Tag Archives: The Write Side of 50

My Birthday: Historically, Not a Fair-Weather Friend

10 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in Confessional

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

MARGO SNOW BIRTHDAY

It’s February. It’s my birthday. It’s snowy.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

February 10 was the coldest day of winter in 1957. My mother told me, many years after the fact, that she was glad to be giving birth to me, her first child, in the warmth of a Brooklyn hospital rather than in the new house she and Dad had just moved into.

While she and I were in the hospital, and my father was either visiting or at work, the house was robbed. Not exactly an auspicious start to my existence, although the robbery was an excuse for my father to buy our first dog, who grew up with me.

My mother was from western Canada and had been working in public health in Jamestown, New York. So she wasn’t exactly a stranger to many feet of snow, and intense cold. Brooklyn must have seemed like paradise.

In 1969, my birthday coincided with a nor’easter. I remember coming out of the elementary school, across the street from my home, and being unable to get over the snow piles. I remember the wind and the blinding snow. I don’t remember being as scared as I would be now.

Suddenly, my mother appeared, grabbed me and got us home. She said my sister had seen me from her bedroom window.

I never questioned that story. My mother knew everything, and so if that’s what happened, it happened.

Many years after she died, not much older than I am today, I wondered about that storm and about the day I was born. My husband, whose many hobbies include collecting weather records, confirmed that, indeed, February 10, 1957, was the coldest day of that season.

As for the 1969 storm, his compact disc of New York Times front pages reminded me that was the one people of a certain age will forever link with Mayor John Lindsay. The city was crippled, and it took weeks to plow out Brooklyn and the rest of the boroughs – bringing the city’s wrath upon Lindsay, who had just started a new term.

Another inauspicious moment: On my birthday in 1978, MH, then my boyfriend, and I enjoyed being off from college classes because the over-two-feet of snow that fell two days before was still blocking roads. We were on our own when it came to meals. It was a fun time for us.

Now, decades later, it’s not so much fun. Property owners, we’re out there shoveling our walks, begging our plow guy to clear the driveway (and paying for the privilege), and doing the penguin shuffle trying to walk anywhere outside the house. We’re more concerned about falling on ice, and not being able to get back up. We’re scared of broken bones, and going to the hospital.

We’re dreaming of February. In Bora Bora.

Well, on this birthday, I’ve given myself the gift of taking it easy. I have taken the day off, filled the feeders, and brought the birds to me instead of seeking them out in the cold. It’s a good day.

50 Years Ago, The Beatles Met the U.S.

07 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by in News

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

beatles redux

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I have long held that Baby Boomers are defined by the fact that they were all in school when President Kennedy was killed. And just a few months later, all Baby Boomers were witnesses to the British music invasion that began 50 years ago with the appearance of The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.

It was Friday, February 7, 1964, when Pan Am flight 101 arrived from Heathrow Airport carrying The Beatles. The newly-renamed Kennedy Airport was the scene, as hundreds of screaming fans turned out to see the four long-haired musicians from Liverpool.  The Beatles gave a press conference at which their long hair was a constant topic for questions.

“When’s the last time you had a haircut?” a reporter yelled.

“I had one yesterday,” George replied.

A little later that day, thousands flocked to the Plaza Hotel in New York, where The Beatles were staying. Meanwhile, WINS, WMCA and WABC went wall-to-wall Beatles as John, Paul, George and Ringo called in to the various New York disk jockeys. Chief among these was Murray the K, who managed to talk himself into the Beatles suite for a live broadcast. Thereafter, Murray liked to call himself the 5th Beatle.

The Beatles hysteria continued all weekend with its climax Sunday night on the Ed Sullivan Show. It’s hard to describe the Ed Sullivan Show to people who never saw it. I suppose it followed the vaudeville model of something for everyone. And so it was not unusual for Ed to introduce an opera singer, followed by a comedian, followed by a rock group followed, by a troupe of acrobats, jugglers or trained animals.

Anyway, on the evening of February 9, 1964, everyone knew that the Beatles were making their U.S. debut, and the audience was filled with screaming teens. The Sullivan show was the hottest ticket in town that night. I remember seeing that Walter Cronkite’s daughter was in the audience. Those of us without CBS connections had to make due watching on television.

Ed was a smart showman, who knew he had pulled off a coup in booking the Beatles. He was known as, “Old Stoneface,” because he rarely smiled on his show. But Ed was all smiles that night. When he said, “Here they are – the Beatles,” the screams from the audience surely pinned the needle on the studio sound meter, and Ed put his hands over his ears. The Beatles themselves were barely audible over the noise. This would be the norm for the next two years every time the group performed.

During the course of their performance, the CBS staff put up identifications (as if we needed them) of the four Beatles under close-ups of each one. That included a second line under John Lennon’s name that said, “Sorry girls, he’s married.”

I remember that the Beatles actually appeared on the Sullivan show three weeks in a row (the third performance was on tape). In between, they appeared at Carnegie Hall and in Washington D.C. – Beatlemania in the U.S. was under way.

That summer, their first film, “A Hard Day’s Night,” was released, and the same screams that always followed the Fab Four were heard in movie theaters throughout the country.

Beatlemania was one of the hallmarks of the youth of Baby Boomers. And now it’s 50 years in the past. Can you believe it?

On Meat and Men: I’ve Caved

06 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by in Food

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

loves meat 3BY LOIS DESOCIO

I am woman. Give me meat.

This girly-girl has recently gone Paleolithic. It started at a recent birthday dinner. It was at a steakhouse. As a lover of everything about a steakhouse (the dark wood, the long bar, the abundance of men) except steak, I’ve always been the odd woman out by ordering fish or pasta.

“Because you only order steak at a steakhouse,” has been the retort to my comments on the badly turned-out fish, or the limp and over-laden pasta that is usually standard fare at a steakhouse.

So that night, for the first time (I believe ever), I caved in, and proclaimed from my new “What-the-hey-I’m-59,” mountaintop:

“I’ll have the Blackened Rib Eye!” (Smothered in onions, mushrooms, and a Jack Daniels demi-glaze.)

It was good – good enough. But what struck me that night, and has stuck with me a month later, is what didn’t stick with me that night – the puffy, sloth-like aftermath of my usual order of a loaf of bread with a bowl of pasta, or anything with a glob of melted cheese on top.

I ate half the steak, and all of the accompanying broccoli. I got full fast, and stayed that way until the next day. (No late night, pasta-leftover, round-two in front of the TV.)

egg meatSo now I’m on a roll. I recently took the load of leftover sausage that was in my freezer from Christmas, put on Dean Martin (whose voice makes me cave), and hacked and clawed the casing from the sausage, pummeled and pounded it into a circle, mushed it together with the foraged-for-and-handpicked-from-the-local-market (which I walked to) cremini mushrooms – and baked it with an egg on top. The recipe is in line with the revival of the Paleo, or Caveman, diet).

And since it’s pretty much a done deal that we all have a ” … little bit of Neanderthal in us …“, I see nothing amiss about replacing my oatmeal, or leftover-quinoa breakfast, with a big turkey drumstick.

turkey leg

Breakfast.

So my life-long sidestep around meat may have taken a turn. In spite of descending from a family that loves liver, I’ve never craved a mutton chop like I do a potato chip. I’ve never said, “Yum,” at the sight of a blood-red Porterhouse. Meat is not crunchy enough for me, nor as consoling as a carbohydrate. But now, I’ve learned that the beauty of meat lies in its ability to satiate with just a small portion.

I now feel leaner than ever. I’ve trimmed most of the fat that had inched-up and stuck to my middle after the Christmas carbo-overload.

And, to be honest, a T-Bone is actually more in sync with the primitive, inner me; that cave-man girl. The one who doesn’t crave a knight in shining armor, but whose appetite has always been whetted by a hulk of a man who grunts just to her, and drags her off into his man cave to share his meat.

Revisiting Shirley Temple, and a Collective Innocence

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Confessional

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , ,

bright eyes 2

BY JULIE SEYLER

Between the ages of 7 and 9, I was a Shirley Temple fiend. Come Sunday morning, I could count on curling up in front of the 14″ black and white TV to watch Shirley sing, dance and cry on cue. I knew all of her movies by heart. This was no feat, since they basically followed the same formula. Shirley is either an orphan, or becomes an orphan and is rescued from despair due to her adorable precociousness. I outgrew Shirley, and she outgrew acting and became a United States ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia (when that country still existed).

But the other night I returned to my childhood because TCM was broadcasting “Bright Eyes,” made 80 years ago, in 1934. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was again captivated by Shirley’s charm as she belts out “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” for a bunch of pilots that look like they’re about 40 (but are probably only 20), as a plane taxis back and forth on the runway. The plot in “Bright Eyes” follows the predicable trajectory:

When the movie starts, Shirley’s father, a pilot, is already dead. She understands he “cracked up.” Her mother has found work as a maid with a mean, rich family with a bratty little daughter. On Shirley’s birthday, her mother is run over by a car, and Shirley learns that her mother has “cracked up” also. Of course, the mean rich family wants to turn poor Shirley out on the street, and of course that doesn’t happen. If you want to know how it ends, download the movie, because what really hooked me into watching it all the way through were the little details that highlighted the innocence of 1934.

The movie opens with Shirley hitchhiking to the airport. Yes, there she is sticking out her 5-year-old thumb to get a ride. That scene is so out of whack today, not just because hitchhiking is passé, but because she is without any adult supervision. Just think about a time and place when we felt so safe that the motion picture industry could depict a working mother allowing her daughter to hitch a ride without any fear that it would be accused of promoting parental neglect.

When she arrives at the airport, she marches right onto the runway. No one bats an eye as this tot plants herself on the tarmac to watch pilots do loops in the sky. Would any pilot do a loop-de-loop in the sky today?

Later, when she decides to run away from the mean family, she climbs into the cargo hatch of the plane, and hangs out as the plane soars through the worst storm ever. No one was guarding the gate with orders to remove her shoes, and walk through a metal detector or body scanner. Those devices, invented to protect us from plane bombs and hijackings, were non-existent in those long ago days because the biggest fear in flying was a crack-up, not the notion that someone would want to blow up a plane.

But there was one thing in the movie that was familiar.The featured mode of transportation was an American Airlines plane. Somehow or other, with all the craziness in the airline industry American Airlines, unlike Pan Am and TWA, has managed to stay in the business of transporting passengers and freight through the air since 1934.

‘Lovin50’ Plate: Vanity? Revelry? Polygamy?

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Art, Men

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

loving 50 plate

BY BOB SMITH

I saw this vanity license plate (LOVIN50), while driving on Route 66 the other day. Is it a confession of polygamy? If so, this guy (or gal) would rival Brigham Young, who, according to some sources, reportedly had up to 55 wives. Then again, even if you had 50 spouses, would you really be “LOVIN50”? You’d probably be indifferent to at least a few, and downright dislike another dozen or two. It’s also been reported by some sources, that even Brigham Young had divorced 10 of his 55 wives by the time he died (stone deaf and exhausted, no doubt).

Or is the license plate a commemoration of 50 years of marriage between Loretta (LO) and Vincent (VIN)? That’s a stretch. Besides, the car wasn’t going 15 in a 55-mile-zone with a little white head, and glasses, peering over the steering wheel.

The most likely explanation seems to be that the driver recently rolled the birthday odometer over from 4 to 5, and is reveling in this happy decade after youthful insecurities have mostly melted away, and before outright decay entirely sets in – Whoopee! I’m 50 and LOVIN’ it!

At age 20, or even 30, I would have been nauseated at the thought of proclaiming my age like that. But once you’re in your 50s, you gain valuable perspective – namely, who gives a crap what other people think? You’re mature enough to sport a vanity license plate that shows both humility (admitting advancing age) and chutzpah (and I’m just fine with that).

I wonder if the driver has reserved LOVIN60 against the day when he or she rolls up to the next decade? Then again, by then, maybe they’ll just be LIKIN’ it.

Memories of Super Bowl XX: We Scored Big

03 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

Frank with baby

David was born on the Monday after Super Bowl XX, 1986.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

There is no more compelling demonstration of the circle of life than the coming of a new baby. If all goes well, my family will add a new member next month. And as my son and daughter-in-law prepare for the miracle that is childbirth, I am inevitably drawn back to January 26, 1986, the day before my son was born.

It was a Sunday, but not just any Sunday. It was Super Bowl Sunday. Super Bowl XX to be precise. Mike Ditka and the Chicago Bears defeated the New England Patriots by the score of 46–10 at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. Quarterback Jim McMahon and running back Walter Payton led a team that featured a rookie lineman named William “Refrigerator” Perry.

Pat with babyThat morning of Super Bowl Sunday, my wife Pat began to feel labor pains. We were living in Clifton, New Jersey at the time, having just moved there four months before from Bergen County. That is why our obstetrician was in Englewood, nearly 20 miles away. To make matters worse, the forecast was for snow that evening. Pat called her doctor who said to wait a few hours and then come into Englewood Hospital. Rather than just sit home and wait, I proposed that we should both go to my office in Englewood Cliffs, and she could wait there while I tied up some loose ends to ease my being away from the office for a few days. The beauty of that was that if my wife’s labor progressed more rapidly than the doctor thought, we would be only 10 minutes away from the hospital.

Finally, we got to the hospital around game time as light snow began to fall. The hospital staff was ready for us. But we found out that our child was not yet ready to be born. Labor continued through the evening and long after the Super Bowl celebrations were over. Midnight came and went, and Pat proposed that we go home and come back tomorrow. The nurses smiled knowingly, and turned up the IV drip to try to move things along. Three a.m. came and went, and then the sun rose on the two of us – both looking as miserable as we felt. There were now whispers of C-section among the nurses, but the doctor who came in at 7 a.m., looking fresh as a daisy, felt that we should give natural childbirth just a few more hours.

And so the hours dragged on. By 9 a.m., there was still nothing imminent, and Pat had now been in labor for more than 24 hours. At one point that morning, she looked at me with a face that combined pain with frustration. I smiled because it reminded me of an old Bill Cosby routine where the suffering wife sits up during labor and yells at her husband, “You did this to me!!”

The clock passed 10 a.m., and by now it seemed like every other woman in the maternity corridor had already given birth. The doctor came in and upped the drugs again, and as the clock hit noon, there was finally some real action. Pat was rushed to the delivery room, and I donned my scrubs and mask to accompany her. David arrived at 12:32 p.m.. The nurse asked whether I wanted to cut the umbilical cord, and I politely declined.

After an all-night vigil, I was punchy, and feared I would harm the child. So the doctor did the honors, and soon afterward the nurse handed me my son. I was shaking as I held him, and tears flowed freely. Meanwhile, Pat had made a remarkable recovery. She was smiling, and the entire labor experience was just a distant memory. I swear that Mother Nature does this to trick women into having more children.

As I look back at the birth of my son, I can only marvel that my child will soon be at his wife’s side as I was, and my child will soon experience the complete joy of meeting his son for the first time. It’s the circle of life, and isn’t it grand.

Seattle? A Miserable Sports City? Not Today

02 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

seahawk redo

BY JEANNETTE GOBEL

America’s Most Miserable Sports City? This, from an article in Forbes Magazine from July of 2013, by Tom Van Riper:

The city of Seattle hasn’t had it easy, sports wise. Its former NBA club, the Sonics, left town in 2008. This past year efforts to get pro basketball back to the city by luring the Sacramento Kings fell short. The NFL Seahawks made a gallant playoff run behind young quarterback Russell Wilson, only to suffer a gut-wrenching 30-28 loss to Atlanta one roushy of the conference championship. The loss marked the Seahawks’ twelfth trip to the NFL postseason in their 37-year history, none of which have ended with a title. Altogether, Seattle teams have competed in 115 cumulative seasons, advancing to at least the semifinal round of the playoffs 11 times, with just a single ring by the 1979 Sonics to show for their efforts. It earns Seattle the top spot our Most Miserable Sports Cities list, just a hair ahead of Atlanta, a town whose history is loaded with Braves’ postseason flops and which lost its NHL franchise not once, but twice.

I remember reading this article and thinking, “Great, could we leave this status behind if the Seahawks have a great season and somehow, make it to the Super Bowl?”

Fast forward to January 19, 2014. Our Seahawks beat San Francisco in a final seconds, tipped pass away from Crabtree by Richard Sherman in the end zone. Our shot at redemption awaits us today as our best-defense-in-football, Seahawks, square off with the best-offense Denver Broncos.

Seattle will be cellar-dwellers no more, not with this incredible Seahawks football team and its regular season record of 13 and 3. It’s been a blast connecting with old friends, and new, on Facebook during the games. Our need to vent and cheer is quite deserved. Whether it was Beast Mode, Marshawn Lynch going for yardage, or Richard Sherman executing a pick six in the other end zone, we did it!!!

The 49ers were vanquished once again at the Clink (Century Link Field). Our Seahawks earned their second trip to the Super Bowl. The din of the 12th man at the home games can still be heard for miles. There is no hushing the 12th. There is a buzz in the air, an excitement never before felt in the state of Washington, because as they say,” When you play the Seahawks, you play the entire state.”

School kids are having 12th contests, Boeing is flying its Seahawks painted 747-800 freighter around the state today in a pattern saying, 12, and even new flavors of Skittles have been created for our Beast Mode, Marshawn Lynch.

NFL Seahawks jerseys sales are through the roof. Who wouldn’t want a number 25, Richard Sherman, jersey? Best cornerback in the league. Believe it! Ask anyone in the state of Washington, or Puget Sound, or anywhere on the globe who is a Seahawks’ fan, and they will tell you that this year is something amazing.

Whether or not we win (and we will), this event catapults Seattle out of its label as the most miserable sports city in the country. With a victory over the Denver Broncos, our city will be rid of this dubious honor. Heck, even if we don’t win, the fun is getting to the Super Bowl.

Even our nails say Go Hawks!

Even our nails say Go Hawks!

Go Hawks

Go Hawks

Reflections, and the Glory of Skating on Ice

31 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by in Confessional

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

pat backyard

BY PAT SCHMIEDEL

Last Sunday, I woke up to the thick scrape and grind of metal on ice. The lake behind my house is frozen. It must be really cold out. They’re ice skating! These thoughts tumbled over each other in a rush of childish joy – the kind that makes you bound out of bed, and land at the window without touching the ground. Hapless shrieks of distress, tangled with the ecstatic barking of a terrier too small for such a racket. The timeless beauty of crystalline white, so sharp as to be blinding, filled me with the awe of how sweet cruel winter can be.

I watched the skaters, transfixed. Unsummoned, winter moments long-past beamed across my mind, overtaking the figure 8s below. There was nothing unique about those days. Yet, on this ever-lengthening right side of 50, with a nod to Wilder, the mundaneness makes it all the more special.

I inhale the cold smell of winter radiating off dad’s gray jacket. I see clearly his sparkling green eyes; red cheeks. And I distinctly hear his voice grow muffled as he rummages, down in the utility room, through an admirable collection of skates.

Bundled up like sausage, out into the numbing cold, Mom’s homemade hot chocolate in hand, dad forces our laces into ankle supports, skates backwards so that we can skate forward, exhales life back into frozen fingers, smiles so broadly that all of life exists just to glide free, effortlessly, unfettered by pits in the road, without gravity or impediments to slow you down.

Having cursed plenty of icy days, and secretly rejoicing the year my own kids outgrew leaping out of bed to go ice skating, I can now enjoy from inside the comfort of my bedroom, the wonders of those glorious winter days.