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          Thinking on this Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend about the holiday: it used to be called Decoration Day; started by John Logan, a Civil War general. Why in May? Lots of flowers are in bloom so it makes sense. We need to remember. Several years ago on a brutally cold, windy February day, something pulled me off the Garden State Parkway on the way home and took me to the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I’d never been there. The conditions were so harsh, no one was around.  I walked in solitude around the memorial, consisting of 366 panels representing each day of the year (leap year too), reading each name (on the day they died) and finally committing two random names to my everlasting memory. So to Arthur John Abramoff and Albert Potter, especially on this weekend, I think about you. Now to dedicate today’s blog to a new friend on Facebook, Stephanie S. who appeared a few weeks ago and has taken me under her wing. She must’ve sensed my ‘newness’ and eagerness to reach out and find friends that I can share words and ideas with; a special sensitive person.

            Wednesday and Thursday of this past week was Book Expo America. Last year there was no knowledge about it. I was three years into writing my first novel and hopelessly adrift in the Atlantic in a ‘Lifeboat’, just Tallulah Bankhead to keep me company. It still bothers me (a little less each year) that Walter Slezak pushed William Bendix overboard. While adrift, I got an email from Book Expo so I went for the first time last year.  Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road was I. An enchanted place where I learned wide-eyed, asked questions and put my name on every author’s list. On Tuesday past, the night before taking the Jersey Transit train to NYC, my stocking of anticipation was hung with the greatest of care; two days of networking to look forward to. But there was something else. A spirit was guiding me along; a spirit of thought, direction, purpose and composition. Borrowing Margaret Hamilton’s crystal ball, I see a high school English class in 37 years studying my blogs and novels. A kid in the last row raised a hand. “The blogs had a designed purpose, foretelling future novels.”

            On the train passing my Jersey coast, ‘something’ made me notice the most remote, random things out my window; puddles of oily water, an occasional duck floating, weathered pieces of driftwood, people rocking on chairs on porches aimlessly( I never want to have a porch or rocking chair. Verboten) small boats moored in the bay (how do you get to them and what’s their purpose?), smoke stacks by the Merck plant in Linden spewing something (for two minutes passed Merck, I kept yawning as if Merck was making tranquilizers; by products in the smoke), rows of barbed wire on top of each other, filling every crack and crevice around a building’s ledges (with almost no windows). A jail no doubt; certainly not an industrial bakery. I worked in one in Newark when Johnson was President. I wore whites

            A few blocks from Penn Station, on the corner of 34th and 10th Avenue, the icon told me to walk. A car disregarded and almost hit me. Temptation gushed (like BP’s gulf oil volcano) to slap the car hood and yell, “I’m walking here!”  Inside Javits: the Autograph section. A lot of authors and book signings. Real birds trapped inside the hall, swooped and hid behind a large Exit sign at the back. I looked for a bald rotund man reading a newspaper next to a doorway. Saudi Arabia had an extensive booth for their publications. The writing on the booth sign captivated; a palm tree, gentle line curves of design; simple and serene. The attendants smiled and so did I. They had plates of fresh dates on displays while some American booths had bite-sized Halloween chocolates. Yes Virginia, there’s a difference. Back and forth a few times passed the Saudi booth, I so wanted to tell them my first novel has a Muslim main character.

            At the other end of Javits, University presses had booths. A school known for football: their booth was manned by a 300 pound lineman or so it seemed. I thought natural order of things. A small booth signed “Publicity for Authors.” A man with gray hair, wrinkled weather beaten face, wearing a seersucker sport coat sat with eyes closed. I felt the spirit of Willie Loman nearby, smelled my armpits and walked away. Some attendees had a red stripe on the bottom of their badge–literary agents and I love Howard Roark more and more.

            3pm on Thursday, I knew the content of my heart and character. I’ll soon begin writing a trilogy and find myself back here next year and the year after; one time with a felt pen in my hand, collar loosened, looking up at people and down at a book, asking them their name. And I must thank the spirit about; my grandfather.

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          Perhaps a new tradition for my blog; dedicate to someone who makes a difference in my new life as a writer. Dolores R. is in my writers’ group (and FB friend) which I hardly ever get to. We’ve never met. I suppose we’re enigmas to each other. Bless the internet, emails and her constant words of encouragement, support, advice and good soulful nature.

            Rambling is a word like a bird in a cage in a mine foretelling the next several paragraphs. A favorite cerebral game watches the bird’s well-being and let random thoughts scratch the cage wall, escape and make me wonder why the thought was there. Like right now. Snow has fallen. It’s 1957 Newark. I work for a grocery store and I have to deliver four boxes of groceries on my sled (I’m so tempted to say the sled was named ‘Rosebud.’) to an old woman (barely older than I am now, probably) Eight blocks downhill and a near sled escape then three flights of stairs to an attic of sorts; four trips so it was like twelve flights up. The only words spoken were an inquisition why I was so late. I should’ve said there was a lot of sled traffic. Then the door closed with no tip. Tips sustained me, provided the bulk of my income for Saturday movies at the Park Theatre. I should’ve been more proactive. That old lady has bothered me since Eisenhower was President to just yesterday, watching a brown Louisiana pelican try to walk, while covered completely with BP’s sludge oil.

            Earlier today a report came out about an MMS oil drilling government inspector high on crystal meth(amphetamine). Back in those days when I used a sled, amphetamine was all over the place. Drug companies marketed it for dieting to housewives. Truck drivers readily popped them on long hauls. It kept them awake. Students partied for a whole semester then took amphetamines for a few weeks straight to study for finals. Once finals were over they forgot everything. Then there’s the legendary story of a British writer who was told he had six months to live. He took amphetamines for six months and wrote an amazing (albeit schizophrenic) novel and didn’t die! (happy trails and endings) Once you throw amphetamines on the cover of a magazine, they get banned in Boston and the rest of the country while tobacco is still king.

            Back in those sledding days, we had air raid drills, hopping under our desks, some still with fossils from inkwells. Communism was alive and well. Joe McCarthy. Nikita Kruschev( I think his daughter lives here) ‘I Led Three Lives’ was yesterday’s equivalent of ‘Lost.’ I suppose. Literary license. Rambling again. Point being there were ‘isms’ growing up and many are gone now (like the wall Reagan wanted down), replaced by new ones. Objectivism was Ayn Rand. Man must exist for his own sake. Selfishness is a virtue. And funny thing, I like Howard Roark. Maybe it’s why I went my own way and controlled my words and novel. Altruism. Some might say you’re trying to make yourself feel good, therefore selfish. ‘Isms’ change over time. I watched You Tube the other night; really powerful videos on the rise of Nazism. I’ll never understand. Or maybe I will.

            Maturation is insight, perspective and grasp. Maybe I’m getting there. Maybe it led me down the road to environmental awareness. Maybe the only real ‘ism’ left on earth should be environmentalism. I just shrugged my shoulders at the white computer screen, labeled Document 1) More rambling. When I was a senior at Rutgers, studying for finals (with some chemical help) the Jets and Joe Namath were getting ready for Super Bowl III. What a time to be young and in love with football. Debate raged within my study group who was going to win. Baltimore was an overwhelming favorite. I yelled across the table. “There’s something in Joe Namath’s eyes. He knows something.” That yell brought in an official from Rutgers Law School Library. We were escorted out. Why were Pharmacy school students there anyway? I said, “Because it’s quiet.”  A few hours ago the NFL announced the 2014 Super Bowl will be in New York-New Jersey. I live in New Jersey. This weekend is Memorial Day. The real Jersey Shore is open for business. One of these weekends, I’ll make my way down to the boardwalk for one thing; French Fries in a paper bag doused with vinegar. I’ll smile because I ordered the largest sized bag. Part of that particular smile is my arrival at maturation, environmentalism and knowing when to be indulgent. 

            Maybe go to vichywater.net, check reviews for the novel.  Have a wonderful holiday weekend.

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       I never thought to dedicate. Life is curious; especially the last few years needing to be free, open, receptive and absorbing. Playing a mind game, you let things fire away. Pick a topic; see where memory synapses take you. Synapses just fired from ‘Easy Rider’ to Otis Redding, Pete Seeger singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ to Eisenhower running for President and an “I Like Ike’ button my mother told me to save; pure random unorganized wondrous thinking processes. I just thought about a friend in Minnesota, Brenda (I call her Gracie, she calls me George.) The words of this blog entry are herewith (almost sounds legal) dedicated to Brenda. She encourages intellectual pursuit; winds of synchronicity (and David Gergen-Facebook) brought us together.

            Now the blog title: The Shark River Inlet jetty (Belmar, NJ) is a favorite place, a spiritual bookmark. Many days synthesizing Vitamin D were spent on its boulders, dreaming of worlds and be(longing). I love Otis Redding. Words echo so it became my dock of solitude, thought and imagination. A computer screen may be in front of me but I’m really there, getting sprayed by wave remnants, shielding my eyes and catching a glimpse of the horizon and a ship heading to Kilimanjaro. Hemingway and F. Scott are aboard. I can barely make-out hands waving at me.  When I was ten years old, I used to spend hours sitting at the dock, on a boulder and dream of the day I’d take my child to the jetty, and stare at this same horizon. When my son was ten, we did just that. Sometime later, he mentioned doing the same thing to his child. Another dream; he’ll fulfill his dream.

            Somehow I want to say, if you’ve reached this point in reading my blogs, and have concluded, I might be a bit on the serious side, let me make this perfectly clear(right out of the Richard Nixon book of public speaking) I’m actually a frustrated comedian. Making people laugh is a lofty aspiration.  Some (I don’t remember how many) years ago. I started writing a comedy act for local improvisation clubs. Two months later, I moved on; becoming a quantum physicist might be easier than stand-up comedy. Point being, I love laughter. A magazine says it’s the best medicine. Before I can laugh while blogging, I need to get the serious stuff out of the way first. It is a long way to Tiperrary( for you WWI buffs)

            There’s a word, maelstrom that comes to mind. I’m in it now, hopelessly being tossed and turned (great album from 1963 ‘Tossing and Turning’). An old man and the sea rowboat, a vortex nearby, golf ball sized hail (what if golf was never invented?) and impenetrable fog conspire. More thoughts about the maelstrom; from my pharmacology days (one of my best courses at Rutgers); when the human body nears the finality of death, it slowly, methodically prepares itself by shutting down systems, organs and cellular communications on all levels.

            Now I’m in a rattling mood. No rhyme or reason. No rowboats heading to shore. There’s an archangel, Michael. So what’s this I hear about the New Jersey budget problems? I sound like Ensign Pulver. The look on James Cagney’s face. A billion dollars gets slashed from education budget here in New Jersey. Size of classes may double when we need all the education we can get. With all the children we have, seems a better educational childhood is gone. And my alma mater, Rutgers, their state funding slashed as well. Libraries closing and cutting back on programs all over the body of the country. Airlines merging and cutting back on routes. Atlantic Blue Fin tuna nearly extinct (25,000 left). The gulf oil disaster. The UN the other day suggesting in forty years, that the 20 million people who earn a living from ocean fishing may have to look for new work; no more fish left. Carbon dioxide acidifying the ocean; oysters can’t reproduce, coral dying. Male small mouth bass fish in fresh water lakes in America now have eggs (71-100% of them). Endocrine disruptors messing with our bodies (all those hormones people took the last fifty years gets pissed into the ocean) Too many people not enough food and changing climate patterns so less farming lands. More video games and ways to play them on a mass transportation bus while fares went up 40% here in New Jersey. Can it be true certain American companies since the end of WWII collectively have killed more people than the Nazi’s?  Hint: tobacco.  Or do drug/car companies know they’ve got a bad product but leave it on the market longer because actuaries say extra sales more than cover extra law suits. A sewage treatment plant in Massachusetts moving to higher ground because future rising sea levels jeopardize safety.  The Middle East. Nuclear proliferation. Neville Chamberlain, “peace in our time.” They want to build a coal plant in Linden, New Jersey and dump all the waste off the New Jersey shoreline. I thought about a “Frankenstein” amount of money for New Jersey tax collectors so to hell with the lungs of the people of central and northern Jersey. Great article:

http://stoppurgencoalplant.org/http:/stoppurgencoalplant.org/why-linden-why-not-rumsen-a-frankenstein-moment

            Enough rambling and rattling. I love sitting on the dock of my mind, firing away, chest rising and falling with troubled breathing, worrying that I’m not shutting down like the world around me. Silver linings in clouds, seeded with iodide. I wonder if that ever really worked to make it rain. A jet plane just flew overhead. I’ll bet it’s heading to Kilimanjaro.

            Oh one more thing. A commercial. My first one. If you like this stuff and that’s what it is, stuff, why don’t you mosey (Texas accent) over to my website, check out my novel, ‘Vichy Water’ and maybe order. It’s all from the same gut.

http://vichywater.net   And thanks.

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             Part of the title is “A Rambling,” which presumes rambling all over a sentimental journey (a fifties song) I’m about to take. Last night was special. My wife and I drove to Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia to hang with an old college buddy. A realization slapped me gently in the face as my American SUV crossed over the Turnpike Delaware River Bridge. Butch and I started out as freshmen nearly five decades ago. I like using ‘decade;’ this way you can say “a few decades” and cover-up 40 or 50 years. I know cover-up is a timely word. Watergate comes to mind. I spent two weeks on vacation with my first wife just watching the testimony of John Dean (an idol of mine because of his powers of recollection) and Haldemann and Erlichmann(non idols). Perhaps lying in bed in a motel room on Cape Hatteras watching Watergate Hearings and not spending time ‘On The Beach'(a great horrific movie, if you’re into apocalypse) with my wife contributed to the eventual dissolution of my first marriage. Isn’t dissolution a gentler, kinder and cheaper word than divorce?

            A few months ago I found a box in the basement, covered-up (there’s that word again) by boxes of old books and magazines. The box contained pictures, letters, diaries of my college years and first marriage. So I had show and tell material for Butch last night. I had an invitation to a fraternity rush party, letters Butch wrote informing me that our fraternity was kicked off campus (after I transferred to Rutgers) for stuffing campus ballot boxes and that my first girl friend started dating (when I transferred) another frat brother(they’re married all this time and living in Cleveland(thanks to Google, Facebook and Twitter). Diaries remembered students (me too) protesting Senator Barry Goldwater speaking at University of Toledo (Time Magazine said we gave him the worst reception during his campaign for President in 1964). Then there was a speaker from a place called Viet Nam. None of us ever really heard of that country. It was 1964. My mother said lectures broaden.

             One letter my mother wrote asked if I was getting weekly checks on time. She budgeted for me $23 a week, to cover food, dates, books, dentists and emergency root canal. That Toledo dentist had compassion; no charge to poor freshman dormitory students. A diary entry on a Toga Party; Butch and I remembered and smiled, thinking we were ahead of ‘Animal House.’ A house mother lived with us to prevent girls from being in the frat house other than for a legal party. The house mother wrote me when I transferred to say “I was a nice boy.”  Who says that today? After thought; if we had a house father, would he have looked the other way and let girls cross the threshold?

            We laughed about pledging, hell night, insurrection and how simple the world was back in 1963. Kennedy was President. Last night we had a wonderful dinner in a new Cuban restaurant on Germantown Avenue; prior we walked around Chestnut Hill; each home was unique, carpeting us back to Tudor England and far away from New Jersey suburbia where if you want Italian food, you’ve got an olive chain with people huddled outside (wearing shorts) every few miles. We were alive walking around Chestnut Hill.

             We’ve been friends for 47 years. Today is Rutgers graduation. I’m watching the ceremony on computer stream as I write this. Governor Christie is being given an honorary doctorate. Two years ago (I’m whispering now) I made a CD for myself. Twenty-two songs. All “Pomp and Circumstance.” Obsessive and compulsive? Sure, but evocative of memories of my graduation from Rutgers in 1969. There was a picture in that box of handing the diploma to my mother. She deserved it more. I get all choked up when I hear “Pomp and Circumstance.” It was with me when I graduated Maple Avenue School, Weequahic High School and Rutgers University. I just heard it being streamed in from Rutgers.  When I graduated in 1969, Viet Nam was in my thoughts every step I took into Rutgers Stadium. Five years earlier, I never heard of Viet Nam.  Good luck to all graduates. “Plastics.”

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           How many times do we hear life is full circle? Do we pay attention or are we like a water droplet on a duck floating in a splash of polluted water near Raritan Bay in Jersey. I took literary license, assumed the water was polluted, after all this is New Jersey; number one nationally in designated toxic clean-up sites. I’m so proud of my state when it receives lofty designations.

            When I was a junior at Rutgers College of Pharmacy in 1968, I drove to Richmond, Virginia with my best friend at the time. Motivations back in the sixties were different than now. Gas was a handful of pennies a gallon. Dustin Hoffman heard about ‘plastics’ and yelled “Elaine.” The draft for me was a couple years away. Vietnam kept me awake at night. The purpose of the trip to Richmond; my friend’s brother was doing a residency in dermatology at a medical college. I had a stubborn wart on the back of my hand. None of those over the counter remedies, with harsh acidic odors, worked. So in an obscure room, in the dimly lit basement of a hospital in Richmond, former capital of the Confederacy, the brother used liquid nitrogen and zapped that wart forever.  It was a free procedure; that’s why we drove for 20 hours. On the way home, we stopped at this big drug store that had a communist name, ‘Peoples.’ In Jersey, drug stores were mom and pop for the most part. Remember it’s still 1968. This drug store was really part of a chain that sold everything. Yes, soup, walnuts, screws, hammers, sickles, detergent; all under the watchful eye of the Pharmacist. I was two years away from that official title. Drug stores in Jersey sold drugs, lotions, potions, condoms (they were never on display, but locked in third draw down, even with the Pharmacist’s knee, out of sight). Having worked since I was twelve in a New Jersey drug store, my dreams and comfort zone was with mom, pop and uncle. That ‘People’ store depressed me. I couldn’t see my future profession selling detergent and hammers. Back in Jersey, emotional, spirited and determined to preserve, I wrote a blistering editorial for the Rutgers Pharmacy School Journal, “Why Is The Sky Gray Daddy?” A testament to all the things which cast doubt on my world and profession.

            Well here’s the circle, just about to close. I’m writing again, same title; now it’s a blog (back when Lyndon Johnson said he would not seek the nomination of his party for another term (thank goodness, I thought) if anyone mentioned ‘blog’ to me, I would’ve immediately thought ‘The Blob,’ a movie starring Steve McQueen). More circle stuff. I’m also the ‘Daddy’ now. And the sky is really, really gray. Last night my son started watching a BBC  DVD called “Planet Earth.” Then we had that talk again (not sex) but the world he’s inheriting. The sky was gray for me back in 1968. It’s a different color gray now. Darker.  Ominously dark. The UN warned two days ago that “massive” loss in life sustaining natural environments was probably going to get worse, to the point of being irreversible. Global targets to cut decline by now were missed.  We are closer to the ‘tipping points.’ “I’m really sorry,” I said to my son. “Your generation ‘effed’ up, Dad.”  “I know.”  I whispered.

            He rambled, talked about nature and a strange bird which puffs out his chest (a male) and dances trying to seduce a mate. Prior to the chest thing, the male bird actually cleaned his area, removing leaves, and scraped a branch (a bed?) with a piece of wood, in a polishing motion. “Nature is amazing,” my son said. I discoursed, “Humans have a lot to learn and not much time.” Then I got excited. A famous ice-cream chain opened up a drive thru next to a donut chain. We humans are so creative with time management. But we can’t speak the same environmental language to define things. Last year was the second hottest on the planet.

            “It’s 1938,” I told my son. Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler, looking for peace in our time. “It’s 2010. The world is not controlling nuclear proliferation. So in two years, some renegade terrorist group (not even a nation) gets their hands on a nuke and explodes it and then the “R” word.”  “R?” My son asked. I said, “Retaliation.” More gray sky. A waste treatment facility in Massachusetts moved itself to higher ground, readying for rising sea levels. I explained the next thirty years or so we concentrate on sustainability, acceptance of the “tipping points.” Then I shrieked, “But we now have a hamburger in a Michigan minor league park that weighs in at 4800 calories and a new corn chip geometrically designed to reach all the dip at jar bottom.” More gray. That oil volcano (not leak) in the gulf goes on and on. More gray. I really feel gray. I feel sentimental writing the second installment of “Why is the Sky Gray Daddy?” But the original was forty-two years ago. I knew I had a lot of years left.

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