An Homage to Family... with Gratitude!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:             An Homage to Family...  with Gratitude!

Bethie (left) and Danny!

Family Matters!  Unexpectedly, my beautiful and incomparable niece, Maggie, daughter of my brother and sister-in-law, sent a note via Messenger.  I don't visit Bookface very much these days, and almost failed to spy and read said communication!  In the end, I'm very glad I did on the referenced occasion!

Given that many of our relatives live in distant regions of the country, and, in fact, in different parts of the planet in at least one case, it is a great joy and a privilege to have them with us when various opportunities present themselves.  However briefly!  

We have a grandnephew, for example...  Danny...  who asked to come and stay with us for a weekend.  His purpose was to explore the delights, attributes and neighborhoods of Milwaukee, with the aim of determining whether this is a place he'd choose to live upon graduation when his career in medicine begins in earnest.

He's 23; we had not seen him for some three years, and prior to that not for some 10 or 11 years.  Always fascinating to discover the emergent personality, likes, dislikes and attitudes.  Will there be compatibility, shared interests?  As it turned out, we, SweetHeart, our daughter, Bethie, Danny and I had a purely terrific time together.  We watched the World Cup final on a giant screen, drank coffee and other potables, enjoyed Bradford Beach, sun and volleyball, danced at Bastille Days to an Afro-Fusion band, and devoured fine food at superb Milwaukee restaurants!

I mean, yeah!  We had a great time together, the four of us.  He, Danny, proved to be a delightful companion, fun, funny and interesting, confident and outgoing.  He makes friends 
with remarkable dexterity...   Truly admirable!  Sometimes we're taken by surprise, and then left with a great sense of gratification that a relative, especially one so young, could fit in with our own personalities, our proposed activities agenda.

About a week and a half later, Brother Kris and Sister-in-Law Jaynie came to town, to attend a wedding feast.  Their niece, Tina, the prime object of the wedding event! Prior to their nuptial

You can just barely see us, seated on the deck of the
Milwaukee Ale House on the banks of the Milwaukee River!

festivities, we were able to spend some delightful times with Kris and Jaynie.  It was a great treat.  We were joined by Nephew Kris Stephen and Niece-in-Law Laura.  The four of them were billeted at our daughter and Son-in-Law's home, the latter pair with their children sojourning at present in Amsterdam, Holland.  

On one of the free evenings, we were also joined by daughter, Bethie, and Nephew Tiger with his wife, Melissa.  I mean, what a joyful time we all had dining on the shores of a confluence of three rivers...  Sail Loft!

(From left, clockwise) Kris, Jaynie, Kris Stephen, Tiger
Laura, Melissa, Bethie, Mary (SweetHeart) and the Perp! 

My brother resides in Texas, but summers -- that is, both he and Jaynie -- in Grand Lake, Colorado where they headquarter when volunteering as "Site Rangers" in Rocky Mountain National Park.  The whole point is, many of our beloved relations live far afield from our home base here in Milwaukee.  As such, we seldom get to spend time with certain of them, and thus it's a great pleasure and a privilege to have them in our midst, if only briefly. Wish Alie, Tad, Coen and Lucy could have been here as well to spend time with cousins, uncle, aunt. 

Kris, the brother that is, spent his working life as an engineer. Jaynie's a retired teacher, an outstanding one at that!  Kris is also a terrific artist; cartooning and wood sculpting just two of his talents!  In fact, he illustrated a Children's Book that I wrote, a collaborative effort.  www.amazon.com!

Wait! You'd like to see an image of that fine piece of literature?  Pshaw (so doggone embarrassing, not being one to trumpet his accomplishments!)... Well, since you ask, there it is, just at the left of this paragraph. 

You see (getting back to the subject at hand!), it is nothing short of a gift, a rare and wonderful treat, to have our beloved family members with us from time to time, when opportunities arise. We are privileged, fortunate in the extreme to have had such a great July with various family members from Cincinnati, Dayton, Texas, North Carolina, Colorado, the Rockies...  Oh, and Stoughton too, of course!  

[Special Note of Dedication:   The perpetrator of this writing dedicates this piece to his entire family, wherever in the country and the world they happen to hang their hats and coats.  Thank YOU all.  And lest one forgets...  Y'all come back soon! (I believe I heard that expression somewhere South of here!)]    

Humbly Submitted, 07-31-18 -- Joel K.    

A Brilliant New Career...

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:             Adventures in the "Dining Car"...   (Act Two!) 
The Players:            Undine and Ulmer
Title of Act Two:      Embarking upon a Brilliant Career as "Goober Comestibles" 
                               (GC) Pick-Up and Delivery Transportation Professionals! 

A Stage Play (sort of...)!

The Settings:    A Vehicle Bumping along a Lumpy Roadway, Somewhere in the Midwest, at  various food purveying establishments and at the residences of varied food consuming recipients!)

Date and Time:    (scene One) Early Afternoon; (scene Two) Evening...

Scene One    (Character names have been modified in order to obscure true identities!!)

Undine:   "The whole darn business made me anxious!  First they want my Social Security

number, then our bank routing and checking account numbers!  I mean, what if it was a crazy scam to rob us of our worldly goods, all our possessions and paltry bank accounts?!"

Ulmer:    "Well, yeah, a bit scary, maybe, but in the end it all turned out alright, aina?  I mean, they have to have that information to set us up as legitimate Goober Comestibles delivery guys!  Right?"

Undine:    "Yeah, I guess, but it scared me silly at the beginning.  Didn't it bother you?"

Ulmer:    "Yeah, I admit it.  I was a bit trepidatious at first.  But then I had my panic attack and some gas pains and everything turned out fine...  Oh, and a couple of spasms from my hiatal hernia...!"  

Undine:    "Oh, wait, we have a ding!  Head for Pizza Palacio on Doobish Street!"  (The duo drives down lumpy, pot-holed streets, eventually arriving at Pizza Palacio!).  "We're here.  Make a U-turn to pick me up in front of the joint.  I'll go in and get the stuff, the pizza, or whatever the Goober guy ordered."  (She emerges with a large pizza pie and a paper sack 

containing garlic bread, we think, maybe salad...!)

Ulmer:    "Where do we go...  Where we headed??"

Undine:    "Be patient.  I have to get the routing directions on my app.  This is all done by smartphone and apps, you know.  I don't have everything in my head, and it isn't written on the pizza sack!"  (Undine places the large pizza pie in an insulated cooler sack, the paper sack on the floor to her right!).  Turn right and then go straight for a while.  I'll tell you when to turn...  Wait!  Where's Dibble Street?  Do we have a Dibble Street in this metroplex? I don't think the pizza people gave us proper directions!"

Ulmer:    "Hey!  There's an average man on the street!  Excuse me, um...  pardon me!  Average

Man, Do you know where Dibble Street is?"

Average Man on the Street:    "Yeah.  You're just a few blocks away...  It may or may not end at the intersection of Boswell and Binkley...  I think!  Just keep driving.  You'll find it..."  (Eventually, they find the destination, about 20 minutes later!)

Undine:    (At the high-rise apartment of the pizza recipient Goober guy who ordered the large pie!)  "Excuse me ma'am (to the concierge)...  Do you know the apartment number of George X.?  We have an incorrect apartment number!"  (Finally, with exemplary detection, they find the correct apartment!)

The Goober Guy Pizza Recipient:   (Opens door following loud knocking and bell ringing)  "Where were you.  This pie must be cold by now, for pity sake.  I'm not happy..."  

Undine:   "You could re-heat it.  Do you have a conventional oven?  Convection, maybe? A microwave?  A toaster oven?...  A box of matches?"  (Recipient slams door in the faces of Undine and Ulmer!  They ride down the elevator and jauntily bounce down a few steps to the waiting vehicle, its emergency flashers blinking importantly!!)

Ulmer:   "Hey!  Another ding!  We're really rollin'...  Where to?"

Undine:   "Um...  Wait, it's thinking...  Ah!  Head for the 'Great Wall of Fong' on Muggle Street...      (Pause to pick up order!) OK, now we've picked up the order.  Head for the University District, State Avenue just north of 18th Street.  The guy who ordered is, um, lemme see...   Zhing Woo W."

Ulmer:   "Here, let me pop out of the car and deliver the food into the hands of...  What's his name again...   (Hands a package of Emperor's ToFu and Chicken Lo Bong to the customer!)  Here you go...  Um, Wing Wei Woo??!"  (Customer looks at Ulmer as if considering him a Sinophobic buffoon!  Undine is convulsed with laughter and has to close the car window and turn away from the scene...). 

Undine:   "His name is Zhing Woo W., you bubblehead!  (Still laughing!) Isn't life grand?! Just a fine inaugural outing in the new but ongoing adventures of Goober Comestibles professionals!...  Maybe we should call ourselves, 'The Great Goober Gastronomic Team'! "

Ulmer:   "You know what I always say:  'Give the client what she or he wants, and put smiles on the faces of all and sundry... ' Is that a ding?  Where to, oh Chief delivery purveyor??!!..."

Undine:   "Hmmm...  Looks like a Mexican restaurant...  Las Uvas, or something like that...  Don't move!  Wait 'till Millie gives us directions!"  (The computerized voice of the GPS 'Goober' directions giver announces, 'Turn left, then turn right, then turn left, then make a U-turn, then arrive on your right, or, your left...' "  Undine and Ulmer call her Monotone Millie, sometimes Mechanical Mildred!) 

Ulmer:   "I'm getting hungry!  When can we eat our wrapped sandwiches?  Are there pickles...?"


(Special Note:   The perpetrator dedicates this writing to Bethie in honor of her milestone birthday, and to let her know how much he loves and honors her.  She is brave, strong, smart as the dickens and beautiful, an exemplary mother, sister and daughter, and he, the perpetrator, is privileged and always delighted to have her in his life!  Happy Birthday!!)

-- Humbly Submitted, 06-29-18 -- Joel K. 

Losing a Great Friend too Soon, too Young... It Just Aint Right!!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:             Losing a Great Friend too Soon, too Young...  It Just Aint Right!!  

We'd often get together at the weekend for prodigious night-clubbing and drinking.  It was a Friday night.  We decide -- or maybe he decides -- to venture to a night spot we'd often frequented. (Long gone now, it was called "Beneath the Street," I think...)

A splendid looking chap...
Dashing, even! 

The Everly Brothers are appearing, and we somehow snag a table "expensively" close to the stage, as if we'd bribed the head waiter.  No head waiters there, just servers, "beverage hosts" and bouncers.

Pat disappears, and I don't really notice where he's gone, as I'm pleasantly floating on a euphoric bubble of booze-inspired semi-consciousness.  Don and Phil, the Everly Brothers, sit down at my table.  "Hey, how you doin' this fine evening," asks Don, or maybe it was Phil...

"Uh...  I'm doin' fine, thanks," I say, somewhat bewildered.

"What did you think of our set?" asks Phil, or Don maybe.

"You two are great," I say in reply.  "I love your style, your singing and the tunes you do.   I love the old stuff, your signature tunes."  

"Lemme buy you a drink.  What are you drinking?  Miss!!" one of them calls out, "Give our friend, here, whatever he wants!"  This from Phil, or maybe it was Don.  I accept!

"I guess I'll have another of these," I say.  "Nut brown ale."  

"Wanna jolt of something stiffer?" asks Don (Phil?).  

"Nah, thanks, the beer's just fine."  

It goes on like that for 15, 20 minutes, the length of their break between sets. They return to the

stage. I muse that my great friend, Pat -- sometimes I called him Gord -- was in Armed Forces Radio (and Television) in Germany.  He had extended his enlistment to do something he loved. And he was great at it, with an excellent, sonorous and "pear-shaped" tonal quality to his superb voice, a bonus in such work, probably needless to add.  

He met many celebrities in Germany through his work, including "Jack," who became an NBC newscaster in Los Angeles and married an actress named Joan.  Pat and Jack became and remained good friends in spite of the distance between LA and Milwaukee. Pat was best man at their wedding. 

Eventually, Pat returns to our table, explaining that he was visiting, catching up and sharing stories with Don and Phil whom he came to know through Armed Forces Radio.  

"So," I ask, "Why were the Everly's so friendly toward me of all people?"  

"I told them you're a big-time Milwaukee DJ.  'He'll play lots of your music if you're nice to him', I told the boys!"  

We laughed.  I cursed and complained at him with jovial good humor.  He was like that, always...  full of practical jokes, silliness, fun and great humor.  He loved to put me in crazy and     sometimes embarrassing circumstances.  That was his way, and I thoroughly enjoyed the sport! He was among my very closest and most cherished friends.  He was in SweetHeart's and my wedding, and we were in his.  His wife -- we call her Joey -- was and is a treasure, and remains a great friend whose company we enjoy enormously. 

Pat died in April of this year, far too young, far too soon.  We were in the military together, and spent some 18 months stationed in Turkey.  We had great times and many adventures, loaded with mischief.  Late one evening, returning from our duties, our second shift in "Research and Development" in the Air Force Security Service, we "borrowed" one of the shuttle buses in order to get to the Airman's Club before closing time, but that was one of our tamer episodes. We raised lots of hell in Istanbul, drank way too much, traded in contraband, once were caught up in a minor revolution...  Pat enjoyed the time my feet were run over by a taxi cab outside a pavilion (an Istanbul night spot!).  What a sense of humor.  Far more than that, he had a gift for comedy, fun and wildly silly humor!!

He loved being of Irish descent; a DNA test proved him to be predominantly Irish. He and Joey, Steve and Andrea were able to visit Ireland, a trip he greatly enjoyed.  And there may even have been some pubs involved...  

Too many years passed that we did not see or interact regularly with one another on a personal level, but we did always manage to meet on occasion, to speak via telephone and trade nonsense. SweetHeart and I visited him in hospital during his final days, told stories, even sang one of his favorite tunes. He seemed to enjoy the occasion, at least we hope he did! 

Pat was -- like SweetHeart and other great friends still are -- a treasure in my life.  I loved him more than I ever told him, and wish I had done so.  I'll miss him every day.  But like the aftertaste of a favorite dish or a nut brown ale (or, these days, a Diet Pepsi Cola with a wedge of fresh lime), a memory will rise in my throat and move to my heart, and I'll savor, once again, his memory, our friendship and the times we spent together.   

Humbly Submitted, 05-23-18 -- Joel K.     

Adventures in the "Dining Car"... (Act One!)

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:             Adventures in the "Dining Car"...   (Act One!) 

A StagePlay (sort of...)!

Scene:    A Dining Room Table Somewhere in the Midwest
Date and Time:    A Sunday Christians call Easter...   11:00AM

(Nine individuals are seated at table, parents, two grown daughters and a son-io-law.  They're enjoying a brunch consisting of eggs, griddlecakes, sausages, fruit, coffee and 

Apparently everyone left to use the
bathroom!  That's Uncle Fisbert on
the wall.  He was the Tenth Earl of
Something!

various juices, whipped topping and sugary additives to encourage the grandchildren to eat their griddlecakes and sausages...  The four kids / grandchildren, two each belonging to the two daughters, exit to play gleefully offstage, out of earshot, in the grandparents' suite!)

Baba (the grandmother):  "Children, we had some unpleasant news from our investment account manager this past Tuesday.  We're almost out of money."

Elder Daughter:  "Ohmygosh!  Are you serious?  What does that mean?  You're broke, penniless?  Darn near on the streets?! Is the guy a thief?!!"

Baba:  "No.  But, we definitely have to cut back on our spending, and we'll finally have to raise our upstairs tenant's rent."  I hate doing it, and I'm so afraid she'll become hurt and angry!  And, we have to find jobs, Dad

Where'd the money go??!!  Didn't we
used to have some money, somewhere
in, like, a bank or something??!!
Uh...  Where's that
retirement account??!

and me...  part-time jobs!  (I wonder if there are any of those six-figure, part-time CEO jobs available! Where'd I put those darn 'want-ads...'?)"

Papa (the grandfather):  "Sadly, that's the grim reality; we have to raise her rent, and as you know, we've only done so in small increments over the years.  But now we have to bring her rent up to what we know is fair market value.  What the hell, maybe we could just rob some liquor stores!...  Lotsa people are doing it!"  

Baba:  We went around the neighborhood asking people what their renters typically pay.  I was surprised how much they get for flats comparable to ours, and with no garage or parking space."

Younger Daughter:  "Holy shit!  I'm so sorry!"

Son-in-Law (elder daughter's husband):  "Damn!  That stinks.  I'm really sorry...  Hey! Maybe

you could sell weed!"

Younger Daughter:  "Or cannabis brownies and cakes.  Cops come around?  You tell 'em you didn't know it was in there...  you bought a mix!"

Elder Daughter:  "Yeah!  From a guy who came to the door selling stuff, raising money for his church...  the 'Temple of the Holy Daze.'  You'll make big money!  Do it!"

Papa (standing up on his chair):  "I'm practicing getting high...  for when we're in the Weed Trade."

Baba:  "Sit down, you idiot! At our age, it's really hard to find part-time work.  I've been looking, filling out applications like crazy!  People don't want to hire people of our age.  You'd think there's ageism going on in this country!?!"

Younger Daughter:  "Mom...  you make a funny joke?!!  It's rampant, pervasive.  (A beat...)  Why just the other day my friend and I knocked down an old geezer, snatched his wallet and gold retirement watch...  Kidding, of course...  I'm just making a little joke!"

Elder Daughter:   Just because you're a geezer, they treat you like vermin!! It's not right!  I'm calling AARP and demanding immediate action!!     

Papa:  "The country is obsessed with youth.  The little jerks!  People don't give a damn about us old baboons.  And, hey, how come young people get to spend so much money on stuff, like those pre-destroyed jeans?  Holes in the knees, no knees, rips and tears up and down the legs.  Where the hell do they get the money to buy that stuff.  I mean, it's nuts!  Pre-destroyed blue jeans for eighty bucks!  SweetieHeart, toss me one of those sausages.  (Puts it in his mouth like a cigar!)  Anybody got a light?"

Elder Daughter:  "Think you could rob banks?  Dad could put on a ski mask and talk like Groucho Marx."  

Hey!  I'm supposed to be driving!
Are we in England??  Are we
driving a Mini Scooper??!

Papa:  "The only gun we have around here is a squirt gun; it's broken and it's orange."  

Baba:  "Yesterday, I called the Department of Aging.  They don't even have a financial advisor. Only a credit
counselor! I mean, there must be hundreds, thousands of people like us who've lost their jobs, their income through no fault of their own.  Their only crime is being old and unemployable, disposable!  Where the heck are the advocates for the elderly, for people like us? "  

Younger Daughter:  "They've all become investment brokers....   Commercial bankers, maybe!"

Son-in-Law:  "Assholes!  Damned unconscionable jerk heads!!...  Are there any more of those cream-filled chocolate eggs?  (An aside:  Papa, I want you to know, we would never let you go hungry, or homeless.  I just want you and Baba not to have to worry, about anything!...  You may be geezers, but you're our geezers! Just wanted you to know. Go back to doing the dishes.")

Papa:  (An aside:  You're a sweet and wonderful guy, Son-In-Law.  Thank you! I mean that from the heart! Could you let me have $50.00 until my relief check comes in?!)

Son-inLaw:  Relief check??!

Elder Daughter:  "Think you could get into one of those private taxi services?  'Goober,' or something like that? 'Slobber Chews'? 'Elevator Wheels'?  Hey!  You could maybe walk dogs, or take in washing! Mending!  Betcha there are lotsa thing you two old ladies could do!  (She always called both her aging parents 'old ladies.')  Maybe write a book, or even a stage play about the trials and travails of penurious 'Old Lady-hood'?!"

Papa:  "Wait a minute!  Wasn't our orange-colored POTUS supposed to give us each $60,000 a year? Where's our 60-thou??!!  I'm calling the Treasury!... Maybe it was lost in the mails!" 


Next time:    Act Two!  The Geezers Consider a Paper Route...  and Other Options!!  

Humbly Submitted, 04-24-18 -- Joel K.

Next Question, Please: Your Religious Affiliation...?

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:             "Next Question, Please:   Your Religious Affiliation?..."  

To borrow a phrase from that outstanding a cappella group, "Sweet Honey in the Rock," I'm tryin' to find a way to talk about religion...  I mean, without being judgmental or giving offense to anyone or any religious tradition...  Really! That's my goal! ("Sweet Honey..." found a beautiful, memorable way to "talk about Greed"!)

Back in the 1960s and 70s, long before the onset of his GeezerHood and mine, my brother proffered the opinion that edifices devoted to the practice of religion should be multi-functional.  He suggested, and I agree, that the monstrous if beautifully designed and adorned church and temple structures that seem only to be populated one day a week -- or so it seemed then and now -- represent a monumental waste. Why not build places of worship such that they can be used and enjoyed seven days a week? Suggested uses include meeting halls, daycare centers, community meeting places, rentable or lendable spaces for film screenings, party facilities, temporary safe refuges for people in peril, emergency shelters for the homeless and refugees...

There are some religious facilities that were or are designed to serve more than Saturday or Sunday religious observances, but too many stand mute and empty six days a week. But that's not the main theme of this writing.  (However I'm not sure I know what is??!!)

I've never been terribly keen on the practice of religion, meaning in a formal sense.  (Although I do possess a certain spirituality...) At some point in my early high school years, trudging slowly and reluctantly up the steps to the gigantic doors of an enormous church on a Sunday morning, a friend popped into view and asked, "Hey, going to church, or do you wanna go water skiing...?" Without a moment's hesitation, I threw myself into his dandy, two-door 1950s-something Chevy with moon hubcaps, and off we motored to Druid Lake.

Though Father Schmocklausen said the "fastest mass in the West," I had no interest in gambling on yet another possibly overly-long homily that would have put me into a near coma. At my own parish church, some 3 or 4 miles west of the holy edifice I had just quit, corpulent, magnificently be-jowled and ancient Monsignor Hooper's saintly tonnage resulted in  agonizingly slow movement, endless warbling of high mass altar prayers and creaky, cracking genuflecting in extreme slow-motion, irritating the hellfire out of the impatiently grumbling faithful!! A great many of us in any case!! That would have been my usual option, meaning

enduring the Hooper pageant, complete with mistaken full revolutions when his true aim was to face the congregation (vs. the altar!) and launch a wondrously falsetto, full warble into its pained, collective auditory organ! 

(Funny thing!  Ancient Msg. Hooper wouldn't let us kids use the new gymnasium building at our grade school. "We must keep it clean for visitors," he'd say! "Yeah, but isn't it supposed to be our gym to use to play hoops," we kids would retort.  "Don't be impertinent!" he'd holler...  Funny old business, that unusable gym...  Only Mrs. Beemish ever seemed to visit, and only because that's where she and Msg. Hooper frequently met to discuss the misbehavior of one or more of her seven or eight children!! However, the monsignor heaped praise upon her for eschewing sinful birth control!!)  

I believe the above image is that of
a Buddhist temple in Siam!
Mongolia maybe?...

I admire and respect all religious practices and traditions.  I really do! What I do not admire is the use of religion as a pretext for killing one another, that specious practice of calling upon the deity to help butcher legions of heavily armed members of one religion by hordes of weapon-wielding devotees of a different or opposing religion.  Oh! And where is god in that scenario??!! I may be naive, fatuous and dopey, but I always thought god called upon his "children" to get along with one another, to practice tolerance and charity, to succor* one another.  (*I believe I saw that word used in a biblical text, maybe the Torah and the Koran as well!!) 

I mean, "kill for Jesus...  butcher for Mohammed and Allah...  wack off a head for Vishnu or Buddha..." Those concepts seem terribly out of keeping with the true intent of religious teachings. But maybe I'm getting a bit off the track, here...  

My father was a Catholic; my mother practiced no religion, though her entire original nuclear family was of Jewish ethnicity, Ashkenazi to be precise.  My siblings and I were raised in the Catholic tradition.  My maternal grandmother flirted with a number of religions, her last being Christian Science. She had no aversion, however, to ordinary medicine, its practitioners and remedies...  pills and analgesics, doctors, nurses and shamans! I believe I last saw her at Mount Sinai Hospital in Milwaukee where she lost her battle with cancer.  

In my own experience, I eventually concluded that Catholicism was not for me. While in Turkey, in military service, I attended a Muslim service or two, and found it fascinating, perhaps owing in large measure to the beauty of Hagia ("Aya") Sofia, the Blue Mosque and other remarkable houses of Islamic worship scattered throughout Istanbul. I've also attended a Jewish temple service or two. At one point, I considered Unitarian Universalism. The minister (or maybe "presider"...  not sure what they call the person who runs the service!) delivered a homily that was truly delightful. He suggested that his religion was such a jumble of confusing ideas to many casual observers, opining that if an angry "clan" of some sort wanted to erect a symbol of protest on the lawn of the church building, they'd probably have to burn a Question Mark. He was very entertaining!  

The music of religious observance is another matter entirely. Wonderful stuff!  Gospel music,

chants, Easter litanies sung in Latin, cantors singing Jewish liturgical music, muslim music too. I remember sitting in nightclubs in Istanbul -- pavions we called them! --listening to mesmerizing songs and melodies, rich with lutes and flutes, guitars and mandolins. 

But back to recollections of amusing moments in religious service. In Iowa we attended mass at a small town church in which the celebrant stated, "The Lord is not male or female...  In fact he's both!!" At another service, the priest droned on for 30 solid minutes; the only thing that woke me from my snoozing was a mention of "milk clabbering."  I have no idea how clabbering milk connected to saintly personages, or angels, the deity, other models of Christian behavior! Lots of muffled snickering undulated among the congregants!  

As a youth I was asked to leave a Sunday service owing to excessive laughter and frivolity between a chum and myself, both of us so consumed with hilarity we couldn't contain our laughter even as we were being ushered from the church. It may well have been prompted by another of ancient jowly Monsignor Hooper's pirouettes and croaking warbles! I'm certainly not inferring that religion is inherently funny, but rather the flawed humans who populate religious service can and have made the most ridiculous pronouncements and suggestions. e.g.  The Iowa priest again  "...the prophet tied his ass to a tree and walked a hundred miles..."  Or was that part of a derisive joke made at the atheists' picnic?

As a child, I think I
called this a
Jazzubobble! It's
actually a chasuble!

A few of my favorite moments under the tutelage of Catholic school sisters:  Sister "Knuckles" Outregis dealt with misbehavior by pounding the spinal column with the middle knuckle of her devastating right hand. (I often wonder if she caused permanent damage to some of my unluckier classmates!) Sister "Heckler" blasted our little palms with her heavy wooden ruler.  Sister "Stretch" Borgia once threatened to smack me with a tennis racket. On balance, Sister Marie was the kind and loving principal. I was grateful to have her as my eighth grade teacher, or I might have abandoned Catholicism prior to that momentous high school decision.

And then there was high school.  Father "Pustule" paraded about the halls inflicting "necessary' discipline by swatting miscreants with his sawed-off golf club. Scholastic Mr. Night delivered open-handed slaps in the kisser...  I guess I'm not really talking about religion in any philosophical manner, but rather just rambling on about recollections, memories of some of the stranger moments in my Catholic schools adolescence era... the amusing side of religion and those ordained to preach, teach and punish. Lest one forget, we had to learn a litany of words describing liturgical apparel -- habits, surplices, chasubles, cassocks, inner and outer rasons, scapulars, cinctures, cowls... 

SweetHeart and I sent our children to CCD classes, but briefly. We couldn't quite embrace what the nuns and lay teachers were "selling" to our kids. Our younger daughter kept asking, "What's this ABCCD stuff? What does it mean and why do we hafta go?" We pulled them out and embarked on our own morality and spirituality instruction!   

In the end, thank goodness some of us emerged from religious education of the 1950s and 60s with our dual senses of emotional wellbeing and humor mostly intact.  And thank goodness many of us still have our guilt to hang onto, thanks to confession and its velvety-curtained booths, vigil lights, benediction, poor boxes, holy pictures, rosaries, incense diffusers, kneelers, rambling sermons and other forms of corporal punishment! But aren't we better, stronger individuals for the experience?!  I have to think about that one!!  

Humbly Submitted, 03-27-18 -- Joel K.