Geeez, Tell Me About It!

I remember a long time ago when everything was so different. Before the information age. Before people had instant everything. If you had a phone, it was a home phone attached to a land line, a wire, maybe even a party line you shared with someone. We had a party line as late as 1975. It was the farm next door, 40 acres away. It wasn’t much of a hardship. They were never on the phone when we were.

It was a big deal when we bought an answering machine. Remember those that had a full size cassette tape in them to record the messages? Then came the micro cassettes, those little tiny ones. If you weren’t home and someone called, they could leave a message. You’d get home and see the light blinking and pressed whichever button and listened to whoever called you and what they had to say.

Time marched on and with that, the advent of the cordless phone, right in your own home, and the messages were left on nothing! There was no tape, cassette or mini cassette, and the messages were just there! How did they do that? Those were the days I tell you. How can that be improved upon? You could leave the home when you were waiting from a call from the drug dealer, I mean the doctor. When you got home, the message was there if they called. What freedom!

I didn’t get a remote phone until around 1994. They came out with these bulky units, called analog phones, that you plugged into a socket at home, or into a cigarette lighter in your vehicle. Either way, they were powered up and you could call out and receive calls. Besides the power cord, the handset was attached just like a corded phone at home. I remember having mine on the floor of the pickup truck. I’d talk on the phone and it looked like a regular Ma Bell Princess. One time I even picked it up and pretended to be talking to show off for the car next to me. What a hoot!

That highlighted Ma Bell Princess link above has info about a company that actually sells this Princess handset for your cell phone!


Then it happened. The cell phone. And it has gone nuts ever since. Apps, internet, voicemail, cameras, TV, Radio, MP3, calculator, texting, you name it, it does it. Hell, I found one that will give you a haircut and even make a phone call!

I want the good old days back. Really. As I age, I get more and more of those nostalgic e-mails that remind us of the bygone days when things were cheaper and we didn’t have the rules, guidelines, regulations and morals that we are held to now. A loaf of bread was a quarter and a candy bar was five cents! (Really youngsters, five cents!)

I’m at the grocery store, my phone rings. I’m at the coffee shop, my phone rings. I’m in church, my phone rings. The other day was in front of the coffee shop and an elderly woman was with her daughter. As they walked into the shop, the daughter's cell phone rang. The ring was a popular tune, the Doors, I think, Break on Through (to the other side). The woman looked startled and wondered where the music was coming from and had no idea it was a phone call. A ringing phone is neither in my opinion

In fact, I’m in bed sleeping, my phone rings. Well, that one is okay since I use the cell phone as a home phone, of course it would ring while I am at home. I guess I could leave the phone home on the charger and check it to see if anyone left me a message when I got home. That would mimic the era when we bought an answering machine. Is that too much?

Another change was the added caller ID option at home with a little device, and automatically built in on the cell phones these days. It’s like the radar detectors with the highway patrol. You get a new detector, they get a new type of radar. One is always thwarting each other’s efforts and the game goes on and on. Caller ID is like that too. You block your number or name so when you call, the receiver of the call can’t see who it is. It comes up as “Unknown”. Then that person has an option that doesn’t accept calls from unknown callers, and so on and so on.

Don’t get me started. Junk or spam calls, which used to be called telemarketing, which we always got as soon as we sat down at the dinner table, seem to be less when the cell phone is used as a home phone, but I still get a few calls to sell me something or a text message telling me that there is a great real estate opportunity available if I text them back or call the 1-800 number. Florida swamp land still for sale. I guess it hasn’t all been sold.

In fact, every corporation that I do business with, for phone service, for satellite TV, for credit, for anything, has sent me a notice with page upon page of small print that explains to me that they are going to send my personal information to a third party so they can spam me on the internet and call me on my phone, (they don’t word it that way, but that’s what it is), unless I “Opt out”, and to do this, it is action on my part. Otherwise, they are going to sell my information.

It is too late to stop the juggernaut. We’re all pretty much in this system. If you’re reading this on your own computer or even if you are at a library and have a personal e-mail account, your information is out there somewhere. I sometimes think that I’ll give it all up. Get rid of the computers, the TV, the cell phones, all of it. Pay my bills by bringing cash to the office for the utility bills in town and send a money order for the mortgage. Better yet, get off the grid and live in a tent up in Mendocino County!

That ought to do it. There, now I’m safe. Wait, there’s a knock at the door. Just a minute........................... How about that? It was the Fuller Brush salesman, and behind himv the Kirby salesman. How’d they know I needed some housekeeping tools and equipment?

Ruby Tuesday 08/10/2010

Ruby Tuesday is a fun meme. The idea to post a photo with Red somewhere. To see other photos or to get on board to show yours, go to Work of the Poet and check things out.

NOTE: The settings for leaving comments has been reset by blogger, but they are taking their time about enabling it. Sorry for the inconvenience.
BUT WAIT! HOOTIN" ANNI told me how to fix it and i did. Thanks Hootin' Anni!

My submission for Ruby Tuesday is a church steeple from the old Calvary Baptist Church in Ashland, Wisconsin. For the three years I lived in Ashland, this church was for sale. Before I moved to The Cabinette, I lived right across the street from it. The day I shot the picture, it was snowing a bit. You can see the snow flake "spots". It was late in May. A little late for snow, even up North. I believe I snapped the picture of the snow and the church got in the way!

We wanted to buy the church, and we would have had the bank given us a loan. The owner had made an apartment in the lower level, where the church basement was. Instead of the open area and kitchen, as is the norm, he had one large room and some other smaller ones that could have been used as bedrooms, or rented out as art studios or offices. He modernized the kitchen as well. And he put hot water heating into the cement floor. The hot water produced by solar panels on the part of the roof that faced South.

The main area of the church was used as a yoga class studio, a Tai Kwan Doh studio and could easily been used as a small theater for music venues or other performances. We had some good ideas. Monthly musical appearances, art shows, and continued use as a studio for not only yoga, but other activities that could use such a place.



We moved away from the church and into the small two room cabin on the Great Lake Superior, the place we named The Cabinette. When we left Ashland and moved South to River Falls, the church was still for sale. The owner, who really put a lot of money and work into this place, had another home where he lived and kept trying to sell it. He lowered the price over and over, but to no avail. Last time I was up in Ashland for a water run, I noticed the place is still for sale.

Peace

Haiku My Heart Fridays, August 6, 2010

I totally screwed up my photo album looking for old pictures. When we bought the new computer last year, we saved everything to an external hard drive as well as to discs. Now, since I didn’t label every photo, I have to open up a file and search for what I’m looking for. In this latest search, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I just wanted a nice photo that spurred some thought for todays Haiku My Heart Friday. See more photos and read fabulous Hailku at Rebecca's place, recuerda mi corazon

I found a picture. It was from not that long ago, a couple of years at the most. My Mom, along with my brother and sister, came to visit us when we rented a summer cabin for a couple of weeks at Lake Sissabagama near Stone Lake, Wisconsin. I remember her enjoying herself while her Great Grandkids played and swam in the lake. I enjoyed this memory and decided I would make my Mom the subject of this weeks Haiku.

It was summer, mid July in fact, but you’ll never find Carmelina without a sweater or jacket. In this photo, she’s sitting inside as we prepare to celebrate our oldest Grand daughter’s birthday. This is for you, Mom.




Wasn’t long ago

We enjoyed her loving ways

Now, her spirit lives


Six months. It was a couple of days beyond six months ago that my Mom traveled on beyond the star nation. We love her and miss her, think of her often and will forewver. And we have wonderful memories to remind us to love one another.



I will be leaving at the crack of dawn on Friday morning. I’ll post this and be away. I regret not being able to visit you to share your photos and Haiku. I’ll return on Sunday night. I’ll be alone on my motorcycle enjoying some moving meditation along the shores of the Great Lake Superior.

May all of you enjoy peace.

Humble Education

A setting sun shining bold and bright through the forest in Northern Nebraska along the Missouri River

“Houston, we’ve had a problem”. This famous quote has become part of the vernacular soon after the Apollo 13 space flight. It is often misquoted as “Houston, we have a problem”. Either way, we have had a problem and we still have this problem. In fact, we have many problems when it comes to issues with our serving military. I want to concentrate on one specific issue today.

Recently, we started a support group here in River Falls. The woman that owns the Earth Angels Coffee House has donated space on Tuesday evenings after hours. The project is called the Red Arrow Veterans Support Group. The title of Red Arrow has derivatives from many sources. I do know there was a Red Arrow insignia for the 32nd Infantry Division that served in the second World War. I like to think it has some spiritual meaning to the fact that if the tip of the arrow is red, it was taken from a wound.

These Veterans who come for support are wounded. As I have been saying for years and years on this blog and others, you can’t serve in a war zone and not have been affected by war. Not only that, for women, serving at all can have effects that are quite undesirable.

It was at our last group meeting that a woman showed up. A Veteran who served after Desert Storm, at the beginning of the Iraqi Freedom campaign. She was in the Military Police when she served in the Army. She never got deployed, but her unit did. Some didn’t return. But she still suffers from her service time.

I guess personally, I knew of some of the problems with females in the military. The sexual and general harassment, the touching, the rape, the constant innuendo and how hard it is to defend yourself from these wrongs with people who outranked you, especially officers. But to hear it right from the mouth of this woman, it set me thinking. If I’m going to facilitate a group to try and help all Veterans, I better know the facts. And I better realize that things have changed a lot since I was in the Army in 1968.

I did my basic training at Fort Polk in Louisiana. A place called Tigerland. It was training for the infantry. I was an infantry sergeant. It was hot, humid, mimicking conditions one would find in Southeast Asia, read Vietnam. I was with men, boys actually, but you know what I’m trying to say. One gender. It was different for me than it is for the soldiers of today. And with this major difference comes major problems.

Ironically, I received an e-mail from a clearing house of left wing issues that told me about a new book that was published recently by a woman soldier who served in Desert Storm. I had just heard this interesting parallel story from the female perspective in the group, now I was reading excerpts from this book. The woman that wrote the book, Chante Wolf, is an acquaintance of mine from my many years as a member of Veterans For Peace and their Chapter in Minneapolis, Chapter 27.


One of the photos from the book, "Dance, Dodge and Duck"

In the excerpts from the book that I have read, I heard the same as I heard in that support group meeting. Here are the authors actual words:

“The title is "Dance, Dodge and Duck".

When people ask what I did in the military, I tell them, I danced, dodged and ducked. And it is the only thing I learned first off and kept to my heart for my 12 years in the Air Force.

I learned how to dance, dodge and duck sexual harassment, comments, looks, touching, cooing, being told how much money could be made off my body in the sex trade, fearing to be raped - murdered and disappeared, was physically attack and stalked ... and that much of the time I watched my own back because my brothers didn't and my sisters were busy watching their own.

Then there were friends who were murdered, killed in auto accidents, committed suicide and died in a C-130 that crashed into a mountain. Did I look down the barrel of a gun, yes, a few times and it was not entertaining at all.”

I ordered a copy of the book. I need to read this if I am to be able to help all Veterans. I also think it would be a good piece for the start of a reference library. If nothing else, it awards the efforts of Chante for her outstanding service and work that she has done in the name of Peace.

In the meantime, I have written a letter and asked Chante to appear at one of our support group meetings and talk, not only to the women that show up, but to the men as well. People like myself that didn’t pay much attention to these problems in the military as I was working on stopping the war, and not so much as the plight of the actual people serving in it.

By the way, besides purchasing the book, “Dance, Dodge and Duck” by Chante Wolf it can be downloaded for free at this link.

I have a lot to learn. It is time to set aside my own pain and lend a hand to help my brothers, and sisters. It isn’t that this stuff happens that is the only wrong, it is that the perpetrators get away with it. This subject can be expanded to include our own society as a whole. The exploitation of women on TV and in media of all kinds. The treatment in the workplace regarding the same issues as the military with the added insult of inferior wages, and it goes on and on.

My education will continue by understanding the issues with the Veterans I serve, both male and female, and that includes teaching those that aren’t aware and helping those that have experienced the trauma.

I ask that you understand these issues as well and not simply accept things as “That’s the way it is”. If the system is wrong, try to fix it, at least in your own lives, and that starts at home, in your communities and with the military that serves society. After all, they learn to kill because we don’t do enough to stop the carnage. They do it in the name of society.

I sign off my posts and comments I make on others’ blogs with the word Peace. If you’ve ever gotten an e-mail from me, you’ve seen this word as well. Let me say a word about that......

Peace

On the Road With Joseph

Authors Note: This is a story from a road trip I made in January of 2008. I used to write a travel story every week on Monday and called the series the Monday Morning Mystery Tour.


One of the better exchanges that I have had with strangers while traveling happened at a gas station/grocery store in Fort Thompson, SD. Fort Thompson is on the banks of the Missouri River. One of the many dams the Corps of Engineers put up years ago makes it a lake and not a river. It is called Lake Sharp. Fort Thompson, the dam and the adjoining area is part of the Crow Creek Indian Reservation in Central South Dakota.

It is a poor area economically. There is no town center with shopping and vibrance, just this oversize convenience store that is the first tier of commerce for the people here. I first came to this area passing through while on my way to somewhere else. Then, last summer, I went on a semi-organized motorcycle ride to commemorate the anniversary of the Trail of Tears for the Dakota and Winnebago people.

These people were forced from their homelands in Minnesota and transported by barge down the Mississippi River, across Missouri by rail car, then back on river boats up the Missouri River and dumped at Fort Thompson in 1863. We rode to remember their spirits and give anyone who could accept it, hope.

Gas prices were a concern when I was planning this trip as it would be a huge expense. I buy where it is the cheapest and fill both tanks on the van to the brim. I get reasonable mileage and thought I’d have enough to get to the Rapid City area where prices were less than the lightly populated rural areas where prices are usually quite a bit higher.

There was a sensational headwind out of the Northwest, as oftentimes happens in Winter on the plains, that I had to buck and the boxy shape of the Econoline just ate my petrol in no time flat. I needed gas. Both tanks were on “E”. I pulled into Lynn’s Dakotamart, gas station, grocery store, video rental, money exchange, Western Union, Deli and more at Fort Thompson to fill up.

I wonder why the gas prices in the poorest remote areas are at least a quarter more per gallon than anywhere else? Probably because they know they can gouge them for the residents have no other choice.

I could have just put in a few gallons at the high price and coasted into Rapid City and cheaper prices, and filled up there, but I figured as long as I was there and I needed gas, I’ll just fill both tanks, spend the extra money and look at it as a contribution to the economy of Fort Thompson.

First of all, you couldn’t pay at the pump. That system wasn’t installed on these pumps. Secondly, you had to prepay for your gas. I went inside and gave my credit card to the young girl with the long dark hair that stood behind the cash register. I told her that I was gonna “Fill ‘er up on number five”.

She glanced out the window behind her that faced the tarmac, spotted the van and said. “Okay”.

I went back out and pumped my gas. The damn thing took about 20.6 in the rear tank and another 14 and 1/2 in the front. The meter stopped at ninety four dollars and some change!

I went back inside to pay my charges. By the time I got my tanks filled up to the top, the place had exploded with customers. There were people all over, so I waited in a line. The young dark haired beauty called out to another young girl and asked her to open another check out aisle.

The other young woman, a bouncy blond gal wearing a blue sweatshirt went to an island and opened another register. She helped a couple of people and I was still waiting in line. I was going to be next up.

The blonde said to me with a nice bright smile, “I can help you over here.”

I looked back and smiled and said, “That’s okay, my credit card is up here. I’ll wait, no problem.”

I used to be in a hurry in the old days. Now, I could take my time and look around. Soak up the anthropology of the store in Fort Thompson. I used to blast through South Dakota and the plains states as I traveled, thinking that there was nothing to see but the grassy buttes in the distance. But I learned over time that even if the face of things was bleak, there is plenty to see and learn about.

The blonde girl closed the register where she was and walked behind the dark haired gal and verified the almost hundred dollar amount on the pump and asked me if that was mine. I told her, “Yes”. and she ran the card on a machine that was mounted on the wall.

To the side of the register, now empty of any customers, she asked to see my ID. I said, “ Sure”, and produced my Wisconsin Drivers License. She looked at the signatures and my picture, then handed my license back to me along with my Master Card.

When she gave me my stuff back, she said, “Here you go Joseph”. Then, she placed the statement down and handed me a pen so I could sign the receipt and said, “Sign this please, Joseph”.

She called me Joseph because that is the name on my card and my license. No-one calls me Joseph except one really special friend. Everyone calls me Joe or Joey. The Grandkids used to call me Papa, but I am making them call me Cap’n because we’re all gonna live like Pirates from now on.

I said to the pretty blonde girl, “My friends call me Joe.”

“Okay Joe, sign here please.” she said. She was smiling because she knew I was just making some conversation with strangers.

Then I said, “My girlfriends call me Joseph”.

She smiled and then said, “Okay then, Joseph it is.” She was being a good sport and humoring and old man. Maybe she knew the wind outside had zapped me and that I was just foolin’ around.

She touched my elbow when she called me Joseph. I was impressed by that. A genuine smile and gesture showed me she liked people. I signed the receipt, took my copy and went into the store and picked up a couple of pears and a gallon jug of water. I went up the register, where the girl with the long dark hair was working, to pay for my selections.

She tendered my purchase and said, “Thank you Sir, have a nice day.”

I immediately said, “I’m not a Sir, I am Joseph.” I smiled at her and she smiled as she had been privy to the earlier exchange with the blonde clerk. She joined in with the spirit and said, “Okay Joseph. You have a nice day.”

I left there with a smile on my face. The two people who worked there had such a great spirit about them. They allowed themselves to pretend or rather enjoy their workaday world with some laughter and humor in its simplest form, light hearted conversation and silliness with a customer, a stranger traveling through their town.

Happenstance put me there at a moment in time. Seems like we all wanted to be friendly at the same time. I was feeling good anyway about my whole day in general despite the wind and slow progress against it. It was nice to see people smile and have a friendly exchange. Maybe because I had been driving for hours in the slightly inhabited South Dakota plains had something to do with it.

I went about my business. I went to see a friend in Crow Creek and hung around the area for a little more than an hour. Now seeing that I was to head out over another wide expanse of prairie, I stopped once more at the store and used the men’s room.

When I walked in, the dark haired woman was behind the register. She looked at me and waved her hand and smiled. Another older woman was working now and the older woman walked behind the counter on her way to perform some task.

The dark haired one said, “Margaret, this is my friend, Joseph. Joseph, this is Margaret.”

I said, “Hello Margaret, pleased to meet you.”

Margaret smiled and looked at me.

I said, “See you later, maybe next week some time, Thanks.”

My new dark haired friend said, “I’ll be here.” Margaret just looked at us as the exchange took place.

I wonder if she’ll remember me?


I know back in the days when I was a child, your name oftentimes was of biblical origin. In my case, I was named after Saint Joseph, as were my Mother’s Father and two of my uncles, boith named Joseph, one on either side of the my family.

No one ever called me Joseph. I was always Joe. Mom, Dad, siblings, relatives and friends called me Joey. I do have a more recent friend that calls me Joseph. I started liking it. Now, when a stranger asks me my name, sometimes I tell them, “Joseph”.

Maybe all those years of doing the deed for the man taught me how to laugh at life and enjoy what I can. Maybe the tragedies and trauma of the years robbed some of that happiness from me. Maybe I remembered how to just have some fun once in a while as I knocked around South Dakota.

Peace to all

Shadow Shot Sunday, August 1, 2010

It's Sunday. Time for Shadow Shot Sunday at Hey Harriet. Check it out.

For a shadow shot this week I went into my photo albums and looked around. Some early mornings I’ll spend time looking at the events page on my computer’s photo gallery. Each event holding pictures from an outing, a trip or an occasion. On one such trip last Fall, I took some pictures while in New Mexico.

I love New Mexico, especially down around Silver City, Deming and Truth or Consequences. I have no trouble spending time and driving around what I call, “My magic triangle”. Each town is unique. Each has their quirks. And the roads that I use to connect the dots are hewn with scenery that I adore. I sometimes actually daydream of being there, in a specific place, and can see it in my minds eye.

The sun was casting long shadows on the cactus this day. Even the shadowy silhouette of the fine needles could be seen on the pads. And the butterfly flew into my shot at the last minute as I was trying to take a shot of the tiny yellow flowers. Can someone name them for me?





Not sure when I’ll be heading down that way again. There is talk of a September motorcycle trip, but I have many options for the upcoming Fall. I want to try to get down there this Winter for a spell for sure, thinking of spending a month or longer in an RV I have access to. We’ll see. The question has never been “If” I get back, it is “When”.

Peace to all

The Good Old Days

Guiseppe Caruso, my Maternal Grandfather, sometime before 1929


There are old photos, and there are really old photos, like the one above of my Mom's dad, my Grandfather. I never knew him. He passed away long before I was born. Then there are the ones from my own life, but they can't be old. The ones I think are old are the ones where everyone in them is dead! Certainly the one with me and Mrs. Spadoman from 1971 couldn't be categorized as "Old", Could it?

I came across the one below while spending time looking through the photo albums this morning. It was taken on the Canadian side of the border on the Pigeon River at a place called The High Falls. At the extreme Northern tip of Minnesota, where it meets Ontario, the political border is this river. It makes a series of waterfalls, three in all, in about a nine mile stretch as it winds its way towards the Great Lake Superior.

Back in those days, we'd drive over the border with no fanfare in either direction, no passports either. Friendly neighbors, we were considered, and we'd visit often. It was a short ride to the old gravel minimum maintenance road that lead past the old mines and log sluice remnants to this overlook. Funny thing is, you could throw a stone across to the American side.

We'll be up this way in a couple of weeks. we'll be attending a Pow Wow in Grand Portage over the weekend of the 14th and 15th of August. We'll get there on Friday. I haven't missed many years attending this event since I started in 1980 or so. We camp out near the Pow Wow grounds on the reservation. Our tradition has been to get up early on Saturday and have breakfast at Ryden's Border Store and visit their duty free shop. Then, we go to the Grand Portage Minnesota State Park. This park is rather new, having been created in my own lifetime. Which, by the looks of the picture, could be older than I think!

I have many pictures of this beautiful waterfall from both sides of the border. Just wanted to expose myself a little here and share a memory with you. I shaved the beard off for good in 1986, and after a period of many years of shorter hair, Mrs. Spadoman's hair has grown almost to the length shown in this picture of her at eighteen. We're coming up on 39 years in October. By the way, we set the camera on a rock and used the timer feature. We were alone in the woods the whole weekend.


Joe and Barb, Fall of 1971

(You know you can click on these photos to get a more detailed view.)

Peace to all