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