About Me

Name:AudiR10TDI
Biography
Loading...

Create Your Own Blog Find Other Townhall Blogs

Comments

Archives

Blog Search

Search

Blog Roll

 

Daddy went to Hospice today

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Tuesday, August 05, 2008 1:08:23 PM
Syracuse NY (August 5, 2008) --Saturday morning while I was up to watch F1 qualifying, Mama called me to tell me that Daddy had had a very bad few days, and that at night he was trying to climb out of bed and falling and then not able to get up or help her and my sister (whichever one was spending the night) get him back into bed again.  Finally they had to call the EMT who sent three burly men and they righted the situation.  Mama wanted my opinion as to whether or not it was time to get Daddy into the hospice where he could be cared for 24/7 by people who knew how to handle these episodes.  During the day he is fine but at night, and my sister confirmed, he seemed to turn into someone else.
A friend of mine who has been adopted as an unofficial brother spent the weekend and phoned me this morning to tell me that he thinks Daddy has panic attacks at night and that helps to exacerbate the loss of oxygen to the brain and causes him to not know what he is doing.  My friend was able to calm him by reading to him and talking to him, but he said it took all his strength even to help him sit up against his pillows.
 
Mama was sure we would think her a terrible person for not being able to cope anymore, but she is nearly 81 and a small woman and is at the point of collapse herself.  Clearly the time had come.
 
The hospice is a wonderful place run by the Franciscan sisters and everyone speaks glowingly of it.  They take only 18 guests maximum and people are admitted on the basis of need and not strictly according to a waiting list.  Being an ardent Catholic, I began a novena to St. Jude Sunday (patron saint of desperate and hopeless situations) begging him to use his influence to get Daddy a bed at Francis House.  Yesterday afternoon my sister phoned and said that Daddy would be transferred there today.  Mama will have the help and support of one sister as she makes him comfortable there, and the other lives 10 minutes from the hospice and has promised to visit him every night.  He will have his own phone and as soon as I have the number I will call him; I've already sent him a card and urged my friends and relations to do the same.
 
Death comes to us all one day.  I am one of the few people my age that I know who still has two living parents, so I have escaped this knowledge for a long time.  Now it is here.
 
Please keep us in your prayers.  It is going to be a tough few months around our homesteads. 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (3) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Mama Mia!

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Friday, August 01, 2008 11:41:20 AM
TORONTO (August 1, 2008) -- Go and see the new movie "Mama Mia" if (1) you are looking for the best laugh you have had in years and (2) if you ever went to a Star Trek convention dressed as Lt. Uhura even if you had legs like bridge pilings, and your children in subsequent years have begged you never to tell a soul.
 
I had a tense and unhappy week that ended with a short-lived but intense panic at work about something we thought had been lost, and since I had Points that entitled me to a free movie, I went up to a theatre that holds about 100 in cushy leather tilt-back loungers with table service for snacks.  The room was full, largely of middle-aged women but with a healthy minority of men and younger women too. It wasn't long until the whole place was rocking with laughter.  The plot, as you probably know, is thin and immaterial: a 20 year old girl who has never known her father finds her mother's old diary (note to self: burn all old diaries) and discovers there are three likely candidates.  She invites all three forthwith to her wedding, signing her mother's name.  Wackiness results, set to every song ABBA ever recorded.  She doesn't discover which one her father is, and she doesn't even get married at the end, but her mother does.
 
What makes this movie work is hard to explain.  In the first place, it had to be ABBA -- no other group is so completely over the top as they were; no outfits as hard to explain to younger generations as those terrifying blue spangled jump suits with elephant bells and the four inch platform shoes, no music as similar and occasionally suffering from what have to be translation glitches as theirs.
 
In the second place, this movie vindicates Boomer Wimmin who are frankly sick and tired of being shoved aside and requested by both the 17 year old Dancing Queens without hips, breasts, calves, buttocks or life experience (and by Boomer men who lust after said Bratz) to have the grace to go away and die because we are embarrassing them.  "Mama Mia!" asserts our right to dress up as anything we want to, be it Lt. Uhura or ABBA girls, and have just as good a time as we had when we were young, whether we are 17 years old anymore or not.  Even if we are a square-built older woman who opens bottle caps with her teeth.  And it shows that not only do we have the right to do this kind of silly thing, we look darned good in the process.
 
Of special note to me was the beach production number to "Does Your Mother Know" in which one of the Dynamos (Meryl Streep's old backup group) has a flirtatious rock-out with a beach full of beachboys in which the boys play they think she's a hottie and she plays they are all just babies and everybody has a good time without anybody having to take it seriously.  Instead of the sad spectre of "mutton dressed as lamb" Mommies whose fevered desire is to have their childrens' friends find them Hot, we have here a woman acting her age, dressed her age, and whooping it up with friends her childrens' age while keeping the generational barrier in place.  (Daughters love it when Mama can whoop it up with their friends; but daughters in the end need mothers, not middle aged hottie competition.)
 
No, Meryl Streep cannot sing like ABBA, and neither can Piers Brosnan.  But they do sing like we'd sing if we viewed life as a song cue. That's what makes us able to enjoy it.
 
And at the end of the show when the credits are rolling and the 'big kids' come out dressed as ABBA and do their production numbers, not only are we awed that they can do dance moves in those shoes, but for a few minutes we can see ourselves, even if we are no longer seventeen, as ABBA, and not only laugh until we fall out of our chairs, but identify.

The only course I ever failed in my life was social dancing.  But I came out of that movie completely in touch with my inner Dancing Queen.  Even if I would never dare try to get into that old Star Trek uniform anymore.
 
Go and see it if you want to laugh, and if you want to be reassured that even if you're not seventeen and you've made plenty of mistakes in your life, it is not too late to find happiness.  No matter what your acutely-embarrassed twenty-something kids may say.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (1) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Looking toward Sunset

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Friday, July 25, 2008 7:31:40 AM
TORONTO (July 24, 2008) -- I am back from another visit to my family over in Syracuse, and as my sisters had reported, Daddy is fading fast.  My Florida sister Linda and her beau Jack came up to spend a few days too, as it became clear that we ought not to put off family visits while Daddy is still able to enjoy our company.  We are in home hospice care now and the hospice people are wonderfully kind, patient and helpful, and Mama is slowly accustoming herself to the parade of people through the house and learning to trust them enough to call someone when needed.  But the fact remains that the dynamic has dramatically changed.
 
Daddy conquered his fiery temper before he stopped racing, back in the day, but he is clearly, quietly furious at the change in his circumstances.  He is able to sit up and preside in his loungeback chair for about 2 hours at a time before being conveyed to his room for a short nap; and he scowls that he hates not being a good host and mutters that he wants to find a bridge and jump off.  Mama has never conquered her temper, and explodes with frustration that upsets the sisters, who misunderstand her feelings and jump on her for *picking on him.*  She says she knows she should not do it, but the strain is clear even when she holds it in.  Respite care helps her to have some time off, but in the night when he cannot sleep, she is up too; and when he does not want lunch, she will not eat either unless somebody sits her down and puts the food in front of her.  The folly of the Traditional Housewife is writ large in Mama at this crucial time; brought up to believe -- and enjoying -- that women did not worry their pretty little heads about the organization of daily life (keep your clothes nice and your house clean, bring up the children and leave the rest to the man), she cannot write a cheque, has no idea what anything costs, and is wracked with fear that she will be flung out into the streets.  Mama has worked hard all her life, but handed the money over to Daddy and asked him for what she wanted.   She clings to us now for reassurance and decisions that we more liberated women have made routinely for good or for ill; and we are reminded, well most of us, that Father Knows Best works only as long as Father is able to cope.
 
But during the visit we had time for the important things.  Daddy and Mama both are reviewing the 62 years they have had together and wondering whether they did enough, did the right things, and whether we grew up without vital stuff that other kids had.  They crave the reassurance and the memories of the good times we had when the money was very short and so was everything else -- except a sense of adventure and the knowledge that we always had each other.  So we spent a lot of time talking about the funny things, the silly things, the triumphs and the glories.  We talked about the Sunday drives to Minnewaska Falls, with a picnic lunch and our hoola hoops or jump ropes or just a beach ball, to enjoy being together.  We recalled the long trips in the Henry J in the days before seat belts, with a big mattress covering the back seat and a pile of library books for company, and usually a baby sister in a car bed, heading for a dirt track somewhere for Daddy to try to make the field, occasionally popping up our heads to glimpse the trailer with the stock car on it sailing along in front.  We shared ancient jokes, giggles and stories and we remembered adventures.  And most of all we reassured them that we would stick together, that at the end of the day whatever our differences they would never overcome that foundation.
 
We are all learning patience in dealing with a situation we cannot change, and drawing lessons from wherever they may come.  Saturday night we watched Titanic and reminded ourselves how long it takes from the time you yell RIGHT FULL RUDDER until the ship turns.  We continue to reassure Mama that we will never allow her to be flung out into the street, that we are ready to step in and handle those things she feels she cannot handle (practically everything can be handled by the bank today, for example, and she has a son in law and a nephew who are CPAs who will oversee the banks handiwork), and that with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren around her she will not be left alone except when she wants to be.  Sisters have bought cemetery plots in the Veterans Cemetery nearby where they play Taps every evening, and the Vet in charge is working with us to get a funeral home where Vets can get a funeral that takes their situation into account.  Sisters take the car to be inspected, gassed up, and maintained; sisters call maintenance and have things done around the house.  Nieces are learning that the old fashioned view of women has serious flaws and are learning the basics of their family finances (and every one of them know how to write a cheque).
 
But most of all we are learning that when the foundation is good, the house does not fall.  We have been blessed with a foundation by parents who are far from perfect but who are not so far from perfect as they fear.  And as Daddy looks toward sunset, we are thankful for everything our family shared, shares, and will continue to share when some of us are in heaven.
 
There is a lot of value in that.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Imagine

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Wednesday, July 09, 2008 9:33:55 PM
TORONTO (July 9, 2008) -- A lot of people sneer at lotto tickets, calling them A Tax On The Stupid.  These people say that if we saved our $3 per week and put it in the stock market, we would get rich more quickly than we ever will by playing the lottery. Just for th record, I know that. I know my chances of winning are 1:48 million, especially since I am middle aged and white.  I also know that putting $3 a week in the bank or $12 per month, and being charged $11.00 a month in *reporting fees* is just another way to waste my money. I prefer to waste my money on Super 7 Tickets.
 
A Super Seven ticket costs 1/4 as much as a movie, unless you buy snacks in which case it is 10% as much as a movie.  A movie lasts two hours; a Super Seven ticket lasts a week. A movie is someone elses ideas written down for me to enjoy; but a Super Seven ticket is MY ideas, planned in that delightfully vague way that daydreams always take. 
 
When I was young and I minded that I had hardly any friends, I used to imagine taking out a full page ad in the New York Times reading IF YOUR NAME IS NOT ON THIS LIST, COME TO MY PARTY AT LINDYS!  (That was when there still was a Lindys).  Then I would list all the Popular Kids and anybody Mama asked me why I could not be more like.  Large, unsmiling bouncers would be at the door to turn these people away.  I would also take great pleasure in informing any of the guys in the neighbourhood that if I was not good enough for them poor, I was way too good for them rich.  And so on.
 
These days, besides looking after my family (something that occupies my mind a lot), I think about travelling to racing venues where people without cars and/or independent incomes cannot go.  Monaco, for example.  To do the Grand Prix of Monaco properly would cost $17,000 for the week, not even counting the air fare or the helicopter to the track.  Today I got a marvelous proposal for a five day trip to the Autosport show in Britain for $5,000 without including air fare.  Then there is the young German driver who had to give up his racing season after 3 races ... I met him a couple of years go and I like him, and I could give him all he would need for the season and have our website (www.rfmsports.com) on his car.  I would also be able to get Shane Lewis one more drive at Le Mans, and maybe talk him out of those stupid Grand Am cars and into a top line ALMS ride. Everybody likes Shane Lewis.  Guy Cosmo, too. Maybe I could finance a drive for the two of them.  I could call the team Whupazz Racing.  That would be fun.
 
Then there are people whose stories I see in the paper.  There was a lady of 75 the other day who is living in a squalid building owned by one of our City Councilmen, who had to abandon her mattress because it was full of mice.  I would move that lady into decent housing because I would pray that someone who had won the Super Seven would do for my Mama if they saw her in need.  I would send kids to camp if they promised to study hard all winter.  I would give my church enough money so they could have the food bank open all week instead of only for one day.  (There are a lot of thoughtless people in my church.)  I would retire to Menorah Park and have people look after me, and take taxicabs everywhere.
 
And I would have time to volunteer.
 
I even daydream about how I would stand in front of the teevee cameras and say that now our lot would all be living on easy street and for the rest of my life I was going to do only what I wanted to do.  These are fine speeches that I make from my shower in the morning!
 
Playing the lottery is not a stupid tax or a waste of time, if you keep on working and just take time out now and then to imagine.
 
Just imagine.
 
And to all those people who remind me that I am not going to win, I say simply, well then you need not wait to be invited to my party.
 
Friday the lotto is $15 million.  This could be my day.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Money is Time

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Sunday, July 06, 2008 5:24:26 PM
Niagara Falls, Ontario (July 7, 2008) -- Those of you who know me are aware that I work two jobs, and what time I have free from one or the other, laughingly called *vacation*, are spent going to and from my parents home in New York.  My nutritionist asked me once if I ever took a vacation just for myself, and I just looked at her blankly.  The last time I took time off to simply enjoy myself was in the 1990s, around the time of Gulf War I, when I spent a week in Switzerland followed by three weeks in New Zealand.  Life used to be a lot less complex.
 
Someone once pointed out that to a businessman, time is money -- to a creative person, money is time.  This month I got a raise, quite a nice one actually, and because circumstances delayed it by two months there was a big fat bonus in my last cheque.  That, and the cancellation of the Champ Car race here in Toronto due to the sellout of the guy we thought was actually interested in Champ Car racing but who was apparently interested only in parking his money until a major lawsuit was settled, made me decide that it was time the girl had some time just to do as she liked.  Consequently, I booked off the two days I had set aside for the Champ Car race, and declined the invitation to spend the four days with my sister at her cottage, celebrating the 3rd birthday of one of the great-nephews, and decided that I would spend four days doing just whatever I liked.  For four days I would be Independently Wealthy and I would saunter.
 
Thursday I got up at 7 (an hour later than usual) and did my web updates, then sauntered up to the library, on foot, with a load of books to return and the vague idea that I might have a picnic later on.  The library is pretty noisy on a Thursday morning; apparently children are no longer taught to be quiet even in the library.  I took out so many books that it took their book checker outer machine 3 sheets of paper to print them all out.  They vary from paperbacks of stories I liked in the Fifties, to a huge biography of Oskar Schindler and an equally massive book on the Six Day War.  (Daddy says it only lasted six days because for the first three days Moishe Dayan had the patch on the wrong eye.  You have to be Jewish....)  A visit to the No Frills grocery store across the street produced absolutely nothing I had wanted for my picnic -- it is a poor cousin of the shop in my old neighbourhood where people shop who were not brought up in Eastern Europe and therefore do not accept the idea that they are lucky to get anything, much less anything they actually want.  I decided that I would go to the movies instead and see Indiana Jones 4.  I sauntered home, had veg and dip for lunch and changed clothes, and went to the movies, taking a book along.  Two blocks from the theatre I heard prolonged batlike shrieking, and as I got closer to the theatre I saw both sides of the streets lined with teenaged girls carrying hand printed signs that said MARRY ME JOE and such in hot pink magic marker.  I asked someone what was going on.  It was the Jonas Brothers, said one of the girls.  No wiser, I hurried through the crush and the screaming and gained the security of the movie with relief.  Lunch and ticket purchased, I settled down for two hours to wait and then joined about 20 people in the theatre.  The movie is definitely not for the Jonas Brothers crowd, who will only understand it in another 40 years.  The story is a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon and Cate Blanchette makes me long to shout WHERE ARE MOOSE AND SQUIRREL? every time she opens her mouth -- but the underlying story is the same as Star Trek III: just because you brats observe our less than girlish figures and our grey hair and wrinkles, do not assume that we are stupid, helpless and retro.  We are a lot smarter than you are, we know everything you know and a whole lot more, because we were paying attention in school and not text messaging and whining, and although we are your parents, we can too keep up.  We also know that treasure is not necessarily coinage, and that in the end getting married to the mother of your child is worth it -- and keep your hands off our hat because we are still using it, Junior.
 
Friday morning it was off to town (stopping to get a McDonalds breakfast on the way), where I had my hair done and tracked down some Quebec 400th Anniversary stamps for my sister, mailed a letter to a New Zealand friend who collects stamps, covering it with Anne of Green Gables, First Oil Strike in Alberta, and Canadian Actors stamps ... bought some shorts, which was the usual harassment because the clerk was shaped like a perfect Figure One and tossed through four racks of Size Zero and Size Two, tried to get me to take a Size 10 (If I could wear size 10 I would not have needed new shorts at all) and short-shorts (nobody over the age of 60 should wear short shorts, no matter WHAT she may think) before finding four pairs of Size 12 for me to try on.  One pair was white, which I abandoned immediately; the first thing I do with white clothes is spill coffee on them.  Then I throw them away.  One was khaki and made me look like someone in a Britcom. The other two, jeans shorts and a pair of charcoal grey, I bought.  Total time expended about 10 minutes. I hate shopping for clothes.  A quick check to see if there were any Azzurri shirts left (too big and too costly) and I headed home for lunch and a few hours by the pool.  People who lounge by the pool during the week are not burdened with small fry.  They actually chat for a bit.  This was quite nice.  Off to see fireworks downtown, lovely 4th of July display marred by shrieking horde of Jonas Brothers fans across the street. Make a note to suggest that since Lake Ontario is so close, Jonas Brothers be drowned.
 
Saturday was the day for the Casino.  Instead of going on the early bus which I usually do, I went by the grocery store to pick up my weeks supply of boxes and cans (Mayo Clinic Diet) and some stuff to take along; I only planned tospend $20 at the casino and usually that leaves me about four hours to lounge outside with a book and wander around the Falls.  The 9:00 bus was always packed; the Noon bus was pretty full too but I got there first and had time for a nice chat with a German woman as the Chinese lined up behind us.  The Chinese love to gamble.  So do I, and so does the German lady.  When I get on board the bus, I share my seat with an Italian lady.  I can not understand a lot of what she says, because she speaks quietly and has a heavy accent, but we manage a pleasant conversation for a bit and then I get out my Six Day War book and she naps.  At the Casino the bus driver says that everyone should remain seated and NOT rush to the front until the Casino Lady gets on and is ready to hand out our vouchers (you get your fare back in gambling chips).  The Chinese people immediately jump out of their seats and rush to the front, pretending they cannot understand English.  The Italian lady,who gambles 3 times a week, says they always do this.
 
I immediately strike a jackpot when I sit down at a slot machine (one I cannot get back on for the rest of the day -- and it is the only one like it).  I immediately made up my Gambling Plan for the day, which includes a firm plan that when I have doubled this jackpot I will cash out and play my other $10.  I keep this resolve.  The other $10 keeps me amused for three hours, as my luck is pretty good; out into the sunshine at 5:00 I write a post card to the parents, eat my lunch, read a bit, walk around the Falls, and board the bus for home. My seat mate is from Jamaica and we chat about how awful the younger generation are to work with, entertaining each other with horror stories seen over 12 or so years.  As I came up the sidewalk from the subway my cell phone rings and Mama inquires anxiously where I have been; my sister has received a message from my office computer and everyone had forgotten I was taking time off.  I reassure them and they tell me about the NA$CAR race and ask why I was not at Watkins Glen.  I explain about crapwagons, for the thirtieth or fortieth time. They will not remember. 
 
Today is Sunday and I went to church, came home and did my housework, ate my diet food and pined for candy bars.  Tomorrow I will go back to work, my four days of Independence at an end.
 
To a creative person, money is time to saunter, to select and to loaf by the pool.  I could get used to it.  Unfortunately my lotto ticket said that my ship has not yet come in.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Fathers Day - One More Time

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Monday, June 16, 2008 1:43:45 PM
Toronto (June 16, 2008) -- Yes, I am late for Fathers Day; this was the weekend of the 24 Hours of Le Mans and I had a very busy weekend keeping everyone updated on what was going on (and just as an aside, Peugeot people, you ought to know by now never to get into a scrap with Germans.  Nyah).  But I did call my Daddy yesterday to wish him Happy Fathers Day and I am very glad he is with us to celebrate one more time.  His health is precarious and its day to day with us.  We are grateful for all we get.
 
Daddy is an old fashioned guy and if it were true that "women look for men like their father to marry" its no wonder I have remained single.  Daddy grew up with 8 brothers and 3 sisters on a Depression-era farm in Wisconsin and apparently his father excelled only in alcoholism and flim-flam.  He learned young that it was part of his responsibility to look after his mother, and he kept looking after her even after she stole most of the allotment money he sent home for her to bank in his name, and used it to give one of his sisters a big wedding.  He and Mama married young and this year celebrated their 62nd anniversary.  Despite years of hard work at blue-collar jobs (stock car racing, followed by milk inspector, which required him to be away from home during the times when we were home and/or awake) he found time to educate himself on a variety of topics as he could not finish school due to the Depression and World War II.  When we were kiddies, til I was 8 years old, we travelled to whatever dirt track or fairground Daddy was racing at in a particular weekend, and we knew we were going when he arrived on Friday afternoon and announced "Pack the car, Ma, we are going to--" wherever there was racing that weekend.  Mama would start out by protesting that we could not just pack up and go at the drop of a hat, but within an hour she was packing and getting us ready to go.  We learned a lot from travelling around like that.  Two things we learned very young: eat what you are given and say Thank You; and sleep where you are told to sleep when you are told to sleep.  Oh, and when Mama says sit right there and don't move, you sit right there and don't move.  "Watch out for race cars," she repeated over and over. "They will NOT WATCH OUT FOR YOU."  We grew up applying that to any number of perils that also do not look out for us. (Although in later years I have nearly been run over by race cars three separate times, that was my own stupid fault.)
 
Daddy read stories to us just the way Peter Falk read "The Princess Bride" to his grandson.  The stories were never as interesting when we read them for ourselves.  Although Daddy's spelling is still mainly guesswork, he can write good prose and memorable stories; and he can still recite poetry that he had to learn from the McGuffy Readers for Friday Recitation in the two room prairie schoolhouse he attended until Grade 8.  I was in Grade 8 Latin before I found out what "since Hector was a Pup" actually meant.
 
But the most important story about Daddy I have to tell, and his favourite, is about his teaching me to drive.
 
Daddy had bought a 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 XL that was one of six cars made as "production models" to be turned into NA$CARs, back in the day when they raced Real Cars over there.  He got it by threatening to expose the fact that these cars were not being sold to "the public" which would invalidate their fitness for NA$CAR.  This is the car he drove 185 mph on a timed quarter mile, and this is the car he used to teach me to drive.  I was 17 years old at the time, and Daddy was my idol; what he told me about driving was therefore the revealed word, and I had no idea that what he was teaching me was in fact stock car racing. 
 
So the day came when I took the Yellow Peril down to the examiner's station for my driving test.  Let the record show that although I committed numerous egregious non-manual driving sins, I did not hit anybody or anything, and I performed the requested procedures flawlessly although not 'by the book' unless you were talking about a book written by Junior Johnson.  The final nail that closed the door to my driving license until I turned 25 and took the test on an old Studebaker Lark VI in car-mad California on a day when almost all the examiners were home with the flu, was when we were heading for the examination station and the examiner told me to turn right when we were past the apex of the turn.  I turned right with a dazzling handbrake turn that left a fan of rubber as a souvenier, telling the examiner in a teenaged pout, "You need to tell me sooner when you want me to turn!"  Daddy was laughing himself into hysterics as we approached the station.  I could see him.  The examiner got out of the car, resisted the urge to kiss the tarmac, and said to Daddy, "Do not bring that car -- OR HER -- back here ever again."
 
Mama was not at all amused, as she had counted on my being able to drive so I could take over some of the duties inherent in getting five girls back and forth to school events and such.  Daddy told her not to be such a party pooper, and still loves to tell everybody about how he snookered the examiner on that day.  And that was what gave me the taste for car racing that has stuck with me ever since, especially touring car racing where the Tarmac is Only A Suggestion.
 
Daddy has many redeeming qualities, including his willingness to stick to a task once he has taken it on, and his early assertion that the only things girls could not do just as well as boys were play pro football and father children.  But it was, and remains, his willingness to seize any occasion and any vehicle to play a practical joke on Authority, and his zest for life, that made me what I am today...and thus I assert, as I wish Daddy yet another Happy Fathers Day, that I will marry on the day when I meet a man who is more of a man than I am.
 
And who has a sense of humour that would, after he told them they ought to know better by now, even in car racing, than to go up against the Germans, expect the French to laugh.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (1) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Oh Lord I Sound Like Mama

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 3:55:31 PM
Toronto (May 21, 2008) -- One of my favourite lines in the misunderstood movie "The Big Chill" is spoken by the Glenn Close character, into the telephone, to her young daughter: "Well when YOU get to be a mother, YOU can be mean too!" whereupon she hangs up, lights up a cigarette (it was the 80s) and mutters, "Sometimes I can't believe the things I hear myself saying."
 
Think about it.  All the years when you were growing up, did you not vow and swear never to be as unenlightened, mean, evil, nasty, cruel, and bossy as your Mama?  Did you ever mutter to yourself, "When I have my own kids, I will NEVER make them spend a whole Saturday morning cleaning up their rooms!" or "I will allow them to raise white mice in their dresser drawers" or whatever awful thing your Mama had just handed down?  And most of all, did you swear to yourself that you would never under any circumstances say "Because I, your Mama, said so"?  or "You are Not Going Out Of Here Dressed Like THAT"?
 
And whatever you said to your as yet fictional children, you would keep your voice as sweet, kind and loving as Barbara Billingsly speaking to The Beav?
 
Confess: exactly how long did this vow last past the day your firstborn became ambulatory?
 
For me it was never an issue; although I objected to Mama's 'bossy' manner of expressing herself, I was the oldest of five and had found that her methods actually worked pretty well, at least on my well trained sisters.  However, the two youngest were adamant that they were not going to follow the path of least resistance; they were going to reason with their children, speak softly to them, and allow them to do pretty much anything they wanted to do.
 
Sister No. 4 abandoned this method when her son was 3 years old.  In fact, she abandoned it when she had spoken sweetly to him on a street corner, "Now hold Mommy's hand and wait--" and seen Junior give her that Kid Look and dart out into traffic.  "Before I knew it," she confessed, "I was out there, had him back on the curb, and was paddling his little fanny."  The usefulness of that Mom Voice that says one more step and you are dead meat was proved.
 
Sister No. 5 saw the light at her child's fourth birthday party, when said child and two partygoers locked themselves in the child's bedroom.  The mother of one of the children in the room stood wringing her hands and proposing that they get tools and remove the door.  Sis stepped up to the door and in the Mom Voice ordered, "Unlock that door this minute."  The door was unlocked and opened almost before the words had died away.  I was there at the time, and Sis turned to me and said, "Now I know why Mama used that tone of voice.  Because it works."
 
Gradually the other Mom Answers crept into our vocabularies.  "Well, if everybody else had warts, I bet you'd want those too."  "Well if everybody else holds hands and jumps off the George Washington Bridge, I guess you'll go right over the edge with them."  And of course the classic, "Well I am not everybody else's mother.  I am YOUR mother. And I. SAID. NO."
 
My youngest boy told me once that some day when he grew up he was going on Oprah and tell the world what a mean, evil mother he had.  "Let me know when you'll be on," I replied. "I'll want to phone all my friends."  As I recall, he stood there with his mouth open for a minute, then muttered, "I can't stand it.  I just can't stand it." as he walked away.
 
Think about it tonight as you put the kids to bed, or if yours like mine are grown and gone, about the days gone by when you suddenly heard your Mama's voice coming from between your lips.  Did you stop and say to yourself, "Oh, Lord, I sound just like Mama!" and did you call your Mama and confess?  If not, you should.  Trust me, she'll understand and the two of you will have a good laugh about it.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (4) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Sisters

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 7:50:55 PM
Toronto (May 20, 2008) -- In a fit of pique or perhaps of candour, Mama once admitted that she had only planned to have two children: my next sister and me, both born in February, two years and one week apart.  The two younger kids, both born in October, 4 years and 1 day apart, were surprises.  As children will, we seized on this interesting fact for a couple of days, as we all recall more or less, and made rather a big deal out of it before Mama put her foot down and stopped the rumpus with her patented, trademarked *That is ENOUGH.*  At all other times that I can remember, we simply moved over for the next sister to arrive, thinking nothing about how many of us there were.  (We did envy our neighbour, who was the only girl in a family of six, but that was mainly because she had her own bedroom.)  In fact, when Daddys oldest sister, whose caboose daughter arrived when Auntie was 45 and thought she was safely past *all that*, having brought up and sent into the world three much older children, my 20 year old mother made room for one more, saying that Linda and I could be twins.  Our house was never very large and our bedrooms were tiny, but in those days bedrooms were where we slept and changd clothes and it did not matter how we were stacked at times like those.
 
Although there were times that I was totally fed up with the swarm of sisters constantly under foot -- I know that I declared more than once that Little Orphan Annie never knew how well off she was, and Linda and I used to imagine that our real parents, gypsies who played the violin and danced, would return for us one day in a red and gold caravan pulled by black horses -- they frequently came in handy.  For one thing, there was always somebody to button you up, and if you could not braid your own hair, somebody else would do it.  Because four of us were within five years in age, there were always two teams for Chinese Checkers, Snakes and Ladders, Go to the Head of the Class, Game of the States, or dominos on a rainy day.  If you had trouble with your school work, there was somebody to help you; if you had to practice reading aloud, there was an audience. With five girls available to do the chores, nobody got stuck permanently with the work that nobody liked; on snowy days it was less trouble to get the driveway cleared and take the dog for a walk.
 
Our famly travelled a lot, at first because Daddy raced, and later because most of his brothers and sisters settled within thre or four hours of us, and of course we would drive to Alabama to visit our Southern Granny and play with a whole other set of cousins, drink Coca Cola and iced tea (which we did not have at home) and spend a week at Pensacola Beach in the huge, rambling family *cabin* with a Mothers Helper to look after us.  Those were the days before seat belts, so a large mattress was placed in the back seat and we piled in, with an armload of books, a pack of Uno cards, the picnic basket and crayons and paper.  There was no talking allowed in the car except if there was blood or your sister fell out of the car; but on the other hand, we could take turns (as long as we still fit) lying in the back window  and making fish faces at following cars.  In the early days we stayed in Tourist Courts, which were frequently cabins; one such place where we stopped every Easter vacation was run by a Mrs. Cassidy, who was likely mystified by our reverent and worshipful behaviour toward her.  We were, you see, told by our Daddy that she was Hopalong Cassidys mother.... When we got older we stayed in motels with pools and teevee, and those vibrating beds where you could have a thrill for a quarter; we girls had our own room and considered ourselves in paradise thereby.  (I will tell you about the Hot Rod Days on Fathers Day.  Then we lived in a homemade trailer called Crestfallen Manor.)   One year we drove home in two cars; our uncle had become dissatisfied with his De Soto and said that anyone who wanted to drive it away could have it, so Mama drove it back from Alabama with three girls in it, and Linda and I rode with Daddy in the Yellow Peril, a 1964 Ford Galaxie XL500 built as a NA$CAR homologue and faster than anybody elses father had.  The other girls got to play with the Town and Country bar on the radio; we got to hear Daddy tell stories -- about Chief Falling Rocks who wandered the hills looking for his lost love (hence the signs reading Watch For Falling Rocks), about the Kingdom of Nosmo King (prompted by the sight of a No Smoking sign) where everything was forbidden except poking your nose in other peoples business), about Baron Von Geiger who lived in a mansion at the top of a mountain (in reality a hotel), and about his childhood on a prairie farm with 9 brothers and 2 sisters where they went to school in a sleigh. 
 
We were all glad to leave home and into our own sisterless orbits, some to further education and others to marriage; but we all found that our lives were easier because we had grown up in a crowd.  My first collge roommate was an only child, who did not know how to make  bed, do a load of laundry, cook dinner on the bottom of a popcorn popper, or make gum wrapper chains.  My next roommate could not sing harmony or read morse code or American Sign Language but she knew them all before the end of the first semester; when you grow up with only a brother, you have nobody to teach you these things.  (For her part she taught me to speak Shakespeare as he should be spoke, and her Spanish was better than mine.)  We scattered around the country and pursued our own dreams -- multiple marriages and children, motocross, home ownership, travel, boat racing, skating lessons, Hollywood stunt work, nursing, engineering, quilting, racing, you name it.  But as we got older we began once again to gather together and revisit all the old jokes, songs, stories and memories (sometimes startling people, and I admit it).  Now that we are all over 50, our kids grown up and on their own and our parents needing us daily if not hourly, we all admit that we are glad there are five of us to share the burdens as well as the old jokes and stories.  Perhaps some day we will all write our memoirs.  Until we do, its fun to have someone to remind us of all the reasons that in the long run the more there are, the merrier.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Mama and Mothers Day

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 8:00:39 PM
MAY 6, 2008  -- When we were kiddies we used always to ask Mama what she would like from us for Mothers Day. Invariably she would snap *Peace and Quiet!* whereupon we would drop the subject and pick up whatever seemed likely to please her, plus a nice card each, a practice not easily managed on 25 cents a week.  One year we took her at her word and for the day we not only brought no gifts but we decamped for the day to the home of our best friends the Gullas and left her strictly alone.  Needless to say, this proved to be the last thing in the world she wanted, and when we got home and asked her how she had enjoyed the peace and quiet, she said we were a bunch of smartalecks.  (My parents did not swear in our presence until we were sophomores in university or married.)  But from then on our queries got much more reasonable responses.
 
Mama was a remarkable woman and at age 80 she still is, although we did not realize how remarkable until we were old enough to be mothers ourselves.  She was married at 18, shortly after Daddy came home from World War II, and had me at age 20.  She was next-to-youngest of a family of 8 and, the South being considerably different in thos days, Mama Long engaged a devoted Black nanny for her and her youngest sister Martha Rose, so she knew nothing about either birthing or looking after babies.  (She once told me that her mothers sole advice regarding the birds and bees was *eat a good breakfast on your wedding day.  You will need it.*)  Nevertheless, by the time she was 30 she had four girls of her own and a foster child, the caboose daughter of Daddys oldest sister, who was the same age as me.  Until I was 8, she ran the household on what Daddy could win on the quarter-mile dirt tracks racing stock cars.  My earliest memories are of trundling through darkened countrysides in the back of the turquoise blue Henry J that pulled our homemade trailer, following the tail lights of Daddys green Kaiser Virginian pulling the trailer with the stock car aboard.  That story is one for Fathers Day; I will only say that Mama managed three small children in a dirt paddock with speeding cars on every side with calm and decision.  We also took many trips between our home and the home of our Southern Granny; we spent Easter vacation with her and not only enjoyed the trip -- down Route 6 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, then to 11E past various landmarks (the Apple in Virginia, Pedroville in South Carolina, a mountainside mansion Daddy called the castle of Baron Von Geiger, a town in Tennessee named Sweetwater Junction that had a positively reeking paper mill, the Rock City birdhouses...) and the stories Daddy told, but also the chance to drink Coca-Cola which we did not have at home, to curtsey and say Yes Mam and No Mam, and to play with our Southern cousins.  Mama managed these trips by forbidding conversation in the car which was stocked with books, and with the same force and effect she used in the presence of speeding stock cars.  We were known to be exceptionally well behaved and tidy children with very good vocabularies.  Mama had not graduated from high school, but she had educated herself and she insisted on good grammar and good manners, with a Mom Voice that no one dared disobey.
 
Mama was equal to anything, from an irate Mrs. Wheeling presenting her dripping daughter and demanding why Linda and I had once again pushed her off the boat dock, to my bout of pernicious anemia that left me bedridden for an entire summer, to Daddys passion for sudden trips to visit his many brothers and sisters or to Vermont or simply to Pennsylvania for ice cream cones.  She made sure we knew the value of money and what our lives would be like if we did not work hard in school; as soon as we were old enough for working papers, we had them and our summers were spent in factory work.  The money earned was to be spent on our personal needs -- eyeglasses, dentistry, stockings, school uniforms and any extras the Sisters might require.  By the time we were old enough to attend university we knew how to save money as well as how to keep house, mind children and our manners, respect authority and drive.  (Okay, I had no driving license because Daddy taught me to drive on a car that had been built for NA$CAR and I terrified the examiner who probably dined out on the story for years.  But I did know how to drive.)  I had been through a year of charm school at John Robert Powers although I was not charming and thank God the Sixties came along before I had to deal with any debutante nonsense. I did not date because I was one of the boys, and I was a perpetual disappointment to Mama although I was a very good baritone sax player and a nice voice for chamber music.
 
But through it all, Mama coped with whatever life threw at her.  She evacuated us from Hurricane Hazel in a motorboat (*Sit still, hold your sisters hand and say your prayers* she told us as we drifted away from our flooded house, and we did, as always, just what she said.)  She nursed us through measles, chicken pox, flu, trichinosis, and other childhood illnesses that meant we had to be quarantined.  She created good meals out of whatever she had, and she never said even once that we were poor and could not afford things; she just said No, and that was enough. We had nice holidays, we got adequate Christmas gifts and we had masses of cousins (38 first cousins alone) so we were never bored.
 
And now that Mama is 80, she can be very proud of what she has wrought.  She has brought up 5 girls in the Sixties and not one of us were ever arrested, pregnant or drug users; my sisters have all married at least once and we have produced grand children and great-grandchildren in abundance, all of them intelligent and well behaved and mature and not in any kind of trouble.  Mama got her GED at the age of 50 with the second highest score in Alabama history, and when she expressed shock, Daddy reminded her that she had smart kids and where did she think they got their brains.  She took us to church and backed us against any foes except Sister at school, who was her ally in keeping us and the Sixties firmly separate, and on one memorable occasion she talked Daddy into not locking the door against Santa.
 
So on this her 60th Mothers Day, I salute my Mama for not only her heroic duty not only around the house but in the factory and behind the wheel, and I wish to state for the record that I get it.  And I do not for the life of me know how she managed.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (7) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Peace, Be Still

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 4:23:37 PM
TORONTO (May 5, 2008) -- I wonder if anybody even knows anymore how to be quiet.
 
May is not a good month for quiet at our church, as it's the month when the kiddies make their First Communion.  The kiddies are beautifully dressed as little brides and grooms (better than a lot of same, actually, as there are neither plunging necklines nor slit skirts to be seen) and beautifully and solemnly behaved.  It's the families that cannot sit still and be quiet.  Yes, I know a lot of these families haven't been inside a church since their own First Communion or possibly since their baptisms, but hey, everybody knows that when you come to church, you sit quietly and pay close attention.
 
Um, no, actually it seems they don't.  The entire row in front of me was taken up by an Italian family (three boys, teenaged girl, three adult women, one man who was apparently there in the role of photographer) whose voices grew louder and louder as the time for mass approached, until finally they were so loud that the church bells were completely drowned out.  That was when I asked if they could possibly please be quieter.  They dropped it enough so that the ring tones from two rows back could now be heard, which wasn't much improvement.
 
What happened to the whole notion of sitting quietly in church and contemplating the Divine Mysteries?  For that matter, what happened to the idea of considering that other people (Whaat?  There are other people in here????) might have come to church to pray, and staying outside until the mass began if you came to exchange recipes, talk over last night's hockey game, and get in a fight with your sister?
 
Thank God we have a priest from Newark who is plain spoken and firm, who took five minutes before the homily to tell these people not to take photographs during mass and for Heaven's Sake not to come up to the altar and take pictures and rearrange their darlings into a more photogenic group.  (Several men left at this point, their usefulness and interest in the proceedings ended.)  Photo ops would be staged after Mass, and then anything would be fine.  But absolutely no behaving as if you were at a football match while others were trying to pray.
 
It is a darned shame that people over the age of 8 should have to be told this in the first place; it is even sorrier that once they have been told to be quiet by an authority figure, they continue to yammer on and on, and allow their kids to punctuate the prayer of the church with constant staccato "Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom" so desperate are they to go stand out in the hall and get started on the cookies that even the Eucharist can't command their attention and if they're not happy, why should anybody else be?
 
Oh, I can't blame the kids so much; obviously their parents cannot shut up for a nanosecond and where were the kids supposed to learn?
 
I'm just making a plea that the next time you are in a venue where your own Mama would have told you to be quiet, think of Jesus speaking to the storm rocking their boat.  "Peace," he said. "Be still."  Could you stop talking long enough to see if He might be saying the same thing to you?
 
 
 
 
 
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (2) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

The Pope, The Church, and the Train to New York

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 10:17:50 PM
TORONTO, April 22, 2008 -- His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has come and gone from North America in 6 days and is no doubt happy to have the seventh day to rest up.  Pope Benedict turned 81 on this trip, about 6 months older than my Mama although in much more vigorous health from what I noted.
 
I watched almost every one of his public events on EWTN for the most part, so as to avoid the leftie blabber on CNN and the Networks and the relentless chattering on the more reverent otherwise Fox News Channel.  I think even EWTN was surprised at the enthusiasm and welcome afforded the Holy Father (called with typical American irreverence Shepherd One) at every venue where he might be expected to show a glimpse of his face.  True, he was surrounded by more Muscle than the average rock star, and usually rode from here to there in his customized Mercedes *Popemobile* which looked like the cab of a tractor and made him visible without making him vulnerable.  A good many Catholic prayers were raised for his safety during those 6 days.  One would have hated to have some American or Muslim on a Mission From God (so called) get close enough to do him a mischief. Still, it also made him rather hard to experience for the average Joe and Joanne in the street.
 
There was very little carping and whining among the press, once he had arrived, which surprised me. Before he landed in DC, to be met personally by President and Mrs.Bush -- both very reverent and respectful, and thank God he was spared the awkwardness of a President Kerry -- a putative Catholic in a state of mortal sin that he knowingly,willingly and defiantly hangs onto -- the Press wittered on and on and on about the Sex Abuse Scandal (lefties discovered their wee-wees in 1964 and have never managed to drop the subject since then) and such irrelevancies as homosexuality and the ordination of women and how the Church *had* to Get With The Modern Program or the Left would boo him off the stage.  Once he had arrived and it was manifestly clear, as it would have been in the Sixties id we had been possessed of the Internet and Digital Cable, that the kickers and screamers were a very tiny minority of fringe folk made conspicuous by their lung power and the loving attention they got from the Press.  As anyone who was not trapped in a bubble of people exactly like themselves was aware, 85% of America is still Christian and 95% of those are still devoted to the power and authority of true faith -- and openly or secretly of an authority figure who Stands Firm.  Those of us who were brought up by parents who WERE parents and not would-be Best Friends, and who in turn were able to say BECAUSE I AM YOUR MOTHER AND I SAID SO in what has come to be known as The Mom Voice, learned as children and from experience that most kicking and screaming is only a test of the boundaries, to see how far the rope will stretch before it snaps back in our face.  I was fortunate to have a Mama who could look me in the eye and emphasize *I.  Said.  NO.* without raising her voice, and in my wisdom to replicate that voice so that when I said STOP in the Mom Voice, both kids would halt in mid-stride, mid-breath, mid-protest and drop the subject.  His Holiness has that voice down pat.  Although his words were kindly and filled with the love of God, the tone said that there was no flexibility, no *dialogue*,no compromise and no nonsense.  There will be no women priests, there will be no accommodation to homosexuality (and after the famous Sex Abuse Scandal, which was almost totally due to the Sixties idiocy of insisting that homosexuals viewed sex in the same way as heterosexuals do, despite AIDS and bath-houses and gay bars and 20 years of *free love*) and above all else there will never be accomodation to abortion. 
 
I was converted to Catholicism fairly recently, after a lifetime of Protestant churches founded on shifting sands and the winds of Whats Happening Now.  Most recently I reluctantly but disgustedly left the Anglican church, which had deposed Christ from the altar and put in His place the male sex organ about which they obsessed and chattered day and night to the exclusion of everything else (save perhaps socialism, anti-American political rants, and guitars.)   I studied the Catechism and asked a lot of questions and queried my teachers and priests, with the view that before I boarded the train I wanted to make sure the destination was where I wanted to go.  And I decided that it was. 
 
To my mind the people shouting at His Holiness that the Church *needs to change* are like people who get on the train in full knowledge that it is headed for New York, and then spend the journey shouting that old chant: WHADDAWEWANT? TO GO TO CHICAGO!  WENDAWEWANNIT?  NOOOWWWWWWW! 

His Holiness spent six days in America reiterating that this train was going to New York, and anybody who wanted to go to Chicago had only two choices: go to New York or get off the train.
 
In a world that changes, shifts and dissolves every few days, and where people wake in dread every day of what may happen to shake their very being before nightfall, a man like Pope Benedict XVI who knows where the train is going and refuses to be turned aside is exactly what North America had in mind.  As the old Baptist Bible School song said, we will *cling to the Old Rugged Cross* as a refuge against the stormy blast (or Presidential Primaries) and this week that personification of the Cross was a reminder that some things are still eternal. 
 
In a world where we are frequently told that all we have is the moment and what we can grab and hold, it was wonderful to have a man come among us to remind us that this is not true.  The change may not be apparent right away, but hearts were strengthened and minds were opened and we will look some day and say this week past was where the tide finally turned.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

One Man and His Hissy Fit

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Friday, March 07, 2008 12:00:00 AM
Toronto (March 7, 2008) -- Since  this is my blog and I hate Tony George, I write today to excoriate the man who almost single handedly destroyed open wheel racing this month.  Four races that I planned to attend this year have been cancelled willy-nillly, as a bunch of boys who bought the Champ Car World Series five years ago -- clearly as a tax write-off, as they did little or nothing to make a going concern of it -- have now dumped it into the hands who has been busy for the past 13 years trying single handedly to kill Champ Cars because thy would not let him be Bernie Ecclestone in America. Well now he has his wish.  He has destroyed open wheel racing and now he reigns over the ruins.   He has angered former fans,  owners of teams who bought cars and equipment that turned overnight to scrap, alienated cities internationally who had contracts to run motor races this year including Houston where he has also alienated ALMS fans whose race was shot out from under them, and he has put millions of people out of work.  All because he could not stand the thought of competition.  Nobody in our former series is rushing to join his 1995 era series of ugly snorting cars in which 85% of the drivers suffer injuries requiring hospitalization, running around in a pack on an oval -- like watching marbles swirl down the drain -- and who visit such meccas as Iowa and Kansas to perform in front of their friends and any street people who will take a free ticket and sit upright in a seat. 
 
Toronto, where certain classes of Greenies have ben trying to get rid of the single biggest money maker in the Province of Ontario because after all they moved to the biggest city in Canada for peace and silence (these are the people would literally prefer to die rather than allow the cops to have helicopters to chase home invaders -- too noisy!)  will lose something like $50 million this year because the Roar by the Shore will be no more.  Wait until these crying greenies realize amount of tax revenue this $50 million used to generate that will not be available for their pet projects this year.  Wait until they discover that the millions of dollars that the CARACharities of Champ Car wives raised for local charities will not be forthcoming -- ever again.  Tony George cares nothing at all for charity.  He wants Power. and he needs his money to prop up his house of cards.  Heck, even the charitable contributions of individual teams such as Chili Pepper Racing, which donated a sizeable amount of baby clothing (expensive, brand new items too), team swag and free racing tickets to a local drop in centre, will not be giving the kids any hope this year.  Friends will not gather here, Canadian drivers will not be cheered here or anywhere else (Paul Tracy will not even drive this year save in the farewell race at Long Beach).  Although Canadian races made up 35% of the open wheel fans in the past 12 years, we have been shoved out the door and told we have the choice of attending the Tony Go Round or --- well, the OR part is what Tony George forgot about. 
 
Millions of us are going to watch beautiful cars in American Le Mans.  Others are returning to Formula One now that it is totally without Schumachers.  Others have turned to World Rally, A1GP,  Atlantics (which stood alone for many years before Champ Cars) and European series. 
 
But the one thing that we are not doing is dropping a dime for Tony George.
 
Happy trails to you, Tony.  Get somebody to read you the poem Ozymandius espcially the last two lines.  King of nothing but the desert. Enjoy.  Alone.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

You'll Get Yours

Posted by AudiR10TDI on Thursday, February 21, 2008 12:00:00 AM
TORONTO (February 21, 2008) -- Back in the days before universal refrigeration, the farmers used to say "The rich people have their ice in the summer and the poor have theirs in the winter!"  While this was meant as a wry joke, it contained a kernel of truth in that assumption that sooner or later, you'd get yours
 
The scripture of the day today is that of the Rich Man (Dives) and the Poor Man (Lazarus, not to be confused with the Lazarus who rose from the dead, or Lazarus Long, for that matter).  Dives is described as enjoying his wealth and not noticing that there was a beggar, Lazarus, at his gate.  Some of us who live in Toronto find it hard to get out of our gates without stepping on at least one beggar, but apparently Dives had a back door.  So anyway, he lived a comfortable life and enjoyed all his Goodies, and then he died.  And, as the communists always tell us they will, he went to Hell; Lazarus, naturally, went to heaven and never the twain shall meet.  That is an indication, say the communists, that You'll Get Yours.  If not in this life, in the next, and you'll see the people who Got Theirs, that you hate, getting stiffed in the next world.
 
However, this is not what the story of Dives and Lazarus is about.  Dives' sin was not enjoying his wealth while someone else had none.  His sin was that he did not extend hospitality to a brother.
 
In the deserts where this lot lived, Hospitality was literally the difference between life and death.  That is, if a caravan wound its way to your door, much less a single beggar, and you did not share with them, it was pretty likely that the stranger or the beggar would perish. So everyone as in pioneer days shared what they had with the full expectation that (1) the visitor would not rip them off and (2) would reciprocate when someone else came to his door.  Unlike today, where people feel entitled to everything others have simply because they themselves lack it, and thus justify hitting them over the head and taking it away, a breach of hospitality was in those days punishable by death.  Not only because the guy you ripped off would be justifiably angry and want his stuff back, but because you do that often enough and the next guy down the pike is going to pay the price when he asks hospitality and gets the answer that the last time he tried it, he got ripped off, so no thanks and move along.
 
This is the problem with beggars, too.  When one town passes a law that moves beggars out, for example the Squeegee Kid Law that moved them out of Toronto, they move to a town with more lenience and pretty soon your town looks a lot like Calcutta.  The more hospitality you give them, the more they congregate, just like cats or birds who know who puts out the food.  So while it is necessary to practice hospitality, consideration must be given as to when, how and where, lest your doorstep become a stopping place for stray cats, birds and beggars.  This does not mean you ought not or cannot dispense hospitality.  You must do so because we're all in this together and sooner or later you'll be where that beggar is.
 
The Bible has nothing at all to say about whether wealth or poverty is the preferred lifestyle for humanity in general.  Don't listen to the communists who tell you that if you don't cough up here on Earth, you will be laughed at in the afterlife when you are forced to cough up and watch the beggars enjoying your stuff.  What it does say is that hospitality is a two way street, and you'd better be prepared for the day when you'll need yours and if you have been hospitable in your turn, you'll get yours.
 
Email It