Bomba the Jungle Boy

Back sometime in my childhood, my siblings and I inherited a box of children's harcover books from our neighbors, the Carovillanos. I don't remember if I ever read this, although chances are I did, because I read pretty much everything in the house with printed words and a cover that I could reach.

I was one of those kids that could not fall asleep without a book. I would drag the old Book of Knowledge up from downstairs until my mother got smart and put it in the hallway outside my room to save on my nocturnal roamings. Given that this was a set purchased for my father, and copyrighted sometime around 1933, it was a bit odd to read, but if there was nothing else I hadn't read around but the dreaded "Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories" or those encyclopedia volumes, it was a no brainer. "Uncle Arthur" was BORING.

Old pictures - Pop and Miss Chips

(Please excuse me while I recover from an unattended CHKDSK that seems to have eaten my c: drive.)

In this picture, my great-grandfather Rudolph Sprenger, called Pops by everyone in the family, sits in his living room chair with my grandmother's dog Miss Chips doing her best imitation of the RCA dog. Based upon the newspaper headline of the Jersey Journal in his lap - "Hungarian Premier Capitulates", the picture was taken in 1956.

I have a memory of spending the day at "Pop's" house when I was a little girl, sitting in the kitchen while he made me toast. He did it in one of those old toasters with a triangular base with two sides that had doors you opened to lay the toast on, partly upright, until one side was done; you'd then turn it over and brown the other side. I remembered that he had a little white mustache, and a very faint accent, and that he was rolly-polly and very old.

I carried this for many, many years before I actually saw his picture, knew who it was when I saw it - and had a shock when I visited his gravesite when my father died in 1984 and realized that Pop - my dad's grandfather - had died in 1957, when I was barely two and a half. When I think about the circumstances of being left with Pop, it was most likely after my sister was born
in 1956, while were were still living in an apartment on Communipaw Avenue in Jersey City. My grandmother lived with her father at what had been the family home since shortly after 1903 - 10 Claremont Avenue, an asbestos shingle-sided narrow row house on a steep street with a view of the Statue of Liberty (and a little bit of lower Manhattan) to the left as you stood on the front steps.

My grandmother had married young, and her husband, Thomas, had died when my father was only 4, at the height of the Depression. So she and her son moved in with her parents, and Pop and his wife Katherine became the real parents of my father. She had no say in the home, although she was the apple of her father's eye. From what my dad used to say, her mother ruled with an iron will that no one dared cross.

Anna, my grandmother, was a wild one. I'm still trying to ferret out details, but she remarried and divorced once after being widowed, the divorce supposedly because she was cheating on her second husband while he was in the Army during the second World War - or at least that is the story my mother told me. I remember my grandmother as doting on me, with wirey silver black hair (although she wasn't that old - barely fifty), bringing me a hankie of some kind everytime she visited as a sort of token between us. Some of them had edges she had tatted, some of them were printed with cartoon characters or ornate flowers - and some of them are still in my dresser to this day. For whatever reason, she had a big plastic bag of them, from which she never failed to give me one every time I saw her.

I remembered her house in Jersey City had an odd smell - wet linoleum and a bready smell - and a washing machine with a mangle, and an old coal stove that had been converted to gas sometime in the 1920's, oddly next to a modern stove. And this wire hair terrier named Miss Chips who liked to bite people, the first pedigreed dog I remember seeing, utterly my grandmother's dog, and utterly nuts.

"Get away from the dog," both my mother and father and grandmother would say the moment you entered the house. Chips was a biter whenever she felt either playful or angry, two moods that she could go from in seconds. I still remember the feel of her coat, wire-haired but silky at the same time. She reminded me of the old horsehair sofa my grandmother had.

Years later, in her old age, Chips lost most of her eyesight and bit one person too many and my grandmother had to put her down. The legal matters involved apparently were to much for Anna, and her mind snapped. One day my father walked in the door from his overnight shift in the morning as the Jersey City police called - they'd picked her up, naked as a jaybird, trying to get on a bus. After a few days in the hospital, she came to live with us. But she would never be "right" again.

For the rest of her life, until the day she died, she moved in and out of an assortment of mental hospitals and nursing homes, diagnosed as scizophrentic and/or just delusional. No one really could figure her out. And, in those days, no one tried really hard. So from the age of 54, until she died at 82, she lived in a place in her mind alone, divorced from all the hardships that life had done to her, where she never felt safe, but where she retained a quirky sacarsm to the end.

Just so sad.

Keith Olberman's Message

The following editorial was made by Keith Olbermann on his MSNBC show,
"Countdown" tonight on the 5th anniversary of 9/11. It is the most
powerfully courageous speech I've heard by a network newsperson since
the Vietnam War era:

---

This hole in the ground


Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40
days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of
what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains
of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes
and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into
my soul -- two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York
policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or
more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always
shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have
"forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping,
opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a
commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago
could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our
eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us
could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud
defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards
and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.


At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months
after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr.
Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot
hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their
reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we
can not hallow this ground." So we won't.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and
jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the
money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and
buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of
doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on
these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The
terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment
you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this
city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the
promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and
painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout
the country. The government, the President in particular, was given
every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot
be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be
squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to
take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being
American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did
the media. Nor did the people.

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them,
"bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would
have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as
morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the
Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the
terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection"
meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a
despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee,
hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a
war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is
"lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume
responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to
this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect
and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he
alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that
he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in
his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most
radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be
televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by
bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the
whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office
seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the
only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the
unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless
death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and
turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How
dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as
long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this
government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from
March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and
this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful
things.

And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting
episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials
disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for
calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests
he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and
suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced.
An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor,
returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by
hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device
that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no
need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human
machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find,
and it's themselves."

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it
up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves
tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and
explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts,
attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a
thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its
own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be,
if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public
chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of
it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely
question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this
empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this
administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

---

And not to belittle anyone's feeling, but, yes, this was an attack on the entire country, but you have to be here in NYC or at the Pentagon to understand that this was more than that. We knew the people that were in there, and many of us might have been in there ourselves, had been there in the past, and looked at those buildings out our offices, our schoolrooms, when we went for a drive. For us, the skyline of NYC and particularly Manhattan is ever present within our view directly or within a short distance.

Last night, I stood in my yard at midnight and saw the beams of light from "Tribute in Lights" directly to the east. They gradually faded into the cloudless sky, and the mixed emotions I felt at seeing them, from my home, are troubling and hard to explain. Not to denegrate anyone, but a tourist from Nebraska is not and never will share how that is. It's like walking through a cemetary reading names and dates on the stones of strangers, versus stumbling upon that of someone you knew. We all knew somebody there. We all lost somebody there. And we lost our innocence and safety there as well.

If I Knew What I Was Doing I Wouldn't be Here: Comments about the movie about Flight 93

If I Knew What I Was Doing I Wouldn't be Here: Comments about the movie about Flight 93

Link to my previous post

Still fallen

I have been writing poetry since I was in kindergarten. For all my life, it has been the way I express my feelings and experiences on the most elemental level. The monday after 9/11, my husband and I and our two daughters attended a memorial service held at Veteran's Park in Edgewater, NJ, across the Hudson from upper Manhattan.

My husband is a Buddhist, and his sect had spent that summer building a Peace garden at the water's edge in the park. We stood there, at sunset, with thousands of others, all of us neighbors, each holding a candle. At seven PM, a few words were said, and we all sang "God Bless America". And each of us, one by one, walked to the star-shaped flagpole's concrete base, and left our candles there. When I got home that night, I started writing. A few weeks later, I read an account in the Record, our local newspaper, about the family of one young man that included his mother's comments about how they were dealing with the fact that his remains were not found. She spoke of finding peace as she watched the smoke from the fires after the tower fell drift into that beautiful blue sky downriver over the Statue of Liberty and the river. It was like watching her son go to heaven. I had the same feeling the night that I stood at the vigil.

(The poem is copyright 2001-2006 Evelyn McHugh. Not to be reproduced or copied without permission)

still
fallen

. . .

What is that?

I watched
Watched what but did not understand
Did not want to understand
Pristine heavens, a thin drift trailing off
Trailing off marred
The eye wanted to fill in the hole
That should not be there

And another

What is that

Quickly at the same time
And understanding
In some part of my thoughts
But not my eyes
Understanding
Flecks of white
Men had taken their jackets off
Since at the office things were
Now casually open
The outline like in a cartoon
Of wings interrupted
And a drift of anger
And the teaming flecks of white
Understanding what
Eyes could not
Or I could not
Removed in my distance
With watching

From my distance,
Not a bang, not a rumble of thunder
Like the ground opened or
Taking an elevator
It just
Fell
And a pall of white
Crept over
Crept over until it reached
The water
Between the streets
Crept over
Taller than Trinity
Over the green parks
Touching the water
Reflecting the pall
And the lie of heaven
Crept over as if it were running
And could go no further than the river
Crept over and spread thin and
Fell in upon itself like an echo.

We heard others
Say how awful it must be
Up there
That the better choice
Is to jump

We heard others
Weeping
But you had to understand
You had to understand

I watched flecks of
White on the skymost highest roof
Tumble down
The spear that groped for the sky
Tumble down
And the pall that crept over
And the running
And the start of the waiting
And the eye still looked
And the eye only did not understand
Far worse
Far worse
Looking for the things that
Had fallen
And finding them fallen
To look up
And . . .
And to know there is no answer
But the shock of a pall
And the empty place our eyes see
Like a tongue looks for a tooth
And the brightness of the day
And the lie of heaven
And still looking
And still gone
Still.

How bad must it be
That the only choice
Is to jump
Yet to land
Still looking for the
Missing parts
. . . an amputee
feeling them
and knowing

gone

And ghosts
And no answer on the phone
And
Passed understanding
Cannot
Like I jumped too
But the ground is too far
Or I have fallen through
And there is no bottom
Just the lie of heaven
And the quiet clouds
And stillness
Where noise used to be
No matter how many times
I remember I watch
No matter how many times
Still
fallen in the grey dust
Still fallen
Still falling

I do not understand

Fallen

Across the river
My flesh untouched
But


. . .

(epilogue)

Over the granite
Over the shine
Over the reflections of the setting sun
Over the Hudson and Ellis and Liberty
drifting
white
Some parent said the soul of their son
Went out to sea
Beneath that impartial sky
Some say just gone
Some stare and wait
Still lost in not understanding

I stood in a park
A week later
A park on the other side
And heard the ghosts of sirens still faint
And the thin white pall
Veiling the first few stars

And I hope
Out to sea in the peaceful sky
Ever towards the stars and the sunset
Look down and see the thousands of candles
All the witnesses
Because I can not bear to know
Not understanding
Some empty filled with sky and stars
Where noise
Where lives
It replaced

No lessons
No preaching
No

Just we in our humanity
Lighting candles and speaking
Bravely
While ungrasping a space
Too big to ever contain
Like the sea and the sky
And the drifting paleness that
Goes on until
Spread thin we can not see it
It fades someday
And only the darkening skies
Know it was there.

Gone

. . .

the birds
wheel in circles
something some sound
come upon them sudden
rise in a clotted cloud
gulls and pigeons
starlings and sparrows


when I thought of you
on wings if you were a bird
silver great wings
riding the thermals
a dark
against the sun
a shadow
a wheel and below others
wheeling motionless
wind carried
with no effort
on your part
just moved along
carried on the thermal
current the invisible current
with no terminus
you can see but up

like smoke blown to heaven
no end no edge
just riding upwards
until my eye can not make out
the dark speck
still rising.

. . .

finale

(to my husband)

at the basement landing
a pair of suit pants
that are ripped on the knee
where you jumped the fence
behind the winter garden

you came in,
hugged me,
just as I went to get our daughter from school
and took off the pants
of your good suit
to show me where you had fallen
as you jumped the fence

Things you Learn at Street Fairs

Went to a local street fair today in search of antiques and, in the case of the husband, something for lunch.

This particular fair is always populated by people running for office, and people that want to run for office against them, with both sides manning big booths loaded with signage.

Every year, we look for the same party's booth to get hamburgers because they are always cheaper and well made, with a great variety of condiments available. And we look for the booth from the other side, because they always have free stuff being handed out, and free popcorn and balloons for kids. But I never really thought about it until today when I asked Himself where he wanted to eat and he reminded me that he always gets hamburgers at the tent run by the Republicans because they are better than the commercial vendors'. As we were saying this, the Democratic surrogate came by, and his aides were handing out pens and water bottles for the kids.

So, in a nutshell, we had party politics. The Republican's working the crowd make sure that there is plenty of well-made food. You have to pay for it, but the spread is lavish. Meanwhile, the Democrats just hand out stuff, but all you get for free is popcorn or water or stuff you probably won't take if you already have it, unless you are like those little old ladies that work the fair with shopping bags, grabbing candy and pens and squeeze balls and coffee mugs..., and I would bet that most of them haven't registered to vote since their kids were in elementary school.

I think this is why I am an Independent....

Child of the Space Age

I was a toddler when Sputnik launched, old enough to walk around the neighborhood after school listening on my red RCA Transistor Radio (with leather case) when John Glenn made his three and a half orbits. But the infatuation with space and rocket ships goes back two generations before mine, to the writings of H.G. Wells and the birth of science fiction.

There is something compelling in the way imaginations transferred human battle drama into space by drawing helmets and space rockets, as if foretelling that no matter how evolved we pretend to be, and how we can dress up the apeman, he still wants to fight off his neighbors with what amounts to just a better class of rocks in a new jungle. And what used to be tales narrated by the campfire, are now pretty paper to look at in front of the TV.

The themes are forever. Only the landscape changes.

One simple word

One powerful word that can change the world = http://www.impeachnet.net/blog/about/.

ADSense has a Sense of Humor

For the past few weeks, the little AdSense things were somehow related to the line in my profile about being vaccinated with a phonograph needle. There were adds about vintage stylus' and turntables and equipment repair.

So I posted the comments from the Mayor of Salt Lake City yesterday, and now they suddenly have turned to garbage and how to clean out your home, and the ilk. I know we need to sweep the phonies out of office. Had no idea that Google agreed with me....