three gay stories

By Fred Owens

Three Gay Stories

A Gay Teenager in Wilmette, Illinois, 1963

Cary Ross killed himself with a shotgun at his home out by Indian Hill. He was 17. He was my good friend in grade school when he lived across the alley. We lived on Forest Ave, and I would cross Forest Avenue, go through the Tuttles' yard, cross that alley, through O'Rourkes' yard, and over to Cary's house.

His mom, Betty, and my mom were pretty good friends. Anyway, Cary was gay from the gate -- talk about wired from birth! This kid was SO very interested in everyone's penis, and this was when we were 11-years-old and the only fun thing we did with our dicks was make yellow patterns in the snow... But Cary was different, we kind of laughed at him, but nobody really cared. Otherwise we had Boy Scout camping and ice-skating after school -- just regular kid stuff.

Fast forward. Cary's family moved out to Indian Hill, then he went to the public high school and the rest of us went to Catholic high school. We didn't see him much, but we heard things about who he was spending time with and it didn't sound good. It didn't sound bad either -- but strange. So he killed himself, and what I remember most was the look on his mother's face at the funeral.

A Gay Newspaper Publisher in Rural Texas

Bastrop, a small town in central Texas, the summer of 1986. I was working as a reporter for the Bastrop Advertiser, the local newspaper. My boss was Jack Fraser. He was gay. Jerry Appel, the business manager at the paper, was his partner.

Everybody in Bastrop knew Jack and Jerry were gay. This was the heyday of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, so it was all right as long as nobody said anything about it. Also Jack did not live in Bastrop, but lived in the next town over, closer to Austin. Jerry maintained a separate, probably fictional, residence in that same town, but it was likely that they actually lived together.

The Bastrop Advertiser was one of the best newspapers in Texas. Jack Fraser was a hard-hitting, outspoken liberal and he took on all the powers that be in that very conservative small town. Fearless, I called him. But he had a very courteous manner about him, so some outraged reader would storm into the office, and Jack would hear him out but hold his ground, and so he was respected.

But far worse than being liberal, and even worse than being gay, Jack and Jerry came from California. Can you imagine that? Two gay men from California, with liberal politics, move to a small town in Texas, buy the newspaper, make a good living, and nobody really cared. Except, you know, not talking about it.

A Gay Barber in Zimbabwe

So if a gay barber gives you a haircut and you don't mind, does that make you gay?

No, its doesn't mean you're gay, it just means you don't mind.

In 1997 I was living in Zimbabwe, in Bulawayo the regional capital of Matebeleland, a city of 500,000 people -- all black, but with maybe 5,000 white people here and there. I used to walk down the street, hundreds of people, all black, and I would look around -- I'm the only white guy!.... But I got used to it and no one molested me.

After I'm living in Bulawayo for a while I need to get a hair cut, and this is a problem because you can say anything you want about black people, but they have different hair -- totally different hair and I was not going to chance it -- having a black barber touch my head.

So I asked around, with a direct question, "Where do the white guys go to get their hair cut?" Well, everybody knew where that shop was, so I went over to get my hair cut by a white man, and he was gay. You know, like the way you can tell these things, telling me about his interests in theater and pornography, and just general demeanor. He kind of hinted about things, as if I might be interested, but I wasn't. I mean, he was a nice guy, and he gave me a good haircut, but that was all.

In1997, there were hardly any white men in Bulawayo, and far fewer gay white men, so this barber probably had about three friends in the whole town.

Notes.

Obituary. Cary P. Ross, 17, a senior at New Trier High School, died last week in his home at 216 Summerfield road, Northbrook. He was the son of Carleton P. and Roberta Schilbach Ross, both Wilmette natives. Other survivors are two brothers, Jeffery and Ward; a sister, Linda; and a grandmother, Mrs. Clyde P. Ross of Evanston, formerly of Wilmette. Published in Wilmette Life, a weekly newspaper, in November, 1963.

Jack Fraser. Jack Fraser sold the Bastrop Advertiser a few years later and moved back to California.

The Gay Barber in Zimbabwe. Being Gay in Zimbabwe is not easy. Excerpt from this Wikipedia entry: Homosexuality is highly taboo in this socially conservative country and Mugabe's anti-gay stance resonates with many Zimbabweans.

Life is hard for gay people in Zimbabwe. Life is hard for everyone now.
Purging the Mailing Newsletter. If you have received this week's newsletter, you have survived the purge -- 75 other people were deleted.... My hope is to send the letter only to people who actually want to read it. The typical Frog Hospital reader does not read every word of every issue -- that's not required -- but they do seem to enjoy the mix.
Most of you do not pay for a subscription. But some of you do pay and that makes it work for everyone.

After you pay the rent or the mortgage, after you've bought the groceries, after you've put a little money away for your children's and grandchildren's education -- after taking care of these necessaries -- then why not send a $25 check to Frog Hospital.

Subscriptions. Your subscription money keeps the editor from getting cranky and self-righteous. Your check for $25 helps me maintain a degree of detachment. I do not support a cause on these pages. And I am truly grateful. Please go to PayPal at the Frog Hospital blog and contribute $25.

Or mail your check for $25 to

Fred Owens
35 West Main ST
Suite B #391
Ventura, CA 93001

Thank you very much,

Fred Owens

Facebook. Some of best stuff is on Facebook. Go to my page, Fred Owens, and friend me.

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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001



--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

We are all artists now.

We are all artists now.

Unfortunately we all get paid like artists.

Marshall McLuhan said all this would happen. He said that in the 1960s. I knew him personally because I went to St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto, where McLuhan taught on the English faculty.

McLuhan described the future -- "we won't have jobs anymore, we will play roles, we will all be artists and actors, not wage earners" -- so he said.

Incredibly, that happened, There are no jobs anymore, jobs went out with objectivity. Now we play roles according to our body types and habits. The horror is that's how we get paid. When we had jobs we all got paid, some more than others, but we all got paid. But now we are all artists, so we are paid like artists -- one-tenth of one percent makes millions, and the 99 make close to nothing.

McLuhan saw this coming. He was detached. He said, "I see the future, that doesn't mean I welcome it personally. I would prefer to have lived in the time of the Middle Ages." -- Really, he said that.

I shoulda never went to his class. McLuhan had tenure, he kept HIS job all along. But role playing? McLuhan famously played himself in a cameo appearance in Annie Hall, predating Steven Colbert by 30 or 40 years. But who the hell is going to pay you for playing yourself?

The jobs are gone, my friend. They're not coming back. You're on your own, like a rolling stone (Help! I'm having flashbacks!)

No jobs, unless you move to Midland, Texas, where the shale oil economy is booming and Wal-Mart is hiring warm bodies at $17 per hour.

Back to McLuhan. He described the global village, he didn't say he wanted to live in it.

I was his student, I didn't say I understood him. Nobody understood McLuhan, not even McLuhan. I am also good friends with his biographer Philip Marchand....... McLuhan, in his personal habits, was quite conventional and conservative -- as well as being a fairly traditional Catholic.

A friend of mine in his class submitted a paper in a multi-media format, partly taped recorded and partly illustrated -- thinking McLuhan would like that, but McLuhan rejected the submission --- stick to the standard format he told my friend.

The lecture I remember the best was McLuhan on TS Eliot the Wasteland. This was given in the Elmsley Lounge as part of an overall celebration and bounteous sherry was served to students and faculty alike. I don't actually remember anything he said, but we drank a lot of sherry and had a wonderful time.

After that lecture they stopped serving unlimited free sherry to undergraduates.

..........................................................................

President Obama recently visited Israel and Jordan, while John Kerry was in Iraq. Here is my reaction:

I found this poem in a drawer,
Labelled 1954.

"No breathing allowed," said the Iranian priest.
"Israel does not have a right to exist."

But we grew these oranges, we built Tel Aviv,
Our children were born here, we're not going to leave.

"You can go back to Europe, to Spain or Morocco,
Go back to the shtetl, the shul, and the ghetto.

We don't want you here......"

But this song, can't you hear?

Jerusalem is golden, isn't that true?
The color of our flag is white and blue,

We welcome the green of your Islamic faith,
We will live together until our last breath,

Breathing is living, we breath and exist,
We are you, and you are all there is.

Jerusalem of Gold

This uplifting song ends Schindler's List. Spielberg's film and this song have the flavor of 1954 -- the rhythm of Golda Meir, Abba Eban, and Herman Wouk, with notes of triumph and hope. Imagine the shining look in Sal Mineo's eyes in the 1960 movie Exodus.

Israel

I'm not a big fan of anyone's historic claims, but I do recognize existence when I see it. Israel -- there it is. It gets quickly complicated after that. Do people who exist have a right to continue to exist? You could tell them that they have no right to exist, and yet they are still there.

This analogy may not spring to your mind, but I think of plants -- weeds, native species, invasive species, plants growing where you want them to, plants you wish were not growing there.

But it really helps if you first acknowledge the existence of same. You can't get rid of something by saying it doesn't exist. Unless it doesn't exist, in which case you don't have to do anything.

Excuse me, Martin Buber just called collect, gotta run.

Baby Boomers.

We are a generation distinguished by the fact that we exist -- going to the grave and still celebrated for our collective birth -- you can't brag on that.

Our numbers cause a bulge in the American population. We are in that human age which is naturally conservative -- old -- so the whole country is old right now.

We out-sourced pregnancy and child-rearing to Mexico and points south. Those young brown men and women are the babies we didn't want to bear, and the children we didn't want to raise, so we hired it out, and then they grew up and were mystically drawn to the US.


I Wish

I wish I was John Steinbeck,
With his mice, his men and his truck.

I wish I was Ernest Hemingway,
He had all the luck.

He made his days in the sun,
Then he killed himself with a shotgun.

I wish I was TS Eliot,
He came from St. Louis , you know,
Then he worked in a bank,
And became Anglican,
Writing poems with his elbows and toes.

I wish I was a Buddhist or a monk,
Or an acolyte,
If that's all right,
Anyway to escape this funk.

Subscriptions. Your subscription money keeps the editor from getting cranky and self-righteous. Your check for $25 helps me maintain a degree of detachment. I do not support a cause on these pages. And I am truly grateful. Please go to PayPal at the Frog Hospital blog and contribute $25.

Or mail your check for $25 to

Fred Owens
35 West Main ST
Suite B #391
Ventura, CA 93001

Thank you very much,

Fred Owens

Facebook. Some of best stuff is on Facebook. Go to my page, Fred Owens, and friend me.


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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

Terrible Poems

"Gun Control." This is a meaningless term and it leads to the silly question of whether you are for it or against it. Consider my suggestion for better language. The debate focuses on gun ownership -- who may legally own a weapon, and what type of weapons might be legally owned.

That's ownership. Possession means you have it, whether legally or not. "Use" means firing the weapon, but it can mean displaying the weapon with an intent........ but "control" doesn't mean anything.

We can make better laws if we use better language.

If you own a weapon and you loan it to your friend, then he possesses it. If he then uses that weapon to commit a crime, are you responsible? To what degree?

We can make better laws to govern this behavior if we make the effort to speak clearly.

Charlie Krafft. Charlie is still in the news. Yesterday I was interviewed by The New Yorker, concerning my objection to his words, which I consider to be anti-Semitic. This story began with the Frog Hospital letter of January 11 and then spread to national media websites. It should be ending pretty soon, one hopes. Anti-Semitism is not only shocking and evil -- it also gets very boring.That's one of it's tell-tale signs -- the banality of it.

I have objected to Charlie's words, not his ceramic art. But I will say this -- displaying the swastika in art is not a good thing, it scares people. No, not now, but maybe a hundred years from now it might be all right to use this symbol.

The New Pope. We can dispose of one problem quickly. The media cries corruption and scandal at the mis-use of money and power within the Curia -- the governing body of the Catholic Church. Where is the Vatican located? In Rome, in Italy. So, like, duh, to use California jargon, the Church is not corrupt, it's Italian.

The sex abuse situation is another matter. It's not funny -- they have to do better.

Pope Francis says he will help the poor. I'm glad he said that, but how will he do that -- give out food stamps?

I like the Catholic Church and the ruling papacy. It is the largest and wealthiest organization on this planet without a standing army. The Pope may cast you into perdition, but he cannot invade your country. As such, this makes him more useful than the United Nations -- he might be able to persuade or influence national leaders in a good way.

You Can Thank Me. I got up at 5:30, drove to the beach and took a sunrise walk. The fog was thick, the sound of crashing waves was muted, the light emerged quietly. I had the sand to myself, except for one surf fisherman. During this 90 minute walk I composed the outline of a 5,000 word essay on culture and politics. When I got back to my car I realized that I would not have the time to write it. This depressed me until I realized that you wouldn't have time to read it either. So it is much better for everyone if I just give you two short poems.

A Short Poem is a Good Poem

A Baptist and a Buddhist walked into a bar,
But I haven't gotten very far,

In writing this poem
In yellow and chrome
In pale-green sea foam.

The Buddhist said Save Me,
I'm scared half to death.
The Baptist laughed and said
Save Your Breath,

Cause I'm going to visit the Dalai Lama,
And tell him that it's time to stop this drama.

This is an old story, it might not be true,
Of a Baptist, a Buddhist, a Catholic, a Jew

In the LaConner Tavern in 1982,
Sonia was making crab-burgers for a select few.

That was back in the day when you could run a tab.
You could get drunk and walk home, you didn't need a cab.

Dirty Biter was scrounging,
Clyde Sanborn was lounging,

Robert Sund was sponging,
While he chalked up his cue.
And tourists came in for the view

Of Swinomish Channel,
The log rafts, the sea gulls,
The herons, the eagles,
And derelict hulls.

(Dirty Biter was a well-known dog-about-town at that time)

The Lion of Cambridge

I saw Harvey Blume
Arise from his tomb.

I am not dead, he lamented,
Only pickled and somewhat demented.

Dill pickled? I asked.
No, bone-weary, bare naked, un-masked.

That was in Cambridge in Harvard Square
Where Harvey played chess with devils and bears,

Bears of uncertainty, wild and free,
While the Red Line rumbled underneath on its way to the sea.

Does a bear shit in the woods? Harvey joked.
No, the bear took the Red Line to Quincy and croaked.

You can Thank Me. Frog Hospital is still surprising after 15 years. You still don't know what to expect from one issue to the next. We only have two rules. Tell the truth and don't waste anyone's time. Please consider buying a subscription, and I thank you in return.

Subscriptions. Your subscription money keeps the editor from getting cranky and self-righteous. Your check for $25 helps me maintain a degree of detachment. I do not support a cause on these pages. And I am truly grateful. Please go to PayPal at the Frog Hospital blog and contribute $25.

Or mail your check for $25 to

Fred Owens
35 West Main ST
Suite B #391
Ventura, CA 93001

Thank you very much,

Fred Owens

Facebook. Some of best stuff is on Facebook. Go to my page, Fred Owens, and friend me.
--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

I Hope, The New Pope, Isn't a Dope

I Hope,
The New Pope,
Isn't a Dope

Let us pray,
He might be gay.

New red shoes,
For the man they choose.

They sit in pews,
And share their views,
Then send up smoke,
But not a toke.

Women are watching,
But they can't vote.
"We can't even send in a post-it note!"

The cardinals are celibate,
But just for the hell of it,
They watch women peeling,
On the Sistine ceiling.

But leave the boys alone,
Or we'll never atone,
Said the men in red
-- we'd be better off dead.

There was a papabili,
Who only spoke Swahili.
He said we need a man,
With an African plan,
But the Italians said don't be so silly.

The Argentine threw his red hat in,
but he could not speak medieval Latin.

You can't use a condom,
Non est disputandum.

We're catching up with modern times,
But slowly, slowly, let the bells chime.

Retrospective -- A letter to the Frog Hospital in 2006, from LaConner's Indomitable Mayor, Wayne Everton, regarding the future of the oil economy.

Dear Fred,

It's been my experience that we find solutions when we need to and not before. All of the various substitutes for petroleum will, I believe, be invented or found or discovered about 10 years before the crisis gets unmanageable.The fall out, of course, won't be the lack of oil but the lack of the money that oil produces. Will the new substitutes produce income for the plastics manufacturers? The tire manufacturers? The Middle East countries? The auto makers of the world? All the others who are dependent on the income?

I doubt the end of the oil age will be sudden and dramatic, as the film seems to predict. It will be slow and evolutionary, like the end of the steel age, or the iron age.

I assume we will not only find substitutes for petroleum but also for the by-products..... like war. There are so many other reasons for countries to annihilate each other I feel confident we will find one, or more, that fills the need. Non-existent weapons of mass destruction comes to mind but there must be others at least as imaginative. Mel Gibbson proved, I believe, in his great historical "Braveheart" that there is no need for massive weapons. Stones and arrows will probably be used in WW3 so oil won't be needed, either as a necessity or a pretence.

Revelations, I've found, work best in retrospect. It's easier to say "I knew that was going to happen" than to say "I know what's going to happen". Christians are like Republicans and Republicans are like the oil supply. Some day they'll all be gone.

You seem happy where you are, Fred, and I'm happy for you.

Wayne

FROG HOSPITAL REPLIES: Dear Wayne, it's been seven years since you wrote this and two things have happened. First, you are no longer with us, gone someplace in the spirit, and we miss you -- most of us do. Second, we haven't run out of oil yet -- the fracking technology has turned it all upside down and, ignoring the environmental problem, we seem to have a surplus rather than a scarcity.

But the best part of your letter is the opening sentence, and I repeat with emphasis your own words:

It's been my experience that we find solutions when we need to and not before.

That's actually a very hopeful statement.

If you've been fortunate, you may have known one or several beautiful women

I deny everything. I regret nothing.

The Astonishing Debbie Rosenblatt. I forgot the promise I made to myself. After I met Debbie Rosenblatt from a personals ad in the Boston Globe I said I would never, ever do that again – because she was such a winner.

It was like hitting the $10,000 jackpot on a slot machine. Take the money and never go back to that casino again – after giving everybody working there a nice tip, of course. But don't go back to the honey pot. Good luck is a moving target. Wherever you found it, it won't be there the next time.

I called her up after I read her ad. She lived in Framingham, an outer suburb. She was a widow. She told me her age – she was seven years older than me. Then she said, "I'm probably too old for you." But she was fun to talk to. I said let's meet. She suggested this old-fashioned watering hole in Wellesley. I thought – what the heck.

I got there a little early, to make sure she wouldn't have to wait for me. I am compulsively punctual anyway. But it was when I saw her walk into the room, making an entrance – that's when I called her astonishing.

She was five-foot ten and she had legs up to here, a long, elegant neck that would put Audrey Hepburn to shame, and longer arms that waved in the air like a flock of snow-white geese, and sparkled in the light with dozens of gold bracelets and scarlet red, red, red polish on her exquisite fingernails.

She just said hello and "you must be Fred," but to me it sounded like "How are you, handsome?" Such enthusiasm and zest, pitter pattering – she loved jazz and dancing and her precious daughter and those special, darling children of mine – she asked me about them, and was sure they would grow up to be famous and wealthy.

I took her dancing, to the rooftop of a Boston skyscraper, valet parking, Cole Porter, and she was lovely and smelled so good. We made love and we were so hot.

Debbie and I had a fling. Nothing as good as a widow – she loved her husband, but he was gone and buried. All she wanted to do was have a good time and enjoy herself again with her new lover.

For a season, not more than a month. Truth is, I couldn't afford it. I was the sole support of those two kids. Valet parking was something I couldn't keep up, and I only had one sport coat and a few good shirts.

Debbie was completely innocent in her needs, which were expensive. So we called the whole thing off. Oh, I forgot about the grand piano in her living room. She could be so ecstatic just to hear me stumble through a few chords of Gershwin. The room would have been garish with color and crystal, but it was so like Debbie, so completely true to her nature.

She had me over for a seder, with a few friends and relatives who enjoyed complaining about everything. I felt at home and smiled.

No, my life was too serious. But a woman so sexy and so virtuous and honest too. I can see her shining in the sky, and hot and grabbing my hair on her bed.

We called it off. We became friends – this was a new idea to her. Everything was new. She had lead a sheltered life and married her first boyfriend, and he was a good husband and all her needs were provided for. She never had a job, a merry widow she became and I was her first man. There were others after me. We talked on the phone sometimes.

But it's been years, I had forgotten. These computer dates are weird. The meetings are hollow and so un-fated. I have met several women this way, nice enough, but now that I remember Debbie, I know that I won't ever do that again.

Subscriptions. Your subscription money keeps the editor from getting cranky and self-righteous. Your check for $25 helps me maintain a degree of detachment. I do not support a cause on these pages. And I am truly grateful. Please go to PayPal at the Frog Hospital blog and contribute $25.

Or mail your check for $25 to

Fred Owens
35 West Main ST
Suite B #391
Ventura, CA 93001

Thank you very much,

Fred Owens

Facebook. Some of best stiff is on Facebook. Go to my page, Fred Owens, and friend me.


--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

Red Quinoa and Tofu

FROG HOSPITAL -- unsubscribe anytime

Feb. 25, 2013

Red Quinoa and Tofu

By Fred Owens


Red Quinoa and Tofu. Red quinoa has a nice nutty flavor and an earthy brick-red color. I made a stir fry to serve with red quinoa last night. Here's the recipe:

1-pound Firm Tofu, cubed and patted dry with a towel. Marinate with sesame oil, garlic powder, lemon-pepper salt and a dash of cayenne.

2-medium leeks. Slice and steam until tender -- if you put the leeks right in with the other veggies they won't get tender.

1-cup red quinoa. It cooks quickly with two cups of water. Set aside.

Heat the saute pan with generous oil. I used olive oil. Add the tofu on a high flame until it gets a little brown. Add -- but do not stir in, just add it on top of the tofu -- the leeks, some chopped green onions, a few broccoli florets and a bunch of chopped chard. Turn the heat down, let it cook for a while.

Then stir up the tofu amongst all the veggies, put a lid on the pan, and let it simmer for a bit longer.

Serve over the red quinoa.

We grew the broccoli in the winter garden. The chard was a gift from the carpenter's son. The leeks were bought at the Saturday farmers market in Santa Barbara.

I had a glass of Guinness Stout with this meal. Quite nice on a cold and windy night -- what passes for winter in Southern California.

Michele Obama Announces Best Picture Oscar Michele Obama will be the last First Lady. Changes in our marriage customs will make this role meaningless. The next President may or may not have a spouse, but that spouse will have a career in some non-political field -- an architect perhaps -- but will not play any social role at the White House.

The Next Pope. The next pope will come from Brazil or Argentina. He will be 60 years old, plus or minus. He will spend very little time in Rome, but will instead establish an informal second papal home in his own country...... The Italian cardinals will support this new Pope because he will not overthrow the status quo.

Girls go to College, Boys go to Prison.

Girls go to College, Boys go to Prison. This is not a good trend.

Young men are imprisoned at record rates because they do not know how to behave.

In the 1950s coherent and strong social controls compelled good behavior in young men leading to low crime rates at that time...... The social controls were abandoned in the 1960s and the crime rate soared. Since nobody could agree on what new social controls could be imposed on young men, the alternate solution was installed -- just lock them up.

There is no emerging consensus on what constitutes good behavior in our culture, so we cannot expect any choice but prison for our young men.

Other factors apply -- sentences are too long, non-violent drug offenders should not be jailed in the first place, and Private Prisons should not be allowed to infect justice with the profit motive -- but we still need to consider better social controls instead of prison.

First Class Mail. Conservatives believe that government is inherently oppressive and inefficient. I don't agree with that. I think government can do good things. First-class mail is a good thing. Rural residents -- many very conservative people -- have benefited for generations because of this subsidy. It costs more to deliver mail to out of the way places, and if Federal Express did this, they would simply charge more for rural delivery, but the Post Office charges the same whether it's across the street or down some distant gravel road out in the boondocks.

Same with power and electricity -- the big cities were wired for electric lights by private utilities, but it cost too much per customer to run power lines out into the country. So the government did that in the 1930s -- read about LBJ's early career in the Texas Hill country when he worked to get the lights on out on the farm.

But government is getting a bad name lately because they can't seem to do anything right. I don't want hear "our schools need more money because our kids are failing." I want to hear, "look at these wonderful children we taught." I want government to fix the roads before they build the bullet train. Why don't they do something that will impress the skeptics? -- do it on time and under budget -- that would get my attention.

In the future, society will be one-third celibate, one-third homosexual, and one-third pro-creative.

The first part -- one-third celibate -- is surprising but we're going to see a decline in Eros, or at least the genital variety. The root of Eros is the life instinct to reproduce. You cut that connection and first you have an outburst of wild sex, which is what we see now, but then sex diminishes -- because there's no need for it -- and celibacy becomes a voluntary and desirable status. Life is the root, Eros is the flower.

One-third celibate, one third homosexual, and one-third pro-creative.

St Mike's Mourns Fr. Robert J. Madden C.S.B., 1928~2013

Fr. Madden was my freshman English teacher at this small Catholic college -- part of the University of Toronto. After he retired from teaching he took over alumni affairs and he stayed in touch with me and a lot of my class mates.

After one class re-union, I came up with this much better idea --

What bothered me about alumni affairs, the fundraising, and the reunions, was that it was all about success -- achievements, milestones, things you brag about.

I thought we could do a little better at St. Mikes and make the events about failures. You were twenty pounds overweight, you just lost your job, your wife left you, your daughter is anorexic, your son is dealing drugs and you're clinically depressed. These things, at least some of them, have happened to all of us.

So you don't come to the reunion, and they don't put that sad news in the newsletter. And yet those moments are when you could really use a little backup from your classmates.

Success takes care of itself, but we ought to be there for each other during times of failure.

Those are my thoughts as they sent Bob Madden away to his celestial rest -- he was a very good man, and I miss him already.

My Old College Roommate. I might write a story about my old college room-mate. I knew him well, we roomed together for three years. We weren't friends in that sense -- we never did things together, but why would we? We slept in the same bedroom, or shared the same apartment for three years -- not much point in going out for a beer on top of all that.

So, anyhow, I have this story idea, only who would be interested? Nobody. They say a good writer can make anything interesting..... No, a good writer might discover that interesting bit, might reveal it, but you can't concoct it whole cloth. There's no make believe. Think of writers with fantastic imaginations -- Ray Bradbury and his sci-fi creations, but he was still working with human clay, picking up pieces of what he saw around him and molding them together into a story.

But that doesn't help. Even Ray Bradbury could not write an interesting story about my college room-mate. And Quentin Tarantino wouldn't even try....... Tarantino would find some violent and dramatic story and amplify it to extremes -- blowing up buildings, shooting people -- shock, speed, quiet shattered by screams of obscenity, relentless pressure .... he would ramp it up -- so what could Tarantino do with two boys on the farm in Nebraska? Picture this:

Tom Orent and his brother Dick, both sitting in recliners, watching TV on a hot evening in July in 1966 -- a away out in the middle of Nebraska, a few miles down a gravel road from a small town called North Loup -- called North Loup because it's situated on the North Loup River, a tributary of the Platte...... Tom and Dick out on the farm, got five hundred acres in corn, got a long-low super-modern high-tech barn that houses a pig-feeding operation with a few thousands hogs. They grow the corn, feed the hogs, sell the hogs, and grow more hogs again next year. Where's the story?..... The farm is pretty in places, some forested ravines run through it, where live a herd of deer that feast on the harvest corn, and provide venison for the winter freezer.

Pretty exciting -- Quentin Tarantino can eat his heart out, because I have the high-drama concept going here -- Tom and Dick on the farm, eating popcorn. You know what Michele Obama said, "you will grip your arm-rest a little tighter," with vivid scene likes this.

--
Fred Owens
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My blog is Fred Owens

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Charlie Krafft Story Stirs National Debate

..... I was waiting for somebody else to say this. It's an unpleasant topic, so it was easier to pretend it wasn't going on. Finally I just decided to call it bullshit and be done with it. What happened is that I was playing online chess with Harvey. He's Jewish. He lives in Boston. I told him about my friend Charlie Krafft and his anti-Semitic ravings on Facebook. Harvey said why do you even have such a friend?

Good point. So I blocked Charlie on Facebook, because it's not a debatable question. I wasn't initiating a dialog with him, I was ending it.

I also stated this clearly in a Frog Hospital newsletter, dated January 11. People emailed me after that, old friends of Charlie's, saying it's about time for this..... good for you ... yes, it needed to be said .....

But a dangerous path is fixing somebody's life, so I just forgot the whole thing. I'm living in Santa Barbara these days. The weather is nice down here and who needs trouble.

Meanwhile, my story stirred up a national debate on anti-Semitism -- read the story about Charlie Krafft in the Huffington Post -- I am interviewed at the end of it. And one other story about Charlie, also in the Huffington Post.

Both of these national stories were based on a similar story in the Seattle Stranger written by art critic Jen graves --- this story generated more than 200 comments. You might find it interesting to scroll through the comments, especially toward the end, when the white supremacists come out of their dark holes to defend Charlie. These people actually exist!

And the Stranger story was based on my Frog Hospital newsletter about Charlie's bad habit -- posted further down --

The sad thing is that Seattle's soft-headed "tolerant" climate has known and put up with Charlie's mad hatred for many years. It was really about time somewhat called it bullshit, which I did, and apparently it's sticking.

Charlie makes a modest living as an artist. He promotes himself very well. He thrives on controversy. He's verbally agile. But this stuff he's gotten into -- if that's how he needs to make a living, it would be more honorable to collect food stamps or sponge off your relatives.

From the January 11 Frog Hospital

A Message for Charlie Krafft

Charlie Krafft is a well-known and well-liked Seattle artist with a penchant for notoriety. Charlie's appearance is courtly and his manners are thoughtful. He can be quite good company at a dinner in Chinatown -- a part of Seattle that he knows very well.

Then of course there is history -- his sojourn in Fishtown back in the misty dawn of hippies days, when he lived his monk-life in a small cabin on the North Fork of the Skagit River.

But the problem with Charlie -- this is a recent development -- and why beat around the bush -- Charlie has become anti-Semitic. He doesn't yell or scream or say he hates Jews. No, not like that, much more quietly. He might say it's research or just following his curiosity to peer into various websites which preach the Holocaust denial and warn of the Zionist conspiracy.

Charlie has over 2,000 friends on Facebook -- a good place for him to promote his art. You can cruise his Facebook page and find links to all kind of websites. Just this morning, I found a link he had posted to a YouTube video about how the Jews had masterminded the opium trade in China at the end of the imperial age.

Why is that so important to Charlie? He wanted to investigate the behavior of Jewish merchants in the previous century who were doing something they shouldn't have been doing -- it being fairly easy to discover Jewish (i.e. human) transgressions against the common good.

But, Charlie, why are you so interested in Jewish behavior?

He has told me in person that he advocates a "genteel anti-Semitism" -- sort of a high-church Anglican snobbery, as if it were a harmless custom.

I don't think it's harmless. I think it's bad and wrong and nasty and a debasement of Charlie's own character.

He should stop doing this.

Here's another one -- Charlie just sent it to me yesterday, headlined "The Jewish Mafia and Their USA Bankers." How does Charlie find the time to do all this research?

This is nasty stuff. There is nothing good in it.

A lot of people know and like Charlie, including myself. We've been saying for years, "Oh Charlie, that's just the way he is." Why did we ever tolerate this?

I'm not in the habit of fixing someone's life, but here I make an exception. I want this to stop.

Charlie, give it up or be gone!


Onward.



--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

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Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

It's a Lover's Question

Does she love me, with all her heart?
Should I worry, when we're apart?
It's a lover's question, I'd like to know.

It's a lover's question. Clyde McPhatter sang these immortal lyrics. Of course you have doubts. Is love a sure thing? No.

La Donna e Mobile says the same thing. Are you sure she loves you? Maybe you shouldn't take her for granted. Pay attention, young man.

And, old man, it's not over, it's never over, you can still screw up, so keep on your toes.

The Weather. Strong rains in Santa Barbara, a huge blizzard bearing down on New England, and a rather large meteorite rushing by Planet Earth this weekend.

What can I do about this? I can plant more seeds. I have celery, cilantro and basil to get started in flats -- probably too soon for the basil, but I'll take a chance on that.

You Can't Eat the Label. In my last message I said to buy food if it tastes good and if it doesn't cost too much. Of course, you should read the label, and question the decisions of the Food and Drug Administration, and support your local farmer, and buy organic -- all that good stuff.

But you don't eat the label, you eat the food, and you need to trust your senses. Does it look good? Is the color all right? Does it smell tasty?

And the people at the store or the market ..... do you like them? Are they friendly? Are the clean? That's an unpleasant question ..... the world is full of germs and you can take precautions, but the best defense is a robust immune system and you keep up that defense by a limited exposure to pathogens. Seriously, you won't get through life being germ free -- you need to have a better attitude when you eat root beer Popsicles and Fritos, like, "This won't kill me. No. In fact, it will make me happy, and if I'm happy I will live longer and be more healthy."

Love is the Answer. Good food is all about love. Those quiet, stern farmers -- they grow so much food. Why do they work so hard to feed us? Because they love us.. You still have to pay for it -- the farmers need the money in order to keep on farming. But it's love that makes the harvest..

Food prepared and served with love will make you stronger and better-looking. And if you sit down at table with people you care about, you will dine well.

But if you eat in your car by yourself -- ugh! You could be eating the most purified organic toasty granola health bars, but if you gulp it down while you're stuck in traffic, it won't do you any good. Don't eat in your car, and don't buy food at the same place you buy gasoline. It smells bad. And remember, the reason they have the sign up in the bathroom that says "Employees must wash hands ...." -- is because they don't wash their hands.

Recipe -- this dish needs a name. I made this polenta dish last night based on what I found in the frig -- a hearty stew, good for a winter's night.

Take equal amounts of polenta, tofu, zucchini and baby portabella mushrooms. Cube the tofu, pat it dry on a towel, sprinkle with plenty of garlic powder and then add, more lightly, some lemon salt and tobasco or any other hot sauce. Cube the polenta into pieces a little bigger than the tofu. Similarly slice and dice the zucchini and mushrooms.

In a big pan, saute all four ingredients in a generous amount of olive oil. Add some soy sauce. Cook it for a while on a low heat. Then pour over the whole beautiful mess with a half a carton of Tomato and Roast Pepper soup from Trader Joe's -- let it simmer for a while. I needed to add a dash of water to keep it going. You can make it thinner or thicker, depending on taste.

It was delicious. It's the polenta that makes it so filling, which is what I wanted last night.

Happy Valentines .......

Buy the cookbook for only $15. That includes shipping. It's the Puget Sound Mail Cookbook, a love story with recipes. The story is simple. It's winter in Cambridge, Mass. A love affair ends and the man is broken-hearted, so he fixes nice meals for himself -- at least he has that pleasure. Time passes and the springtime comes and the sadness is gone --- that's the story in a nutshell, plus lots of good recipes here and there throughout the book.

For $15, which includes shipping, you can have this slim volume in a week or so. Go to my blog at Frog Hospital and hit the PayPal button. Or make out a check for Fred Owens and mail it to 35 W Main St, Suite B #391 Ventura CA 93001.

You will enjoy this book.


Puget Sound Mail Cookbook, a love story with recipes. Why is it called the Puget Sound Mail Cookbook when the story takes place in Cambridge, Massachusetts?

For only $15, which includes shipping.

--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

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Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

It's Still Winter in California

It's Still Winter in California. Yesterday it was spring in Santa Barbara. I pruned the apple tree and the peach tree, working in warm, sunny weather, taking my outer shirt off. I harvested two heads of broccoli. I planted seeds for beets. I weeded out around the sweet peas. I took the weed whacker and cut down tall grass on the hillside. Then I hauled up several bins of green debris -- up 2 flights of stairs -- up from the garden to the curbside for morning pick up....

I planted three milkweeds to attract the butterflies -- planted them around the small pond, plus I planted what I call a sweet pea bush underneath the cape myrtle and next to the cement pelican statue.

We compost most greens on the property -- saving the bigger sticks for kindling. But some of the harsher euphorbia leaves will take about 100 years to break down, so we let the city haul them away -- they get run through a high-powered grinder and then turned to mulch.

Meanwhile, my horticultural partner, known as Ms. Lovely, was pruning her roses, 4 and 5 canes per plant on the hybrid tea roses, and upwards of ten canes on the floribundas.

We pronounced sentence on a tired old rose with a big knobby base, but just two skinny stems. No future, she said, hasn't bloomed in two years. I took my sharp spade and dug up the old bush -- that's a part of life and it happens to all of us -- tossed it in the bin without ceremony. Might buy a new one to fill the space although she said maybe just leave it open and give the other roses more room -- room for the wind to blow and keep diseases and bugs away.

Afterward, she put on dormant spray, on the roses, on the apricot and apple trees, and on the grape vines.

That was yesterday. Today the clouds have returned and the rain should come tomorrow. Southern California might be the only place in the country with normal weather, but we have had just about the right amount of rain this winter, interspersed with warmer, sunnier days. In late January we had night-time frosts for about 5 to 7 days -- but not too harsh, didn't seem to damage the local citrus trees, and the experts say a good frost kills bugs and hardens the grape vines nicely. So we have had good weather up til now and who knows how long that will last.

Issues and Opinions. I am being recruited to take a stand against GM foods (genetically modified) but I decline the offer. I don't even care about organic anymore, or local. I have scattered all these fads and dismissed them -- for the time being. For now, here's what I eat -- if it tastes good and it doesn't cost too much, then I buy it and prepare it. I avoid take out food and prepared and packaged food -- but I'm not doing this because of someone's righteous program, I'm just doing it because food I make myself tastes better and it costs less money.

In my lifetime I have kept a small carbon footprint and been doing that for many years before I ever heard the term "carbon foot print." Just think "cheap" and you will have a small footprint too. Or you could buy a book that tells you how to do this, and then take a class, but pretty soon you're trusting the experts and I advise against that.

I'm the kind of expert you can trust, because I would just tell you to go home and figure it out yourself.

I do recommend 19th century novels, however. Try anything by Thomas Hardy, or Chas. Dickens. Good books will simultaneously ease and stimulate your mind -- laying the groundwork for making good decisions, and your good decisions will make our happy earth a better place for everyone.

Che Gelida Manina -- and never despair, beauty and goodness are always present


--


--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

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Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

Spring in California

"Spring in California" That was an old song by George Jones and Tammy Wynnette. Spring comes early to these green hills -- we like to walk out on the breakwater at the Santa Barbara Harbor, see the waves and pelicans facing one way, then turn around and see the green, beautiful hills in the background. Santa Barbara is a town that makes a living being good-looking. Such prosperity! The parks are clean and fresh and the flowers are beautiful.

Texas Governor Rick Perry is buying spots on local radio stations in California. He's touting the Texas advantage -- lower taxes, less regulation, and lower real estate prices. You all come to Texas, he invites us. Perry is welcome to make his pitch -- I lived and worked in Texas six years ago and it was all right, but I guess I just like it better here -- where it's more expensive to live and the taxes are too high and the regulations are excessive -- but you can go down the beach and not worry about all that nonsense.

Anyway, it's always good to be hearing from Governor Perry. I enjoyed it when he ran for the Presidency.

Predictions. This week, the nation is confronting two issues -- gun control and immigration reform. Here's what going to happen -- we have 11 million undocumented or illegal immigrants. The reform that will pass will allow them to stay and get right with the law. Hardly anyone is coming over from Mexico these days, not since the bust and the scarcity of jobs in our country, plus the Mexican economy has gone upwards.... But I hear that immigration from Asian countries is on the rise. Basically, the ones that are here will be staying and the ones that are coming in now will be less welcome. That's the reform. Not to many people will be sent home. Mainly everybody is staying where they are.

Which is exactly what will happen with our vast domestic weapon supply. Everybody who has a weapon will keep it, and those that don't care to register the ownership or sale of weapons will continue to do so. It just won't happen otherwise -- this is only my own observation. I realize that Pres. Obama and his allies have a lot of steam up on this issue and hope to get all guns registered and all ammunition clips limited to ten rounds -- but they will not succeed.

So, to sum it up, and to link these two issues -- the immigrants are staying here and so are the guns and we all can just learn to live with it.

And everybody gets to vote.

Marriage. I wrote about gun control and immigration reform because it was much easier than writing about social issues such as the feared or welcomed changes in our marriage laws. I am thoroughly confused about all this. I am also a responsible purveyor of news and commentary, and since I cannot provide any clarity, direction, or judgment on this question, I will say nothing.

Judgment. Good judgment is the only quality that the old have over the young. Younger people, say 25 or 35, are smarter, quicker, and stronger. They can be astonishing. They can also be astonishingly stupid, because they lack judgment.

Old people are slower, weaker, and working with decaying mental faculties, but they're judgment is superior. The have discernment and the ability to discriminate between a false path and a true path. A good horse from a bad horse, right from wrong. Take an experienced cop, for example. The most important quality any cop can have is good judgment. He needs courage of course, but even more he needs judgment -- that ability to come upon a situation and know the difference between a nuisance and a threat.. That's good judgment, and it tends to be found among older people.

Which is something I am sure of, which is why I wrote it.

Marriage and Judgment. If people don't get married and have children, then we won't have anything but old folks - a country with lots of good judgment but no energy or passion. Doesn't sound good to me.

Note. The title of the song is "Take Me." But the strongest phrase, toward the end of the song, is "and it would be just like spring in California as long as i knew you were mine."

Flowers blooming everywhere, surf pounding on the shore, fleecy clouds sliding by -- not bad at all.


--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

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Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
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John Kerry, Secretary of Ambiguity.

I like John Kerry as Secretary of State. His ambiguity over Viet Nam marked his character. He wanted to serve his country and yet, when he did, he found it was senseless. He fought and earned his medals, then threw them away. He could not resolve his inner conflict on the war. With far less effort, other people formed positions pro and con, but they did not find the truth.

The War in Viet Nam was maddening. You were damned if you fought it, and you were damned if you ducked the draft and stayed home. If you were a young man in those years, you were bound to lose. There was no path to honor. John McCain may have believed in the mission, but no one else did.

John Kerry, from his privileged family, could have avoided military service quite easily, but he joined up and saw what he saw, and came home conflicted. As such, he is a man after my own heart, and he might finish his career well by this last good service to his country as a diplomat.

Women in Combat. One things leads to another -- this is the law of social dynamics. Acceptance of same-sex marriage has led to the admission of women in combat. The broader trend is the battle against gender distinctions. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is not at issue here, but we ask a related question -- "What happens next?"

Target. Three exclusively male institutions remain in this country, standing as pillars of patriarchy. The Boy Scouts of America are reserved for male leadership and male membership as well as a prohibition of homosexuality. College and NFL football teams are exclusively male. The third and biggest pillar is the Roman Catholic Church with its all-male priesthood and hierarchy.

Prediction. The Boy Scouts of America is the smallest and weakest of these all-male citadels. Sex abuse law-suits will impoverish them. Their prohibition against homosexuality will banish them from most meeting places. They're going down, to put it bluntly, to be resurrected when they decide to invite women and girls to join the troop -- women as Scoutmasters, girls as scouts, and gay men and women as leaders. It will simply become the all-inclusive Scouts of America and go on from there.

As for football, the sheer bulk and muscularity of college and pro players will prevent females from joining the team -- but a campaign of awareness about head injuries will lead to changes and new rules. Hard-hitting will be discouraged. Women will qualify as referees and coaches, if not players, and an 11th player position will be created -- a no-tackle position, suitable for women and even disabled players. Even now, it is conceivable that a woman might qualify as a punter or field goal kicker........But, one way or the other, football is not going to about brawn, muscle, and gladiator combat any longer. They will learn to play nice and the "hits" will become ceremonial and symbolic.

Finally, the gender equality wave will crash against that bastion of faith, the Roman Catholic Church and it's all-male priesthood. This is where feminist leaders will encounter serious resistance. The Church is global in reach and vastly wealthy. Billions of dollars in pedophilia court settlements have not threatened the church's foundation. Traditional forces will rally around the Church and make a last stand. I don't expect a significant change here in my lifetime.

Well, that's the forecast. There's been quite a debate over same-sex marriage, but having gone over that hump, the admission of women in combat seemed the next obvious thing. So, not to discuss the right or wrong of these changes, but to examine the social dynamics -- what happens next? These are my predictions. What do you predict?


--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

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Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
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--

A Message for Charlie Krafft

A Message for Charlie Krafft

Charlie Krafft is a well-known and well-liked Seattle artist with a penchant for notoriety. Charlie's appearance is courtly and his manners are thoughtful. He can be quite good company at a dinner in Chinatown -- a part of Seattle that he knows very well.

Then of course there is history -- his sojourn in Fishtown back in the misty dawn of hippies days, when he lived his monk-life in a small cabin on the North Fork of the Skagit River.

But the problem with Charlie -- this is a recent development -- and why beat around the bush -- Charlie has become anti-Semitic. He doesn't yell or scream or say he hates Jews. No, not like that, much more quietly. He might say it's research or just following his curiosity to peer into various websites which preach the Holocaust denial and warn of the Zionist conspiracy.

Charlie has over 2,000 friends on Facebook -- a good place for him to promote his art. You can cruise his Facebook page and find links to all kind of websites. Just this morning, I found a link he had posted to a YouTube video about how the Jews had masterminded the opium trade in China at the end of the imperial age.

Why is that so important to Charlie? He wanted to investigate the behavior of Jewish merchants in the previous century who were doing something they shouldn't have been doing -- it being fairly easy to discover Jewish (i.e. human) transgressions against the common good.

But, Charlie, why are you so interested in Jewish behavior?

He has told me in person that he advocates a "genteel anti-Semitism" -- sort of a high-church Anglican snobbery, as if it were a harmless custom.

I don't think it's harmless. I think it's bad and wrong and nasty and a debasement of Charlie's own character.

He should stop doing this.

Here's another one -- Charlie just sent it to me yesterday, headlined "The Jewish Mafia and Their USA Bankers." How does Charlie find the time to do all this research?

This is nasty stuff. There is nothing good in it.

A lot of people know and like Charlie, including myself. We've been saying for years, "Oh Charlie, that's just the way he is." Why did we ever tolerate this?

I'm not in the habit of fixing someone's life, but here I make an exception. I want this to stop.

Charlie, give it up or be gone!


--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

Frida Kahlo.

By chance, I was in New York City in November of 1990 and I
visited the Metropolitan Musuem of Art to see an exhibit of Frida Kahlo's
original paintings. Few people in this country had ever heard of her, but
she made a splash in the world of art and the world of Hispanic culture,
becoming a feminine icon, her image silk-screened on t-shirts and coffee
mugs from Seattle to Tierra del Fuego, to become as over-exposed as she had
once been hidden......There's some politics in all of this, and I will stay
one hundred miles away from that.


Instead, I am composing a work of the imagination on Facebook starring
Frida Kahlo, the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, director John Huston,
Moses, King Solomon, Queen Nefertiti, Pope Pius XII, Modjadji -- the Rain
Queen of South Africa, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. And others. I am
thinking I will need a comic character, so that will be Albert Brooks
.

The work is exploratory but it has three unquestionable premises -- that
America is the New World, that Africa is where the human race began, and
that the Matopos Hills in Zimbabwe are the site of King Solomon's Mine.

The work bears a distinct resemblance to my previous effort, the Story of
Jimmy & Hitch, re-titled the Fishtown Blues, which I wrote last summer.
That work placed real and historical people in a fictional setting, with
characters such as pharmacist and former Mayor Fred Martin, plus
quasi-fictional characters such as Aurora Jellybean. The story was tightly
focused on a journey of one day's duration in July, 1982, when Jimmy
Kuipers woke up from a night's drinking and headed into town to buy more
beer at the Frog Hospital. Jimmy hooked up with his pal Hitch and they had
adventures and went out to Fishtown to confront the face of evil and the
death or disappearance of a woman they knew only as Lisa. It was a good
story, and those who have read it asked me to write



--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

Turn the Lights Off

Turn the Christmas lights off a for a few days. It's too sad. Christmas is wonderful -- but this year it's not so wonderful.

Turn the lights off for a few days.

The flags are at half-staff but that isn't enough. Half-staff is for military heroes and national leaders, but it doesn't serve at this time.

In America we fix problems. It's the nature of our culture. If there's a problem, then we can find a way to fix it. We are not like some other cultures that seem to accept fate. So we are going to fix this problem -- but not this week. No fixing. No solutions. Not this week.

Turn the lights off for a few days.

This part of the Christmas story is often overlooked, but we might read it this year. There's no historical evidence that it actually happened, but our knowledge of tyrants and human depravity says that it's true.

The Massacre of the Innocents is at Matthew 2:16–18

When [the Magi] had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Get up, he said, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."[5] When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.

After a few days, turn the Christmas lights on again. And tell a story about the sun and the moon. How the sun goes down every day and it becomes night, but we are not afraid, because the sun always comes back in the morning. And the moon goes to hide away every month, but it always comes back in a few days to brighten up the night.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours,

--

Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

Legendary Actor Robert De Niro

While a typhoon raged in the Philippines and civil war raged in Syria, peace dwelt in Santa Barbara. Robert De Niro was in town to receive accolades from the Santa Barbara Film Festival. The headline in the Santa Barbara News-Press read "Film Festival honors Robert De Niro" and referred to De Niro as a "Legendary Actor."

De Niro is ..... legendary .... but he doesn't take this too seriously. He's a guy from New York who has had some good roles and some good luck. He makes a living. A favorite film is The Bronx Tale where De Niro plays the role of a city bus driver, a day-in and day-out job that makes him a hero to his family. This is the kind of guy -- that bus driver -- whom De Niro honors.

But the Film Festival picked De Niro for the mascot this year because once you get to the award level, they just keep picking you, giving you honorary degrees, all that.

What about five hundred other actors in Hollywood who are pretty good at their work, and when do they get an award? What about a man I know in Altadena -- Allan Wasserman is an actor, he makes a living. He's a familiar face on some TV shows, he also does theater. He keeps working and he's pretty good. He has a dog named Murray and a lovely wife. This friend of mine also comes from New York, like De Niro -- and I imagine these two gentlemen respect each other.......Robert De Niro and my legendary friend from Altadena..... who should also get an award.

Philippines Typhoon Takes Over 600 Lives and Damages Banana Crop

Aside from the still-climbing death toll on the southern island of Mindanao, the storm destroyed 34,000 acres of bananas, or 18 percent of the total crop. This crop serves as export income, and the loss will be felt deeply -- among other losses.

But just to point out that we live in a global culture and economy -- we eat bananas from the Philippines, and the price might go up a little bit because of the crop loss.

Which brings us to the ---

Kyoto Protocols. This is a treaty designed to reduce carbon emissions by the major economic powers. Less developed economies are not expected to reduce their emissions as much or at all --- that would make it like progressive taxation.

Only how do you account for the carbon life-cycle of a product? Our blessed land is a major exporter of wheat to Egypt.

We manufacture tractors and farm equipment, we use chemicals from agri-factories, and much fuel to grow the crops -- for the benefit of the people of Egypt. So who pays the carbon tax, the producer or the consumer?

Egypt is in turmoil. The military may soon intervene to restore order. Egypt receives over $1 billion in direct military aid from the US. We build tanks and jet planes and then "loan" the money to Egypt to buy the stuff. So who pays the carbon tax on the wheat and the military equipment?

And we pay a smaller amount to the Palestinian West Bank faction known as Fatah -- it helps to keep them moderate.

And quite a bit more to Israel.

How they gonna have a war without us? -- they would have to form a camel calvary and use swords.

But what about Rwanda? -- they didn't need chemical weapons or jet fighters from America, they slaughtered upwards of 500,000 of their fellow Rwandans, and they did it one corpse at a time, using machetes. (who sold them the machetes?)

The civil war rages in Syria and the typhoon rages in the Philippines. We say one is a natural disaster and the other is a man-made disaster. What is the difference?

A nice gift for Christmas, Frog Hospital, the book at Amazon.com where you can read a few pages -- It's a lasting value. You could read it today or five years from now -- durable words that won't wear out.

It's not a funny book. It's a serious book with a few jokes in it. Frog Hospital has three fire stories.

-- the trailer fire outside of Floresville, Texas, where a mother and two children died in the night

-- a memory of the Our Lady of Angels fire in Chicago in the 1950s when over 80 school children burned to death

-- a house fire in La Vernia, Texas, which was almost funny if it wasn't tragic.

The La Vernia woman was so mad at her husband that she poured gasoline all over the double wide mobile home and lit it afire, then stepped outside and called the sheriff to report her action. The house was left in ruins and she was arrested for arson. Some folks wondered if it was a crime to burn your own house down, but the sheriff thought it was a crime. Apparently the woman's husband also thought so, because he would not post her bail.

She stayed in the county jail. I didn't find out where the husband was sleeping.

That's the book. You see a photo on the cover of the author standing in a boat with Robert Sund's Fishtown shack in the background.
That's where the book begins, that's the attitude of the book, which is why it got on the cover -- but most of the book takes place in wide spaces from California to Ohio to New England, to St. Louis, and the year of drought in South Texas --- it's all about America.

You can buy it from Amazon for $14.95 -- and please let me know if you do that.

Or -- much better -- you can buy it from me directly and I will sign it...... Buy it from me by hitting the Pay Pal button on the Frog Hospital blog for $25 and then send me your mailing address.

Or -- takes longer -- send a check to 35 West Main Street, Suite B, #391, Ventura, CA 93001

We're approaching the goal of selling 1,000 copies. That's the magic number. At that point the publisher recoups his investment and we get to publish another book.

And that's the reward for writing books -- if it goes well, you get to write another one.

So far, it's been a pleasure. I want to finish by saluting two well-known authors.

Philip Roth, at age 79, has announced a retirement from writing fiction. I have just begun to enjoy his novels, and I am very glad he wrote them. He would know better than others if he is tapped out ---- well, let's remember Ted Williams hit a home run in his last at-bat and then said good-bye.

Elmore Leonard, at age 87, is still writing crime novels. He's a favorite to me.

So you give it up, or you keep going.

In the meantime, most of my words are on FACEBOOK these days. You should friend me at "Fred Owens" Nobody in America or around the earth composes more interesting and varied posts. Honestly, this writer is the premier FB poster of all time. That's what you will find out.











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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
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Person, Partner and Parent -- new rules for marriage

FROG HOSPITAL -- Nov. 9, 2012

By Fred Owens

This is really boring stuff. It's like going back to school or reading the manual -- but it can't be helped......I need to get back to writing the farm news really soon.

Person, Partner and Parent -- new rules for marriage.

I will explain the new rules for marriage, which can be confusing, so I am using an instructional format. Ready?

The key words are Person, Partner, and Parent. The operative verb is Choose.

And this is how it works:

A person may choose a partner and may become a parent. Simple. Any person may choose any other person to be a partner and they may or may not choose to become parents.

Got it?

Okay, but there's an important variation. A person may choose to become a parent without choosing a partner -- this is called being a single parent.

Those are the basics. Notice that no gender usage is necessary in this format. Terms like husband, wife, mother and father may still be used but in a subordinate sense.

The wedding ceremony itself is a different matter. Curiously, the new rule is the same as the old rule -- women are very interested in weddings, all the details and customs and hoo-ha. Men, by a large, except for a few floral arrangers, only want to show up on time and wear a suit. The archaic terms bride and groom have not been supplanted, often causing confusion -- two brides? two grooms? Be assured this matter is under linguistic reform, but for now we carry on.

Now, let us bring up a difficult subject -- proponents of traditional marriage object to the new rules on moral and religious grounds, which is a topic for another day. I only want to make one point, but it is an important point -- that people who resist new marriage customs are often reacting from a great deal of confusion rather than moral objection. Consider that 15 or 20 years ago everybody knew what a marriage was and certain assumptions could be made. If a man was getting married, we assumed he was getting married to a woman.

Assumptions are important and make life comfortable -- again, I am discussing manners, not the right or wrong. All the old assumptions have been tossed into the air and some people are just getting cranky about it. That confusion and crankiness should be respected for what it is.

For further study. Old rules for marriage can be seen on film, in two movies. Father of the Bride with Spencer Tracy in 1950, and the 1991 remake with Steve Martin. New movies showing the new rules are coming your way soon.

Women in Journalism. I remember years ago when women were hesitant and even demure, when I had an editor's job and a female secretary who typed my letters. But I wanted things to change and I talked with the women. I encouraged them, helped them with confidence, and more than once I said "Well, you can write a story as good as any man in this office."

"I can?" -- she said shyly, and then, "Yeah, maybe I can."

And then she was coming out of the big editor's office, in tears, after getting dressed down by the boss and I told her "that old bastard is just a bag of hot air, don't let it bother you" and I told her "You could be the editor yourself some day, I mean why not, you're smart, you work hard -- don't sell yourself short."

Well, I moved on and eventually, after much struggle, she did become the editor and she was good at it, and then after a few years behind the desk she began to believe she got there all by herself. And the Publisher was happy after he got over his initial resistance to female staff -- "Hey, let's face it, they work harder and for less money, and I need to stay up with the times."

And the women in journalism didn't need pep talks anymore -- they were loud, brash, competitive spitfires -- get out of the way or get run over, because it's a tough business.

Anyhow, that's how things have changed over the years -- technological changes and the move from print to Internet have meant fewer jobs for everyone which is another topic.

But I'm thinking back to that moment in 1972 when I began talking to my secretary-- I wish I had kept my mouth shut.


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Fred Owens
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My blog is Fred Owens

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Looking for Work

I was looking for work yesterday, and I will continue looking for work today. Otherwise, there's not much going on around here.... The weather in Santa Barbara -- a high of 70 today -- is normal for November, and a chance of rain tomorrow, which is just in the nick of time -- they had a small fire in the foothills above Montecito yesterday. I could see a towering column of smoke from the freeway -- but the smoke was going straight up and that meant no wind, giving the fire-fighters a break --- they put it out quickly.

A Song for America. A song of America young, brown and female, where the women are strong and the men are kind, where English is one of many languages ..... where Eurocentric pride and patriarchal prejudice have been vanquished, and high fructose corn syrup has been banned ....

I am being ironic -- I can just make this stuff up -- left wing pap. Be careful what you believe. And don't expect too much from our leaders. I cast my vote for Barack Obama last week, so I'll have to own him now.

The Jersey Shore. It will be interesting to watch the recovery on the Jersey Shore -- this is a strong Democratic area -- but I don't think FEMA will pull through for them. Let's see how long it takes them to learn that they will have to do it themselves.

My bet is that they will soon take matters into their own hands.

A Farewell for Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney reminds me of some successful businessmen that I know -- they are good-hearted men but with poor social skills. Romney would never have been elected Governor of Massachusetts unless he was a moderate conservative. But he pandered too much to the Tea Party in order to get the nomination and then swerved back to the center in order to win the election -- too transparently phony.

Organic Airheads Defeated in California. Prop. 37 would have required labeling of GMO foods. Hey, don't get me wrong. I work in this field --- literally in the field on more than one organic farm, and we grow some mighty nutritious vegetables. I support this growing industry -- but, to be honest, we have some really flaky people on board, and they put their muscle behind Prop 37. It was just not a good idea. Hate to say it, but it was too complicated and expensive...... Back to the drawing board.

Democrats acquire super majority in California. Dianne Feinstein declared Senator for Life........It's wonderful to be living in a one-party state.

Let's finish with this good idea.

National Service Draft. Alan Archibald send this in from North Carolina. He writes:

I am increasingly committed to promoting two years' obligatory national service -- for everyone, no exceptions.
As I see it, young women and young men would be able to choose between service in "The War Corps" or a greatly-expanded "Peace Corps." http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/07/proposal-for-two-years-of-obligatory.html


Have a great day, hope we get rain California, and a mild winter back East.

God bless America.
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Subscriptions. We need your help to continue publishing stories like this. Please go to the Frog Hospital blog and hit the PayPal button with your $25 donation. Or write a check for $25 made out to Fred Owens and mail it to 35 West Main St., Suite B #391, Ventura CA 93001.

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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

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Fred Owens
7922 Santa Ana Rd
Ventura CA 93001

Voter Fraud in Ohio

The History of Voting Fraud. Voting, as we know it, began in Athens, Greece, during the classical age, commencing about 500 C.E. The procedure was to drop a small stone into a jar. The voters (adult married males who had served time in the military) would line up and, one by one, place either a white stone or a black stone into a jar to signify their vote. This first election was pure and direct democracy.

Voter fraud began on the second election. Some voters secreted two or more white stones within the fold of their tunics, having accepted gold drachmas from the candidate's bag man. When the bribed voters reached the jar, they slipped in the extra stones and thereby ensured a victory for their man.

Lesson: Voter fraud was not invented here, it's been going on for centuries.

Voter Fraud in Covington, Tennessee. Your favorite Aunt Denise, a lifelong Presbyterian Sunday School teacher, a wonderful cook, devoted wife, and loving mother, has also been a precinct worker for the past forty years in this small town of less than 5,000 people.
Everyone knows and trusts Aunt Denise. She has never been caught stealing votes, but watch her hand bag -- the copious one you see placed near to her at the registration desk -- somehow "damaged" ballots seem to end up in her hand bag, and somehow she kind of forgets to turn them in at the end of the day. Nothing wholesale, maybe 10 or 20 ballots, but sometimes that makes a difference in a tight race for sheriff.

Lesson: There is no typical vote stealer, it could a be your Aunt Denise.

Counting Votes in Chicago. In April, 1963, I was a junior in the Honors class at Loyola Academy, a Jesuit school for boys in Chicago. Mayor Dailey, the Mayor Dailey, not his son, was up for re-election that year. The general election didn't count because there was no serious Republican opposition, so what mattered was the Democratic primary.

Someone from Dailey's campaign team contacted the Principal of my high school and and said they needed to hire 15-20 students to help count votes on election night. The students in the Honors class were chosen -- some 15 of us -- we took the subway down to City Hall and got in place on the third floor when the polls closed. It was a fabulous experience, cop cars kept pouring in from all over town, each car carrying locked canvas bags stuffed with ballots from outlying precincts.

We carried these locked canvas bags over to huge tables, poured out the contents, and did an initial rough sort. From there we carried bundles to an enormous room, filled with at least a hundred women, each one at her own table with an adding machine, and those women did the actual counting.

We worked from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. in the morning. And then we took the subway home and here's the really cool part -- we got paid $40 each -- as temporary employees of the registrars office. Not only that, we got the next day off of school.

So let's add that up -- a night of fun work in downtown Chicago, getting paid, and getting the next day off of school. All perfectly legal, and a decent reward for being a Honors student. It's not voter fraud, it's just smart politics -- because we all loved the Mayor after that.

Lesson: Voter fraud is no more common in Chicago than elsewhere.

Voter Fraud in Ohio. In 2004, the Ohio Secretary of State was Republican Kenneth Blackwell. He was accused of masterminding every conceivable fraudulent scheme. I can't testify for that, but I am sure of one thing he did that cost the Democrats a few thousand votes. Blackwell sort of mal-distributed the voting machines. If you lived in the suburbs with a reliable Republican majority, then your polling place was generously supplied with machines, and you didn't have to wait in line to vote. Park your car, pick up your ballot, mark your vote, and on your way.

But on election day in November of 2004, there was a cold, hard rain falling all day, and if you lived in Franklinton, one of the inner city neighborhoods, then you had to wait in line, in the rain, clutching for your raincoat and umbrella, for more than an one hour, even two hours. I was there. I saw this. And that was because Blackwell had somehow forgotten to get enough voting machines down to Franklinton. Other campaign staff reported long lines all over downtown Columbus in Democratic precincts.

So that was fraud on Blackwell's part. Was it technically illegal? I couldn't say. But I know it was wrong. Were the Democrats, then or now, involved in any fraudulent activities? Probably. And can the Republicans point their finger at the Democrats? Hell no.

Conclusion. Most people are honest, but there are a few crooks in every crowd.


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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
7922 Santa Ana Rd
Ventura CA 93001

Autumn Leaves in Ohio

The links are missing on this, but I can send you the original email version with all the links. Email me at froghospital911@gmail.com

The election countdown begins and the days are becoming tense. Don't forget the beauty of our great land. It's what we all care about.

Fall colors. Brandywine Falls in northeast Ohio, with beautiful foliage. The last two weeks of October are the happiest time of the year, especially this election season. For the next two weeks everybody believes they can win, Look for huge campaign rallies on crisp October evenings with thousands of happy, cheering people.

Polls in Ohio --- Every poll taker can make their candidate look good. This one from the conservative National Review takes a tie vote and spins it into a forecast of victory for Romney -- nice try! I would sooner consult astrologers.

Bruce Springsteen from the Plain Dealer. The Plain Dealer, in Cleveland, is Ohio's largest daily newspaper. This story tells of the Boss barnstorming Ohio for Obama. It's a free show and the crowds will be huge. The Romney campaign does not have that kind of fire power -- but they will trot out Condoleeza Rice. She can give a good speech at least.

Question. If you were a Republican and you liked Bruce Springsteen and you could hear him perform for FREE at an Obama rally, would you go?

Defiance from the Washington Post. Defiance is a small city southeast of Toledo and fairly close to Detroit. General Motors is and always has been the main employer in Defiance. And the factories are back to work -- so you would think that Defiance is going for Obama. Nope. You need to read the story to find out why this factory town might go for Romney. Romney grew up in Michigan, near by, and his Dad ran a car company, American Motors, so he is no stranger to this industry.

Xenia, Ohio In April of 1974, 34 people were killed by a tornado in Xenia, Ohio. Xenia, a small city near Dayton, and they surely have not forgotten this tragedy. More than 300 people were killed in neighboring states by a multitude of violent storms that same day.

I was in Charlottesville, Virginia, in Sept. of 1974, hitchhiking. We were picked up -- me and Gabriel and Selma, all three of us -- by some hippies in a school bus, going to Yellow Springs, Ohio, the home of Antioch College, and very near to Xenia. We did drive through Xenia at that time and saw the wreckage -- this was six months after the storm.

We stayed in Yellow Springs for a few days, then got on a freight train for Missouri, and then hitched a ride to Oklahoma and on to southern California --- but I had forgotten all about this -- it seems that I have been to Ohio more times than I can remember.

The Price of Gas in Ohio. The average price for a gallon of regular gas in the Ohio was $3.37 in last week's survey from the AAA.

Gas in California is almost a dollar higher than Ohio.

Toledo. Why is Toledo called Toledo? After the city in Spain? A cursory search on the Internet yields no answer. So I reach back in the memory bank -- yes, Rick Hayward, a college classmate of mine, he was from Toledo, and I have his email address -- so I just sent him a quick note. But will he reply? Rick and I attended St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto. Rick married his college sweetheart and continued to work and live in Toronto -- I haven't heard from him lately, but he has been a good friend..... And he knows all about Toledo.

Toledo native Rick Hayward responded quickly. Yes, Toledo, Ohio is named after Toledo, Spain, but he does not know why.

Contemplating Cleveland. The Greyhound Bus Station in Cleveland was built in 1948 -- it's a classic. The bus station is downtown and right near Lake Erie. In 1996 I was living in Boston. That summer I bought a round-trip bus ticket to Seattle -- because I wanted to see the country. It took three days and three nights -- I loved the landscape, this big and beautiful country -- so I enjoyed the view mile after mile.
But the people on the bus -- eeeeehw! It was a homeless shelter on wheels. I will never take the bus again.

I brought a paperback edition of The Brothers Karamazov to read on my cross-country trip. It was a wonderful book -- 700 pages of sustained intensity like only the Russians can do. And fittingly, it was right to read it on a continental journey because Russian novels are vast indeed.

Anyway, we stopped in Cleveland for about an hour. I ate lunch in the terminal and walked a few blocks around the city. Cleveland is not so easy to describe. It is not pretty like Cincinnati. It is not awesome like Chicago. Cleveland is like a lot of places you've seen, only more so.

The New World. The best thing about Cleveland -- this wonderful music. The New World Symphony, composed by Anton Dvorak, and performed by the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by George Szell in 1960.

So, listen that sublime music, and be grateful that we all have a vote in this new world.


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Subscriptions. We need your help to continue publishing stories like this. Please go to the Frog Hospital blog and hit the PayPal button with your $25 donation. Or write a check for $25 made out to Fred Owens and mail it to 35 West Main St., Suite B #391, Ventura CA 93001.

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The Rise of Franklinton, Ohio

This is really stupid. Nobody cares about Franklinton. Ten thousand journalists are swarming over Ohio in search of a juicy Obama story, but nobody ever goes to Franklinton. It's the oldest neighborhood in Columbus, by the banks of the Scioto River, and it had been prone to flooding.

I was there in October of 2004, when I worked for the John Kerry campaign. Back then Franklinton was known as The Bottoms, a very old inner-city neighborhood with the stench of squalor like a Charles Dickens novel. The Kerry campaign couldn't get anybody to work The Bottoms, so of course they sent me. "This way we can get rid of Owens," they whispered.

I walked those streets for six weeks. I was often nervous -- junked cars, boarded up houses -- but I met some nice people too. They said "The politicians ignore us. The city won't come and fix the streets. The people on the north side of town have a much nicer library, so why should we bother to vote?"

I refuted that argument. "If you don't vote, you don't count. The politicians know you don't vote, so they don't care."

But this is a stupid story. Franklinton isn't cool, although, eight years later, it still matters to me, and I even wish I was there for the campaign -- anyway, I'll pass on my notes, rather than write an actual story.

Words. "The working man" or "the common man" -- of course we would never use that kind of language, although we might secretly indulge ourselves by watching a black and white Gary Cooper movie from the 1940s.

The PC terms are "common people" and "working families."

"Power couples" -- He's an architect, she's a management consultant. They live in the suburbs and increasingly they vote Democratic. Then we have an equal or larger number of powerless couples. She works full-time at Wal-Mart. He works part-time at JiffyLube. If this powerless couple is white, they will probably vote Republican. If they are black, it's a guaranteed vote for Obama. If this couple is Hispanic, it will probably go D, but maybe not.

The Obamas and the Romneys are power couples -- they have that famous "choice" as to whether she does or does not have a job. Powerless couples have choices too, between Taco Bell and Burger King.

There are two kinds of people, the one percent and the middle class -- at least to hear Romney and Obama say it. They must have said "middle class" a hundred times in the debate on Tuesday. So what do you call people who are not one-percenters or middle class?

The power couples and the powerless couples will both strongly proclaim themselves as middle class -- but they do not know each other, they have so little in common.

Names. I challenged myself to quickly name all Big Ten schools from memory. Before reading any further, see if you can do the same. The correct answer is, going west to east -- Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Northwestern, Indiana, Purdue, Michigan State, Michigan, Ohio State. New teams added to the Big Ten do NOT count.

Ohio is an Iroquois name meaning Great River. It was admitted to the Union in 1803. Ohio is the most beautiful state name. Eleven million people live there, with three great cities, all beginning with the letter C -- Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus, plus generous farmland, pleasant forests, and meandering rivers. The airplane was invented in Ohio -- because Ohioans are innovative, energetic, and persevering.

Real Estate. I interviewed Rick Brunton, a Franklinton real estate agent -- houses are incredibly cheap I noticed, Detroit prices -- and I asked "What is the reason that houses are so cheap?" Because it's a dead-end neighborhood basically, he said, using much nicer language -- but a good bargain if you can afford to wait a few years.

This house on 266 South Cypress Avenue is a really good deal. A small one-bedroom with a full basement, priced at $22,000 -- but with an expansive front yard, ideal for urban garden and homesteading. No garage. But only $22,000 ! !

Spirit. I talked with Brian Hamilton, who answered the phone at the parish office of Holy Family Catholic Church on Broad Street in the heart of Franklinton. He declined to be interviewed, but from the parish bulletin I saw that they had a very large soup kitchen program going on about one-block from the church -- that's good news and bad news -- good that so many people are being fed, bad because so many people need to be fed.

Holy Family offers Sunday and weekly Masses in the Tridentine rite -- that is, in Latin, with the priest facing the altar instead of facing the people. This indicates that Holy Family is a fairly conservative parish.

Politics. I interviewed Joe Garrity, legislative aide to State Rep Michael Stinziano of the 25th district which includes Franklinton. He said Franklinton is an improving neighborhood -- in other words, the yuppies are coming. He could not discuss Stinziano's re-election campaign because I called him at the office and he was on government time. He said if I called him after 5 p.m. on his cell phone, then he could talk about the campaign.

Franklinton is low income -- not middle class and not one-percent. It is 60-70 percent white, 30 percent black, and 10 per-cent you name it. Franklinton reliably votes Democratic but has a history of very low turnout -- signs of despair and cynicism.

The Future. Eight years ago, they called it the Bottoms, but now they call it Franklinton, and there is evidence of civic improvement -- clear signs of yuppy occupation efforts such as the Franklinton Cycleworks and what else? A community garden, Franklinton Gardens.

Nobody cares about Ohio. After the election the media people all leave town in a big hurry and it will be November and the weather gets colder and the trees are bare, and there's only one thing to look forward to -- something that matters very much to the people of Ohio -- but I won't tell you what that is, not yet.

These are my notes. I intend to follow the election campaign as it plays out in Franklinton.

Also it's time for a baseball story. I wrote this in 1992, with an update in 2004. The first part is about the game, the second part is about the friends who sat in the bleachers together and had dinner after -- it is not too sentimental. Some people with no interest in baseball have told me they like it.

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“God Must Hate Me”



It seems a long time ago, but there is no time in baseball, and there are no new stories.



In 1986, the Boston Red Sox lost the World Series to the New York Mets. In the dramatic sixth game, the Red Sox were one out away from becoming world champion, but they choked, and blew the game. It was the most incredible choke in sports history. I almost died.



I didn’t die, but my whole life changed after that game. I mean, it’s only a game, but I really got wrapped up in it.



In 1992, when this story took place, the memory of 1986 was raw and the pain was still real. I was still a Red Sox fan, but I could barely stand the torture of it.



In 2004, the Red Sox finally won the World Series, but I no longer cared -- I had moved on.



BOSTON, MASS., 1992. Pete Rose is not a part of this story, but that doesn’t matter, because I have to say this: I always hated Pete Rose, right from the beginning back in the early seventies. I used to watch the World Series, and when they showed him on third base I would start screaming and gnashing my teeth. I always hated him. When he got caught for gambling the whole world of sports condemned his moral depravity. But that didn’t matter to me. You don’t hate someone for a reason, you just do.............So let me start with the story.

It was July 30, an overcast day and so not too hot, when this gang of underemployed lawyers, real estate developers and civil servants came up from New York on the shuttle to watch the Red Sox play the Texas Rangers. They were out for a good time. Some of the guys made phone calls between innings but that was just for effect and out of habit --

“Anything going on at the office?”

“No, nothing going on here.”

“Fine, well, I’ll get back to you later.”

I know Jim Gardella really well. Jim and his cadre of cronies got ousted in a political coup last year when Mayor Dinkins took over the city government. He still occupies his office at Brooklyn City Hall, but he fills his melancholy days doing crossword puzzles and waiting for the phone to ring. It never does. He eats lunch in empty restaurants. “Where did everybody go?” he says to the maitre’d, who smiles back at him politely.

But at least he has time for baseball. Jim told me that the group was coming up to Boston for the game, and he mailed me a ticket so I could meet him at the Park. We had seats in the centerfield bleachers. It was an afternoon game on a Tuesday, and the house was packed --children, idlers, the unemployed, and the usual riffraff.

The Red Sox were a disaster in July, they were in fourth place, nine games behind Toronto. I was very pessimistic.

I hated Jack Clark, he was the new Designated Hitter. He had 89 strikeouts so far this year. The pitcher threw the ball -- I looked, Jack Clark looked -- only I couldn’t swing because I didn’t have a bat. But I thought, reasonably enough, that since Jack Clark did have a bat, his job required more than mere observation. The bum! I wanted to take his gold chain and choke him.

I sat next to Jim at the game and he introduced me to his friends. Shelley, the lawyer, had arranged to buy the tickets, so everybody was giving him a hard time about being in the bleachers. They said, “Next year let’s make it a rule that we get seats in the same city that they’re playing the game in.”

But the women in the group liked the bleacher seats because it gave them a view of nine sets of powerful athletic buns. On a serious note, the bleacher seats are good because it’s like being on the field, being a part of the defense. It gives a wide view of the whole field, not the details, but the sweep of the play. And it gives the pleasure of being a common man, no better or worse than his fellows. Privilege is exhilarating, but the humbler seats can be more relaxing.

Ed Burke came in during the third inning. He said the seats were lousy but so were the Red Sox and they weren’t worth more than $6 to see anyway. Ed’s a funny guy -- he was wearing a white cap, and he had a gum massager sticking out of his shirt pocket. Ed’s a State Senator; he’s been representing Framingham for twenty years. Then he did his political thing, updating his file by asking Jim and me about our families, children, schools, wives, etc. He left a few innings later. Jim asked me how come Ed doesn’t have any clout? How come he couldn’t get us better seats?

The Red Sox won the game 11 to 6. They sent 14 batters to the plate in the third inning and scored 10 runs. Six of those runs were from the hot bat of Carlos Quintana, my favorite player. He got a grand slam for four runs, and a double for two. That’s my man. Carlos is a different kind of guy than Jack Clark. The proper psychology with a guy like Clark is to heap abuse on him when he’s playing badly. He likes the attention and it gets him mad. Eventually he will take out his aggression on the ball and hit it over the fence, which happened the very next day.

But the “Q” is a gentler soul, a man who responds better to approval and kindness. Later in the season, he began to play badly because he had been treated badly by Joe Morgan, the Red Sox manager. Carlos’ feelings were hurt. He had been playing first base well and hitting over .300 when Mo Vaughan got called up from Pawtucket. Mo was the new hero that everybody was excited about. They made T-shirts about him, they splashed him all over the sports page. He was black and would be a credit to his race in Boston. (They hadn’t advanced much further than this in the Old Towne.)

Morgan put Vaughan on first base and sent Quintana to right field. Quintana immediately went into a hitting slump and made careless errors in the field. It was Morgan’s mistake, not mine.

“God Must Hate Me”

Before leaving the game and joining the New York gang for dinner, we need to talk about Oil Can Boyd. He was pitching for the Rangers. You know a lot of these guys up from New York are Mets fans -- may they all burn in hell. Mets fans are the worst people in the world. They have no class whatever.

You remember 1986 as well as I do, when Oil Can was pitching for the Red Sox and they lost the Series to the Mets. You remember where you were that day like you remember Kennedy’s assassination.

The Can is one of the games truly existential players, a man with a mind as well as a heart, a human being of tragic proportions. He’s the “Natural”, the one they wrote the book about.

Michael Madden, Boston Globe reporter, wrote about Boyd’s loss to the Sox on the day we were there in the bleachers:

Other men might have lied and said it was just another day. Just another game. Other men might have tried to put the best face, the phony face, on a bad situation gone worse. But not the Can, because the Can knows how to speak only from his heart:

“For me to be traded to the Rangers, and for me to pitch my first two games against the Boston Red Sox means that God must hate me.

“It’s the worst game I ever pitched in my life. And for a lot of reasons. First of all, I never wanted to pitch in Fenway Park again.....I’ve never walked the bases full before, and I’ve never given up a grand slam homer, and it all happened in one day, shit, it all happened in one inning. I just look at it and say it was meant to be.

“I don’t have anything to cherish about Boston. You talk about the ‘86 World Series, but I don’t care about any of that. That year a lot of things happened to me that probably will go to the grave with me, and still don’t let me get no peace of mind. So I don’t have anything to feel good about at all and especially today. Today just poured gas on it. Just made the flame bigger.”

We stayed until the end of the game because it was nice in the Park. Many of the New Yorkers had never seen Fenway Park before. It was a treat for them, and they could even make charitable comments about it.

We piled into three taxis and headed for Anthony’s Pier Four Restaurant. There was a lot of hoo-hooing in our car about going to Anthony’s. Shelley said, “They fill that place with old ladies on tour buses, why don’t we go to a real restaurant?” Shelley lived in Boston once, on Beacon Street -- he showed us the apartment when we drove by. He made some cryptic remarks about Boston being a cold town, a mean town. He didn’t say what kind of trouble he had, but I bet it was some kind of bad luck with a woman.

Anthony Athanas owns Pier Four and the surrounding 36 acres of very valuable waterfront property. He’s Albanian. He’s an old man and very well connected. He had just sold the property surrounding the restaurant to the federal government for a fabulous profit. The feds will build a courthouse on the land. The guys in our group would have killed to get in on this deal, but they don’t really know anybody. I could tell that, because they were with me. It’s like Grouch Marx’s rule about clubs, the ones he wouldn’t join if they were willing to accept him as a member. Power brokers don’t have dinner with me unless they’re on the skids.

Still we were a merry crew. They gave us a table for twelve outside on the deck, and we made a lot of noise. Now I was bluffing just like the rest of these guys do on a real estate deal. I had twenty dollars in my pocket and an overdrawn checking account. Naturally I flourished a ten spot and paid for the cab ride when we got there. That didn’t leave me with money for dinner, but I was hoping for the Greater Fool -- that one of these guys was so desperate to put on a show and he would pick up the tab -- and I could get off with pretending I wanted to pay.

I hedged my bets -- I ordered way down the menu, choosing the striped bass special for $9.95. Jim Gardella ordered it too, mainly because he’s a cheapskate. The others guys were going for the gold -- three pound lobsters, steamer clams for appetizers, nice wine from the list and Grand Marnier after dinner. The wine was good. Jim -- the other Jim, the one who looks like the Great Gatsby -- ordered the wine. He wore his blazer and tie all through the meal and never unbuttoned his collar. Then he had this sophisticated conversation with the wine steward, and, for God’s sakes, the rest of the table took him seriously. They say New Yorkers are street smart, but they fell for this game.

Jim -- the real Jim -- was making a complete fool of himself over Amy, the 30-year-old beauty who was making her first trip with this group. He kept hitting on her and wanted to sit next to her at dinner. She asked me if I would please sit between Jim and her, which I did. Jim was being no worse than usual. You have to remember that his friends go with him to out of town ball games because they know they won’t be seen.

The bill came to $600 including tip, to be divided up 12 ways. I guess my bluff didn’t work because nobody wanted to make a $600 impression and pick up the tab. I was forced to ask Jim for a loan of fifty to pay my share, and I wrote him a hot check to cover it.

Boy, it was a lot of fun. Now the sun was going down, and some of us walked to the railing and looked at the water and the boats going by. Jim and I talked quietly for a little bit. Jim’s a good guy, and I really like him. These New Yorkers have a sense of humor and style. Boston is a good town, but it can get a little too serious here without some outside help.





Fred Owens
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