Sunday Blog for February 27, 2022

Good morning! As I write this, it is Sunday February 27 and we have just sailed into New York Harbor aboard Norwegian Cruise Line's Getaway. This is the first cruise in nearly 3 years for Stacey And me. It wasn't meant to be that long, but due to Covid, here we are.

On February 18, we drove to a hotel near New York City to spend the night before the cruise. It would be my second time in the Getaway and Stacey's first time. This was the first sailing out of New York City for the Getaway since Covid. Indoor maskin requirements are in place and we had to take a Covid test at the pier before getting on the ship. We both tested negative. Stacy met a lot of people and in a Facebook group so she already knew who to look for once we were on board. One piece of fun is that many of the crew members had never seen snow before. It's very cold in New York and a snow squall passed through while the ship was still docked. Many crew members were excited to see snow for the first time and went outside to see it.


We were two hours late embarking, due to wind and river current conditions. It was dark as we sailed out the Hudson River, so that left us with a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline and Lady Liberty lit up at night. Our plan was to be on deck as we sailed under the Verrazano Narrows bridge, but it was too cold to stay out for very long.


Stacey really stood out with the entertainment crew as she wore her teacup pants and beads. We danced at the sailaway party, held in the Bliss ultra lounge, and she got on stage with the ship's band to do Sing it if You Know It. People from our Facebook group cheered her on.


The original itinerary was to have three ports in the Bahamas, but one was dropped and replaced with Norfolk, Virginia. We were supposed to get off the ship in Norfolk Virginia at 1 p.m. but arrived at 3 p.m. due to being late leaving New York. So our time in Port was cut from five and a half hours to three and a half hours. Stacey and I chose not to get off the ship.


It was about 40 degrees in Norfolk. We finally got some warm weather in Port Canaveral. We took a walk on Cocoa Beach and walked around some shops.


It was mid 70's at Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas. We relaxed on the beach, took a short dip in the cold water, danced to the DJ, and had lunch.


It was also mid 70's in Nassau, Bahamas, where we took a land and sea tour.


Our activities on board were the usual mix of fun, dancing, karaoke, participating in games, seeing shows, and hanging out with crazy new friends that we met!


We saw a show called Burn the Floor, and The Million Dollar Quartet. We saw a Fleetwood Mac tribute band, and the same group also did an 80's prom show.


The ship had a little over 2,000 guests on board, about 50% of capacity.


It was SO GOOD to be back on board again! Time to catch up; we have two more cruises booked this year

Sunday Blog for February 20, 2022

Posting the blog for Sunday, February 20 early.


Some people have asked me how Stacey and I met. It was March of 2017 and our common friend Judy had arranged for a bunch of us to get together at Taylor's Nightclub on Monroe Avenue to see the band Hall Pass. When I arrived, I texted to Judy that I was there. As I was standing near the front entrance looking for Judy, Stacey walked up to me and said, “Judy is in the back talking with someone she told me to come out and look for a tall guy named Paul.” I said, “Well that's me!” So as a group we all had a fun evening dancing and listening to the band.


I met her on a few other occasions that spring. One event that stands out to me was an 80s night at Burgundy Basin Inn. That night that I noticed that Stacey stayed on the dance floor longer than most other people. I was impressed that she had what I called “dancing stamina.” Another occasion that stands out to me is when Stacey and a few other friends came to Shortsville to see me in a parade. We stayed that evening to see the band The Dean's List play at the carnival. The ground was soggy from a lot of rain, and we remember that night as the night we danced barefoot in the mud.


Both of us were in relationships at the time, and by coincidence both of those relationships ended the same weekend. I was not ready to date anyone else yet. Stacey and I quickly became good friends, dancing and hanging out a lot together that summer. I was scheduled to go on a cruise in August. While I was on the cruise, Stacey sent me messages every day. I still felt like I wasn't ready for a relationship during the first part of the cruise.


A notable event happened about halfway through the cruise when I was in the country of Estonia. While on an excursion, the tour guide pointed out something called the Kissing Statue. It's a statue in a park of a man and a woman in an embrace and kissing. I took a selfie with it and posted it on Facebook with the caption, “I wonder what good fortunes this statue will bring to me!” It was meant to be in jest.


But in retrospect, I realized that shortly after I saw that statue, I started thinking that maybe I should pay more attention to Stacey. Just before I came home she sent me a message saying she was going to greet me at my apartment and give me a big hug and kiss. After I got home and saw her arrive, I said, “Well I'm yours if you want me.” She gave me a big hug and a kiss and we have been together ever since!



I will end this week with the poem that I wrote for my proposal to her in 2018:


Proposal


When we first met dancing

We weren’t thinking of romancing

Our friendship grew stronger

As our time together became longer

It meant a lot to me when you said

“When I’m with you I can just be myself”

I’ve grown very fond of you

And fallen in a love that’s true

The time is now right

A new beginning in sight

I now ask of thee

Will you marry me?


(Stacey said “Yes!”)


See you again on Sunday, February 27!

Sunday Blog for February 13, 2022

I started this blog years ago, before social media became such a thing. I’ve always enjoyed writing. I let the blog slip. I’ve had short-term restarts through the years, but usually felt overwhelmed by keeping up with it on a daily basis. That was too much. I’ve decided to try a weekly approach. I thought, “How about publishing it when most people are home, like on a Sunday morning?” It’s gonna replace most of what I’ve posted on Facebook. Instead of impulsively posting thoughts on Facebook, I’ll put them in my blog draft through the week. Then I can expand on, revise, or delete any impulsive comments.

I’m making it a policy that anything that goes on my blog stays in my blog. Comments about my blogs are welcome, but they have to be posted within my blog, not on Facebook. I’m not going to respond to comments that people post about my blog on my Facebook page. So, feel free to comment below.


I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I love how I can connect with nearly a thousand friends (do I really have that many friends?), but I hate the arguing. And I hate the idiotic way Facebook treats people. No, you can’t blame the government for that. Facebook is a private entity; you don’t own your Facebook page, Meta Platforms, Inc. owns it. They can censor or delete your page at will. You want your own website? Pay for it. I did have a situation recently where Facebook’s robot warned me that a comment I made on a complete stranger’s post was “against community standards.” That was a wake-up call. First of all, the comment I tried to make was in no way against any standards. But you can’t argue with Facebook’s robots. I want my Facebook page so I can stay in touch with friends and promote my drumming and wedding business. There is NO WAY I want a complete stranger to be the cause of me going into Facebook Jail or some idiotic “punishment.” So, for that and other reasons, I am limiting my Facebook activity from now on.


Looks like people have had enough of billionaires. They should dismantle Bezos yacht's masts so it will fit under the historic bridge, not the bridge itself.

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/09/1079568745/jeff-bezos-yacht-de-hef-bridge-rotterdam-eggs?utm_term=nprnews&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr


Hey people, STOP GETTING MEDICAL ADVICE FROM POLITICIANS AND TALK SHOW HOSTS!! Listen to your own doctor!! And keep your friends out of it, too. Their medical needs are different from your own.


Masks work. But they are ineffective when not used with other means to prevent Covid from spreading; washing hands, sanitizing surfaces, handling utensils, etc. People have been required to wear masks at work, school, etc. But when the same group gets together socially without masks, what's the point? And so many people don't wear masks properly. The nose is exposed or they drop the masks down like chin straps. Again, what's the point?


Well, I'm ready to stop all the social distancing procedures. I was in favor of all this until we had a vaccine. Now that we have it, we know it works, and the majority of the population has been vaccinated, we all know what to do to protect ourselves.


"If you're sick, stay home." Makes sense. So why do some businesses reward people who never take a sick day?


I see the car lots are filled up again. The shortage of cars is what drove the prices up. It's all about supply and demand. When things were shut down because of Covid, there was no way to get new cars into the U.S. That drove up the price of the remaining supply of cars. It's economics 101. I see people giving the President too much credit or blame for prices. It's the same with gas. There are a lot of factors that drive up or drop the price of gas. But at this time, you could blame Putin.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/oil-prices-slip-hot-us-inflation-concerns-2022-02-11/


And now this truckers' protest is causing shortages. People have the right to protest, but I don’t see how this truckers' thing is doing anything other than slowing down the economy and driving prices up even more by causing a shortage of items needing to be shipped. Workers in the auto industry are losing wages as a result.


But seriously, who is advocating this protest?

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fox-news-goes-all-promoting-anti-vaccine-mandate-canadian-truckers


Rich vs. poor. Have you noticed the rich like to post "private" at the entrance to their big fancy houses while the rest of us common folk put out "welcome" mats.


Have you ever thought of billionaires being hoarders? They hoard money!


After receiving a gift card, we finally tried out Chick-Fil-A. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It was OK; didn’t taste any better than any other fast food I’ve had.


I’ll leave you this week with a poem I wrote a few years ago. This was inspired by a wedding that I officiated. It’s one of the poems in my poetry book, ‘60 to 60.

Slow Dance

She sat, smiling

Thin, frail and elderly

Reveling the celebration

She asked, hoping

“Will you dance with me?”

Her eyes, lit

Grand anticipation

“Slow,” she said

“It has to be slow”

We waited for a soothing rhythm

She rose, gently

Taking her delicate hand

I guided her to the dance floor

“Tighter,” she said

“Hold me tighter”

I held her close to my chest

Eyes closed

Time stood still

Caressed in sentimental warmth

Reminiscing

She relished anew

Memories of her youthful days

The song ended

A graceful twirl

Then back to her granddaughter’s day

Weekly Sunday Blog Start-Up

Starting this Sunday, I will be reviving my mostly-dormant blog with a weekly posting of my random musings of a geezer-in-the-making. It will be a great way for me to occupy your brain while you have your Sunday morning coffee! No topics will be off limits. I've been dissatisfied with much about Facebook in particular and social media in general. From now on I will be limiting what I post on Facebook. So I have decided to revive what has worked well for me in the past. In the meantime, you can read some of my old blogs from the past. See you Sunday morning.

Alcoholism

This is a very personal story but it's one I that want to share with anyone who has a drinking problem. It's my way of showing what alcoholism can do to the people in your life and to encourage you to get help.

Alcoholism killed my dad. While his body lived until 2006, the wonderful person that he was when he was younger died long before that.

People have told me what a sweet, caring person he was. My aunt...his younger sister...told me how he used to hold her while they were in the bomb shelters of World War II Germany. She told me that he was her special brother. My mother once told me how much he used to love her. Once he walked many miles in a snowstorm to meet her at work so she would not have to drive home in the bad weather.

As a young child, I remember looking up to him and thinking that he was the perfect image of what a man should be. He was an excellent carpenter and I was always proud of the work he did. Not only on his regular job, but also on home projects for friends and family. He remodeled rooms, built additions to houses, and even participated in building entire houses. It wasn't until I was about eight or nine years old that I started to understand that he had a drinking problem. At first, it was when I began to realize that the amount of time he spent in bars was not normal. He sometimes brought me with him. He’d put me at a table and feed me Cokes and beer nuts to “keep the kid happy” while he sat at the bar and drank. We’d be weaving around the road while driving home after leaving the bar.

I remember being at family functions that had a lot of drinking going on. My mother would be sitting on a couch or cowering in a chair, keeping very quiet to herself. After a while, I started to understand that she was anticipating the way he was going to treat her once we got home. After us kids were in bed, he would reach a stage of drunkenness where he would be yelling at her and picking at her, emotionally abusing her for whatever was bothering him on that particular evening. Usually it was something trivial. He would berate her in his drunken stupor until he fell asleep. He was not like this when he wasn’t drunk. The difference was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Once I got a little older, he would start those drunken tantrums on me. One time he slapped me on the face so hard that it turned red. Another time he came into my bedroom and yelled at me for how messy it was. Then he started shoving things from the top of my dresser and shelf onto the floor. I can't begin to count how many times I was in the car with him driving drunk and weaving all over the road. It amazes me that I am still alive today to tell you this.

By the time I was ten years old I lived in fear of my dad. He would almost always go to a bar after work and stay until late in the evening. If I was sitting in the living room with my mother watching TV, as soon as we saw the headlights of his car come into the driveway, she would expect me to run upstairs to bed and pretend I was sleeping. She took the brunt of his drunken abuse and tried to spare us kids. He would come into the house and start yelling at her about whatever. I could not understand what he was saying because of my hearing, but he was loud enough for me to know that he was yelling at her. I would eventually fall asleep to the sound of his yelling voice.

He had plenty of accidents due to driving while intoxicated. He totalled seven cars that I am aware of. Laws were different then and they kept letting him off. By the early 1990’s, laws had finally changed and he permanently lost his license after yet another accident.

The alcoholism got worse as the years went by. He became a role model for the man I never wanted to be. I hated his drinking, his smoking, and what he did to my mother. Most kids get upset when they find out their parents are splitting up, but I was relieved when my mother told me she was going to separate from him. I was 13 at the time.

Long-term, what this did to me was put me in a state of constant fear of anyone who was drunk. The legal age at that time was still 18. Drinking at the local bars was very popular in those days. When I turned 18, I mostly avoided bars. I only went to them to see my friends who played in bands or when I played out in a band.

When I first started college, I avoided the bars completely. Over time I got comfortable enough to go to a disco in Geneseo so I could have at least some semblance of a social life. Once in a while I would go to see a live band at another bar. I did not want to date or get into a relationship with anyone who seemed to have a drinking problem. When I first met Mary, who became my first wife, I was comfortable enough with her to go dancing at the bar that had a DJ and we went there fairly often.

After I graduated college and entered the workforce I very rarely went to any bars or socialized with my coworkers outside of work. If I went to a party where there was drinking going on, once it reached a certain level of drunkenness, I would leave. All of this was due to the fear that was instilled in me by my dad's alcoholism.

A major turning point came for me at Christmas time in 1985. Mary and I were invited to Christmas dinner by my dad’s wife. He was not home when we arrived; he was down the street at a bar, drinking. We were seated at the table when he arrived, stumbling into the house. He was at his mushy stage of drunkenness and wanted to hug everybody. Once he got to Mary, who was pregnant, he started to fall over on her. I feared for her safety and the baby, and said, “We are leaving.” His wife looked at me with understanding and we left. It became a symbolic moment for me, realizing I never again had to rely on him for rides while he was drunk or anything else. He did come over to our home the next day while sober to ask me why I left. I told him flat out, “It’s because you were drunk.” From that moment on, I rarely saw him. Nor did my sisters. He has grandchildren that he never met. Never showed much interest. This is what alcoholism did to the man who once protected his younger sister during the bombing raids of World War II.

In his final years, he ended up in a nursing home, a shell of a man. I visited him on a few occasions. In 2006, when I was told he wasn’t going to live much longer, I made my final visit to him. At the end of the visit, I stood up, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “Goodbye.” I walked out of the room and never saw him again.

Five years ago my life changed in ways I never expected. After my first marriage ended, I ultimately met Stacey. I have come out of my shell in many ways. We do go out a lot but I still don’t drink much. We go out mostly to be with friends, hear bands, dance, and sing karaoke. I have learned to keep my distance if I see too much drinking going on.

I am not a teetotaler. I do have a drink once in a while. Very often people who see me having a drink are surprised. I never liked beer. I've heard it said you need to acquire a taste for beer. I never had any interest in acquiring that taste. I like sloe gin fizz, red wine and some other wines, and I will once in a while have a mixed drink with vodka. Anytime I do have a drink it would be early in the evening and only one. Stacey doesn’t drink much either. I am very thankful that Stacey does not have any kind of a substance abuse problem.

So, again, I write this story so that people with a drinking problem will hopefully understand what they are doing to their loved ones and encourage them to get help. I hope you pay attention. Thank you for reading this.

My Memories of September 11, 2001

Everyone who was alive on September 11, 2001 has their own story about the day, so here is mine.

It started out as a routine Tuesday for me.  At the time I lived on Willowood Drive in Greece, was married to Mary and our daughters Kristi, 15, Tracy, 12, and Melissa, 10 all lived with us.  I was working the evening shift at WHEC Channel 10 in the control room and was due in at 3:00 PM.  Mary was teaching at Brookside School and the girls were all in school that day.  My plans before work were to go shopping and then attend a meeting of the group, SHHH, Self-Help For Hard of Hearing People.

For reference, the times of the plane crashes on that date were 8:46 for the first plane into the World Trade Center, 9:03 for the second, the Pentagon at 9:37, and a field in Shanksville, PA at 10:03.  The first tower collapsed at 9:59 and the second one collapsed at 10:28.

It was shortly before 9:00 AM when I was driving to Wegmans and had WCMF radio on in my car.  I heard them discussing something about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.  I knew that a plane had hit the Empire State Building in the fog in the 1940's.  The damage was a hole on the side of the building, which eventually got repaired.  I pictured this incident being something like that.  They did say something on WCMF about air traffic being restricted from the New York City area.  As a private pilot myself, I tried to comprehend what this would mean for routing air traffic away.  "What a mess," I thought.  I surely did not grasp the magnitude of what was happening at that moment.  

I went into Wegmans and completed my shopping trip, all the while wondering how a plane could have crashed into the World Trade Center in this day and age, and thinking about the air traffic situation. It was around 10:15 when I got back in my car, turned on the radio, and that's when it all hit me about what was going on.  While I was shopping, the second plane hit the Trade Center, a third plane hit the Pentagon, and a fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.  As shocking as it was, it didn't take much for me to figure out that this was some kind of an attack on the United States.  But who?  And why?

My home was only 5 minutes from Wegmans, so as soon as I got in the driveway, I left the groceries in the car, ran into the house and turned on the TV.  All I could see from the aerial shots was a tremendous amount of smoke and dust over southern Manhattan. I was shocked!  I could not believe what I was seeing. What I didn't know was that the first tower had already collapsed.  Just then, my phone rang. It was a reporter from a newspaper....I don't remember which one.  At the time, I was president of the Rochester Pilot's Association and they wanted my thoughts on the national aviation airspace being shut down.  I told them I was just learning of everything and didn't know what to think or say at this point.  I have no idea if my comments got published or not.

I continued watching for a few more minutes.  In all the  smoke and dust, I did not realize that the first building had already collapsed.  The phone rang again.  It was my mother asking me if I was watching this, and if I had seen the plane crash into the building.  Up to then, I had not.  As we were talking, I had an eye on the TV and then I saw the second building collapse.  I said to her, "The building just collapsed!"  Only then did I realize that the first one had collapsed a half hour earlier.

My mother, at that point, had been fighting pancreatic cancer.  She passed away 8 months later.  It's sad for me to know that she spent the last 8 months of her life in the post-9/11 world.

After we hung up, I continued watching the events unfold on TV.  At some point, I managed to get the groceries in from the car and put away.  I received a message that the SHHH meeting was cancelled, and I was asked to come into work earlier, at 1:30, to stand by for whatever was needed on the crew.

I remember that Mary called me at one point, worried about our daughters' reactions to all this.  I reminded her that, like her in her own classroom, their teachers would be handling the situation with their students. That seemed to calm her down about our daughters.  I did leave a note on the table for all of them to read, when they got home, expressing my feelings and offering hope that they were handling this OK.

I arrived at work at 1:30 and don't remember what I did for the first hour and a half.  Probably just sat around, watching coverage from NBC and waiting on standby in case I was needed for something.  I was scheduled in Master Control at 3:00, and that's when I took over.  

Master Control was the position on the crew where you run all the programs and commercials that go over the air.  At the time, our programs came from videotape machines. a satellite feed, or the NBC network feed.  In this case, we were running everything from NBC since they had the resources to show what was going on in New York City, Washington DC, and Shanksville, PA.  I was asked to stay in Master Control for my entire shift, including my lunch break.  We usually rotated crew positions, but on this day, we all stayed in one place for the whole shift so that everyone could focus on one job and there would be no confusion with people changing around.

NBC was based in New York City near Ground Zero.  Since no one knew where these attacks came from, NBC didn't know if the network might get knocked off the air or not.  They sent messages to their affiliate stations, advising us to keep local programming on standby in case the network feed was lost. Therefore, part of our job was to keep the regularly scheduled programming running on our tape machines so that we'd have something to go to if we lost the network.  In the meantime, the news department was keeping up with the local angle.  We actually already had a crew in Albany because of another story that we had planned to cover, but that was cancelled and the crew was sent to New York City to get as close as they were able to get to the World Trade Center.

Through my shift, I continued to keep track of the programs we were running on standby.  All of the commercials were cancelled so we could run news coverage as a public service, which was the original intent of television and radio broadcasting.  I did keep track of the commercial schedule, just in case for some reason they decided to start running them again.  If I recall correctly, I think we went three days without airing any commercials.  That's a lot of lost revenue!

Most of my shift is a blur to me.  Just seeing endless repetitions of videos of the planes crashing into the buildings, the collapses, and all the dust and smoke.

We broke into network coverage several times to give local news updates, and we ran a full half-hour newscast at 11:00 PM.  I actually have the program log from this day.  Program logs are required to be kept for a certain number of years and then they can be destroyed.  When the logs for 9/11/01 and 9/12/01 were slated for shredding, I was able to obtain them.  At this point, if I was able to find a suitable museum that would treat them with the historical respect that they deserve, I'd be happy to donate them.

I signed off my shift at 11:38 PM.  I went home and tried to sleep with visions of buildings collapsing dancing in my head.

I recall that in the immediate days after the attacks, the whole country came together.  No one knew what was going on or who was behind this.  For a brief  moment in time, we were all Americans and the rest of the world was united in support of our country.  It saddens me that over time, politics and crazy conspiracy theories emerged and have divided us.

Comics

 A couple days ago, I posted a blog about my family's old station wagon.  I wrote about how my mother used to buy comic books for my sisters and me to read in the back of the car while travelling.  It got me thinking about the characters in the comics I read.  I was never into the super-hero comics, such as Superman, Batman or Spiderman.  I enjoyed a lot of the Harvey Comics, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Little Audrey, Little Lotta, Little Dot and Richie Rich.  The Disney series was a favorite, with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Scrooge McDuck, Huey, Dewey & Louie, and April, May & June.  I also loved the Archie comic series.

I'd have to say my all-time favorite comic when I was younger was Dennis the Menace.  I just got a kick out of all the shenanigans he pulled, often involving his friends Margaret and pal Joey.  Poor Mr. Wilson, and the ever-loving Mrs. Wilson.

While I accumulated a nice collection of comic magazines and books, I also read the comic section in the daily newspapers and especially looked forward to the color Sunday section.  I was a voracious reader of comics.  I have no doubt that it helped me with developing my reading skills as a youngster.  My dad called me a bookworm.

We usually got up early on Christmas morning to open the gifts that Santa Claus had brought us.  I remember one Christmas where, because we were up early, my parents wanted the whole family to take a nap in the early afternoon.  Once I got into bed, instead of sleeping, I read an entire Disney children's novel about Mickey Mouse.  I just couldn't put the book down.