Civil War Sunday - Oh Say Can You See

50 years before the United States Civil War our country fought another war, a war which tends to be swallowed up in the fascination our country has in the events that occurred between April of 1861 and April of 1865.

Today is the 200th anniversary of the writing of a poem of thanksgiving by a young lawyer, Frances Scott Key.

Too many Americans mumble their way through this poem that became our National Anthem, wondering why anyone cares if we can see in the dawn's early light, and hearing something about rockets, red glare, and bombs bursting in air.  Too many Americans have little understanding about why the song was even written to begin with.

Today, I want to explore that poem.

And, best of all for my Sunday Civil War feature, there is a tie in with the Civil War.


It is well known that our National Anthem is difficult to sing, and every public performance becomes a moment of stress for the singer.  The reputation of a singer, even a famous one, can hinge on whether the singer can survive the ordeal or not.

So why was such a song even chosen to represent our country,and what does that choice have to do with the Civil War?  For that, we must go back in time to the year 1814.

I have a number of readers in Great Britain, and I appreciate every one of them.  I consider them my cyber acquaintances.  But, in 1814, my country was at war with their country.

Some three weeks before the events of September 14, 1814, on August 24, 1814, the British had captured our nation's capital,with our President (and other high officials) fleeing. Our President eventually took refuge in a private house in the small town of Brookeville, Maryland.

Our treasury was bankrupt.  Our capital was in ruins. Our President was running for his life. Things were not looking good for the United States. 

Now, some three weeks later, the British were aiming to capture Baltimore, Maryland, a key harbor.

Enter an attorney practicing in Washington, DC, Frances Scott Key. Key, a religious man,  had opposed the United States getting into what we call the War of 1812, but fought briefly in it.  He was well respected.

A physician and college of Key, Dr. William Beanes, was taken prisoner by the British after the capture of Washington, DC and was being held in Baltimore.

Frances Scott Key was asked to negotiate with the British for the release of Dr. Beanes. With another gentleman, Colonel John Skinner, Key made his case and the British agreed to release Dr. Beanes. But first, the attack on Baltimore was beginning and the British decided they would not release Beanes until after the battle was over. 

The British detained Key, Beanes, and Skinner on an American sloop for the duration of the battle.  They also wanted Key to help negotiate the expected surrender of Baltimore, and Ft. McHenry, which was guarding Baltimore.

On the American sloop, Keys, Skinner and Beanes watched the engagement.

Through the night, the bombardment continued. On the American sloop, Key had a close up view
(he was about eight miles away) of what was happening, but he could not see if the fort had surrendered or not.  Finally, after 25 hours, the British ceased their attack.

Key scanned the dawn skies - was the American flag still flying over Ft. McHenry?

Yes!

Key was an amateur poet, and he quickly wrote a poem called "Defence of Fort McHenry." which was published in the Baltimore paper.

After the war of 1812,  Key became a U.S. District Attorney.  He was also a slave owner, with complex views on slavery. 

Key died in 1843, at the age of 63.  (Key, incidentally, also has a link with the City of San Francisco, perhaps a story for another time. I'll give you a hint: San Francisco cable cars.)

In 1861, as the Civil War began, there was another bombardment of a fort - Ft. Sumter, in Charleston Harbor (South Carolina), which became the first battle of the war.  The "Defence of Fort McHenry." resonated with many loyal to the Union. 

Ft. McHenry? It was used as a Union prisoner transfer camp, and was known as the Baltimore Bastille.

After the Civil War, the song gained in popularity, and eventually, in 1931, became our National Anthem.

Many myths surround the writing of the poem that became the lyrics to the National Anthem. One fascinating fact is that the song differs from what Key had originally envisioned.

Over the years, there have been other interpretations.  Wonder what Key would have thought of this one....

And, there is one more little tidbit to be mentioned. This really has nothing to do with our National Anthem, but makes a good story.  Key had 11 children. One of Key's sons, Philip Barton Key, had an affair with the wife of a U.S. Congressman from New York.  In 1859, the Congressman found out about the affair, got his wife's confession, confronted Key on the street and murdered him.

Sickles was found not guilty - in fact, he was the first person to successfully use the defense of temporary insanity.

The Congressman's name was Dan Sickles.  Sickles fought for the Union in the Civil War, receiving the rank of Major General, and lost his leg in the Battle of Gettysburg.  The leg, incidentally, is on display in a medical museum (no, I haven't gone to see it.)

If you've ever been to Gettysburg and visited the battlefield, you can thank Dan Sickles, who was instrumental in preserving it for history. 

And, as one more historical note - at least one descendent of Key is expected to attend today's ceremonies.

History - full of fascinating stories.

Sustainable Saturday - I'm Not the Only One

There was an amazing aurora borealis visible over the northeastern United States last night but we had a cloudy evening in the Binghammton, New York area. (Surprise!) By 11pm it was breaking up but I was too tired to want to travel somewhere without city lights to see it.

But today, at the Vestal, New York farmers market, I saw another natural color display.

I pulled my iPhone (still a 4S) out as I passed display after display.  One farm in particular, Bloodnick Farms in Appalachin, provided the raw materials for some (not all) of these photos.

Bloodnick Farms- Local Fresh Picked Lettuce

Lettuce.

Beans, beets, and a little carrot.

Laughing Crow Farms, Nanticoke, NY

Kale and cabbage

And heirloom cherry tomatoes.

As I snapped pictures, Lisa Bloodnick from Bloodnick Farms smiled at me.  She struck up a conversation, saying "I saw you take a picture of my lettuce." and we quickly found out we had something in common.

Our phones were both stuffed full of pictures of plants, flowers, vegetables and other natural things.  Laughing, she got out her phone and showed me her personal Facebook page.

Her cover photo was a picture of her lettuce field.

I'm not the only one who uses veggies and fruits as their cover photos!

If you check out my blog's fan page on Facebook, Ramblin' with AM, you'll see some of my past posts and cover photos.  Give me a "like" and leave a comment if you like what you see.

What do you like to take pictures of?

Your Friday Laugh - Schrodinger's Cat Executive Decision Maker and Other Finds

When life gets a bit tough, it's time to start laughing. 

Some of my readers may not be aware that one of the best sources of humor can be found in certain Amazon product reviews.  I sometimes wonder what the merchants of these items think but you have to admit, when thousands of people stop by to add their wisdom, it means these merchants are getting attention - and traffic.

And who knows, maybe they find it funny, too.

It's become such an art form that Amazon itself even keeps track of the funniest ones.

Hence, my latest roundup of Guaranteed Belly Laughs. Take a deep breath and read. Restore your sanity.

Schrodinger's Cat Executive Decision Maker.

The  JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank (only $19,999 - cheap!)

A Million Random Digits.  You'll enjoy the 100,000 normal deviates that come with it.  But, you may want to wait for the audiobook version to come out.

The all time favorite Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer

The famous book "How to Avoid Huge Ships"

My spouse's favorite shirt, the Mountain Three Wolf Moon (seriously, he loves wolf t-shirts).

Brooklyn's famous Tuscan Whole Milk - 1 gallon - 128 fl. oz

The Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Cable

And, last but not least, the Accoutrements Chicken Mask (cock a doodle doo!)

Do you enjoy Amazon product reviews?  And even better, do you write any?

Another 9/11

Today is September 11, 2014, the 13th anniversary of what we in the United States simply call "9/11", as if that was the only September 11 ever.

Of course, it wasn't, although if you say 9/11 to the average American, this is one of the images he or she may get - heroic first responders.

I don't minimize September 11, 2001, not at all. As someone who grew up in New York City, I know people who suffered terribly, from the loss of a son, to the loss of a best friend, to losses of neighbors, to two people from this area who responded to that area and provided services (my exercise instructor stayed for nearly a month to help out) and an elderly uncle in Brooklyn who may have had preexisting health problems aggravated by breathing in the fumes.  But there is another September 11 that will also stay in my mind, side by side with the more famous one.

On September 8/9, 2011, massive flooding hit the Southern Tier of New York and caused extensive damage to many neighborhoods.  An aerial photo of my neighborhood, Westover, near Johnson City, New York, became the iconic cover of a local book about the flood.

My neighborhood is still recovering, three years later.

On the morning of September 11, 2011, I wrote the below post from a motel room in Cortland, New York.  What it doesn't mention is what we saw after we arrived in our neighborhood.  We saw fire trucks from the Syracuse area and from parts of Pennsylvania.  These first responders had come to help our neighbors who were seriously flooded.  And, there was more.  The Salvation Army set up a food tent several blocks from where we live so people without homes could get a hot meal. 

In the coming days local business owners and their employees, some of whose businesses had had to close temporarily, helped the people of my neighborhood and other neighborhoods.  One set up a food tent and cooked donated food. Others spearheaded a furniture drive. 

Maureen McGovern even did a benefit concert for our area. The concert had already been scheduled, and Ms. McGovern donated her profits to flood relief.  What class!

If you have never had to depend on the generosity of co workers and neighbors, hope you never have to.

Every one of those people was heroic in their own way.  And, as much as I have a personal stake in the memories of September 11, 2001,  I remember, just as vividly, a September 11, 10 years later.

Here's my post from that date.

September 11, 2011

We did not make it back to our neighborhood on September 10.  Midway through our drive from Maine to the Binghamton area yesterday, our son called and told us about an 8pm curfew.  So time suddenly became of the essence.

According to 511NY, I-88 was open all the way.  It wasn't.  The detour cost us time.  We got to our neighborhood at 7:40 pm, Main Street was closed and blocked, the emergency worker told us they had closed at 7:30.  He would have "turned his back" if we parked in a certain place and walked in "just to take a look" but it was dark and it would have been too dangerous.

We quickly found all the area motels were full.  We ended up in Cortland, NY, about 35 miles from where we live, totally exhausted. We will be leaving later this morning to go back to the Triple Cities.

I am watching the 9/11 ceremonies live as I blog this.  I just finished chatting with the one neighbor who didn't evacuate and he advised there is traffic in the neighborhood once again.  What a juxposition.  9/11 ceremonies and wondering what we will find in our devastated neighborhood.  I saw a picture on the TV as I ate breakfast.

I want to note there are a lot of people in our area worse off than we are.  Please do not feel sorry for us.  Our house is still there.

During our brief visit to near our neighbhorhood there was an indescribable haze, a haze of dust being raised by people plowing the road (yes, they were plowing Main Street) The flood smell I can't even describe was there.

Remember the Michael Jackson song describing the "funk of 40 thousand years"?

 It would not have been a pleasant night.

My heart goes out to all the emergency workers and rescuers on this special 9/11.  You are at work once again. You are keeping my home and neighborhood safe.   And my son's.  I haven't even talked about my son's situation yet. 

Wish us luck as we try to go back today.

Summer Ramblings - The Change

When I went on vacation at the end of the third week of August, it was summer.

Now, it is the end of the first week of September, and fall has arrived in the world of wildflowers.

Sure, parts of summer remain.  Although they are mostly spent now, this is what knotweed looked like when I left.

The wild sunflowers have finally appeared, a bit late, just like so many other wildflowers this year.

And, the goldenrod is still lighting up the countryside in brilliant yellow.

But fall is intruding.  The wild New York asters are blooming.

The Virginia creeper is turning red.

And look what I found yesterday.

The signs are there.  The seasons are changing.  It's only a matter of time.

The Bear News

September 9 - a Supermoon is rising tonight, but it is cloudy so we will not see it. So instead, I'll give you a picture from two nights ago, as the moon rose over the Chenango River near downtown Binghamton, New York.  Not that it has anything to do with my post - I just wanted to start with this picture.

Nature is on my mind, and the impact it continues to have on our lives is something I think about often.

We were walking three or so Sundays ago on the Vestal Rail Trail, a walking trail we try to frequent at least once a week where we live in upstate New York.

We approached a bridge carrying elevated traffic that crosses over the trail. My spouse suddenly stopped, and seemed reluctant to continue.  He was acting so strangely, in fact, that I wondered if he was in some medical distress. It scared me for a minute

"I'm not sure if I want to keep walking", he said. "I heard a strange sound - maybe it was a motorcycle, I don't know".  I hadn't heard the sound but my hearing isn't the best - so I told him "if you have an instinct not to go any further, let's not."

We turned around.

This was so different from how my spouse normally behaves, and I wondered what he had heard or seen as we walked back to our car, cutting our walk short by about a mile.

When we got to our car he said "I thought I heard a bear."

Where we live, in the "Triple Cities"of upstate New York, this is not a joke.  Vestal has been seeing a lot of black bear sightings, and one of the recent sightings (May, I think), in fact, was on the Vestal Rail Trail near to where my spouse was spooked by something.

And then, last weekend, we found this on the sidewalk of the trail near to where spouse heard the noise. Let's just call it what animals leave behind after the digestive process is complete.

I hope it was a deer.  Anyone know for sure? 

It's small consolation to know that bears may be more afraid of us than we of them.

Someone at work set up an automatic camera in her yard, and showed us some amazing footage of bears in her back yard.  And, my guest photographer (who lives out in the country) takes in her bird feeders at night.  One night she was a few minutes late and had her own close encounter with a bear.  The bear ran off.

But they don't always run.  Sometimes they attack.  A high school friend who lives in Florida had her neighborhood make the national news for bear attacks.  
 

It isn't only bears.  A fox that may have been rabid attacked three members of an Endicott family earlier this summer.  And, last year, we had our own close (or not so close) encounter, again on the Vestal Rail trail. We were alone, right after a rain, and are fairly certain a bobcat ran out and crossed the trail right in front of us.

You never heard about this kind of thing when we first moved to upstate New York in the 1980's.  But it is definitely becoming more and more common.  Increasingly, we know we are sharing our lives with wildlife.

It isn't just squirrels and sparrows (and the occasional skunk or raccoon anymore.

Do you have any stories of your own to share?

The Dancers

Blues on the Bridge was held again yesterday, on a beautiful late summer Sunday.  This is the 13th year this festival has been held in downtown Binghamton, New York.  There always seems to be a special story surrounding it.

For example:
September 25, 2011.  Still recovering from massive flooding two weeks earlier (generators were needed to power the electrical instruments), downtown Binghamton threw a party for itself.  Even floods could not destroy what had become a Sunday after Labor Day tradition.

This year's Blues had a special story I didn't learn about until today.  I'll tell it a little later.

This is the bridge the festival used to be held on, the historic South Washington Street Bridge.  But the festival, free and open to the public thanks to sponsors and donations, long ago outgrew that bridge.

Here's another view of the downtown side of that bridge, now closed to vehicular traffic. Our beautiful hills are in the background.

So it is held on another, nearby bridge, but no one cares, least of all the Blues Brothers.

Near to the concert, two rivers, the Chenango and the Susquehanna, converge.  This picture was taken from the South Washington Street Bridge.  Hard to believe a small city downtown is just a few feet away from this natural beauty.

Concert goers enjoyed the afternoon.

Here, one of the opening acts entertains the crowd, which builds through the day.  And somewhere in this crowd, there was a poignant story, the story I promised to tell.

There are some couples that show up at some of the free music festivals and dance near the stage.  Some appear year after year. This year, we saw a new couple.  The woman had a beautiful head of silver hair.  She danced with an elderly man, coming close and coming apart.  When they came apart, though, it seemed like the man was lost. He just stood there, shuffling their feet.

I read their story today.  This couple, married 53 years, dance several times a week.  Interviewed for our local paper, I find out why they dance.

Her husband has Alzheimer's.  They dance so he can remain active.

 “We need more of this,” the woman said of the festival. “To bring the people together. Because when you’re in a group like this, everybody talks to everybody, they say hello to everybody else.”

Binghamton may seem like a beautiful place in these photos. It can be in places, but it also has a lot of problems not uncommon to "rust belt" cities. High unemployment.  Lots of vacant buildings.   I don't like to dwell on the negatives in this blog, though, because there are also so many positives about the Binghamton area.

For one afternoon, those problems were forgotten by thousands of people, all dancing, eating, rocking out, and just having a good time listening to music ranging from blues to Americana to classic rock.

And the loving couple danced on.

Civil War Sunday - Historic Walls

The escaped slaves huddled in the cluttered basement.  It was cluttered intentionally, to give them places to hide if the basement was raided.

It was cold and damp, but they did not care.  They had suffered every day of their lives - forced to labor from an early age, with little opportunity to rest.  Some labored on plantations, in the hot, burning sun.  Some were house slaves, attending to their master's every whim.  Others were skilled craftsmen, who had to give some or all of their earnings over to their masters. Some knew extreme cruelty.  Others knew mainly neglect.   They all, however, had one thing in common:

They had the burning desire for FREEDOM.  It was the desire that made them risk everything.  If they were caught, death or cruel punishments awaited, so they only had this one chance.  Somehow, they all had met up with this guide, the guide that would take them north to a magical place called Canada, where men hired by their masters to hunt them down and bring them back could not pursue them.

And now they were in this basement, in a place called New York State, just a few days run from freedom.  It was so close!

The guide had brought them there, but they could only stay a night or two. Then they had to move on.

The house was owned by a white man.

Who was the white man who was sheltering them for the night?

It may have been the man who owned this house in Auburn, New York.  This house was owned by someone who may well have become the Republican candidate for President in 1860.  But Abraham Lincoln got that nomination instead, and the owner of this house became Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State during the Civil War.

He became a friend of former slave, Underground Railroad conductor and overall amazing woman  Harriet Tubman, whom I blogged about last Sunday.  In fact, for some years, they lived only a couple of miles apart, on South Street in Auburn, New York.

His name was William H. Seward. When I went to school, I learned of him only in connection with something he did in 1867.  His entire history before that date was a big unknown.

Photography is not permitted in the house or in the basement that was a stop on the Underground Railroad prior to the Civil War, but I can show you the exterior and grounds of this house.

Ironically, Seward was the son of a New York slaveholder, growing up just north of New York City at a time before slavery was outlawed in New York State. As a child, one of his playmates was a slave owned by a neighbor, a black boy who escaped one day after a vicious beating due to a prior escape attempt.  As an older teen, he lived for a time in the Southern state of Georgia, and what he saw of slavery during his time there turned him totally against the "peculiar institution".

Seward risked a lot in sheltering slaves in the years prior to the Civil War, but he risked even more by being an anti-slavery Senator.  He lost the opportunity to run for President of the United States as he was so hated in the states that ended up seceding and forming the Confederate States of America.

(As for those slaves, did they succeed in reaching freedom? We will never know. But like many things in the Civil War, everything was complicated. White men enslaving blacks.  White men helping slaves to freedom....although few of those white men considered blacks as their human equals, and that must also be pointed out.)

Seward nearly lost his life on the night that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.  The plotters, who included John Wilkes Booth (Lincoln's assassin), also targeted others in Lincoln's administration for death.  The man assigned to assassinate the Vice President lost his nerve. The man assigned to assassinate Seward, Lewis Paine, went to Seward's house, gained entrance by trickery, attacked Seward's son Frederick,  and seriously wounded Seward.

Seward survived. However,  Seward's wife died of a heart attack shortly afterwards.

After the Civil War ended, Seward remained Secretary of State under Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson.  In 1867, he purchased land in North America from the Russians, who had lost interest in that piece of land. Many people opposed that sale.  They called it Seward's Folly. But the sale went through. 

That land became, almost 100 years later, the State of Alaska.  You could say, though, that Seward had the last laugh when Alaska became our 49th state and proved its worth during the Cold War.

William Seward died in 1872 and is buried just a few blocks away from that house in Auburn.  His last words were "Love one another".

Look at that house.  It's a house that sheltered escaped slaves, was the home of a governor/senator/Secretary of State/ and saw a bloody assassination attempt turned back.  Kings and princes visited Seward there and dined with him, as did many famous people of the 1800's.

Their pictures line the walls of the house.  But you won't see any portraits of the slaves that sheltered in that cluttered basement.  I can wonder what happened to them, and their descendents.


It's a cliche to say "if only those walls could talk" - but, if only those upstate New York historic walls could talk, what would they say to us of the 21st century?

Sustainable Saturday -Bringing Back the Dead (Species, that Is)

Bring back the dead? No, I'm not talking about zombies, although that would probably boost readership of my blog substantially.  In fact, the last time I blogged about zombies, the spammers headed for that post like...um, what is a herd of zombies called, anyway?  I had to fight spammers off, with my trusted Japanese katana zombie fighting sword, for months.

Rather, I am talking about man-made extinction, and the process of what some call de-extinction, or recreating (as best we can) a species that currently is extinct.

100 years ago this week, the passenger pigeon, once a bird numbering in the billions here in the United States, became extinct.  And yes, that is a subject perfect for a Sustainable Saturday.

These birds, it was estimated, once composed about 40% of the United States' bird population.  Their flocks darkened the sky, so much so that some early pioneers thought they were enduring the end of the world when a flock flew over.  The flocks destroyed trees when they roosted by the sheer weight of their numbers.  Their sounds were deafening.  Their numbers, it seemed, were limitless. 

They were hunted. And hunted.  And hunted.  Passenger pigeon - yes, it was what was for dinner.

We were wrong about the limitless numbers part.  The huge flocks made hunting a little too easy.

The extinction process only took about 40 years. 

On September 1, 1913, the last living passenger pigeon, named Martha by humans, died, in a cage, at the Cincinnati Zoo. You can view her preserved body today, as I have, at the Smithsonian at Washington, DC.  If you visit, ponder how easily we can upset our ecology and make changes that can not be undone.

Or can we?

I understand that the passenger pigeon somewhat resembled a common bird here in upstate New York, the mourning dove. But, actually, there is a closer related pigeon still alive, called the band-tailed pigeon.  And now there are scientists who are wondering if we can, in some way, bring a bird as similar as possible to the passenger pigeon back, using the band-tailed pigeon and passenger pigeon DNA.  It is a complicated question.

Last year, I blogged about the process of "de-extinction".  

With the passenger pigeon, there are actually a fair number of - shall we say preserved specimens, where DNA could be obtained. But the process is not easy.  We've actually tried with a species of mammal that became extinct in 2000, and failed. 

And then there was the movie Jurassic Park. (I so love the satire on its theme song done by Weird Al and its ponderings on what could go wrong if scientists de-extinct dinosaurs. Enjoy!)

Assuming we can develop the skills to bring a sort-of passenger pigeon back into existence, the question becomes - should we?  Would we care less about protecting endangered species if we could (in some cases) bring them back?  Plus, the environment has adjusted to the absence of the passenger pigeon - could de extinction become a case of unintended consequences?

But, on the other hand, do we have a moral obligation to try, since this extinction was totally our doing?

What do you think?

A Carousel Ride Through History

An amazing idea.  Teach New York State history by building a carousel.  After all, what does a child love more than riding a carousel?  Why not make it an educational experience?  "Stealth learning", some call it.  To me, life is learning - why should we separate learning into something that happens only in school?

A couple of teachers, some 32 years ago, had an idea - why not teach history through a carousel ride?

At the Farmer's Museum near Cooperstown, NY, the dream took shape over the next 30 some years.  As time passed, the dream was carved in wood into a carousel.  In fact, the work is not yet finished.  This carousel, now called the Empire State Carousel, has spaces remaining where any city can contribute something to this work 32 years in progress.

Let Benny the Brook Trout and other carvings take you through history.

This is their dream in action - literally.

On the outside of the carousel, various quilts hang.  And, along the carousel interior, hand carved wood panels tell of history, or demonstrate beautiful artwork.

Each panel demonstrates an asset of New York State history or culture.

How about some pirates? What child doesn't love tails of pirates?

How about illustrating a Broadway play?

Various people,, some amateurs, some professionals, carved the carousel animals.  This one, Percy the Pig, cost a million pennies, which he carries in a money bag. (No, not really.)

Features of the animals sneak in "learning", such as this map of Long Island on a carousel horse.

This bear from the city of Waterloo, has the Finger Lakes on one side (photo above), an American flag in its mouth and Civil War gear on the other side.

The day we visited the Farmer's Museum, young children were squealing in delight as they rode the carousel, blissfully unaware that they were being educated.

I love carousels.  I live in what is considered the carousel capital of the United States, with six operational (and forever free) carousels donated by a local philanthropist to the children of the Triple Cities of Upstate New York. But we have nothing like this.  I was amazed.

I hope you were, too.

Stretch Bread

Every part of our world has a food specialty.

Where I live in the Southern Tier of New York State, it is the spiedie, a specialty that, I must admit, is not my favorite.  In parts of Central New York, it is stretch bread.

What is stretch bread?

It is a bread made from something like ciabatta dough, stretched before baking.  Some online sources say it must be baked on a stone, in a deep, dry oven.  (In other words, don't try this one at home.) Another name for it is Stirato.

This is what it looks like when you eat it.

And it has even been the subject of a lawsuit.

I've purchased it, warm from the oven, from a bakery in Skaneateles, New York (some 30 miles west of Syracuse), and it is heavenly.

This might (or might not) be a recipe for it.  I make no claims - I have not made it for myself.  I do challenge a particular woman out in Nebraska (she knows who she is) to make it, though.

Getting back to spiedies for a minute, too many of these marinated meat cubes I've eaten have been dry.  And, to top it off, they are put into what passes for "Italian" bread in the Binghamton area (sorry, speaking here as a native of New York City), which makes the meal even drier.  I have a throat condition where I need to eat moist food, and spiedies just don't work for me. 

But I bet they would be great on stretch bread. (And now that I've alienated all of my Southern Tier of New York readers....)

Dear readers, have any of you ever made stretch bread?  Can it be made at home?

Summer Ramblings - Unplugging

I am not ashamed to admit that last week was a stressful week for me, despite being on vacation.

Why?

I was in the middle of a situation where I needed (or so I thought) to be in contact with some individuals, and I had my smart phone with me.

I use my phone as my camera, so every time I wanted to take a picture, there were the emails and texts.

Which, of course, I had to check out.

"Snap", went the photo button.  And as I saw each text, or read each email, my blood pressure rose.

I had a headache, and it got worse with each passing hour.

Willard Memorial Chapel, Auburn, New York

Even a historic building could not make me smile.  I wore the burdens of my world.

Hoopes Park, Auburn, New York

I love my iPhone.  I love the photos it takes.  But I hate being connected.  Finally, I sat in a park in downtown Auburn, New York, and questioned what I was trying to do.

Sometimes one just has to unplug.  And I swore that this week I would do a lot more unplugging.

And a lot more enjoying the world around me, as I ramble through the rest of summer.

Fear not, I am not stopping my blog - I still intend to post daily.  But I just may not be as accessible this week.

Have you ever unplugged?

Never Let Us Go

A book I read several months ago haunts me.

I don't make it a habit to write book reviews.  In fact, Goodread's nagging me to write reviews has caused me to (almost) abandon the site.  But today, I want to blog about a book that will never let me go.

This book is a book some call science fiction, and some dystopian.  It was written by a  mainstream author, Kazuo Ishiguro.  It's called Never Let Me Go.  (You may know Ishiguro better for another book, The Remains of the Day.)

Never Let Me Go was made into a movie in 2010, and this is the trailer.  The late Roger Ebert gave it four stars and a big "thumbs up", but his review definitely deserves a Spoiler Alert. (Full disclosure: I have not yet seen the movie. I actually took it out of the library last week, but didn't have the time to see it. So back it went.)


The plot:  students at a mysterious English boarding school in an "alternate" England find out the reason why they are so special.  (And now, the spoiler alert. If you want to read this book and haven't, read no further.)  If you are still with me:

They are clones, created for the sole purpose of being organ donors.  They won't live that long into adulthood, as they will be harvested for their organs and eventually "complete", or suffer brain death.

But before they become donors, the young adult clones must become carers - nurses for the clones older than them, clones who are already in the organ donor system. The system is this:  First you are a carer.  Then you receive your letter (from the government?) and must report to become a donor.  You live in a donation center for the rest of your life.

The donor doesn't die right away, depending on the organ taken.  Some die after the first donation.  Some die after the second.  More die after the third.

But none of them survive the fourth donation.  No later than the fourth donation, they complete.  And whether that is really the end of their suffering, or if there is some consciousness that remains during  what comes after, none of the clones know.

Meanwhile, the carer clones see the entire process close up- the pain the donation surgeries cause, the crippling, the mental and physical agony. They see the suffering of their patients as they recover from each donation surgery.  The carers must care for the donors until they themselves are called to end their careers as carers and begin donating.  Sooner or later every clone is called to donate.  There is no escape - but is there a way to delay the inevitable?

There is a rumor among the clones that you can be "deferred" (have your donation time deferred) if you fall really, and truly, in love.  But is it true, or only a terrible myth?

The book is partially about three clones who grow up together at the mysterious boarding school, and become friends, finally seeking out one of their former teachers to find out if the rumor of deferral is really true.  (I won't reveal that end, sorry.)

And the most horrifying part is:  no one fights the system.  No one tries to escape.  The clones suffer, but they show up for their donations in the end.  And then they donate, and they finally complete.

The end.

I am in my early 60's and a caregiver for an inlaw in her mid 80's.  And all through this book, I kept thinking about the parallels between carers and caregivers.

Carers. and Caregivers, in our world, go hand in hand.  Caregivers first watch as their parents and in laws age and eventually die at the end.  We know that one day, it will be our turn, as we are cared for in turn.

We have no choice. We must age.  We eventually lose our health. We become frail, no matter how much we exercise, or eat right, or take care of ourselves.

And then we complete.  Some in our 70's, some in our 80's, some in our 90's, and the rest of us in our 100's.  Every one of us.  No exceptions.

Our coping with this fact is a function of religion, or spirituality, or philosophy.  But, whatever your beliefs, we can not escape.  There is no deferral.

I found this a book that speaks to me.  It speaks to me again, and again.

I love books like that.

Do you have a book that has spoken to you in a special way?

Would You Walk a Mile for a Camel Meatball?

During a recent vacation, my spouse and I came across this display in a supermarket in upstate New York.

Yes, we were looking at ground camel and ground kangaroo.

In the United States, these are still considered exotic meats, but it would seem that in Australia, kangaroo meat is gaining in popularity.  In fact, I was able to find an online kangaroo cookbook on an Australian website.

As for camel, that was a bit harder but I found some recipes online.

After some thought (and checking with Facebook friends), we decided not to buy these items.  But we did purchase some chicken sausage in the same store.

I thought back to my college days, when I was a cultural anthropology major, and remembered just how culturally influenced our eating habits are.

While we in the United States may reject camel and kangaroo, many of us love fried fish.  The small village where we were vacationing has a very popular fried fish restaurant, in fact.  And it sells other items, such as lobster rolls.

Yet, there are cultures who will not eat fish, and cultures who will not eat lobster. I have friends who follow a vegan lifestyle for various reasons.  And, there are groups of people who follow extensive rules, religious or otherwise, concerning which foods can be eaten, and which can not be.

Why do we eat certain foods and not others? And, why have certain customs grown up around certain foods? 

Would you have bought the camel or kangaroo meat?  Would you have accepted that challenge?

Speaking of challenges - today starts the Ultra Blog Challenge, a brand new challenge hosted by a woman who had previously helped with the Ultimate Blog Challenge.  She's experienced, and I look forward to participating.  Come join us - it will be fun, it will be exciting, and you will get a lot out of it. Discipline.  Inspiration.  And fellowship.  What do you have to lose? Nothing.  What do you have to gain?

Join the Challenge, and see.

Civil War Sunday - Every Great Dream Begins with a Dreamer

Harriet Tubman, who was known in her childhood as "Araminta" or "Minty", should never have achieved greatness.  She was hired out as a nursemaid and later a human beast of burden by her slave master, starting at age six.  When she was 12, she was hit in the head by an object thrown by an overseer trying to prevent the escape of another slave. After being nursed back to health, she developed epilepsy and, later, narcolepsy.  Her seizures made her, in the eyes of her master, almost worthless.

She married a free black man, John Tubman, who threatened to tell her master if she tried to escape to freedom.

A slave marrying a free black was not uncommon where she grew up in Maryland. In fact, a fair number of the blacks in that area of Eastern Maryland were free.   Some free spouses would do whatever they could to free their slave spouses, but John Tubman was not one of these men.

Harriet escaped anyway, to the free North, in 1849.  She used the skills taught her by her father - how to live in the woods, how to find her way by using the North Star.  During her seizures, or "fall outs" as they were called back, she would sometimes have religious visions.  Tubman was deeply religious.

Being free was not enough for Tubman.  She returned to Maryland, again and again, a total of 19 times between 1852 and 1857, to lead other slaves to freedom.   She led some 300 slaves to freedom using her woodcraft skills, and never lost one.  She was a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, a system of trails and safe houses where escaped slaves could find shelter in the night, and be passed off from "station" to "station" until they had reached Canada.


Tubman settled in Auburn, New York in 1857, a small town where many abolitionists (people who opposed slavery, although they did not necessarily believe blacks were equal to whites) lived.  She lived just down the street (South Street, ironically) from a friend, William Seward, who became Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State.  Seward's home was itself a "station" on the Underground Railroad.

Tubman didn't spend a lot of time at home - there were funds to be raised and speeches to be made, while she continued her work to abolish slavery.


When war broke out in 1861, she served in the Civil War, on the Northern side, as a nurse and later a scout.  Later in life, Tubman had to fight to get a small military pension. She always lived on the edge of poverty.

Tubman remarried after the war. Her husband, Nelson Davis, was a former slave and Civil War veteran.  He died some 19 years into the marriage.  They lived in this house in Auburn, New York, which is now being restored.

Harriet Tubman's barn.

In later life, Tubman cared for the elderly, so much a mission for her that she purchased adjoining land and built what became a home for the aged near her home.  Previous to this, she had cared for her aging parents, whom she had also rescued from slavery.

Fort Hill Cemetery, Auburn, New York

Harriet Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913. She was in her 90's (the exact date of her birth is unknown, but a date in 1820 is what is most accepted. Tubman herself thought she was 95 at the time just before her death.)  Her gravestone is simple.

Harriet Tubman once said "Every great dream begins with a dreamer."  Hers was a wonderful philosophy.

Many people have gone to Auburn to visit the home of William Seward, especially after the award winning movie Lincoln was released.   I highly recommend that tour, too, but no one should leave Auburn without visiting the Tubman homestead.  Now owned by an AME church, tours are available of the property (not the house or barn). Our tour guide was most informative (and was working the tours totally by herself) and made me want to learn more about this remarkable woman.

Tough times.  A remarkable woman.  An enduring legacy.

Sustainable Saturday - Strawberry Fields Forever

Don't these strawberries look luscious?

They aren't just any strawberries.  These are cutting edge strawberries, grown in a special way that may become more mainstream one day.

We picked those on Wednesday - fresh, at a farm in upstate New York about 30 miles from Syracuse, New York, where (for "normal" strawberries, the season would have been over in late June).

These strawberries are not your normal strawberries.  They were grown, outdoors, hydroponically, on a U Pick farm near Skaneateles, New York called Strawberry Fields.

These are grown in vertical towers.  They are everbearing strawberries, which bloom throughout the season.  The berries we saw had both flowers, small berries, and ripe berries, all on the same plant.

The berries are not officially organic, but are grown as naturally as possible.

Each tower has a number of pockets, each of which contains a strawberry plant planted in a non-soil planting medium.  The ground around the plants is covered so you are never walking in mud.  Even someone with a back problem, such as me, can pick these with no problem.

Each visitor to Strawberry Fields is given a basket, lined with a plastic bag, with a pair of scissors at the bottom.  You snip the stem and gently place each berry in the basket.

You pick as many as you want, and pay by the pound.

How you use the berries are up to you. I eat them plain (no sugar, no cream - even before Weight Watchers, I loved my berries in the natural way) but you are welcome to use them in recipes.

These berries are grown as annuals, since, basically, they are grown in containers, and probably wouldn't overwinter in our northern climate.

And the best part?  The "small world" factor.  We visited this farm twice on a recent visit to Skaneateles.  The first time, we were helped by a young lady.  The second time, we were helped by her mother, and found that the young lady of the day before goes to college where we live, and lives just a couple of miles from us.

That's why I love travel.  Even if you don't travel far (and this was less than 100 miles from where we live), you can experience something brand new.

Have you ever eaten hydroponically grown fruit?

Laughing Back at Life

This has been an interesting week in many ways.  

This post is dedicated to a friend  and a fan of this blog, and she knows who she is. 

If you will excuse the expression, she is in the midst of kicking a$$ and taking names (an "urban" expression here in the States).  And she's doing that today, so she doesn't want to hear any of my whining about life in general.

For that, I am grateful.  This will not be a whining post. (or a wine post, although I should do one soon.)

I am grateful, daily, for the fact that she has been my friend for 51 years.  Yes, someone has put up with me all that time.  That's important for someone like me who is an only child.

And now, she will have to put up with me some more.  I'm confident that she will be putting up with me for years to come.  Despite that foe that begins with the letter "C".

What this week has shown me, as life has shown me so many times, is that life is not a straight line.  No, it is a crooked line, meandering here and there.  As you age, you have to understand that if you can make plans all you want, but sometimes life laughs at those plans.

Mannequin Lamp, MacKenzie Childs, Aurora, NY

So we have to laugh back at life.

I thought this lamp (yes, it is a lamp) I saw at one of my stops on Wednesday was "you", dear friend.  That's because you, like this lamp, are one of a kind.

You have style.

You have class.

And you're a little strange, but in a good way.  Just like this lamp.

I guess we deserve each other, because I'm strange, too.  As long as you will have me, and the post office doesn't lose my cards to you, I want to dance through life with you with a lampshade on my head.

So there.

Thank you for being my friend.

Another Revisit to The Twilight Zone - with Gratitude

I am traveling back in time, once again, to October of 2009, when I first wrote this post, and an update in September of 2011, after a devastating flood hit my neighborhood, and others in the Binghamton, New York area.

We are coming up on the 3rd anniversary of that flood.  There has been recovery, but there is still a lot of pain.

There is a lot to be grateful for - that we surived, that there hasn't been a flood since despite flood producing rains going all around us.  But, still there is the anxiety, always in the back of our mind:  how long will our luck hold out?

It might have made a good episode for The Twilight Zone. I wonder what Rod Serling might have thought, if he was alive and still living in Binghamton in 2014.

Enjoy the double post from 2011 and then 2009.

Did you know that Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame grew up in Binghamton, NY?  Did you know that The Twilight Zone TV show, seen by my generation as a new show, and generations since as reruns, aired 52 years ago this past October?

I am honored by the fact that I do much of my exercise walking in Rod Serling's boyhood neighborhood; that in a manner of speaking I walk in his footsteps.


Now that Binghamton (and surrounding villages and town) is in a fight to recover from the devastating floods of last month, I sometimes find myself in a personal Twilight Zone. Just a handful of miles from Rod's boyhood home, I can walk through my neighborhood, and pass from a zone where people just had some water (or a lot of water) in their basements, to a zone where water touched and then receded, to a zone where everything is closed, abandoned, or just plain dark (some still covered in layers of mud) with active rebuilding. I can pinch myself and ask "Did this really happen?  Or was it just a figment of imagination?  And what will it take for us to recover?"

Let us take a lesson from Binghamton's native son.  All things are possible in The Twilight Zone.  We will rise again.

So now, submitted for your approval, a post from 2009.

The Writer Once Without Honor in His Hometown

 Rod Serling.  The Twilight Zone.  The writer and the show are so much a part of our culture that several catchphrases and its theme music immediately bring this show to mind even to my 19 year old son.  Yet it is 50 years (and one day) after its first episode aired on October 2, 1959.  It has never left television once in all of those 50 years.

Happily, the paraphrase above of a quote from Jesus in the New Testament Book of Mark  ("A prophet without honor in his hometown...") may have been true at one time, but no longer is.   Rod Serling, a very talented...and tormented... man, who wrote amazing TV scripts in the era of the Red Menace with messages so timeless they resonate today, has come home.  It is ironic, in a way, that one of his most famous scripts showed a man trying to revisit his childhood in vain.

Rod Serling has now been honored in his hometown.  The hometown of which Rod Serling once said this:

"Everybody has to have a hometown, Binghamton's mine. In the strangely brittle, terribly sensitive make-up of a human being, there is a need for a place to hang a hat or a kind of geographical womb to crawl back into, or maybe just a place that's familiar because that's where you grew up.

  "When I dig back through memory cells, I get one particularly distinctive feeling—and that's one of warmth, comfort and well-being. For whatever else I may have had, or lost, or will find—I've still got a hometown. This, nobody's gonna take away from me."

We think we know the man in black and white, smoking a cigarette, who intoned the following every week on the TV sets of the baby boomer generation and their parents:

"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition...."

But what of the child who grew up in Binghamton?  Thanks in part to a conversation I had today with a man from California who upkeeps the Rod Serling Foundation website, I was able to walk in those footsteps.  It was humbling in a way to speak to a man who thinks so highly of a man that he has traveled four times to Binghamton to be here.  The same Binghamton that I am in five days a week, and take for granted.

During my journey, I also met people from Seneca Falls, NY and Cherry Hill, NJ who also came out to share the experience.  To so many, Binghamton is a "burnt out industrial town" but one of these people closed her eyes in delight in Rod's childhood neighborhood and exclaimed her happiness in seeing it.

So here is my tribute to Rod Serling.  I'm not even going to say "submitted for your approval". 

First, here is the home where Rod Serling grew up.  I've passed it doing my exercise walks (disclosure:  I do not live in this neighborhood but I love walking in it) and never knew its history.  As the address and a photo of this home exist on a Rod Serling website, I feel comfortable in posting a picture but will not give the address-it is privately owned.

This is the junior high (now West Middle School) where Rod Serling first met Helen Foley, the English teacher who influenced the boy who became the writer.  I took two pictures to highlight some of the Art Deco architectural details both in the windows above the entrance doors.

The next stop was Recreation Park, just a few
blocks from where Serling grew up, home to a bandstand where Serling carved his initials as a boy.
I didn't take a picture of the bandstand, but I did of the building housing the historic carousel.

Binghamton is known as the "Carousel Capital" and myself and my son took many rides on the same carousel. The carousel, which normally doesn't run after Labor Day, was running today to celebrate.  (Sorry, the picture isn't very good.)  They were showing the episode inside the carousel building on a couple of TV's and, although it has been years, I immediately recognized it because I've had such emotional responses when I've seen it.

A live recreation of this episode will air on our local PBS station tonight.


It will be an emotional experience for us who know the true story.  Which I do now.  I was told that even, after Rod Serling was famous beyond imagination, he would come back to his childhood neighborhood on Binghamton's west side and walk those streets.  Trying to find....something.

For what it is worth, the "Walking Distance" episode was not filmed in Binghamton (nor were any other Twilight Zones, although Serling came back to Binghamton many times) and the carousel in the episode was not this carousel.  It was filmed in Hollywood, according to the Serling expert I spoke to.

This is Binghamton High School (then known as Binghamton Central High School before Binghamton lost so much of its population in the 80's and 90's)

 Next, is a Rod Serling portrait inside of Binghamton High School.

I skipped the Serling star in the Binghamton Walk of Fame downtown, as I pass it so many times that it is an ordinary object to me.  Perhaps that's why prophets are without honor in their hometowns.  We know the famous celebrity as an ordinary person.  One who carved his initials into a city bandstand as a child.

Or even...the thought I had as I passed the boys room in Binghamton High...oh, never mind.

Thank you to Broome County Transit whose special hybrid shuttle bus transported us to some of these sights.

So, what was the rest of the story?

This child of Binghamton grew up.  After Rod Serling graduated Binghamton Central in 1943 he served in the Pacific Theatre during World War II as a paratrooper.   The combat service (including, it is said, seeing his best friend die in front of him) created permanent trauma that haunted Serling for the rest of his too short life.  A driven individual and a heavy smoker, Rod Serling died at age 50 with an unbelievable legacy few of us could ever aspire to.

Some episodes haunted me for years after I saw them.  "It's a Good Life".  "The Midnight Sun".  "The Hitchhiker". "Nick of Time".

Others were morality plays that still resonate today although as a child I did not know their true meanings.   "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"  "The Eye of the Beholder". "The Obsolete Man".

And, of course, "Walking Distance".

Rod Serling said, at the end of the "Walking Distance" episode of the protagonist Martin Sloane, the man who found out he could not go home:

Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives—trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone.