Back To 2001

Every once in a while I read about a museum exhibition that sounds so tantalizing it motivates a desire to take a trip just to see it.  So it is with an exhibit that is opening this weekend at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York called Envisioning 2001:  Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey.

Of course, the exhibit is about 2001:  A Space Odyssey — a masterpiece that is now generally considered one of the greatest films ever made.  (The British Film Institute’s critics poll, for example, ranks the film as number 6 on the top 100 list of the greatest films of all time.)  Anyone who’s watched the movie — and if you haven’t, you really should — has been mesmerized by the story, the soundtrack, and the many memorable scenes.   From the early ape-like human ancestors stroking the colossal object and learning how to use bones as weapons, to the discovery of the object on the moon, to the docking of the shuttle and the space station set to the strains of The Blue Danube waltz, to the exploits of the murderous HAL computer on the voyage to Jupiter, to the final mystifying scenes with the Starchild and the Stargate, 2001 is a mind-blowing adventure and feast for the senses.  And as you watch, you wonder:  what in the world (or, more appropriately, beyond the world) is happening here?  It’s hard to believe that many critics at the time of its release panned the movie and didn’t recognize its epic scale and greatness — but often the influential scope of books, movies, artistic movements, music, and other creative endeavors aren’t fully appreciated until years later.

The new exhibit offers a peek at the models used in the film’s ground-breaking special effects, the ape costumes worn by actors, and the spacesuits designed for the Jupiter voyage, but the real focus is on digging into what Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke were trying to convey — and how they got there.  When you get a chance to look at how a classic was created, how can you resist?

Parental Eavesdropping

Like many states, New York has a law that bars recording communications unless at least one of the parties to the communication gives consent.  Earlier this week, the highest court in New York considered whether parents can legally eavesdrop when one of the parties to the communication is their child — and held that parents can do so under certain circumstances.

The ruling came in a case where the divorced father of a five-year-old boy, over an open phone line, heard his son having a “violent conversation” with his ex-wife’s bodybuilder boyfriend.  The father recorded the conversation.  (Disturbingly, though, the father apparently didn’t contact authorities to give them the recording until months later, when the ex-wife and boyfriend were arrested after neighbors heard screaming and crying coming from the house.)  The boyfriend argued that the recorded conversation shouldn’t be allowed into evidence at his trial because neither party to the conversation consented.

The New York Court of Appeals disagreed, and concluded that the father had “a good faith, objectively reasonable belief that it was necessary for the welfare of his son to record the violent conversation he found himself listening to.”  Three of the judges on that court dissented, concluding that the ruling raised policy concerns that should be left up to the legislature and could raise issues in divorce situations, with the parties to the break-up planting bugs to record conversations between their children and the other party to the divorce.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone would argue that a parent who heard their little boy being threatened with violence couldn’t making a recording to try to help their child — but then again, it’s hard to imagine that a father who made such a recording wouldn’t immediately take the recording to the police to try to get his son out of a dangerous situation.  The father’s inaction in the case makes the ugly divorce scenarios that apparently motivated the dissenting judges seem more plausible.

But one person’s bad judgment shouldn’t mask a key reality:  parents should be permitted to eavesdrop and intervene when they honestly believe their child is at risk.  Whether it’s bullying on a school bus, or a situation where a child is falling under the sway of a sexual predator, there are many instances where parents could legitimately decide that making a recording of a conversation involving their child was the right thing to do.  It’s not snooping, it’s trying to protect your kid — and we shouldn’t let speculative worries about what might happen in other worst-case scenarios prevent parents from following their basic parenting instincts when it comes to trying to do right by their children.

Time For A New Debate Format

Kish suggested we watch last night’s Republican debate.  Against my better judgment, I agreed.  I should have heeded my judgment, I think.

I’m not a fan of these sprawling debates for a lot of reasons, but the first one hit me as soon as the debate began:  I just don’t like the idea of the moderators picking one person to answer a question about a given topic, and I don’t like the candidates’ ability to not answer the question.  So when the moderator began the debate by asking Ted Cruz about the economy (why Cruz?) and Cruz launched instead into an obviously prepared speech about the ten American sailors captured by Iran, it set my teeth to grinding immediately.

This is a format destined for disaster on a stage with seven candidates hoping to get air time.  At first the candidates act politely and hold their fire as one of their competitors gets to address a juicy topic, but eventually they can’t help themselves and start talking very loudly so that they get to weigh in and get their faces on TV again.  There’s no meaningful way to discipline candidates who go off topic, either.  What are you going to do, tell one of them that they don’t get to respond for the rest of the debate because they didn’t answer a question?  If that rule had been applied last night, basically every candidate would have been silenced long before the debate’s official end.

If I had my choice, you’d start one of these pre-primary debates with opening statements by each of the candidates, so they could vent their canned speeches and you’d at learn about whatever topics were of most importance to them.  I’d establish the order by picking names out of a hat.  Then, once those preliminaries are out of the way, ask a question about a topic and have each candidate respond to the same question.  So long as the question dealt with an important topic, and was not of the “if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you want to be” variety, the candidates themselves would discipline each other to stick to the subject, the way Chris Christie did last night when neither Cruz nor Rubio answered a question about entitlements.  You couldn’t blow off an important topic without the next person in line immediately criticizing you for dodging it.

And I suppose time-limit buzzers are inevitable, especially when seven politicians are on one stage, but they give the debates an unfortunate game show quality.  And, as a candidate’s answer proceeds, I find myself anticipating the buzzer rather than paying much attention to the latter part of the candidate’s response.  The candidates blow right through the buzzers, anyway.  I’d rather have the moderator politely tell the candidate that their time has expired.

Who won last night’s debate?  Beats me.  I thought Trump really zinged Cruz on Cruz’s ill-advised dismissal of “New York values,” recalling how New Yorkers pulled together and moved forward after 9/11 and leaving Cruz to do nothing but keep a frozen smile on his face and no doubt think, inwardly, that he had just taken a self-inflicted wound.   I don’t think those kinds of point-scoring exchanges ultimately mean much in a multi-candidate field, but I do think that, with all the problems we are facing, we don’t need politicians who make cheap appeals to regionalism and pit one part of the country against another.  I was glad to see Cruz take a haymaker.

As for the rest of the debate, Trump obviously has no real substance behind the catch phrases and bloviating, but the other candidates can’t quite figure out how to deal with him.  It’s like they’re trying to climb over each other while hoping that some day, somebody will vote Trump off the island, while Trump stands at the center stage lectern, scowling.  They can’t figure out why people are going for Trump and I can’t, either.

Tat Trouble

In case you’re looking for another reason to not get a tattoo, let me be of assistance — medical researchers are finding that a measurable portion of people who get inked report skin reactions which can last for months, or longer.

A recent study published in the thrillingly named journal Contact Dermatitis interviewed 300 New Yorkers with tats in the area around Central Park in June 2013.  (Wouldn’t you love to know, by the way, whether it took more than 15 minutes to find 300 inked people around Central Park, and how many of the people approached told the researchers to stick it?)  Ten percent of respondents reported having problems with their body art, ranging from rashes to itching, swelling, infections, delaying healing, and skin bumps, with six percent saying the problems continued for more than four months.  Some of the reactions appear to be responses caused by the body’s immune system.

The study also indicates that conditions seem to be related to the color of the ink used, with skin problems reported for red ink at levels disproportionate to the commonness of red ink tattoos. Researchers don’t yet know whether the reactions are due to the ink itself, or to brighteners or preservatives used with the ink — but then, tattoo-related conditions haven’t exactly been a hot topic in the medical research field.  That’s unfortunate because, as Dr. Marie Leger, spokesperson for the study, said, “The skin is a highly immune-sensitive organ, and the long-term consequences of repeatedly testing the body’s immune system with injected dyes and colored inks are poorly understood.”  No kidding!

If you’ve ever had poison ivy or a bad rash, you know that there are few things more maddening than persistently itchy skin.  I can’t imagine dealing with it for months, or even years.  With tattoos becoming increasingly common — Dr. Leger estimates one in five adult Americans has at least one tattoo — maybe it’s time to take a careful and systematic look at just what risks are involved in getting permanently inked up.

Helping Birds Make It Home

Who doesn’t like birds — at least, birds other than pigeons?  They are pretty and colorful, they add happy chirping and warbling to our world, and they are a pleasure to watch as they soar, dip, and dive and make us wish we could fly, too.

But birds have a big problem.  Every year, millions of them are killed in urban settings for reasons collectively known as fatal light attraction.  They become disoriented by the mirrored surface of an office building, believe the reflection of a tree is the real thing, and are killed by the resulting collision.  Or they think they have a clear flight path to the tree and pond in the glass-walled atrium and fatally crash into the unseen window. If you’ve ever seen a bird strike a window — from inside or outside — and heard the terrible hollow thud the unfortunate bird makes you probably won’t forget it.

Scientists also worry that the bright lights of cities may be altering migration patterns because the lights interfere with the bird’s ability to navigate by starlight.  In addition, bird deaths from fatal light attraction interfere with normal evolutionary processes.  Whereas survival of the fittest is supposed to mean the genes of the strongest, healthiest birds are passed to the next generation, death from a window collision can strike down even the healthiest of our flying friends.

People are trying to do something about the problem of fatal light attraction.  The National Audubon Society sponsors a “lights out” program designed to reduce light confusion, with local chapters across the country.   In Canada, an organization called FLAP — for Fatal Light Awareness Program — is encouraging the construction and lighting of buildings in ways that will help to minimize unnecessary bird deaths.  And authorities are starting to take notice, too.  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo just announced that non-essential outdoor lights will be turned off in state-run buildings between 11 p.m. and dawn during the peak migratory seasons in the spring and fall.

Right now, there’s a bird outside my window, chirping with pleasure as dawn approaches.  Fewer soulless mirrored buildings, an end to generic office building atriums, and turning off bright lights during the early morning hours — which presumably would be a financial and energy savings, too — so that birds can migrate safely seems like a small price to pay to ensure that we can continue to enjoy their sweet morning song.

The Lesson Of Scary Lucy

Lucille Ball originally came from Celoron, New York, a small town in the western part of the state.  Celoron decided to celebrate its most famous citizen by commissioning a life-size statue of the legendary TV sitcom star of the ’50s and ’60s, who was one of the most gifted physical comedians of all time.  No doubt Celoron also hoped to spur visits to the town by diehard fans of the star.

Unfortunately, what Celoron got was “Scary Lucy,” a large bronze piece that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the familiar redhead.  And it’s not because it is an abstract modern art piece, where achieving an actual likeness of the subject is not the principal goal.  No, the statue is, in fact, an attempt at a faithful representation of Lucille Ball — it’s just one that fails miserably and is pretty frightening-looking to boot.

The friendly, funny woman from I Love Lucy is depicted with a spoon and what appears to be a bottle of Vitameatavegamin, in a nod to one of the show’s most famous episodes.  So far, so good, I guess — although people who don’t know the show might think the statue is supposed to represent a scary governess chasing a young child and insisting he consume a hated spoonful of Castor Oil.  But the face and head doesn’t look like Lucille Ball in any way.  Instead, they depict a ’50s motorcycle punk apparently turned zombie, with a greased swept-back hairdo, googly eyes, poor dental work and a bad complexion.  If you didn’t know it was supposed to be Lucille Ball, you wouldn’t guess it was her in a million years.

The good people of Celoron don’t like the statue, presumably because it gives them nightmares, so they’ve decided to hire another sculptor to “fix” it, even though the original sculptor offered to provide a new statue for free.  I have no quibble with the decision not to go back to the well with the original artist — given the quality of this statue, who knows what kind of horror he might produce.  But how does an artist “fix” Scary Lucy?  Cut off her head and attach a new one?  That’s just about as scary as the current effort.

What’s the lesson?  Do your due diligence.  Before you hire an artist to create a statue or paint a portrait, look at their past work and the people they are trying to represent, and make sure that they are truly up to the job.  And if they ultimately produce something that looks terrifying, for God’s sake don’t display it publicly — unless it’s Halloween.

Barack Obama And George W. Bush

New York magazine has an interesting article with a headline no one thought they would see after President Obama’s triumph in the 2008 presidential election.  The headline is:  Barack Obama Is Not George W. Bush.

The comparison is being made by some because President Obama’s approval ratings have dropped to levels at or below the levels for President Bush at the same point in the second term his presidency.  The article argues that although the approval ratings are similar, the reality of the two presidents is much different:  President Bush had bipartisan support and lost it, and President Obama never had bipartisan support to begin with.  The article contends that President Obama’s dropping ratings are due to diehard, unending opposition that has been adopted as a tactical matter by Republican leaders.

I’m not convinced by that contention, which strikes me as a bit of a dodge.  The implication is that President Obama’s policies have nothing to do with his falling popularity, or with the opposition to his initiatives — the Republican tactics are wholly responsible because they have made the President look “partisan.”  In reality, I think, the opposition to many of the President’s proposals, such as the Affordable Care Act, is due to disagreement with the merits of those proposals:  Republicans and many independents thought they were bad ideas, and nothing that has happened since the recent rollout of healthcare.gov and the insurance exchanges has caused them to change their minds.  The mismanagement of the “Obamacare” rollout, and the President’s claimed unawareness of governmental actions like the NSA’s surveillance programs, also have caused people to question the President’s competence.  Those are self-inflicted wounds, not the product of stalwart opposition.

One other aspect of the New York piece is troubling.  It forecasts that the remainder of the President’s term will focus on executive action, where the President simply announces decisions without having to win approval from Congress.  We are already seeing that with some of the recent decisions to waive enforcement of various provisions of the Affordable Care Act.  That process is troubling in and of itself, but even more troubling is that the political focus has shifted from Congress to the federal judiciary — specifically, the federal court of appeals for the District of Columbia, which hears appeals of many administrative decisions.  The New York article states that Republicans have had a “functional majority” on the D.C. Circuit, and argues that the recent changes to the filibuster rules will allow President Obama and Senate Democrats to approve nominees to that court who will approve the President’s expanded use of “executive powers.”

This kind of frank assessment of the politics of a federal court should be disturbing to everyone.  Our government has been increasingly politicized in recent decades, and it hasn’t exactly worked well for our country.  If the judicial branch — which, with its lifetime tenure, is supposed to be immune from base political considerations — becomes explicitly politicized, it will not be a good development for the United States of America.

My Only (Somewhat) Ghostly Encounter

It was the summer of 1976.  I had just finished my freshman year of college and was working at the Alpine Village resort in Lake George, New York with a bunch of other high school and college kids — along with one 30-something guy named Jerry, a Vietnam War vet who captained the Alpine Village boat and who was focused with laser-like intensity on achieving meaningful dalliances with every unescorted mother bringing her two kids up for a week-long stay at the resort.

Jerry’s family owned a house that was located nearby.  It was the old family homestead, a sprawling, century-old house back in the woods that was still fully furnished, although no one lived there.  It was a convenient place for Jerry to take those lonely young mothers.

One night Jerry invited the lot of us to the house for a clambake and sleepover.  The house was like a scene from Arsenic and Old Lace or a Vincent Price movie, complete with creaky floorboards, odd family memorabilia, portraits of long-dead relatives whose eyes seemed to follow you when you moved, dusty drapery, and unexpected alcoves where you might be startled by your reflection in a mirror as you passed by or the sight of a stuffed raccoon.  It was a creepy place, and Jerry told us without much elaboration that family lore had it that the place was haunted by at least two ghosts — a weeping woman who had died during childbirth in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and a boy who had been killed by a fall into a well out back.

We chuckled at the story, gobbled our clams and burgers, and drank more beer than a responsible person should.

That night, I awoke after I thought I heard an odd noise.  It was black as pitch, and the wind was blowing.  I stuck my out of the bedroom door and out of the corner of my eye noticed some movement down at the end of the upstairs hallway.  I didn’t have my glasses on, but something seemed to be moving down there.  The floorboards creaked, I suddenly felt cold, and the hairs on my arms stood on end — then I retreated to the room, shut the door, and got back into bed, soon to fall into alcohol-assisted slumber without further incident.

The next morning I explored the other end of the hallway.  There was a mirror and window, and a table with some old framed photographs.  Perhaps I saw myself in the mirror, or curtains blowing in the early morning breeze?  I’m not sure.

Taxes, Forms, Worksheets, And Instructions

It’s April 15 — Tax Day.  For many Americans, it’s an angst-filled day, as they rush to complete their taxes and get their forms filed before the midnight deadline.  Even for those of us who are already filed, it’s not a day to celebrate.

Every year, the process of completing tax forms seems to become more complicated and more overwhelming.  Taxpayers juggle federal, state, and local forms, labor through increasingly lengthy instructions, and strive mightily to interpret myriad weird descriptions of deductions, credits and “adjustments to income” to determine whether they have any application to our lives.  This year, the on-line IRS instruction booklet for the 2012 Form 1040 comes in a PDF that is a mind-boggling 214 pages long.  And if you don’t think you need to read every instruction because common sense answers most of the questions, consider this:  according to the instruction at page R-1 of the Form 1040 booklet, for purposes of the credit for the elderly, the IRS considers you to be 65 the day before your 65th birthday!  Somewhere, there is an sober bureaucrat who will give you an earnest explanation of why that approach makes perfect sense.

Although we make the most fun of the federal forms and instructions, for many of us the state and local forms and instructions are just as bad.  This year I had the good fortune to review the New York forms and instructions.  The basic New York personal income tax form, the IT-201, is four pages long and includes 19 separate line items for federal income and adjustments, 5 line items for “New York additions,” 9 line items for “New York subtractions,” 4 line items for deductions, 9 line items for “tax computation, credits, and other taxes,” 13 line items for “New York City and Yonkers taxes, credits, and tax surcharges,” and 14 line items for “payments and refundable credits.”  The on-line instructions for the form comes in a PDF that is a hefty 72 pages long.

Of course, those are just the forms for personal income tax.  I can’t even begin to imagine the complexity and pain involved in filing tax returns for a small business.

With the multiplicity of forms and the confusing instructions, it’s not surprising that many people turn to tax preparation services for help.  According to estimates, about 60 percent of taxpayers seek professional help, and some 800,000 people are employed in helping us prepare our tax returns.  If you add in the various people employed by the IRS and state and local tax agencies to receive, process, and audit our forms, more than 1 million Americans likely earn their living through some tax-related job.  That’s why some people say that “flat tax” proposals that would eliminate all of the deductions, adjustments, additions, surcharges, and other confusing entries are job killers.

I’m sorry if simplifying the tax form completion process would cost some people their jobs, but it simply makes no sense to have Americans fight through these ludicrous forms and instructions every year.  Congress, state legislatures, and local governments should roll up their sleeves, get rid of the special interest exclusions, deductions, and adjustments, and get us to a tax system that is simple and straightforward.  If you want people to pay their taxes — and we should want people to pay their taxes — make the process easy to understand and therefore easy to comply with.

When Hurricanes Strike, Forget Politics

Every day, those of us in the Midwest read stories about awful conditions in Staten Island and other parts of New York and New Jersey — people without power, without gas, without food, without help, and without hope, a week after Sandy the Superstorm made landfall — and we shudder.

The media is eager to label politicians as winners or losers in all of this.  They ask:  Did President Obama do a great job in the first 24 hours, or has he fallen down on the job recently, when he left the East Coast for the campaign trail?  Was New York City Mayor Bloomberg crazy to even consider holding the New York City Marathon under these circumstances?  And will FEMA ever perform flawlessly when a hurricane scores a near-direct hit on a major city?

It’s ludicrous to try to identify political winners and losers when disaster strikes; it just cheapens the colossal human tragedy to view it solely from a political perspective.  The conditions left in the wake of Hurricane Sandy are unimaginable to those of us who are accustomed to modern life — a group that includes all of the wretched souls in New York and New Jersey who have had their lives turned upside down.  Imagine living in a small apartment in one of the affected communities, having to deal with overflowing toilet bowls, spoiled food in the refrigerator, rotting trash at the curbside, no food or water, unheated rooms in near-freezing temperatures, and fears of armed looters when darkness falls.  The victims of Hurricane Sandy can’t understand why, a week later, they aren’t being helped to get their lives back to normal, and I expect they find it infuriating that the media has passed judgment on which politician performed well and which didn’t, and then moved on to another story.

If there is a lesson about this, it is that natural disasters are, in fact, disasters — incidents that have catastrophic consequences that can’t be easily reversed or repaired.   Mayors, Governors, and Presidents do the best they can, but often the scale of the disaster makes appalling human suffering unavoidable.  We should just accept that fact, let the governmental bodies do their job under difficult circumstances, try to help however we can, and not be quite so quick to judge.

Like Federal, Like State

We tend to talk a lot about the federal debt — and for good reason! — but there are reasons for concern on the state level, too.

A recent report on the amount of debt at the level is very sobering.  The report looked at regular debt, the 2013 fiscal year budget gap, outstanding unemployment trust fund loans, unfunded benefit liabilities, and unfunded pension liabilities, and showed that for all of the proud words of the governors who spoke at the Republican and Democratic conventions, many states are drowning in debt.  California is in the worst shape, with a stunning $617 billion in debt, followed by New York ($300 billion), Texas ($287 billion), Illinois ($271 billion) and New Jersey ($258 billion).  Ohio, unfortunately, stands sixth with $239 billion in debt.  The state in the best shape is Vermont, with only $5.8 billion in debt — less than 1/100th of the amount owed by California.

In all, states are laboring under a crushing $4 trillion in debt.  It’s just another reminder that the flood of red ink is found across our country — and that it’s high time we start doing something about it.

My Alpine Village Summer of 1976 (Part II)

The grounds at Alpine Village

After a few weeks of washing dishes I got promoted to waiter.

Alpine Village operated on the “American plan,” so guests got breakfast and dinner served at specified times and ate whatever our cook decided to prepare.  The wait staff would carry in platters of scrambled eggs, meat loaf, pancakes, and Swiss steak and put them on the long, communal tables for everyone to share.  The dining room usually was filled with lively chatter as the wait staff weaved in and out, dropping off fresh, hot plates of food and clearing the dirty dishes.

The dining room at Alpine Village

I also worked as a lunch-time short order cook, flipping burgers and making grilled cheese sandwiches and milkshakes at the “Rathskeller” in the basement of the main lodge, and as back-up bartender at that same location in the evening hours.  For that summer, at least, I could make a tolerable Tom Collins or Harvey Wallbanger.

The workday stretched from 6:30 a.m. sharp to 9 p.m. or so.  When the day was over, the staff would party in the common area on the second floor of the barn, playing the Eagles and Jackson Browne albums on a battered communal stereo and drinking cases of beer, or take the Alpine Village speedboat across the lake to a local establishment that served ice-cold pitchers of beer and buckets of steamed clams.  Few things taste quite so good after a long, hot workday as a cold beer in a frosted glass and a hot steamed clam dipped in drawn butter.

I roomed with Jerry, the speedboat captain.  He was a fun-loving, 30ish Vietnam War veteran who was primarily interested in testing the virtue of the bored mothers who spent the long weeks at Alpine Village with their spoiled kids, waiting for their husbands to come up from the City on weekends.  My other great friends that wonderful summer were Sharon, the hilarious and acerbic bartender, and sharp-tongued Kate and good-hearted Ceal, who worked as waitresses and chambermaids.  Our bosses were Marilyn and Peter, the chain-smoking, highball-guzzling married couple who owned the resort.

There was no individual tipping at Alpine Village.  Instead, guests would leave envelopes for the staff as a whole, and if they wanted to reward a particular employee they could designate part of the money for that person.  We got the accumulated tips at the end of the summer.  Peter and Marilyn did it that way to prevent reckless staffers from irresponsibly blowing their pay as the summer progressed — and they were right.  I received several thousand dollars on my way out the door, which was a huge amount of money in those days.

When I left Alpine Village at the end of that summer, with money in my pocket and a sense of self-confidence from having succeeded, on my own, in that faraway job, I felt like I had taken a long step toward becoming an adult.

My Alpine Village Summer Of 1976 (Part I)

It was the summer of 1976.  It was the year of the Bicentennial, the year after I graduated from high school, when the tall ships came to New York harbor and the Fourth of July was celebrated with a special, round-number, multiple-century vigor.  I spent that summer working at the Alpine Village resort in Lake George, New York.  It was one of the best jobs I ever had.

The entrance to Alpine Village

I wanted to get away from Columbus.  I was looking for work at a resort-style place, where the position would include room and board so I wouldn’t have to pay for an apartment.  Alpine Village was perfect.  It was a small resort located right on Lake George that employed about 15 staffers who performed every imaginable job.  Most of us — men and women, teenagers and twenty-somethings, clerks and blue-collar types — shared small rooms on the second floor of a barn-like structure on the grounds.  We were supervised by Peter and Marilyn, the chain-smoking, highball-drinking, often feuding married couple that ran the place.

The dishwasher room at Alpine Village

I started the summer as the dishwasher, working in a small room with a huge steel dishwashing machine and a nozzle that fired superheated water.  You rinsed the dirty plates with the nozzle, filled plastic racks with the rinsed dishes, slid the racks into the machine, closed the metal sheathing, and started the washing cycle.  While the machine hummed away, you worked on the next stack of dirty dishes and glasses.  When the machine was done you removed the cleaned rack amidst billowing clouds of scalding steam, slid in the next rack, started the process over again, and stacked the cleaned dishes, still hot to the touch, on the shelves.

I loved working in that little room, managing things myself.  During slack time, I cleaned and polished the steel counter where the dirty dishes were stacked and — best of all — practiced my skill at squirting streams of superheated water at doomed ants who couldn’t resist the scent of the leftover food.  I worked with lightning speed in that steamy room, keeping the metal surfaces bright and gleaming, trying to keep ahead of the waitresses who dropped off the dirty plates and cutlery.

Sure, I was working in a small room in a little-known resort in a small resort town — but what did I care?  I was 19 years old, and on my own.

Speaking Of Fair Food And Doughnuts . . . .

How serendipitous!  Right after writing about fair food and America’s love of doughnuts, I see a news item that combines the two.

This year’s New York State Fair will be serving up the Big Kahuna Donut Burger.  This quarter-pound burger is served between slices of a grilled glazed doughnut.   With cheese, bacon, and the fixin’s, The Big Kahuna Donut Burger comes out to about 1,500 calories:  a true, over-the-top gutbuster.  What will they think of next?  Couldn’t they have worked a deep-fried Snickers bar into the mix somehow?

I’d like to see someone slug down a Big Kahuna Donut Burger and then take a spin on the Tilt-a-Whirl — at least, I’d like to see it from a safe distance.

An American Scene

Paddle-wheel boats were a huge part of water-borne commerce in the United States in the 19th century and early 20th century, as they ferried passengers and cargo up and down American rivers and lakes.  Now they are seldom-seen relics that have become too slow for most people and too expensive to maintain.  Those that still operate cater mostly to passengers who want to experience a living piece of the past and ponder the days when the paddle-wheelers ruled the inland waterways.

It is always a treat to see one of these great ships that look like wedding cakes on water, as it churns the water and steams toward its destination.  The Minne-ha-ha pictured above plies its trade on the waters of Lake George, New York.

An American Scene

An American Scene

An American Scene

An American Scene

An American Scene

An American Scene

An American Scene