I’m Sick of Stressember.

I originally started writing this column about how I always get sick when my body and mind go into stress overload and how invariably it always seems to happen around the holidays. The first and worst time I remember this happening was when I was in my early 20’s and it was the week before Thanksgiving. I was all stressed out about my first real job, my first real relationship, and my first real apartment. At that time I was also smoking so what started out as a cold ended up being 2 weeks in the hospital with pneumonia. There’s nothing quite like turkey dinner on a plastic tray with a side of “jello” and a swig of codeine cough medicine.

So anyway that’s how I handle (or mishandle) stress, I let it build up until my immune system weakens and then wham, I’m sick for a week. Everyone copes with stress differently and that’s what I want to write about but first let’s talk about “Stressember”.

Stressember is the 30 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and it all starts with the ominous sounding “Black Friday”. I don’t really get stressed about shopping because I don’t hardly do any for Christmas, for me it’s about the Birthdays. You see I’m surrounded by December babies, starting 2 weeks before Christmas I have birthdays for my Mother-in-law, my twin siblings, my deceased Father-in-law, and my wife Diane. And if that wasn’t enough my sister who was murdered has the same birthday as my wife, so Diane is always trying to keep it low key so as not to upset my Mother.

Part of the stress I feel also comes from the constant bombardment of holiday music and having to answer the holiday small talk questions from everyone you run into. “Are you ready for Christmas?”, “Got all your shopping done?”, “Are you going anywhere?”. The reality is I’m not a religious person so I don’t get into the spiritual aspect of the holidays, I’m not much of a consumerist so I don’t need or want to give any more stuff, I’m not that big on socializing so I don’t care about Christmas parties. I guess in short all I can say is “Bah Humbug”, but unlike Ebenezer Scrooge I don’t begrudge anyone that wants to get into the holiday spirit. If putting up lights and a tree, or fighting the crowds to buy that perfect gift, or even listening to the same songs over and over, if all that makes you happy then more power to you. Because ultimately that’s what the holidays are all about, just being happy for a little while and forgetting about all the troubles in the world.

OK, so the troubles of the world bring me back to my original column about stress.  My stress about the holidays, work, money, and mortgage, how does that compare to the stress of someone living with the constant gunfire of war and not knowing when or how it might end. That’s how a lot of people in the world live today, whether civilians or military in a war zone it has got to be a lot of stress. Donald K. Sanders often writes in the Express about his time in Vietnam and about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). While reading one of his emotional columns I thought to myself, hey I’ve got PTSD as well. Not the Post Traumatic kind but something different, I’ve got Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In other words I’m always stressing about something terrible that hasn’t happened yet but just might. Oh I don’t know, how about I’m pretty sure I’m going to die and everyone I know and love is eventually going to die as well.

OK, before you get all stressed about me funning on PTSD, I know it’s real and I know it’s serious.  My point is that worrying and stressing about the future can sometimes be just as debilitating as stressing about something that’s already happened. I wonder about all those people living in war zones and how do they cope? How would I deal with it if I already get sick from just my non life threatening worries? What about our bigger worries? Man made: over population, global warming, nuclear bombs or the depletion of our natural resources. Natural: earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. Bad people: terrorists, politicians, and Wall Street bankers. Disease:  bird flu, swine flu or the Andromeda Strain. Crazy stuff: asteroids hitting earth, aliens invading, or what about the rapture.

Maybe it’s because I’m older and not so naive. Or maybe it’s the constant bombardment of negativity from the mass media. Or maybe it’s just my pessimistic personality. Or maybe I’m just worrying for nothing (but that’s a whole other thing to worry about). All I know is that there is so much to worry about and so little time, no wonder I’m stressed.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 13 of the following link. Winters Express 12/22/2011

An altered state of mind

I’m sure some of you have noticed that drug use keeps popping up in many of my columns. I guess partially it’s because during my youth it was such a big part of my life and partially it’s because I feel nostalgic about them and my youth as well. Recently I was talking with a pillar of our community who in referring to my openness about my drug use said they could never publicly be as open and then proceeded to tell me how much they used to love Cocaine and how they met their future spouse while buying coke. I could definitely hear the nostalgia in their story. I think one of the reasons I have always been open about my drug use is that I never had children and never needed to set a good (if dishonest) example for them. Many of my generation have white washed their history for the sake of the children, the boss, or even the nation as in Bill Clinton’s “I didn’t inhale” story.

Before I go on with the unwashed story let me be very clear, I have not used any illegal or “prohibited” substances since one second before Midnight on August 29^th, 1985. That’s over 26 years ago and shows how important it was to me that I remember my last toke, not coincidently that was the night before my first wedding anniversary. Marijuana was my drug of choice, I started smoking when I was 15 and pretty much never stopped until I was 28. Through most of my 20’s as an employee and business manager I was a functioning Pot-aholic, I smoked everyday and even rationalized it by saying that no one knew me straight and I had to stay stoned so they couldn’t tell the difference.

I think its way too extreme to say that drugs ruined my life because I don’t have a bad life. What I can say with all honesty is that drugs changed my life and put me on a different path. As an adolescent I was curious about things, I liked to read even if it was mainly science fiction and comic books, I liked sports even if I was chubby and not very coordinated, and I had friends that I played and learned with. Once I started getting high, life just became about getting high. I lost interest in learning, my shyness was exacerbated, I became less physically active, and my social skills stagnated. Sure, my life went on and there were so many other social and family factors that also contributed to my development (or lack thereof) but in the end I didn’t fulfill my potential. I had the intelligence and the opportunity to go to college and become anything I wanted to be, I just didn’t know what I wanted to be other than high.

All that being said, it may surprise most of you but I think the Prohibition on recreational drug use should be lifted. That’s right; I think pot, coke, psychedelics, and just for arguments sake maybe even heroin should be legalized. Let’s wave the white flag and end the war on drugs once and for all because the reality is that we can’t win. Let’s face the fact, human beings like to alter their state of consciousness, they like a feel good buzz. The only problem is that some of us like it a lot more than most.

For perspective let’s start with a little history from Wikipedia. Alcohol (beer and wine) the grand daddy of mind altering substances: “The discovery of late Stone Age beer jugs has established the fact that purposely fermented beverages existed at least as early as 10,000 BC.” Marijuana: “Evidence of the inhalation of Cannabis smoke can be found in the 3^rd Millennium BC, as indicated by charred Cannabis seeds found in a ritual brazier at an ancient burial site in present day Romania.” My point is that humans have been using and in some cases abusing mind altering substances for thousands of years and I think the desire for the pleasure it gives us is somehow ingrained in our genetic makeup.

I don’t have enough space here to go through all the pros and cons of lifting the prohibition on recreational drug use but I would like to say that the economic and social cost of drug related crime (85% of all crime) is more than our country can afford. Those monies would be better spent on substance abuse counseling and improving the social, physical, and economic health of those most in need. Also just like with the current safety laws on alcohol use, I would say don’t drug and drive, wait to use until your old enough (stay out of your parents stash), and most of all know your limits.

So what about all the addicts or abusers like me? In my opinion it’s all about personal responsibility, if I need help you can suggest it or I’ll ask for it. Otherwise it’s my problem, let me deal with it.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 13 of the following link. Winters Express 12/1/2011

Remembering J. Michael Ryan - R.I.P.

     Michael is dead and I want to say I don’t care. So is this a sad commentary on his life or mine? Obviously I have feelings about his death but the reality is that for the last 20 years he might as well have been dead.

     Truth be told, 20 years ago I had thoughts of killing him myself. That was just after he fired me from the job I had held with his family’s business for over 11 years. I guess now with his passing I will never get the closure that I would have liked.

     I have often wondered if Michael ever felt any guilt, regret or remorse for what he did to me. From what I know of his life these last 20 years I doubt if he gave me much of a second thought, unlike me who has thought often about how I could have done things differently. Even to this day I still have dreams about working with him so I guess sub-consciously I’m still trying to work through it.

     To quote my friend who emailed me about Michael’s death, “It’s weird to have pity on someone who was blessed with such good fortune”. And that’s the great contradiction of Michael’s life. He was blessed with great promise and cursed with inner demons.

     As I’m writing this and thinking back to the Michael I knew in high school and worked with for many years, the tears are starting to flow and the emotion is welling up in my chest and I realize I am sad and I do care. Even if we hadn’t spoken in many years and had totally different lives we still had a shared history and there were a lot of good times in that history.

     Michael and I were part of a small close knit group of friends in high school. Mark was our natural leader but Michael was always trying to one up him. I was always just a follower so watching their rivalry was kind of fun.

     Michael got his one up when he started dating Mark’s ex-girl friend Lissa in high school and eventually married her, he asked me to give a toast as part of the ceremony (but like so many other things in his life the demons won out and they eventually divorced).

     As a follower I went along for the ride on many crazy adventures. With Michael I was there when he got caught trying to steal an amplifier from a repair shop, I was riding shot gun when he hit over 100 mph in his mother’s Electra 225 on a residential street, I was in the basket when he took us up to 10,000 feet in a hot air balloon, and I was there when he got access to 5000 hits of “clear light window pane LSD”. Now I’m not promoting it but there is a special and unique bond that is created when you take multiple psychedelic trips with friends.

     Michael was one of the smartest people I have ever known, he had an almost photographic memory so school work came easy. He never studied or wrote a paper until the last minute but always pulled it off and got good grades. After high school Michael was breezing through college trying to figure out what to do with his life. When we would talked about the future he said how he never wanted to work in the family business and was thinking about becoming a Veterinarian. He also thought that the world should be fairer with less greed, some kind of hybrid between capitalism and socialism.

  

     His life changed forever when half way through college his father unexpectedly died and Michael had to go into the family business. I guess the family could have sold the business but instead Michael sacrificed his dreams to keep his father’s alive. My life also changed because soon after I also went to work for them. Over the next 11 years Michaels and my relationship had its ups and then downs. We started off sharing a house and being good friends, we did a lot of fun things together, and our wives became best friends.

     Sadly, Michael always thought that he was indestructible, from the crazy risk taking in high school to the never ending substance abuse thru out his adulthood. It was the drug use that ultimately caused our friendship to end. I was able to conquer my addiction but Michael always ended up going back. When I tried to intervene by talking to his mother (who was still the business owner) Michael never forgave me and eventually fired me.

     Michael firing me was the most traumatic and then best thing that ever happened to me. If I hadn’t been fired I would have stayed unhappily working, afraid to leave. I would have never started my first restaurant, would never have moved cross country, wouldn’t have become “Steady Eddy”, in short if it wasn’t for Michael I wouldn’t be who, what, and where I am today. I guess if I’m really going to be honest I have missed Michael these last 20 years and now that he’s dead I will miss him even more because any spark of a hope for reconciliation is gone forever.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 12 of the following link. Winters Express 11/10/11

A Tribute to Tomas and all his Kind

             Tomas was a special guy and he just died. So why do I say he was special, after all he was just a cat. I guess first I need to qualify myself because I’m a cat person. In this world there are basically 3 kinds of people, Dog People, Cat People, and the “I don’t want to get attached and feel pain people”. As a kid we always had cats and instinctively I knew how to rub them the right way. I think cats are where the “rub me the wrong way” saying comes from because there is a right and a wrong way to rub a cat.

            Growing up I learned many of life’s lessons from my interactions with cats. I learned about life and death, love and loss, as well as responsibility and irresponsibility. Learning about life I saw cats having sex and kittens being born. At 9 years old my first up close experiences with death was finding one of our cats dead after a family vacation, I also learned about irresponsibility because my parents had left them to fend for themselves while we were gone.

            I learned about unconditional love because that’s what cats and kittens give you when they are in your lap purring as you gently stroke their fur. I also learned about loss when my parents got rid of “Blacky” the cat that had survived the family vacation and had made the move from Kansas to Michigan with us. They got rid of her because they found out that my sister and mother were allergic to cats. I’m still not sure what lesson I learned (I don’t think it was a good one) when within a year we got a new cat and they got allergy shots. During my teen years the losses mounted and it seemed like I was always the one balling my eyes out while doing burial duty in the back yard.

            All that loss along with seeing my parent’s reaction to the death of my sister and then their divorce made me decide to be that 3^rd kind of person. If I didn’t love I wouldn’t get hurt or feel emotional pain. That’s how I lived my life for a few years, no pets, no serious relationships and no pain. Eventually I realized that hurt free and happy aren’t the same thing.

            I started dating, then living with, then marrying Diane who came with 2 cats. Diane has the biggest heart of anyone I know so I wasn’t surprised to come home from work one day and find a beautiful White Sheppard in the yard. My first reaction was “We’re cat people, we can’t have a dog”, but then she said “but its blind”, what could I say but OK. We then became cat people with a dog. “Kudzu” the blind dog was the biggest emotional ride of my life, the frustration of dealing with her handicap and the shear joy of seeing her loving life opened my heart forever. Unfortunately she also had a physical problem that caused seizures and after only a year and a half we couldn’t control them and had to have her euthanized.

            A month later some friends found a flea infested Brittany Spaniel running along the road and “Dana” came into our lives to fill that empty hole in our hearts. We got her a companion “Emily” because dogs need a pack and cats don’t count. Our family pack lasted for almost 20 years but now we are just cat people again.

            So all this brings me back to Tomas. Over the 30 plus years that Diane and I have been together a multitude of cats, the 3 dogs, and even a few birds have come and gone. Every one of them with a unique and distinct personality, but Tomas was the most unique of all. He showed up in front of our house 5 years ago, full grown, talking this little cat talk, tail held high and happy as a cat can be. Basically he just moved in and said I love everyone, he would run out to greet anyone that was walking by. When we would come home, walking up the driveway he would run in front of us then drop and roll so that you would almost trip on him. He slept every night on the bed snuggled up as tight to Diane as he could, then in the morning would just lay there all stretched out while the other cats got all excited about breakfast. I guess all I can say is that he was the happiest cat I have ever know and it’s a huge loss that his life was cut short by someone driving too fast and not caring about all the living things around them.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 11 of the following link. Winters Express 9/8/11

The Summer Camp from Hell

            When I was around 10 my parents decided that it would be good for my brother and me to go to summer camp. We were living in Topeka Kansas and the YMCA camp was a couple of hours bus ride out into the middle of a swampy nowhere. What possessed my parents to send their chubby, shy, insecure, and non-religious son to Christian camp I will never know. Never having been away from my family the horror began as soon as my brother left to be with the older boys and I was taken to my cabin and shown the pee stained bunk that I would call home for the next few weeks.

            It had already been a long day and I was hungry so thankfully it was dinner time and we were shown to the large mess hall. Having been seated at a long wooden table and food placed in front of me I was ready to start eating, but that would be too easy. You see this is where I first started to learn about “The fear of God” because at that first dinner a random boy was asked to lead the 100 plus people in saying “Grace” before the meal. I didn’t even know what Grace was so for the rest of the 2 weeks I was scared to death that I would actually be one of the chosen few.

            This being summer camp, our days were filled with what were supposed to be fun outdoor activities. Hikes, I didn’t have the right shoes, couldn’t keep up, and was always out of breath. Team games like capture the flag, I was the last one picked and had to guard the flag. Bow and arrows, I just couldn’t get the hang of it. Now it wasn’t all bad, there was one activity that was so cool, “Marksmanship”. Hand a 10 year old boy a loaded 22 caliber rifle and watch out.

            The one activity that I was good at was swimming but the camp didn’t have a pool. We swam in a small lake that was more like a big pond. It had a small beach, a lifeguard tower, and about 100 feet out there was a raft with a diving board. The rest of the pond was surrounded by trees, weeds, and reeds right up to the waters edge. The first few times was fun doing the usual kid stuff, splashing, throwing mud, and just keeping cool. On the third day I was almost to the raft when the lifeguard starts yelling “Snake, everyone out of the water!” I froze, snake, what do you mean snake? I couldn’t comprehend it, my mind went blank. After what felt like an eternity I started swimming as fast as I could back to shore only to realize that everyone was yelling at me to go back, back to the raft. It seemed that the snake, and not just any snake but a “Poisonous Cotton Tongue Water Moccasin” had cut off my retreat. I don’t know if it’s possible but I think I pooped my trunks, had a heart attack, and walked on water all at the same time because next thing I knew I was huddled on the raft with a couple of other kids who had made it there alive. Eventually they came out to get us with a row boat and a rifle. Needless to say, I didn’t go swimming again, even after we were told that the snakes usually stay on their side of the lake and the lifeguard now sat with a rifle in his lap.

            The horrors continued: My towel fell off after a bath and I stood naked in front of a big crowd. I broke the skis while trying to water ski. Other kids would attack our cabin during the night. And when my parents came for a family visit they wouldn’t take me home even after I locked myself in the car. But all that pales in comparison to the horror of what came next.

            The morning of our last full day at camp we were loaded on busses and driven out into the swamps. I started to hear this rhythmic sound that was like this alternating high pitch, low pitch chirping. As we got deeper into the swamps it got louder until it was almost deafening. As I cautiously stepped off the bus I was handed a rifle and told “OK boy, let’s get us some dinner”. I still didn’t know what was going on so I followed all the other kids down a trail out into the swamp. That’s when I saw them and discovered what that weird noise was, FROGS. Hundreds of them, not just little frogs but giant “Bull Frogs”. They were huge, as big as a dinner plate with hind legs at least 12 inches long. At the exact moment that I realized “Frog Legs” was for dinner the carnage started. Shots rang out and frogs started flying through the air. It was horrifying and I couldn’t take it, I dropped my rifle and ran back to the bus, stopping just long enough to puke my guts out.

            That night we had our farewell dinner of Frog Legs that I must admit kind of tasted like chicken. I never got called on to say Grace so I survived my Summer Camp from Hell. When I think back about that adventure the thing that always comes to mind is the kids riddle: What’s green and red and goes 100 miles an hour? Why a frog in a blender of course.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 14 of the following link. Winters Express 8/25/11

Read the Label

             So this 4^th of July I got to thinking about what it means to be American. Not in the patriotic or we’re better than they are sense but just in the label. I was born in the state of New York, which is part of the United States of American and is in North America. My older brother was born in Argentina that is in South America. My sister’s husband’s family is from Nicaragua which is located in Central America. From what I can see that makes us all Americans. Maybe here in the states we should try a little rebranding and call ourselves USAers, pronounced with a Brooklyn accent (you-say-uh). Let’s see how that rolls off the tongue, “I’m not an ugly American, I’m a USAer”.

            OK, seriously this makes me want to ask the question, why do people feel a need to label themselves? Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, Gay, Straight, Raiders Fan, Giants Fan (yea, yea, different game), Black, White, Christian, Muslim, the list goes on and on. I know that historically we labeled ourselves to show inclusion in a family, group, or clan. This was primarily for protection from or dominance over a rival group. But the world has changed, for one thing it’s more homogeneous and we now know that as a species we have more in common than differences with people we don’t know. For another point the groups have just gotten too big for everyone to have a majority in common. Just as a simple example, in the U.S. there are 130 million voting age people, if you take out the smaller parties that still leaves over 50 million people in each of the 2 major parties. I for one find it hard to believe that give their different life experiences, educational, and socio-economic backgrounds all those people think, feel, and believe the same way. So why do so many people want to march under a particular banner and I guess my bigger question is why don’t I?

            This may seem like an oxymoron but I have always labeled myself as a non-conformist. Or to quote Groucho Marx “I don`t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members”. I have always been pre-disposed to go in the opposite direction of the crowds as well as to question authority. Sure I was once a teenager wanting to fit in but I always felt I was different and didn’t fit in. But even not fitting in comes with labels; loner, rebel, outcast, etc…

            Currently I guess my label would be; a middle aged lower middle class non-religious rural-urbanite white Hispanic of Jewish descent. Now that’s a mouthful. Maybe we should try a little rebranding here as well. Instead of middle aged, I am now a semi-centenarian something and with the way the economy is going it won’t be long until I am part of the upper lower class. As for color, Casper the friendly ghost was white I’m more of a dark pink with a touch of gray. I am a non-believer that Shirley keeps telling me is one of the “chosen people” and yes I do speak Spanish.

            So where is all this labeling and rebranding taking me? I guess if I have to be labeled I want to set my own priority, so here goes. I am in this order; Human, Man, Husband, Son, Brother, Friend, & Neighbor. You see it’s about sharing the planet with other people, so what color my skin is, or what God I do or don’t believe in, or even how much money I have shouldn’t matter. Sadly it seems that according to the main stream media those things are all that matter.

            That brings me back full circle to the whole American and USAer thing. What if I want to be part of a bigger group with a grander label? Let’s say a citizen of the Earth, an Earther as they are called in the Science fictions movies. If the Supreme Court can grant corporations the same rights as people and corporations can be multi-national why can’t people be multi-national as well. I mean we are already so interconnected when it comes to commerce, entertainment, and communications. If that connectivity can benefit mankind as a whole why not expand it?

            OK, so a few columns back I was ragging on the economic drawbacks of a “new world order”. Now I’m wondering, if enough of the 7 Billion people on earth are like minded that may not be a bad thing. As a matter of fact, I think the only way for survival in the future is through cooperation, compromise, and a lot less labeling.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 13 of the following link. Winters Express 8/4/11

I can't help myself.

            Long story short, I was talking to someone recently about how I was dealing with a situation that I wasn’t particularly happy about. I was concerned about future problems that may arise because of what he was doing when he said something that I found very profound and haven’t been able to stop thinking about. Basically he just said “You can’t help yourself”. He was talking about the ramifications to me because of how I was dealing with the situation but that’s not relevant to the rest of the story.

            I was amazed at how perceptive he was in being able to pickup on one of my life’s major flaws, because truth be told I can’t help myself. For as long as I can remember I’ve been doing things that I knew I shouldn’t be doing and were somewhat self destructive but I did them anyway.

            When I was a little kid I used to sneak into my fathers study and look through his desk drawers. Once I found some “dirty books” and I can say that was quite the eye opening experience. When I was a little older I babysat some of the neighbor’s kids and used to look through their stuff as well. One of our neighbors worked for the FBI and one night I found his revolver in a cupboard above the refrigerator. That really scared me so I quit being so nosey after that.

            When I was in Junior High I got in trouble for playing with fire. My friends and I used to light strips of Magnesium and watch them burn because it reminded us of the stuff they used on Mission Impossible to cut through metal. The way I got caught was stupid and I knew better, but I took a test tube full of gasoline on a school field trip where it came open in my pocket while riding in one of the teacher’s cars. I almost got kicked 

out of school for that one.

              In High School I started doing all sorts of thing I knew I shouldn’t do. I skipped classes, smoked Camel non-filters, drank booze, did pot, and enjoyed the occasional trip with the help of some psychedelics. I argued with my parents and lost any direction I had in earlier years. It all became just about the party and having fun with my friends. I hated studying (now I would have been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder) and school so I didn’t go to college even though I had the opportunity.

            As an adult I continue to be “self destructive”, not physically because I quite all my smoking and only drink moderately, I continue professionally sabotaging myself and I can’t help it. I’ve been fired from two good paying management jobs because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut or my displeasures to myself. The first time I “tattled” on my substance abusing boss to his mother (see my column titled “I should have taken the watch”), the second time I had the owner’s daughter working for me and she was (and I don’t say this lightly) an idiot. She drove me crazy and I guess I ragged on her one to many times because out of the blue my position was eliminated (her brother later told me the truth).

            Then there’s the story of Steady Eddy’s Café in the Flint, MI farmers market and how I gave it away. This was our second restaurant and it was a restaurateurs dream (in hindsight), we were only open on market days so only 4 days a week, it was an all cash business, the equipment was included, and the rent was very low. We had year round steady business and on Saturdays we kicked butt, we were non-stop from 7am to 3pm. It was a comfortable income and not that hard of work but as usual I got bored and burnt out. One day in our third year my wife Diane got really mad at me for some joke that the cook and I were pulling on her and she stormed out for the day. I got angry back and said F**k It, let’s just sell the place. I placed an ad in the paper and had a buyer within the week. That was 15 years ago and he ran it until his death in 2009, his daughter runs it now and it’s still called Steady Eddy’s with most of my items still on the menu.

            So what have I learned about why I sabotage myself? I’m not sure but as my therapist told me years ago, one of these days I need to get over “my fear of success”.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 14 of the following link. Winters Express 7/14/11

My Fathers Farewell Tour

     My father and I had a special bond that was different than what he had with my siblings or with other people. I know now that we were more alike than I ever wanted to admit while he was alive.

     As adults those similarities brought us closer together but as an adolescent I strictly adhered to the natural law that “Like Repels Like”. When I was a teenager I can truly say that I hated my father and he really didn’t like me much. Now I know that it was because we were both stubborn, head strong and always thought we were in the right.

     I was 21 and he was 49 when I first realized my father was mortal. When the phone rang I was expecting it to be my father but instead it was his wife and the first thing she said was “your father had a heart attack”, in that instant I thought he was dead. She then told me he was in the hospital and I just started to shake and cry. I don’t ever remember having felt that kind of fear and anguish. That day was the first time in many years that I remembered that I loved him. That was also the day that in my father’s eyes he stopped living and started dying; I guess he also realized that he was mortal.

     From then on Nitro was in his pocket and death seemed just around the corner. For the next 24 years he and I spent way to much time worrying about his mortality even as our lives went on. I got married, he got divorced. He moved to Paris, I eventually moved to California. He had a couple more heart attacks and bypass surgery, I just got older but not much wiser. 

     As time went by and his health continued to deteriorate he often talked about suicide, but the reality was that he loved life, he just hated getting old, and as I get older I can totally relate.

     Over those years we learned to trust each other more, communicate openly and honestly, and we were able to talk about almost anything. And talk we did, every couple of Sundays he called all his children and even though to most of my siblings it was kind of a joke and  pain in the butt,  I really looked forward to his calls.

     We would talk about what was going on in our lives, about his health, world politics, about the state of society, and about how messed up the world was. In the last year of his life (post 9/11) he became very pessimistic about how the powers that be were ruining the world; he worried about his children, his friends and family in Argentina, and especially about how his grandsons were going to survive.

     In the fall of 2002 when he was 73 years old my father did what I now call “The Farewell Tour”.  Even though we didn’t know it at the time I truly believe that he did know the end was near.

     He came for a weeks visit and got to see most of his kids and grand kids, my mother (first ex-wife), and one of his best friends from Michigan who was visiting the bay area. He and I then went to LA for the day where another of his very good friends was visiting his children there. 

     During this whole time my father was not doing all that well, his doctors had been trying to get him to put in a pacemaker but he steadfastly refused. He was also joking (so we thought) with all his friends that this might be the last time they saw each other as they were all getting old.

     Anyway this visit ended like normal with him heading back to Paris. A month later my father went to a Bioenergetics conference in upstate New York, there he got to see a bunch of his old friends and colleagues. That evening he called his younger brother in Argentina just to check in and after breakfast on the second day he took his newspaper, sat down under a tree and died.

     It’s been 9 years since he died and every Sunday morning I still wish the phone would ring. When some geopolitical event happens I want to know what he would have thought. When I see or read some reference to France or Argentina I think of him. There are so many unexpected things that remind me of him and I know he will always be in my heart. Even though I didn’t always appreciate him I know he loved me and was a bigger part of my life than I ever realized. I will miss him for the rest of my life.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 14 of the following link. Winters Express 6/16/11

Stocks & Stones may Break our Bones

My wife thinks its nobodies business, but if you’re writing an honest commentary then you need to tell the truth. So here is my reality, I’m underemployed, underinsured, underwater on my mortgage, and sadly I’m not alone. Unfortunately more and more Americans are finding themselves in the same boat. What’s even sadder is that it didn’t and doesn’t have to be this way. So what’s the cause? In very simplistic terms, it’s Greed, Laziness and a little global conspiracy for good measure. Now obviously G&L are nothing new, they are 2 of the 7 deadly sins that have been part of religious dogma for millennia. What are new is the scale, speed, and shear number of people that can be affected and or “infected”. What I mean by infected is how easily people can get caught up in the greedy allure of an easy money bubble. The most recent bubble being housing and we all know how that’s turning out. I want to focus on the Stock Market and how technology and speed have turned it into just another form of gambling. Now don’t get me wrong, I like to gamble but we should save that for the casinos, lottery, or a friendly game of poker.

            

When I was first learning about economics the concept of a stock market made sound financial sense. It kind of worked like this; a company (that actually produced something) needed capital to grow so they offered shares of ownership (stocks) in return for a percent of the profits that were then paid as a dividend. For years the basic strategy was to buy quality stocks and hold them (prices didn’t fluctuate much), sometimes for generations. Wealthier people just bought more and middle class people either bought or were given stock in the companies where they worked. That’s what it was like growing up in Flint, MI a General Motors town. Everyone I knew had some relationship with GM and only bought and drove GM cars. They also bought stock when they could. The community was made up of executives, supervisors, and line workers that worked at GM as well as at suppliers like Goodyear, Dow Chemical, & AC-Delco. There was a pride and sense of ownership, back then you could get your butt kicked for owning a Ford let alone a Japanese car.

            

Then something started to change, companies started outsourcing, workers quit caring about quality, and the markets became obsessed with share price instead of company value. I don’t know what happened first or who’s to blame, I only know that it’s been spiraling downward ever since. This brings me back to the markets and how they help perpetuate the death spiral. Because everything has become so fast with computerized trading and fractions of a second can mean big bucks, the market has become very short sighted, it’s all about the quarterly reports, that’s only 3 months of a persons or companies working life. If a company is doing poorly but says that they are going to lay off employees they get rewarded by the market and their stock price goes up. If a company is doing well but didn’t meet the analyst’s expectations their stock gets clobbered. To compound the problem executive compensation has been tied to the performance of the stock not just the company. Back in the day, the average CEO made 50 to 100 times the average workers salary. Now it’s become obscene with that number rising 10 fold at the same time that worker wages and benefits are being eviscerated. It’s no wonder that just like me the average American is struggling.

            

So is all this a result of a fluke global recession caused by a greed driven housing bubble or is it something more? Well I for one love conspiracy theories and ever since hearing way back in high school about David (very rich guy) Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission and it’s goal of “remaking global trade and finance” I have believed that eventually we would have what George Bush Sr. (a Trilateral member) called “A New World Order”. I also believed this could be a good thing as it would create a better chance for peace in the world. But what I didn’t realize then, but am starting to see and feel now is that to create a true, fair, and balanced global economy you need a level playing field. The problem is that America and the EU are to high and even with China and Asia’s growth there is no way they can catch up. So that means our economy needs to come down so we can meet them halfway. Looking around at how fast the world and its economies are changing the only thing I can think to say is “are we there yet?”


To view the column in it's original form go to page 13 of the following link. Winters Express 5/19/11

I'm only human - but what kind?

I think I’m a defective human being. How’s that for a way to start a conversation. Let me rephrase that a little. I think I’m either a defective human, an enlightened human or least of the three possibilities, a normal human.
Let me state my case. There are some basic human traits that got our species to this point in time:
~ Walking upright. Okay, that’s a given most of the time or at least on the day after I see the chiropractor.
~ Use of tools. I know many people have told me I look like Al from the TV show within a TV Show, “Tool Time” on “Home Improvement,” but as my wife and John Siracusa will attest, if it’s a power tool, you better keep it away from me.
~ Building fire and cooking food. I almost got kicked out of high school for playing with a makeshift blowtorch made out of a syringe, gasoline and a lighter, and all I can say about cooking (and eating) food is that it’s one of the surest ways to enlightenment I know.
~ Self awareness. Yes, I look in the mirror and know that it’s me, except on the days I see some old guy that reminds me of my dad.
~ Ability to reason. As my wife is so fond of saying, “Things happen for a reason” — I just can’t always explain it.
~ Use of language to communicate. On this one, I prefer a good stare or roll of the eyes than to actually speaking.
So, those were some fun basics, now here come the biggies:
~ Desire to procreate. I ‘m different than most humans on this, as I have never — and I mean never — had a need to create offspring. I don’t know if it was a lack of physical need or my life experiences (nature vs. nurture) that made me not care if my genetic code or bloodline ends with me. I think that answer gives me one notch towards enlightened because it means my ego doesn’t have to see a mini-me to be satisfied. Oh, and just to be clear, sex and procreation are two totally different desires. Enough said.
~ Belief in a higher power. On this one I make Tom Stone look like a choirboy. I guess because I was raised without any religious teachings or even discussions in our house I didn’t even start thinking about God until I was a teenager. Since I had never been indoctrinated with any set of beliefs and as a rebellious youth who questioned authority, it just didn’t make sense that the world as I knew it was designed and controlled by some all-knowing but unseen omnipotent person or thing.
By that age, I’d heard Mr. Spock on Star Trek say “It’s illogical” so many times that I pretty much couldn’t help but feel the same way about God. I just didn’t understand how for millennium, people had been going to war and killing each other in the name of religion, and I still don’t understand how it continues. Even though I don’t personally believe in God, I’m actually envious of the faithful with their unquestioning belief. I sometimes wish I could trust that much.
~ Knowing we are mortal. We’re all going to die, even though to live life, we have to be in a state of denial about this fact. I never thought much about death growing up even though it was all around me. Two of my sisters, my grandparents, countless pets that I buried in the back yard and, of course, all the deaths in Viet Nam that we saw on the news every night. The specter of “assured mutual annihilation” also hung over our heads during the Cold War as well as all sorts of natural disasters.
As I get older, I find myself thinking about death much more often, not because of any health issues but just because I know it closer. Since I don’t believe in an afterlife, I don’t fear death; sadly I sometimes even long for it. What I really fear is dying. I don’t want to suffer and I don’t want my family and friends to suffer either. But the reality is that we will, some of us physically and all of us emotionally. What I fear the most and what causes me the most anguish is the thought of separation from my wife. I don’t know which of us will be left behind, only that most likely, one of us will be.
So, as I think about some of the things that make me human, I realize that it’s the thinking of those thoughts that separates me and mankind from most of the other life forms on this planet we call home. I’m now even more confused than ever as to what kind of human being I am, so I guess maybe that just makes me normal.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 14 of the following link. Winters Express 5/5/11

From Trash to Treasure.

            One of the reasons I started writing this column was because I was feeling a need to personally explore and then share my thoughts and life’s story with my adopted community. I’m starting to feel old, and yes I know I’m only 53 but in my minds eye I’m still 16 and when I was actually that age, 53 seemed ancient. I also sometimes feel insignificant, I mean on a grand scale I’m only 1 of almost 7 billion people on earth and on an even grander scale I’m only 1 of over 110 billion people who have lived since the beginning of civilization. I’m sure more than a few of those people have contributed to the betterment of their fellow men. On a smaller more local scale, I look around at my friends and neighbors and I see parents, teachers, farmers, doctors, researchers, safety personnel, musicians, artists, and the list goes on and on. All these people seem to make some kind of difference but I wonder about me, what have I done? I haven’t raised any kids, taught anyone, cured any diseases, or created any music or art. In my ancient 53 years on this earth have I made a difference? I can’t say for sure but I hope maybe a little, so let’s see.

            Shortly after Diane and I opened our first Steady Eddy’s Café in Michigan we were shorthanded and looking to hire some more help. We had a young woman working for us who had a neighbor that lived in the same trailer park and was looking for work so I agreed to interview her.            Melody, or Mel for short showed up for the interview with a couple of her kids in tow, she had them go sit in a booth while we talked. At that moment, in my mind, Mel was the classic stereotype (and there’s no P.C. way to say it) of “White Trash.” She was barely 30 with a teenage daughter, overweight, was loud, smelled of cigarettes, and hadn’t worked in years. I eventually learned that her life was actually the complete stereotype. She lived in an old trailer with an alcoholic husband who treated her like crap and that’s why she wanted and needed a job. She was pleasant enough during the interview and promised to work hard if I hired her; I was desperate so I did.

            As you can imagine, Mel’s life had beat her down pretty good, she had low self esteem and not a lot of confidence. Right off the bat Mel was the hardest worker I had ever seen. She was willing to do any job, showed up to work on time, and was truly happy to be there. Steady Eddy’s was her sanctuary, her escape from life. The more she worked and interacted with the customers, the more her confidence grew. The more confident she became the more she started thinking about her personal issues and wanting to change them. She lost weight, quit smoking, and started trying to figure out what to do about her relationship. Diane and I were always supportive when she complained about how her husband treated her and we told her she didn’t have to take it. Eventually she got strong enough to kick him out and file for divorce.

            By this time Mel had become my most valued and trusted employee. She was still loud and drove me a little crazy but I was glad she was there. We had opened a second restaurant at the Flint Farmers Market and then sold the first one. At the farmers market Mel blossomed even more and everyone there loved her. While working at the market she started dating one of the farmers who had an apple orchard and eventually married him. In the meantime Diane and I sold the café and left Mel behind. She stayed working with the new owners for a while but once she got married she became a farmer’s wife and that meant a full time job at the orchard and baking pies for the market.

            Since Diane and I moved to California we only talked to her every couple of years but I know her life is still good and a hell of a lot better than when we meet her. So when I start feeling insignificant and sorry for myself I think about Melody and how I did help change some ones life for the better. I may not have set out to help anyone and in fact it was originally self serving but if I’ve learned anything it’s that if you treat people with kindness and respect the odds are better than 1 in 6.9 billion that you will make a difference, and you can’t hope for anything more.


To view the column in it's original form go to page 13 of the following link. Winters Express 4/7/11

I should have taken the watch.

           Anytime I make a choice or decision that I regret, or if my wife calls me on one, my response is, “yeah, and I should have taken the watch.” I know that’s an odd expression so let me explain. When I was 21, Michael who was one of my good friends from high school offered me a temporary job driving fork lift for his family’s beer distributorship. His father had died a year earlier and his mother was running the business while Michael finished college, the plan being for him to take over after graduation. I figured what the hell, I was already pretty good at forking around and it was only temporary. Well go figure, that temp job turned into the next decade of my life.

            Life was good; I was 22, a Teamsters warehouseman making $13 an hour with full benefits and not a care in the world. I got an apartment, bought a new car, and started dating this cute young woman who worked in the warehouse with us. I was good at my job, was in a stable relationship, and enjoyed my “recreational” activities. For the next couple of years life just flew by. Michael, who was now running the business, offered me a management position with the company. I readily accepted, quit the union, and became the new assistant operations manager. Over the next nine years I held different positions, from warehouse manager to data processing manager, eventually settling into inventory control manager. Over that same period the company grew by leaps and bounds; we were an Anheuser-Busch distributor and when I started working we only had 4 brands - Bud Light hadn’t even been introduced yet. As inventory control manager I went from ordering 50 items to a few 100 and then we bought a wine distributorship with over 1000 different items. Needless to say my job had become much harder.

            Michael and I had been part of a close knit group of friends in high school. He was always a little on the wild side, had been raised Irish Catholic, was the most affluent of our group, and had a propensity towards self destructive behavior that also ran in his family. His father was a hard drinking WWII pilot who died in his early 50’s, his older brother died from a drug overdose while we were in high school, and his younger sister died just a few years ago after a life full of substance abuse. Michael had always been a heavy partier and even running a multi-million dollar company with dozens of employees didn’t slow him down. When it came to substance abuse lets just say that in that race Michael and I ran nose to nose. That changed when I was 28. With the prodding (threat of divorce) of my new wife Diane, the “Breaker Girl” from the warehouse, I went cold turkey on our first wedding anniversary and quit doing illegal drugs for good. As happens so often with ex co-dependents Michael and I started to drift apart. This didn’t bode well for me as he was still my boss.

            Over the next 5 years I continued doing my job but getting more and more frustrated with Michael and the way he was running the company. Michael had gone from being an idealistic, socialist leaning kid who favored sharing his good fortune, to a union busting, money craving, hard ass, that really didn’t care much about anyone but himself and his habits. It got to the point where I felt I had no choice but to tell his mother about his drug problem and try for some kind of intervention. She listened patiently and after I was finished did what all good enablers do, told Michael all about our meeting. He was furious and that was the beginning of the end for me. Even though I had still been getting good evaluations, increasing bonuses, and pay raises, I was transferred to the wine division where I felt kind of lost.

            During that last year my wife Diane and I had started our first part-time business. It was called Steady Eddy’s Pushcarts and we did snack concessions at a seasonal amusement park. That business was doing well enough that Diane had quite her job to work it full time for the summer season. I was working it by taking partial vacation days during the week and then working on the weekends. Working at the park was fun and I had also settled into a comfortable routine at the distributorship. I didn’t mind working in the wine division but I was still angry and I showed it by being “passive aggressive”. This manifested itself in different ways that I’m not real proud of but in essence I just quite caring about my job.

            Anheuser-Busch had an incentive program for its distributors call “Dimensions of Excellence” and the company worked hard at meeting those goals. We had achieved all our goals that year so meetings were scheduled where all the employees would receive a commemorative watch as a thank you. My group meeting was scheduled for 1:00 but I was busy working on something else and since I was still pissed and being passive aggressive I just skipped the meeting because I really didn’t want the watch. A couple of hours later I was called into Michael’s office where he proceeded to tell me that I had purposely missed a mandatory meeting and that was insubordination. He then told me he wanted my resignation letter within the hour. I was in total shock and I told him I wouldn’t quit, that he would have to fire me. He then proceeded to hand me a termination letter and asked a couple of my co-workers who were also my good friends to escort me to my office so I could pack my things.

            I had worked there for over 11 years, 1/3 of my life and it was over just like that. It’s now been a little over 20 years since that happened and it’s still the most traumatic event of my life. There’s no way to know how my life would have been different but there are way too many occasions where I say “yeah, and I should have taken the watch.”


To view the column in it's original form go to page 18 of the following link.Winters Express 3/10/11

I was a teenage meat man.

When I was in high school I was always the kid that sat in the corner at parties smoking a dobie and watching everyone else have fun, metaphorically I was the kid in the back seat of the car, always a passenger never the driver. I was chubby with low self esteem and very shy, I was afraid to open my mouth for fear of making a fool of myself.  All that changed after graduation when I decided to become a “Door to Door Salesman”. I had a good friend Jim, whose older brother had gone to work for a meat company that sold “portion controlled” steaks door to door and he was making tons of money. It took all the courage I could muster because I had this huge fear of talking to strangers and an even bigger fear of rejection but I went for it and I went for it big. This was not your ordinary door to door sales, none of this would you like to buy a vacuum or some cutlery, no this was driving around with $1000 worth of perishable product in the back of your truck and if you didn’t sell it you ate it. Needless to say, win or loose we ate well, steak and lobster all the time.

            The plan was to spend a few months training around the Detroit area and then come out to the Bay Area and help open a new office. Jim (who had also gone into the business) and I drove our CB radio equipped cars cross country, traveling with us were two of his younger sisters, both of which I had the biggest crushes on. We arrived at my mother’s house on July 4^th 1976 just in time to watch the Bi-Centennial fireworks over the San Francisco bay. Now it was time for the fun to begin, the company called Arrow Meats had set up an office in an industrial park in Sunnyvale and it was part of my job as a “management trainee” to show new recruits how to SELL MEAT. As us skeptics knows so well, if someone is coming to you and trying to sell you something, it’s probably not as good a deal as they make it out to be and of course that was the case with us. Now don’t get me wrong we were selling a damn good product, fresh cut NY strips, rib eyes, and filet mignon all portion controlled to a perfect 8 ounces with all the fat trimmed off and sourced from USDA inspected packing houses. We also sold frozen shrimp, lobster tails and stuffed chicken breasts. I never felt like I was ripping anyone off, just “hustling” them into paying more for a product than what they could buy it for in the grocery store. The basic technique was simple. First we went door to door to businesses not homes. This gave us the opportunity to work a strip, contacting a lot more people and if we were lucky a business owner that didn’t usually do the grocery shopping. Next we did everything possible to not tell them how much the price per pound was. Each of the boxes weighed 9 lbs and it was stamped on the side of the box so when you brought in a box to show you always made sure that side was facing away from the customer. If they asked how much it was per pound you replied it was $2 per steak, if they did the math, 2 steaks equals 1 pound, $4 for 2 steaks, that comes out to $4 per pound and that’s twice what it cost in the grocery store back then. If they figured it out, that’s when they usually told me to take my meat and beat it. Anyway for 9 months I was having fun, exploring the bay area, going to the college of hard knocks, and selling thousands of dollars worth of meat each week. Like any red blooded 19 year old male with a pocket full of cash I spent my spare time hitting the clubs and bars chasing girls and even catching one on occasion.

            I had just moved out of my mother’s house and into an apartment full of rented furniture in Cupertino when on a sunny Tuesday morning I show up to work ready to pick up my meat for the day only to find a bunch of guys in suits with badges and “Cease & Desist Orders” from the District Attorneys of San Francisco, San Mateo, & Santa Clara Counties. It seems I was one of the few “honest hustlers” in the bunch; a lot of the other guys were totally misrepresenting and out and out lying about what they were selling. They were saying that the meat was leftover from deliveries to fancy restaurants or claiming it weighed more than it did. Turns out the D.A.’s had been running an undercover investigation into what all these meat men were doing and decided to shut us down. I don’t really know if anyone got arrested or fined because three days later the company had me on a plane to the Baltimore office and I was back on the street selling meat.  2 weeks there then on to New Jersey where I lived out of a hotel room for 4 months before moving into a condo with an alcoholic coworker who ended up taking me for $5000 on a business idea he had. I kept it up for another few months but got tired of the hustle, it was a lot harder on the east coast where everyone and their brother is hustling something. That Thanksgiving I went home to Michigan to visit my dad and just decided not to go back. I left behind all my belongings, a room mate, and a girl I had been dating. I left without saying goodbye and I never looked back. That may have been cold blooded and selfish but what did you expect? After all I was now a hardened traveling salesman who had changed from that kid who feared rejection to a man who didn’t care what anyone thought. Boy did I still have a lot to learn. 


To view the column in it's original form go to page 14 of the following link.Winters Express 2/17/11

What's the point of writing a column?

So I’ve been thinking about writing an occasional column for the Winters Express. Debra the editor thought the “Steady as we go” columns I wrote as the Chamber of Commerce Executive Director were OK, and since they’re always looking for some filler for section two, and as how you can only take so much of Donald, Jesse, Robert, & the chicken stuff, and as I’ve always wanted to see how long of a sentence I could string together, I figure what the hell. So here goes.

The title of my column is “What’s the point?” and it will give me the opportunity to express my pessimistic, jaded, cynical and sometimes humorous views and observations of life, culture, society, and these times we live in. Hopefully we can also explore some of the big philosophical questions about the point of life, religion, politics, and why the world can’t have civil discourse on any of these topics. I also want to bare a little of my soul to all of you who think I’m just this business guy who used to run the coffee house and the visitors center. To quote the Talking Heads “And You May Find Yourself In A Beautiful House, With A Beautiful Wife And You May Ask Yourself-Well...How Did I Get Here?” And I do ask myself, how did I get here? In this beautiful town with these beautiful people? So let’s start with a short highlighted history of my life. As Jon Lovitz used to say on Saturday Night Live “Get to know me!”

I was born a poor black child, oops sorry that was Steve Martin in the Jerk (are we seeing a pattern here already)? Actually I was born in Poughkeepsi, NY on June 8^th 1957. I was induced labor because my parents were scheduled to move on the due date and figured my mother could use the rest before moving. I’ve always wondered if that contributed to my never feeling quite ready. My parents were both born in Argentina and moved to the states (with my older brother) so my father could finish his medical schooling. My father was a psychiatrist who was much better with his patients than his family. My parents were Jewish but didn’t believe in god so we were raised without any religious teachings. We moved a lot in my youth, before I settled at age 11 in Flint Michigan we lived in NY, Vermont, Kansas (sister born), Delaware (triplets born – one dies), Argentina, back to Kansas and then Michigan. During my 9^th birthday party in Kansas we were interrupted by a tornado that cut a mile wide path thru Topeka, I thought that was the coolest present ever. When I was 14 my mother kicked my dad out of the house and told him he had to take the older kids with him. My 16 year old brother and I moved into a townhouse with my dad, we got a black lab that we named Psycho and he sure lived up to his name. After 6 months we all moved back home and the dog went to live on a farm (so we were told). Starting in 8^th grade I went to a brand new small progressive private school where we got evaluations instead of letter grades and we called the teachers by their first names. That year there were 80 students in the whole school. The school was started by a group of concerned parents who said they didn’t like the public school system but the truth was more about race. This was Flint 1 year after the Detroit race riots and the public schools were already about 60% minority students. Ironically my first and best friend at that school was black (but affluent).  By the time I was 16 I had become what is now commonly known as a “stoner”. That year my sister Moira was murdered on the day before her 15^th birthday. That event shredded what little relationship my parents had left, they divorced and my mother picked up what was left of our family and moved to California to be near her brother. After 4 months of living and going to high school in Richmond I convinced my parents to let me move back with my dad and finish my senior year in Flint (not the first of many bad ideas). After that long strange trip of high school I was sick of going to school so I wasn’t very motivated for college, I dropped out after a couple of months. My father said if I was going to live under his roof I had to go to school, I responded by moving into a $35 per week furnished apartment. Ah free at last. I had a job, a car, my own pad, and the love of a girl we called “Mary Jane”.

If you enjoyed reading this, look for the next installment, Young Adulthood or what I like to call the Triple D. Disco days, door to door meat man, and the San Francisco D.A. comes a calling. If you’re wondering about what happened to my sister, I’ll write about that some other time. If you’re asking yourself what’s the point? There may not be one but stay tuned anyway, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.


To view the column in it's original form go to page 14 of the following link.Winters Express 1/27/11