City Hall corruption
I grew up in the 1950s and 60s in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Just about every mayor of that city went directly from City Hall to jail, do not pass Go and do not collect $200. The current crop of mayors seems to be following in those footsteps. Google Atlantic City mayors who went to jail. It’s eye opening.
The mayor’s office in that city was like a feeder line to prison. Most didn’t have time to even grab a change of clothes.
Atlantic City had a lot graft and corruption based on simple greed. No one denied it. And Continue reading →
Old and Bored
OK, I now have a podcast called Old and Bored. It should be available by tomorrow – or next year. I’m not really good yet at how it all works. But I’m old and I’m going to use that as my excuse for the stumbles you will see until I figure this all out.
So check out my podcast. Whether anyone listens or not, I’m going to keep doing it because – let’s face it – I spend a lot of time alone and talking to myself anyway. I might as well do it into a microphone Continue reading →
Obesity and me
I spent a good deal of my life overweight. It started in childhood and didn’t really end until I had bariatric surgery. Reading the recent article in the paper about childhood and teenage obesity brought tears to my eyes. I had spent those years feeling as though I was a failure – a fat failure. Everyone and everything around me made it clear I simply had no self-control, I overate, I didn’t get enough exercise and I wasn’t really trying. By the time I got to college, I wouldn’t go to dances because I was so sure that the minute Continue reading →
Bacala and pretty clothes
I was raised Italian Catholic. If you are Italian Catholic, there are very specific foods to be cooked for very specific occasions depending on where in Italy you are from. You may serve a five, seven or twelve fish dinner on Christmas Eve depending on your tradition but it is always a seafood only night.
My nona continued the tradition of soaking bacala for days on end until all the salt was gone and then she made bacalao salad. My mother wouldn’t eat it. Neither would us kids. In fact, my mother barely wanted it on her holiday table. But Continue reading →
Fear
I went to the same school from pre-kindergarten through 8th grade. I spent more time than I can calculate hiding under my desk from a nuclear attack. Of course, if that didn’t work for nuclear war protection, there was also going out to the hallway and facing the wall while holding our hands over our heads. Either way, according to Sisters Angelina, Beatrice, Gaetano and all the rest of the Salesian nuns that taught me, we were safe. And if they said we were safe, we were.
I think if I were a child today, there would not be Continue reading →
My first night
Reading about the push to turn the old ANMC land into something more useful and attractive brought to mind my first night in Alaska.
It was Oct. 1, 1972. I had cried my way from New York City to Anchorage while a very unhappy parrot was in the cargo hold. I have no idea how Adeline made it safely to Anchorage under those conditions, but she did. She was a tough old bird.
I was picked up by an IHS employee and dropped off at the front desk of visitors’ quarters. I stood there holding the cage with Adeline in Continue reading →
North Star hospital
In what now seems like a distant past, I was a Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) with the Alaska Court System. My caseload was pretty much troubled teenagers from North Slope villages. Most had been in state custody on and off throughout their lives and now were old enough to truly express how those years affected them. It was not pretty. These were children who had already been damaged by their parents and, to some extent, by a state system that kept giving them back to those parents instead of working on a more permanent solution.
All of this is to Continue reading →