These Truths Aren't Self-Evident...

What is the "The Truth?"

I have no idea. Seems I said it elsewhere on this blog. Here it is again; I tend to live my life at a high level of uncertainty.

From a strictly faith-based perspective, the truth is cast in bronze as one thing. From a research-based point of view, it shifts with the sands.

From an entertainment standpoint, we're talking blockbuster here.

Ron Howard's "Angels and Demons" is out and getting mixed reviews. One reviewer calling it "...an endless chase that makes less sense the more and closer you watch it." Yeah, right, like that hurts; the first weekend out the movie did $46 million.

The DaVinci Code did $77 million and was huge, both as book and as movie. It's entertainment value was unquestionable. There was, though, something else.

Dan Brown made a lot of people, millions probably, stop and think, "What if...?" Yes, indeed, what if?

My moment of "What if..." came years before the novel and film. Neither Brown nor Howard had anything to do with it. Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard Leigh made me start thinking, questioning, allowing for any number of possibilities other than that which is usually accepted by most.

It was a long time ago.

Originally published in 1982, the book had been an enormous bestseller in Europe, where the story it told had blown a firestorm of controversy across the continent and throughout the UK. The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail was the story of Rennes Le Chateau, itself a widely popular mystery surrounding the Languedoc, a region in the south of France. (When the book was released in the USA, the name had been changed to Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Why, I haven't the faintest. Also for some unknown reason, the book failed to kick up the fuss it did on the other side of the Atlantic.)

The book, its authors, and very quickly its supporters, made some preposterous claims.

The two which immediately grabbed me were that Jesus Christ was a married man, he had children, and that his bloodline exists today, and those descendant of the Sang Real, the Royal Blood, know full well who they were.

Another claim, but certainly not the only claim, was that there was incontrovertible proof to all of their claims. For instance; Jesus' wife was the woman the New Testament has taught us to know as Mary Magdalene, or simply, The Magdalene who, of course, would have been the mother of the children of Jesus, truly the children of God.

Crazy talk, you say? Oh, there is more, much more, perhaps even more crazy. That's your job, not mine, you'll have to read the book.

I read the book in the early '80s. There was no movie, although there were sequels to the book itself, all of which I also read. I should tell you that I recommended the book to a lot of people over the years; some loved it, some never finished it, some thought it complete fabrication. Love, hate, toss it in the trash, I don't now, nor did I ever, see fabrication.

Those who discarded the book and badmouthed it, I suspect, were made uncomfortable by its challenging of long-held religious beliefs. A deceased friend of mine, a history teacher with a master's, dismissed the book as garbage. When I pushed him on specifics, he couldn't provide them. He was a devout Methodist. The book made him itchy.

Some twenty years had come and gone since reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail when one day the talk started. People at work were buzzing about this new book, The Da Vinci Code, and those reading it were losing sleep at night because they couldn't wait to get up in the morning and discuss the book and its implications, the biggest of which is, again, "...what if?"

What if there are more and different "truths" out there and selected individuals know these truths and guard them with not only their lives but with the lives of others.

Some friends literally cornered me to tell me about this phenomenal book, The Da VInci Code. No sooner would they begin to unveil the premise to me, usually in hushed and confidential tones, than I'd look right at them and finish their sentences.

This "new" book, this "new" theory or new set of theories, was all old news to me.

Dan Brown's books are novels, works of fiction. Yet both are based on a book and books that are put forth as 100% non-fiction. While there are several books, perhaps dozens, the granddaddy of them all is undeniably Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the story of Rennes Le Chateau's central figure, Berenger Sauniere, the Roman Catholic priest who discovered "the secret."

Is there a secret? Yes, I do believe there is. My belief in the secret, however, is not without numerous and important caveats.

While I do believe there is a secret, and that societies and powerful men and women have shed blood in protection of this secret, and that could include the Vatican, there is one question I cannot answer; is this secret true? One need to ever keep in mind that just because something is designated as a secret does not in any way verify the alleged secret as being the truth.

What the truth is, I really do not know. There's that high level of uncertainty again. The Da Vinci Code aside, I have my own thoughts on what the secret is and what its implications are, but you need to read the book, watch the movies, get your hands on all available info and draw your very own conclusions. Maybe it is all crazy talk - but what if?

Keepers of The Flame...

You've seen it, I'd bet.

There's an ocean. Presumably, the Pacific.

Waves crash upon the beach's sunlit shore.

A man runs slo-mo through your field of vision. He's in a suit and tie.

"Eye of The Tiger" fills the audio void.

The picture is now complete in all its parts.

It might as well be a bad (how would you know?) Salvadore Dali painting hanging upside down. I still don't get it.

The promo makes no sense whatsoever to me. And I still don't get Conan O'Brien.

Some things are designed to not make sense, and often enough, there is great humor in juxtaposition and conflict. Put another way, some things are so badly misaligned that they make you laugh, and whoever misaligned them knew that they would make you laugh.

I don't see that in the Conan O'Brien promo. I see nothing at all.

Maybe O'Brien is running past Carson's old Malibu place hoping for some inspiration.

Eye of The Tiger? I'm half surprised they didn't trot out the theme from Rocky for the eleven-thousandth time.
Steve Allen - Jack Paar - Johnny Carson - David Letterman. All of those I either got or get. Leno, you'll notice, is missing from the list. Sorry, I didn't get him either. However...

To be sure and note well that I thought Leno was fall-down-lose-your-breath-fart-involuntarily funny as a stand-up comic. As the host of The Tonight Show, no, to me he was an ill fit from the start. Count me among the millions who will forever believe the job should have gone to Letterman.

Steve Allen started the fire known as The Tonight Show. Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, David Letterman are all keepers of that flame passed down through the course of beyond fifty years now. Paar and Carson kept the flame at NBC. Letterman had to take it to CBS, where it resides to this day.

Conan O'Brien never had the flame, and neither does Jimmy Fallon.

I'd be the first to admit that it's an age-related thing, but only if it was an age-related thing. It's my strong belief that it is not. There are a great many young, even 20s and 30s, comedians who I find hysterically funny, clever, brilliant, engaging. O'Brien and Fallon are none of the above, in my never humble opinion.

(Quick note; by their very nature, strongly expressed opinions cannot be humble, they are the epitome of self-centered.)

Is the distinguished about to become the extinguished?

As long as Letterman keeps on, the lineage continues. As to a successor: If there's one out there, they really need to step forward and not run on a beach in a suit.

Memorial Day...

Somewhere off in the distance, a lawnmower hums. Closer, birds chirp and leaves rustle on a small Quaking Aspen in the yard, the only things breaking the silence of our seemingly always-quiet neighborhood.

For a second, one of our dogs growls. I shoot her a look. That's it for the growling. She's now back to what she was doing before; nothing.

And so we celebrate another Memorial Day.

Where did the year since last Memorial Day go? Your parents, my parents, gave us a load of things to consider when we were kids, and I suppose, some of it was just that, a load.

One thing they were not "giving us the business" about is the matter of time flying as you age. If nothing else good old mom and pop ever told us was true, the routine about aging is an immutable. Too bad you haven't the brains to realize that when you're twelve.

Thinking back on it, it was my mother who was big on forever reminding me to be in no big hurry to grow up, to slow down and love every second of life made available to me.

She was so right.

In this past year I've been to several veterans' events, some quite large, ceremonial, and choreographed with great thought. I always get a lump in my throat when it comes time to post the colors, say the pledge, then sing our anthem. The Star Spangled Banner is one really tough song to sing, made even more difficult by the beginning of the sob that begins each time I try.

Maybe it's having been at those events that's giving me an excuse, helping me to assuage my guilt, for not having been at Memorial Day ceremony of some kind, any kind, so far today. The day isn't yet done.

As a kid, my Memorial Days were all about cemeteries and cleaning the graves of family members who'd gone to their reward. We'd scrub headstones, pull weeds, plant flowers, following which there'd be a quick standing and staring at the work we'd done, while I'm certain the adults among us spoke in silence to those interred beneath.

Perhaps this day we'll visit a cemetery and pay brief homage and give our thanks to those who gave, and to think of those still giving. Thank you.

"The Oral School"

This is an aerial shot of the soon to be dramatically changed Scranton State School for The Deaf. Go ahead and click on it and you'll get a decent resolution photo, one that will give you a pretty good grab on the size of this campus.

My familiarity with the school goes way back, back to the '50s, back to when I was a little kid who was being awed and wowed by the vast world before him from the comfort of a front porch.

Very often before me sat The Oral School, as it was still then called, and which was its original name. I really don't think the name became politically incorrect at some point in time. I likewise don't know why they changed the name to Scranton State School for The Deaf. The road, a dedicated street, that ran behind the campus and St. Joseph's Center is Oral School Road, or at least it was. There were signs on poles telling you that it was. Did that change as well?

We'd sit on the porch waiting for hummingbirds to visit the petunias in the wooden box planter that hung from the railing in front of us. See, my grandparents lived right across Electric Street from the school. The front of their house faced the front of the school.

These were warm summer nights. We spent more of them than I could possibly count sitting with my grandparents on their obligatory front porch glider. Everyone had a glider back then, didn't they?

We'd sit and look at the gorgeous lawn that swept up to meet the main building of the Oral School. We'd sit and gently swing, my grandfather lighting and re-lighting his ever-present pipe or cigar.

We always called my grandfather "Dad." All of his grandchildren called him "Dad." Never knew why, never much figured it mattered. He was just "Dad."

That picture I've posted before. It deserves another, so here they are one more time, l. to r.; my father, my grandfather, my Aunt Mary, and my grandmother. This was the clan Sweeney as it then existed. In time, there would be four more children. Today, but one survives.

I grew up with SSSD. Only once, though, did I ever set foot within, and that was early on in my television career. We did a Christmas piece at SSSD somewhere in the late '80s.

For whatever reason, SSSD's campus was strictly off-limits to the nosy and adventurous who just wanted to come onto the property and do no more than stroll around, poke around without entering any of the buildings. There was always some security guy who they'd scramble to shoo you away the second you entered SSSD airspace.

These people had their own definition of a "closed campus." In an extra measure of keeping it closed, a sturdy and spikey wrought iron fence surrounded much of the place. A moat would have been a nice touch.

The photo at left is also a rerun. Its relevance is that Mom and Dad are not only looking at whoever had the camera, they're also looking at SSSD. That's my grandparents' driveway.

Enough reminiscing, I suppose. There's an old saying, I think theatrical in origin, that says, "You go with what you got." And what I got is memories of a childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood where The Oral School/SSSD was simply a fixture, a given, in every day life.

That it would, or could, go away never much crossed our minds. To be frank, I don't think it crossed the minds of most until the last several months. There's been some considerable shock over the school's future, if it even has a future.

Looking at the aerial shot up top made me think what a fine "city estate" it would make for some really rich person. Actually, it would be more like a manor. Although possible, that seems an unlikely fate for the property.

Marywood? Scranton Prep? Commonwealth Medical College? They all seem to be a good fit in one form or another. With a medical school under construction, wouldn't the next big step for the Scranton area be, oh, a law school? Could happen, the academic foundations are certainly there. Marywood or UofS are positioned such. Lackawanna College could have a stake here, too.

In the end, though, I do feel a sense of sadness and loss for SSSD's likely fading into history. It was a source of great pride to have such an institution in Scranton, although I think a big chunk of the property is physically in Dunmore. For the many who were educated there, it's also pretty darned tough to watch this all fall apart.

Like most others, I took a look at the numbers. Sadly, and if they are accurate, the cost of operating SSSD is hard to justify, it's a tough sell. It costs us more than twice Harvard's annual tuition and board to take a student through a school year at SSSD.

Still, I cannot help but wish those fighting to save the school abundant good luck.

Return From Whence You Came...

Consider the following:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Spring is here and bears are emerging from their dens for the short stroll to Alaska's largest city. Some residents are putting out the NO VACANCY sign...

...Wanda Phillips is among them. She recently moved from Washington state — where she saw no bears — to the Anchorage suburb of Eagle River, where there are lots of bears.

Last summer, Phillips saw at least 10 bears near her home. A grizzly camped out in her back yard defending a moose kill. Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials told her to keep the family inside until the bear was finished with the carcass."It (that advice) didn't seem very helpful to me," she said. "We have a real safety problem. The fact is they are ignoring it, it is a time bomb."

While I'll not now or ever speak for anyone else, let me make my feelings abundantly clear:

Dear Ms. Phillips,

Kindly go back to Washington and stay put. Alaska will be better off without you and your demands that things there change to suit you and your needs, likes, and dislikes. You went to the Grizzlies, the Grizzlies didn't come to you. Get it? I doubt it.

I'm reminded of the great shark scare of so many summers ago when "Jaws" debuted. People were scared skinny over shark attacks. People were losing sleep, having nightmares, wetting their shorts over being eaten, or worse yet, half-eaten, by a Great White Shark.

I've had the solution all along: If you fear sharks, stay the hell out of any body of salt water, even brackish water. Sharks don't come up on the boardwalk looking for you, don't go in splashing around in their space where you just might look like lunch.

If it hurts when you go like that, don't go like that.

Same holds true here: You fear Grizzlies, and you should, then stay away from Grizzly World, and that would be Alaska.

Those Grizzlies will be better off without you, too, since I figure you'd do away with them all rather than adapt. Alaska is likely the last frontier wilderness we have left, get out and stop trying to turn it into downtown Jersey City.

Thanks for your time and consideration. Have a dandy day.

Reality in Real Estate

We've been in and out of the house-hunting game on and off over the last at least ten years.

Right about the time I memorized the way to the upstairs bathroom in the dark at the then new house, we started eyeballing other properties, often enough with a measure of envy.

Every so often the urge rumbles within that you need to have a new place to live, a better or bigger place. Could be all you really need is a change of scenery, or a different route to travel to work each day. Could be you're bored or want to spend some money, which is almost always money you don't have. That's what we all know as the mortgage.

The mortgage is money you don't have that you use to buy what someday ( you hope) will really belong to you. In the interim, and even though you call it "my house," you know it belongs to whoever holds the paper.

Whatever motivation there might be, most of us do the dance on occasion and start looking for those greener pastures whether near or far. Not only greener, some of us want bigger pastures, while a growing number of us want smaller (witness the growth of townhouses and condos). Admittedly, a big, big backyard was once very important to me. Today, not so much so.

Somewhere, and somehow, in between those brief binges of wanting a new house, things happen. Prices take major jumps. Interest rates fall. Taxes soar. The latter we all know about here in Luzerne County. And unless something major happens, which I am not ready to concede will not, the new assessment will stand.

So Sunday we do some looking on-line, putting a list together. (I still don't have a GPS - Sunday, by golly, I wished for one bad.)

Off we go.

We did a "rolling inspection" of likely seven or eight properties, all of which we pretty much rejected, that's when we headed for "the lake." In Luzerne County there is but one "the lake" and that is Harveys Lake. Lovely place, although I will confess to never having any great lust for living there.

By chance, literally, we came across two open houses. We stopped at both, we did the stroll-around-and-through at both. Nodding, smiling, saying meaningless things. Quickly, we came to realize that we really did like House #1.

House #1 was lovely, interesting, eclectic, fascinating, and pretty darned cool with a great view of the lake. Not lakefront, now, not on the lake, near the lake, close enough and on a rise high enough to afford a great view.

Price? In this economy, and adjusting for my own personal evaluation system (non-certifiable) and weighing our willingness to move money around and get deeper in the doo-doo of debt, the asking on the house is too high.

In fairness, let me say that, while I understand the owners asking what they are, I also feel they won't get it. If this house was over assessed, as our own was last year, some quick ciphering tells me what it's really worth. Then, of course, you need to haul in the many rules of real estate, especially the one that says, "A property is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it."

Before going on and on even more, let's get you squared on what lakefront is at Harveys Lake, since it's not what it is at most other lakes with which you might be familiar. If you've never been to Harveys Lake, homes there that are "lakeside" are really roadside, since there is a two-laner between you and the lake. On one side is your house, on the other side is a little sliver of land along the lake upon which you can begin a dock or boathouse or perhaps both. In short, the lake isn't at your door, you need to be old enough to cross the street to get to it.

It's an arrangement I've never before come across. Apparently, it hasn't had any impact on "lakefront/roadside" property at Harveys Lake.

We can now move on to House #2. Again, this was an open house we simply happened upon while looking for some place else altogether. House #2 is a nice house and it is "lakeside." Small, very well kept and furnished, with a nice chunk of land out back, the asking on this place rocked me back on my heels.

Knowing that lake property had leapt from pricey to "Sweet Mother of GOD!" since the reassessment, I still wasn't prepared for the number that jumped off the page and poked us both in the eye sockets. We looked at one another. We looked at the agent. She shrugged. It is what it is, and real estate at the lake, if it's on the lake, is extraordinarily expensive, even more so since the county told them it was about ten months ago.

Move away from the lake a short eighth of a mile tops, and prices just about drop in half.

Is being able to walk across the road to the lake worth a quarter of a million dollars more than a great view of the lake? To some, the answer is an obvious yes. To me, and I assume many others, the answer is no.

We're looking and we'll keep on looking. And the lake will still be on the other side of that road.

Can I borrow your boathouse?