Memorial Day...

For more years than I can comfortably admit, we've vowed to get to a Memorial Day service somewhere to pay respects on the day we Americans set aside for doing so. And it seems that each and every year, you got it, we manage to break the vow.


It's not an excuse, just an explanation, mind you, but in years past either of us or both of us were working on Memorial Day, and most all other holidays, too.

Things are now different. We both still work. We both have holidays free.

We did it again this year. We broke the promise and slept in, missing a chance to be at a service, and that is to our shame.

This year, though, we tried to make amends by visiting a burying ground where veterans of antiquity and now alike lie; Hollenback Cemetery in Wilkes-Barre.

The row of graves, markers, and flag holders with fresh flags, draws your eyes to a hill where Civil War veterans are buried, all members of The GAR, The Grand Army of The Republic.

Many of the men, whose ultimate fate sits right there on that rise, lived very long lives. I saw several yesterday who survived the nightmare of The Civil War, then carried forth through the 19th century and into the 20th. Many of these men lived into their 90s, which was completely remarkable for that day and age. Consider that life expectancy of Americans averaged in the low 40s at the time, and you can imagine these men must have been viewed as prophets and saints walking the streets and roads of The Wyoming Valley.

I can't count the times I drove past these stone sentries of the long-dead thinking that someday I should bring along my camera gear and try and capture the feeling of the spot.


Yesterday I tried.

The physical feel of the place is tranquil, pleasant. A feeling of, if you have to go somewhere in the end, this is really a good place to go. This particular portion of Hollenback, should you take a minute to climb the hill, looks down on River Street and General Hospital, and on Conie's Island, a hot dog joint. Now that's America.

Far off in the distance, the same gentle swell of mountains which family and friends saw the day they buried their own Civil War Veteran on the higher ground. Although back then I would imagine that the space between here and there was murky with the smoke, dust, and dirt of progress, the air filled with the prosperity of coal going about its business of being king. Surely the rhytmic chant and chug of steam locomotives was likewise ever present.

Indeed, within a five minute walk of Hollenback sits the ventilation fan-house of what was once an enormous colliery, The Dorrance.


We didn't walk much of the cemetery yesterday, concentrating mostly on the Civil War graves. One such grave, not tucked neatly into the row, caught Carol's eye. First, a context shot of that grave on your left.


Surrounded by far more expensive granite, marble, and limestone testaments to the once clearly wealthy, this modest tablet-style headstone marks the plot of a Civil War Veteran who, unlike some of the men he marched alongside of, camped with, fought bravely near, never saw his 90s, nor his 40s.


Henry P. Crum was 36 years of age when he "...fell at Gettisburg." The spelling I've seen before, and do believe to be an accepted alternate to Gettysburg, somewhat like Swoyerville and Swoyersville.


Hollenback Cemetery is an amazing place. It's the names that fascinate me. Slowly driving through other pieces of Hollenback, the names on stones big and small, plain and fancy, the names on mausoleums, are what strike me.


So many are very familiar, so many are the names of streets we drive, names we've all heard over and over for years and years. But there are also many names totally unfamiliar to me.


Big, imposing, chunks of rock refined and chiseled, marking the memory and remains of people whose names I've never heard. No mistaking it, these were wealthy citizens of this valley, people with serious money, money enough to pay for large and perhaps venal monuments to the passing of one's life. Venal or not, that isn't my judgment to make. In fact, I'm glad they are there.


Who were they, the ones with unfamiliar names? More than that, I wonder where they are, their families, their descendents. Did they all leave and never come back? Did a family name end abruptly, or does it carry on and sound completely familiar somewhere else in this world? A place to start searching for answers would be at The Luzerne County Historical Society.

We'll go again to Hollenback Cemetery, and to others as well.

Unofficially, It's Summer...

The term Decoration Day has all but fallen into complete disuse. When I was a kid, you'd hear it about half the time, and it was always age-dependent. Some parents, more likely grandparents, called the holiday Decoration Day.

If you heard someone say Decoration Day when you knew it as Memorial Day, it was a sure bet you were dealing with an old person. Certainly someone old enough to remember WWI. The mere fact that I can recall hearing Decoration Day makes me an old person, right? Probably so.

The feds years ago declared the last Monday in May as the legal holiday, prior to which it was May 30th, regardless of day of the week. Despite several moves by key senators and congress members to return the holiday to its original date, it hasn't so far happened.

We all have to come from somewhere, everything seems to have a birthplace. And so it is said that a town in our very own state, Boalsburg, is the birthplace of Memorial Day as it exists today.

As with most of us, memories of Memorial Days past are many, but they all seem to carry that common theme of the holiday being the unofficial start of Summer.

Sitting, typing, glancing out into our backyard it's pretty darned quiet for the start of Summer, unofficial or otherwise. A distant lawnmower buzzes, a chilly breeze is in the air, and I just had a pleasant gab with a neighbor about how it is none of us is going much of anywhere with the price of gas, today breaking the unprecedented threshold of $4.00 a gallon. Cars are parked and staying parked. I know it's not my fertile imagination; traffic on my road is seriously weak today.

Holidays are looked upon as a time for giving thanks, and generally we do just that. Today, though, my gratitude is mixed with an unsettling feeling that daily life in this country is painful for far too many Americans.

We have a war that shows no sign of ending. The obvious burden of the price of gas is crippling some families. Skyrocketing health care and medication costs have sent many people into a financial tailspin that has yet to end. The world's wealthiest man, Warren Buffet, yesterday went on record as saying a recession will be longer and deeper than anticipated, and that we are indeed in a recession.

Here in our little piece of the world, Luzerne County, PA, property tax reassessment notices are in the mail. By Tuesday, the taxpayer earthquake will have begun on River Street, with aftershocks rumbling for years and years.

Gorgeous day that it is, and having a three day weekend as I do, there's still a nagging sense that things aren't good.

With apologies, and sad to say, for the first time in a long time I am not a very optimistic citizen.

Despite that, happy Memorial Day. Remember those who gave all to us all. Remember those who served, like my Dad in WWII, and this very minute continue to serve. May this day bring you peace and joy.

Jim Moves Me Again...

Ya' know, Jim Rising and I have "careers" that pretty much ran side by side. Actually, they're still running side by side in many respects.

It's also fair to say that we feel the same way about a good many things. He gets annoyed by that which seems to have no logical explanation.

By way of background, Mr. Rising and I spent the bulk of our working life in broadcasting. I was at WARM when Jim and WKRZ managed to knock The Mighty 590 of its lofty perch of longstanding in the early '80s.

At first thought to be grazed, winged, by 'KRZ, WARM's condition rapidly worsened, and its market dominance would in time come to a crashing end. The latest radio ratings for this market can be found right here.

It was in radio before my WARM years that I'd first heard the term digital. While at WWPA/The Twin in Williamsport, an engineeer by the name of Carl Steinbacher spoke of digital frequently. We're talking the '70s here, mid to late '70s. A long time ago.

Carl, a really bright guy, would try with great patience to explain to me, and anyone else who'd listen, that the huge but distant wave, the one rolling, thundering, and swelling towards broadcasting, was digital. Most of the time, the looks on our faces were dopey, stunned, like we hadn't a clue what he was talking about. The reason for that was pretty darned simple - we didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

The only thing in my life at the time that was digital was a watch. I still have it. It doesn't work at all now, and it didn't work very well back then. What it was then, however, was the future strapped to my wrist. I didn't know that. I didn't understand that. I didn't know what analog was until digital emerged. Here in 2008, I'll make no pretense in truly understanding it all. I do not.

What is obvious is that the wave, which sure took a long time getting here, is about to crash down on Analog Beach, wiping out television reception for those who fail to heed its approach. Does that sound about right? Does that ring true with all of the dire warnings we now seem to get hourly? Doomed, I tell you, doomed! It's over. Repent and digitalize, or suffer the unspeakable consequences, chief among which is no TV for you.

Well, c'mon now, that's really not quite right, is it?

Recent strange happenings on Penobscot Knob revealed how many, more like how few, pull a television signal from the airwaves these days. When one TV transmitter tower came down, taking others with it, we were given more than just a great news story, we were given a yardstick with which to measure the scope of the damage about to be caused by the coming digital wave.

If some of the numbers disseminated are correct, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, roughly 17% of television viewers pluck their favorite show from those distant towers which broadcast to us all. For what it matters, and it's my guess is it matters not much, the airwaves belong to us all. Those who have licenses to broadcast television and radio signals are holders of a public trust, no more, no less. That, of course, is the theory. A topic for examination some other time, perhaps.

What it really gets down to is simple enough; if you don't watch TV via rabbit ears, a rooftop antenna, or by wearing an aluminum-foil hat, you have nothing to fear in terms of losing anything.

If you're a cable or satellite subscriber, you'll notice an elevation in the quality of what you see, and that will be completely dependent upon your television. If you spend a ton on a swell HD TV, terrific. If you're sticking with what you might already have, an old low-tech conventional television, no dice, no soap, no good, no difference. As time marches forward, though, you will have little choice save to buy HD, because the tube television(CRT) is already no longer being made in any quantity, if it's being manufactured at all.

(Just so you'll know, the Sweeneys have yet to make the big leap, we're still waiting for 3-D TV. OK, old joke, one from The Honeymooners episode where Ralph and Ed go halfsies on a television. What we're doing is no more than wrestling with which HD TV to buy. There is no doubt as to which one we want, but there is that matter of buyer's remorse if we spend what need be spent in getting it. Did someone say, "...rampant consumerism?")

I think Jim Rising and I, although traveling different routes to get there, are wondering the same thing, asking the same question; why did going digital become such an obsession with the FCC? While surely not opposed to digital, I really don't know why it became legally mandated.

Why did forcing digital upon us Americans become a priority? As much as I love technology and electronics, I could use an explanation.

Analogically, for now, I'll be standing-by.

Jim, back to you...

Our Emma...

Yes, I know. Writing about a dog does carry a risk. You take the chance that some people might think you're out there if you do. Too bad.

Anyone who thinks it's out there, over there, under there, on top of there, isn't anyone I'd really care to call a pal. If you've never loved a dog, you might want to consider opening your heart and giving it a try. It's very good for you.

Let me tell you about Emma.

Emma was the first dog Carol and I adopted back in the early '90s. We rescued her from The SPCA of Luzerne County, never imagining that someday, somehow, I'd take up space myself in that same building.

Emma was a stray, found running the streets of Pittston. Clearly, she'd been tossed, abandoned, left to fight her way in what could have been a very short life. She was less than a year old when we found her sadly cowering in a corner of a cage in what was then the shelter's only kennel.

While I was wandering around, Carol found "our dog." Carol wasn't shy about telling me that this little white creature all covered in flea bites was "our dog." I took one look. That was it. Carol was right, this was "our dog."

My first memory of Emma, after we took her from the shelter, is of her soiling her crate on the ride home, and me hosing it out in the backyard. Whether she was scared, or maybe even just thrilled to be going somewhere with someone, who knows. What we did know immediately was that Emma was a marvelous dog.

Loving, affectionate, loyal, forever in my lap, Emma was just a nice, nice dog. She loved me. I loved her. Carol loved her, too.

The photo pre-dates my digital days. This particular image was taken with a TLR - a twin-lens reflex camera. Great camera, outrageously sharp negatives, allowing the creation of equally as sharp prints with colors that jump right out at you. That particular TLR necessitated using a hand-held light meter, then setting aperture and shutter speed. It's an old scan, I can't find the original. The film was Fuji Velvia, a color slide film, once the standard of the professional photography community. Those days are over. Digital has wounded film and film cameras beyond any possible recovery. I never fought digital. If there was a revolution, it was pretty obvious to me that digital would win. It did.

The name Emma is a story maybe worth telling itself.

A friend of ours had this cat he wanted us to take. We were ready. The cat's name was...Emma. Emma The Cat wanted no part of leaving our friend's house. Trying to find Emma, he got nowhere, at least for a half hour or so. Then he found her. She wasn't happy; he was bloodied enough to prove it. Emma The Cat never did go home with us. Not because we weren't thrilled to have her, but because she simply wouldn't budge without a fight. Our cat-giving friend, seeing this was a bad situation, put giving Emma away on hold. Meantime, this little dog came into our life.

There was no sense even considering another name. This dog had to be Emma, named after Emma The Cat, the cat we never brought home.

The setting is Frances Slocum State Park. That was Emma's favorite place. It was easy to tell it was. The second she got out of the car, that "show dog" tail of hers went wild. Then the second her paws hit grass, her joy took on another dimension. Emma would poop and pee a dozen times within a half hour, something she did nowhere else. Yes, we cleaned up after her. The poop, not the pee. Have we figured a way to do that yet?

Now, about that "show dog" tail of Emma's. It was anything but. She was a cutie, a sweetie, one lovable dog, and she was a pretty girl. All that being true, it's also true to say that Emma had some odd fur configurations upon her small body. She was a mutt, a pound hound, she was loved.

I'm going on and on here. It's by design. I'm stalling. All good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. I really don't much feel like telling you that Emma is no more. She lived a long and happy life with us, roughly seventeen years, and she was treated like a princess through them all. In the end, Emma gave us the greatest gift a dog can give. In the end, Emma made the final act of unconditional love. Emma spared us any painful decisions. Emma died peacefully in Carol's arms, at home, in our bed. That was over two years ago. Still, it doesn't take much to get us weepy about Emma.

We sure loved our Emma.

Hey, Nice Tomatoes...

Hey, thank you. Yes, they are nice tomatoes. Homegrown, right in the backyard. The variety is an unremembered beefsteak. We grew them, plucked them from the vine, and sliced one to take this photograph. It's untouched, not manipulated, it's the real deal. We still have that plate.

Beefsteaks don't fly with tomato snobs, those who sniff with contempt at any tomato that isn't' some obscure heirloom variety grown only by people smarter than you are. I don't like tomato snobs. In fact, I really don't like snobbery of any kind.

If you're not into vegetable gardening, you're most likely unaware of what seems to me to be an uncountable number of tomato varieties. Seriously. What we grew there was a hybrid, more than likely a Burpee hybrid.

Among the tomato purist community, hybrids are the focus of serious disdain. Only rank amateurs grow hybrids. Tomato purists have embraced the heirloom tomato. Any hybrid= bad; any heirloom=good.

"Gawwwwddd, dahhhhhhling, don't tell me you still grow those detestable lowbrow hybrids.?"

I had to know, had to find out if there was anything to heirloom adoration. So I went for the best tomato on the planet. I'm not kidding, some say this tomato on the right is the absolute best tomato in the world, bar none. This tomato is the Brandywine. More specifically, the Sudduth strain of the Brandywine, an even more snobby sub-variety of an already snobby enough fruit. I just had to bring up that fruit versus vegetable argument.

Here it is, in simplest form; botanically, the tomato is a fruit - horticulturally, the tomato is a vegetable. In 1893, SCOTUS ruled that the tomato was a vegetable. The reason? Declaring it a vegetable made it subject to import taxes. Who says it's all about money?

So, I fell for the hype, stuck my nose in the air, bought Sudduth Brandywine seeds from a very reputable but small supplier, which adds another layer of snobbery. You can't just buy those seeds from one of the big outfits, that would never do. They must come with bragging rights. For your tomatoes to have bragging rights, the seeds must come with a pedigree.

You might think I'm kidding here. I'm not, not at all.

No later than March, I started the seeds in small peat pots in the basement. Once they grew a set of what most call "real" leaves, they were moved up to a bit bigger pot. That upward progression, surprisingly called "potting up," continues until you have what now looks like a real tomato plant that you'd buy, only you didn't buy, you grew it yourself from seed.

By late May, you're ready to set out the plants. What you should do is "harden off" your tender young plants before actually transplanting them. Hardening involves placing the plants outdoors in their pots during the day, then bringing them in at night. A week's worth of hardening and you should be good to go. Being impatient, I often skipped the hardening off process. The result was...no big difference, really. Hardened or not, most tomato plants, most plants of any kind, suffer transplant shock right after transplant; they look really, really droopy, kind of pathetic. Given care, water, sun, they bounce back quickly.

Enough gardening advice for now. Let's fly through much of Summer, get to August, get to that greatest tomato on the planet. Let's have at the Sudduth Brandywine, or Brandywine Sudduth...whatever.

It ain't the greatest tomato on the planet. Plain, simple, straightforward, it's just not. Most who'd have this tomato put in front of them and ready to eat would be unable to distinguish it from any plain, old, tried and true pedestrian and common hybrid.

Were they good? Sure. Were they sensational? Absolutely not.

What they are is unpredictable; you never know how many or when you'll harvest these tomatoes, or if you'll harvest them at all. I had several enormous Brandywine plants that bore no more two or three tomatoes. That is not a judicious use of time, energy, and space. Being an heirloom, they are susceptible to most diseases connected to tomatoes.

They're slow-growing, malformed, at times very pithy, and no more than acceptable. That, of course, is my opinion. Many agree with me, while many would roll their eyes and snicker. Just for comparison, I did try another highly regarded heirloom one year. That variety is the Mortgage Lifter, allegedly an Amish heirloom whose genome has been unaltered for at least a hundred and fifty years. Same result; a good, but in no way great, tomato.

Tomatoes are relatively easy to grow. As someone who's grown his share of them, I'll gladly admit that. Also testament to their ease of growing is the fact that most everyone with a garden, however tiny and neglected it might be, either grows or has grown tomatoes.

If you stick with a dependable hybrid, say a Big Boy, Big Girl, Early Girl, etc., you can almost shove the plant in the ground and all but ignore it until it bears fruit(or vegetable). If we get ample rain, watering might not even be necessary, although tomatoes do like water.

Oh, and if you're going to give tomatoes a try, do like the "old-timers" did; don't plant until Memorial Day, the traditional day itself. Frost will take young and tender tomato plants out in a blink.

For us, vegetable gardening is blog material and little else. Sweet-cheeks there on the left put us out of business several years ago. That yearling buck and his cousins, male and female, mowed us down, turned our vegetable garden(and we once grew lots of things)into an all-you-can-eat salad bar. I like to grow vegetables. I like deer. I give. The deer won.

It Is What It Is...

Although I learned more years ago than makes me comfortable that things are seldom what they appear to be, this time around it is what it is. Let's wrap up this weed-whacker thing and move along.

With the new weed-whacker, WYSIWYG. Or maybe WYSIWTBGY. What You See Is What The Battery Gives You. And what each battery gives you is maybe ten minutes, and that's me being generous.

So, for now at least, my weed-whacker evaluation has come to a conclusion. Which is as follows...

With a fully loaded battery, it works just as well as any gas-powered whacker out there. If you're going to do more than twenty minutes of whacking(remember, you get two batteries, but use one at a time), I'd have to recommend sticking with gas and walking right on past battery power. Like all else in life, it's all about compromise, about trading off.

With batteries, what you don't have to deal with is whacker that won't start no matter how many times you pull, yank, and jerk.

What you also don't have to deal with is mixing gas and oil, and storing gas and oil, and getting gas and oil all over you, then smelling like gas and oil for most of the weekend. But our mower is still gas-powered, so it's probably not a break even deal.

I'll keep on whacking. Any further developments, you'll be the first to know.

The Weed-Whacker Report...

This is the preliminary report.

The first look at the strengths and weaknesses of that new weed-whacker.

The news is not great.

Not terrible.

Just not great.

When last I blogged, the 18 volt batteries for that new weed-whacker were under full charge. Two batteries, each to be used alone, with the other ostensibly serving as backup. Each battery taking in the vicinity of nine(9)hours to charge. An eighteen hour investment in weed-whacking, and yet there'd been no whacking, so far. I was optimistic.

Monday's rain ruled out running like a loon through the yard lopping off 90% of last year's growth on those ornamental grasses, the grasses being the main reason for that new whacker. By Tuesday, the rain was gone, the sun was out, and the wind had been whipping enough to dry things out.

Sliding that first battery into the whacker, a solid click indicated it was in there, and in there right. The thumb-switch is the safety feature. You depress that, then squeeze the on-off button, which in a gas-powered whacker would be the throttle.

A slight squeeze and my new toy damned near jumped out of my hands. This whacker was capable of some serious work, it meant business, I held its power in my hand. It was ready. Me, too.

The first ornamental grass I walked up to was eye-high and ready to be cut back. (Ornamental grasses spring from the soil up with new growth each year, no growth takes place on last year's growth, so they should be trimmed down to almost ground level.)

I tucked into that baby with the whacker wide open and screaming like a circular saw. In seconds, job done. Magnificent!

Next grass?

Ahhh, there's one. Buzzing, growling, old grass blades filling the air, another one was closely trimmed, another one ready for this year's new growth, which is already underway. Things are very early this year.

I'm moving, outta my way!

Next target is a clump of dwarf grasses needing a trim. I'm there. They should go within seconds. Some did. Some didn't.

The change from boisterous raw power to a half-hearted whine from the new toy was deflating. At first, I thought it was me. Soon, like in seconds, it was apparent that it was not me, it was the new toy.

More specifically, it was the new toy's "fully charged" battery. Nine hours of charging, roughly ten minutes of whacking and....pffffttt. Done. Gone. Discharged. Dead. Croaked. Out of juice. Out of power. The will to whack there, the wherewithal to do so not.

Ripping out the spent battery and shoving in the other "fully charged" cell took seconds. Again, this thing nearly leaped from my grip and trimmed those grasses unguided.

Also again, nine hours of being plugged into our kitchen wall would yield about ten minutes of whacking, tops. After five or six minutes this thing lacks the power to pull a straw hat off a marble statue.

To Summarize...

...I'm disappointed. But I'm also willing to admit that my initial whacking was pretty tough stuff. The job at hand wasn't just edging a walkway, it was mowing down some sturdy vegetation. Not like working one's way up along the Amazon, mind you, but not dainty work either.

...I'm encouraged. When this machine's batteries are peak, it has the muscle of any its gas sucking cousins.

...Patience continues to be a virtue. A re-read of the manual indicates that four or five discharges and charges may be necessary for these batteries to reach such state of charge that the max capacity to hold a charge is achieved. (Why do I feel an urge to insert, "Party of the first part..." into that sentence?)

Even with showers over the weekend, I do plan on some whacking. So, be sure and join us next time on The Weed-Whacker Report...