Author: earlthepearl137

Sexy nurse with the patient

I’m working on a book about my friend Debbie D., a native New Yorker, who arrived in Lancaster a few years before me. She’s a character, and since third-world countries will have high-speed Internet long before she ever goes online, I feel safe in writing anything I want to about her, here.

She’s knows I am writing a book about her, though, so it’s not a secret. Besides, she’ll probably be the first one to see the finished product. So, unless I want to wind up someday eating a steady diet of bunny rabbit stew, I won’t say anything to piss her off (too much). But, some stories just have to be told. Consider this a public service message. Stay healthy, Pennsylvania. Debbie just got a job as a homecare assistant.

She lost her job at the T-shirt store, when the boss decided not to open the store this year. He was branching out into the designer popcorn field, and that looked like a bigger moneymaker for him. So, Debbie went job hunting. She landed a job that didn’t require any computer skills. So, you could say that she was overqualified in that area. Nor did the job require any other skills. So, she nailed it.

She also nailed the job interview. They gave her a few hours of orientation and put her right out in the field. Fortunately for those individuals for whom she will be performing home care, the orientation was all about what she is NOT supposed to do. She can’t administer drugs, not even aspirin. She can’t even put a Bandaid on a patient, but she can give them a Bandaid if they are bleeding and are able to put it on by themselves. She is not there to be a nurse. She is only there to run errands, do dishes, sweep up, do the laundry, that kind of stuff. Still, it scares me half to death. I’ve known Debbie for more than 3 years, and she has a talent for breaking things that surpasses any proverbial bull in any proverbial China shop anywhere.

The home care company at least showed some good sense by making her first assignments two patients, who were under hospice care, and probably not going to live that long anyhow. Debbie showed a little good sense of her own, by asking to go meet the two patients while another caregiver was there, so that somebody could show her the ropes. As a gambling man, I’d say that both parties have now probably used up most of the good sense either of them ever had. So, if Debbie makes it through the probationary period, it’s only a matter of time before she’ll get assigned to someone not in hospice, at least not in hospice until after she became their caregiver. Stay healthy, Pennsylvania. Watch your diet. Take your vitamins. Exercise. The life you save could be your own.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

I went to New York for my friend Marianne’s 60^th birthday. Getting there was quite an adventure. I boarded the Amtrak train in Lancaster, PA. We barely made it past two stations when the power went out on the entire train. About a half hour later, they fixed the problem and we were rolling again. But the problem wasn’t really fixed. We made it past two more stations and lost power again. Once again it took about a half hour to “fix” the problem, and we were rolling again. We were only about 6 miles from Philadelphia when the train lost power again. This time they weren’t able to restore power, but they did come up with a Plan B.

Philadelphia was downhill from where we were stuck, so they decided to attempt to coast into the station. They released the pneumatic brake and we started rolling slowly. Gradually the train picked up speed and we made it all the way to the Philadelphia station. Once there, they announced that there would be a delay while they switched engines. Passengers could, if they so desired, walk over to track 3 and catch a train to New York, which would be leaving soon. Almost everyone raced towards track 3. It was like the lifeboat scene in Titanic. I was the only one to stay on board. I was on my way to a Patty’s Day party and it was only Thursday, so I wasn’t in a hurry. About 40 minutes later we were rolling to New York – the new engine, the train crew, and me. I had a private train all the way to Trenton, where two guys got on. Since it was no longer a private party, I had to take my music off speaker then and go back to wearing a headset. Fortunately, I took enough video while the train was my private train, so I’ll be able to put something on FaceBook to commemorate the day.

Marianne’s party was one of the best ever. As usual, she had hired Bob Gier to play the piano and entertain, but this time a bunch of us had parody songs prepared to honor Marianne. Her sister Geralyn channeled Robert Palmer to do a very funny parody of Addicted to Love. “Might as well face it that you’re over the hill.” One of Marianne’s cousins and her other two sisters, Eileen and Janet, played the gorgeous backup band who never crack a smile. They had the gorgeous part of the act, but couldn’t help laughing throughout the song. I can’t blame them. I was cracking up, too.

The entire O’Hara clan got up to do a riotous tribute parody to the tune of Piano Man. “It’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday. The regular crowd shuffles near. There’s a young gal sitting next to me, making love to her 60^th beer.” More cousins and friends did their rewrite of If I Only had a Brain, that was a mini biography of Marianne. “A Driscoll she did marry, Producer legendary. Twelve Emmys he has won. Three children they created, all with talent unabated. Yes, one daughter and two sons.”

The talent included performances by real live Broadway and Off-Broadway performers. None were easy acts to follow, so my friend Johnny and I were nervous when it was time for us to perform a parody of Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen we called, Sweet Little Sixty. “They’ll be rocking in Merrick, Lancaster, PA, On the streets of New York, As long as Bob can play, All over Long Island, And way across the sea, All the cats want to dance with Sweet Little Sixty.”

Afterwards, I found out that Chuck Berry had just died. Some said that our “singing” of his song is what killed him, but I don’t think we were loud enough to be heard in St. Louis, though, goodness knows we tried.

Rock on Marianne. Roll on to Rock N Roll Heaven, Chuck.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

“Honesty is the best policy.”

On Super Bowl Sunday, Bill O’Reilly interviewed President Trump. The most memorable part of that interview was when O’Reilly questioned the President’s respect for Vladimir Putin. “Putin is a killer!” O’Reilly reminded the President. Trump responded that “There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. Well, you think our country is so innocent?”

Democrats and Republicans alike took umbrage with the President’s statement. They called it Un-American.

I wasn’t surprised by the political response, but I was astonished about the irony of the whole thing. Throughout the Presidential Campaign, Trump told one lie after another with relative impunity. Now, he spoke the truth, and it sent people into an uproar. Did all these people really believe our country was so innocent or were they mad because he spoke the truth so openly? I think it was a combination of the two. I think that most Americans are unaware of the atrocities committed by American military and intelligence agencies. To them, to even think that this country has skeletons in its closet, is Un-American. I think that those who were aware of the atrocities were appalled that an American President would shed light on them. To them, that was Un-American. Truth, Justice, and the American Way is all good for Superman, but Truth has no part in the American Way of politics.

A President telling Americans that we were responsible for the cold-blooded killing of people is worse than if he told Kindergarten classes across the country that there is no Santa Claus. It disturbs Americans to think that we gave smallpox infected blankets to the Indians, enslaved boatloads of Africans, turned away boatloads of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, locked up over 100,000 Japanese-Americans in Internment Camps during World War II, or massacred people at My Lai. So, we don’t talk too much about that kind of stuff, even though they are all well-known events. Most Americans would be absolutely horrified to learn of the further atrocities that are hidden under the veil of secrecy, such as Top Secret Black Ops to assassinate world leaders and ruthlessly overthrow democratically elected governments.

Louis Brandeis, an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme court once said that “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

The way to control evil behavior is for evildoers to be exposed, and many have been exposed and prosecuted. Even more are now being exposed as the government records shielding them have been declassified. Right now, I’m listening to a 17 CD audio book called, “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner.” It is based upon the contents of more than 50,000 CIA documents that have been declassified. I’m only on disc 7 and it is becoming a bit painful to continue. Most of the villainous black ops committed by the CIA were illegally hidden from the Presidents and Congress. Some, though, were carried out with their full knowledge. The CIA was originally formed to gather intelligence, not carry out Black Ops. Despite this, there were 163 Black Ops carried out by the CIA during the 8 years that Eisenhower was the President. And they were just warming up. They carried out 170 Black Ops during the 3 short years that Kennedy was The President. I’ve learned how they were responsible for hundreds of deaths, and I still have 10 more discs to go. No, Mr. O’Reilly, this country is not so innocent. President Trump spoke the truth. We have stone killers here, too.

The trouble is that by the time these documents were declassified, the evildoers were no longer alive. That is the trouble with Top Secret documents. By the time they are declassified and we learn the truth, the truth is no longer relevant, and the situations are no longer correctable. On the other side of the coin, many good projects absolutely require secrecy. The Allied Invasion on D-Day is probably the best example. I, therefore, propose that the government must be able sometimes to operate in secrecy, but that classified documents should be declassified much more rapidly – in years, not decades. Evildoers must know that they will be exposed in their lifetimes. Knowing that, just might prevent them from hatching some of their evil plans, and help clean up the swamp a bit, even if we can’t drain it completely.

Now, back to President Trump. I would like to think that his moment of truth was an effort to bring transparency to the government, but I can’t help thinking that it might have been something completely different. We all know that he is in favor of torturing prisoners for information. When questioned about Waterboarding, he said that he believed in it, and MORE. So, I fear that The President’s frankness about U.S. killers was less about transparency and more like a lawyer introducing legal precedents which would allow him to proceed in the same manner. I fear that he thinks it might be okay to overthrow any government that won’t let the U.S. dictate their policy, simply because we already did it in Chile, Guatemala, Africa, Iraq, and plenty of other places.

We are putting The Monroe Doctrine on steroids. Not only does this President feel obligated to control the “bad hombres” in our hemisphere, by doing things like threatening to send the Army into Mexico, but he feels that he can interfere with any government anywhere if they don’t do what we say, and he has requested more military spending to help him carry out his wishes. The fact that he made his killer comment on TV during the Super Bowl shows that he’s not even trying to keep it a secret.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

Following in the footsteps of Benny Goodman

I was prepared for Winter. I was ready to hunker down, watch movies, and work on my screenplays. I just wasn’t prepared for this Winter. This February has been like Spring. I haven’t worn my Winter coat in weeks. Usually a light jacket is all I need, and I didn’t even need that half the time. I was all prepared for being snowed in, but instead we got days that are much too nice to waste sitting inside. I’m not complaining, but I was stuck for things to do. The Barnstormers don’t start playing until late April, or I would just go to ballgames. My hip is feeling much better so I can go for walks around the neighborhood, but I can only go for an hour or so before that becomes painful.

I could sit in the backyard, but there’s not really anything I can do back there. I’m not into gardening or anything like that. So, I dug out the clarinet and saxophone I bought when I first moved here. I figured I’d sit in the backyard and practice. It’s been 50 years since I played those instruments, so I wasn’t very good. That’s not true. More truthfully, I was actually god awful, and I only had one song book. So I screeched through the same songs over and over again, but at least I was getting outside in the sunshine and fresh air.

Then the library annex held a sale of “gently used books.” They normally sell used book for a couple bucks, but on this day everything was half price. For less than $20, I filled up my knapsack and a shopping bag full of books. I bought every songbook I could find, Wedding songs, Love songs, Traditional songs, and the songbook from my favorite Musical, Jekyll and Hyde. Now, I could go out in the backyard and practice until my lips were numb, and I didn’t have to repeat the same songs. I also didn’t have to worry about bothering anyone with my screeching. My backyard faces a parking garage.

So, whenever the weather is nice I head out to the backyard with one of my instruments, usually the clarinet, since that’s easier to play than the sax. Since the weather has been great, I’ve been getting quite a lot of practice. I’ve worked my way up from god awful to just plain bad. I can even play some of the easy songs fairly decently. It’s getting to the point where you could guess what song I’m playing, if you knew the song. The other day my 6-year old neighbor, Isabella, heard me playing and grabbed her plastic recorder to join me. Together we made the backyard sound like a slaughterhouse, but we had fun. She didn’t know any of the songs I was playing, and she only knows how to play a few notes on her recorder, but that didn’t stop us. I thought I might find something she knew in the traditional songbook, but a 6-year old can’t be expected to know By the Light of the Silvery Moon or Mack the Knife.

It finally dawned on me that she might know some Christmas songs. So, we tried some of the classics like Santa Claus is coming to Town. I didn’t have any sheet music for these songs, but we both stumbled our way through, figuring it out as we went along. Then we hit on Jingle Bells. There are only a few different notes in that song, and we were both able to figure out what they were on our respective instruments. Since it was the only song we could both play we did it a couple times. After the third time we heard somebody politely applauding. There was a girl on the 2^nd floor of the parking garage listening to us. She stayed for one more rendition, but I guess that was enough Jingle Bells for her. She waved, got in her car, and drove away.

Today was a beauty with temperatures in the 70’s, so I got out the clarinet and headed for the backyard. After a short while ‘Bella appeared with her plastic recorder and a friend, another 6-year old named Lisa. Lisa said she was also learning how to play the recorder, but that she didn’t have it with her. “That’s okay,” I said. “You can be the drummer. Just use your hands on the table.”

I played a few classics which they didn’t know, but we had fun anyway. Then we reprised our hit single of Jingle Bells, and we were finding our groove. Then I thought of a Rock N Roll song that I thought they might know, The Tokens hit from 1962, The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Sure enough, thanks to The Lion King, they knew it. So, that became our song of the day. We even worked out an arrangement. I played the wee um ba way wee um ba way part on the clarinet and they played drums and sang the chorus. After a while I heard a third voice singing. Isabella’s mom, Rene was sitting on her balcony singing along with us.

We haven’t signed with any record label yet, but we’ll be appearing here all week, if the weather is nice. Don’t forget to tip your bartenders and waitresses.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

Back in the ‘80’s Jean M. Auel wrote The Clan of the Cave Bear, a fictional book about a clan of Neanderthals who raised an orphaned 5-year-old girl they found near death. The girl, Ayla, is one of “the others,” the Cro-Magnon people who gradually dominated the Neanderthals and eventually evolved into us. The 700 plus page book was a best seller and it was followed by even more sequels than Rocky. Each of them was just as long as the original, and I read and enjoyed all of them, even though it took me many years.

So, fearing that winter might force me inside for some months, and spying a nineteen CD set of unabridged recordings of The Clan of the Cave Bear at the library, I decided that this might be a good time to revisit the Earth’s Children series. I went from one CD to the next, still just as enthralled by the story as I was 30 years ago, and I quickly zipped through all 19 CD’s in just a few days. Now, I needed something else to keep me busy for the winter.

I rushed back to the library to see if they had The Valley of Horses, which was the next book in the series. Unfortunately, they didn’t, but they did have thousands of movies. Since I was also using the wintertime to work on polishing final drafts of my three screenplays, I decided to let the library become my film school.

Many of the movie DVD’s contained director’s cuts with commentaries about making the movie. If I particularly liked a certain movie, I could check out other movies by the same director, or from the same studio, or with the same actors who impressed me. I also checked out audio books by actors and directors. I listened to “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future” by Michael J. Fox. He explained about how he, a high-school drop-out, had acquired the equivalent of a college education just by living life. I’ve acquired quite a film education over the past few months by watching more than 100 movies and listening to dozens of audio books, but the main thing I’ve learned is that an education is only intended to give you a foundation for the real work of living your life. So, using what I’ve learned, I finished the final draft of my screenplay, Miles to Go Before I Sleep.

Soon, Spring will be here, and I will crawl out of my man cave armed with more of the tools I need to improve my writing and further my education in Life 101. Some say that our opposable thumbs are what separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Now, I tend to agree with that, because our opposable thumbs gave us the ability to hold the writing instruments that allowed us to pass down our knowledge and stories and thus affect and enrich the lives of others. We began with prehistoric cave drawings and now have DVD’s and Internet streaming of information and stories. I’m glad I live in these modern times, and I’m grateful to all those who paved the way. The stories of our ancestors are now our stories, and many of them are now movies. Director Michael Chapman, screenwriter John Sayles, and actress Daryl Hannah did an outstanding job of bringing The Clan of the Cave Bear to the Silver Screen in 1986. Now, I look forward to the stories, which we will all enjoy in the future. I’m also hoping that some of those stories might be mine.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

In Super Bowls of the past, Tom Brady was guilty of deflating footballs. In Super Bowl LI, (The one named for Long Island) he deflated an entire city. He turned Lady Gaga’s amazing half-time show into a warm-up act for his second-half show.

To open her show Lady Gaga jumped off the roof of the stadium. After Tom Brady’s show, I wonder how many Atlanta bettors jumped off bridges. General Sherman is probably more welcome in Atlanta today than Tom Brady.

Congratulations to the New England Patriots, and congratulations to my friend Sally in Maine, who was rooting for the team all the way. I don’t know how she manages to get through winters in Maine, but I’ll bet that days like yesterday sure help.

My condolences to the Falcons and their fans, but, as the son of the world’s biggest Brooklyn Dodger fan, I learned that quite often in sports you are forced to wait ‘til next year. Just stay off the roof until then.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

All things are relative. I didn’t originate that phrase. Some German guy did. I just proved it.

My latest doctor’s appointment began with one of the assistants leading me to the scale. I stepped on and waited for the digital reading to appear. A few seconds later “209.0” flashed on the screen and I jumped for joy. The assistant wondered at my behavior and I explained that per the height/weight charts I had finally gotten myself out of the obese category. 210 was the dividing line.

When I arrived in Lancaster three and a half years ago, I weighed 247 pounds. So, I wasn’t just clinically obese then, I was 37 pounds into the category. By losing 38 pounds, I was now just plain fat. Halleluiah.

Most people wouldn’t be happy to be told they were overweight, but to someone who’s been obese for as long as he can remember, being just plain overweight was a cause for celebration. All things are relative.

Under normal circumstances a meal of bread and water would be considered a punishment, but to a man dying of thirst in a desert, a glass of water would be more precious than Dom Perignon Champagne. Someone who was starving would delight in a crust of bread. All things are relative.

Right now it’s pouring rain outside and I love it, because the usual precipitation around here in January is snow and I hate that. I’m sure there are others, like skiers, snowboarders, and my friend Patrice who would prefer snow. Once again, it’s all relative.

I just finished reading Where Nobody Knows Your Name, a John Feinstein book about life in baseball’s minor leagues. Most of the players were not too happy about being stuck in the minors, but there were a few who were happy that they were getting paid to play a game they loved. Even attitude is subject to relativity.

My target goal is to weigh 186 pounds. So, someday I may be disappointed to step on a scale and have it flash “187.” Not today, though. Today I am happy to be overweight. You might say that I’m now pleasantly plump. Someday I might be at Clipper Magazine Stadium for a Barnstormer’s ballgame and be disappointed by rain, but today, as it washes away all traces of the last snow dusting, I am happy to watch the rain fall.

To some, playing in the minor leagues might be a big disappointment. To me, at 68 years old with an arthritic hip, playing a sandlot game would be a dream come true. Attitude and relativity.

It’s warm today, but I know that most of the winter will be a lot colder and I will be cooped up in my apartment, but when I visit the local library I see a group of people who are there because they just want to stay warm and charge their cellphones and they don’t have their own apartments. They spend their nights in the Water Street shelter.

I am happy even when cooped up in my apartment, though. The cold winter days with the windows closed give me a chance to play my clarinet and saxophone. I’m not very good. Actually, I’m terrible. I bought the instruments when I moved here, despite the fact that I hadn’t played either instrument in 50 years. There are 59 notes that can be played on the clarinet, but, so far, I only remember how to play about half of them, and for some reason, I’m having a lot of trouble playing the note b flat. I haven’t yet developed the mouth control to make it come out cleanly. Every time I play b flat, it sounds more like an animal is screaming in pain, but I’m still having a ball playing simple songs poorly. I don’t think my neighbors are having near as much fun as I am, though. All things are relative.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl