Category Archives: Men

Smile! Probing Pictures Are Being Taken from Space

07 Monday Oct 2013

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Bob's Universe.

Bob’s universe. By Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

Sitting at breakfast recently reading a magazine, I came across a photo taken by a NASA spacecraft called the Cassini probe, which since 2004 has been orbiting Saturn, exploring the planet and its moons. The entire upper portion of the photo is dominated by the dark arc of one portion of Saturn, and to the right of that, a greenish-gray swath of the planet’s rings. The tightly concentric black and green-gray lines comprising the rings resemble the grooves on an old vinyl record, except that the rings appear to be glowing gently against the black background of space. That dark expanse dominates the center portion of the photo, and at the bottom there’s a ghostly horizonal white stripe that’s either light from an unseen source to the left, or a distant slice of the Milky Way. The image is majestic, peaceful, and kind of eerie.

The sobering thing is that, as explained in the accompanying article, it’s actually a photo of earth from approximately 900 million miles (1.4 billion kilometers) away. I thought, at first, that the object just to the right of center was a fragment of the english muffin I’d been eating. Indeed, a toasty crumb had fallen on the magazine, so I brushed it off to reveal a minuscule white speck – 1/100th the size of my bread crumb. It looked like a nick in the ink, or a dust mote, but I couldn’t wipe it away. According to the article, that irregular speck is the earth and the infinitesmal bulge on its side is the moon, both as seen from Saturn’s orbit.

Two thoughts came to mind: We are nothing. And we are not alone. If an infininte number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters, and an infinite amount of time could eventually write the entire works of Shakspeare, then there must be untold numbers of other planets with Earth-like life forms spread throughout the inconceivable vastness of the universe. I decided to have another fried egg. What the hell.

But the earth photo was nothing compared to the news a few days later, when NASA made the ultimate “Elvis has left the building” announcement: after 36 years of hurtling through the void at 38,000 miles per hour, the Voyager space probe has exited the solar system and entered interstellar space. It’s now nearly 12 billion miles away, and still sends back minute radio signals using a transmitter with about the same amount of power as a refrigerator light bulb. It takes nearly 17 1/2 hours for the signal to reach Earth, and when it arrives, the wattage striking the antenna is only about 1 part in 10 quadrillion. By comparison, it takes 20 billion times more power than that to operate an electronic digital watch.

Aside from studying the planets and the far reaches of our solar system, Voyager also carries a message for any intelligent life that may find it someday: the Golden Record. This 12-inch diameter, gold-plated, copper audiovisual disk includes 115 images and sounds representative of life on Earth as well as musical selections and spoken greetings in 55 languages. Of course, to play the record, you’d first have to build a record/video disk player, speakers, and display screen. I guess they figured that any life form intelligent enough to snatch this probe from its race through space would be able to figure that out. And the NASA engineers were thoughful enough to include a cartridge and needle you could use to play the record once you’d built the machine to play it on – a good idea, since it’s hard even now, right here on Earth, to get needles and cartridges to play old vinyl LPs.

I thought back to the Cassini photo: if the entire planet is a speck from 900 million miles, aren’t we surely invisible from 12 billion and counting? Compared to the universe, our solar system is smaller than an electron oscillating in one molecule of a hair follicle on the ass of a flea. And if we’re invisible and barely detectable, who’s ever going to find us, even if other intelligent beings are out there? And if they really are out there, why haven’t they sent us their Golden LPs, begging for retrieval and playback?

Keep your eyes open, kids. You never know. And let’s just hope that if the aliens send an 8-track tape with information about their planet, they include the whole device because working 8-track players are even scarcer than record needles.

Vacuuming My Way into Clarity

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

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carpenter street

Mowing the lawn of my youth was as cathartic as vacuuming.

BY ANTHONY BUCCINO

It’s the same story every week: “Ant, the house is all dusted. You can vacuum when you’re ready.”

“Aw, I got to vacuum the whole house,” I mutter under my breath.

When I’m ready, I grab the vacuum from the upstairs closet, plug it in and click it on. While the noise drowns out the rest of the world, I focus on specks of dust and lint challenging me to a duel they will lose.

Before I know it, my head is cleared of everyday life. My mind is fogged by memories of Mom and her Electrolux that slid on metal blades across our old rug in the four-room cold water flat.

There was that time when the neighborhood version of “Benny Miller-from-Cucamonga” tried to sell Mom a new vacuum. “Would you let your eight-year-old son pick up a handful of dirt outside and eat it?”

“Of course NOT!”

“But, Mrs. Buccino,” he said, “the rug inside your house is much worse than the dirt outside.”

Hey, I was eight. I wouldn’t eat dirt in the yard. Anymore. What was this guy talking about?

Ma was unconvinced and sent him on his way. She wouldn’t even give him the name of a friend he could call on, the way a now-former friend had given her his name. We made do with that old Electrolux until after we moved to our big house, where there was now also a wall-to-wall carpet to vacuum.

That new house had an 8,000 square foot side lawn that needed to be mowed. Gone was that old rotary push mower. In my eagerness to use the new Lawn Boy Dad bought, that chore became mine.

After a gazillion pulls on the easy-start cord, the roaring motor drowned out the rest of the world. I focus on overlapping cuts, straight lines, the end of my imaginary row where I’ll turn around and head back in 200-foot paths for the next hour and a half.

Automatically, I round trees, maneuver past pits, side-cut hills, and watch for that silly little patch of blue grass growing below the black walnut tree. I kick aside the fallen green walnuts. I know where every root pops up, and where I might create a divot. I eye the neighbor’s hedges that need trimming, stop and empty the bag of clippings, leaving the mower to whine for my return. As my hands are shaken into numbness, my brain solves all the problems of my little world.

After Dad died, and I had a home of my own, Ma’s lawn was still under my stewardship. Weekly I’d haul the latest working mower and gas can back and forth between our lawns.

I’d tell my daughter, “Hey, you want to visit Grandma? We can take our lawn mower for a ride. It’ll be so much fun.”

The older I got, the larger Mom’s lawn seemed. By comparison, my home lawn was a postage stamp and hers was the novel, “Pride and Prejudice”. At least Mom was still up to doing her own vacuuming.

Meanwhile, back at my ranch, I was able to bring home a Labrador Retriever, as long as I promised to vacuum all the dog hair in its wake. No one could figure how our basement dog got her fur past the drop stairs into the second-floor attic. But there I was, vacuuming dog hair in the attic.

Two dogs later, and I’m still vacuuming dog hair everywhere. Heck, our latest Lab sees me plug in the vacuum, and heads to the sanctuary of his crate on the bare floor side of the basement.

I don’t know that my father ever touched our vacuum. Mom was a housewife. Dad went to work, Ma did her chores. Monday was wash day. Tuesday was ironing. Wednesday was scrubbing. Thursday was mending. Friday was mopping. Every day was cooking dinner.

When Mom vacuumed, the old Electrolux had a cloth bag held in by clamps. When the bag was full, Mom would empty the dirt and dust onto old newspapers spread out on the floor. Try doing that online. These days when the bag is full, I snap it out and replace it with a clean bag. Our local vacuum dealer recommends we have ours serviced about every 90 days. Huh? I don’t even change the bags that often.

Nowadays we split chores. I don’t mind vacuuming. Bachelors must vacuum their pads, no? Eventually, yes? In fact, I sometimes really get into vacuuming. I flip over furniture, zip under dining room chairs, slip under slipcovers and leave a path of no footprints. I crisscross the carpet giving it the look of center field at Yankee Stadium. All this time, I keep a business-like look on my face. You can’t let on that vacuuming is cathartic.

“Aw, I got to vacuum!” You may hear me moan, but I look forward to those moments when the noise fills the outside air and my brain solves all the problems of my little world.

Knocking at My New Front Door: My 59th Birthday; Retirement

30 Monday Sep 2013

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Bob door

BY BOB SMITH

When you’re born, they start at zero, and count your age in days, weeks and months until you’ve completed a year of life, and you turn one. I was 59 on September 29, which means I’ve completed my 59th year on the planet, and my 60th year begins, today, on September 30. I’m not “in my 60s” as the term is conventionally used, but it’s close enough. Holy crap – suddenly I’m old.

I’m also retiring after nearly 30 years of practicing law – more than 26 of those with the same firm. It’s unsettling to be leaving a profession and a work environment that I know so well, but it’s also exciting to be setting out into uncharted waters. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do – acting, writing, and travel all come to mind. But the important thing is that I’ll be defining what I do, and when I do it. And it doesn’t matter if I earn money at it or not. My last day at work is today, Monday, September 30.

Now that we don’t need to live close to any work site (my wife retired from her job in Nutley in December), we’re having renovations done at our former vacation home in Monmouth County, and will move there permanently in a couple of weeks. We did an extensive facelift of the house, including new siding and ground-level stone, the addition of a porch on the third floor, and upgrading the siding, railings and trim around the porches on the first and second floors.

We’re also adding a brand-new mahogany front door, with a stained-glass insert in the center, and stained-glass panels on either side. It’s replacing a double door that had a white aluminum frame and full glass panels – basically, a sliding glass door with handles and hinges. The new door, by contrast, is a work of art.

As with most renovations, this project has hit a number of snags – missing/slow tradesmen, late inspectors, delayed shipment of materials, machinery, and/or fixtures, rerouting pipes and ductwork to accommodate conditions unknown until the walls were opened, etc. The usual.

As a result, the projected completion date of July 30 has now been pushed to October something-soon. My builder won’t commit to anything more concrete than after the first, but before Halloween. Although the front porch and the steps leading to it have been rebuilt, the paved path that’s supposed to run between the porch steps and the sidewalk is still a pile of dirt. Nonetheless, the builder tells me he’s ready to install the new front door. It’s to be delivered, today, Monday, September 30, and installed on Tuesday, October 1.

That’s also my first day of retirement. And the second day of my 60th year. They say that when one door – or in this case, a couple of them – closes, a new one opens. We’ll see.

Private Planes Bring Clearer Skies

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

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frank 9.20.13

By FRANK TERRANELLA

We over-50s came of age just at the time when air travel was becoming dominant. We saw the decline and fall of the dominance of rail and steamship travel.

I can remember when I was a kid, we went to bon voyage parties aboard the cruise ships my grandparents were taking to Italy. I can remember my school friends taking the train to Miami. But by the end of the 1960s, it was all air travel.

Back in those pre-terrorism-mentality days, people who were meeting a flight could go right to the gate. Needless to say, there was no searching of passengers, and their carry-ons, although simple metal detectors were brought in after people began hijacking planes to Cuba.

Anyway, people our age grew up with air travel. It wasn’t special like it was for our parents. It was just transportation, faster than the train or steamship. And that speed meant that getting there quickly took a priority over enjoying the sights along the way. While trains had big, glass-enclosed touring cars so that you could see the countryside, airliners climbed to 40,000 feet, and showed you the tops of clouds.

But air travel doesn’t have to be this get-there-quick-with-the-shades-drawn-while-we-watch-a-movie-and-eat experience. It’s possible for air travel to be just as leisurely, and scenic, as train travel – you just have to know someone who has their own plane. frank again

Fortunately, I have a friend my age who learned how to fly his own plane after he reached the right side of 50. Brian lives in upstate New York, and flies his plane all over the East Coast. Sometimes he flies down to a small airport in New Jersey, and visits with me and my wife (we were all college classmates together). And sometimes we drive to where he is and he takes us up for a scenic view.

Recently, we drove to Cape Cod to meet Brian and his 92-year-old mom. Brian had his plane at the Provincetown Airport, and he took my wife and me up for a leisurely tour of the end of Cape Cod. We were high enough to get the Google Earth perspective of the Cape, but close enough to the ground to see the details of houses and shoreline below us. It was marvelous.

While we were out flying, there were some hot air balloons in the distance and it occurred to me that that is another way to get a leisurely air view. It’s travel where the trip is all the fun, and you get there when you get there. That type of travel is more and more appealing to me all the time. My wife and I will be taking a Mediterranean cruise next month, and I look forward to just sitting on my balcony and watching the world go by. I don’t know whether that means I’m getting old, or just that I have come to appreciate taking the time to stop and smell the roses. I like to think it’s the latter.

Farewell to Summer, and Its Tomatoes

24 Tuesday Sep 2013

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bob tomato

BY BOB SMITH

In our garden, we have about a dozen grape and cherry tomato plants. It takes more work to pick them than with Big Boy or other large tomato varieties because you have to pluck fifteen or more of these little gems to equal one of the others. But we prefer them because the fruit is so much sweeter. We inadvertently planted them too close together, so they grew into an impenetrable tangle of interlaced green tendrils – a dozen plants became one, and happily have been giving us sweet, red beads of fruit since mid-July.

Now it’s September, and the season is dwindling. We’ve already seen a couple of nights with temperatures in the low 50s – threatening to go lower. So before fall officially arrived Sunday at 4:44 p.m., I went out to pick the last tomatoes of the season. The sky was pure blue, with the temperature around 70, and a light breeze – the kind of afternoon where you knew that if the sun wasn’t beating down on you, it would feel chilly. But when the breeze died down, and I turned my face to the sky, I could pretend for a moment it was still full summer.

From ten feet away, the green tangle was generously sprinkled with dots of red – meaning lots of tiny ripe tomatoes waited to be harvested. I grabbed a big bowl and set to work – working my way along the length of the garden, one arm’s width section at a time. I took the blood red ones, and even slightly yellow ones too, knowing those won’t ripen anyway in the last warm days and cooler nights ahead. And I left behind hundreds of hard green nuggets that will never see the table. But nothing’s wasted – in late October, after the first hard frosts, we’ll chop those up along with the spent vines, and throw them into the compost pile to make fertilizer for next year.

At each stop, I picked in a vertical column, top to bottom – first those nearest the top of the canopy that I could reach standing up. Before depositing each one in the bowl, I pinched off its top, littering the ground around the plants with green caps and stems. Then I kneeled and reached under the plants, ducking my head between them and reaching upward into the crowded green canopy, pushing aside, and untangling the ropy threads to find the pink pearls hiding beneath the leaves. I heard the high-pitched kamikaze-whine of mosquitoes, roused from their midday torpor, buzzing at my ears. My hands were full, and I couldn’t swat – I’d deal with the itching later.

After combing through the middle of the canopy looking upward, I turned to the lower branches and the ground, where tomatoes I had dropped or jostled from their stems lay waiting in the cool shade to be gathered up. By the time I stood up 45 minutes later with a slightly sore back and sandy knees, my bowl was full. To top things off, I moved to the fig tree, and plucked five figs – plump and brown – still warm from the sun.

Despite all their vibrant flavor and color, taking the last tomatoes of summer from the vine is bittersweet. In a few brief days there will be no more. For all plants and creatures and seasons, time runs its course.

But for now, we celebrate. I brought the bowl inside, discarded those that had hidden wormholes or other defects, and counted the take: three one-quart containers full, 300 or more succulent red berries in all.

Time to make tomato salad:

  • 2 to 3 cups grape or cherry tomatoes (probably one of those quart containers full), sliced in half. This takes time, but it’s worth it, releasing all the sweet juices and tender seeds.
  • 3/4 cup chopped scallions.
  • 1 – 2 tablespoons chopped basil (or a few teaspoons of dried basil, if that’s
  • all you have).
  • 1 – 2 tablespoons dried rosemary, crushing the stems in your hands.
  • 1/4 cup each of extra-virgin olive oil, white vinegar, and sherry.

Play with the proportions of the spices and liquid ingredients to suit your palate. Toss all ingredients and season to taste with kosher salt. Let it sit for an hour or more to let the flavors mingle. Serve with warm crusty Italian bread, sweet butter, and a glass of red wine. Repeat red wine as needed.

Ti saluto, another fine summer.

I’ll Always Have a Love for a “We’ll-Always-Have” Story

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

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Frank Robert and Francesca.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Those who follow my writings on this blog may have picked up on a theme that runs through most of my favorite books, movies and even songs. I am a lover of stories about people who meet, enjoy a brief time together, and then are forced to move on. It’s been described as ships-passing-in-the-night fiction.

A famous example of this is, “Casablanca.” Rick and Ilsa enjoy a short time together in both Paris and Casablanca, but they part at the airport. And as Rick reminds Ilsa, “We’ll always have Paris.” And that’s the way I like to refer to these stories. To me they are the, “We’ll-always-have(fill in the blank)” stories.

Over the years there have been many, “We’ll-always-have” stories.  One of my favorites is, “Two For The Seesaw,” a 1962 film starring Shirley MacLaine and Robert Mitchum that was made into the musical, “Seesaw” a decade later.  Stories like this are naturals for musicalization because the emotional level is so high.

A more recent example of this is, “The Bridges of Madison County.”  A few weeks ago I saw a performance of the pre-Broadway run of, “Bridges” up in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  Most people known the story from the 1995 Clint Eastwood/Meryl Streep movie, but the original Robert James Waller novel is much more heartfelt. Anyway, the musical version of the story comes to Broadway early next year and I heartily recommend it for those who love a good, “We’ll-always-have” story.

For the uninitiated, “The Bridges of Madison County” revolves around Francesca Johnson, an Italian-born war bride who marries an American GI right after World War II, and accompanies him home to his farm in Winterset, Iowa. She raises a family and has a good life there. But then one day a photographer named Robert Kincaid arrives at her farmhouse. He’s lost and looking for directions to a nearby covered bridge. Francesca is home alone because her family is at the Illinois State Fair. What transpires over the next week is one of the great love stories of all time. But just as Rick knew that the right thing to do was to let Ilsa go off with her husband, Robert and Francesca painfully reach the same decision. Francesca must stay with her husband and children. And so, even though they would never see each other again, they’d always have that week in Winterset.

But perhaps you have experienced your own “We’ll-always-have” story in real life. It doesn’t have to have been the love of your life. Maybe you had a dear childhood friend, and the family had to move away. I can imagine a tearful farewell scene where you promised to write, and never forget one another.

I had that kind of tearful farewell 40 years ago at a train station in Baden-Oos, Germany (now known as Baden-Baden). My cousin Bob and I were in college, and backpacking through Europe. We met two sisters in Budapest, and hit it off so well that we couldn’t bear to say goodbye when our planned time there ended. So they invited us to visit them at their home on a Canadian military base in Germany. We had such a tremendous time in those few days that there were tears at the train station when we had to get back to Munich for our flight home. We promised to write, and I did diligently for several years. Eventually life moved on for all of us. But even though Bob and I are not likely to ever meet Rosemary or Linda again, we’ll always have Germany.

While there is something sad about two friends or lovers separated by life, what makes these stories bittersweet rather than tragedies is the fact that they did enjoy a brief time of true happiness. In fact their happiness is so strong that it’s enough to last a lifetime. So whether it’s Robert and Francesca, Rick and Ilsa or even you and that special someone you had to leave behind, there is much truth in the words of Tennyson: “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

And we’ll always have our memories.

Ocean Grove Flea Market a Great Find

17 Tuesday Sep 2013

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flea market

Photos by Bob Smith.

BY BOB SMITH

On a recent Saturday, we went to the annual Ocean Grove Flea Market, which is probably the largest such event held in Monmouth County each year. Over 300 vendors set up tables and booths on Ocean Pathway, the wide swath of grass between the Great Auditorium and Ocean Avenue. (The Great Auditorium itself is pretty impressive. Built in 1894, and featuring seating for over 6,000, it’s supposedly the largest enclosed auditorium in New Jersey.)

But this day wasn’t about the auditorium, it was about the flea market – hundreds of sellers displaying every trinket, doodad, and outright junk you could imagine. It was sunny and pleasantly warm – the kind of September day that sweeps away all memory of the humid August doldrums, and makes you wish summer would never end. At the center of the event were food vendors selling sausage and pepper sandwiches, meats of dubious provenance barbecued on a stick, Italian ice, hot dogs, lemonade, calzones, and candied popcorn. The smoke and steam rising from the clustered food trucks combined to give the day a carnival air.
We promptly fell into a predictable pattern: the women in our group lingered at the jewelry and clothing tables, while my brother Jim and I poked through adjacent displays of moldy books and magazines, glassware, tools, candles, board games, and toys.flea3

There were impressive collections of refurbished antique furniture, carefully glued together and polished for resale. There were concrete lawn ornaments shaped like geese, frogs, turtles, lizards, and grimacing gremlins. There were carved wooden replicas of African tribal masks, brightly painted gourds, and an array of meat cleavers in varying sizes for all your cleaving needs.

flea5 best
There was a phalanx of shiny metallic figures, each resembling a dentist, lawyer, accountant, surgeon, or other professional – all inexplicably fashioned from cheese graters. There were Ghostbusters action figures, and an anonymous pile of molded green soldiers, twelve for a dollar. There were handmade doilies, baseball cards, bayonets, and real World War II army helmets – both Allied and German (none with bullet holes). We picked them up, and marveled at their dull weight, and at how much more effective the German helmets seemed, with their sides extending down over the ears and neck in back like an angular ’60s flip hairdo.

We allowed one hawker to spot-test a cosmetic depilatory on one of the women. He buttered a wide piece of tape with the magic goo, laid it on her arm for two seconds, then peeled it off and proudly displayed the result: a hairy piece of tape. He assured us it was equally effective on mens’ ears, chests, noses, and sensitive parts of the female anatomy. We were duly impressed, but weren’t willing to lay out $35 for a gallon jug of the stuff, which based on that demonstration would appear to be a lifetime supply – at least for the mildly hirsute.

We were less impressed when that now-naked swatch of our companion’s arm developed an angry red chemical burn ten minutes later. But it was all in good fun. I bought a jar of local honey – guaranteed to guard against allergies, and at $8 a pound, to dispel the beekeepers’ aversion to poverty. My sister-in-law bought a portable (meaning it weighs less than six German WWII helmets), vintage Singer sewing machine that my brother declared would be perfect to keep the other sewing machines company in their closet at home. And for our 11 nieces, my wife Maria bought lovely, unique, hand-crafted Christmas gifts, the nature of which I’m not at liberty to disclose or it would spoil the surprise.

Here’s a hint: wide metal cuff bracelets with vintage costume jewelry earrings and pendants artistically arranged and glued on top. Shhhh. It’s a secret.

A Commuter Tale (From Home)

12 Thursday Sep 2013

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port authority bus terminal

BY ANTHONY BUCCINO

“Left a good job in the city … la-di-da-dah.” 

I wonder if Fogerty had to wait ten minutes for a bus, take a 45-minute ride – on a good day – and then walk uptown for about 15 minutes from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan dodging hundreds of early-rising tourists looking for the line in the skyline in Times Square from W. 42nd Street to W. 48th Street and Avenue of the Americas?

TIMES SQUARE 2

In that short trip, we leave the one-family homes in outer suburbia, pass the shuttered gas stations, the backside of one mall and the side view of another, cross a memorial bridge over the Passaic River, then tool along that river for a while until it’s time to ride parallel to the highway-under-forever-construction project to Ridge Road at the ridge of New Jersey’s great northern swamp. The swamp is a reminder of man’s tinkering with nature. It was once a vast forest until the settlers decided the trees there made fabulous furniture.

We roll along a half-cloverleaf past the former drive-in theater (now business center), and pass the new stadium that replaced the 40-year-old stadium, onto the highway, the past-due arena, and a blue-striped, boxy monstrosity that someday may become a mega-mall if it doesn’t sink into the muck and mire of earth and New Jersey politics. Think of it as a piece of art to awaken sleepy commuters slogging towards the wizard in that city back-lit by a glimmering sun. For home-bound commuters, it’s a symbol of leaving behind all that is ugly, and yet still stands, while everyone fills their pockets and the construction never gets done.

For a while, in the morning heading into the city, our buses have their own lanes. We’re actually driving in the left lane against oncoming traffic – yes, on the other side of the divided highway taking us all the way to the whirlwind helix leading into the tunnel named for our 16th president. Unless you’re riding shotgun, or have a habit of staring out the driver’s side window, the tight traffic pattern goes virtually unnoticed.  But it serves to move us quickly (a relative term), to our destination to two of the ugliest, yet functional, buildings known as the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Inside, the buses queue as far as the eye can see, stopping long enough to let out a few passengers, then pulling up, letting off a few more, repeat, rinse and spit. And so you see the eager beavers rush to be the first off the bus at the earliest stops in the queue. They can then scoot down the stairwells and arrive at the west side of the terminal. The longer you stay on the bus, the farther east you travel. In the “far east,” you’ll find the escalators that take you down a level, thus avoiding the crush of the stairwells.

Moving staircase or static steps, down a level, and you end up on the mezzanine level where you must decide how to leave the building. If you debark the bus early you may walk the city-block width of the terminal at the mezzanine level, or the first floor level. Or you may simply exit the nearby west doors to your destination. Each path has its own rewards and retailers.

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There are always too many people milling around the station. They have time to sit around, read a newspaper, have coffee or breakfast, or wait in line to buy a magazine or a winning lottery ticket out of this rat race. Well, that is what it’s all about. I mean we all want to get out of this rat race. We know the rats are winning. Remember that ugly blue-striped building?

We go to work every day so we can some day stay home, and not go to work. There are plenty of good jobs in the city; plenty for us to leave when we get tired of the crowds, the endless walks, the broken sidewalks, tripping potholes, sudden-stopping tourists, Bible-spouting commuters.

If we look long enough, we’ll see Murray the groundhog frolicking in the safe zone under the catenary wires. Murray is fat, dumb, and happy. He doesn’t have to commute to work in the city. Neither these days does Proud Mary – nor I. I write from home.

Happy Trails.

SUBWAY

A B&B Can Be “Home” on the Road

10 Tuesday Sep 2013

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frank bab1

By FRANK TERRANELLA

Staying at a bed and breakfast (B&B) is not for everyone. It takes a bit of a leap of faith, and more than a little effort to be sociable. So if you’re really not a morning person, and just want to be left alone while you eat breakfast, you’re better off staying at the Hilton, Holiday Inn, or any of the other cookie-cutter hotel room providers. But if you are up for a bit of adventure, and just love meeting new, interesting people, there’s nothing like a B&B. Recently, I was reading that in the 19th century many inns did not provide private rooms. Strangers shared rooms, and even in some cases, they shared beds. Meals were, of course, communal.

Well. 21st century B&Bs have maintained the shared meals and shared living rooms, but the rooms in most B&Bs are now private, and come with private bathrooms. Yet it is the communal part of the B&B experience that makes it special. My wife and I were in our 50s when we tried our first B&B.

It was a wonderful home in Bennington, Vermont called The Four Chimneys. We had some trepidation about how communal an experience this would be. We quickly found out that at a B&B you can be as social or as unsocial as you want. Those who want to keep to themselves can do so. But the real fun is sitting around the communal living room and meeting the other guests. Invariably we had met fascinating people, and had a great time. Some B&Bs are just large, old houses that the owner sets up for guests. You stay in a guest bedroom; you eat in the dining room; you hang out in the living room of what was once a normal house. Newer B&Bs are built almost like a hotel with all the modern amenities except that care is taken not to get larger than a large house. So typically, there are five or fewer bedrooms.

One B&B we stayed at in Mendocino, California, the MacCallum House, had both the old-fashioned-house guest rooms, as well as a newly-constructed annex. Mendocino is one of those places that are full of B&Bs. Most recently, we stayed at a new B&B in Williamstown, Mass., up near the Vermont border. It was called Journey’s End, and I hesitate to mention it because I fear I may never be able to get a reservation again once people discover it.

Journey’s End is a beautiful new construction B&B. It’s a log cabin on a hill with a gorgeous view of the Berkshires. The people we met there were mostly over-50 travelers, so we had a lot in common. But probably the best thing at Journey’s End is the food that Carlos feeds his guests for breakfast. That’s something that’s common to all B&Bs. You get a real home-cooked meal every morning. B&Bs are perfect for making you feel like you’re at home while you’re on the road. I recommend them to all over 50 travelers who may be looking for a cross between a motel and the youth hostels we stayed in while backpacking 40 years ago. A B&B provides a great communal traveling experience but with private rooms. It’s the best of both worlds.

My Stool-Sample Story

06 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

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Drawing by Julie Seyler.

Drawing by Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

Last week, as part of my annual check-up, I had routine bloodwork done. I was also given “homework” in the form of a stool-sample kit, which tests for blood in your feces. If they find blood, it could mean you have colon cancer, which is highly treatable in its early stages, but frightfully deadly later on.

The stool-sample kit is ingenious. You lay a piece of thin paper on the surface of the water in your commode to create a temporary floating platform, “make your deposit” on it, then jab the top of the floating waste with a tool resembling a spiky plastic toothpick – twisting to ensure full coverage. Then you snap the befouled toothpick into a sterile plastic carrying case, wrap the case in a sliver of bubble wrap, and slide the whole thing into a padded, postage prepaid envelope addressed to the testing lab. Dump the envelope into the nearest mailbox, and it’s done.

Are we having fun yet? Surely not half as much fun as the lab technician whose job it is to unwrap and test those spiky sticks all day long.

Anyway, I dutifully completed the test, mailed it off, and totally forgot about the blood work and stool sample – until I went home after four days away and listened to the accumulated phone messages. There were four: one wrong number, and the next three, ominously, from my doctor’s office. All three merely recited that it was Dr. Gold’s office calling for Robert W. Smith, and asked that I give them a call. I’m not technically savvy, so I couldn’t figure out whether the messages had been left over three days, or three hours. Nonetheless, I was a bit alarmed that the doctor’s office was so anxious to reach me.

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