Future talk

"Nothing has concerned man longer or more consistently than the future. Before we could write, perhaps even before we could talk, we scanned the skies for signs of sun or rain, made sacrifices to ensure the success of undertakings. Always the inner eye gazed with fear and trepidation on what John Milton called "the never-ending flight of future days." Always we have asked of no one in particular -- or anyone -- what will happen? 
In Roman times, it was the oracle who read the future in the entrails of sacrificial animals. Nowadays, we're more refined and we call the oracle the clairvoyant, but the idea is the same, and so is the purpose: to know what is coming tomorrow, the better to take the fear out of our eyes.
"What horrors lie ahead for us we do not know. We do not wish to know. We would rather stumble along blindly than know we are heading for disaster. And yet what joys are ahead, what happiness? Do we wish to know? Perhaps it is just as well that we do not know, that we wait, silent and patient for whatever the future brings."   

 The Clairvoyant, first broadcast over CBS Radio Mystery Theater on October 1, 1976. Written by Elspeth Eric.

Tammy Grimes

Tammy Grimes dated
singer Sammy Davis,Jr.
at a time when such
things were ... or 
were they?

The protagonist of this radio play is portrayed by Tammy Grimes. A veteran of stage, screen and television as they say, she was the daughter of a spiritualist and a night club owner who made it big on Broadway, winning two Tony Awards for appearing in such plays as The Unsinkable Molly Brown, California Suite and 42nd Street among many others. 

In movies, she starred in Play It as It Lays, Can't Stop the Music and Arthur? Arthur!, again among many others. 

On television she acted in such series as Route 66, The Love Boat, Mr. Broadway and her own series, The Tammy Grimes Show.

Grimes also had a career as a cabaret and cafe review singer at such venues as The Downstairs Room and The Rendezvous Room in Manhattan. She performed a long-running one-woman show, Downstairs at the Upstairs. Three albums of her songs were released by Columbia Records: Julius Monk Presents Tammy Grimes, Tammy Grimes and The Unmistakable Tammy Grimes. She was the narrator for the BBC Radio production of Lord of the Rings.

Although she married two white actors, Jeremy Slater and Christopher Plummer, she dated several black entertainers, including impresario Julius Monk and singer/actor and member of the Rat Pack Sammy Davis, Jr., gaining some notoriety for doing so. 

As you can see in the accompanying news article, from the March 12, 1965, Chicago Tribune, Grimes was involved in what the police determined to be a fake "hate crime" long before the term was invented. It seems there is a long history of some people really, really wishing that white people were strongly racist, far more than reality would indicate that they are.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Confederates

by Neal Bowers

My father was only two in 1915
when he sat on Walter Denton's lap
and heard the old man dragging in
his heavy chain of breath, each link
stuttering down the back of his throat.
"Floyd," he whispered, saying the baby's name
like a question, "look yere,"
and he placed my father's hand
on a scar the color of moonlight,
a shrapnel wound from the Yankee boats
that shelled Ft. Donelson.
Then both of them began to cry,
there in the ladderback chair
someone had dragged into elm shade,
away from the stifling house,
until a woman came and saved them
from each other, leaving one
to go into the past and disappear,
the other to follow by way of the future. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe my home town...?

 So, outside of Japan, where did I spend a lot of my childhood?  Where did I enjoy my life the most? Guam!  I'm still a Guambat at heart and was very happy to be stationed there as an adult.  Why was that?

Here ya go:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
I Meet My Grandmother in Italy

by Katrina Vandenberg

I find her where I least expect her,
Santa Marguerita, with yellow roses
in her hair. She laughs, deep

in the arms of that American GI,
her hair rolled like Hepburn's, her lipstick
red as tiled Verona roofs. Then I remember

the Saturday before she died, the way
we stopped at a greenhouse and she said,
I'll take for my granddaughter all

the plants you have with yellow flowers,
ignoring my protests until the Pontiac
was heaped with roses and verbena,

with lemon gladiola perfume I could gather
in my hands. She said, Take them
all; you need to have a happy life. 

 

 

 

 

 

Uh oh

I'm in trouble now!

Reading through blog and substack posts, twitter feeds and all that, I realize that not only do I have nothing in common with many of these people, I don't understand them or their lives at all.  They seem very class and status conscious, which to me is fundamentally anti-American.  I guess I am naive. 

As I've written, I have lived most of my life overseas as a service brat or in the service myself, so there's that:  America is, in many ways, a foreign country to me, as are Americans. Sure, lifer navy pukes are Americans, after a fashion, but a very distinct subset with little in common with your average slacker landlubber.

Then there is the fact that I don't drink. I don't like the taste of alcohol and if I take more than a few sips at one time, I get sick.  Otherwise it just makes me sluggish.  So I've never been drunk. And I am not impressed by Chateau Snooty Pants wine or 50-year-old single-malt rot gut. Take the alcohol out of that stuff and who would drink it? So admit it, guys, all you want to do is get hammered and all that la-de-dah talk is just cover.  

So, not being a drinker, I've never gone into a bar voluntarily; I mean, like, walking down the street go, hey, there's a bar, I think I'll stop by for a shot of rye.  I've gone in with other people to be sociable, but that's about it.  I've never gone into a bar to meet men.  Oh, no, no, no.  Like Mickey Spillane, of all people, said, the only kind of people you meet in bars are people who like to hang out in bars.  Pass. Oh, I've never been "picked up" either. Not on  your life.  Like I've said before, I talk the talk but I do not walk the walk.  Forget it. 

I've never taken drugs, never snorted cocaine, never smoked a joint or eaten a marijuana brownie. So I've never been "high," and don't understand the attraction. The results of addiction are so obvious and appalling that it baffles me why anyone would ever touch the stuff.  Anyway, my research specialty was the brain, so I'm well aware of the damage, down to the neuron level, that drugs do to the brain.  If you've taken drugs, you're brain damaged and not the way you were before you indulged.  That is fact.  Cold, hard fact.

Oh, I don't smoke cigarettes, either.  I had an aunt who smoked a lot, but she died before I was born. Neither of my parents smoked. Well, at least not since I've known them, so to speak.  I learned not long ago that my dad smoked when he was a young man.  I did smoke now and then in Afghanistan because, well, you can imagine.  Putting out a cigarette once saved my life there.  Yeah.  Chance rules all.  I wonder if my mother smoked when she was in Viet Nam. I've never thought to ask her. Considering cigarettes were included in C rations in those days, she very well might have. That was the era of coffee and a cigarette.

I'm not a big fan of coffee, although the navy lives on it. Coffee's okay, but I'd rather have tea or hot chocolate. These days, I use plain cocoa powder to whip up my hot chocolate, adding a dash of vanilla and homemade simple syrup along with the milk. When I make it for my kids I add little marshmallows.  Hubby wants coffee, strong and black.

I'm not really interested in politics and don't follow it.  When I read about it, I very often don't recognize the names of the politicians and don't know if they are Republicans or Democrats or what they are promoting or opposing. I've tried to be more informed about it in recent years, things being as dire as they are, but everybody involved seems to be so hostile and nasty, even wanting to kill those they are against.  Psychopaths.  I can't influence anything that's happening, so I just avoid it.

As far as movies and TV go, I generally don't know the names of the stars let alone the directors and all that.  Most of the movies and TV series people talk about I've never seen, often never even heard of. I haven't watched any television at all since 2016.  I never did watch much. Why did I stop watching TV in 2016? I was looking for a nice Christmas show and came across The Simpsons and Krusty the Klown jumping out of a manger laughing, and I thought, all right, that's enough of that.  No more.  Forever.  And so it has been.

It's pretty much the same with popular music.  Oh, sure I "consume" it; quite a bit actually, everything from Annette Hanshaw to Hey Monday, and like it. And I'm always discovering more that I like.  But I tend to like music nobody else cares for anymore.  So I will groove on performers like jazz singer Nancy Wilson or Jay and the Americans, not necessarily the current idol. There's no particular reason for that. There's just such an enormous warehouse of popular music that I get lost wandering down forgotten corridors and discovering tunes I like. So I'll say to a friend that I love some song by, say, the Spaniels and they will say "Who?" and I respond, "No, not the Who, the Spaniels," and from there it goes into an Abbott and Costello routine.

On none of these subjects could I hold a conversation, nor would I want to.  I don't care enough about them to be interested.  That doesn't mean that I think I am superior to those who do care and can talk or write about them with knowledge and enthusiasm. Not at all. I often read with interest such writing or listen to someone talking about these things and enjoy doing so.  It just means that I'm not dining at their restaurant, if you fetch my meaning.

It also means that I don't hold the popular opinions of the day.  Generally, they baffle, bemuse or appall me.  I stick with what I was taught, and growing up in an armed forces family, and attending Department of Defense schools, you can pretty well figure out what those are. Or maybe you can't, being ruled by prejudice and false stereotypes. 

I could tell stories (and have!) about how I was put down by students and teachers at the highly gifted magnet school I finished up high school in because of my accent and military background. Oh, and also because of my race and religion and the fact my family comes from flyover country.  Wypipo, hicks and Christians are so déclassé, don't you know. And military?  Stupid losers.  Just watch Two-and-a-half Men on TV.  TV tells it like it is. 

And being a blonde on top of it just meant I was really stupid.  And sexually promiscuous. So all the call-center Indians, Iranians (or whatever they were) and squinties hit on me. Cue the dry heaves. And if I hear one more dumb blonde joke.... (Somebody told me that actually they are shiksa jokes, Catskill humor, along with dumb Pollack jokes. I had no idea what a shiksa was or what Catskill humor was.  It had to be explained to me.)

"You're racist because you won't go out with me!"  

"Your dad kills People of Color!"

To the first I initially said, "No, I'm not.  I grew up surrounded by all varieties of people.  The American armed forces are the most integrated society in the world.  You live and serve with every race, creed and color." But even my teachers weren't having that.  Military are all stupid, racist losers.  Period.

Okay, fine, I'm a stupid racist. Whatever.

I didn't bother saying that my father retired as a flag officer and I grew up on officers row, often within walking distance of a golf course.

Only losers with no other choices join the military. Yeah, sure.

To the second, at first I would say things like, "Hey, look at South Korea compared to North Korea.  It only exists because the American military fought hard to prevent it being conquered by communists. South Viet Nam would be similar if we had won there.  Look at Japan, how prosperous after we defeated the fascist death cult that had taken over the country, look at...," but they weren't having any of it. 

So, finally, I would say, "Oh, yeah.  Between them, my father, grandfather and uncles have killed thousands of gooks, chinks, slopes and motos.  Torpedoed their ships, sank their submarines, shot their planes out of the skies, rocketed their tanks, blew up their artillery, napalmed and machineguned their troops, burned their cities to the ground. Every time the the zips tried to fight them, they got shredded.  I spring from a race of warriors and conquerors. Unlike you and your loser cultures and countries. You're only here in my country -- my country! -- because the ones your people created are no damn good, and you know it."

Both my mother and father served in the armed forces.

That didn't go over very well, duh, but people left me alone after that. You know why?  Because it was true. I was heir to the mightiest civilization the world has ever seen and they were not. I was aware of that and proud of it because they made me aware of it and proud of it. Their attempts to belittle me had backfired.  

I wasn't a racist before I went to that school, had never even thought about such things.  I'd been taught by the DoDEA schools that the only thing that mattered was that we were all Americans, whatever the color of our skin or our religious beliefs or our politics, male or female.  E pluribus unum and all that. But I was a racist when I graduated. Thank you, civilian educators. Maggots. 

Yokosuka Navy base 3rd grade class. Photo by Tyler Hlavac.

It took me some time to shake that and get back to the original attitudes inculcated in me by Uncle Sam's finest. 

Why did I go to that school if it was so awful for me?  My parents thought it would be good for me to get some exposure to a real American high school, have a chance to participate in extracurricular activities, summer internships and all that.  They also thought that the gifted programs the school offered would be better for me than regular high school.  

That last was true. I was able to take college-level courses so that I was able to get my bachelor's in eight semesters and move right into my Ph.D program.  That, coupled with the fact that I skipped 7th grade, meant that I got my doctorate as a pretty young whippersnapper. And if you bust up your brain in a car crash and the neurosurgeon can fix you up well enough that you know your own name, you can thank the research I was doing before I was old enough to legally drink --  had I wanted to drink. Um ... don't thank me, just send money. 

Were all my teachers at that high school bad or mean to me? No.  Two stand out in memory as especially good and professionally friendly.  Another was an ex-Marine who took a shine to me (in a platonic way!) and gave me good advice.  But that's about it. 

Looking back, I wish I had just finished out high school at my DoDEA campus with all my friends, taken four years or even five to get my BS, then three or four more for my Ph.D.  Taken it slow and enjoyed things more.  What was my hurry?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
The Continuous Life

by Mark Strand

What of the neighborhood homes awash
In a silver light, of children hunched in the bushes,
Watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender,
Signs that the irregular pleasures of moving
From day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty,
Have run their course? O parents, confess
To your little ones the night is a long way off
And your taste for the mundane grows; tell them
Your worship of household chores has barely begun;
Describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops;
Say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do,
That one thing leads to another, which leads to another;
Explain that you live between two great darks, the first
With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest
Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur
Of hours and days, months and years, and believe
It has meaning, despite the occasional fear
You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing
To prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside,
That your search goes on for something you lost—a name,
A family album that fell from its own small matter
Into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours,
You don't really know. Say that each of you tries
To keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear
The careless breathing of earth and feel its available
Languor come over you, wave after wave, sending
Small tremors of love through your brief,
Undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No More Than A Memory

Everyone needs a ghost.  No matter how busy our lives, how interesting our pleasures, there are depths of loneliness  that neither work nor pleasure can plumb, a little core of ourselves that needs someone to talk to or simply be with. Who can fill this need better than an understanding ghost?
Each of us not only needs a ghost but has a ghost.  We cannot see it or touch it or hear it, but it is there and keeps us company when there is no one else. A ghost, perhaps, is no more than a memory of someone once well loved. 

The Intruders, first broadcast by CBS Radio Mystery Theater, March 30, 1976. Written by Elspeth Eric.

The narrator is Lois Nettleton. She studied acting at the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago before beginning a long career in television, appearing in episodes of The Twilight Zone, Naked City, Route 66, Mr. Novak, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Eleventh Hour, Hawaii Five-O, Dr. Kildare, Twelve O'Clock High, The Fugitive, The F.B.I., Cannon, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Virginian, Kung Fu, Daniel Boone and The Mary Tyler Moore Show and others. 
Nettleton was the first caller to raconteur Jean Shepherd's late-night radio program on WOR, later becoming his wife. She was a regular guest, known to the audience as "the listener."

A secondary role in this play is portrayed by Fred Gwynne, who lived a varied life, at one point being a radio operator on a Navy sub chaser, was a cartoonist for The Harvard Lampoon,  one of his cartoons causing the Middlesex County district attorney to try to ban the publication on grounds of obscenity. He worked as a copywriter for J. Walter Thompson, got into acting with some minor Broadway roles, then into the movies with a brief appearance in On the Waterfront, then got into television with roles on The Phil Silvers Show, which led to a starring role in Car 54 Where Are You? and then to his most remembered role as Herman Munster in The Munsters.

 

 

 

 

Woof!

“In every woman, I came to realize, there is a desire to be naked, a desire to be seen naked.”
 ― Chloe Thurlow
 
“I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were young with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic, and a progressive religious experience.”
― Shelley Winters

“To bark or not to bark, that is the question—
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The squirrels and the mailmen of outrageous fortune,
Or to raise a leg against a sea of troubles
And by peeing end them.”
~ Anonymous

 

 One of the things I did when I was in college was to be an artist's model for art classes, as I've mentioned before. I was also a photographer's model, both for professionals and for amateur photo clubs. It was easy work that paid okay and I got to be an actual calendar girl. No, really. 

I mention this because el jefe, my husband, likes for me to be his photo model. Photos he particularly likes he enlarges and prints out and hangs up in his office and workshop (he loves woodworking, making furniture, cabinets and that sort of thing as a hobby). So, naturally, when men are in his office discussing business matters and what not, or guys are in his shop helping him or just hanging out with him, they see those photos -- of me in all my refulgent glory, just as the great God above made me. El jefe says that when God made me he was just showing off, lol.  The dope sure knows how to send a girl's vanity soaring.

Anyways.... What I was getting to is that one of our couple friends, for whom el jefe is making a chiffarobe, dropped by the other day and visited his workshop to see how things were going. The wife stayed chatting with me for a bit before we joined the men in the workshop. 

When we showed up, her husband was standing in front of one of my photos checking it out and saying something to my husband. His wife cleared her throat and he turned and said, "Oh, hello, dear, we were just waiting for you, what do you think of it so far?" going over to the work in progress and waving a hand at it. 

She glanced that way, then shifted her gaze to the photo he had been examining with some interest. When she realized it was me, she gave me a look. Such a look. Oh, such a look. I shrugged, looking as innocent as possible.

Other than that, nothing happened and the visit carried on normally, except that her husband more than once sidled toward me to chat and she interposed herself most adroitly. My husband appeared not to notice what was going on, as did I. We had a nice lunch, they approved of the chiffarobe and we talked about the weather and the stock market and whatnot.  

When they left, I punched el jefe on the bicep and he grabbed me and swung me around.

"What did that guy say to you when he was looking at my picture?" I asked.

"Oh, he just said you were a hot number."

"A what?  He did not! That's like slang from the 1930s or something."

"An HB 10. That's a hot number."

"He didn't say that.  Come on, what did he really say?"

"Well....  He said he wished he could fuck a piece like that every night like I do."

"But his wife is very attractive. And you don't do me every night anyway. And I'm not a 'piece,' thank you very much."

"Well, you know how guys are -- and I would like to fuck you every night and twice on Sunday."

"Before and after church?"

"That sounds good.  Thanking the Lord for blessings bestowed."

"Uh huh. Besides, you're usually asleep and snoring when I get to bed. I could blow a whistle in your ear and you wouldn't wake up. And how guys are, huh? So do you want to fuck his wife?"

"Well, no, Wanda.  She's not my type."

"But if she were your type?"

He sighed, shook his head.  "Wanda...."

"A non-answer...that means yes."

"No, it does not! You drive me crazy sometimes, you know that."

"But in a good way, right?"

"Not always.  Look, why do you think I like to take photos of you and hang them where I can always look at them.  I like you.  I like seeing you. I like hearing you.  Even when you are in another room talking to someone else, on the phone or whatever, I like hearing your voice. I like the sound of it. You don't know how much. It makes me feel...relaxed. And you know what else?  I like guys looking at you, at the photos I take of you, and saying things like that they would like to fuck you."

"What if I did? Fuck them, I mean."

"Oh, come on.  I know you. Ms Germophobe of 2025."

"True.  Just the thought of some strange man's sweat on me gives me the shudders, let alone.... But I wouldn't anyway.  What would be the point? You're the only man I want.  You know that."

"You're insecure, Wanda. But you don't have to be.  Not with me."

"What brought that on? And I am not." 

"What you said about me and his wife.  It's not true and it was offensive to me. You can't really think I'm such a man who would --"

"No, I don't really think you are.  I just said that.  I don't know why. Teasing you, maybe.  I didn't mean to be insulting. I never want to insult you.  I have no reason to. I'm sorry."

"Well, you were and for that you deserve a good spanking.  Get over here!"

"Catch me if you can, you big lummox!"

"Why, you little.... You're going to get it now!"   

Why tell this dumb story? Well, because while lesbian bed death is mentioned as a thing, nobody seems to mention, let alone take seriously, heterosexual bed death, which is a very real thing in marriage.  I think it wrecks a lot of them and needs to be taken seriously, not so much by men, those hound dogs, lol, but by their wives.  Hey girls, don't you get that your husband desires you? Wants you to be a hot number, an HB10 that other guys envy him for having married.  I honestly think it hurts a man when his woman doesn't hide the fact that she'd really rather not have sex with him, considers doing her wifely duty a chore to get over with as quickly as possible.  And I think that's one reason a lot of women let themselves go, so they'll be unattractive, undesirable, so they won't be pestered for sex by their husbands.

Now, there might be a lot of reasons for this that are not the woman's fault. Hubby could be a slob -- clean yourselves up, guys!  He could have let himself go -- beer guts are not attractive. He could also be a jerk. Even if he doesn't physically abuse her, he could verbally abuse her, ignore her, just not be a decent person. 

So when he decides he wants to do the horizontal hula, she decides she doesn't. Why would she? 

She gets a new dress, fixes her hair, tries to look nice for him -- and he doesn't notice.  Or, when she asks him what he thinks, he just grunts or says, "Yeah, it's nice," while not even really paying attention. She spends hours preparing and fixing a special dinner and he says nothing, just eats it and goes to watch some stupid sports crap on TV. Or, if she adds candles and uses the best china, he says, "What's all this for?" And if she says, "Oh, I thought it would be nice to have a romantic dinner for a change," and he just shrugs, looks at the meal and says "What is this stuff anyway? You know I like meatloaf not...whatever this is," how do you expect her to feel about him?  How can you expect to have a good sex life if regular life is like that?

And I'm not even getting in to physical causes for a woman's lack of interest in sex, number one being painful intercourse, then there is FSAD -- look it up! I could go on.  Believe me.

Well, I've said enough. 

 

 

I don't remember

 "Do you want to live?  Or do you want to die?

"I've forgotten it, just to live. I may look all right to you, but that's just the outside of me.  Inside ...  if you knew what's inside ... it's terrible. It would scare you.

"Losing those you love: I suppose there is no greater grief than that, because the one who still lives is not only left with a great load of sorrow, but a load of love and nothing to do with it. Failure, rejection, poverty, illness ... these are all trivial causes for depression.  The profound sorrow lies in the loss of those you loved and will go on loving after they are no longer there to be loved. 
"Love and loss. Love and loss.  It is the metronome of life. And it is not always death which occasions the loss.  Jealousy, contempt, estrangement, even boredom can accomplish the same thing. But even then, the faint memory that love once lived and animated the world brings grief unutterable.
 "To receive love is a wonderful thing.  To give love is even better, but the fundamental, the most important thing of all, is to possess, and to know that one possesses, the capacity both to give and to receive.  To be deprived of this capacity is the greatest misfortune that can befall anyone.
"No one knows precisely what love is, though poets and philosophers have tried for centuries to define it. I doubt that any one of us has been satisfied with any of the definitions. Yet we go on trying, desperate to know, desperate to feel, desperate to find, because we sense that without it we are lost."

  Beyond Belief, first broadcast by CBS Radio Mystery Theater on December 17,1979.

Jada Rowland

Protagonist Jada Rowland was educated at the King-Coit School and Children’s Theater. In 1949, at the age of six, she began acting on Broadway, starring alongside Katharine Cornell, dubbed “the First Lady of Theater,” in That Lady. There followed a string of roles in Broadway plays and early television series, including Producers' Showcase, Armstrong Circle Theater, The United States Steel Hour and Pond's Theater. 

But she became most well known for her roles in soap operas, in particular The Secret Storm, in which she played Amy Ames for almost 20 years. She also appeared in As the World Turns and The Doctors, where she portrayed Carolee Aldrich for six years. 

Her husband of many decades is astrophysicist David Helfand, professor of astronomy at Columbia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

October!