Teig Saying "Goodbye"

"It's an owl!" said my friend, the driver.

"It's a hawk!" I said, unable to see its head.

While driving to Cabot last night, we encountered a bird in the middle of Danville Hill Road. My friend had only just warned me that he simply could not stand the thought of killing a living creature with his car, that he even swerves for insects.

Stopping immediately, headlights on, I was expecting whatever it was to move off quickly when we pulled up. But it sat there. Finally, it turned its big head as if looking straight into my eyes.

"It's an owl," I agreed.

Neither of us had ever seen one before, at least not in the middle of a dirt road. Up high up in a tree, maybe, but not on the ground.

"It's caught something," I said.

As we pulled the car around the bird, it finally lifted off, relaxing its grip as it did. A single poplar tree leaf fluttered to the dirt.

There began a discussion in the car of what an impressive moment that had been, one that others assign great meaning to — since the time of the Greeks and Romans.

The owl was carrying a message.

Could it be my friend Teig Hogan saying "goodbye"? They'd just gathered down in Virginia for an informal memorial the day before. I'd sent best regards along with a link to some images of him, hoping to participate remotely.

I knew he didn't have long, but I'd missed that last call — phone upstairs when I was downstairs kind of a thing. Of course, I wish I'd called him back.

Goodbye, Teig. We'll play more trivia when I get there.

October 8, 2018

Fixing the Furnace

It all came down to a faulty switch.

The oil furnace had been lurching. Disconcerting, especially knowing it hadn't been maintained properly for years. The temperature cycle band was a good six or seven degrees, and all that surging must be inefficient.

Waking up one morning when it was at an extreme low ebb, meaning really COLD, ultimately got me to take action.

Pushing the reset button on the 1950s-looking Honeywell relay switch without result, convinced me the furnace had stopped functioning. Getting advice on what to try over the phone, as I walked to the post office to check my mail, inspired me to dive in and fix the damn thing.

When I got back to the house, it was warm. The furnace had come on again and cycled through. Should I just let it be?

And miss out on all the fun?

Online advice, purchasing parts, quizzing experts, each turn adding to things I needed to address. Replacing filters, inserting a new nozzle and electrodes — annual maintenance things clearly not done for years (even decades). 

Firing it up and adjusting the fuel screw to eliminate the black smoke made me feel like a real engineer.

But, operation was intermittent. A nudge on the Honeywell switch box would get things going again, with further manipulation required to keep it on track. When it did work for hours at a time, that familiar lurching returned. 

Finally, it gave out and no amount of maneuvering the switch would revive it. A friend offered advice and, serendipitously, a newer relay switch. 

Now I live in a pleasantly-heated home.

Honeywell relay switch (R8184G)

The Miracle of a Working Key Fob

If you own an older Saab, you know the miracle of a working key fob.
By the time the keys have been turned over to you, your 15-20-year-old car may have been through a number of owners. At least one of them likely left the thing to die when the CR2032 battery died.
You know the kind.

The batteries that look like lozenges

Problem is, if you let the battery die — and fail to replace it quickly — the whole system goes kaput. And then you know the true agony of living with a beautiful, classic Saab automobile with a failed key fob.

The joys of having a key fob and door entry system that actually works are many. They include door locks that go up and down with the press of a button. A rear gate that can be opened with pulling out your key. And a beautiful "tweet" sound that accompanies all this magic.

My Saab key fob works intermittently

With a yard full of Saabs, I've already lived the agony of failed key fobs. With the 1999 9-3 SE I've got now, I'm living the dream — at least intermittently — of a working fob. The glorious tweets! The ease of use! The sense of a Swedish luxury car working to its maximum potential!

But, then it goes out on me and I suffer — deeply. The first time this happened, just after I purchased the vehicle, I opened the device and checked it out. Some of that white corrosion film was apparent on the lozenge, so I replaced it.

Since then I live through the intermittency.

Until the failure seemed more permanent . .

. . and I put the proper (tiny) screwdriver in my car so I could take the fob apart again and have a look. It hadn't been long enough, it seemed, for the battery to have run down that far.

I really didn't wake up to the danger I was running until a couple weeks later. What if the battery had run down and the system fails? I rushed down to Rite Aid, and pulled out the manual to check the battery size. There in big letters it said that if the key fob battery did fail I'd get a warning notice on the dash.

I'd received no such warning.

Looking down the racks for the proper battery I noticed they were sold in two-packs — for $7.49 each. Since I'd purchased the last battery at that same store that would mean that I have another one somewhere.

I checked the glove compartment for an extra battery . .

. . but no dice. I stopped at the Chinese for lunch, bringing the special screwdriver in with me to effect the special operation on the failing key fob. Reviewing Twitter instead, I sat waiting impatiently for the waitress to come for my money.

When I got up to bring the tray to her, my key fob fell out of my pocket and onto the floor with a "SMACK". As I leaned down to retrieve it, I thought, "Could this have fixed it?"

I'm living the miracle of a working key fob again!

It's a Miracle!!

My life came crashing down around me recently with a large cup of black McDonald's coffee—flavored blueberry coconut—that lightly splashed my Acer laptop computer.

Blueberry-coconut-flavored coffee on my laptop.

A friend in the booth behind me had asked a political question regarding the chances of #NeverHillary vs. #NeverTrump, and as I turned to enlighten him on that point my arm/finger/sleeve combo took the coffee with it.

My big failing was not lifting the laptop.

The spill didn't seem so great on the actual computer, just in front of it. The McDonald's employee came with a mop and paper towels. I mopped up what I saw, but there was a lingering issue that kept me from lifting my laptop. I'd been meaning to swap out my charger/adapter/cord for a new one for quite some time as it was getting fiddly. In fact, I could barely get it fiddled into a position where it might actually transmit power to my laptop. To lift the computer to clean around it properly might have cut the power I'd spent so much fiddling time to get flowing to it.

The coffee had pooled underneath the computer.

It was only as I closed up shop to move on that I noticed the pool of coffee under the laptop. I didn't think too much about it at the time, not understanding the importance of the fan located there. I did start having fritzy cursor behavior—which evolved into no keyboard response by the next day.

The fan had been spraying coffee into the innards of my computer?

Technically-minded friend #1 explained this to me, as well as suggesting such a spray might short out the motherboard. When I asked if that meant getting another computer—which I'd been contemplating for some time, putting it off as long as possible—he said, quite simply: "Just get a USB keyboard."

That sounded expensive.

But where would I get one of those? Would I have to drive into New Hampshire to find one? Spend $65? "More like $9", defusing my computer/life crisis matter-of-factly. Taking this suggestion to technically-minded friend #2, who was working at the local library at the time, he said: "We have them upstairs. Just disconnect one from the public computers." It was only as I was doing just that I realized I had some of these USB keyboards at home.

Attaching a separate keyboard opened up new worlds.

With the separate keyboard attached via USB cable to my laptop I found I could maneuver both more easily—putting the laptop to the side and placing the keyboard where I could best work it. When using the computer in the car, for example, I could put the laptop in the passenger seat next to me, placing the keyboard in my lap. My computing life had actually improved after the blueberry-coconut-flavored coffee catastrophe.

Then the BEEPING started.

The laptop started BEEPING on first start-up. Next try it would boot up properly. Then it started BEEPING every time I tried booting it up—first time, next time, every time. When I described the sound to technically-minded friend #3 he thought it sounded keyboard-related. This plus the continued fritzy cursor suggested keyboard signals as culprit. A YouTube video showed me how to remove the keyboard with tweezers. "Would I really need to use tweezers?" I asked techie friend #2. "Just RIP IT OUT," he replied (with perhaps a little too much relish).

Busticated keyboard remains

So I RIPPED the keyboard out.

When I got the first layer off I smelled the blueberry-coconut-flavored coffee. Keys went flying everywhere, but I got the connector free. "The connector's key here", techie #2 had informed me.

It booted up (with help from Windows repair function).

I cut a piece of cardboard to tape over the gaping space left by the now ripped-out keyboard. This would protect my computer against any further coffee (or other) assaults. I wrote on it with a Sharpie, to remind myself (and others) how often I'm blessed with things turning out better than I thought they might . .

"It's a miracle!!"

Returning from a medical absence, techie friend #4 mildly debunked the fan-pulling-coffee-into-computer-innards theory of techie friend #1, noting his experience with moisture and computers was almost always related to the keyboard. The fan destroying my laptop from below might therefore be described as a "red herring" in this story.

Chevy Chase Coincidence

Hippest Spot in C-ville

Having just returned from visiting Bennington College in Vermont, hoping to see a Charlottesville musician attending there, I was interested to overhear the group of young C-villians sitting next to me at the C&O restaurant discussing that very school.

Turned out one was a musician, which made me nod inside. Most all of my central Virginia coincidences involve musicians. These kids were discussing their dorm "pod" at Bennington, relating stories thereof.

We were enjoying the live act—The Skip Castro Band—and I saw my musician friend Paul Curreri sitting at the bar. Conditions for coincidence were ripe.

I opened up a conversation with the young gal sitting next to me—Anna(?)—opening with the usual question: "What are your plans now that you've graduated college?"

"I don't know."

"Some kids go to grad school."

New "house" at Bennington

"If I had to, I guess I would." (Oh.)

It transpired that her father was from Hawaii and her mother from Maryland. The latter fact drew me in.

(with a gulp)

"What part of Maryland?" "Montgomery County," she replied.

(gulp again)

"What part of Montgomery County?" I asked, fully sensing where this was going. "Bethesda-Chevy Chase."

(big gulp)

"What street did you live on?" "I don't know," she said "But it was right next door to Donald Rumsfeld." (Oh.)

I took another look at her and said, "Your mother would be about my age." "How old are you?" she asked. Telling her my age, she said: "Yes, she's the same age as you."

Paul Curreri

"So," I said, building up to something big. "I probably went to elementary school with your mother. I went to Chevy Chase Elementary School."*

"She went to Chevy Chase Elementary School."

After naming the two teachers who taught our class there—Miss Page and Miss Kopp as a duo—and mentioning the names of some of my classmates, I said it was absolutely certain that I went to elementary school with her mother.

She seemed unsure as she got up to go.** I guess I just couldn't help myself when I added . .

"You know, if things had turned out differently between your mother and me in the sixth grade . ."

---

Other schoolmates in Miss Page and Miss Kopp's 6th grade class at Chevy Chase Elementary School in 1970-71 that I remember (perhaps imperfectly) included Phil Urquhart, Phil Augustine, Rudy DeSeife, Louis DeSipio, Sharon Flood, Adam Kolker, Maya McGee, Carol Engler, Jack Roche, Mike Spaulding, Harold Patch, Diana Stone, Beth (?) Stoner, etc. 

Many, including myself if we had not moved again, would have ended up Class of 1977 at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.

*for just one year (1970 to 1971) because we moved to Vermont (the tie-it-all-together coincidence in this Vermont-Virginia story).
**she would later confirm that it was all so horribly true.

Coincidence Corner: Part II (Vermont extension)

When I first relocated to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont — aka "Moose Country", with Canada immediately north and New Hampshire east — I was in a desperate search for public WiFi. 

Electricity finally reached this area in the late 1930s, why would there be public WiFi anywhere in 2008?

The nearest town had no cafés, not like you'd see elsewhere in the United States. McDonald's had one electrical outlet for all of its customers, and that one source of power put users in direct sunlight in the afternoon.*

Hope came in the form of indications that a real-life café was coming to town.

First, a sign above the building appeared. Peering in hopefully, I could see an acoustic guitar leaning up against the wall. Furniture slowly appeared. 

Some nine months later, The Grindstone Café opened — and they did indeed offer WiFi with ample electrical outlets. The owner-founders were two guys out of Keene, New Hampshire — one of them a musician, teacher of guitar, and guitar fixer.**

Lounging comfortably in my new spot, consuming way less coffee than would compensate for the WiFi and electricity I was consuming, I regaled these new barista-owners with stories of my musically-driven, central Virginia coincidences.

When I'd hear my Virginia musician friends' songs play on the radio station at the café, I'd excitedly make the connection for the barista-owners.

One day an older guy tried to enter the coffee shop but had difficulty getting up over the threshold. He'd step up, then fall back. Overcoming that barrier, Otto Kremer (1943-2018) energetically grabbed for the guitar and started singing.

He wrote songs, one of them having just played on NPR the Sunday before. He told tales of having once run a live music venue in St. Albans, Vermont — a story with a very wild ending.***

Here he was, a true musician, in fulfillment of the signs.

Months later Otto came in with a bag over his shoulder and asked if either of us — the non-musician barista-owner or myself — knew anything about streaming. "I'm sure Ben can help you on that, he's the technical guy around here," I deflected to the co-owner.

"That's good," he said, "because I have a movie I want to watch that my nephew produced. It's called The Parking Lot."

"Oh?" I asked, my coincidence bell ringing. "What's the film about?"

"It's about this parking lot in Charlottesville, Virginia. A bunch of musicians work there taking money, and this is their story."

I knew that parking lot. My room in the Chancellor Apartments looked out over it. I'd walked across that parking lot many times.

The Corner Parking Lot was at the heart what I'd come to call "Coincidence Corner" because of all the coincidences that had happened to me there.

Two of the biggest synchronicities I experienced on Coincidence Corner involved Buena Vista Social Club, a record the musician-friend who kicked off all my Charlottesville coincidences had recommended to me.

"Your nephew worked on this film, Otto?" I asked, returning to the matter at hand.

"Yes, my nephew Mark. He's a musician, too."

"What group did he play with?" I asked sensing where this might be going.

"6 Day Bender," he responded.

"I know Mark," I said. "I watched him play in that group at their CD release party."

"Oh," he said. "My sister lives in Charlottesville."

So many times this exact sort of thing happened to me, even outside of central Virginia, I should have long since gotten used to it.

Then Otto pulled a CD out of his bag, intending to give it to Ben to play for his customers. Catching a quick glimpse of the CD cover, I asked tremulously, "What CD is that, Otto?"

He pulled it up, coming closer for me to see. I covered my eyes with my hands and lowered my head. 

"Don't tell me," I said.

It was indeed Buena Vista Social Club.

---

*they have since made amends, converting their restaurant into a cross between a swanky 1990s restaurant and a lawyer's office, replete with outlets everywhere.
**they had been thinking about offering guitar-related merchandise in their café.
***involving drugs, escaping police capture to another state, etc.

Coincidence Corner

Not long after I arrived in Charlottesville in 1999, I encountered a bluegrass band that changed my life. Two members of this musical collective were performing at Michael's Bistro¹ on University Avenue, just a couple of doors up from where I was staying (at the Chancellor Apartments).

I was immediately struck with the sound of this group, and that the singer came from Lexington—where I spent my first year in college (and first encountered bluegrass music)—and the guitarist came from Richmond—where I'd attended high school.

After befriending the impresario of this act,² he started recommending I listen to Buena Vista Social Club. On the day I finally got around to buying the album, following repeated nudges from my new friend, I walked just up the street to Plan 9³ with yet another Michael in the story (who lived down the hall).

After making our purchase, I wondered about heading up 14th Street, crossing over the railroad tracks and parking lot behind the apartment building where we lived, and getting home that way.⁴ For no real reason, we decided to stroll directly a block or two up University toward home. Right in front of our apartment we run smack into said musician walking with his friends.⁵

I'd never encountered him on the street; certainly never seen him in front of where I lived. On the day I finally buy the CD he'd been pushing me to buy, that's right where I see him—immediately after making the purchase he'd recommended.

We chatted about the CD, how he listened to it more than bluegrass nowadays. He asked if I had a room upstairs, and we parted rather clumsily.

Needless to say I became infatuated with Buena Vista Social Club, listening to it for hours on end with tears streaming down my face. The Cuban music spoke directly to my heart and it was healing my soul.

In the months and years since, the strains of Buena Vista Social Club have wafted through my life like a fugue. It seemed that each time my head was in a fog of some sort or another, I'd walk into some café and music from that CD would be playing through the speakers.

Fast forward to yesterday⁶ . .

Down on the famous Charlottesville pedestrian mall, meeting with friends, etc., I'd decided to grab a bite to eat on The Corner (at the old entrance to UVa)—which I'd long since started calling 'Coincidence Corner' for all of those same articles I'd experienced there.

After an enjoyable sub at Little John's deli—which sits right below Michael's Bistro—upon exiting I spy my friend Michael, the very one who'd helped me purchase that 'Buena Vista Social Club' CD at Plan 9 all those years ago. Now indistinguishable from a bum, I couldn't tell if he recognized me or simply wished to avoid my recognizing him.

I stepped into the new location of Plan 9, immediately next door to Little John's, for a coffee. What should be playing for all the customers to hear?

And not just one song, but the whole damned thing.

---

1. I always joke that they did me a real favor by naming this place (which quickly became my favorite) after me before I got to town.
2. Whose middle name was 'Michael' and whose father's middle name was 'Michael'.
3. Plan 9 was then located down the street a couple blocks, just past 14th Street (meaning it was actually on Main, 14th Street being where it changes names).
4. Thereby crossing the now-famous Parking Lot.
5. Will and Craig(?).
6. I should have know something was up: the live act I happened to catch the previous night in Harrisonburg was from Charlottesville and named Sons of Bill (way before they were big). My father's name is 'Bill', and the first three songs they did were among his favorites.

SEE ALSO: Coincidence Corner: Part II (Vermont extension)

Telling Stories in a Baseball Poem

The home run Kirk Gibson hit to win the first game of the 1988 World Series was the most spectacular athletic achievement I'd ever experienced — even if I was home watching it on television.

Hurt in the locker room, legs in ice, he wasn't even in the line-up. When he improbably swaggered out, he couldn't take a practice swing without hurting. He was barely able to run to first base on a foul ball.

How could this man possibly save the day?

To find out you have to hear me read my narrative poem "The Man Who Gave All the Dreamers in Baseball Land Bigger Dreams to Dream", which I modeled on Ernest Thayer's classic "Casey at the Bat". Writing parodies of his most-popular poem has become almost a side industry.*

The idea for it came from an article in USA Today chronicling the greatest home runs of all time. Third on the list was Gibson's. Dodgers catcher Mike Scioscia was quoted as saying:

". . it was like 'Casey at Bat,' but this time 'Casey' hit it out."

That's what gave me the idea. Those who watched that remarkable event on TV always tell me how much they appreciate my poem.**

My thanks — and apologies — go out to Ernest Thayer.

---

*my rather poor attempt at one has been published with others in Baseball Almanac.
**which sticks faithfully to what actually happened.

"I Never Had Any Intention of Becoming a Poet"

Current Living Arrangements

I never had any intention of becoming a poet.

Playwright, yes, screenwriter, maybe—perhaps one day a novelist—but never a poet.

Poetry was always a silly thing, especially as a lifelong pursuit. What poetry I had written in college as a drunken student was dark. The kind that took itself way too seriously, that tried way too hard to be "deep" and meaningful, to get at the soul of life (ha!).

My poetry-writing started out so innocently. I had some musicals I wanted to write, but who would write the songs? My one effort at collaboration had not worked out.

Maybe I would be the one to put the rhyming words down, and perhaps one day apply the music. That's when I somewhat magically landed in Charlottesville, Virginia, a town filled with musicians. Maybe we could collaborate. 

I started writing lyrics.

Attending an open mic at the much-storied Prism Coffeehouse I had hopes of kicking off my songwriting career by reading original lyrics to the aspiring songwriters in the audience. I hated so much that the emcee, Aer Stephens of WTJU, introduced me as a "poet". 

I informed the audience that what I was reading to them were actually "pre-songs".

They laughed at my Catholic confession and goldfish song ditty. Aer said afterward I might have a future in radio advertising. 

Ominously, he said, my longer piece sounded like it should be a poem.

God, how I hated to hear him say it. I'd hoped it might make an historical ballad like 'Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald' — Gordon Lightfoot's classic I'd tried to get a rhyming scheme from.

I set off on a poetry-writing tear, anyway, almost inexorably. 

Many writers of other genres passed through a poetry-writing phase, it seemed, though usually earlier in life. Maybe my playwriting would benefit from the detour. It's what was coming out in terms of artistic production, so why stop it? 

Write something that morning, read it an open mic that night — poof! you're a poet. None of that finding of directors, financing, spaces, and producing your works for the public that go into making a playwright.

Narrative poems came first, the long kind that tell a story.

Then came sonnets on a variety of topics. They appealed to my intellectual, philosophical, make-a-point mentality. After creating a few "starter sonnets" — just the first four lines — I remembered from my schooling somewhere that a four-line poem was called a "quatrain".

Then came quatrains on life and love and wheels, whatever.

I even dipped my toe into what I call beat poems — what some might call "slam".* That opened up political rants, politics being something I'd been trying to keep out of my art.

I'd like to think I innovated two types of poetry: sentence and word poems.*** I'm sure others have written in these styles, but I don't know of anyone to give them names, define them — or write a bunch of them as a category.

I've now written something on the order of 500 poems,** surprising, especially since I never thought I'd become a poet at all.

---

*"beat" comes from "street beat"; never liked the whole idea of "slam poetry", the term or the style.
**more like double that as of 4/20/13. For a breakdown as of 6/11/07 see Rough Reckoning; for an accounting of the poems at this blog, see "Reckoning: April 9, 2018".
***since added X-style to poetic forms I've originated.

I Remember Carthage

Finding a woman's passport on the sidewalk the other day, upon return from the theater, I wondered what to do with it. How had it gotten there? Would I incriminate myself somehow by returning it?

After consulting with two members of the U.S. Postal Service, guys who should know about this sort of thing, I asked if I could just pop it into a mailbox. "Yeah, that'll get to her eventually" one of them replied.

So I dropped the woman's lost passport in the mail.

It reminded me of my father's wallet coming back to him in the mail after he left it in a taxi cab in Tunis. That was a magical thing, I thought, especially considering we were living in Moscow, USSR at the time.

Of course, it came back empty, minus his $50. He said to me after losing the wallet that he'd have preferred to have bought the carpet my mother had picked out rather than to lose the money like that.

I remember the visit to the ruins of Carthage by the sea. 

"What were the Romans doing way down here?" I thought as a 10-year-old.

My sister sneaked a turtle out of Tunisia on the plane, naming it Myrtle. It would remain her pet until it scrambled into the underbrush in Upper Northwest Washington, D.C. My father raked the backyard in search of it, more for show than anything else. The creature was long gone.

I remember the feel, the aroma, the sights of Tunis. The smell of rope, the tawny colors, the French in the air (giving my mother a chance to show off hers). The desert dress. The camels. The pleasant service.

"Excuse me, are you Jewish?"

Hasidic Jew

That's a strange thing to be asked walking down a busy sidewalk some morning in Washington, D.C.

Turned out an Hasidic Jew was looking for two Jews to meet a quorum for prayer service.

I replied that I was expanding my mind, did that count? 

"Not today", he said.

On noting the Nazi nature of profiling people on the street as to their ethnic appearance, he said

"Nazi-like would be telling you you're nothing."

Reminding him that the Nazis profiled as to Aryan-like features he claimed he couldn't tell what I looked like with my sunglasses.

I took the opportunity to ask him about the new Pope, "while we're on the topic of Nazis", I said, hopelessly prefiguring his response.

"What are you going to do, he was just a kid.  Let's see what he does now, that's more important," he replied dismissively.

He went back to his search for two more Jews, and I to my wondering at the impact of this new Pope on people of my faith.