Author Archives: Lois DeSocio

Time Warp in Copenhagen: Counterculture Thrives in Christiania

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

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Frank Christiania

In Christiania, it’s 1973 all over again.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Back in the summer of 1973, I attended a concert in Jersey City that was my closest meet-up with the hippie counterculture of the time.  It was a double bill of The Band and the Grateful Dead. I remember thinking, as soon as I got to my seat in the old Roosevelt Stadium, that this was not a run-of-the-mill concert. The guy in the seat next to me had set up a small recording studio. He had a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder that he had lugged in, along with two microphones that he had on stands. You see, the Grateful Dead did not object to people recording their concerts. That’s why there are so many bootlegs around today.

Sirius/XM satellite radio has a whole channel devoted to the Grateful Dead, and features these “audience recordings.” The next thing that told me I wasn’t in Kansas anymore was the open sale of drugs and drug paraphernalia. It wasn’t just pot, which was the dominant smell at the concert. People were walking through the stands selling all sorts of pharmaceuticals from amphetamines to LSD and more. This, too, was done openly.

Fast forward 40 years to 2013. I am touring Copenhagen with my cousin and he takes me to a section of Copenhagen called Christiania.
Frank Christiania 3

Frank Chritiania 2
We walk in, and it’s 1973 all over again. There are peace signs on the buildings, clothing from another era and open sales of drugs. It’s a hippie time warp. Christiania is 84 acres of downtown Copenhagen founded in 1971 as a commune. The founders simply squatted on an abandoned military base and have never left. The relationship between Christiania and the people of Copenhagen has been tense at times, but much to the credit of the liberal Danish people, it has been allowed to survive for all these years. Christiania considers itself a separate city state from Denmark. They even have their own currency, the Løn.

As you walk around Christiania, and see the carpentry shops, bike shops, bakeries, restaurants and jazz clubs, you get a sense of what might have happened if our generation had held on to the spirit of Woodstock.  That’s not to say that everything in Christiania is peace and love. There have been some violent incidents in recent years arising out of the drug trade. But by and large, this small community, estimated at about 850 people, has managed to support itself, and live the spirit of the Age of Aquarius. How much longer the Danish people will allow this extremely valuable piece of prime, downtown Copenhagen real estate to be occupied by the residents of Christiania remains to be seen.  But let’s salute a group of dedicated people who have held off “The Man” for more than 40 years.

I’m a Birder Who Prefers to Fly Solo

26 Tuesday Mar 2013

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One bird

Birding with a group has its perks, but I often stray from the crowd. Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

I have always been pulled between being a loner and longing to be part of the crowd. As a child, I kept to myself. As I got older, I made friends along the way. One became my husband (MH). He, too, is a loner, but is not much troubled by that fact. Watching birds is an ideal activity for a loner, although it is often done in a group. I find groups have a tendency to rush along and talk, and I would rather go at my own pace and listen to the singing. Even with MH, I find I bird differently than when alone.

It is when birding the loner and the longer come together.

The other day, at a pond in the middle of a suburban NJ office park, a Pacific loon was discovered. It was publicized on the NJ bird list, which I read. The office park is on the outskirts of my town, which made it imperative for MH and me to see it as soon as we could.

What was it doing there? I don’t know, but weather conditions have been pretty strange this year. This loon is an unusual visitor east of the Continental Divide, but they’ve been reported before. The office park pond, which was not frozen, must have been an appealing sight.

Except in winter, loons are found on lakes and ponds. In winter, when those ponds freeze, they are usually found along the coast. The common loon and its smaller relative, the red-breasted loon, are the Eastern loons you’re likely to see at Barnegat Lighthouse, along the Jersey Shore, for instance.

In winter, they are all black and white and gray. What gave this one away were the shadings of gray and the bill – not as stout as the common loon; not as thin and upturned as the red-throated.

When we got there, we found ourselves in a crowd, but smaller than expected. We were all friendly, talking shop, field marks, or other birds recently seen in the state. As usual, for a while there, I felt I belonged.

And yet, when they started talking about people whose names I don’t know, but they see all the time in their travels, I knew I was not part of this group. I won’t be going south to Florida to see the birds heading north with them, or trekking to Belize or Mexico.

As this point I usually wonder, when does enjoyment of the birds become an obsession? If you spend your life doing nothing but running around to find and tick off birds every time one is reported, is it much of a life?

I admit, I daydream of dropping everything and doing nothing but bird. But bills have to be paid. The loner wins.

Before the Oil, There was an Olive

22 Friday Mar 2013

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Spanish olives
BY LOIS DESOCIO

This post has been hijacked and hacked by me. Julie had been wondering if an olive has as much nutritional punch and the same, much-touted health benefits as olive oil. She started writing about it:

If olive oil is “good” for you, are olives equally good for you?  Is there a difference between oil-cured Provence olives, Sicilian green olives, and Greek Kalamata olives in terms of nutrition and health?  I always embellish fish, chicken and pasta with black olives, but never beef or lamb. Is it possible to combine such ingredients?  I have made chicken with green olives, but otherwise they only grace my martini glass.

I did some Internet research about olives, but not about recipes.  If anybody has any intriguing novel recipes, send them on please.  Here are some facts about olives:

They grow on trees and are classified in fruit family.
They cannot be eaten raw. They require some prodding after being picked – curing or brining are two options.
They may help prevent bone loss and may temper inflammation.
So, they are good for you, but don’t eat too many because they are fattening!

I had to weigh in, and take over, because I am olive-obsessed. “…don’t eat too many because they are fattening!” is bad advice. I am not an olive expert, just an expert consumer. I eat olives every day – by the spoonful; the cupful. As I’m filling my two or three huge containers at my local olive bar every week, my mouth is watering the whole time. What I do know about olives is that they are ripe in the “good,” monounsaturated fat. And they bear the anti-inflammatory phenolic phytochemical called hydroxytyrosol. It is this anti-inflammatory phenolic phytochemical that boosts the health benefits of olive oil. (There are studies as to the benefits of hydroxytyrosol.) But all the tongue-twisting scientific lingo, and exhaustive studies aside – the bottom line is, olive oil comes from the olive.

cracked olives

We’ve all heard about the benefits of the Mediterranean Diet. And, I agree with Julie that there’s minimal hype around the olive itself. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has recently release yet another study about the benefits of a diet rich in grains, fruit, fish, nuts and olive oil, and how it’s better than a low fat diet in preventing cardiovascular disease and strokes. To summarize a part of the new NEJM study: eat all the olive oil that you want (it recommends four tablespoons a day), and as many nuts as you want. I’ve added olives to that. An olive (or a truckload) can serve as a check on the list of the recommended five servings of fruit the experts tell us to eat each day. And get your daily nuts in with almond-stuffed olives.

Julie asks: “I always embellish fish, chicken and pasta with black olives, but never beef or lamb. Is it possible to combine such ingredients?”

Yes. The beauty of the olive when used with any meat is simply in the taste. It’s salty. (Add hot peppers for zing; raisins for sweet.)  And you can cook them with the meat, or add them after. The flavor remains steadfast. I cook with them; top with them. I heat them in the microwave when I’m feeling fancy. They are my go-to snack. And I ask for extra olives when ordering a martini.

Julie also asks: “If anybody has any intriguing novel recipes, send them on please.”

Here’s mine. I eat this at least twice a week for breakfast – it’s tweaked from a sardine recipe I found years ago. It gives a heap of superfoods in one fell swoop:

Spread a frozen slice of good rye bread with avocado and a smidgen of mayonnaise. Cover all the open space with halved olives. Cover with one slice of Swiss cheese, and broil (that’s why you want the bread to be frozen, otherwise it may char) until cheese is melted. Take it out, and cover it with a whole can of sardines packed in olive oil (packed in water is fine too), and sprinkle with pepper, and finely chopped almonds or pine nuts. Place on top of a layer of fresh spinach. You’re good to go. Send us your olive recipes in the comments below, or e-mail, and we’ll print them.

mixed olives

All olives shot by Julie Seyler.

My 1964 Ford Galaxie: A “Great White Boat” of a Car

20 Wednesday Mar 2013

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a Ford under a galaxy of stars

A Ford under a galaxy of stars. By Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

In 1973, when I was 18, I got my first car: a white 1964 four-door Ford Galaxie 500 sedan that weighed in at nearly 4000 pounds. My then-girlfriend’s uncle gave it to me for nothing, and expressed great regret at having to part with such a fine vehicle. Unca Cholly, as he was affectionately known, was moving up to something better – probably a Pontiac – but he wanted the Galaxie to have a good home.

I was your stereotypical rambunctious 18 year old, determined to define myself as boldly independent of my parents. However, as a college student living at home with only a part-time summer job, I wasn’t going to turn into James Bond overnight. So the Galaxie was my key to the world – given enough gas and time, that car could take me virtually anywhere, and in my feverish imaginings, it did. But the reality was somewhat different.

First, it rode like a monstrous marshmallow. After a couple of cushy trips around the block, my brother christened it The Great White Boat. But make no mistake – it had lots of positive features too:

Real chrome bumpers you could use to open a beer bottle (so I heard).

A back seat as big as a small sofa. Out of deference to her Unca Cholly my girlfriend refused to explore its potential with me, but it did serve the purpose with some of my friends, and their less restrained dates, as I played the discreetly aloof chauffeur.

Triangular side vent windows in front that were perfect for flicking the ash off the end of your cigarette without having to open the whole window and risk sending unwelcome sparks into the back seat.

A steering wheel the size of a hula hoop, and power steering so light you could make turns with one finger.

A cavernous trunk Goodfellas (or their acquaintances delinquent in payments on the vig) would die for.

Then there were the negatives:

Primitive sound – AM radio with one oval dashboard speaker. The “latest”- an eight track tape player – had not been installed in this vehicle.

Pointy chrome gear selector and turn signal stems that were puncture
wounds waiting to happen. (By 1973, the automakers had wised up, and started putting blunt plastic knobs at the ends so if you rammed into the windshield wiper control in an accident you’d get a nasty bruise but no perforation.)

Rudimentary lap belts (front seat only) that would tear your torso in half in any collision over 40 mph, but might spare you from being skewered by the turn signal.

Miles per gallon in the high single digits on the highway going downhill with a tailwind. Plus the seals were bad, so it took a quart of oil every week and trailed a bilious white cloud everywhere it went.
The transmission was starting to slip, and the brakes were so low you floored the pedal and prayed at every stop sign.
And the insurance on that nine-year-old tank was more than any part-time job could support.

I think it took me five months – one glorious summer and into the fall – before I realized I couldn’t afford the gas, oil, seals, brakes, transmission, or insurance needed to keep the boat afloat. It sat for a month on my parents’ front lawn, a monument to my hopes of freedom, while I scraped around trying to figure out a way to save it. No one wanted to buy it, not even Unca Cholly, despite his misty-eyed reminiscences about its former glory.

Actually I suspect he was glad to have unloaded it on me to spare him the pain of having to finally put the car to rest. Which I did, one chilly October day when I paid fifty bucks to have it towed away to be cannibalized for parts. My next car was a used Japanese econobox that was a lot easier on my wallet, but woefully short on dreams.

"Bob behind the wheel" Mixed media drawing .

“Bob behind the wheel” Mixed media drawing by Julie Seyler.

Four Months In, and We’re Still Friends

19 Tuesday Mar 2013

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LO and me

Julie (left) and Lois (right), in the ’70s.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

Today puts Julie and me into the four-month anniversary of our blogging collaboration. We are riding a tide counter to that conventional-wisdom wave that cautions friends against becoming business partners. We think we’ve made the perfect match. What makes it work is how different we are – different skills (I play with words, Julie points, shoots, and paints); different temperaments (Julie is super organized, I love a mess); different likes (Julie is a bit of a food-fussbudget, I’ve eaten days-old soggy Cheez Doodles that were left out overnight and were stuck together); different worries (she does, I don’t); and different viewpoints (she’s old, I’m not).

So please excuse the indulgence of our posting a picture of the two of us, as teens, sitting in Julie’s childhood bedroom. We mean for it to be a testament to all women, and the incalculable value of enduring female friendships. Girlfriends.

And thanks to all our contributors, fans, and followers (our guy friends, too), for your writing and reading.

The Saturday Blog: Bowling Green Subway Station

16 Saturday Mar 2013

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Bowling Green subway station 2.18.13

Bowling Green Subway Station in Lower Manhattan. Photo by Julie Seyler.

There is a magnificent piece of architecture in Lower Manhattan, quite close to the ferry terminal to Staten Island, that harks back to the turn of the century. The entrance to the Bowling Green subway, which takes you in and out of Brooklyn, opened in 1905, and is worth looking up to.

Serendipity: Don’t Look, and You Will Find It

14 Thursday Mar 2013

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road trip

Be open to the unexpected on the road ahead. Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I believe in the power of serendipity.

The dictionary defines serendipity as, “the phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” Probably the most common form of serendipity these days is using an Internet search engine, and finding something great that was not what you were looking for. This is part of the attraction of “surfing the web” for many people.

But serendipity is not a new phenomenon. I first noticed its power back in the 1970s when I got my driver’s license. I would set out on a Sunday afternoon in a random direction from my house seeking an adventure. I would make turns on a whim. Sometimes, the reason for a turn would be simply to follow an interesting car like a Corvette or an Alfa Romeo. Sometimes, after the law allowing right on red was passed, it was simply a matter of making a right to keep moving. Most often, the turn was just a feeling drawing me off in that direction.

These trips (long before GPS) invariably ended in an intriguing new place. In addition to adventure, these trips served to familiarize a new driver with all the roads in a 50-mile radius of his home because I always had to find my way home. Then in college, I found serendipity in choosing college courses. My school had a system of registering for courses back then that was based on seniority. Juniors and seniors got first choice of their electives over sophomores and freshmen. I remember one year trying to get into a popular professor’s history course that was filled, and having to settle instead for a course with a professor I did not know. The course proved to be fascinating, and I went on to take two more courses with the professor.

And then there’s serendipity television. That’s when you turn on the television, and a great movie you’ve never seen is on the channel that the television happens to be tuned to. Back about 30 years ago, my wife and I turned on our television on a Saturday morning just to have something to watch while we woke up and ate our breakfast. Three hours later we finished watching “The Best Years of Our Lives.” The film pulled us in and never let go. We later found out that it was an Academy Award winner in 1947, but neither of us had ever heard of it, and probably would not have seen it for many years, if not for serendipity.

The Internet has increased exponentially the possibility of serendipity. Just about every time I go to Netflix to have a particular movie loaded into my queue, I come across another movie or two that I have never heard of that goes on to be a favorite. Companies like Netflix and Amazon have raised “we thought you also might like” to an art form. This is manufactured serendipity, but it still works if you go along with it.

And of course, that’s the secret to serendipity. You have to have a mindset that allows you to go off in an unexpected direction. I know people who have never had a serendipitous experience in their lives, because they simply opt not to. I feel sorry for them. Serendipity adds wonder to life.

A few years ago, my wife and I planned a trip to Colorado and nearby states. We had plotted a complete course for the 4,500-mile drive. Then, two days before we left, I happened upon a picture online that was just breathtaking. I found out that it was taken in Arches National Park near Moab, Utah. As a man who knows serendipity when he sees it, I knew that I had to re-plot my entire trip (including changing motel reservations) to fit in a swing into neighboring Utah. I did that, and the Utah detour proved to be one of the most enjoyable parts of our road trip.

So I am sold on serendipity. I think it adds spice to life in wondrous ways. It’s not knowing what’s around the next bend that makes life interesting. The great sage Yogi Berra would agree. After all, it was Yogi who said, “When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it.” That’s serendipity.

Our Life List: 338 Birds, and Counting

13 Wednesday Mar 2013

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Margo life list

BY MARGO D. BELLER

Many people keep a “bucket list” of things they want to do before they die.

Birders have a life list.

In the 1947 edition of his classic, “Field Guide to the Birds” of the Eastern U.S., Roger Tory Peterson included two pages with a list of birds covered in the volume. The idea was for a watcher to check off each bird when seen for the first time. He called it a “life list,” as in something seen for the first time in your life.

Birders have been rushing around to see and record new birds ever since.

My husband (MH) photocopied that list several times for me years ago, and I’ve used the copies to record birds from various places – my favorite birding spots in New Jersey and in New England, for instance – plus one to use as a master list. This list is so marked up it is hard to follow at times. I’ve had to add many birds as I traveled outside the East. Many birds Peterson considered accidentals, or rarities, in 1947, have become more common as their ranges expand, or as more birders go out in the field and find them.

MH and I have, in our combined life list, seen 338 types of birds in the years we’ve been birders. This may seem like a lot to non-birders, but it is an almost pathetically small number compared with others who are out in the field nearly every day, or who travel the world, the United States, even their neighborhoods in search of new birds. Many have the time and money to do this, and I envy them. MH and I have to fit in our bird activities when we can.

Still, we enjoy being together in our searching, sharing the successes and being wise enough to keep the failures in perspective.

Some “life” birds have come easier than others. The prothonotary warbler that walked out of the bushes in Central Park. The sandhill cranes that soared over the Indiana toll road on our drive back from a midwest wedding. The anhinga, limpkin and kites we saw during a trip to the Florida panhandle.

Our newest, the northern lapwing, came in March and we didn’t have to go too far. Three of these European visitors, with their distinctive crest and coloring, were found by others during the winter, hanging out in a cattle field on a farm in New Egypt, N.J. Like Alexis de Tocqueville, these old-world land plovers found favor with the new world, and were received enthusiastically.

We came after the initial crowd frenzy ended, and were lucky to find another couple watching the birds with a scope, which they allowed us to use. We were also lucky the birds decided to fly around the field, making it fun to study them with binoculars.

If travel broadens the mind, as the saying goes, we will have to do more traveling if we want to expand our life list, and our life.

A Snapshot of Mom’s Old Brown Box Camera

12 Tuesday Mar 2013

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Bob - camera

BY BOB SMITH

I remember as a boy, playing in the snow with my big brother. Bulky as astronauts, we wore heavy coats, wool hats, mittens and insulated boots. There was a foot of snow in our front yard and we were trying to roll up a ball big enough to form the base of a snowman. But the day was too cold; the snow too dry. And we couldn’t get anything that big to stick together. The most we could manage was snowballs, which broke apart as soon as we threw them at each other’s heads.

Mom came outside, and asked us to pose for a picture. Hanging from a strap around her neck was a Kodak Duaflex IV camera, which consisted of a brown cardboard box (with leather-textured surface) with two lenses on the front, facing the subject – one on top for framing the picture, and one below that, with the shutter behind it, where the film would be exposed to capture the image. You lined up a shot by looking straight down through the square viewfinder on top.

“Come on boys, let me get you!”

We paused our snowball war, panting puffy clouds, and faced Mom. When you looked at the camera you could see her upside-down image in the viewfinder lens. She smiled and, as she centered us, she also centered her face, topsy-turvy and fluid, in that rounded frame. Jimmy rested his snow-crusted mitten on my shoulder.

“Okay: 1…2…3…smile!”

She squeezed the button on the side of the box, the lens snicked, and it was done. Mom rolled the metal wheel on the side of the camera to advance the film for another shot, posing us side by side, with shovels jammed into the snow like soldiers with rifles at parade rest. We smiled again at inverted Mom as she snapped the picture, and she went back inside.

That camera came out for every holiday, too. My brothers and sisters and I would be grouped on the couch, giggling, with our hands folded politely in our laps. Someone at the last second (usually Jimmy) would raise two-finger rabbit ears behind someone’s head, or jab an elbow to give the shot extra pizzazz. Because it was indoors, Mom used the flash, which consisted of a silver saucer-like reflector on a plastic battery compartment that screwed onto the side of the camera. Each flashbulb, approximately the size of a ping-pong ball, had a fuzzy maze of blue filaments inside. You had to press and turn the bulb into the hole in the middle of the reflector and eject it so it could be replaced after each shot.

When Mom pushed the button, the flashbulb would explode with a sound like one of the last kernels in the pan turning into popcorn. The brilliant light blinded us briefly, and we would wander around the room in a happy daze, closing our eyes to relish the moonlike afterimage floating across our field of vision.

You never knew what the pictures looked like until they came back from the camera store after being developed, when Mom would paste them into albums. The prints had a scalloped edge with a quarter inch white border, where Mom would include notations like “Easter 1965,” or “Bobby three and a half, Barbara two,” written in careful script just like the “correct” examples in my penmanship textbook.

A few years later, Kodak came out with Instamatic cameras that didn’t have a viewfinder, and featured a built-in flash that didn’t require you to replace a bulb every time you took a shot. There was no popping noise, and the flash was more diffuse so we didn’t get the floating moon afterimage either. We still had to pose and smile but not having mom’s wobbly face in the lens facing you, inviting you inside, took some of the romance out of having our pictures taken.

That Duaflex IV may have been a cheap low-tech camera, but as they say in the credit card commercials – the memories are priceless.

Stored in My Memory Bank: The Pink Pig, Dad’s Silver “Washers”

11 Monday Mar 2013

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il_fullxfull.244653389

Photo courtesy Etsy.com.

By Anthony Buccino

Dad was a carpenter, and each week he gave me the washers from his pay envelope. I’d plunk them onto my piggy bank. Yeah, that’s right, washers as in nuts, bolts and washers.

He told me washers weren’t money and I couldn’t spend them on candy or toys. When we filled the pink pig, we brought them to the big, boring stone bank. They said when I turned 16, I could take the money out.

Whatever they told me, it worked. Heck, I could barely read, and knew nothing about the nearly bald guy etched on my washers. Far from me to figure how worthless washers turned into money, but I accumulated the worthless washers regularly.

When I learned to count, I unscrewed the base, dumped the washers on my bedspread and piled them in five-high stacks. I cheered later as I slipped them back in the slot, clunk-clunk. This is probably how one-armed bandits got their start.

In my smart aleck teen years, I watched Dad when he brought home rolls and rolls of pennies, nickels and dimes. He needed glasses to read by now, and he wasn’t even 50. And there he’d be, with his coins scattered on the living room coffee table, his horn-rimmed reading glasses sliding down his nose, a hand-held magnifying glass in one hand as he tilted each coin to catch the light, date and mint.

He looked like Mr. Magoo. I laughed. “Dad, what are you doing with all these coins? Why aren’t you snoring through a John Wayne war movie?”

Looking at me over the top of his glasses, his grey eyes caught the light and yellow highlights glistened in his white-gray hair. Maybe he’d realize how much time he’s wasting and finish the basement where I could play.

“For you,” he said. “These are all for you.” He turned back to his clutter.

My wife likes to save pennies. Not in those cardboard collectors with the holes punched out and the year and mint pre-printed. And not only by buying bargains, or scouting a Rexall one-cent sale. She likes to save shiny pennies, and pay the change portion with dirty, gross old pennies. She sets aside wheat pennies for my out-of-date collection.

Perhaps she’ll get into the habit of saving dollars, too, when Congress changes from paper bills to coins. I have four of the president series (two Jeffersons, one J.Q. Adams and a Polk that came to me from an NJ Transit ticket vending machine). I keep those coins apart from my real money. NJ Transit says it’s converting those machines back to paper currency.

Those washers I saved were stamped with the image of Ike, and were mostly-silver fifty-cent pieces which we cashed in when Kennedy died. If only.

Forty-odd years later I’m shopping in Italy, struggling to tell a one-euro coin from a two-euro. I stop to don my horn-rimmed reading glasses. That’s when I see my father sorting coins. On my return I check out the washers in my attic.