Home Beckons

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My heart races faster
as I walk into that off-limits place
once full of joy and now only sadness.

My tears well up slowly
when I touch the soft cotton shirts
with their dinosaurs, baseballs, and bears.

My tears roll slowly down
as I reach for the bright blue truck
just waiting for tiny fingers to make it run.

My tears slowly blind me
as I imagine a different beginning
for a new life so anticipated, so soon ended.

My heartache crushes in
so hard that I move to a safer place
where colors range wider than sad baby blue.

For our first grandchild, Austin Holcomb Seymour, born still on January 18, 2012.

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I’ve listened for over a week now as the media has crucified Penn State students, alumni, and fans as uncaring and out of touch with the rest of the country.  Why are so many supporting Joe Paterno when he apparently failed to follow up on the abuse?  Why are they upset about Paterno being fired?  How can they think that football is that important?  Why aren’t they focused on the abused children?

I think the media’s missing the point.  No decent human being could hear the horrific news out of Happy Valley without being outraged by abuse of young boys.  No decent human being could read the Grand Jury’s report without grieving for the lost childhoods of Victims 1 through 8.  Nor could anyone read the report without agonizing over why so many people, who could have stopped the abuse, apparently failed to act.  Surely, most Penn State students, alumni, and fans are decent human beings.  I think that I am also.

So, why am I still mourning not only for the young men, but also for Joe Paterno?  It’s complicated.  In the early years of marriage, my husband and I spent a few days each summer in State College shooting in the PA State Archery Championships.  We stayed in the dorms and competed on the Blue Band practice fields.  We ate ice cream every night at the Creamery.  We bought Penn State sweatshirts and wondered if any of our someday kids would go there.

Never really die-hard football fans, we began to watch Penn State games as a way to link us back to the good memories we’d made together.  And then years later, our three sons attended Penn State as students, so State College once again became a mini-vacation destination, complete with lunch at Ye Olde College Diner or dinner at The Tavern.  Slowly, we wove the town, the team, and JoePa into our lives.

Whether he wanted it or ever intended it, sometime over his sixty years at the institution, Joe Paterno became the face of the university and all that is good about Penn State.  He accepted a reasonable salary and lived a modest and quiet life.  He stressed academic achievement to his players and created an atmosphere which helped them succeed. He and his wife shared his financial success with the university and community with generous donations.  JoePa became the favorite uncle, the respected father, the revered grandfather, or the trusted friend to hundreds of thousands of people who created their own memories at Penn State.  When the news first broke about the scandal, the media just didn’t give us time to mourn for JoePa.

Most of the media and much of the nation clamored immediately for Joe’s head for his apparent lapse in moral responsibility.  They screamed nasty judgments on those of us who wavered about what to do about Joe.  They claimed that we just wanted to win more football games.  Forgotten or ignored was how it feels to learn that someone you love and trust may have behaved inexcusably.  I took four days to pass through the five stages of mourning.

Denial?  JoePa must have acted responsibly; the media must be wrong.

Anger?  The media should give him time to defend himself before persecuting him.

Bargaining?  Give him more time to explain what happened and I’ll still support him.

Depression?  After reading the Grand Jury report, it’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario that give’s Joe an absolute moral pass.

Acceptance?  Joe had to go.

I came to that decision with a heavy heart, but still hope that Paterno can prove that our trust in and respect for him were well placed. Imagine that your allegiance to JoePa mirrors your relationship with your father, grandfather, brother, uncle, or good friend.  The decision to stand by him has little or nothing to do with football.  It doesn’t lessen our concern for the abuse victims.  It doesn’t make us bad people.  It just makes us good human beings sticking by someone we love at least until there’s no possible reason to believe.

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Yes, Americans can produce products that are both good and cheap, and I mean cheap in a good way!  I recently stopped for the first time at Hilsher’s General Store in Port Trevorton, along the Susquehanna River about eight miles south of Selinsgrove.  I’ve gone past it hundreds of times, never realizing what a gem I was missing.

In one stop, you can eat homemade chicken and dumplings, stock up on local cheeses, buy a candle or knickknack for your mother-in-law, pick up those hard-to-find nuts and bolts for that job you’ve put off, buy muck boots for monsoon weather in Pennsylvania, pick out paint for your patio, and prepare for fall with feed to lure the deer in and buy a grinder and seasonings in hopes that the feed does its job.

Hilsher’s wraps a wonderland of miscellaneous goods around its Ace Hardware core.  It’s a Walmart before Walmart became too big, too predictable, and too much “Made in China”.  You can wander though Hilsher’s and find products and brands that you haven’t seen in years or have never seen.  I found two new-to-me brands of “Made in the USA” products and wondered why they aren’t on Walmart shelves.

Rada Cutlery knives – I bought a parer, a tomato slicer, and a bread knife.  They are sharper than any knives I’ve ever owned – sharper than my German-made blades and definitely sharper than the Farberware and Chicago Cutlery knives, which Walmart brings to us from Asia. Competitively priced from $5.50 to $9.00, give the Rada Made in the USA products a try.

Onguard Industries muck boots – with the recent flooding in the northeast, I was just one of many trying to find rubber boots to wear while hauling mud out of basements.  I had given up finding boots not made in Taiwan or China until I happened into Hilsher’s.  I was so excited to see “Made in the USA” stamped on the side of the boots; I bought three pairs and surprised my husband and father.  We’re all amazed at how comfortable, well made, and “cheap” they are at only $16.99 a pair.

It’s kind of sad that finding something made in the USA is such an exciting occasion.  Rada Cutlery and Onguard Industries prove that companies in the U.S. can make high quality products at competitive prices.  Our biggest challenge is to find these companies and products.  Check out these websites (Oh, and check out Hilsher’s General Store too!):

Made in USA

Made in USA Forever

Still Made in USA

Americans Working

Save Our Country First

Written with my friend Missy B. in mind.  Keep up the good fight!

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I like my pizza hot. So, when I sat down today in the middle of the afternoon at one of my favorite pizza chains with my slice of pepperoni, I eyed it suspiciously. Where was the glorious pepperoni grease that should be lying in the little indentations in the cheese? Why didn’t the entire surface shimmer and shine from the reflection of fluorescent lights overhead? What caused the first-bite tip of the pizza slice to curve up, not down as it should, across the paper-plate edge?

“I’ve never gotten cold pizza here before,” I said to the manager.

“One of our two heat lamp bulbs is burned out,” she replied, “but I’m not allowed to buy one locally. I have to put in a request with the company. The approval could take a week depending on who’s in the office and then it takes two weeks to get one delivered here once it’s ordered. The funny thing is, the lamps are available now and are cheaper at the hardware store right here in town.”

I took my pizza back to be table and savored the first few hot bites, intrigued by the heat-lamp bulb dilemma. I went back to the counter.

“Can you order more than one lamp at a time?” I asked.

“Yup, I order six at a time,” she answered as she slid the chicken-bacon ranch under the one remaining heat lamp bulb, which necessitated the sacrifice of the meat-lovers’ to the dim outer reaches of the lamp’s heat arc. I imagined myself sitting too far from the campfire to stay warm and made a mental note to make my slice choices by lamp position for the next three weeks until the new bulb arrives.

Back at my table, I finished my now semi-warm slice, but before heading home, I went back to the counter, hoping that the manager didn’t think me a stalker.

“If you can order six lamps at a time, why don’t you always have at least one spare on hand?” I asked, sure that I already knew the answer.

“I’m not allowed to order new ones until we’ve put the last one in service. Sometimes the second one burns out right after we put the last new one in.” She smiled, shook her head, and went back to work.

I cursed the anonymous, rule-making office-sitter out there somewhere far from pizza ovens, heat lamps, and hot-pizza loving customers.

“Perhaps there’s a reason for the rules,” I thought. “Perhaps there are only two heat-lamp bulb making individuals left in the world and they aren’t teaching anyone their trade and they’re both ninety-seven years old. Or, perhaps heat lamp bulbs each contain 17 grams of gold at $1,632 per gram making the price of one lamp $27,744 plus other materials plus production labor plus depreciation plus profit plus salary for another anonymous rule-making office sitter at the heat-lamp bulb-making plant.”

A quick Google search dashed my desire to bring reason to the rotten rules. Multiple suppliers are available for industrial grade infrared bulbs to keep my pizza slices cozy for 5,000 hours, or approximately 1.39 years based on my estimate of hours of actual bulb operation. Prices range from a modest $6.99 per bulb up to a luxury model at $17.99. Tomorrow, I’m heading down to that local hardware store to buy a heat lamp bulb to donate for the benefit of all hot-pizza loving people in my community. Maybe I’ll donate two. Three weeks is an awfully long time to wait.

Mutton, the best cat that has ever lived and will ever live died last night.  (See A Cat Story).  The vet handed his still-warm body back to me so that Gary and I could take him home for the last time.  We cried and held hands during the six-mile ride.  Once home, we pulled the soft towel away just far enough to take one last look at his smoke-gray fur and curled up paws.  Today, we’ll bury him in the corner of the field outside my kitchen window and shed more tears.

For fifteen years, he’s made us smile with his calm and trusting ways.  His life is woven tightly into our family memories of all those years, so he’s sure to come home to us often and especially during family gatherings.  Mutton on mole watch at the edge of the field, Mutton battling with my mom for a spot on the couch, Mutton on the pump room concrete begging for a brushing, Mutton …

Mutton (AKA Mutton-Man, Tubby, Tubman, T, T-Man)
Loved by all who knew him
1995 – 2010

Image by MemaNH (busy)

“They’re all dead,” he finally concluded with as much irritation as sadness in his voice.

I drove a couple more miles on the narrow blacktop in silence, passing another old farmhouse; sorry to let it go by without introduction.  He spoke first.

“Guess they’re all dead now except Old Joe.”

My dad exaggerated a bit, but at 85, he’s one of the last voices of his generation still alive to recall the names and faces of those who once lived behind the walls of the old farmhouses we passed.  One day he too will be gone, forgotten by all but those who loved him best.  And so it will be for all of us.  Growing old beats the alternative, but it sure must get lonely when you’re one of the last ones to leave.

Even after thirteen years without him, my brother can still sometimes bring me to tears. (See Saying Good-bye). I just found this photo taken of him in San Francisco in the mid seventies. He looks so healthy and happy on this day. Was he? I wonder who captured this moment on film.

Waiting

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“You told me about the winners of the Marcellus drilling.  What about the losers?”  My friend asked this after scanning an article in the Daily Review about a public hearing on fracing fluid.

I finished the last bite of my Krispy Kreme before answering. “Well, you know, I’m writing a story about the losers, but I can’t seem to concentrate.  Every time I start writing, I get stressed and depressed.  I think I’m suffering from …”

In 2002, Glenn Albrecht, an Australian philosopher visited the Upper Hunter Valley of southeastern Australia, observing the impacts of two decades of open-pit coal mining on the residents. The area, once peaceful, lush farmland, was now enduring blasts from chemical explosives several times a day. Gray dust from the blasts covered homes, crops, and animals for miles around. With high-output lights glaring non-stop, dark night skies were only a distant memory. Trucks, draglines, and idling coal trains provided an unending low-frequency rumble. Rivers and streams were polluted, and the residents of the Upper Hunter were distraught.

In a recent interview with Daniel B. Smith in the New York Times Magazine, Albrecht discussed his observations of the Upper Hunter. (Is There an Ecological Unconscious?).  Excerpts from the article:

“People have heart’s ease when they’re on their own country. If you force them off that country, if you take them away from their land, they feel the loss of heart’s ease as a kind of vertigo, a disintegration of their whole life.” Australian aborigines, Navajos and any number of indigenous peoples have reported this sense of mournful disorientation after being displaced from their land. What Albrecht realized during his trip to the Upper Valley was that this “place pathology,” wasn’t limited to natives. Albrecht’s petitioners were anxious, unsettled, despairing, depressed — just as if they had been forcibly removed from the valley. Only they hadn’t; the valley changed around them.

In Albrecht’s view, the residents of the Upper Hunter were suffering not just from the strain of living in difficult conditions but also from something more fundamental: a hitherto unrecognized psychological condition. In a 2004 essay, he coined a term to describe it: “solastalgia,” which he defined as “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault . . . a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home.’”

So, perhaps I’m suffering from a kind of pre-solastalgia; prematurely anxious about the growing and apparently unstoppable Marcellus assault on rural northeastern Pennsylvania. Heavy trucks already rumble day and night, drilling pads multiply weekly, and pipelines slowly snake their way across more and more miles of farm land. Worrisome news of DEP and DOT violations by gas-related companies foreshadow future assaults on our air, water, and land.

Loss of heart’s ease …   Homesickness one gets when one is still at home …   Will Home always Beckon?

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With less than an hour left before the sale-ending noon deadline, I rush toward the dressing room, trying to beat the grey-haired lady who is heading there from the opposite direction; trying to beat her there, that is, without actually breaking into a run.  With a sharp turn left, a tight squeeze right, and a short speed-walk finish, I beat her by a body length, only to find myself behind several other beat-the-clock triers-on.  Eight doors stand in front of us, closed and locked.  It’s sales day at Bealls, where the shoppers are mostly savvy seniors serious about saving a buck.

I watch the doors, willing them to open.  From my vantage point, I see bodyless ankles and feet beneath the doors of the middle four stalls and shadows moving about beneath the outer two on each end.  But, wait!  There’s no movement in that stall on the far right!  I catch the eyes of the ladies behind me, silently staking claim to my place in line and step toward the stall in question.  Bending down, I peek under the door, immediately calculating that 12.5% of the dressing room capacity is unused behind this locked door.  I eye the distance from door-bottom to floor – twelve inches at best, so I step back into line.

The line moves so excruciatingly slowly, I’ve got time to count the number of rooms (eight minus one), divide by people ahead of me (eight), and multiply by an average dressing room stay (four and one half minutes).  I won’t make it to the front counter in time for my 50% discount, my additional 35% off, my bonus dollars, my senior day bargains, my free gift, my LAST BIG SALE OF THE CENTURY, my MEGA-MADNESS BARGAIN OF A LIFETIME!!!  Time for drastic measures …

Stepping past the ladies behind me, I face the far-right door, throw my new clothes to the floor, take a deep breath, and drop to the floor.  My well-dressed, perfectly coiffed, fellow shoppers turn toward me with questioning eyes.  Imitating my husband’s best Corvette-frame-fixing move, I shimmy head first, back-to-the-floor, under the door, only wishing for his four-wheeled creeper to smooth my journey.  Unlocking the door, I open it to smiles, cheers, and applause!

I’m still savoring my hero status a few minutes later when the clerk says with a cheery voice, “Thank you for shopping with us.  You just saved sixty-seven gazillion dollars today!”

Ah, the simple pleasures …

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“Have you been reading anything besides Marcellus Shale gas stuff lately?” my friend asked as we gathered up papers scattered across the conference table.

“Well, gas drilling occupies a lot of my reading time,” I replied, “but last month I plowed through all nine hundred thirty-seven pages of Michener’s “Hawaii” and now I’m in the middle of “Blood Oath” by Jimmy Cherokee Waters. Both books make me think of the Marcellus.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I crammed the last file into my briefcase before answering. “Well, the native Hawaiians lost their land and lives to whalers and missionaries and the Cherokee fought and fell to white men greedy for gold and more land. Now, water trucks rule our roads, landsmen lean on landowners, and pipelines cut crossways through corn fields. I wonder who’ll be the winners and losers in this new land rush…

Three years after the first white pickups rolled into Bradford County from Oklahoma, it’s clear that we can’t send them home. And many wouldn’t even if they could. Marcellus promises unimaginable riches with odds of winning much better than a Lotto ticket or the slot machines at the Tioga Downs Casino. The main ticket needed to play this new game of chance is a deed to a few acres of land, but landowners aren’t the only early winners. The drive to drill is helping small businesses in towns like Towanda and Troy where signing-bonus cash is funneling into local economies, fast-forwarding the call for lumber, siding, roofing, paint, paving, cabinets, carpeting, and furniture for home projects to make Martha Stewart and Tim-the-Tool-Man proud.

Marcellus is also breathing life into hometown hotels, restaurants, grocery stores, equipment companies, gas stations, and appliance stores. Local dealers are selling shiny new trucks and tractors in reds, greens, and blues to landowners happy to shed newfound bonus cash. Royalty payments promise to speed this spending spree, fueling an economic boom in northeastern Pennsylvania, an area dependent for the past hundred years on farming, forestry, and a few local industries.

For now, most workers actually on the drill, frac, and pipe sites are non-locals; industry-hardened types from west of the Mississippi, but locals will surely edge into some of the better-paying jobs as this gas play unfolds. Local entrepreneurs with keen eyes see Marcellus paydays in new businesses like hauling water, digging gravel, storing equipment, and seeding drill sites. Tax accountants and financial planners, for years finding limited clientele in this rural community, now hustle to work with new clients unfamiliar with inheritance taxes, trust funds, and income spreading.

All that gas cash is also helping people to pay off old mortgages, reduce school loans, and keep up with nagging hospital bills. Local schools are sure to benefit from higher property taxes levied on farm land now valued at ten times the amount assessed three years ago, and may collect added dollars as drilled land drops out of Clean and Green. Gas companies are adding to this local boom by plowing feel-good money into local charities.

Taking a broader view, Marcellus offers a pipeline to partial independence from the Middle East’s grip. Our unending thirst for oil continues to place our sons and daughters in harm’s way, providing the underlying driver for our presence in conflicts in that region. Latest estimates suggest that Marcelllus could provide enough gas to support current U.S. consumption rates for 20-25 years, easing demand on foreign oil imports. Substituting one non-renewable fossil fuel with another won’t solve our long-term energy problems, but it might help to keep our troops home in the future.

The Marcellus promises one more positive outcome. Natural gas is the cleanest-burning of all fossil fuels, spewing 30% less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than oil and almost 45% less than coal. The principal component of natural gas, methane, is itself a greenhouse gas, but according to the EPA, the reduction in overall greenhouse gas emissions from increased natural gas use strongly outweighs the negative impact of increased methane emissions. Emitting much lower concentrations of toxic nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides, and 90 and 99% less soot and ash than oil or coal, Marcellus gas offers fewer smog-covered days and acid-rain nights.

As we headed for our cars, my friend shook his head. “You sound like an advertisement for the gas industry, so I don’t understand your connection between the Marcellus and the Hawaiians or the Cherokees. You must have changed your mind about the drilling. Have you signed a lease yet?””

“Well, the Marcellus is making a lot of people happy, and I understand why, but I really haven’t changed my mind much,” I replied. “Remember, I’ve only given you half of the story – the winners’ side – the missionaries, whalers, and white mans’ side. Give me another day, and I’ll tell you what may be in store for the Marcellus losers. And no, we haven’t signed a lease, but, I’m running out of let’s-not-sign-a-lease-yet stall tactics. We’ve passed on $100, $500, and $1,500 an acre, plus twelve and a half percent royalty, but recently the offer skyrocketed to $5,750 and 20%. Now, the pressure ‘s really on and…