Some Came Back...

As of this morning, at least some of the butterflies I've been waiting for have returned to our property.

Allow me to proudly and humbly display a Painted Lady (Vanessa Cardui).

I took these photos this morning.

Maybe, just maybe, you can now understand why I found their failure to appear disturbing.

They are beautiful creatures.

And extremely fragile.

The most beautiful things in life usually are fragile, are they not?

We need to appreciate them more. We need to address global warming and all the other things we are doing to poison this planet.

The planet will go nowhere. We will.

Now Wait A Minute...

Please consider the following AP story:

BOSTON - An activist group hoping to pressure the Roman Catholic Church into dropping its long-standing prohibition barring women from the priesthood says it ordained three women on Sunday.

Church officials did not recognize the ordination, and the Vatican has previously warned that women taking part in ordination ceremonies will be excommunicated.

The group known as Roman Catholic Womenpriests held the ceremony at the Church of the Covenant, a Protestant Church in Boston.

Consider again the statement from the Vatican that "...Church officials did not recognize the ordination..."

I don't know about you, but one of the first things that comes into my mind is, you can't have it both ways. Really, you can't.

You can't say that something never happened, which is what the Vatican is saying in that the ordination isn't valid, while at the same time saying the individuals involved will now suffer consequences, and nasty ones at that, for something which either did not or could not happen.

Also, for there to have been a valid ordination, Apostolic Succession must be in place. According to these women's website, that is solidly in place. Check their site, draw your own conclusions.

It's analogous to, oh, let's say, me, swearing you in as a Judge of Commonwealth Court. To state the absurdly obvious, I sure as hell cannot make you a judge, so me just saying the words does no harm. And it certainly doesn't make you a judge.

So, either these women are or are not priests. They might be excommunicated priests, but they are priests nonetheless, because once a priest always a priest. I learned that in probably third grade from my Baltimore Catechism via Sister James Francis, IHM. The imprint of Holy Orders never goes away. It may be controlled, limited, confined, and perhaps suppressed, but it never goes away.

Face it, these women are indeed priests. The Vatican's excommunicating them only proves that they are.

Personally, and this is just an opinion, the day is long overdue for the ordination of women.

Insanely overdue is the issue of celibacy becoming optional.

Again personally, I think what these women did was right.

And haven't the men just a swell job of running The Church?

Home Is Where The Hat Is...A Pointless Post

Great hat, by the way. All the way from Bermuda, from The Hog Penny. Did I mention the hat before? If not, wifey bought it for me one night in Hamilton, Bermuda, in The Hog Penny. The Hog Penny allegedly being the model for The Bull & Finch, which in turn, is said to be the model for that great TV show, Cheers.

The hat might've been the cheapest thing on the menu. OK, the cheapest "entree," literally, was a hamburger. That burger was going for $17 American.

Just last weekend we bumped into a guy wearing Hog Penny hat. He was just back from Bermuda, he was also directing traffic in Tunkhannock as folks parked for the shuttle to the train, the train from Tunkhannock to Jim Thorpe. It was a great trip and I'll have to write some about it soon.

This is my home office. I now have two offices, one here, one at work. Funny thing, I never really had an office until I got my present job with the SPCA. Trust me, my office there, at the shelter, is the very definition of modest. I've jazzed it up a bit with personal things, photos, plaques, and the like, but modest it is.

I once had a visitor who was clearly put off by there being animal hair on a chair in my office. The hair was there because a dog had been sitting in the chair moments before. That dog would be Chloe. Chloe has become pretty much the shelter mascot. She's a sweetheart of a Pug. If the hairs weren't enough, Chloe herself popped in while my visitor's face was expressing disdain and contempt for the hair on the chair. Chloe did what she did best; she jumped into the visitor's lap. In turn, visitor-person damned near wet their pants. To say that I was puzzled, and annoyed, is understatement. What in hell do people expect in an animal shelter?

In TV, few have offices, at least in the news department, which is always the largest department at a TV station. Instead, most everyone in sales and administration has an office. Some very low in the pecking order have very nice offices, that's if you work in a department other than news. It's one of the many oddities of the broadcasting business. Those who are the very "face of the station" get lesser treatment than those who push papers around every day.

It was about the same in radio. In my last radio job, at the #1 station in this market, I shared a desk with three other guys and had one(1)drawer in a filing cabinet to stow my gear. Screwed up? Yeah, beyond belief.

Again, this is a pointless post. If you're expecting little, you've come to the right place.

Then there's the heat. Hot is one thing, what we've had the last couple days is close to unbearable, or is it me? Sure, it could easily be me. I do hear others squawking about it, so maybe it's not just me.

Here's a question; where do kids go during the summer months? Really, where do they go? I had this conversation with one of our neighbors within the last couple weeks, she is the mother of four, and she wonders the same thing. I can only assume kids spend way too much time hunkered in front of a keyboard, or too much time playing games, rather than go out and hang around. Another neighbor mentioned that playgrounds are largely deserted nowadays. Often enough, I hear that public pools are likewise empty.

We hung out a lot in summer.

Of course, hanging out was not without its share of complaints from parents. Mine weren't fond of me hanging on Al's Corner most of June, July, and August during at least a few of my adolescent years. Al's Corner was called such because Al had a store there. Al was a nice guy. Idiot kids like me came to appreciate Al as we got older. Quite a few of us came back to Al's Corner to say hello when we were in our 20s and 30s. Al liked that, you could tell. He remember most all of us by name.

The Zummo Brothers were like that, too. Parents didn't seem to mind you goofing off at Zummo's, maybe because it wasn't on a corner, it was in the middle of a block. Maybe moms and pops were OK with it because it was only feet from our church. You could walk out of mass on Sunday morning and into Zummo's inside of two minutes.

Vince and Tony Zummo ran a small grocery/candy store on one side of the building, and shoe repair shop on the other. Tony was the cobbler, Vince the grocer. Gratefully, and it certainly is a huge measure of respect, Electric City Roasting Company now occupies that building and damn if they don't refer to it as Zummo's Cafe. I like that. The Zummos, all of them and their assorted in-laws, nieces, nephews and children, were a nice bunch of people. Oddly enough, Joe Snedeker's wife is the granddaughter of Tony Zummo.

There were other corners we hung on, none of which tickled my parents any better than Al's. Taking up space on a corner and doing nothing of any worth was not what any respectable parents wanted of their children. It's a phase. You do it. You get over it. It goes away.

The memories, luckily, do not.

Being in your teens and doing nothing on hot and steamy summer nights was fun. In my neighborhood, working-class all the way, we had curfews. In an adjoining neighborhood, a little more upscale, most kids did not, they did what they wanted until they wanted. On balance, and through the magic looking-glass of more years than I want to admit, I will say that us working-class dufuses turned out pretty good.

Like mentioned above, this is pretty much a pointless post. It's also pretty much over for now. I do have to tell you about that train trip.

On The Radio Part #2...

Fellow blogger and old friend, Andy Palumbo, has been writing about radio recently. With the death of legitimate and bona fide radio legend and icon Paul Oles, not all that long after the passing of likewsie legend and icon George Gilbert, radio has been on the minds of many.

Knowing Andy, that smile on his puss over there on the left is coming from some awful thought he had while his "official" WNEP portrait was being taken. Care to share, Andrew?

A lot of us who spent the bulk of our working years in television began the journey in radio. Safe to say, most of us didn't begin there hoping to someday make it to TV.

Quite the contrary.

Radio was our first love. Radio was where we wanted to be. We didn't leave radio, radio left us. That's a quote from yet another old radio pal. I wish it were mine, it says a ton.

To say that radio ain't what it used to be is the very definition of understatement. But you have to realize that while it's not what it was doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. Different, absolutely. Bad, no, not always.

Andy got to recounting his first interview and audition, which was at WCDL, the station Oles called home for years and years. Paul is at right with yet another dear radio friend, and himself legendary and iconic, Rock107's John Webster.

Sitting "High Atop Melody Mountain," WCDL started many careers. Sadly, it probably ended more than a few as well. I have no names to offer here and now, but I would be willing to bet at least some aspiring disc jockeys got that first break at WCDL, only to hit the wall, only to never move beyond the airwaves of Carbondale.

Come to think of it, I knew a few who felt getting to WCDL was an accomplishment, it was a destination, not a beginning. Those few had started elsewhere, then made the big move to Carbondale. There were smaller places to get that foot in the door, there were smaller towns, much smaller towns, than Carbondale.

As I wrote in Part #1 of On The Radio, my first days behind the microphone were in Honesdale. While just over the mountain and through a valley or two from WCDL, WHPA was a "really small" station, as contrasted with WCDL being one level up and just a "small" station.

More importantly, WCDL was on the cusp of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre market, where there were some "medium" stations, including one extraordinary "medium" radio station widely known as The Mighty 590. In time, I would indeed land in WARM-Land.

The good old days? Yeah, some were...some were not.

All that being said, Andy got me to thinking about my first interview, my first audition. That's all they were; interview, audition. I didn't get the job.

It was in January of 1973 that the program director of WPAM called and asked me to come on down. WPAM was in Pottsville. Best I can tell, it still is. It sits at 1450 on your AM dial, just like it did 35 years ago. Only 35 years ago, it was in a struggle for the hearts, minds, and ears of Pottsville area residents with its crosstown rival WPPA at 1360 AM. WPPA is also still there and appears to be a viable AM radio station, something which is in very short supply today. The precise status of Pottsville's radio landscape is at present an unknown to me.

WPAM's program director(PD)was a really nice guy, a recently discharged Army veteran, retired if I remember correctly. He was likely around 40 and his name is completely and forever lost on me. I wouldn't know it if I drove past it daily on a digital billboard for seven months.

I'd driven to Pottsville on that gorgeous, sunny, and frigidly cold January day with no misgivings whatsoever. In my dopey mind, the job was a done deal. I mean really, why would this guy call me and set a time for me to sit and visit if he wasn't already convinced he'd found the man for the job, and that would be me.

It wasn't me. It wasn't anyone. He was doing pre-opening interviews for future candidates for jobs that didn't yet exist. This he told me after an hour's worth of Q&A in his office. Being the brash and arrogant young man I was at the time, had he told me at the start that there was no job, I would have probably stood, said something rude, and walked the hell out of the place. After all, this trip had cost me a day's pay from my "civilian/real world" job on a loading dock and a tank of gas. He never told me this that day, he waited until the follow-up letter came in the mail a few weeks later. At least he had the courtesy to write.

Oddly, the day did come when he had a job for me. I took some joy in telling him, "No thanks, I already have a full-time RADIO job." Just for snorts and chuckles, I asked what he had in mind salary-wise. I was doing roughly $25 a week more where I was. There was even an ounce more joy in telling him he was not only a day late, but several dollars short.

"You had your chance, Buster, you could have had my major talent. You blew it. Now you pay the price. Now skulk away and weep."

That's what I was thinking.

He was probably thinking, "OK, who's next on the list?" I'm betting he forget me, my name, and everything else about me the second he hung up the phone.

My next interview/audition went precisely the same way; I was there to be no more than filed away for a future position if, and when, one should open. Again, it did open. Again, I had a much better job by the time it did. Again, I took some minor pleasure in dismissing my suitor.

Three's a charm, right? The third trip got me an offer via phone within hours. I jumped at it. And here I am. The 4th of July always reminds me of those WHPA days, and so I write. All sincere and heartfelt condolences to Paul's family this holiday weekend.