See books written by Paul Pakusch at https://www.amazon.com/author/paulpakusch



Friday, November 17, 2023

My Passion for Music

Music has always been my biggest passion. I've always enjoyed listening to music; my earliest memories are of hearing children's songs, back in the day. I started learning how to play drums when I joined the Greece Cadets Drum & Bugle Corps at age 11. Music truly affects my emotions. I have never felt the need for alcohol, weed, or anything else. Music can make me high, mellow, sentimental or excited. I laughingly frame myself as “the deaf guy who loves music.”

Although I have been drumming for over 50 years, much of my drumming has been in the background while I tended to higher priorities in life, such as working in my career or taking care of my family. I have seen friends progress in their bands to sometimes large local followings while I have remained relatively unknown. I appreciate my friends who invite me to sit in for a song or two with their bands; it’s always an honor.
I have reached a point in my life where I can make music a higher priority. I have been in marching bands again since 2005; primarily Mark Time Marchers and Excelsior Brigade Fife and Drum Corps. I'm excited about my new blues band, Blues Circle. It's a wonderful group of people, and it is expanding my repertoire further into blues music.
Stacey M Pakusch got me into karaoke. That's something that I truly never felt that I would do. Being hard of hearing, I have been extremely sensitive to whether I'm on key or not. I have found ways to help me figure out whether I'm on key. Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. I'm not a great singer by any means. Stacey and a few others have told me they’re amazed that a person with the amount of hearing loss I have would try this. I appreciate that feedback; I also don’t expect people to tell me I’m better than I really am. I appreciate the fact that people love my attempts at the Monster Mash. I agree, it is my go-to song. Anything else is hit or miss.
For the last several years, I have been trying to put together a solo drum show. I now have a couple shows available, involving rudimentary and ancient style drumming. It's never going to be big and flashy like “Stomp.” I do what I like. Once I started singing, I tried to figure out how to work that into a drum routine, so that’s available too. I choose songs that I enjoy, not necessarily what is going to bring in the crowds. If people like what I'm doing, they can get enjoyment out of it. Otherwise, they can go somewhere else. My shows so far have been private. My next ambition is to pick up where I left off years ago on learning more piano.

Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Car Fire in My Driveway

In January 2021, my daughter's car burned in my driveway. This blog is about the fire itself; my observations and my experiences. Melissa endured some burns from the fire. She has healed well physically, but still has some deep emotional scars. So her story is her own, whether she chooses to tell it or not.


The fire was caused when she attempted to light a cigarette. Fumes from a butane lighter had escaped into the car and the lighter blew up in her face. The fire investigator later ruled it accidental. Flammable material inside the car began to burn, including her jacket. She and a friend were briefly trapped in the car. The doors would not unlock because the car was in reverse. Once they got out, Melissa said all she could think of was "Stop, drop and roll," from safety drills in her school years. She managed to get the jacket off. The only remaining part of the jacket that I could later find was a piece of the zipper. They both ran into the house for help. The first thing I saw was burns on their faces.


At first, I was not aware that the car was on fire. As I was calling 911 for help for their burns, I glanced out the window and saw a small fire in the front seat area. I had been requesting an ambulance, but then quickly added that the car was on fire. I impulsively felt like I needed to try to put the fire out. At that point, it seemed small enough and manageable with a fire extinguisher. The fire extinguisher that I usually kept in the kitchen was in our detached garage. 


With my phone in one hand to continue talking to 911 as I ran outside in my socks through the snow, I grabbed my key with the other hand to open the side door of the garage. I quickly picked up the fire extinguisher and ran back outside. In less than a minute, the whole car was engulfed in flames. I was later told it was a "working fire" at that point, meaning it will double in size every minute.


I ran to the front of the car. I saw my neighbor across the street, looking like he wanted to do something but was helpless. With one hand still holding the phone while I talked to 911, I managed to pull the pin out of the fire extinguisher with the other hand.  With the flames shooting high above me, I already knew it was pointless to bother with the extinguisher, but I still felt like I had to do something. I squeezed the handle and emptied the contents of the extinguisher onto the hood of the car, only because it was the part I was closest to.  This tiny extinguisher was no match for what was in front of me.


I was hearing popping noises from within.  It occurred to me I’d be too close to the car if it blew up, so I moved behind my own van for safety.  The popping noises continued.  Suddenly there was a very loud bang.  The fire chief later told me that the popping noises were various components releasing pressure as the heat and flames burned through them.  The loudest noise, he said, was the air bag compressor blowing up.  We found the airbag in the street; it had been blown out the back window.


I gazed at the flames shooting towards the tree branches above. I wondered if the tree would catch on fire. I heard and saw fire trucks coming down the street and told 911 that they were arriving.  They told me to let the firefighters take over, and the call was ended.  With my phone now free, while standing behind my minivan for safety, I managed to take one photo of the inferno and a 15 second video.  You can hear the car alarm go off in it.  It didn’t last long, once the car alarm started burning.


While the first firefighters to arrive started spraying water on the flames, the fire chief arrived and walked in my direction.  I pointed him to Melissa, who was crouching in severe pain on the floor of my kitchen.  He took over for her until the ambulance arrived.  In retrospect, I wish I had stayed by Melissa’s side during all this and let fate deal with the car; I knew the fire department was on the way.  When you don’t prepare for emergency situations, you don’t think straight.  When she had first come into the house screaming, I felt extremely helpless.  Calling 911 was the easy part.  Now what can I do for my daughter who is suddenly in the worst crisis of her life? I learned later that wet towels may have given her a tiny bit of relief until the ambulance crew arrived.  After my first wife suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in front of me (she ultimately survived), I made it my mission to know what bystanders should do in a crisis.  I felt like I failed Melissa by putting the car fire over her first aid.  


I was still standing in the snowy driveway in my socks.  I went inside to put on dry socks and shoes. At that point, there were over half a dozen people inside our tiny house, and Melissa was being taken care of. Her friend seemed to be OK with less severe burns, so I decided to go back outside to get out of the way.  


I watched as the firefighters finished up and I got my first closeup look at the burned out shell of a car.  I looked up and down the street and saw that our section of the street had roadblocks at both ends.  Melissa was soon brought out to the ambulance and I called her mom to tell her what happened.


Soon the fire investigator arrived and started poking around. The ambulance left shortly thereafter to take Melissa to Strong Memorial Hospital, where she received fantastic burn care. Amazingly, we found the purses of both girls in the snow.  They must have dropped them while escaping from the car.  While the outsides were charred, the contents were mostly intact.  As I said earlier, the cause of the fire was ruled accidental.


The car was towed away and the town of Greece sent a salt truck to melt the ice that was now in the street. Our driveway was charred in spots. There were small piles of melted plastic all over the place. Glass was everywhere. Every day for the next couple weeks, I would walk around and pick up pieces of debris that I found in the snow. That's how I found the piece of zipper that was left of her jacket.


We never successfully cleaned all the glass out of the driveway. It was old and cracked. When the government handed out Covid checks to stimulate the economy, we spent it on a new driveway. I stood watching and silently applauded as a backhoe ripped out and dumped the old driveway into a dump truck. The last of that awful evening was finally removed from our yard.


Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Just Completely Bewildered

The Republicans can absolutely do better than Trump.  It just completely blows my mind that the GOP and various groups who call themselves "Christian" will support this jerk.  I remember years ago, Rush Limbaugh would criticize Bill Clinton by saying, "Character matters."  Bill Clinton is a saint compared to the stuff that Trump gets away with.  There's really no new revelations about Trump; the evidence about his lies, cheating, racism, sexual harassment, bigotry, and financial misdeeds have been there all along.  Anyone who isn't a Trump supporter sees it. Now it's taking court cases to show what kind of character he has; and yet, Trump supporters continue to look away or make excuses for his behavior.  Even looking at his campaign for reelection, he hasn't offered a single reason why anyone should vote for him; it appears to be just a ruse for him to take revenge against his political opponents.  Seriously, Republicans, you NEED to do better.

Thursday, February 9, 2023

State of the Union

USA Today columnist Rex Huppke
From the article: Biden went off script regularly, parrying GOP lawmakers who heckled him, at one point backing the party into a corner and getting them to swear to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits... President Joe Biden, at the ripe age of 80, came out with ample vim and vigor in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address and proceeded to mop the House floor with the howling, discombobulated remains of the Republican Party.
Preaching populism and leaning hard on his noted skill as the empathizer-in-chief, Biden bounded through a speech that acknowledged the nation’s struggles while remaining unerringly optimistic. He went off script regularly, parrying Republican lawmakers who heckled him, at one point backing the whole party into a corner and getting them to swear to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits. I’ve never seen anything like it in a State of the Union speech – they ran at him like a pack of lemmings and, with a wink and a grin, he politely directed them to the cliff.
Whatever the White House cooks are feeding Biden these days, I’d like a plate of it myself. It’s like he’s Benjamin-Buttoning all of a sudden. And as he ponders running for reelection and nervous Democrats eye a younger candidate, Tuesday’s speech suggests he’s still got it when it comes to retail politicking. Biden, of course, will never be mistaken for a great orator. But his address relentlessly hit notes most Americans would cheer, putting the Republican lawmakers in a bind.
Biden said, “Our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken.” Republicans kept quiet. Bided talked about a boom in infrastructure projects. Republicans kept quiet. Biden quipped, “I’ll see you at the groundbreaking.” Biden said the unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in decades. Some offered tepid applause while others kept quiet. If you don’t cheer for democracy, improved infrastructure and a low unemployment rate, people are going to wonder whose team you’re on. The Republican lawmakers’ unwillingness to applaud popular accomplishments that help people, coupled with repeated acts of childish heckling that Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, seated behind Biden, tried and failed to shush, showed how weak and devoid of ideas their party has become. Throughout the speech, McCarthy gave a clinic on squirming uncomfortably. At one point, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shouted “LIAR!” at Biden. When the president was speaking about a man who lost his child to a fentanyl overdose, Republicans began shouting Biden down, one yelling, “It’s your fault!” Biden responded by asking Republicans to join him and launch “a major surge” to stop fentanyl production and provide border agents with “more drug detection machines to inspect cargo.” That, of course, shut the Republicans up, because they don’t want to consider a solution, they just want to have something to holler about.
The midterm elections showed clearly that the American people are not buying the kind of performative outrage Republicans are selling. But on Tuesday night, while the older guy they routinely describe as “senile” was energetically promoting hope and ideas that might make the country a better place, performative outrage was, again, all GOP lawmakers had. You could see it in McCarthy’s face as he tried to silence the please-put-me-on-Fox-News loudmouths in his caucus. He looked defeated. He looked like he was going to race home after the speech, write mournful poetry and enter a lengthy goth phase.
At SOTU, Biden showed America who's normal and who's crazy
You don’t have to love Biden or even like him to see why he was feeling peppy Tuesday night. The 80-year-old kid from Scranton, Pennsylvania, was facing opponents who couldn’t stop punching themselves.... In the Republican rebuttal to Biden’s address, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy.” She’s not wrong. But I don’t think she understands which side the American people see as crazy. (Hint: It’s the side that let itself get outfoxed on live TV by a president they keep calling old and incompetent.) [https://www.usatoday.com/.../state-union.../11202538002/](https://www.usatoday.com/.../state-union.../11202538002/)
USATODAY.COM
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