this memory condition. And it’s probably true, if you ‘suffer’ from this, you might never lose an argument. Here’s the program video link:

video link to CBS/60 minutes/ superior autobiographical memory

But what I do remember from the jetty during that summer of my contentedness was how I kept wondering about being someone’s father and how important it was and whose father would I be? Gosh, I was only ten, so why did fatherhood dreams pre-empt the Brooklyn Dodgers on their way to the pennant and a chance to get the hated Yankees in a World Series? Funny, I remember loving the Dodgers and not the Yankees; it was a racial thing and I was ten.

Jackie Robinson: why I loved the Dodgers

The Dodgers and my hero, Jackie Robinson were the first to break baseball’s color barrier, not the Yankees. Jetty sitting one day; there were white caps and my mother told me the ocean is readying for a big storm; I resolved before that storm, that I’d bring my child to this magical jetty which helps you look past the horizon and tell my son/daughter (I was never gender specific) how much I dreamed of bringing them here. My father was never with me. I was always alone. Oh, a couple of times he’d throw a baseball to me in the driveway until that wonderful July day in the Bronx. My father got tickets to the Yankees versus Orioles. We were so early that we watched a choose-up game in a field near the stadium and pre-baked in hot unyielding sun; once inside Yankee Stadium, he passed out from sun stoke and I saw the game from a nurse’s office. That was the last time my father spent a day with me for the rest of his life. My father, who never even saw me play organized basketball, still taught me about fatherhood. When my son was ten years old, we went to my jetty and I told him the story. The following year we went to a football game at Rutgers Stadium and the year after that, my son and I were season ticket holders. I thought about my father yesterday. One day I’ll ask my son what his plans are for our Belmar jetty.

It’s a good time to plug this amazing place of sand, jetties, Atlantic Ocean, summer sounds, winter solitude and French fries with vinegar sold at boardwalk vendors. The Jersey Shore is a best kept secret (sort of). Years ago, people from eastern Pennsylvania used to invade the shore, carrying lunches in shoe-boxes; hence they were called “shoe-bees.”

Some of the most expensive real estate any where is on Stone Harbor, near Atlantic City and HBO has the successful series, ‘The Boardwalk Empire” as is MTV’s ‘Jersey Shore.’ That’s a lot of pop culture, for the obvious reason; the shore is happening, evolving and magical (and probably hard to adequately describe if you haven’t been or happen to live in one of the Dakotas). Spur of the moment Saturday night, with friends, we went to Asbury Park (where Bruce Springsteen first met Clarence Clemons), walked downtown, crowded with casual folks, found a perfect Portuguese restaurant and dined for three hours outside, under cirrus clouds and a pink setting sun; two pitchers of Sangria enhanced as did a red trolley car that passed by. After dinner, we walked around absorbing the Haight-Ashbury-like youthful energy of the place. You could hear/feel echoes of Bruce, but there’s actually plenty live music to be had all the time in Asbury Park. Here’s a link/doorway/rabbit hole/key to shore magic:

http://www.visitthejerseyshore.com/

Asbury Park Convention Hall

Also check out the ‘Jersey Shore Icon Contest.’

And speaking of Clarence Clemons, why is it in life; that you never pay enough attention to gifted humans, or find ways to get to that first row and just keep regularly taking in amazing precious talent? Clemons met Springsteen on the Jersey Shore in 1971 and played on two songs on Springsteen’s debut album; ‘Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.’ Clemons joined the inaugural E Street Band in late 1972 and played with them until his death. He played on 21 Springsteen albums and was featured prominently on many of his biggest hits, including “Blinded By the Light,” “Thunder Road,” “Jungleland,” “Badlands” and “I’m Goin’ Down.” On stage, Springsteen regularly introduced Clemons as “The Biggest Man You’ve Ever Seen.” Clemons was around 6-foot-5 and 270 pounds. And I’ve added “not having seen Clarence perform enough live,” to my ever growing list of “should’ve done” things. I hate that list and I loved Clarence Clemons.

Clarence Clemons

Youtube. Clarence Clemons “Jungleland” solo

So what’s the deal with my moving to a cabin in Montana? It’s because of everything swirling around my head, Ma (listening now to Dylan’s song “It’s Alright, Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding).” “Son, you take too much to heart. Go hop on your Harley, find Captain America.” I wish my mother would’ve said that back then. I might’ve headed out west, discovered America and more of myself. Cousin Stuart offered me a ride on the back of a Harley last summer in Dallas. I looked to the hot sun and asked Ma, “Is it alright?”

“An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it” Bob Dylan

Here we go; the roller coaster ride at Olympic Park in Irvington, New Jersey. I rode that ride once when I was twelve years old and never again. Could it be, I’m still dizzy? Guess what I’ve known all along; The Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that a huge class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores alleging sex discrimination cannot proceed. The lawsuit could have involved up to 1.6 million current and former Wal-Mart employees and billions of dollars in damages. The plaintiffs (women) can still pursue their suit on their own, but not as a class action, the court ruled, meaning much less money would be at stake. See Ma, big money usually always wins.

My dream log cabin in Montana: vegetable garden around the back

Back to the cabin idea; I’d live alone, grow my own cucumbers, no electrical outlets, no outside world, no US Mail, no political campaigns, media feeding frenzies and other dire straits machinations.

There seems to be ten states now where it’s particularly bad to be a woman because of a lot of new legislation (hint). And if I did cabin living (with only batteries), there might not be National Public Radio, under the de-fund gun. In Minnesota, the Education Finance Committee is readying a funding bill that will eliminate the goal of desegregated schools. And a few states have rejected high speed rail service and I love train travel as you all know. I like net (internet) neutrality; that’s under fire. Did some House representative from Arkansas introduce legislation cutting funding for the President’s teleprompter? Are there real wars going on against unions, collective bargaining, middle class; all of which touch me? I’m so ‘middle,’ I want to live in a cabin. In Texas, Debbie Riddle (R-TX) introduced a bill that would jail people who hire undocumented workers but would exempt anyone who hires “the help” for their homes, thereby effectively legalizing slavery for illegal immigrants. And what’s the deal with Neal Boortz, an Atlanta vitriolic radio talk show host advocating vigilantes and shooting ‘street thugs.’ Cox broadcasting likes the publicity; good for ratings? And how come there isn’t more of an outcry from the media and politicians or are they still burned out on hot dogs? “Hey Ma, do you see why I’m dizzy?”

Rep Peter King. was his hearings really necessary?

‘Islamophobia’ became institutionalized in the U.S. House of Representatives when Rep. Peter King (R.NY) had his McCarthy-esque “investigation of radical Islam” back in March. I’m so tired of Joe McCarthy. Pell Grants, that help middle class kids go to college, have been cut by 25%. Back in my cabin, I wouldn’t have to worry about the planet adding a billion people every 12 years.

Flooded Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant

Hey Ma, more swirling stuff; Back on June 7th, there was a fire at the Fort Calhoun Nebraska nuclear plant. The official story is that the fire was in an electrical switchgear room at the plant. The facility lost power to a pump that cools the spent fuel pool for approximately 90 minutes. According to the Omaha Public Power District, the fire was quickly extinguished and no radioactive material was released. Right now, the nuclear facility at Fort Calhoun is essentially an island. It is surrounded by rising flood waters from the Missouri River. I love the ocean especially by my jetty in Belmar. But is Fukushima, which we hear nothing about anymore, killing our oceans and will it be the worst disaster known to us human kind? How much of Japan will be inhabitable? My friend in Seattle, a psychic, keeps telling me about cracks in the earth’s surface (and earthquakes); one 500 foot crack developed in Michigan recently.

Arizona fires.

The fire in Arizona consumed 500,000 acres and saddened me; I’ve climbed red mountains there a dozen times. I left my heart out west; that’s why I want cabin life in Montana; big blue sky away from the maddening crowd. “Hey Ma, why do I let all this stuff swirl me around?” Maybe if Captain America would ask me, under a starry western sky, to join him around a joint camp fire, but I’d have to tell him it doesn’t work on me and to put it back in his handlebars. Too much rationality and sensibility fight cerebral recreation.

I just came in from outside. I love shoving 10:30 PM summer air into my lungs; I was back in Newark, sitting on a stoop, smoking a ‘punk’ which was nothing more than a lit stick that scared Jersey mosquitoes away.

George Reeves. TV Superman

The stoop gang looked up at the stars and wondered about the television ‘Superman’ George Reeves, dying the way he did. I hear the ‘Book of Mormon’ is now sold out for five years and I could’ve gone to previews. Pandora now has comedians. Earlier this afternoon, I flicked on the television and watched an HBO documentary ‘Section 60;’ the story of a section at Arlington National Cemetery where America’s most recent war dead from Iraq and Afghanistan lie in a quiet patch of ground. Families, friends and military comrades visit the gravesites. Such powerful visual stuff. Link to Documentary web site:

‘Section 60’ Documentary Link

Sure Ma, this was a serious blog. I think its time for Youtube and ‘Abbott and Costello’ “Who’s on First” routine.

Abbott and Costello ‘Who’s on First’ Routine

Often I’ve pondered writing like this, but thirty years ago, expressing what’s out the window, down the block, but I don’t think I could’ve back then without internet infusions and confusions. I’m a product of changing digital times, Belmar jetties, Google, Facebook, anti-oxidants, the Constitution, and Montana cabin dreams. If I were a songwriter, I would’ve written the lyrics for the aforementioned notions by this morning followed by two aspirin. Have a nice first day of summer. Quick thought; I wouldn’t have to move the clocks back or forward in my Montana cabin.

CONTACT INFORMATION

website: http://vichywater.net

Facebook: Cal Schwartz

Twitter: Earthood

Book Trailer(hey its only 65 seconds, Ma):

Vichy Water book trailer

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Vichy Water – Author's Blog Just another WordPress weblog

July 16, 2011

Paul McCartney. Curt Flood. Television: My ‘Curb’ of Un-enthusiasm and My First and only ‘Dear John’ Letter. Living to 150 years and beyond. July 17, 2011

July 12, 2011

Fat is Cannabis Addictive? Synchronistic Headache. More Asbury Park and Jersey Shore Jetty (habit or hobbit?) Bashful. Sedona. Playing Chicken with a Newark Bus. July 12, 2011

July 6, 2011

Fourth of July. Asbury Park, NJ: Forever Young, ‘The Stone Pony’, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.’ Diabetes. Exercise. More Absurdities. July 6, 2011

June 28, 2011

Whitewater Rafting. How Green Is My Valley, Mind, State (NJ)(an environmental topic). Modern Absurdities. Welcome to Asbury Park(NJ). June 28, 2011

June 21, 2011

Father’s Day (thoughts from a New Jersey jetty in 1955). Celebrating the ‘geographic’ Jersey Shore. Why I Think About a Cabin in Montana (political escapism or cerebral asylum?) Atlanta Radio Vitriol. Another movie review: ‘Section 60.’ Clarence Clemons Remembered. June 21, 2001