An hour with the Historic District Commission...

is like a season in hell. Well, no, I'm sure time passes more quickly in hell than with the Historic District Commission.....

After an hour of conversation, the Commission finally gave us permission to finish our half-finished roof. Some 15 minutes of the hour was spent in a discussion between two of the members about the distinction between three tab shingles and architectural shingles....I asked a man beside me if he had a gun. He asked back, "Why?" I told him, "I want you to shoot me...."

Let me see if I can explain this: our neighbor down the street went through exactly the same thing. His roof work was stopped and he had to go to a meeting for an exemption but since it wasn't a public meeting (hadn't had a notice in the paper about the subject of the meeting) he had to come back two weeks later to get the exemption the Commission knew they were going to grant anyway.

The chair said, "well, we don't want to be inconsistent...." (Meaning we'd have to come back after a notice about our roof and who in the community is foaming at the mouth to keep us from having it could show up to be heard.) I said, English major that I am, "Consistency is the hob-goblin of small minds...." No one laughed except Bern and the three other 'citizens' there to complain to the Commission about yet other stuff besides our roof.

So, what they were about to do, even though they knew they had a quorum and that they had decided in favor of our neighbor after the useless insanity of advertizing for a meeting that no one except my neighbor came from that they would prolong the insanity and the pain for another month! To be consistent!

There's a lot of stuff about 'being consistent' in the Republican primaries. Everyone accuses all the others of being 'flip floppers' or not being consistent. Truth is, if I ever met a absolutely consistent person I think, for the good of the human race, I'd consider killing him/her. Consistency IS the hob-goblin of small minds. Walt Whitman, writing about 'consistency' wrote: "Do I contradict myself?/Very well, I contradict myself!/I am Large, I contain Multitudes...."

There was a NPR conversation about 'consistency' in the last few days. The guest said that some politicians are Hedgehogs and some are Foxes. A Hedgehog, he said, is 'consistent'. The Hedgehog things One Big Thought--to not be killed and eaten by the fox. The Fox, on the other hand, things all manner of little thoughts--some of which have to do with different ways to kill and eat the Hedgehog.

The Republican 'base' longs for a Hedgehog--someone who is consistent and never, ever, not ever from the Dogma of the Right. (Granted, Left-wing-nuts like me long for a Liberal Hedgehog, but realize there is no such animal. Concessions must be given, deals struck, compromises made in the governing of a country. I much prefer a Fox--someone who is Large and contains Multitudes--someone who can compromise, change their mind and even, horror of horrors for Hedgehog fans, admit they were wrong and apologize.

The Republicans are apoplectic that Obama apologized to Muslims that some Korans were unintentionally burned by NATO troops. If a Bible were burned or religious symbols desecrated by non-Christians, wouldn't we all expect an apology? Obama backed away from his hard line on contraceptive coverage--all the Hedgehogs Right and Left complained. The foxes understood....

Rick Santorum was criticized in a recent debate for saying he voted for some support to Planned Parenthood because it was linked with other funding he favored. He said he was a "Team Player" and the others hooted.

I like a 'team player' myself. Lone Rangers may be 'pure', but they not only get nothing done, they do a lot of harm.

Anyway, the Historic District Commission are mostly all Hedgehogs. They fear the inconsistent Fox. They cling to illogical regulations and 'consistent' mistakes rather than make exceptions, see the big picture, let a 'neighbor' have a roof over their head....

I must have said "neighbor" half-a-dozen times in my conversation. The regulation said you don't need approval if you replace a roof with 'the same or comparable materials'. Our shingles are 40 years old--ancient for a roof--and aren't made anymore. The one we chose is about the same color--if you can tell the real color of a 40 year old shingle--and the Commission had already, in my neighbor's application, said that architectural shingles (whatever those are, exactly) are 'comparable' to the shingles both our neighbor and we are replacing.

But they were on the verge of making us wait yet another month, even though they knew they would approve it, until one of the folks in the public seats asked if he could speak. He's been before the Commission several times before and reminded them that it was this kind of regulation worship that made most of the people who live in the Historic District hate and loath the Historic District Commission. He was passionate and committed that the Commission 'do the right thing'.

After he spoke, the Town's liaison and the member of the Town Council who were there seconded that guy's sentiment and reminded the Commission that they actually could 'make a decision' without waiting for a public hearing. Two of the Commission members began playing with a motion. But one of them had come in late and said, I swear to God!, "Madam Chairwoman, I'd like to make a motion but I haven't been seated." So the Chair officially SEATED him and he made the motion which they tinkered with for five minutes before voting.

Here's what doesn't work with Hedgehogs--humor and appeal to their basic, decent humanity (that's what I did in the conversation)--and logic and reasonableness, which was Bern's contribution. Neither works.

What worked, in the end, was someone reminding them, in a sense, about the difference between Rats in a maze and human beings. Take away the cheese down one of the tunnels of the maze and a Rat will stop going down that tunnel. Human beings, on the other hand, will 'consistently' do the same failed thing or useless thing over and again expecting different results.

In a day or two we'll have our roof, our two chimneys will be repaired and the house will be power washed in anticipation of painting it in the Spring.

Oh, God, I forgot to ask the Historic District Commission about masonry, power washing and paint!

I'm just glad it's over. Bern, however, now has a Hedgehog kind of cause--Repeal the Historic District--which she is Fox enough to pull off.....God bless her: a Fox in Hedgehog clothing....

p.s. your bird is dead

WARNING! ALERT! DISTURBING CONTENT BELOW! TALK OF THE PROCESS OF HUMAN WASTE ELIMINATION! THE DEATH OF INNOCENT CREATURES! BLOOD WILL BE SPILLED!

READ NO FURTHER, GENTLE SOUL, IF THOU ART EASILY OFFENDED....


Don't say I didn't warn you....


On the way back from Baltimore yesterday (rain in Delaware and New Jersey--snow in CT) someone on Public Radio mentioned 'energy gum', which is the newest form of 'energy drink', and said chewing a pack a day was like drinking two pots of coffee.

Bern said, 'why can't they put all medication in gum?' Then she went on to discuss how the older she gets, the harder it is for her to take pills. Before she goes to bed, she takes some fish oil and some vitamin or another and Lord knows what else--all of which come in pills that seem to me to be the size of elongated robin eggs. From time to time one gets stuck somewhere down there in the dark and she has to eat toast to get it down.

On the other hand, I can't even swallow an aspirin, never have been able to. When I was a kid, my parents had to mash up pills and put them in apple butter before I could swallow them without a paroxysm of gagging, thrashing around and being sure I was going to choke to death. I chew up pills that are larger than a small fly to this day. Some of them have interesting tastes, I must admit, while others are simply vile and make me gag a bit, even chewed up.

The second thing that happened on I-95 and then the Merritt was that I developed symptoms of what is called, in polite circles, 'dysentery' though most of us use much less polite terminology for it. Twice I had to swerve madly into a rest area and run to the rest room....Odd, isn't it, that we use the word 'rest' for that room when that's not why we go there....

When we got home, I barely could hold back but as soon as we came into the kitchen we discovered that Rainy (one of the two parakeets we got custody of from our daughter) was dead. Bern was very upset and I was too (I love those little birds for themselves as well as because of how much I love the one who passed them on to us) but my internal mechanism made it almost impossible to show much sympathy because I had to 'rest' so violently.

Bern put her in a check box (a box that bank checks come in for all those who pay all bills on line) and buried her while I 'rested'.

But here's where the plot turns even worse. I noticed when I was finished that I had blood in my urine!

I had a urologist once who said "a little blood in your urine is normal". I replied, "Maybe in 'your urine!"

Having had prostate cancer and a couple of urinary tract infections which were worse than cancer surgery ever was, blood in my urine makes me a crazy person....(Those bouts with infection and catheters have, I swear to you, made me a better Christian. Every time there is 'no blood'--which is 99.9% of the time--I whisper a sincere and grateful prayer....)

So, Rainy's death is suddenly not the tragic event it truly was. I drank four glasses of cranberry juice and a 24 ounce bottle of water as fast as I could, realizing that I'd had nothing to drink all day but a cup of caramel coffee from a Starbuck's in Delaware. The self-help treatment for blood in your you know what, is to over hydrate as fast and for a long as you can stand it.

I was feeling better an hour later and the blood was gone. A slug of Kaopectate helped the other issue quickly, so it was time to go to the kennel to pick up the dog.

By that time it was snowing heavily and there was slush on the road and I had to drive 17 miles of back roads to Wallingford. As I was leaving I noticed Bern had some Cranberry concentrate pills. (Cranberry, you know, is your urinary tracts best friend.) So I grabbed two, even though they were the size of elongated robin eggs, tossed one in my mouth and drank some water....

Even knowing I can't swallow pills, I did that, which is what having you know what in my you know what does to me--it makes me irrational and terrified. Of course the pill stuck just below my uvula (if that's what that little weird thing in the back of the throat is called) and I started gagging and snorting and leaping around the kitchen in sheer fear. I even called Bern from upstairs and she was trying to help for the 10 minutes I stuck my finger down my throat and had the water I tried to drink come out my nose. I rubbed my throat and was one step from putting a stick down my throat to push the pill down when Bern suggested I sip warm water.

Most of it came out my nose, but it eventually melted enough of the pill for it to go down.

After a remarkable rush of relief and thankfulness, I was hit with an even greater wave of embarrassment over having subjected Bern to such a display of total panic. I couldn't look her in the eye. I thanked her humbly and slinked out to get the dog.

When I got back, I had to run to the room to 'rest', leaving the leash on the dog for Bern to take off.

A little later, when all the alimentary stuff had calmed down, she looked at me and said what I had known all along she would eventually have to say in spite of all her best intentions: "After that conversation about swallowing pills in the car," she began, "what were you thinking????"

I wanted to tell her I was ultimately humiliated by my "not thinking", but instead I said, "I'm so sorry about Rainy..."

And we embraced....

enough is enough...and everything is beautiful

Tomorrow I'll preach at the memorial service of Dick Harris, 87, who was a friend and a supporter.

In less than 6 months I've preached at the funerals of Reed Smith, Bill Penfield, Kay Bergin, Sue Parker, Zeinith Punter and tomorrow, Dick Harris.

Plus, my remarkable friend, Norman Harrower died but left explicit orders that their not be a funeral or memorial service.

I don't know if I more resent not being able to honor Norman or having to honor the half-dozen dear, dear people I've preached for to God and whoever else was listening....

It's beginning to wear on me. All this dying.

Today I took the Puli to walk the canal. The town of Cheshire plows the pathway brilliantly. The only snow on the asphalt had fallen from trees.

Snow was falling from the trees into the water of the canal. Those remarkable concentric circles water has were spreading out and colliding with other concentric circles of water. It was the "Chaos Theory" in action.

And it was beautiful.

The dog and I had the canal all to ourselves. The silence was deafening. Bela didn't go darting off in all directions, sniffing madly. He walked right beside me for a half a mile out and a half a mile back. At the beginning he had peed a quart or so and at the end he pooped copiously. But in between, he walked at my heel and seemed, in my understanding, at any rate, to notice how beautiful it was--how quiet, how absent of humans, how lovely....

'Course he didn't, I know that, it was just that the snow made smells of other dogs muted so he just walked with me.

All those wondrous people were like the concentric circles in the water of the canal. Their lives swirled out and out, touching so many and making chaotic patterns in the river of life.

Sometimes I am simply astonished by how beautiful life and people are.

I subscribe to the Chaos Theory of wonderment....And I am so glad to have known those people, now dead, and to hold them in my heart.

Ponder, for a moment or so, the dead you hold in your heart....You'll realize, I believe, something about the beauty of life.

Why I didn't eat chicken as a boy

I was in New York on Friday, having lunch with my daughter and Tim, her companion. On the way through Grand Central someone handed me a pamphlet "25 Reasons to be Vegetarian". I've looked it over and though I was vegetarian for several years when Bern and I were first married, I don't think I'll go back to a meatless life.

But I didn't eat chicken when I was a boy because of one of the reasons for being Vegetarian--"would you be willing to kill the animals you eat?"

I spent a lot of time with my grandmother as a child. She lived up on a hill in Conklintown, WV, just five miles or so from Anawalt, where I lived. Gramma's name was Lina Manona Sadler Jones and she was like a wondrous grandmother for me. Except for the chicken thing....

Gramma kept chickens and ducks. I ate lots of duck eggs in those days but I wouldn't eat chicken. Gramma also had an outhouse--a two seater (consider who you'd sit next to to have a bowel movement...) I can't come up with a single person....During the cold winter months, the chickens and ducks would lay around the outhouse and you'd have to shoo them out of the way to go in. Human waste decaying produces a remarkable amount of heat. I never thought it was very cold in the outhouse and the birds just wanted to absorb some heat.

When she wanted to fry chicken, Gramma would go out in the yard and pick up one of the chickens, hold it gently in her arms, talk to it softly and then, quicker than the eye could follow, she would wring that chicken's head right off with her hand and throw it away so the gushing blood wouldn't hit us. "Running around like a chicken with it's head cut off" rings really true to me! It was the weirdest thing to watch that chicken run around for a while, spouting blood, before it fell over and Gramma picked it up and took it to the porch to pick off the feathers.

In spite of that experience, I would have probably eaten chicken, but the next step was to singe off the pin feathers with the open flame of her wood cook stove. The smell of that was worse than outhouse smell by a long shot. It made me gag.

So, that's why I didn't eat chicken as a boy. More the loss since I was told by all my cousins that Gramma's fried chicken was the best in the world....

A stranger story than mine was why my father never ate turkey. He grew up on a turkey farm and you didn't eat the cash crop. So, he and his brothers and sister were told turkey tasted dry and stringy and only people in the city would ever eat it. When he left home to work in the coal mines, he stayed in a boarding house. One day he told the woman who ran the boarding house that the meal she served that night was 'the best roast chicken I've ever tasted"

The woman laughed. "That was turkey, Virgil," she told him. She had to take him in the kitchen to show him the carcass before he would believe her.

Ponder what necessary lies we tell children....

Ponder why you don't eat certain things....

Goat in my food trap

I have this terrible food trap back in my last two molars on the upper right side of my mouth. I just spent 5 minutes clearing out the goat meat. Goat, it seems to me, is one of the most stubborn food stuffs--requiring picks, and two kinds of floss.

There is a reason I have goat in my food trap--I helped with the funeral of Zenith Punter today and there was goat at the reception after the interment.

Zenith was a couple of years younger than I am. She was married to Vincent and had 4 or more kids, my favorite of which was Keshia, the youngest daughter. There were 450 people at the funeral, almost all of them natives of Barbuda--a tiny island near Antigua.... It always seemed to me that there were as many Barbudans in Waterbury as there were back on the island. I know that's not true, but it seemed that way.

The first time I ever tasted goat--which I like, by the way--was at a Barbudan funeral in my first few years of the two decades + I spent at St. John's. I didn't know what it was--it tasted a bit like pork but not as sweet and was horrified when someone told me it was goat. But I liked it. (It's sort of like when I ate tongue in Israel and loved it until someone told me what it was....)

Zenith was part of a remarkable extended and extended some more family at St. John's. I always referred to them as "The Webber's" since "Mrs." Webber was the matriarch of the whole clan. I always called her "Mrs. Webber" and she always called me "Father Bradley" (though her accent made it "Fadder Bradley"). That was our way. I tried to make her call me 'Jim', but that wasn't going to happen. And I never even considered calling her "Renetta". We were very close, but our closeness was because of our respect for each other.

At any rate, the "Webber Family" was vast and far-flung and occasionally descended on St. John's, like at Renetta's significant birthdays or the baptism of some of the children. An elegant, refined, wondrous family they are. All the men are handsome and all the women are beautiful and all the children are astonishingly well behaved.

Two stories about 'the family'.

Seminarians would come and go at St. John's, and to a one they would at some point ask me, "why do most of the Black people sit together?" like something was wrong. I would say, what it you so 30 or 40 people sitting together, all with red hair and freckles? They would ponder and say--"a family?"

Precisely, I'd say.

Then there were the people with children who would tell me they wanted to come to church more often but 'the children, you know, just can't sit through it'. And I would invite them to watch the Barbudan children who not only 'sat through it' but sat through it with white gloves on the girls and suits and ties on the boys.

This family meant so much to me. I'm sure they don't know how much.

Today, though it's only been two years, when I saw the children I nearly wept and rejoiced all at once. So grown up, the ones I knew as adolescents, so refined, those I knew as grammar school age. Astonishing how powerful DNA is--these are GOOD people.

Good people who eat goat.

There seemed to be one station empty on the endless food line. There was scalloped potatoes, ziti (obviously a food learned from our culture) , green beans, mac and cheese, goat, ham and chicken in two directions. So I handed out scalloped potatoes to half of that 450 group.

Michele, the one who seemed in charged, asked me why I was serving. I told her, "today I am an honorary member of this family."

Raven, who was doing the pasta beside me and is about five inches taller than me though she's still in high school and incredibly beautiful, looked at me and said, "Father Bradley, you've always been a member of our family...."

I could have wept then and there.

May the expansive soul of Zenith and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace....

The Hysterical Society

So when Henry and Jose and their 5 man crew showed up to work on the roof (probably doubling the number of Hispanics in Cheshire this morning) Henry went to Town Hall to get a building permit. Strange, I thought, since they'd already done a full day's work and finished about a quarter of the shingles. But another contractor today told me people do that a lot since building permits for roofs are pro forma most of the time. They are really great guys and are doing a remarkable job and leave the site immaculate.

Since having 7 people on the roof hammering and scraping makes our already neurotic dog a basket case, thinking he has to protect us from the onslaught, I was in bed reading and he was beside me. (The bedroom is the only place he'll calm down and stop barking.) I was half asleep when Bern came in and said, "the have to stop working".

I showed a sleepy uncomprehending look and she said, "Go talk to Henry."

"The guy was signing the permit," he told me, "and started to hand it to me when he noticed the address again. He said, 'which end of Cornwall is this on?' and when I told him the Route 10 end, he took back the permit."

So the guy who gives building permits said to stop whatever they were doing since this would have to go by the Historic Commission. That had never occurred to me since we were replacing shingles with shingles and not making a structural change. It seemed like normal and needed maintenance to me.

So I go to talk to the guy at Town Hall who is the staff liaison to the Historic Commission and the Planning and Zoning Committee. He shook my hand and looked extremely grave. "I don't want to put you to any trouble," he said and proceeded to put me to a great deal of trouble.

He laboriously explained that a new roof is, in fact, an alteration to my frigging 1850 house that needed either an exemption or approval from the Commission. So I filled out a form for an exemption since I consider a new roof 'maintenance', gave him a check for $25 for the privilege of filling out the form for an exemption and told me again he didn't want to cause me any problems and he was sure this could be resolved at the March 5 meeting of the Historic Commission which, obviously, has no process to do anything except at their monthly meetings! I was about to say, "isn't there someone I can bribe?" when I realized Planning and Zoning people probably wouldn't realize it was a joke and I'd be in big trouble....

So I come back to talk to Henry and Jose and explain the bad news. They cleaned up (though the guy at Town Hall told them not too) and nailed a huge blue tarp to the part of the roof that is exposed (though the guy told them not too).

So I have to bring a sample of the current shingle and a sample of the shingle that covers a quarter of my house to the Historic Commission Meeting on March 5, not make jokes and ask pretty please for an exemption to whatever rule we have seemed to violate. Given I have a quarter of my house with new shingles, a quarter with old shingles and half shingle less, It seems a weird exercise.

(I'm no good with Historic Preservation people. When I was Rector of St. John's in Waterbury we wanted to tear down an old building for more parking. A church needing more parking seemed a good thing to me but, lo and behold, it was in the historic district and we had to go to the state Historic Commission to get permission. I went to the first of several meetings and listened to the Commission drone on about the historic significance of that building and offering options to tearing it down. Finally, I interrupted and said, "It's just an old building...."

They had to adjourn for a few minutes to get their composure back and the lay folks never let me go to another meeting with the State Historic Commission....)

Maybe I'll change my voter registration to Republican or Libertarian and start protesting with the Tea Party dudes about 'getting government out of our lives'....

Well, that won't happen, but I was feeling a bit homicidal after meeting with the P and Z guy....

Things I learn walking my dog

This morning I walked my dog, Bela (who is a bad dog we love ultimately), down on the old Canal Greenway and we were assaulted by the songs of a myriad of birds, more birds than I've heard since September.

Even Bela stopped several times and listened. It was a concerto that sounded to me a lot like Spring.

I hope they didn't come back too soon, for their sakes. I don't want birds whose timing was off to die on a February Connecticut night. But, for my sake, I hope their centuries of DNA told them right and soon all the birds will be back. I've missed them. I lean toward Spring....

Then, at 5:30 or so, when night was coming on hard--though later each day by a few minutes (God bless the tilting of the earth back toward the sun in the Northern Hemisphere)--I walked Bela down on Main Street, hoping he'd do his business somewhere close to the huge house of the bad man who used to live across the street from us and yelled, unmercifully, at his kids. I'd have picked it up, but I don't like that man and like that Bela often poops near his house. (Once, a few years ago, he came out when I was walking Bela and yelled at me. He yelled something like this: "Your dog always urinates and defecates near my house! I want that stopped! My children smell it in their rooms!) Nevermind that I had a plastic grocery bag in my pocket and nevermind that picked up dog defecation and un-picked up dog urination couldn't possibly be smelled on the second floor of his house. And never mind that I heard him yell equally irrational things at his kids when they lived across the street. Never mind all that--who in the hell says "defecates' and 'urinates' when they are angry and yelling???

If he has enough self-restraint to not say "shits and pisses" when he's yelling, why doesn't he have enough self-restraint not to yell at a neighbor or his kids? Go figure....

We walked down toward the Town Hall and three of the Tea Party guys who are there several drive times a week were in front of Town Hall.

They had three signs.

One said, FACE IT, OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST!

Well, I voted for Obama before and will again. I'm a 'yellow dog democrat', but believe you me, our President is not a 'socialist'. I actually wish he was. He's a moderate Democrat, much more moderate than me. I can't for the life of me understand that sign or why someone would write it or hold it.

The second said, EXTREMISM IN THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM IS NO VICE. That's a quote from Barry Goldwater. I was a devotee of Barry Goldwater when I was 17 years old. I was a convinced conservative back then. I even spray painted AUH2O on several public buildings, which meant I could have been arrested for vandalism except my father's two brothers owned most of the little town where I lived and being a Bradley was license to deface.

Then I heard Barry Goldwater promised to privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority, a government entity that provided cheap electric power for a vast swath of Appalachia. That he thought a private company would be as generous as the government had been woke me up.

That's when I grew up and became a Liberal.

I didn't mind the Goldwater quote at all. I actually believe it, just not the way the Tea Party guys do.

The last sign said: HONK IF YOU HATE GOVERNMENT

Bela and I stood there for 10 minutes or so, watching the three old guys (all of which, I imagine, haven't sent back their Social Security checks or torn up their Medicare cards!) try to hold three signs and two American flags between them.

It was drive time and Cheshire's two major industries are Garden Centers and traffic--mostly on Route 10--Main Street to natives--so Bela and I waited and watched and listened.

Only 4 cars honked in 10 minutes out of several hundred that passed by. An unscientific poll at best. But it gave me faith.

Then, here's the awful thing. The three guys left, gathering their flags and signs and I watched them go. They had parked in the parking lot of Town Hall!!!!

Wait a frigging minute! If you "hate government" and yet you stand on Town property and park in a Town Hall parking lot, isn't that a bit hypocritical. Do you hate the ground you stand on and the parking lot you use? The Town of Cheshire is, last time I looked, a organ of GOVERNMENT, that hated, reviled thing. When people 'honk' do you want the sidewalk to disappear and your cars to fall into a black hole because both are 'government property'?

Don't ever try to tell me, not ever, never in anyway, that IRONY isn't writ large in the world we live in.....

And I, for one, am glad about that.

Irony makes the world go 'round so far as I can see....

Honk if you love IRONY.....