My Neck of the Woods on Earth Day

I spent Earth Day contacting hired engineers and township officials to protest a proposed residential development that will border my three acre wooded property and affect preserved wetlands. Something has got to be wrong in my neck of the woods when I am fighting urbanization on Earth Day.

The Ham in Thanksgiving

Anyone sense the ham bone in me as I lavishly prepare to stuff dual birds for Thanksgiving 2007? I ham what I ham. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Space Invaders

I got so excited over the new Brother fax machine at my full time job that I cradled the machine in my arms. Later, I got enthralled over an Ebay transaction that came through on my Paypal account on my second job. I thanked Jesus then began to produce the purchased product. Later, I poured over my emails hoping an acting job came through. Long after midnight, I erupted into rapture finding a new floor mop bought for me at my janitorial job. My bloodshot eyes checked the time. I had been up for 18 hours and literally had gotten paid for every one of my waking hours.

I said quietly to myself, “Joe, you are working way too hard on Mischief Night.”

On Halloween, I felt a little more relaxing admiring the parade of costumed trick or treaters that inundated our development. A rather stout miniature Darth Vader left his mother’s side at the end of my driveway. Vader’s black boots trampled over my newly seeded front lawn to get to the door. Alas, I stood in the doorway as Darth Vader approached then looked left and right of me. He seemed more interested in my home than the giant sized candy bowl thrusted before him for selection. A space invader on my stoop, Darth Vader spoke befuddlement from behind his mask.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“My mother was right.” He repeated in a sqeaky voice unbecoming of a villain. “This house is huge. Mom wants to know how anyone can afford to live here.”

“Help yourself to a gum ball then go tell your mother I got four jobs. That’s how.”

Darth Vader went running to the Dark Side. “Mom, looks like you got to get three more jobs for us to move here.”

Now Witch Is It?

This year, think twice before removing your Halloween decorations with nobody home. Do not let what accidentally happened to me last year happen to you.

Afraid of heights, my wobbly knees climbed the 12-foot aluminum ladder to the Palladian window facing the front of our house. I boarded the wooden ledge then dismantled the life-size witch from her decorative perch. As I began to broom sweep the cleared landing, my wife pulled into the driveway a tad too deliberately for her customary lead foot.

I peered out the arched window and into the cool crisp air of a November night. With the chandelier lights blaring through the foyer of an otherwise quiet and dark house, my illuminated presence was there for all to see. I must have loomed bigger than the full moon that painted ET’s silhouette on that famous bicycle ride. With the broom swinging in my hands and my loose fitting pants begging for a belt, I must have not looked any better situated than an extraterrestrial on a bike.

Leaving the car, my stepson Jimmy wisecracked, “Now that is a scarier sight than the witch he took down.”

Carving Out a Niche

I got to hand it to this pumpkin carver, Halloween can be a crack!

Purple Mountains Majesty

I'll be There Because

Every Day in America...

3 children die from abuse or neglect.

6 children commit suicide

13 children are homicide victims

15 children are killed by firearms.

95 babies die

790 babies are born at a low birth weight.

2,660 babies are born into poverty.

3,398 babies are born to unwed mothers.

6,042 children are arrested.

8,493 children are reported abused or neglected.

1,407 babies are born to teen mothers

Despite the impact the above flyer has had on me as a social worker, I forget how exactly it came to be hanging in my office for the last decade. Its corners are folding inward, a wrinkled coincidental concealment of the content. My eyes often glance up to read what my stomach cannot digest. I lean on its message as a social work credo. The information has inspired me to be a conduit of change while the humbling statistics have also conversely served to derail my spirit from time to time. I look at life from both sides now.

Whenever I witness the breathtaking beauty of Fourth of July fireworks, it causes me to reflect about our country's history and future. Over fifty years ago, former Russian statesman Khrushchev boldly predicted America will destroy itself without anyone raising a single bullet against her. That day may be approaching if we do not right its course. There is a rampant decline of the nuclear family. The cycle of drugs and violence are undermining America. We are raising bullets against ourselves. The middle class is shrinking; creating a great rift between the upper and lower classes. I admire this country, democracy, and the personal freedoms it stands for. However, I am a fatalist when it comes to the long-range future of our species. I do not think the rest of the world is any more equipped than America to avoid self-destruction. Our sun has a three billion year burn cycle but I doubt humans will be around to see the damning dooming fade to eternal black. I worry that America has started a slow decay like a mighty oak rotting from within, looking proud until the day of the fall.

There is no shortage of work at my job, just a shortage of workers handling a multitude of social ill. It will take a miraculous coming together of a nation to prove Khrushchev wrong, to not yell "Timber" as the mighty oak falls on an unsuspecting populous while an American bald eagle, an endangered species herself, circles above the sun-driven sky. The world watches and waits. For purple mountains majesty from sea to shinning sea.

The Pampered Chef

I may have bit off more than I can chew this Thanksgiving. Twenty salivating sit-down guests and a 34 pound fresh killed farm fed turkey. Anytime you tackle that many houseguests and a turkey that weighs half as much as your ten year old son, you should expect a fight on your hands. If this turkey didn't do steroids, the hens he ate for breakfast did.

I hear the alarm clock sound at 2am and tip-toe into my daughter Jenna's bedroom. I whisper in her ear to see if she still wants to help daddy make the homemade stuffing. The only one of the four kids who expressed a remote interest in becoming an assistant chef, Jenna is fast asleep. She is difficult to stir much like an uncooperative gravy. I nudge her. She is warm and cuddly. I almost want to say to hell with Thanksgiving dinner and just lay down next to her and drift back to sleep. Children can scramble priorities. Instead, I whisper kitchen chores in her ear fold.

“Uh-uh.” Jenna replies.

In kiddy talk, this meant not a chance, what are you kidding, at this hour, call me when it is ready. So I eased her bedroom door closed. The family needed their beauty sleep anyway. They are to rise early to go to the Thanksgiving Day parade in Philadelphia, where a room has been reserved at the fabulous Four Seasons hotel so they can watch the parade festivities from a bird's eye view while I stay home by my lonesome. The Thanksgiving Day cook always reminded me of the designated driver on New Years Eve. Down the dark stairs, I shuffle. My nightly dose of Zyrtec adds an additional layer of film to my eyes. My mouth opens and closes. Yawning is as much a staple for a cook on Thanksgiving as is a turkey. I put on a pot of coffee and turn on a Peter Gabriel CD on the surround sound at volume 8 for anyone keeping score at home.

I cube a loaf and a half of the supermarket’s finest poultry bread and lay it out on the table to get crisp. My Iron Moto sized knife works with precision. An obsessive compulsive personality worries about each cube being the same size, even in the middle of the night. The food processor makes mincemeat out of the mounds of celery stalks and raw onions. The bagged beast squirms in the refrigerator upon realizing that I am getting the trimmings ready for his cremation ceremony. The smell of poultry seasoning mixes with the raw vegetables and melted butter in the frying pan. There may be no better smell on the planet. Chopped garlic, raisns, salt, and crushed black peppercorns are added. I wonder what Martha Stewart is doing right now.

As the ingredients simmer stovetop, I remove the beast from the refrigerator. Its weight is great. My paultry biceps flex hoisting the bird to the sink. I thrust my hand into the belly of the beast. It is cavernous and I consider grabbing a small flashlight for internal inspection. The beast swallows my arm up to my elbow before I can remove the guts. This is a necessary evil, which I suspect has made vegetarians out of millions. The neck bone is gigantic. I swing it around in my hand for dead of night frolic. For a second, the thought occurs to me that I bought an ostrich not a turkey. Nah, I throw the gizzard, kidney, testicles, and neck bone into a stock pot. Good thing everyone is sleeping. There is no denying that these internal organs and cold cadaver body parts are my ingredients for delicious full-bodied gravy. The slumbering family only wants the finished product so I will spare them the details until they read my Blog entry. I pamper the bird with a cold water shower in the sink. Next, I combine the stuffing mix with the cubed bread. Kneading of the hands produce a nice consistency for stuffing. I stuff the bird front and back and realize something for the first time in my life. The larger Tom turkeys sure have distinguished anatomical parts. Sadly, I can recognize everything and this may be why they say, “It always tastes better when you eat someone else’s food.” I hog tie the bird’s trapped doors shut with #2 twine available at any hardware store. Check local circulars for a store in your area. I coat the roasting pan with no-stick spray and slowly lift the beast into its metal coffin. One huge problem. The beowulf of turkeys is too big to fit in my only roasting pan. I slap wildly at the beast before calming my nerves. I take a step back and down a sip of my coffee. Peter Gabriel is singing “Red Rain” right about now. The floor above me is thankfully quiet. Nobody has witnessed me abusing a dead animal. I like to cook a turkey upside down, it seems to keep the meat more moist but this turkey didn't fit in my roasting pan upside down or right side up. I wedge him on his side and none too gracefully. In the melee, I may have broken one or two of his meaty legs, the size of a rolling pins. I put the roasting pan housing the beast on the floor, cover it with a metal lid, and actually stand on dinner. I thank God the family is asleep for this step. I hear a few animal bones break but I pay it no mind, it will taste good in the end as a first course, stovetop leftovers on Friday, and maybe even a little turkey salad by the weekend. Waste not want not. I heave the panned turkey into the burning oven. After a sinkful of dishes, I calculate that this turkey will need to cook all night and into Thanksgiving Day, and then cool for about an hour and a half before my electric carving knife gets to his bronzed skin.

Everything is proceeding as planned. I decide to write this Blog before retiring. I am pecking and pawing away at this entry when what is that I hear? The sound of the smoke alarm tells me time to start basting may be here.

I'll be back. Hold that thought.........................

Okay, I’m back at the keyboard. Basting couldn't have been further from the problem. The colossal bird escaped from its metal cage despite my standing order. Drippings caused a small grease fire but I quickly restored order. The ghost of Martha Stewart is alive and well. I still got twelve hours of cooking left. I got to wonder if this turkey is going to say "ouch" when I plung a meat thermometer into his heart come tomorrow. The blaring smoke alarms awoke my son but nobody else. Smoke surrounds us as I greeted him at the top of the staircase.

“What are you doing down there, Joe?” my stepson asked.

“Cooking Thanksgiving dinner.” I snicker Grinch-like.

“It smells like you are burning Thanksgiving dinner?” Jimmy tables.

In raising kids, their sarcasm can come at all hours with no time off for good behavior. I convince Jimmy there is no real fire or practice fire drill. I tell him I am smoking the turkey this year and encourage him to go back to bed. Talk about a smokescreen! I stay up another hour as a precaution. It is now 5am and the sun has yet to give thought to rising. A strange car pulls up to the front of the house. From the library window, I watch a man get out of the car. I realize my Blog has moved to the present tense. “What is he doing?” I wonder.

I hear a loud thud against the front door. The sound startles me. I had just turned off the house alarm to open the windows to fumigate the first floor. Burglars scare me more than grease fires, apparently. Alas, it’s only the paperboy delivering the morning paper in what looks like an older model Ford Taurus. I guess he is not cooking Thanksgiving dinner this year.

This Renaissance man in a full length apron goes up the winding staircase to his bed for a catnap. Thanksgiving is for the birds! I still have to make the homemade cranberry sauce, three other starches besides the stuffing, and four vegetables, but what are holidays for. The side dishes will be for another day. I need some shut eye. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Curtain Call on Election Day

A Boy Scout assignment forced Jimmy to accompany his parents to the election polls. Still on a chocolate high from Halloween, I was unsure whether Jimmy had civic duty in mind or even if his head was in the right place. As the three of us exited the car, I noticed something amiss.

"Wait a minute, Jimmy. Do you think wearing headphones into the polls is a good idea?"

"Why not?" he asked. He had his head in the right place all right but his ears were misbehaving. I gave him one of those parental what-is-this-world-coming to looks. I argued the point. "I don't think listening to the soundtrack to School of Rock is the national anthem to vote. Leave the headphones in the car. I want you to use your ears and your eyes to take in the experience." Maybe I reprimanded him a bit too much because he chose to follow his mother into the fire hall. They both walked ahead of me. Inside, I explained that his mother and I were standing in two separate lines to vote because we carried different last names. Marriage and politics are both complicated institutions and I don't pretend to be a professor of either. What I do know is that I love America and my wife. However, I might have an easier time remembering the third President of the United States than what I gave my wife on our third wedding anniversary.

Jimmy dutifully followed his mother into the voting booth. The curtain swung shut like a Kmart instant photo booth and all I saw were two sets of feet. My wife is very vocal about her political views so there existed no secrecy who she was voting for. With gas at $2.00 a gallon, it seemed impractical to cancel her vote and place my ties with the other party. We could have stayed home and saved gas. I would have felt comfortable telling the Boy Scouts we were preserving the environment by not putting noxious emissions in the air rather than voting For then Against.

With the nation so polarized, it seemed odd for me to be undecided all the way up to the last minute. I read the newspaper, I followed the nightly news, and endured all but one television debate and my lone absence had more to do with a debatable bout of narcolepsy than apathy. The moment of truth came, which in this 2004 campaign could be considered a misnomer. I closed my eyes, came to a momentous decision, then toggled the vote. As we left the fire hall amongst the drove of voters, I asked Jimmy what he thought about his first voting experience. "Curtains." he said in a one word summary. The more I thought about his editorial, the more it made sense. Today, it would be curtains for one presidential candidate.