Semester's end is rapidly approaching. Spring is here. In coming days, I will have time to write here. Yay.

It finally started raining yesterday. Snow in the Catskills. Hopefully this helps to extinguish the fires. Semester is winding down. I entered a Writer's Digest short fiction contest. I wanted to write something new (and I have an idea), but there wasn't enough time, so I tweaked an unpublished favorite. Notifications take place in February. I don't expect to win, but I need to get back on track with writing. Maybe because her birthday will be on Thanksgiving or one of the characters in the story is based on her or due to this story in the news (or all three), I have been thinking about Donna more than usual. I always feared she would suffer the same fate as that poor woman who was found in Troy, but somehow she managed to make it to 53 and die of natural causes  -- if addictions are "natural."

I've been doing some thinking about whether writing publicly (as in a blog or on social media) is empowering or stifling. This is a question I remember being extensively discussed on blogs 20+ years ago. I could argue "empowering" because I have managed to keep this e-journal for over 22 years -- something I was never able to do in the days of handwritten or typed "private" journals (scare quotes because sometimes it was an assignment, read by a teacher or professor). I could also argue "stifling," because I absolutely self-censor, even though I have never tried to promote this blog and so the audience is small.

On social media, Bob has decided to be brave and make some political posts about Kennedy. I think it is admirable, even though I cannot do much more than click "like." I have PTSD from my days on the village board. People were so rude. To maintain peace, I can't engage in a lot of discourse. His shares have resulted in the blue-no-matter-who crowd commenting, in what I perceive as an effort to get him to delete posts and shut up.

An outrage on the news is the daily coverage of Belmont -- the race is being held at Saratoga this year, due to construction. It was bad enough that Saratoga has added race days in recent years. Now we have to hear the constant media gushing even earlier this summer over what amounts to animal abuse, due to Belmont.

We saw the last of the ten movies that were nominated for best picture: the Killing of the Flower Moon. It was good, although a difficult story. I can now say with assurance that "Poor Things" was the worst of the ten -- in fact it was much worse than that, and no way should best actress or anything else have gone to it. It was nothing more than a creepy celebration of abuse, and that simple fact renders good performances or make up or whatever meaningless.

I have an idea for a satire cartoon or short story based on this article and pending village elections. Revitalize Main Street! Like Castleton's cats, how about Castleton's rats? Oh I am itching to write and draw. This is why I am excited to not teach this summer.

When I was a teenager the question of life after death really captured my attention. At that time, I read a lot on the subject: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross books (On Death and Dying), and some popular works, for instance Life After Life and The Evidence for Life After Death. I found a lot of comfort in that reading.

Mimmie and I talked a great deal about the topic. She promised she would let me know someday, as it was likely I would outlive her. The summer after she died, I felt the world was different; somehow less colorful. Oh, the grass was green and the sky was blue, but it wasn't the same shade or brightness or something. Then one night I had a dream. She was sitting there, as always, at the little table in her kitchen, but her mobile home had been transported to a stunning hillside, surrounded by hay and Christmas-tree sized spruce trees. We had tea. She was OK. I felt better afterwards, though I still think of her, and miss her, a lot.

Quite a few years ago, a friend gave me a book called Embraced by the Light. I was impressed by the book at the time, and even shared it with a friend’s father, when he was grieving the loss of his wife. I re-read it recently, and even though I still liked it, I was not as taken with it as I was the first time I read it. I am reading Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife and so far, I’m enjoying it. After I bought it, I learned he taught at Harvard and worked at MGH. How about that!

Due to the magic of the Internet archives, I discovered this story, Compost Pile:

I was scheduled to get my first vaccine on March 31, but that was the day after Rosie died and I was at the pet crematory. (I cry as I write that.) I rescheduled for April 21 and was relieved because classes would be over the day before the second shot, in the event of a reaction. On May 12, I got the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and on May 13, I was one of the unlucky who had severe side effects. I think I didn't understand until it happened to me. It wasn't like the flu at all, "it flattened me," which is how someone described it in a Google search I did. My arm was sore Wednesday night, much more than it was after the first shot, so I should have suspected. If I had known, I would have skipped the second dose. I was pretty vaccine hesitant, but got it due the social pressure. Not that anyone said anything to me, but in my community, getting the shot is the norm. At minimum I should not have scheduled it until after grades are done, because the deadline is tomorrow, and I am stretched to the limit. The mask mandate is being loosened -- but like in this New York Times story, I think I'll keep mine handy.

I have learned that another grant I wrote was funded! $21,250 for a tree inventory. I am a skilled grant writer, and I need to find a way to transition from how I make my bread now (as Mark Twain would say) to grant writing. To that end, on Friday I am going to a web conference for a Regenerate New York forestry grant.

I have really, really, really big exciting news that has to be kept secret...extremely hard!

It occurs to me that a reason I haven't been writing here much is because for the past four years, I've been keeping an off-line journal, as I did pre-Internet.

I like this TU writer. He championed the village in the Save Our Stewarts advocacy and I am forever in his debt. However, I disagree with this column. A policy may have more than one goal, in this case supporting middle-class college students and keeping college graduates in the state. There will surely be consequences of this policy, and some may be unintended. One can debate the merits of the residency requirement, but trying to avoid being an exporter of our most skilled workers is hardly an evil justification. Making a deal that is palatable to both the Assembly and Senate is difficult. And, full disclosure, this will be good for SUNY, my undergraduate and graduate alma mater and where I have worked for nearly thirty years.

On a completely different subject, in honor of my father's 90th birthday, I am sharing this story I wrote years ago that was published by the Daily Freeman in 2006. Happy birthday to Daddy, one of the best storytellers I know.

 

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I'm sharing this story from my book "A Visit with Mimmie: Catskill Mountain Recipes."

All four of Mimmie's grandparents immigrated from Ireland. She was proud of her Irish heritage, and had no patience for tired jokes about being Irish and drinking. Her mother, she said, would not touch birch beer or root beer either, just because of the word “beer.”

On the card for my 18th birthday she wrote:
“Want to wish you Happy Birthday for Tuesday. Hope my card gets there on time. Eighteen is a lovely age to be isn’t it. Just think you are now your own boss. Have a Happy Birthday Tuesday and don’t drink too much (champagne). Suppose that is spelled wrong, but guess you will know what I mean. That horrible tasting drink that they always have at weddings.”

Years later, I noticed Irish Soda Bread being sold at the Kiwanis Club barbecue at the firehouse. and many restaurants serve it on St. Patrick's Day. I was not really familiar with it, so was wondering if Mimmie had a recipe for it. I looked, and couldn't find anything. However, the 1926 Old Book begins with a recipe for Irish Wedding Cake. Mimmie wrote on the page: “I started this cookbook in 1926. My first recipe was given to me by Gladys Fox.”

Irish Wedding Cake
Flour 2 cups
Baking Soda 1 teaspoon
Butter 1 tablespoon
Cinnamon 1 teaspoon
Cloves 1 teaspoon
Egg 1
Molasses 1 cup
Boiling Water 1 cup

Sift dry ingredients, add remaining ingredients and beat all together. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes in loaf pan, or recipe can be used to make layer cake. Use white icing.
Here's Mimmie's Irish Apple Cake recipe; this one is not from the 1926 notebook, but from the little 1970s mod recipe file box:

Irish Apple Cake
Flour, sifted 3 cups
Sugar 3/4 cup
Salt ½ teaspoon
Egg Yolks 3
Butter 1 cup
Lemon Rind, grated from one lemon
Applesauce 1-3/4 cup
Cinnamon ½ teaspoon
Cloves 1/4 teaspoon

Mix flour, sugar, salt, egg yolks, butter and lemon rind. Divide mixture in two parts. Press one part in bottom of pan. Mix applesauce, cinnamon, cloves, and spread over mixture in pan. Sprinkle rest of mixture over applesauce. Bake at 350 degrees in a greased 9x9x1-3/4-inch pan for 40 to 45 minutes. Top with whipped cream, if desired.

 Ann Kathryn McSpirit Eckert (1904-1993) at about age 17

I received unexpected compliments today. During a village-related meeting with the State, referring to our (unsuccesful) DRI application, one person remarked "I don't know who your grant writer is, but they should be a published writer" and the other said it was the best of the applications they received from smaller municipalities.

The Fall semester begins next week. I did not accomplish the same things I normally do during my long summer bread (gardening, reading, writing). Instead I wrote four grant proposals and did many other things for the Village, along with teaching my usual two classes. Let's hope the proposals pay off in some way and don't work out to be a waste of time that could have been better spent growing green beans, writing here, and reading Mark Twain! I'm pretty much ready to start the semester. I'm sad about the end of my long summer, but it will be good for me to get out of the house. The animals will be sad though!

Ugly Sweater

The woman with the weak chin

The woman in beige

The tall man with the crew cut

The crowded bar

The guitarist playing Christmas songs

The Church woman impatient with it all

I Don’t Have One

Fourth grade was the first time Gwen noticed Samantha. The year before, the girls’ school switched from dividing classes by hamlet where you lived to sorting kids into two sections, based on "ability." Prior to this, Gwen had been with her kindergarten peers for three years, while Sam’s kindergarten class had also been together, with different teachers for Grades 1 and 2. With the switch to tracking, they wound up in the same class, but she still wasn't on Gwen’s radar screen. Their fourth grade teacher, Miss Innis. changed that. Miss Innis was in her 30s but she seemed ancient. She was the definition of an old school marm: Hair in a bun, stiff, thin and bony, brittle, with plain attire that featured high collared shirts, buttoned up to her chin. Gwen thought she looked something like Olive Oyl. She wasn't particularly mean to either Gwen or Sam, but she wasn't nice either. She didn’t single kids out for ridicule as some teachers did; she was equal opportunity mean. The whole class was terrified of her.  

To illustrate sets in math, she told the fourth graders to get into groups if their houses had two or three or four bedrooms or what their fathers did for a living (worked for IBM or owned businesses or were teachers etc.). That day the question was about dad’s job. Sam didn’t go into a group and when Miss Innis asked why, responded "I don't have one." Sam was suddenly noticed by everyone in class, including Gwen.

The second time Gwen thought about Sam was during that same year in school. Just when the students were poised to leap from the flutofone to a "real" instrument, Miss Innis yelled out, "who's Catholic?" Gwen and a handful of other kids timidly raised their hands. Sam was Catholic, but her hand either wasn’t noticed by Miss Innis, or she was too scared to raise it at all. The brave souls who raised their hands were herded across the street to the church for religious instruction, and so missed instrumental music and were never able to be in band. Sam didn’t go across the street and didn’t miss music, but she also didn’t join the band until much later, in high school. The band was chosen to march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade one year, and Sam wanted to go. So she volunteered to play the cymbals, and once the trip was over, she quit the marching band.

Despite those two incidents in Grade 4, Gwen considered sixth grader to be the actual start of a friendship between them. It was facilitated by Gwen’s  “best" friend Amy, whom she’d met the first day of kindergarten. Amy had been put in the "other" section of class after Grade 2.  As a result of the scrambling, she became friends with some kids who lived near Sam. Sometimes Amy would be invited to the party of a girl in her class that Sam was also attending. They got to know each other, eventually Amy invited Sam to her house, and since Gwen and Amy were always together, all three girls became friends.

Once they knew each other better, Gwen found out that Samantha did, in fact, have a father. Sam’s parents divorced when she was six months old and he was remarried and lived four hours away. Why she said she didn’t have one when Miss Innis was clumsily trying to teach sets was a mystery. Did she not know what he did for a living? Was he a drunk who didn’t  work so it was easier to pretend he didn’t exist? The latter explanation didn’t occur to Gwen until years later.

Taken yesterday from my office window: 9/11/01 Your Are Not Forgotten

And, my 2001 story, Sirius.

Closure:
Story Four of Four
by Gina Giuliano

The service was held on a magnificent August day. Gwen thought there was something surreal about the setting. The scene was strangely evocative of the last time Gwen had seen Sam, at a swing concert over a decade before. The crowd consisted of the same type of tidy, refined folks, but on this day they were gathered not to listen to music, but to honor the memory of loved ones who had donated their bodies to the medical school.

Gwen had dreaded attending, not because she didn’t want to honor Sam, who had died three months earlier from a lifetime of alcoholism and bulimia, but because she feared one of Sam’s crazy sisters would be there. She knew this was irrational, as the risk was minuscule. Even in the unlikely event that they cared enough to want to come, none had the resources to make the trip. The cliche about not having a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of was not an exaggeration in Sam’s family’s case, thought Gwen.

This was what drove Gwen to attend: Someone should be there to represent Sam. Two weeks after Sam’s obituary appeared in the newspaper, Gwen contacted the anatomical donor program to ask when the memorial service would be held. She didn’t expect to get a response, because she assumed if Sam wanted her to know or to be there, she would have listed Gwen on the donor form or had someone contact her before or after she died. But Sam didn’t. Gwen didn’t blame her. Maybe Sam felt Gwen didn’t care. Whatever Sam’s wishes, however, the program’s staff did indeed respond with an invitation. So Gwen went. Jack went too, toting chairs for them along the cemetery’s winding paths on one of the hottest and most humid days of the year.

The director of the anatomical gift program spoke about the many reasons people have for choosing to donate their remains. He said some believe in research and teaching, others want to spare their families the hassle of a funeral, and for a proportion it’s financial. Gwen added another to his list: There is no one to spare from the hassle. The director probably didn’t mention Sam’s reason because people in this category didn’t have any family or friends in attendance. Except for Sam, that is.

After the director, the hospital chaplain issued a vanilla blessing that could have been applied equally to Moses, Jesus, Mohammed or Zeus. Then two medical students spoke. One was bubbly and so plagued with "upspeak" that Gwen thought, “Maybe she expected? Someone to jump in? And answer her questions? Or is this how? She always talks? Didn’t her advisor? Try to help her?” The other monotonously droned on in a whisper, and Gwen suspected all the senior citizens present heard not a word she said. The message of the speech was something trite fancied up with New Age lingo, about healers being good people. Afterwards a man sitting next to Gwen remarked to the woman with him, "young people should be taught public speaking."

The next part reminded Jack of the Truman Show. A series of speakers read the list of donors, and medical students put a carnation for each name on the joint, single casket. They walked around over and over in a big circle surrounding the crowd, all in the same order every time. The same students must have passed Jack and Gwen ten times.

Mourners could go up and place a flower on the casket when their loved one’s name was read. Jack whispered, “do you want to go up?” but Gwen vigorously shook her head “no.” The chance of a crazy sister encounter was extremely small, but it was not zero. As predicted, though, no family was evident when Sam’s name was read.

Gwen couldn't help thinking of Sam's antics if she had been sitting there. She'd have made them laugh inappropriately, probably imitating future Dr. Upspeak, and the people nearby would shake their heads “tsk tsk tsk,” as the concert goers had shushed Sam, all those years before.

Afterwards, they lingered a while, visiting the flower-covered casket, and looking at the nearby headstones for prior years’ donors. Jack snapped a few pictures. Later, Gwen noticed that the tombstone he’d photographed had bird crap obscuring some of the letters. Sam would have found that funny. Gwen imagined her doing her favorite Cheech and Chong routine, “Looks like dog sh-t, Smells like dog sh-t, It IS dog sh-t!”

Goodbye Sam, Gwen and Jack. Reflecting on Donna’s death, it struck me that there was no longer a need to write in the third person or to change names to protect the guilty. Perhaps there never was, as the first three stories in this series: The Sweater, Competing Conversations and Tacos Anyone? were never published anywhere Donna would have seen them. But the anonymity was always more to protect Donna from other friends of long ago, most of whom were naive to her situation, than because Donna might encounter the stories and be hurt. Not outing her remains important to me, but I made the decision that I was not going to hide her afflictions if someone asked “why?,” as many did, stunned when they learned of her passing.

I have a talent for investigation, and enjoy detective work. Toward the end of college, state troopers even tried to recruit me (that story is here). So I find myself very interested in the recent prison break story. I wish I could dig up some detail that would help to catch them. Something I was thinking today: seven days in the Adirondack woods can only result in being covered with black fly bites and Lyme Disease. They will wish they were back in prison.

I am finally getting over my two colds in a row (!) [what a way to spend winter break] and so with a box of tissues nearby, I've made progress on winter session, next semester, advisement, and even the village comprehensive plan.

It is cold -- zero etc.

Bob turned a milestone age (55) on January 5 & we celebrated Elwyn style -- Ommegang & Oneonta (stolled Main Street & felt sad once again over Bresee's, stopped at campus and the Autumn Cafe, went to Brooks) on Friday, Yono on Monday. So not a month. but a long weekend.

I felt pretty bad about the French cartoonists being murdered by terrorists. I don't mean "as usual" over these type of sick events. In this case I have always loved drawing satire cartoons, and for a brief period (until a more mature sensibility set in at about age 16) I flirted with the idea of being a cartoonist "when I grew up." I know satire, whether as an illustration or in writing, often pushes people's buttons, and they may react with hostility. But to think they'd machine gun down a whole office. The world can be a scary place, but that's all the more reason to be vigilant about free speech.

Something I like to assign occasionally in class are 2, 3 or 5 minute free writes. So while the students were scribbling last night, I thought I'd do it too. Here is what I wrote:

Before class I was going from the education building to campus center. Don't students understand keeping right? Well, they didn't act like they knew -- they practically knocked me down as they streamed through the open door, the one on their left but my right, in their rush to get to class. I didn't want to get jostled or worse, have my foot stepped on, so I waited there until it was clear, but it must have been at least a dozen students who ignored me, did not let me through and also did not make any effort to open the door on their right! I finally was able to continue, but I felt pretty glum, to tell you the truth.

But on my way back from the bookstore (where I was buying cards for all the April birthdays in my family), a young man came up to me and said, "Are you Professor Giuliani?" (I said yes, even though my name is spelled just a little different from Rudy's). He shook my hand and said he has signed up for my class in the fall. Made my day! (He had "A" written all over him.)

Today I entered a writing contest. That's something I haven't done in a long time. There will be a ton of entries, of course, and I don't expect to win. But (I tell myself) the payoff is in the writing, and that really is the truth. I expected to spend today grading essays, and instead I spent the day writing. I'm pleased I resisted my tendency to put every task associated with "earning my bread" high on my priority list, while promising to write once each line was crossed off. The problem is that I run out of steam, and writing has to wait another day, when new priorities surface and claim top positions.

I'm referring to "serious" writing (though at times it is humor), not what I do here most of the time. I manage to find time to write here (almost) whenever the desire strikes me. But serious writing is different, it isn't journaling. With serious writing, although it often comes to me in a burst, I craft every sentence, contemplate every word and study every comma. I listen to the voice to find just the right note.

"It's spring break after all," she said. Was that an excuse or a challenge? "Others are increasing their carbon footprints so they can lay on beaches." I deserve my guilty pleasure.