Vichy Water – Author's Blog Just another WordPress weblog

 It’s dizzying; all the input, media, social networking, cable news. And speaking of cable news, one of my favorite musicals was ‘South Pacific’ and the character, ‘Lt. Joseph Cable,’ a Marine who arrives on a fictional island from Guadalcanal to take part in a secret mission. Last winter, I saw the musical in Newark at NJPAC. In 1947, James Michener wrote a short story collection ‘Tales of the South Pacific’ which of course became the musical. What is it, when I hear Michener’s title, something pulls, fills me with deja-vu, and takes me there in the mid 1940’s. I’m on that island; beholder of glorious sunsets, pastel waters, enemy low flying aircraft, loading up supply ships, and sneaking off to Bali Ha’i when no one is looking. How enduring the musical memories; my parents sitting on the sofa listening to their new Hi Fidelity recording, planes flying low and noisy into Newark Airport (prop planes, by the way) and the ‘Good Humor’ ice cream truck with ringing bells, hawking their new ‘Toasted Almond’ bar.

 I’m dizzy now and was last Friday when I went back for the fourth time to this place of barbed wire and incarcerated non-violent human beings, all American citizens. An ongoing phenomenon for me as I travelled to the shiny wire; was how I seemed to notice the most minute details of my surroundings, as if preparing my senses for hard, dull abstractions of life etched in cold bitter blood. The Jersey Turnpike is undergoing construction and adding more lanes; I wondered why, when roads are originally built, extra few lanes are not built when costs are so much cheaper; anybody with a Texas Instruments calculator or slide rule can compute extreme population growth and road usage leading to vile Jersey bumper to bumper traffic. Cumulous clouds were fluffy and white overhead as I passed a few farms with an occasional silo; how I always wanted my own silo and barnyard. I’m tight walking on a fence just before falling into the mud by the pigs. A hand reaches down to help me up. Good old ‘Huck’ is such a reliable, loyal old friend to me and Dorothy. As I got closer to the barbed wire, my mind kept firing away into strange random streams of consciousness. A motel on the left had five rooms; no air conditioners protruded from shaded windows and a sign on the dirt apron said, “Welcome Home Soldiers.” A newspaper blew in front of me; I could swear the headline read, “Japanese Bomb Pearl Harbor.”  A patch of blue sky appeared overhead, just as I thought, that within six months after our troops leave Afghanistan, that mountainous country could all fall down to the insurgents; so would everything be in vain?  Next thought was the same for Vietnam. Government/military ‘no- trespassing’ signs were affixed to barb wire fences. Speed limit signs were strictly adhered to by me.

  Credential check point time; I knew the routine. Picture ID. I wanted to use (as a joke) my old ID pix from twenty years ago, when I looked like Howard Stern (long hair). Gun in a holster of a mean looking officer made me show a current ID; then I drove down a black brick road. On either side of my SUV were strange two story barrack buildings and an eerie silence beyond the walls of wire that I could almost touch. Another photo ID check; I was in a large room with metal seats and stools in three long rows; a far wall was lined with vending machines (vending White Castle Hamburgers could be micro-waved). Hugging was allowed. TastyKake, a Cherry Coke and a strained smile next. I heard that his friend, a couple beds over had died a few days ago amidst complaints about chest pains and no medicine (takes weeks to get a prescription filled); no voices anywhere (no one cares) or “7 on Your Side.”  

 What bothered me the most; the strained smile implicit of so much he couldn’t say. And you’ll notice how little I say. An 82 year old mother, grey and frail, drives down from Connecticut every week to visit and play cards with a son. They sat a few dark green benches away from us. No air conditioning at all; no fixing of broken fans and no complaints or they’ll shut them all off. No humanity and dignity. Strange fear and sadness, invisible; an infant born after incarceration, visits a young father. Then I asked myself, what was I doing here? Then I was about to answer myself, reaching to touch my friend’s forearm. They say if you’re doing a survey on the streets of Manhattan and you want to get respondents, just reach for someone and gently touch and ask for their help. If you touch, they’ll probably help. If you’re about to shoot a foul shot, and a team mate gently pats your butt, you’ll be elevated to play harder. The subtleties of human relationships and kindness; for me I was visiting because loyalty is such a wonderful human condition and too often, I feel far out west, near California’s Death Valley and there are no people around, no extant family, only strewn bones of carcasses from random indigenous animals. It’s just lousy not to have anyone that cares. Mendacity is mind stifling and bending.

  Homeward bound, I took a slow route, and stared at agrarian New Jersey landscapes, small ponds, more silos, imagined wheat fields and pretend Bridges of Madison County (I’m a guy but one of my favorite bitter sweet movies) and most of the time, I felt it was 1943, simpler times, when America didn’t have more people incarcerated than the rest of the world combined. Next time, I bring a camera like Clint Eastwood in the movie and take show and tell pictures. Do I need to buy a pick-up truck? Hey, ‘Life Magazine,’ I’ve got a whole bunch of your mildew magazines in the basement. My mother said they’d be worth a lot of money one day. Of course she threw out all my comics and baseball cards.

 Once upon a time in Michigan, I went to a lecture about equal justice; what I learned was, it’s better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent in America. A bit of heartening from my perch of solitude and reflection: California will release or transfer 46,000 inmates from their prisons over the next two years as the Supreme Court upheld a decision form the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to alleviate overcrowding; I saw for myself last Friday here in New Jersey under white cumulous clouds.

 On Saturday, I took yet another webinar on aging and living long. Of course, I tongue and cheek it, when talking about living to 100 or 150 years old. On the other hand, in thirty years, many Homo-sapiens will live that long; of course, politically speaking, with shortages on food, energy, water, drugs and plastic garbage bags, who’s going to get the opportunity? A white dove, fighting a blowing wind, just landed on my newly shingled garage roof, and cryptically told me, that the very rich and powerful (the ones who pay the least taxes, coincidentally) will live the longest. Practically speaking, there are a few things we should all be doing. Treat your telomeres right. Telomeres are the tips of the chromosomes which protect it from damage. As you age, the tips get smaller and cells eventually die. Studies have indicated that a 70 year old who exercises massively, has telomeres as long as a thirty year old. Exercise may be the fountain of youth.  Diet right. Take supplements. One of my futuristic idols (RK) takes over a hundred supplements a day; I take forty for the last forty years. Look into anti-aging medicine. Develop the right life style. Manage stress. And yup, you need the right attitude. I could write 200 pages right now; perhaps I’ll take a slow metered approach and continue to throw some things out every week. Top foods to eat: Spinach, salmon and fatty fish, nuts, olive oil, red or purple grapes, tomatoes, green tea and garlic. I take daily supplements of green tea, garlic, omega 3,6 fish oil, lycopene (tomatoes) and resveratrol(skin of grapes). Here’s Dr. Oz’s age calculator. I nailed 97 years.

DR OZ’S AGE CALCULATOR:

 http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/how-long-will-you-live?sp_rid=MTQzNDQ2MjY0S0&sp_mid=1709699

 ‘More absurdities and extinctions’ is a favorite part of the blog; like a Barrett Browning 43rd sonnet, I’ll count the ways and fire away.  While writing this last night, I alternated between glimpses of the Republican Presidential candidate debate all the way from my den, eating a small bowl of new Cinnamon flavored ‘Cheerios,’ (perhaps its not that healthy overdosing in oats. ‘They Shoot Horses Don’t They?”) and mediating daily comments about this blog.

   Michele Bachmann managed to sneak in the much anticipated announcement about her earlier declaring for the Presidency while she was answering a different question; seems a bit tacky and opportunistic. Every candidate attacked the President but no one really mentioned a definitive plan how to succeed in business without really trying; too much of nothing said, for my tired and worn pair of neutral, non-committed auditory canals. Tell me something substantive not stupid.

 Speaking of stupid segue; not ever in my earthly journey to ocean jetties of meditation or red mountains in Arizona for spiritual enhancement, have I ever witnessed a more despicable display of a double-standard thinking clown in a suit as Republican National Committee head Reince Priebus. I’ve got no political party affiliations. Priebus was outspoken calling for Democrat Anthony Weiner to resign. Weiner committed no crime. But when asked on Sunday why he didn’t call for Republican Senator David Vitter to resign when Vitter solicited and paid for a prostitute (indeed a crime) he just evaded. As an independent voter, I get so turned-off to double standards and evasion.

 And Priebus went to the University of Wisconsin, the same state that is governed now by ‘King’ Scott Walker of the end of micro-breweries and collective bargaining Walkers and where the end of Medicare (Paul Ryan) breathed a first breath. More from the wacky world of ‘widiculous’ Wisconsin (a governor gone wild?): There’s a proposal that revises child labor laws to end the prohibition on minors under age 18 working more than 40 hours or six days a week. So a sixteen year old can work 66 hours/week for below minimum wage in a secret munitions factory? Absurd?

 Before I slip into a rabbit hole this morning, I’d love to see the end of investment banks trading oil. And Pennsylvania is looking for a law to prohibit teachers from striking. But I like Ohio’s Governor Kasich, who wants a state resolution making the Dallas Mavericks honorary Ohioans for beating ex-Cleveland Cavaliers Lebron James’s Miami Heat for the NBA title.

 When I was a kid growing up in Newark, New Jersey, some of the older, cool, tough guys, with cigarettes dangling, used to tell nerds like me, stories of how they played chicken with a bus, when they were bike riding or later in a car. Go head-on towards a bus and see who veers away first. Nerd-hood kept me from entertaining thoughts of duplicity. “Rebel Without A Cause” had a ‘chicken scene.’ I’ll never forget James Dean or that scene. Why bring it up now?  “Cause,” I just thought about the debt ceiling getting raised or not and how skillfully the two parties will play chicken with us and not a bus right up until the ‘which-ing’ hour. Larry Summers, economic advisor, said we need more stimulus and Greece has just achieved the lowest credit rating of any nation. What if they go bus(t)?

 More absurd but good (I think): A pool-playing robot has been developed by researchers at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. The robot has two arms that can move in seven different ways. Cameras mounted above the table track the position of the balls and cue and feed this information to the robot’s computers. Then it decides on the best move and calculates how the arms should be oriented to complete the stroke. To get into position, it rolls around the table using predetermined coordinates. It had an 80 per cent success rate. I wonder what ‘Minnesota Fat’s’ success rate was? And it is a brave new world. Apple plans to build a new campus with a circular building that looks like a spaceship, big enough to house 12,000 employees, scheduled to open in 2015.

 Now to serious stuff. Only 400 Sumatran tigers are left in the world; fewer tigers than sheets in a package of all purpose paper. The Sumatran tiger is classified as “critically endangered;” on the brink of extinction and barely hanging on. They’ve lost 93% of their habitat because companies like Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) are destroying their forest homes. I wonder who buys their paper products. Nestle? Kraft? Unilever? Tigers are left to roam where they are easily slaughtered by poachers for their body parts or shot by the people moving in; perhaps Google “Greenpeace.”  There are 300 Asian lions and 950 Bactrian camels left on Earth. And yup, by the end of the century fully half of all earth’s animal species will be extinct. Why do I dwell? Well, I just finished reading an article on ‘The Science of Optimism.” It’s actually built in for us to think everything will be alright.

 Mount Rainier is one of the most iconic landmarks in the Pacific Northwest. Like many other world mountains, this volcanic peak is losing snow cover at an alarming rate. A new study has revealed that Rainier has lost 14% of its permanent snow cover over the last 38 years. And I think of Joplin, Missouri and intense storms and global warming and all the skeptics who think warming is fiction or a game of chicken. I think we need ‘Cher’ to slap us all hard and say, “Snap out of it!” Hey, go watch her do it. Take five seconds. Love you tube.

 Finally, my movie review: On Sunday night, in the throes of restlessness at 1 AM, I flicked the channels with my remote (I think the remote ranks right behind Penicillin) and found “An Unmarried Woman” starring Jill Clayburgh, Alan Bates and Michael Murphy. Oh, I’ve seen it many times before, but each time another rivet to my appreciation on what a timeless, dare I say riveting, breathtakingly real story of a perfect life being shattered when Jill’s character, Erica’s husband leaves her for a younger woman in New York City.

 a 5 second video of Cher telling Nicholas Cage to “Snap out of it”

 When I watch a movie I try to suck in every minutia of timeless scenery; trucks passing by, people in a park stopping for ices, a jogger, the east river, an art gallery or the faces of brunch people in a brunch place. Every detail of city life and Erica’s pain and growth is wondrously painted by the director/artist Paul Mazursky. I love that movie and city.

Here’s what really got me. Erica had a fifteen year old daughter in the movie, Patti, beautifully played by Lisa Lucas, who’s now really 52 years old. And I had just begun my second marriage when that movie came out. But that little teenage girl is now 52 years old! So I thought lying in bed, it felt like ‘Cher’ slapping my face and telling me to “Snap out of it!” My head swirled and I couldn’t get back to sleep. This blog was brewing. How not to age, use every moment to grow and think, to ponder  loyalty to friends, animals, Earth and to wonder, what if I met Lisa Lucas somewhere, would I know what to say? Right now, I can say to her, she helped me grow up (not older) a bit.

CONTACT INFO:

website:  http://vichywater.net

Facebook: Cal Schwartz

Twitter: Earthood

Book Trailer(65 seconds) :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj2ko9gcC_M