the advice you didn't ask for...

So, here's my advice (that you didn't ask for) and with the caveat that you should 'beware of anyone offering advice'.

The advice is this: get in touch with a friend you haven't seen for years.

It's always a little anxious making to do that (one reason people avoid high school and college and family reunions). Sure you used to love them but, gosh/gee, time has passed and you aren't who you were and they aren't who they were and what if these new folks don't have the same connection and magic they used to have? I got it. And that is true. And it may be like trying to be intimate with a stranger.

But I've had a couple of experiences lately--one by email and one in person--encountering folks I haven't been with for years (from 5 or so to 25 or so) and it's been really great. Seamless, really, back to the same place though we're in a different place altogether.

I am the reigning world's champion at 'not keeping in touch'. My personality allows me to have serial friendships. My closest friends are old ones, but I don't do well making sure I keep the friends I had because I always make new friends.

I'm going to take my own advice (and even I didn't ask me for advice!) and keep up with those two and figure out how to contact some more 'old friends'. Maybe it's my advancing age that wants to recapture the past or maybe it's just that a friend is a terrible thing to leave behind.

I'm pondering friendship these days. It's not a bad thing to wonder about....

The Igloo Factory

I have a very long novel I've written over 30 years--messing with it and revising it and sending it to agents and all that. And it has never been published. I write better than I 'sell' what I've written.

But I would like people to read "The Igloo Factory: A Romance of the 60's" for several reasons:
1) I wrote it to be read;
2) I like it and would like to share it;
3) The 60's were a great time to be alive, if you can remember them....
4) The characters have been my friends over the years and I like to introduce my friends to my friends;
5) I don't have the patience it takes to try to sell it to someone.

So, over the next few weeks, if i can figure out how, I'm going to 'publish' "The Igloo Factory" on this blog.

I have a couple of requests:
*if you like it or don't, let me know by email--I never take the time to read responses people make on my blog (Padrejgb@aol.com).
*if you like it, send it to friends you think might like it. I really want a wide readership.
*if you know a publisher, surely send it them them!!!!

It's almost 700 pages, so I'm going to have to figure out how to space it out.

The reason I decided to do this is that my Friend Mike, signed an email to me, "Milo". I thought he was now known by a different name, but he let me know that he just wanted to know he'd read my mystery novella, "Murder on the Block" that I put on the blog months and months ago. One of the characters was a Lt. Milo Caggianio of the Rhode Island State Police, an Italian like Mike and as spooky and funny and unpredictable as Mike was when I was around him.

Anyway, since I knew Mike read "Murder on the Block", I though, what the heck, why not share "The Igloo Factory" with whoever is out there reading Under the Castor Oil Tree. Who knows who you are? I'm always startled by some unexpected person who talks to me about something I wrote on UtCOT. What a joy that is, by the way.

So, beginning next week--maybe I'll do it the same day each week like a Dickens serialization--though I'm no Dickens, God knows....But then, God, I expect, knows everything....

OK, as a 'teaser' I'll give you a 'synopsis' of "The Igloo Factory"--which is akin to trying to dress a python in a tuxedo--that I sent to an agent who asked for one.

THE IGLOO FACTORY

(1989--Buchannon, West Virginia)
Deep in the chill February mountain night, Reed is writing. He is writing a story he promised Meyer he would write someday. And he is trying, as best he can, to make it TRUE--just the way Meyer wanted. In the light of his Carl Yastrezemski lamp, Reed had fallen through a crack in his brain and is once more walking the streets of Cambridge, headed toward the Igloo Factory. It is June and very hot and he can't get his mind off the girl he met that morning on a wall outside a church. Her name was Sandy.
*
In June 1968, Thomas Reed Daley had just finished college at a Great Midwestern University and had been suddenly struck illiterate after reading a letter from his father from beyond the grave. His senior thesis adviser rescued Reed for the squalor his life had become and sent him to a certain Brigham Francis, proprietor of the only nudist Day Care Center in Somerville, Massachusetts. It was the only thing to do. And Brigham sent him from Oz to The Igloo Factory and Meyer T Meyer (no period after the T please) and Reed's healing.

Meyer was a strange, illusive character, full of enigmas and vastness. He watched over the "wanderers on the earth" who wander, for some reason or another to the Factory. Reed is trying to tell the wanderers' story as well and his and Meyers.

First installment next Wednesday. I've decided to do it on Wednesdays.

OK, I'm human! Who knew?

I'm a big enough man--too big because of the post cancer treatment I've been undergoing for nearly a year now that makes it impossible to lose weight. The other possible side affects are growing breasts and hot flashes. I'll take being too heavy over those any day.

But I am a big man in other ways: Like I can admit to a mistake.

After my last post, all hot and bothered about racism, I got the following email from my high school friend and college roommate, Mike Miano.

Brad,

I enjoy your musings and scan you site daily for something new to ponder. Thanks for your time and effort.

Most scholars credit Edmund Burke with: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

The above is most likely a summary of the following quote in Burke's 'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents': "When bad men combine, the good must associate, else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.'

Also attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville.

The actual line of Burke's is akin to Benjamin Franklin's "We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

I used to attribute it to you uncle, Gen. Omar Bradley. The quote has also been followed by the names of John F. Kennedy, Peyton Linkous, R. Murray Hyslop, Charles F. Aked, John Steward Mill and may others who have studied Locke and wanted to be famous too.

Peace and Love,
Your friend, Milo

OK, some deconstruction is in order. Mikey put on the subject line: "Edmund Burke would strike you from his Christmas card list".

So, I did say Locke said the quote and am wrong. I can take that. As Walt Whitman said, "I am large, I contain multitudes!" (Find an alternate attribution for that, Mikey!)

Also, he calls me 'Brad'. My name is like rings on a tree. If I get an email or letter or Christmas card (which I won't get from Edmund Burke this year) that begins, "Jimmy", I know it is from someone in my family.

If someone calls me "Brad" I know it is from between the years 1963-1970. High school and college where I was, most definitely, 'Brad'.

Since then, most everyone calls me "Jim" or, for the really Episcopalian, "Father Jim" or "Father Bradley". Plus, now that I am, in my dotage, teaching at the Lifelong Learning Institute at UConn in Waterbury, more and more people call me "Dr. Bradley", academic and all.

But 'Brad' comes from a special part of my life--my 'young man' time. A glorious time, though you'd have to hold a gun to my head to make me re-live it. I love being who I am and how old I am. I like being in my skin. Back in the years 1963-70, Brad didn't always like to be in his skin. There was all than 'angst', all that teenage confusion, all the wondering about what came next and who I was...like WAS.

All that is long gone. I truly love 'who I am". I enjoy being me. Sometimes a change of name will do that.

I notice Mikey, as I know him, is now "Milo". Good enough. A good name to be in the skin of....

But I do, from time to time, miss being 'Brad'. And I truly miss "Milo" or "Mikey".

For those who read this and think I'm a tad crazy, I'm in A ball to Mikey's Big League Craziness back then. The stories I could tell.....

I think I've gotten crazier as I age. Mikey most likely used up his portion of Crazy long ago. He's become, I think, a Responsible Citizen. I've gotten crazier and crazier as the years go by.

Be well and stay well.

Shalom, Jimmy, Brad, Jim

Don't get me started....

A web sight called "Stumpy's Stickers" has bumper stickers for sale that say (I kid you not!)

DON'T RE--NIG IN 2012
Defeat Obama

There's another available with a picture of four hooded KKK members with their arms crossed in front of a burning cross that says

The Original Boys in the Hood
Defeat Obama

I grew up in a segregated county--the southernmost county of West Virginia. I didn't go to school with Blacks until High School and then only the 'brightest girls and best athletes' --5 blacks in a graduating class of 99.

The older black people in my little town of Anawalt--which was 50/50 white/black called me "Mr. Jimmie", and , much to my embarrassment, I didn't realize until I was 11 and 12 how wrong that was. My father and to uncles were all business owners and Black folks wanted to stay on the good side of the Bradleys.

I never played with a Black child in my childhood. Never knew any of their names. But they all knew me. It wasn't Mississippi, but it was toxic and bad.

A guy from Gary District High School (as opposed to Gary High--the white school) and I became friends in college. He would introduce me to his Black friends by saying, "Jim and I went to different high schools together...." I was properly humbled by that. This man who I became quite close with went to a different school less than a mile from mine, who had lived 10 miles from me for all our lives, who had my interests and my concerns-- and we had no opportunity to 'know each other' until we went to college--the SAME college, together.

The first parish I served was an African American parish in Charleston WV--even in 1975 there was tacit segregation in WV--and I learned great wisdom from the good folk of St. John's. They were of my class and education--not quite right, about 1/3 of the congregation had Ph.D's and were several steps above me economically--but it was close enough that, just like my one black friend in college, I realized we shared a great deal, more than I shared with many of the white people I knew.

But we didn't share everything--we listened to the same music, read the same books, voted for the same democrats (though some of them were still members of Lincoln's party because it was Lincoln's party) laughed at the same votes and shared many social passions. However, I once was watching a parade in downtown Charleston with Col. Ben--a Corneal in the segregated army of WWII--and he said, "Jim, do you know how you're different from me?"

I wasn't sure and said so.

He took a deep breath and a great risk: "When you hear a band coming from around the corner, you can decide if you like it or not. But I have to wait until I see it. And if there are young Black faces in that band, then I like it, no matter how good they play."

I had been accepted into a Black community with grace and compassion, unlike any Black priest could have been accepted into a white church. I was blessed. More than blessed. I was transformed by the people of St. James. "Integration" has always concentrated on "how we're alike" and ain't that great. What true equality means is noticing 'how we're different' and celebrating that.

(Tonight at a wondrous St. Patrick's day corned beef and cabbage dinner at St. James in Higganum--hundreds of people came to eat or take out meals and some were probably delivered to a nearby elderly housing group and 10% of the proceeds went to a local soup kitchen--these folks in the Cluster really 'get' being a Christian....I said to Howie, half-in-jest, half-in-truth, "you know the thing I'm still not used to in the Cluster is being around so many white people."

Howie laughed and agreed the group was 'quite white'.

The three churches I served before I retired were a Black church, a totally integrated church and a totally integrated church that began a successful Hispanic ministry that became the 2nd largest of the three Sunday services and will, I suspect, become the largest of the three some day, through God's Grace.

I felt dirty after viewing Stumpy's Stickers web site. Dirty and despondent and fearful. Such hatred of 'the other' is full of ignorance and resentment and fear. How can this still be in this time and in this place?


Think back to the last time you didn't say something when someone told a joke or made a statement that was racist or sexist or xenophobic 0r homophobic or anit-Semitic or anti-Muslim?

Don't let it happen. Don't let it happen.

It is up to us, each of us and all of us, to Stand Up against Hatred and Fear and proclaim Inclusion and Hope. By the way, Courage is not the opposite of Fear, Hope is because Fear allows not possibility and Hope is ultimate possibility.

You know the quote: John Locke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of Evil is for good men (sic) to do nothing."

I want to live in a world where Stumpy's Stickers would not be allowed to exist. I support freedom of speech absolutely, but if we could all come to realize that we are all Children of God, with differences, and celebrate that (the 'differences' most of all) something akin to Sanity might become part of our national dialog.

Maybe. Hopefully.

Plus, Lukie lives....

Our roof is finished but our problems are not over. On Wednesday the power went off for about half our house. I may have mentioned it before. A guy from the utility company came and told us our entire electrical panel was shot. Water down the outside line into the panel, corrosion, danger, Wil Smith, danger!

A guy came from the electricians and did some work but couldn't replace the panel. So, since our bedroom was one of the places affected, and my office with my computer and the router for Bern's computer--we've been off line for two days....

I'd recommend that. It was wonderful....

Today they came--two electricians--and replaced and encased our outside line and our inside electrical panel and grounded everything. But still the same problem, half our power was off. So they came upside and I put the dog in the car and went in the truck to a physical with my doctor and they crawled around, looking for the problem.

(Oh, I should tell you that since the electricians had opened the door to the basement and the dormer door to the outside from the basement and I couldn't find our cat, Lukie, I went up and down the street expecting to find him crushed on the road somewhere. Luke is an indoor cat for 11 or more years and the thought of him getting out when he knows Jack about cars and stuff, had me in a panic mode. He's a 'puppy cat'--comes when you call him, very affectionate and begs like a dog. I love him profoundly. He is the last of our once 4 cats and has always been my favorite and has flourished with just him and the dog. He always wanted to be an "only cat" I think, and he and Bela--the bad dog--play and run and co-exist in a marvelous way.)

So, I go to the doctor, not knowing is Luke is smushed on the road somewhere or if my computer and all our electricity will be back on when I come home.

Well the electricity was back on--the guys found a line up in the attic that was--against code--right on the ceiling and got broken by they guys driving nails into the roof to put on our new shingles. The fault lies in whoever did that wiring as much as 100 years ago since in is original wiring. But in great shape, the electricians told us, given it's age.

And Luke was back with us. He hadn't escaped and been smashed by a car. He'd been hiding the whole time.

I was so happy I picked him up and held him and rubbed him for a long time. He likes that. He is, after all, our puppy cat.

Plus, I'm much more healthy, according to Mike, my doctor, than I deserve to be....

Not a bad day, over all--but we haven't gotten the electricians bill yet....

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....