That Tree in Rockefeller Center

Tonight I watched the annual lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center and realized that there are several times a year when we reach a benchmark, a crack in time that reminds us to step back and compare where we were a year or two ago.

I've seen this before. In fact, many years. I always seems to find this Wednesday with nothing really pressing to do that I can’t kick back and enjoy the two hours that lead to the magic moment when the tree comes dazzlingly alive with a flip of the switch.

Every year there is a succession of new and  old performers who alternate between getting saddled with an old saw carol that they have to get through or a beautiful tune that performers would fight to perform only to blow them up with personalized quirky renditions.

Tonight I was actually laughing out loud when  one young performer absolutely torched a favorite. That’s when I realized that this happens every year just to a different song. In this instance, the offense was especially egregious. In her own mind she was marking her territory by putting a personal stamp on a song and she probably thought it was a pretty cool effect.

Here is a factoid - her personal entourage would probably be committing personal career suicide if they ever let her know honestly that they agreed with me - over the years, the song they torched, was sung by a number of skilled and talented (there’s a difference between those two) performers and her 2013 rendition, when placed beside those efforts would compare as ridiculous. Descriptions that come to mind - forced, sophomoric, and maybe silly, pretentious, just to name a few. I wonder, all things being equal, had they been appraised or warned, would they go out and screech that song, that way, again?

I am being tapped on the shoulder and reminded that these might just be the thoughts of a developing curmudgeon. That guy. The one with the cane, threatening the kids who just broke his window with a baseball.

Another part of me realizes that this is just the passage of time. Next year, someone will mangle a different Christmas classic and it’ll be a rising pop star who decides to dive off the deep musical end. It’ll be that time of year and I’ll get a new serving of Christmas tradition lite.
The saving grace of all this is the actual moment when the button is pushed and the tree jumps with light. Any musical transgressions are forgotten. Everyone stares up at the tree in wonder at such a transformation. It’s official: the New York Christmas season is well underway. Sure Santa Claus closes the Macy’s Day parade but nothing happens until that tree gets set ablaze.

Pennsylvania Christmas Memories

Several years ago, I wrote a short blurb for my company’s internal organ detailing some favorite holiday memories. After years of seeing my stories everyday in the newspaper and then changing occupations, it was again gratifying to see my by line in print again. The collateral benefit was capturing in print some family holiday lore that probably would have been long forgotten.

My sister-in-law apparently enjoyed the short story enough to request that I write down more holiday memories. I wondered if I hadn’t already used my favorites, so I gave it some thought and decided that now was a good time to write about holidays growing up before I forget them, just as how I had almost forgotten writing that original holiday blurb.

Nearly everyone lays claim to unique holiday stories and situations and so do I. In the years when I was old enough to still believe Santa Clause existed [spoiler alert] my brothers and sister had an annual reminder that caused us to doubt for maybe a few years after we normally shouldn’t have that the jolly old elf was real.

Christmas Eve was always spent at my Aunt Dorothy’s home in downtown Reading, Pennsylvania. The extended family (mother’s side) all convened for a buffet dinner followed by a wonderful party until relatives either had to take the younger cousins home to bed or, as everyone got older, pack off the local Polish church for Midnight Mass. My grandmother’s side was predominantly Polish and the parts of the Mass, then in Latin, were supplemented with Polish. As a kid without language skills other than English, I was left out.

The Mass was jammed with standing worshipers. There was little room left for the Knights of Columbus, in full regalia, with plumes and swords, to line the main aisle of the entrance and egress of the priest. I remember my older brother (by three years) leaning over and whispering to me, “This is why they call it ‘Mass’.” It was warm and stuffy. The Knights tried in vain to make an aisle and I vaguely remember wondering why people wouldn’t honor a simple request made by men with swords, when a small boy remarked loudly to his mother, “I don’t feel good.”

An aisle you could drive a truck through opened up and the Knights took their positions and for a few tense moments everyone wondered if we were going to experience an unpleasant eruption.

But getting back to that marvelous evening at Aunt Dorothy’s, I remember things that seemed to happen every year as if someone had set some holiday clock. Aunt Dorothy had legendary deviled eggs and I was always on the lookout for my mother as I snatched too many of these delights from their scooped-out ceramic plates. There was also the Pennsylvania Dutch potatoes salad that the entire city bought from the same stand at the Farmer’s market or all over town: Sailer’s. One year, about two decades ago, Sailer’s finally revealed their secret recipe and some of the steps were so convoluted that only the slightly insane or masochistic would bother duplicating it—one of life’s great mysteries, finally solved.

Aunt Dorothy’s home was a three-story Pullman style row home with a small gift shop and my Uncle Leon’s picture framing studio on the ground floor. Uncle Leon was an accomplished painter whose renown in art circles would grow after he had passed away. His unique style of painting figures without distinct facial features set him apart from other local artists.

I remember the long narrow halls, the high ceilings, the beautiful never-ending stair banisters going up to the mysterious third floor from the party, which occupied the second floor. In the front room that opened onto the cityscape on Penn Avenue, there was an upright piano, the Christmas tree and a classic fireplace. The middle room was a large dining room, home of the deviled eggs, and there in the back, was the kitchen. The men all gathered in the kitchen where Uncle Leon held court.

For a young, growing lad, Aunt Dorothy’s kitchen was the final frontier of adolescence. The rite of passage dictated that you were only grown up if you were allowed in the kitchen with the men drinking beer from small tumblers and listening to their stories and this year’s new jokes.

At some point, the cousins were all herded into the front room because Uncle Carl, cigar in mouth, started playing Christmas Carols. He was quite accomplished and, I believe I was told, he had performed with the Reading Philharmonic, so everything he played was amazing. As a child you loved hearing the carols and then remembered that his last number would be Jingle Bells and that meant the arrival of Santa. The fireplace was right there but probably way too inconvenient to come down with all those people there so he opted for walking down the hall from the kitchen, rattling sleigh bells to announce his arrival.

Uncle Carl would stop playing and Santa would set down his large sack next to the piano bench and one by one we would be called up for his annual inquisition before as a requisite for receiving our present.

“And were you a good boy this year?” he intoned with the formal diction of a circuit judge. Mentally, your entire year passed in front of your eyes and you gulped deeply, now remembering all those transgressions, many which had been witnessed by one or more of the cousins in the room awaiting their turn. “Yes,” you found yourself lying out loud while you were thinking that he can’t possibly have known about the time you played in the out-of-bounds chicken coops, the ones with the hornets’ nests. Or the times you cut five minutes off your hour wait before jumping into the swimming pool after a big lunch.

My memory of what Santa looked like is foggy. I heard years later that whichever imposing fiancé of my older generation cousins was a newbie that year, was entrusted with the annual conceit. I am sure as  a Santa Claus he was quite ordinary to an adult but I always remember a combination of Norman Rockwell, Currier and Ives wearing Coca-Cola red and a Hallmark, rosy-cheeks face. All adults were 6-8 and 280 lbs. in those years.

The present he gave you was one selected from the balance of the gifts you would receive the next day at Pop-Pop’s farm in the country.

Christmas that officially opened at Aunt Dorothy’s officially closed the following day at my grandfather’s farm in Maiden Creek. Every year, Christmas Day was celebrated at the mansion house (it was a gentleman’s farm) where the extended family, complete with thirteen cousins, could spread out to play with all their new toys.

The “farm” as we called it had an unending amount of places to fire a young child’s imagination. There the rest of the Aunts’ and Uncles’ presents were distributed. As the oldest child my older brother was left in charge of doling out the soda from the corner bar in the dining room, a massive room anchored at one end by a large fireplace and a large breakfront at the other. The lighting was recessed behind a crown molding that hid five or six different color lights. The wall switch at the center hall entrance had a switch with a row of round buttons and any combination of colored lighting could be punched in the toggles.  Flanking the fireplace mantle on each side were French doors leading to a unheated sunroom, closed up for the winter months. The other three walls wall had a sideboard or table server and one corner held a bar whose folding doors hid away an entire array of bar tools, mixers and sodas. We all watched in anticipation as he poured each soda out for us and waited for the foam to recede or have our noses tickled.

  My memory doesn’t remember any holiday meals in particular although we always sat together as a family and enjoyed the traditional meals but my grandmother had her own unique cookies, lemon and chocolate, rolled out incredibly thin. The recipe was handed down and these days, my sister is the keeper and master of the Bowers’ cookies. Each year, she dutifully sends a CARE package of these delights to the remaining relatives. My daughters try to find time every year to travel to her home and make the cookies.

At days end, when the parent would finally be at their patience end, reluctantly, we piled into the station wagons and slept the short twenty  minute drive home. I am sure we experienced great anticipation of receiving toys during in the annual run-up to Christmas, but looking back, I don’t think it was just receiving gifts that made it a special time. Toys, soda, cookies and candy—all in the same day— were wonderful but being able to share it with your cousins at my grandfather’s made the holiday special.   

There's A Mouse in the Garage

I wonder if Americans realize the important of their garage? To many people the garage is a place to store junk, a place out of sight and out of mind. Something no longer worthy to be in their living space is relegated to a space where the objects don’t have to be viewed on a day-to-day basis.

 My garage has too much stuff but from October to June, it has enough open space for my car. On cold fall and winter mornings, it’s relatively warm, dry and I can commute to my train station for the short ride to Manhattan. The rest of the year I am lazy so my car sits outside and the garage becomes a collector of stuff. Right now I am moving enough stuff around so that one of my sailboat can be moved in and car garage becomes “dry dock.”

But returning to the idea of the American importance of the garage, I present you with this thought. The most amazing things have come out of American garages. Music, for instance, rock and roll specifically. Frank Sinatra did not start out crooning in his garage although he did do his share of summer pool parties, a practice he continued nearly just before becoming a national and then international sensation. Some rock and roll bands start in garages and then move on to pool parties, private parties, roller rinks, bowling allies, and some make it to the rounds of summer fetes, and small town park gazebos. Where would popular music be without the garage band? Think no Buddy Holly, no Bruce Springsteen, Beach Boys, Credence Clearwater Revival and many others too numerous to name here. Rock and roll is American’s gift to the world, a truly unique idea along with America’s invention of jazz.

American garages supplied the world with an aspect of entertainment. I guess it is also fitting that garages are an offshoot of America’s romance and adulation of the automobile. Apparently we were affluent to the point of building structures for our cars. With the wide open spaces of a developing land, we made sure there was enough space for a house and garage. Worldwide, some people are lucky enough to have a roof over their heads and here people don’t appreciate how well-off they are, having a separate structure to house their car, let alone extraneous stuff.

The garage is a place where you can work on your car while it’s raining or snowing. Few people, percentage wise, use a garage to work on their cars. Pop the hood and you’ll notice the engine has been augmented by a confusing tangle of wires and hoses far beyond the simple VW bug, popular in the 60s—fuel injection systems, anti-pollution devises, and power drake fluid tanks. Henry Ford, or rather Charles Duryea, would be astounded by today’s machines.

As if music and the automobile were not the most important and amazing things to come out of a garage, also remember that two teenagers started out conquering the world from the garage: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. There are those detractors who explain, with tinges of extreme envy in their voice, that they borrowed ideas from other people. Agreed. But they synthesized ideas that worked far beyond the individual parts but offering us a more complete whole. You can disparage Apple and Microsoft, but as garage start-ups, they need to be admired, embraced and imitated or used for inspiration.

Personally, my grandfather, Clarence Bowers started building car batteries in his garage. He became universally recognized for his innovations in the early, developmental years of batteries. Eventually, East Penn Manufacturing Company—known as “Deka”—became the largest independent battery manufacturer in the world, and it, too, started in a small abandoned place, in this case a creamery. The idea of starting in a garage inspired Delight Breidegam to use what was at hand, a creamery. He was helped by my grandfather in those formative days. Without Bowers Battery, there might not have been a Deka.

Delight's Deka Creamery

Labor Day in America marks an end to the “mythical” summer. People return from their summer vacations, children go back to school if they aren't already there by now, and the fall cycle of activities start. Once your children are grown up a wonderful thing happens—summer extends to the end of September. Some of the nicest weather is in September in this latitude of North America.
This Labor Day weekend I did probably one of the most iconic of American labors—I painted an antique (built in the 1850s) barn the color red. Think about it—I painted an American barn, barn red. Does it get any more American than that? 
Maybe it is in my blood. The Pennsylvania Dutch built barns to last but more than sturdy structures they were the anchor of their prosperity. As the initial surge of English farmers moved west after depleting a farm's soil, the Germans followed behind, picking up homesteads at rock bottom prices. The first thing they did was build a barn to house their livestock because the livestock was precious to them and vital to their success. The barn was sacred to them. The garage is the modern day barn.

For people who work in garages on their personal project, the heat or cold is immaterial. Great ideas come from there and always will.  Think about this—somewhere in America some kid in a garage is tinkering with the next generation of a detached cursor button—a “mouse.” That may not have been unusual—to have a mouse in a garage—but it may have been the most important mouse.

Treating A Photo

           I am reminded about the famous caution to physicians “First, do no harm.” This is precisely what I am trying to accomplish in this basketball history book, Running With The Greyhounds.

       Examining the photos and finding them well-below the quality I was looking (and hoping) for, I have selected certain pictures I am calling “the money shots.”

       For example, for photos of Hurricane Sandy, the money shot would be the wild mouse roller coaster standing in the surf. I took that shot February 2, 90 days after the storm, ona beautiful, crisp day when police wouldn't let you on the beach and I had only limited access from side streets just off the boardwalk, actually where the boardwalk used to be.

                             The Shore post-Sandy money shot.

       In this book, the money shot is the all-time scoring leader, Jim Lacy. In 1949, he lead the nation in scoring, 2,199 points. He was the first person to break 2,000 points and remember he did it in a time when there were no 3-point shots and freshmen were not allowed to play varsity basketball.

Original photo - cropped - annoying swirls

I have an excellent shot of him scoring against Seton Hall. That particular game was memorable because Loyola and Lacy snapped Seton Hall’s 28-game winning streak. Imagine—a national power gets wrecked by a school of about 600 students. Loyola had a habit in those days beating the big boys—Georgetown, Navy, Villanova, Maryland, La Salle, St. Joe’s,  American U, and Yale, among others.

The money shot, in this case, was photographed through a cellophane covering and there are these light swirls running through it. The author went to the home of 88-year-old Lacy Friday and secured the original. Otherwise I’d be forced to run it. But I was about to pull a sleight-of-hand but running it smaller and using a posterized backdrop of the same photo only running it off-centered. It will be a full size picture, running opposite the chapter opening page. The book is 8-1/2 x 11.

   "Posterized - black changed to dark green

                     Combined photos.

    I am posting the photos separately and then combined. The author promised to get me one without the swirls and I will swap it out.

  I think you will agree that I have done no harm.

A Picture Worth A Thousand Words

I got my first look at the “antique” photos that will run in the basketball book. I admit, they came out much better than I expected but a little bit worse than I was hoping. They came out…muddy…and flat. The strange thing is that they are still cool pictures. Okay, most of them are cool.

 

This is a book about the basketball era from about 1908 to 1981. It covers how basketball was invented in 1891 and how my alma mater was involved locally in Baltimore from the very beginning but the narrative of the book really picks up when the first teams were getting off the ground and that was during the ought years.

Probably the best photo, of the old timey ones, is a spooky, deserted-looking gym from the original college site on Calvert Street. The strangest aspect of the photo is that basketball was played in that gym and there are nine posts in the middle of the floor. When you are using a pommel horse, rings, and free weights or parallel bars, posts in the middle of the floor don’t bother anyone. But devise a game where people are running willy-nilly and passing a ball around and suddenly a post in your immediate path takes on new significance. I am running it as the inside front cover.

 

 

 

Using this picture to kick off the book has several nice effects. First, it’s arresting. Second, if someone isn’t shocked, they are in disbelief. Third, it might pull them into the book. About the picture quality: It’s not good. It’s fuzzy in a sort of Titanic-under-the-water-with green-corrosion look. I guess the photo is poor enough to be intriguing, especially since I am running it in a sepia tone. I am super-imposing some other old timey pictures against the gym picture, used as a backdrop.

But in trying to wind up the book, now that the editing is mostly out of the way, it’s going to be decision time and the decision is going to be whether the subject matter and its placement is enough to overcome marginal quality. The writing more or less parallels the pictures. The saving grace is that the material is so different and basketball-interesting that the photos will not be National Geographic crystal clear won’t be an impediment to enjoying the book.

In most cases the picture will be worth at least a thousand words and in some cases considerably more.

 

 

 

 

Learning To Juggle

I’ve always admired the performer who can take three rubber balls and juggle them with ease, keeping one ball in the air at all times. The trick can be learned and practice can take you to the next level and eventually to juggling chainsaws.

I am one of those people who can do many different things, some of them quite well, a select few expertly. In real life, I think the degree to which you can juggle successfully translates directly into your satisfaction quotient and your anxiety level.

 There are times in my writing life when there are just too many balls in the air. The expert juggler starts with three balls and then keeps adding balls until he has a collection in the air. Somehow, through practice and having a knack, he is able to track all those balls without one hitting the floor.

I remember when I was writing one thing, tossing one ball in the air. Like the little kid with a baseball glove (okay, some call it a mitt) and a ball, waiting for a friend to show up to play catch,  killing time, tossing a ball straight up and then waiting for it to come down, catching it different ways.

 Now I sometimes feel like that same kid with a glove and, like the scene in Braveheart, a thousand archers are launching arrows into the air. I’m down range trying to catch as many as I can without being stuck.

 

Normally I’m carefree about doing several things at one time. Generally this is when there are no deadlines, I’m enjoying all the different stuff I’m doing, and there is time for normal, everyday pursuits. I recognize now, that I get anxious when one or more projects gets dragged out, sometimes with no firm end in sight, and new ideas and projects present themselves and I know that I either will not get to them for months or I realize I might not get to them for…years.

 

I am at the bitter end of finishing a basketball history book. I made the bad decision of offering to edit this manuscript, thinking it wouldn’t take that much time. Wrong. I basically re-wrote the book, in the process cutting 233,000 words back to 207,000 words. I probably chopped out 50,000 words and then put 25,000 new words back in. The editing is done but now I’m also doing the book production.

 

A word about photos: There are nearly 250 photographs in this book that now, upon closer inspection, are not all usable because they weren’t scanned. People generally don’t understand photos and printing. So many pictures are taken with cell phones now that people think just because they use a high pixel count that they can digitally print in a book. I have seen fantastic, sharp cell phone shots with less than 72 dpi resolution.

 

What the heck is resolution? 72 dpi means that the photo is made up of 72 dots per inch. To send that sort of photo across the web is fine and the quality will be detailed and viewable. But, to use in an ebook or to print digitally, it can be a problem. The standard dpi for digital presses is 300 dpi. Many of the photos in this basketball book are of the 72 and 150 variety. I am waiting for a sample printing of a set of low resolution photos and holding my breath. If they work, I can finish this thing by Labor Day.

 

If not, then either a lot of the shots will get cut out or run in a sepia tone to make them look “old timey.” This book might get done by late September or early October. Adding to the problem is that the source of the photos is in Baltimore which is nearly five hours down the road. And if that isn’t enough, the author who has to approve all this, returns to England the last week of this month (August).

 That’s one project—but it’s the one that’s killing me. At the same time I am rewriting my novel, trying to incorporate the changes requested by an interested agent. Meanwhile, another agent has asked to see the manuscript—wants to read the whole thing in September when she starts at a new agency. Naturally, I want to finish making make the first agent’s edits since they make the book so much stronger and I wouldn’t dream of handing in my last attempt to this new agent. The good news, or silver lining in this case, is that people sometimes try for years and are unsuccessful getting an agent to read even the first few pages. I have multiple agents reading full manuscripts so I’ve been blessed.

 

The science publisher who is interested in two different books about the missing moon rocks and a book I pitched about cosmic impacts has been very gracious and patient. I told them how I was swamped and committed to my novel and they said not to worry, they and the moon weren’t going anywhere. Just hand them in when I’ve gotten them written. Meanwhile, they want me in their database—that’s a good sign.

 

The other balls in the air are: a rock and roll thriller set in China, a historical fiction about George Washington’s real life secret agent during the revolution set in my town, historic Ringwood, New Jersey, finishing my Springsteen ebook [95% done], and an ebook memoir of my involvement during high school working on the Apollo program during the Space Race. I am also wondering when my primary novel gets published if they would immediately be asking about the sequel. I’ve given some thought to a sequel but, right now, I’m afraid to throw one more ball into the air.

 

 

Lost In the Flood

There are times we all try to do too much. I think since last fall, that’s been me―some sort of cross between Gumby and Elastic Man―stretching myself so thin it’s amazing that nothing broke. 

I’ve been trying to edit an improbably long sports treatise, a mere 217,000 words, nearly every other one of which has to be double checked. 

I’m trying to finish up an ebook that I started writing on a lark that turned into a wonderful labor of love. I just need those last, few, elusive interviews (two to be exact) to close the book out. 

I have my “main” project, the novel about the Amish and Baseball, The Fastnacht League, which is being rewritten. I’d say “rewritten” is too weak a word. I had to tear out 25,000 words of scenes that were probably unnecessary and reorder the time sequence. I am editing it now and the word total is growing because I am fleshing out more parts and making vague parts more understandable. It will probably take me the rest of the summer to finish the edit but I have an agent who wants to read it in September, so that’s my goal. 

I have a great idea for a next novel, but that is unthinkable until I finish this one. I am pretty happy that my brain is letting me alone, not pestering me with details it wants jotted down. My brain has been very patient and not bothering me, so I don’t want to rile it up with any more thoughts here. I do think my story line is as strong and unique as the story line of  The Fastnacht League. 

My moon rocks and cosmic impacts books are nicely mothballed and my publisher is very patient and said the magic words, “write them when you’re ready, the moon will still be there.” 

And, oh yeah, I have a day job, something I play at 40 hours a week―in between writing. 

I’ve been a bit AWOL with my blog but I’ll try not to let that happen again. I need to learn a little perspective and keep my sights on the worthwhile priorities. 

I wonder how I got off the track but, as usual, a line from Springsteen seems to sum it up: 

“I wonder what he was thinking when he hit that storm, or was he just lost in the flood?”