A Not So Boring Life

IS THAT TIMOTHY LEARY OUTSIDE THERE? I believe that the statute of limitations has long expired and that anyone who might think badly of me or be shocked at reading this remembrance already thinks badly of me and knows that I have strayed from the beaten path and been crazy enough to have done any number of risky and on-the-edge things in my life.   The seventies were a bit of a wide open period for many of my generation, and often involved experimenting with drugs.   Growing up in a small town with little outlets for youthful entertainment exacerbated the situation.   I don’t advocate the use of drugs (never did – I was just an experimenter) and have long since learned that there are much bigger and better highs available – love and sex are just two examples.   But, as they say:   Ahhhh, youth… There are mistakes that all parents make, at least once in their life.   For my parents, it was going away and leaving me, at 17 years of age, alone in the house for the weekend.

HERE! HAVE SOME PISCO. IT WILL RELAX YOU! We drove for several hours in a convoy of four-wheel drive vehicles on narrow and winding dirt paths – a sheer cliff rising to the left and a sharp drop just off the right tire.   We were in the mountains in the Huancavelica province of Peru, in altitudes ranging from of 3,700 meters (@12,140 feet) above sea level to up to 5,000 meters in the highest mountains.   Cold, treeless and rocky terrain; thin oxygen that had several travelers sucking on portable tanks from time-to-time.   (Me?   I was a heavy smoker at the time, so my lungs were used to having less oxygen. J )  We were in a hurry, as our destination was still in front of us and it was getting on into the afternoon.   We had been delayed by a long spoken mayor in an earlier stop, who insisted that we wait while they went out to pull a poor indigent man and boy off the streets so that we could present them with some blankets.  Protests on our part did not let us avoid the awkward

I only met a true Mafioso once in my life. In the early 1990´s, I responded to an advertisement in the Nicaraguan newspaper ‘La Prensa’.   An international student exchange organization was being set up in the country:   interested parties were to apply in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Managua.   Jobs were scarce in the country, and the lobby was filled with hopeful applicants.   An older German man, fluent in Spanish, was holding the interviews.   I was hired on the spot as the manager of one aspect of the soon-to-be-founded company: a Cross-Cultural “PenPal” scheme, wherein students from Nicaraguan high schools would write letters to students in high schools from around the world, establishing friendships and getting a glimpse into diverse cultures.   It sounded great and fit right into my university education in cross-cultural communication. In the economy of the day,   I was happy to have a job. There were two other things going on with the overall pa

On Gentrification, Group Living and Other Delights An NPR report on gentrification made me think of the different circumstances in which I have witnessed it firsthand in my life.   As a rule, gentrification of a neighborhood impacted primarily on economically disadvantaged populations and people of color, as younger, upwardly-mobile couples (“Yuppies” in the vernacular of the day) began to move from the suburbs back into urban neighborhoods in search of cheap housing and shorter commute times.   The North Side of Pittsburgh in the 1970s was one example; in this case, the influx of well-to-do young couples impacting on ethnically diverse working and middle class families whose livelihoods and security had fallen away from them with the closing of plants and mills associated with the steel industry. As fallen-down houses were renovated and businesses designed to service the newer, upwardly mobile, predominantly “professional” population increased, so did the tax base - forcing fami

Growing up, I didn´t think a lot about race and prejudice.   We lived in a small, predominantly white middle and working class town.   There were only three African-American families in the immediate area and they were well incorporated into the social fabric of the overall community.   Within my own family, any underlying taint of racism was manifested in occasional jokes where black voices were stereotyped in a southern and uneducated drawl (I’se gots to go!) and phrases like “look at those cute pickaninnies” when referring to black children: holdovers, I rationalized, from the prevailing depictions in once popular ‘50s and 60s television shows like “Amos and Andy” and the stereotypical characterization of Jack Benny’s black servant “Rochester”.   I considered myself untouched by a racist upbringing and thought my parents above – or at least to the side of – any outright racist inclinations.   Until, that is, I brought home a black girlfriend. I admit I might have better planne

I was a bit saddened to see that the 50-year redux of the Woodstock concert succumbed to a variety of setbacks and won’t be held this month.   While there was never any realistic expectation that a reiteration of the festival could ever capture the magic of those three days of “peace, love and music”, the level of nostalgia for those days was palpable among many of our generation.   I missed the original - at sixteen years of age being just a wee bit too young to appreciate the import of the festival (not to mention getting parental permission to absent myself and travel to New York for three days.) Of course, the later release of the album and movie had a significant impact on my youthful musical education.   A group of friends and I once even dismantled and wired two speakers at the local drive-in theater into the speakers of Donny’s van to get the full benefit of watching those rock and roll greats on a gigantic screen combined with a pseudo-stereo listening experience.

LOVELACE MARIONETTE THEATRE I have been fortunate.   In the mid-seventies, I moved to Pittsburgh, PA.   There, I did a variety of things:   working as a carpenter´s helper; repairing toilets and operating a telephone switchboard in a roadside hotel; studying early childhood education at a Penn State branch campus; working as a direct care worker in a center for Severely and Profoundly Retarded Adults who had spent their lives warehoused in large state-run facilities; studying Sociology and Political Science at a Community College; being a VISTA volunteer promoting an Adult Literacy Program; catering rock concerts at the Pittsburgh Civic Center; growing and marketing bean sprouts out of an abandoned brewery; working as a volunteer on the “Mill Hunk Herald” – a grassroots worker writer magazine.   And I met Margot Lovelace.   Margot was an icon of the Pittsburgh art and theatre scene, founder of the first professional puppet theatre in the United States.  In her ear

The best time is early morning, when they are still bringing out yesterday’s donations from the back.   “By the pound” stores are the most fun, - as well as the most dangerous - as the lady next to you slides under your arm and agressively hip bumps you out of the way to snatch a likely looking gem.   Being tall and long armed is an advantage, as you can reach over the heads of shorter rummagers to the middle of the box.   Getting in next to the person who is obviously specializing in stuffed animals is a good tactic, as he/she will take care of the heavier work of flipping things over in their search for the unstained and only lightly battered Care Bear or Pokémon figure. Having a good eye is all important: if you can spot the item that is made of fine wood, that is obviously old or that has some distinctive aspect before anyone else, you can grab it, throw it in your cart and later review it with greater care. Try to stay ahead of the “professionals” – those thrift shore shoppers