Vichy Water – Author's Blog Just another WordPress weblog

Before I jump into my Rutgers sweatshirt and hat, as I need to get in the mood for blogging on this cold, partly cloudy Friday morning, I found ‘Dangling Conversation’ by Simon and Garfunkel on You Tube. Here’s the link. Go listen.

Dangling Conversation You Tube

 

About the time Jimmy Hendrix (Rolling Stone just wrote that he is the number one guitarist of all time) changed his name to Jimi back in September 1966, I heard ‘Dangling’ for the first time. It was a bit haunting; I thought they were singing about me. I had a girlfriend and our relationship was disintegrating and I was taking a strange course in college. I kept looking in the mirror.

“Yes, we speak of things that matter,

With words that must be said,

Can analysis be worthwhile?

Is the theater really dead?”

 

Pharmaceutical Analysis at Rutgers Pharmacy School was the hardest course I ever took; the labs were five hours long; we saw day drift to darkness in every lab. And the lyrics speak about “can analysis be worthwhile?”  Of course they were singing about the kind of analysis (not Pharmaceutical Analysis) you do while inclined on a sofa with a metronome spitting out your $100/ hour charge. I never did sofa analysis and flunked the course but aced the lab so I just had to take the lecture portion over again. Perhaps when you all finish this blog installment, some might support the notion of my investigating some form of analysis. Well, I’m not inclined to do so. But the song transports me back to studying chemical pursuits in my battleship grey small bedroom in Maplewood, New Jersey, cigarette smoke wafting from an overflowing ashtray( I had the notion that nicotine kept you awake and I was studying Pharmacy/Pharmacology) and hearing nightly TV sounds of Vietnam War casualties drifting upstairs from the den. So this is the mood as my fingers now depress keys and birth these words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the blog title; ‘Dumplings with Tuna Salad Filler.’ Well it’s nothing more than streams of consciousness bordering on my favorite pastime; dwelling on absurdities of modern life. I used to eat tuna salad four times a week; now a couple of times per month. I hate mercury sloshing around my colon and getting absorbed. By the way zinc and calcium (600mg) supplements are good for the old colon (24% reduction in colon cancer? Perhaps). Atlantic Blue Fin tuna are almost extinct. Japan loves raw tuna for sushi so they keep over fishing. On New Year’s Eve my gang ordered dumplings in the small neighborhood Chinese restaurant we frequent. I passed on the doughy confection; it’s stuffed with meat and I stopped eating red meat in 1975. Truth is told; my stopping red meat back then was because of a six foot tall (I’m 6’ 5 ½”) blonde blue-eyed girl from Short Hills. Two dates and I moved on to less imposing un-chilly granite statues but stayed true to all the tenets of not eating red meat. However, guess what. I’ve been a flexitarian all these years. Flexitarianism means that you are an omnivore who predominantly eats a plant based diet but also eats animal meat occasionally. That’s me, Miss Crabtree. I do eat some chicken and turkey just no red meat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The entire world is fossil fuels driven. I look at the Republican presidential campaign and lackluster candidates; one calling the other an outright liar liar; one having affairs and leaving a wife  because she was sick; one trying to do away with contraception. Where is Calvin Coolidge II when you need him? (They say history is treating my namesake, Calvin Coolidge in a much better light. Maybe he wasn’t that silent after all)  Back when I was studying Pharmaceutical Analysis, an acquaintance got his girlfriend pregnant and he had to get her one of those back alley illegal abortions and she almost died. I love all the promises, promises to change America and the world as part of the political ‘both sides of the aisle’ rhetoric. No one is changing the accelerating world; it’s just not going to happen; makes me want to go to Louis’ in the Bronx for the best veal in the city. But I don’t eat veal. What am I to do? Maybe go to Sarajevo for a long weekend. I know this great deli there; yes, they make this neat tuna fish salad with chopped up jalapenos and red peppers.

 

 

 

 

 

Now remember I’m just firing away here. A scene comes to mind from ‘Animal House’ when John Belushi (Bluto) stuffs his face with a hardboiled egg and dark green jello and asks Faber college cafeteria table sitters, “See if you can guess what I am now.” Get it? The climate is so messed up. Global warning warming is so real. I wonder when people board an airplane and sense something but never get off the plane because there’s nothing you can do about it. Fossil fuels are a great earth epitaph; so is its merchandising corporate world. Politicians know there is nothing you can do anymore. So they all jump in bed with the big guys, get elected, make a few speeches and juggle a few congressional cosmetic bills. Make the patient comfortable in hospice or assisted living. I wonder who wrote the book of love and if all prisoners in our over-crowded jails are going to be released as a humanitarian gesture a few weeks before Thanksgiving. I call the world’s inability to agree on the Kyoto Protocol the new ‘Tower of Babble.’ Ah fossil fuels. Canada walked away from the Kyoto Protocol because of all their oil which is stuck in tar sands. You need a lot of resources, water and pipe lines to work it right. Canada may have more oil than Saudi Arabia (I’m whispering by the way).

 

 

 

And I loved the movie ‘Gasland.’ 3,500,000 gallons of water are used/wasted for each well. And the people around the wells are getting sick just like in the movie ‘Erin Brockovich.’ Speaking of water; I have another acquaintance who said that a friend of his, who used to be a chief executive of a major oil company, told him not to worry about oil; there’s plenty of it, but worry about water instead. China’s largest freshwater lake has shrunk to its smallest size in years due to drought, state media and officials said just yesterday, endangering the ecology in the area and fishermen’s livelihoods.

 

 

 

 

Pennsylvania has come under fire lately as pollution from drilling in the Marcellus Shale threatens water resources across the state. But instead of ratcheting up oversight, Gov. Tom Corbett wants to hand authority over some of the state’s most critical environmental decisions to C. Alan Walker, a Pennsylvania energy executive with his own track record of running up against the state’s environmental regulations; more big business and fossil fuels again writing our epitaph. Nobody really cares. It’s the greatest addiction; fossil fuels. But the world seems more concerned about Kim Kardashian’s wedding and whether it was a fake. It was the top question asked in 2011 at Ask.com. It’s all accelerating. Moore’s Law describes how computer chips double in performance every 18 months. That’s accelerating too. We’re running out of time and space; perhaps they might have to get to the atomic level (electrons) to continue accelerating chips but electrons are too unreliable just like tuna salad with unwashed jalapenos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At 3AM Thursday morning, I heard from a Facebook friend that I should consider going to Montevideo, Uruguay.  He lives in Iowa. I’ll think about it in syncopated time which is accelerating. I apologized to my almost 26 year old son for the last time a few months ago. I can’t stop eating chocolate and we can’t stop environmental degradation and hatred. Darfur is what I think about subliminally in my blogs. Go back in time and look. Back last May, my psychic friend Ruth from Seattle called and warned me about New Jersey feeling an earthquake. Of course I laughed and responded with what my generation x y z son has been saying to me all these years, “Yeah, right.” So on my birthday, August 23^rd 2011, the earth moved here in New Jersey and I still hate corporations peddling fossil fuels and allied products. All earth bound politicians have given up the good fight. I think it’s time for me to watch ‘Casablanca’ tonight. Over Christmas, I watched ‘A Christmas Carol’ three times. There’s nothing quite like Scrooge (Alastair Sim) waking up Christmas morning reborn and overjoyed on how he can help Tiny Tim and his family. Finally, I’ve found the age old answer to “blood is thicker than water.” It isn’t. And next Christmas Eve, I know where I’ll be. And a final thanks to Hugh Everett and his 1954 Princeton PhD dissertation on parallel universes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love college sports. I remember the old Ballantine Beer commercial logo, “purity, body, and flavor.”  I’ve (umbilical) attached to my alma mater, Rutgers University and their sports programs. So living the loco life, I find myself on campus 70 times between September and May for all gender’s sports (sounds like more than two genders available. Perhaps on Planet Tralfamadore there are more than two. I was told yesterday by another Facebook friend there are no I-Phones on that planet. I wonder why.) In Steve Jobs bio, I read about developing powers of intuition. Jobs haunts me for a lot of reasons; for one, with billions of dollars in his piggy bank, he still couldn’t buy more time or health.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And what will corporations or rich relatives or the objects of Occupy do in future time?  Back to college sports; on December 29^th Rutgers Men’s Basketball team played #10 ranked Florida here in New Jersey. I was there, four rows up from the floor when Rutgers defeated Florida in double overtime. I waited until the students rushed the court to celebrate first, then I ran out; perhaps the rushing is a better blood thinner than Plavix or aspirin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day, I was in Manhattan for the Pinstripe Bowl (Rutgers versus Iowa State) at Yankee Stadium. I walked from 33^rd Street where several thousand Rutgers loyalists gathered at Legends bar for tailgating (me too); then slowly uptown, absorbing New York City on Christmas week. It was bumper to bumper people and quintessentially magically electric. I was on 34^th Street, where a movie miracle occurred with little Natalie Wood (they’ve re-opened her death inquiry. How strange) standing in front of Macy’s holiday window. That’s worth a pinch on the left arm. A few blocks away, I saw Sponge Bob, Pooh and the Grinch, live and in colorful costume posing for pictures, each with a bag for tips. A women with child from out of town asked “who are they posing for?” I said, “This is New York City. It’s for themselves.” She laughed. I made an out-of-towner laugh. Rutgers easily defeated Iowa State, who was the only team to defeat Oklahoma State, who probably will finish #2 in the country.  So what happens to Rutgers rankings?

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the subway down to Grand Central Station after the game, I was packed tightly next to a couple from Iowa. It was their first trip ever to New York City and it was delightful talking to them. I love that bridging of New York subways of Madison Avenue county stuff. Finally, I described New York City to them my way. If the world pooled all the concrete, steel and glass together, found an island somewhere warmer and higher up from the coast and decided to build a bigger and better duplicate of New York, they couldn’t. Simply, there is nothing like this city anywhere in the universe and non-duplicitous. They agreed and were wonderfully congenial and warm. I thought to myself, welcome to mid-America ideals and values. They loved St. Patrick’s Cathedral. So do I. We shook hands as the subway doors opened and wished each other a happy healthy New Year. I whispered the plural, New Years. And that’s what I’m wishing you all right now. Plural.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One Important note. Here’s a wonderful music video to listen/watch on You Tube featuring Linda Chorney, right from here in New Jersey, Grammy nominated for Best Americana Album.

Linda Chorney music video “Cherries”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONTACT INFORMATION

website:  http://vichywater.net/

Facebook:  Cal Schwartz

Twitter:  Earthood

Email: earthood@gmail.com

 

book trailer. hey its 65 seconds long

 

 

Vichy Water book trailer 65 seconds long

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IMPORTANT LINKS

If on Facebook check out this NJ Discover site:

 

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000125711074

 

OR   www.njdiscover.com    

 

ARE you in search of another blog that is also outspoken, unique BUT refreshingly, topically unbridled which means uninhibited ????  Meet   LINDA CHORNEY:

 http://lindachorney.wordpress.com/

 

Immortality Institute (which represents advocacy and research for unlimited lifespan)

http://www.imminst.org/

 

 

LINKS TO VIDEOS.  Please Watch.

 

1.   ZOMBIE WALK   October 22, 2011

 

zombie walk

 

2.  VETERANS DAY NJ VIETNAM MEMORIAL

 

Nov 11, 2011

 

Veterans Day at NJ Vietnam War Memorial

 

3.  RANDALL HAYWOOD & JAZZ CONCERT

 

Nov 19, 2011

 

Randall Haywood and Victor Jones Interview from Chico’s House of Jazz Asbury Park

 

 

 

Linda Chorney’s Album has been nominated for Best Americana Album Grammy!!!!!