Church and World: Viva la Paradox?

      I don't write often on this blog about things overtly or institutionally religious. My stories sometimes touch on this -- but not the news-y and nonfictional. Yet an article about the newness of and the 'paradox of Pope Francis,' by the revered German theologian, Hans Kung, caught my eye yesterday.

      Intuitively, the challenge and the paradigmatic spiritual model that Francis (formerly Jorge Bergoglio, a Cardinal archbishop from Buenos Aires, in South America) has suddenly presented to the church and world is at once both ancient and refreshingly inspirational. One need not be a Catholic, or even Christian or a religious person, to find a sense of fresh uplift and spirit in what the new pope, in his simple all-white outfits, is trying to say via his symbolic actions, his non-verbal gestures, and sometimes actual words. PF1's emerging example reminds me of a maxim that an another revered reformer of the 13th century, Francis of Assisi, once addressed to all who would hear: 

              'Through your life, spread the good news without
                ceasing, use words if they become necessary.'

____________________________________________________________

     'To conclude . . .  what is to be done if our expectations of reform are quashed from above? In any case, the time is past when pope and bishops could reckon with the obedience of the faithful. The 11th-century Gregorian Reform also introduced a certain mysticism of obedience: Obeying God means obeying the church and that means obeying the pope. Since that time, it has been drummed into Catholics that the obedience of all Christians to the pope is a cardinal virtue; commanding and enforcing obedience -- by whatever means -- has become the Roman style. But the medieval equation, “Obedience to God equals obedience to the church equals obedience to the pope,” patently contradicts the word of the apostle before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem: “Man must obey God rather than other men.”

'We should then in no way fall into resignation; instead, faced with a lack of impulse toward reform from the top down, from the hierarchy, we must take the offensive, pushing for reform from the bottom up. If Pope Francis tackles reforms, he will find he has the wide approval of people far beyond the Catholic church.

      'However, if he just lets things continue as they are, without clearing the logjam of reforms as now in the case of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, then the call of “Time for outrage! Indignez-vous!” will ring out more and more in the Catholic church, provoking reforms from the bottom up that will be implemented without the approval of the hierarchy and frequently even in spite of the hierarchy’s attempts at circumvention. In the worst case -- as I already wrote before this papal election -- the Catholic church will experience a new ice age instead of a spring and run the risk of dwindling into a barely relevant large sect.'

http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/paradox-pope-francis

                                                                                                -- Rev. Hans Küng
                                                                                                    Tübingen, Germany
                                                                                                    May 21, 2013


Bottoms up! What an unusual and never complacent time to be alive.

Writing -- Is It Torture or What?

                        'You don’t enter into it because it’s a great lifestyle decision -- it
                        isn't -- you do it because, for whatever reason, you believe in it,
                        and you believe in it because, for whatever reason, you need to.'

Is Writing Torture?

By Avi Steinberg

Are writers happy they became writers? Until someone conducts a survey—and I hope they will—it remains an open question. At the moment, it is at the heart of a quarrel between Elizabeth Gilbert and (indirectly) Philip Roth.

It all started a few months ago, on the Paris Review Daily, when one Julian Tepper published a piece describing an encounter with Roth at an Upper West Side deli. Waiting on his hero’s table, Tepper tremulously presented Roth with “Balls,” his first novel. Roth warmly congratulated him, and then offered: “I would quit while you’re ahead. Really. It’s an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and you write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it’s not any good. I would say just stop now. You don’t want to do this to yourself. That’s my advice to you.”

Soon after this exchange, Roth announced that he’d quit writing. Apparently, he’s never been happier. Affronted by Roth’s advice to Tepper, Gilbert launched an earnest defense of the scribbling life, declaring that writing is a “. . . great” job. This is a classified piece of information, she claims, kept secret by vain, jealous older writers.

Some readers will share Gilbert’s distaste for Roth’s peevishness: Why would a writer as dedicated to literature and as accomplished as Roth speak so bitterly? Why must he insist on being so uninspiring, so ungenerous? Why must he damn the young? There may well have been something dodgy in Roth’s naysaying, something potentially strategic, some sly counter-Oedipal scheme by an elder of American literature set on sabotaging any and all whippersnappers-in-waiting. It seems perfectly likely that Roth felt threatened by a younger writer whose first novel is called “Balls” (Roth told Tepper that he was surprised he hadn’t thought of the title himself). Or maybe Roth sized up this waiter-writer as someone who might publish a creepily detailed account of his breakfast order on the blog of the Paris Review, as he indeed did. Roth was being cagey with the guy. Gilbert was right about that.

Still, it’s hard not to be skeptical about Gilbert’s optimism. Yes, she’s got a quite a talent for optimism—she is, if you haven’t heard, the author of the wildly best-selling memoir of self-discovery “Eat, Pray, Love.” But let’s get real: writing is not a great job. It does not attract happy people, nor does it make its unhappy practitioners any less unhappy. God knows this is a well-documented phenomenon—and one that Gilbert herself talks about. For writers who have found neither inner peace nor boatloads of cash, and certainly not both at once, for those just trying to get health insurance and scrape together some hope for the future, it feels somewhat inaccurate to hear the writing life described as having “everything to recommend it over real work.” And if telling stories is, as she puts it, “marvelously pointless”—a description that her own earnest readers would certainly deny—why does it matter whether or not a young writer is encouraged to keep at it? Go be a professional snowboarder—that’s also marvelously pointless, and the parties are better.

I’m trying to agree with Gilbert when she celebrates writing for the way it allows you “get to live within the realm of your own mind.” But I know plenty of writers for whom living in their own mind is a far from pleasant experience. Writers are very often miserable people: some thrive on unhappiness, others don’t. But few are immune from feelings of deep and avid dissatisfaction. We write because we are constantly discontented with almost everything, and need to use words to rearrange it, all of it, and set the record straight. That is why, for instance, Elizabeth Gilbert herself sat down to write her Roth call-out, and it’s why I’m writing this. It’s why the author of “Balls” wrote Roth a desperate apology letter in the Daily Beast. These are not the acts of contentment. And it’s why Roth, like a recovering addict, is taking it day by day, trying hard not to write anything at all. Like Saul Bellow’s Herzog—reclining on a couch at the end of that book, finally recovering from his fiendish letter-writing addiction—Roth has “no messages for anyone.”
Except that he does. His newest message, we are told, is: “Don’t write. Get out while you can.” But what did he really mean by it?

My guess is that he was joking. Which isn’t to say that he wasn’t serious. It was a serious joke. Roth’s cranky advice for the young writer is an old Jewish chestnut. The sages of the Talmud offered the same piece of advice to anyone who wanted to join the faith: don’t do it, it’s seriously not worth it, it’s just an objectively bad idea. The ancient rabbis suggest that you ask a potential convert, “Are you not aware that today the people of Israel are wretched, driven about, exiled and in constant suffering?” It’s a rhetorical question. But if the person replies that he or she indeed embraces wretchedness and constant suffering, you explain to him or her how taxing it is to practice the religion. You mention the gruesome punishments for breaking the Sabbath and other laws. You try very hard to dissuade any would-be applicants. You mess with them—and that is how you welcome them. Joining, in other words, happens through a process of opposition, irony, and dissent. If you’re going to join a messed-up club, you have to pass the messed-up entrance exam. You enter into the sect only when you push back, when you finally say, Listen, I don’t care what you tell me. I know it’s a bad idea, but I’m determined to do it, and I will do it.

That’s the kind of a person it takes to be a writer: someone who’s zealous and ready to argue, someone who has Philip Roth tell him, “It’s torture, don’t do it,” and replies, “You had me at torture.” You don’t enter into it because it’s a great lifestyle decision—it isn’t—you do it because, for whatever reason, you believe in it, and you believe in it because, for whatever reason, you need to believe in it. Roth was messing with Tepper; he was testing his faith and strengthening it. He wanted the guy to earn the title: author of the novel “Balls.”

My guess is that Tepper was heartened to discover that even the great Roth, it turns out, hates his life. For struggling writers, wretches that they are, that is inspiring.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/02/elizabeth-gilbert-versus-philip-roth-is-writing-torture.html#ixzz2Kt6Vdm8z

Endurance -- Beyond the Sunset

     I feel guilty when I stray away from this quiet, little blog for such a long time. Guilty even when I am working on something purposeful elsewhere. Like writing original material for some other audience.

     But I'm back to say that the best advice that I have ever been given -- about sitting down to write something new  -- is simple. The advice was two syllables, one word:  finish.

     A new book of stories which I have been piecing together has proved to have an elusive closure point. It's ironic that the newest piece that I am working on is a story -- with a protagonist named Butterman stuck in the midst of the detainees' hunger strike at the Guantanamo naval base -- tentatively titled "Endurance." My plan was to have the whole project wrapped up and bound for e-book land before Easter. But the best laid plans . . .

      Fortunately, I just had a surprise distraction amidst my (in)action, an office drop-in dragging in a whacky business idea. This has lent me an excuse to draft this blog note.

     The surprising (and loopy) proposal that she was pitching caught me off-guard. But it spurred me to give my visitor that absolutely withering, wordless, I don't think so gaze that has terrorized hordes -- for many years -- of staff members, employees, co-writers, teammates, trolls, and children. This is that look that my visitor csaptured. Do I seem pleased? No, I do not.

"No, I don't think so!  Just come back
with when you have a really good idea."

     Endurance. While I have been constructing this unmolded story I've been thinking about Tennyson's work -- and curiously about those folks who were badly injured in the recent bombings in Boston. Challenging it can be to stay on the right path -- especially when something like a bang and a flash hurls one suddenly right off of it. In particular, I've been studying again the poem "Ulysses" with it's emotional closing -- relating to an aging but idle Adventurer looking to 'leave it all behind' by launching anew into some great unknown, but probably fairly happy just to hang out quietly in his Grecian barcalounger, watching his worker-bee scepter bearing kid, Telemachus, do much of the unpleasant lifting on their weathered isle. It's a story told often before.

      But, now, I see it's time to go back to my immediate task. Endurance. Completion. On to the finish! No time to yield. (But wait, maybe I'll grab lunch first. Then pick a Kentucky Derby horse to bet on tomorrow. Look around for some lingering list of B-level priorities to address. It just may be that ItsMyLuckyDay.)  

Ulysses         --  Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-- Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd and wrought, and thought with me-- That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.                                                                                                                                                 Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

"12-12-12" Concert for Relief and Recovery

Take a Holiday from the Neighborhood

         Great show last night from Madison Square Garden in New York City. I watched on my new best friend on the local cable TV system, the Palladia channel. To the cable gods who put Palladia in our cable package, I am forever in your debt. The rest of you? Remind me what I used to do again before Palladia showed up among our local hi-def channels.

         Before it's a distant memory, I want to post what I consider to be the most moving (in the context of the entire concert) musical moment from last night, "121212." Before the broadcast got going, I was convinced that this would be a necessary part of the show's performance lineup. I was ready to put money on the thought in fact. -- And so it was. This is a performance by an aging artist who has never been a particular favorite of mine -- Billy Joel. He sang and played (piano, naturally) this tune in a most unforgettable way during the Concert for New York that happened right after 9-11-01 -- eleven years ago and counting, if you canbelieve that. Now this beautiful, New York sentimental ballad has become a legendary element of another peak moment in the pop music and philanthropy tradition via the breathtaking show on December 12, 2012 (Concert Relief "121212")

Billy Joel Performs "New York State of Mind"

     

         To all of you who out there, having experienced some of the most destructive and overpowering forces of nature imaginable when Sandy came ashore, and for those who now live in and with her life-altering aftermath, all of us Katrina and Rita co-journeyors (like me) walk with you and feel for you. Honestly, things do get better -- life circumstances and living arrangements and many people get re-connected -- and one day you wake up to a life (forever changed, yet still alive) that is a new normal. That day actually comes every day for me though I can't quite pinpoint when that all began. Hope that day comes soon for you, very soon. Here's the link to the B. Joel performance:

                 Video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFlsXgw_SFE

A new short story that you might like:  "Union Beach: When Sandy Met Jersey"

http://monsterworst.blogspot.com/2012/11/lives-unmoored-plans-blown-away.html

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Facebook: Narcissism, Solipsism, Hypochondria, and the Urge to Do Good

This piece appeared originally in the pages of the National Catholic Reporter newspaper, during November 2012. It is easy to read and it should make the reader think, in a good way.

Facebook:  A Conduit for Good?

It's easy to make fun of Facebook. It gobbles up time and takes us away from our work. It encourages us to post inane photos (I'm not immune to this temptation) -- for example, what's on our plate at Applebee's ("Mmm, baby back ribs!"). It invites people to boast of their accomplishments or popularity. ("Can't believe 10 people showed up for my book-launch party!") It fosters navel-gazing, solipsism and even hypochondria. ("Sore throat again.")

Worst of all, it takes us away from one-on-one contact with live human beings, and substitutes virtual relationships for lasting ones. That's the most damning critique of Facebook. Rather than post a "Happy Birthday" message on a person's wall (which I do almost every day -- though not for the same person), it's probably better to call them up. Five minutes of real time is better than an hour of Facebook time. The other night a friend noticed that I had just posted a comment on his page, and he called me.

"I figured you'd like to talk with me in person," he joked.

"Oh, I can't talk to you now," I joked back. "I'm too busy posting on your page!"

But like many other social media sites, and more broadly the Web itself, Facebook can also be a conduit of grace. Surprised? Of course not. You know that God can work through any medium, even ones that are supposedly tearing us apart. The easiest way to illustrate this is with a story.

A few months ago I noticed a Facebook page for "alumni" of the Ridge Park Elementary School, in Conshohocken, Pa., of which I myself am a proud alumnus. And the other day one of my childhood friends posted a handful of color photos that I had not only never before seen -- but that showed something that I had entirely forgotten.

Snapped on a field behind our school, clearly during recess, the photos show my friends and me in the process of building a human pyramid. The first snapshot depicts us readying the pyramid; the second the triumphant success; the third, our tumbling over one another as the pyramid collapsed. The photos were taken on what must have been a cool day in early fall or late spring, since some of us are wearing lightweight jackets, others are in short sleeves. I would guess that it was the fifth grade.

I can't describe how moving it was to see these photos. It was as if God were giving my soul a window into a day that I had long forgotten. I felt like a time traveler as I stared at those images, taking in all the details. With a start, I even remembered the pants I was wearing: blue-and-green striped bell-bottoms -- way cool in 1968!

What shocked me most was this: Each photo showed me with a huge smile on my face. What a blessing to be reminded of this moment that I had utterly forgotten.

God is with us all the days of our lives, blessing us with friends, touching us with warm and funny moments, accompanying us throughout our hours. But many of these moments are so fleeting, so evanescent and seemingly so unimportant that we don't remember them at all. I'll bet that on that day in the fifth grade, all we did after recess was talk about our pyramid: how we had always wanted to do it, how much fun it was and how we laughed when we all fell on top of one another. Maybe I remembered it for a few days. Then I forgot it. For 40 years.

That photo got me thinking about the other graced moments that we can forget. God is always looking out for us, in our struggles as we try to build something, in our triumph as we sit atop the pile, and in our failures as we collapse on ourselves. God is always aware of us. But we're not always aware of God. And sometimes, even if we are, we forget it immediately afterward.

So that photo was a surprise. Even more surprising, it came from a supposedly shallow social media site. God is at work at all times. And everywhere.

Even on Facebook.

[Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest, is a contributing editor at America magazine and is the author of many books, including Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life and The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life.]

Caylee & Casey: Another Rough Cut for Justice

         A horrible story grows more complex, depressing, and frightening. How can an official police 'investigator' overlook searches performed on a PC on the exact day of a mysterious, globally infamous, death at that address?

Google Search:  'Fool-Proof Suffocation Methods'

        
          November 25, 2012

         ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The Florida sheriff's office that investigated Caylee Anthony's death says it overlooked a computer search for suffocation made from the little girl's home on the day she was last seen alive.

        Orange County sheriff's Capt. Angelo Nieves said Sunday that the office's computer investigator missed a June 16, 2008, Google search for fool-proof suffocation methods. The oversight was first reported by Orlando television station WKMG. It's not known who performed the search. The station reported it was done on a browser primarily used by the 2-year-old's mother, Casey Anthony.

        The girl's body was found six months after she disappeared. Casey Anthony was acquitted of her daughter's murder in 2011. Her attorneys argued that the toddler accidentally drowned in the family pool and that Casey Anthony's father helped her cover it up.


         Video report:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/25/fool-proof-suffocation-methods_n_2188034.html

         USA Today, 11-26-12:  http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/
nation/2012/11/25/casey-anthony-suffocation-google/1725253/

Casey Anthony & Jose Baez, Her Attorney


 My Blog Post:  "Ballad of Caylee & Casey -- A Rough Cut for Justice"

     July 5, 2011 

 http://monsterworst.blogspot.com/2011/07/
passing-of-casey-and-caylee-rueful-tale.html

 

Union Beach: When Sandy Met Jersey

     
                   'God save thee, ancient Mariner!
                   From the fiends, that plague thee thus!
                   -- Why look'st thou so?'

                                      Samuel Coleridge, 1798
                              The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

              I know this development is unexpected. I intend to get right to the point, though that is 
not my standard m.o. -- I wish to announce that the Big Monster Blog is back in business.  The blockade has been disrupted. My blank slate is being writ large again. How and why exactly I do not know. But as with a nimble late show by a practiced prestidigitator in a crowded, smoky night club, I'm willing to just observe, flow with the tide, feel the mirth of irony, and not demand the insider's 411 about the unexpected goings-on.

Everything, my fiction, my new poem, even my modest little blog, went in a hush to ground almost two months ago faster than a leaky decommissioned sea vessel that suddenly lost its safe-to-cruise certificate.  Turns out it was not, and I was not, yet willing to go into the permanent decline of drydock. Certain things had transpired way too coincidentally, too conveniently, during late September, in the Year of our Lord 2012. What stifling effects such occurences had. Disbelieve that? Well just sample some of my meticulously DVR'ed footage a la Cantore grabbed during those windblown and messy days of late September off  The Weather Channel -- TWC episodes that recount the mighty clash of a mystifying tropical tempest named Isaac into subtropical Gulf states  (and how he resembled, like a magical reincarnation, his older and robust tropical sister, Katrina).

Why so much prolonged unmotion from me I ask myself.  The question prods and pokes my insides with sharp little fingers. In my head a slightly angry voice sings Set me free, don't you delay. In the primeval, coastal swamp as thick and dark as blackest India ink on the morning of September 29 (2012), a venging creation of Nature bloated and ready to burst,  named Isaac, stormed ashore with abandon onto the doomed and disappearing fertile delta of southern Louisiana. It was an  highwire act even for unbridled and furious, and much abused, Nature: because Isaac in biblical history was a son of Abraham but forever a Canaanite (so he hailed from a cursed land), and his name with a dastardly turn of the comically etymologic screw means He laughs. Not in any manner amusing, cursed Isaac blew onto the exact same geographical nexus of latitude and longitude, at almost the identical hour, on the same calendar date seven years after the contentious killer Katrina started ripping Gulf Coast lives and material goods apart -- like the shrieking giant vengeance, Godzilla, all fiery and focused, traipsing over vulnerable Japanese cityscapes in vintage black and white -- onto the oozing, sinking, perishing Southern delta and far beyond, causing some human beings and their treasured possession to forever disappear without the tiniest of we were here once  traces at an early hour of that gray, roiling day, September 29, 2005.

Great -- even not so great -- investigators will often say, In the real world, there are no true coincidences. While churning away at what I do best, hunched over my keyboard, on 28 September, I anxiously sought a climax to an original story that kept eluding my imagination.  In the backdrop, the never fatigued Weather Channel related without pause the fearsomely coincidental journey of Isaac toward modern Canaanite villages  (sorry, New Orleans and Biloxi) now marked by opulent coastal edifices, vanishing barrier islands and wetland ecologies, gambling casinos, spawning residents, the homes and shops of thousands, and massive cell towers. Issac was rolling up to strike on coastal Louisiana in darkness. Coincidence? Sometime on September 29, which was Katrina Day + exactly 7 years, a biblical number indicating completion, my modest gift of imaginative abruptly receded, washed out to sea, and left me alone. Like a large, do as I please tide that  pulled away from the sandy shore, my energy to create went to hide somewhere over a hazy, curved horizon and out into the hidden and uncharted reaches of the ocean. Did you read, as I did, that one of the first businesses that took the full brunt of Isaac's landfall fury was a bar and seafood grill near a flooding little fishing bayou in Buras?  Since rebuilding after Katrina, the proprietors had  called it The Comeback Inn.

So it went. Some casually might label this experience writer’s block. But once you 've met talked at any knowing length with one's very own PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) it's pretty easy to see when she’s come back, a haughty gymnast in the mind , to your cortical neighborhood. Every time I looked at a certain picture of furious destruction, with the collapsed Buras water tower in its center, the demolished inn crunched down next door, I had to look away.

I would say to myself upon waking restlessly, 'Hello, stress. You jerk, lingering sneaky ass. I see you have crawled over my way again.'

But now I am creating again. In honesty, I give credit to the freakish appearance of what has been named in the mainstream media Superstorm Sandy. Once Isaac was done but still a sour memory, the Western world endured another ferocious blow who rolled up the eastern United States coast above a way too warmed-over Atlantic. She was named Sandy. As she barreled northward, she performed a freakish and hard left turn, to the west, nearly an impossible gymnastic manuever abetted by a thundering Pennsylvania low front. Sandy plucked up her surging waves, searched through her tropical banks for a vulnerable east coast, and grabbed for Jersey. Perilous weeks have passed; once again bedraggled Americans are tested severely by the frosting-over clime, oddly close to the where Washington and his charges clung tenuously to life and limb in the numbing winter's retreat of Valley Forge, scrabbling for sustenance and fending off insanity, each sunrise and sunset, unprotected from Nature's weather season that can kill. (Perhaps you recall a pungent Blue Ribbon margarine commercial from years ago that featured the sardonic punch line, ‘But it’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.’)

Instead of Katrina's crushing legacy of  breathtaking, 24/7 humidity and torrid temperatures across late Summer Gulf lands, with people marooned outside (no inn to repair to) fried slowly and mercilessly by searing sunlight each day,  the brigade of Sandy residents in eastern states, like New York and New Jersey, are accosted by frigid winds, sleet and snow showers, and subsist in their detritus strewn yards, on cracked icy driveways, huddled together, stamping and clapping extremities to keep warm, powerless in the electrical sense, gasoline-fueled generators grinding away loudly.  2005 and 2012: so much alike and yet so different.  When one looks at pictures from those scenes, like I do, Louisiana  and New Jersey are forever united and demand one's response.

As the November general election arrived, a driving snowstorm, a new turmoil and frozen tempest, followed briskly over the track left by the Superstorm.  It materialized from the heavens but one week after Sandy's devil may care and freakish tropical blasts -- which huffed and puffed away so many hopes and dreams.

There is an old bible-style maxim – 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.' there are no coincidences. As a consequence of what humans have wrought with what is called climate change, it feels often like we have slipped and slid into a modern Canaan.

Turns out the story I had in mind was a tough nut. Actually, it was made up of three fragmentary ideas, or so I just realized a day ago. Three is another biblical number that represents completion or fullnesslike the trinity. The common theme in the trio of storylines was the raw, awful reality of  inexplicable, untraceable  disappearance of people. Twisted truth, yet somewhat amusing. And by the way, there is no such thing in official meteorlogical terms as a Superstorm. It's an interesting media fiction. But the weather genus does not exist.

A few well-meaning friends counsel me to title my unfulfilled story “Lives Unmoored, Or When Jersey Met Sandy.” But before  I get there I have a temptation to write a fictitious letter called “Dear Stephan.” Or maybe I will choose to entangle my fictitious Stephan amidst the disappearance story. Stephan is a guy who shared ( . . . had) a nice house and yard with his family in a coastal area of New Jersey.  I do notg know him personally, yet I sense that I do. Sandy, a raging tropical storm hit, all hard, very hard. My own experiences with storms past help me empathize with his plight. Stephan e-mailed a polite response yesterday, using a charged laptop on his jittering knees, on a cloudy cold New Jersey bad dream kind of day, tingling hands chilly, perhaps in gloves, knit cap hugging the crown of his head, as he perched on an overturned wooden fruit case on his driveway littered with some crusty, salvaged belongings and damp keepsakes. (Imaginatively, he had borrowed a jolt of electrical juice for his little Dell in the middle of the sleepless night before in the one townhouse two blocks down that miraculously had a working power socket on its second floor.) The e-mail went to an office with which I have had inside dealings. Someone who works there told me Steve had been sent an electronic notice that his subscription to the organization had lapsed, so would he please send a check to get things back to normal and he could get a quarterly newsletter safely? Free market capitalism thus ebbs and flows in rhythm like the steady tides, no matter what. Steve replied like a gentleman whom you would never know was encamped on a little patch of his snowy driveway in crisis. He noted politely by return e-message that he is from the New Jersey shore, that his family’s home and everything had been vanquished by Hurricane Sandy, then the flood waters that cascaded in, and of course there was all that snow that made its coincidental appearance, a gift from our used and abused climate. So, Steve indicated with a nice economy of words that he wasn’t going to be making that payment anytime soon, so very sorry.

Now, simply put, that’s funny too, a sobering echo of what violence powerful Nature wreaks on unwitting and unsuspecting targets, and the fallouts that ensue. The surprised office manager who had e-mailed Steve ruminated a bit on the tragic outcomes of Sandy and her superstorm forebears. Then graciously the office manager awarded Stephan a one-year’s free renewal subscription. This just adds to the improbable witty climax to this slice of life amidst the changing wilds of Western civ.

Thankfully, the subscription will be for a computer-based publication, not a hardcopy printed page periodical. Steve will now have a chance to enjoy all of that heady professional reading on a quarterly basis after all. Meanwhile he will anxiously cling to his storm-tossed family members and his waterlogged little collection of belongings heaped in front of the gaping maw that once held his elaborate garage door.  Later, Stephan will also be eligible to attend an annual Spring conference, at a discounted  fee, for a rollicking blowout out West. The myth of Manifest Destiny pushes forward. That’s if Stephan and his family members survive, of course, and if they ever find two dimes somewhere to rub together again.  By God’s grace Stephan still possesses a working but weary little pc.

The Ancient Mariner

He has not yet replied to the e-gift of the one-year complimentary renewal. But his tidy and correct suburbanite’s mailbox -- once adorned decoratively with his former five-digit street number -- got snapped off in Sandy's swirling storm surge then literally flown across state lines, like a jagged-toothed play shark boomed from a circus cannon under a cloak of pre-dawn darkness, to a place uncharted, by  some of the headiest gusts of change ever registered on the eastern U.S. shore. Better not to rely on yesterday's snail mail after all? Don’t you think? . . . . –

Now that, that is kind of funny.

(I hope that you will check back soon for the blog entry “Dear Steve” letter. It will require a spiritual mindset and it will drip with drama and empathy. Promise.)

A Man Named Isaac @ the Door

     
There's a deja vu-dripping party cranking up in the boot tip of Louisiana.

"Hey there, Buras LA. My name is Isaac. Katrina told me all about you. She's not coming back. But the mischievous girl has sent me to play. Game on!"

(Buras LA is grimly known as the location where, on August 29, 2005, the eye of the Hurricane named Katrina made first landfall in Louisiana. The loss of surrounding marsh lands to erosion and subsidence allowed Hurricane Katrina's storm surge to undermine the New Orleans area levee system and the overall area was devastated.)

Wonder if Mr. Isaac will prove to be a kinder, less ravaging, and more polite guest than her Russian highness, Katrina, was. He's knocking at the door now!

Katrina Crashed into Buras LA in the Dark on August 29, 2005

Storm Tracking for Hurricane Isaac on Tuesday, August 28 (2012)

Back in December 2010, while I was working for a few days in New Orleans, I wrote an early Monster Blog entry. It was titled "New Orleans Journal: Lessons Learned in the Third World."

Today, I have updated it here (weblink below). I would like it very much if you took a few minutes with it, then let me know what you think.  May everyone in the stormy upswing of Isaac be held safe.

http://monsterworst.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-orleans-journal-lessons-learned-in.html

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On Criticism -- Well, Thanks for the Feedback?

"If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is really thinking"

     As I stepped off the stage of my most recent performance (I just killed it, to be honest but not very modest), I felt pretty good. Among a variety of new wrinkles, I had experimented with an old story with a new cadence to my words, with a much slower delivery than usual, and a couple of different inflection points. And I worked in a pair of new facial expressions when I delivered the snappers. Bazinga, as Sheldon Cooper often says. Not that all my material is that aged and creaky. But I have  been working this one bit for a long, long time. As with any good story, particularly a really funny one, it has staying and human interest power and it is a rich mine that begs to be dug deeper.

     Visions of a big payday pirouetted in my mind. I was smiling. But my de facto stage manager gave me the "Duh" face. Which is always an occasion for serious concern. Well, 'sup bro? I thought that went pretty well, pretty funny, I ventured hesitantly, But okay what's the deal, what went wrong?

     I suddenly remembered the officious music composer Tony Salieri's strongly negative and dour response at the German court to a brilliant live performance (in the film Amadeus) just played by Mozart. But what could be the problem?, the genius asks the poser. Salieri hems, haws, then says: 'Umm, let's see. Ahhh, too many notes!' 

Such was the off-key feedback.

Antonio Salieri

     What I was succinctly told was that while I came off pretty good overall my delivery had been too slow. With this person I usually choose not to get into a battle of wits because, all things considered, I typically come off like an unarmed competitor. Just to underscore my point though let me say that I disagreed with the feed loop and said so. But not with much conviction and energy. After a couple of hours, I concurred with the criticism even more. Of course, I had consciously planned to experiment with a slowed-down delivery during certain elements of my laugh a minute snapperfest. But no doubt I could step it up and likely will do that the next time around. If there is a next time, as the old saying goes. 

     Just to make my salient point more obvious, I admit that when it comes to giving and receiving constructive critical feedback, I am way, way better at giving than getting -- at no charge, naturally, mostly when nobody is asking for anything from me. Geez, since it's confession time, I'll say that I'm am chock full of opinions. I am tempted to say it's because everybody's a critic. But that's probably not true. Nevertheless, as some say about critics and others, I only play one on TV.

     I suppose the main emphasis I want to get across is that I have come to believe that in a lot of cases, when others gripe, or complain, or come off like critics from left field, or get plain old snarky, I may have hit on something good. (Well, alright, it could be that the critics have a good insight now and then.) Workplace situations have taught me a few things over and over. Most groups of people, like co-workers on a staff, tend to go along to get along. Not rock the boat. Birds of a feather, they flock together. In the sharp words of someone far wiser than I'll ever be, this can be summed: so, if everybody is thinking alike, then nobody's really thinking. 

     What I need to do is take life more as it comes I suppose. That would involve backing off a little in my innermost thoughts (which never turn off) and moderating certain knee-jerk reactions -- such as thinking more deeply and appreciatively about what certain people have to say, or about how they do it, or what their contributions add up to. Despite the fact that I have never subscribed to this theory, this would entail clamming up more, listening a whole lot better, and seeking first to understand before trying to be understood, as Stephen Covey said.

     That's it. I need a whole new viewpoint on giving and getting feedback. My presence and interactions should become more effacing. So, for now, since I cannot easily tell that zinger-packed, old story from earlier today, let me try to sign out on a different note -- using some newly pilfered material from the late, great Phyllis Diller. ('Cause she won't complain.)

     "I am a bad driver. I am such a bad driver!" 

     From the audience members:  How bad are you?

     "I had a terrr-ible, horrr-able accident driving the other day. I had to make a quick call to 911. Fortunately my car was jammed into a phone booth at the time."

     And: "My bad driving has led to important information. Like never and I mean nev-ver run into the lead car of a funeral procession. Man, I have never ever seen a group of people in such a BAD bad mood . . .  (pause for the laugh) . . . And, then, when that stiff rolled out of the hearse . . "

     Can't you just see her grasping her standard cigarette-holder prop (she never smoked in fact) and hear her laugh now? She'd throw her head back and go ah-ha-ha-ha-Hah! The thing is once she got rolling on stage in Vegas, then TV and movies, all kinds of people told PD over and over what would work, what wouldn't, what she needed to do better, and that stand up comedy was a male's game but not for middle-aged females. But Lady Diller stuck to her instincts. Like, the more contemporary Lady Gaga, PD laughed all the way to the bank.

Phyllis Diller

     But seriously folks, that reminds me. People seem to love it when I get to the drunk ol' me jokes. Thank goodness for the gift of sobriety. My de facto's  unbidden and current feedback is to cool it on these drinker's gag lines. Nope. Not ready yet. One yuk that I shamelessly swiped from Phyllis herself is this. (Well, okay, on second thought, maybe I'll cool some of it some day, bro.):

     You know, I was a bad drunk. A really bad bad drunk.

     Cue the audience: How bad were you?

     Well I was prit-teee dang bad. But I only got drunk once. Unfortunately for me it was from October of 1987 . . . until September of 1999. (Pause for the slight pops of laughter.) Now for the big snapper: 'I was soooo bad a drunk that one day I cut my neck while shaving . . . and my eyes cleared up! Then my son's dog killed a bird and dragged its carcass into his house. My son sent me a picture on his phone. He said the bird looked better than I did! . . . A friend the other day started calling me Sasquatch. When I asked why, she pointed to my drink and then said 'Cause you're big, your brown and your hairy and nobody ever sees you anymore! . . . But seriously, friends, after drinking all day I once stumbled into a Pet Smart store by accident. The people in there tried to rescue me!

     Now that's humor, no matter what your opinion tells you. Build a premise, then slowly unfold some zingers that relate to it. Cap the process off. -- Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba-Bam. Be sure to get the comic pacing right. Take your time, deliver the lines with proper rhythms. Some people are gonna eat it up, while some -- like Salieri -- aren't gonna like it much. Check the nonverbals out there. They'll probably get their feeback and sour reactions over to you in some quick way. Reminder: don't forget to collect your $$ check as you leave. You have probably earned it all and more.

     But now it's your turn. Surely you have something to say back to me. As Shakespeare once noted, all the world's a stage and we are simply players. Play on. Ball's in your lap.

Thanks for being here, folks. You've been a great, great

audience! Tell your friends I'll be here all week. Don't forget

to tip your waiters. Now drive home safely. Goodnight!

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It's Seniors' Day -- Let's Go Krogering!

 

 

     

A box of Slim Jims
A cellophane bag of fresh salad mix
Some kind of ready-to-eat corn stuff in a plastic cook bag and
An old school squeeze can, bright red and yellow, of Red Devil lighter fluid

Instantly I knew this was a girl that I really had to meet.’
 

         

A box of Slim Jim,

          A cellophane bag of fresh salad mix

          Some kind of corn stuff in a plastic cook bag and

          A squeeze can of Red Devil lighter fluid

          Instantly I thought ‘This is a girl that I really need to meet.’

 

 

 

 



                  “It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in

                  the giving, but like morning light it scattered

                  the night and made that day worth living.” 

                                                -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

      I sit here attempting to relax and to catch my breath for a while. I should be getting back to my 'thrill a minute' weekend straight away by paying attention to my (thankfully shrinking) to-do list. But first let's conduct a concise review of this day's accomplishments and modest adventures. For instance, it's just past 12 noon on Saturday, and already my frig and my larder (now there's a fine but largely forgotten term) are well-stocked. You see, I just went Kroger-ing -- as the peppy TV commercials say. In New Orleans the locals all call it "making groceries." My crispy, fresh dry-cleaned clothes for the coming work week have been collected too. They properly hang put away on wire hangers under plastic overwraps that remind me of translucent plastic ghosts in my quirky 'man room' closet. Each time I stick my nose in there, especially on those dark and early-mornings of workdays, standing there vulnerably in my underwear and socks, I expect to hear some disembodied, practical joking voice of the Incubus manically shout 'Boo.' Most importantly, I now have at hand the requisite daylong supply of large plastic cups holding iced green tea from Starbucks -- treinte size for me, a he-man's 30 ounce beverage, none of that awful poisonous dextrose syrup please, but with four Equals in each cup. Si vous plais! This comforting supply of icy green tea functions, I suppose, like another author's cigars, Mark Twain's let's say, that smoke up the room zestfully and function as a habitual writer's metaphoric Muse to prod one into the creative imagineering process.

Okay, everybody, let's go Krogering!

     Having just sucked up a big sip of tea through my two green straws, I feel I now have something to rehash. About today's Krogering foray, that is. As surely as a faithful, dedicated Jesuit under vows would undertake a rigorous and religious examen of his misgivings, his misdeeds, plus his good thoughts actions of the day, as night shadows creep about, I will do this. Relax, I tell myself. This should not take very long and should not cost much. And the punchline as it were at the end of my grocery shopping adventure in my opinion will possess a worthy lesson for you and me about getting it together to live virtuously in our hungry America.

      Selection of the Kroger shopping cart to begin one's in-grocery adventure may seem mundane to its core. But I prefer to treat it as a crucial step in a successful food and drink acquisition process. I do not ever walk into a grocery store, if I can help it, empty-handed. I clutch a Starbucks iced tea or a grande cup of bold, smoky hot coffee in one hand. With the other hand I push a cart I've just wrangled from a lingering metal herd, like an out of shape cowpoke just arrived from the great American prairies, way out there in the store's danger-ridden parking lot. The Kroger people (as well as some of the Publix, Safeway, and Ralph's managers across the country) stock two basic models of shopping carts -- one is a standard, high sided and deep-bodied item on wheels (with no drink-cup holder, very bad!) and the other which is a truncated little contraption. It possesses a smallish holding basket for groceries, etc., on the top -- with a hole in the push bar convenient to insert your walkaround beverage, most excellent! -- and below is a flat rack that will also accommodate some miscellaneous items intended for purchase like a humongous bag of nutritious Science Diet dog food for aging Fido or a family sized gigantic tray of sale-priced, slightly graying beef steaks that will surely take to clogging up someone's heart arteries at supper in just a few hours or so.

Yes, this bad mommy was recently charged with 
slipping NyQuil into her kids' juice boxes on Aisle 3

Who says the bigger one is always better?

      To me the essential steps of shopping cart selection and procurement are critical. It's the smaller model of basket for me just about every time. I just prefer the way this compact machine 'helps' me shop judiciously, not frivolously. Frankly, it won't accommodate that many food and paper goods overall. It does accommodate well the large gallon-sized bleach, water jugs, and detergent containers on the lower rack. Those whopper big old grocery carts at Kroger and other megastores tempt the unpracticed poor food shopper, and the weak-willed but cagey veteran adventurers (like me), to overdo it every time ('You really don't need that double pack of Coke Jolt on sale and that 20 pound sack of frozen catfish nuggets, do you, dear?'). The compact roller carts make drinking my tea or coffee beverage easier to accomplish as well, while watching heated and disastrous cart collisions and mad dashes down irrelevant aisles mark the progress of the weekend's Krogering Games. Humbly I thank the Creator for them, and the Kroger's management of course. The whole world will be watching, as the movie "Hunger Games" tag line would say.

      What's the big deal? Well, someone is bound to ask the meaning of this question. Surely, as it's posed, a lonely mocking jay sounds its hollow call, decrying the materialistic and hungry horizon we all seek, just above the big DAIRY sign high up on the Kroger back wall.

**********   **********    **********

      So I'll make an effort to engage you with another question. Is 11:00 A.M. an unreasonable time to begin a cart walk, like a low skilled weekend golfer with his golf bag, through a local Kroger's superstore on Saturday? Well, it helps one to beat to the punch the frenetic thrum of the customer tsunami that will later thrash into the front doors of the K-Store like a smothering wave of churning water rolling in from watery serfdoms unseen. This assault is usually filled with chunky gamers with mullets who sport over-stuffed tight tee shirts, women with ridiculous shorts and sandals sets, young boys with hip-hop jeans dangling precariously on their butts, dazed and aisle-clogging little 'family' aggregations doing this grocery trip together (for some indiscernible reason), a few actually (usually pushing alone) attractive shoppers with handbaskets or push carts filling nicely, screaming children who want now their cereal Trix (which are for kids not silly rabbits), the occasional growling service animal with some older man ticking the floor with a cane, obese or emphysemic riders who can't breathe or walk unaided puffing away slowly on NASCAR-like, cantankerous little scooters that the Kroger folks supply, an out of place couple dressed to kill just stopping by rushed to get a bottle of overpriced wine and a cheese tray for some glittery Saturday reception, and of course other samples of food-dependent detritus that wash ashore in the Kroger zone just before Saturday supper.

      Today I went walking the aisles of my store. I had picked up many more items than I had originally planned to squirrel away in my oversize cart. I was stuck with one of those bigger models because unbelievably all of the smaller models were somehow missing from the store and not lurking unused in the crowded parking lot.

      Grudgingly, "It happens I suppose," I mumbled to myself as I rolled into the fresh greens and produce section of the store.  "Harshes my Saturday cool but not every day can be a total plus."

       I picked up and bagged a few once-living lumps like onions, basil leaves, and some bunches of dark lettuce and bok choy, then I made my way further through the maze of long aisles. I grabbed some actually needed (Ragu pasta sauce and a box of whole-wheat penne) and some impulse items (a big bag of the Keebler elves' finest gourmet cookies) until I got to around Aisle number 7 -- the row for Soft Drinks, Candy, Gum, Waters, Beers, Wine Coolers, Ice. It was there that I initially noticed a nice looking blonde girl dressed in soft and casual Nike sportswear with blindingly bright neon green New Balance shoes, which I wouldn't exactly call a clever fashion ensemble.

      She was pushing her big basket toward me. Actually, and oddly, this girl resembled closely the young actress, Jennifer something, who played the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, in the big hit film "The Hunger Games." I nonchalantly pegged her to be about 27 or 28 years old, an aspiring attorney laboring long but billable hours very low-profile at a so-so greedy law firm somewhere in the vicinity. No, she did not carry a bow and arrows. I like to bedevil some folks by seeking eye contact with them when I can in situations like the grocery store -- if my mood is good and if I am feeling up to it. Their reactions often delight my heart -- from little smiles to shunning lookaways to clipped How-are-ya's to other assorted responses and non-responses. Fun. Well, practice random acts of kindness the poster on the wall says. Another one counsels sagely Keep them guessing about what you are really up to!

     What had caught my eye about this blonde girl, besides her glowing Katniss in sportswear thing, was the fact that she was diligently piling items -- just like me -- into the little section of her grocery cart in which theoretical kidlets are supposed to squeeze like little prisoners of war planted in a steel-bar island while mom or dad buy the food stuffs that the tiny captives, um children, generally detest. I noticed that Katniss looked away when I sought a mild bit of eye contact and a hint of a smile. No problem.  I was already poised to move on. She pretended quickly to get very busy tapping a text message -- Save me from this geezer -- on a handsome black, silver, and shiny Epic Smartphone. I shrugged and pushed on.

    By the time of my walk up Aisle 11, I was flagging badly and needed a rest. Surrounded by freezer cases, I hunted for a frosty cake to take home. Then she appeared again up the aisle. I rounded into Aisle 12 -- Ice Cream, Novelties and other sugary stuff in a freezer with a row of glass doors. On the other side of the floor were Cheeses, Yogurt, Biscuits, and a few random categories laid out in a way that ran to the back wall, which was labeled high over head in huge letters DAIRY. Okay, I said to myself. 'Gotta get busy and get outta this place.'

     I barely noticed as the blonde attorney came ambling  slowly up Aisle 12. She seemed at the moment to be thinking over what choice to make next. I did not register that she parked near the shredded cheese displays then wandered off. I had left my cart near the cheeses bin too. I busily waked  (I'd now say rushed) about while grabbing some on-sale ice cream (Cherry Cordial No Sugar Added), some Hershey chocolate syrup in a squeeze bottle, a box of frozen Welch's fruit bars, slices of Kraft's sharp white cheddar in a sealed bag, and a big slab of reduced fat Philadelphia Cream Cheese but no cake. Soon my hands were crammed. I rounded back to my cart, dumped the delectable selections into it while not eyeing anything much but the nearby Bakeryland, which would be my path toward a hopefully quick escape from this Krogering business for the day. I got the heavy cart's wheels rolling again.

     But not very far.

     "Excuse me, sir. Sir?," some female said behind me as I was fumbling to adjust my earbuds so I could listen to iPod tunes. "Sir, I think . . ."

     I turned and saw that it was Katniss herself. She had stolen up near me like a silent stalker. "What's it? Oh," I spoke a little strangely.

     "I think you've, you've got my shopping cart there," she said with puzzlement.

     I looked closely. Geez, I did have her cart, her collection of groceries, my most recent acquisitions placed in it. It was all intermingled now. I felt confused by this upsetting observation. "Wow. I, I, I -- I've never pulled anything like this before. Really. Believe me." Momentarily, because she was a lawyer, I seriously wondered what the legal penalties might be for purloining someone's basket while shopping.

     "Well, no problem," Katniss smiled shyly. I smiled sheepishly.

    "Mine -- my cart -- was here too," I explained. Looking around, I scanned down the aisle and surmised that it was no longer in sight. "But . . . . now . . . it's gone. Who would take my cart? My stuff. I'm not that interesting. Really."

    Katniss and few other listeners smiled lightly. She shook her head yes.

    "Well. Thanks, so. I gotta go look for it" I said summarily. I wanted to just walk away and hide somewhere near the SEAFOOD counter. I was going to hunt down my shopping cart and the idle-minded thief or thieves who had stolen it. I figured the darn thing was big enough that I surely should spot it swiftly.

    "You know people just up and go 'n walk off with stuff -- just like that," a helpful citizen with a family sized box of Velveeta in her hands chimed in. "They'll probably go 'n figure out what they done 'n just leave it be it somewheres around here."

    "Yeah, guess so," I said. I began again to push and walk once more.

    "Sir! Sir?,"

    "Yes? What is it?," I asked absentmindedly.

    "My cart. My cart. I need it. You've still got it. That's my cart you have there." Katniss pointed as if I were incapable of grasping her plain English.

    "Oh yeah," I sighed dumbly. My hands rose briskly off her push bar. I worried that I was much more discombobulated deep down than I believed myself to be.

    She grabbed at her cart. Her movement displayed that she was anxious to regain control of it. As she did, I admired some of Katniss' sensible but run of the mill purchases. Lots of raw and nutritious kinds of food. Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice brand boxes. Nothing dangerous or whimsical in that basket. Clearly, she was not, this budding young lawyer, a spendthrift, nor a big drinker, nor some Food Channel gourmet kitchen pretender. Iron Chef himself would be enthralled, I thought. Then I wondered out of the blue what Katniss would say about alcohol and marijuana use.

     "Thank you. Yeah, well, I'm sure that this happens a lot. They all, the shopping baskets, kind of seem alike here if you don't look real hard," she added genially.

    "Not if you get one of those great little carts they have here with the square top basket and the bottom rack for stuff like Science Diet dog food," I blurted with a little too much energy. This sounded really weird, off-kilter, maniacal.

    Katniss held out her left arm as she said, "Hmmm. Well. I guess that's right." In her hand she loosely held the shiny black Smartphone.

    "Well, thanks for the heads-up. I gotta go run mine down. So, are you trying to offer me your way cool Smartphone too?," I joked.

    She laughed at that. Several other shoppers were watching. They looked mystified by the entire incident. I said, "Well, bye. Sorry."

     "Sir? Sir? These would be yours. Don't you want your items? Here," She pointed down to the cheese slices, juice bars, and other things that I had dumped into her cart's child-ready little bin.

     I know I turned red at that point. "Sure," I whispered. "Good idea." Thank you, Katniss -- and I'm outta here is what I thought to myself. Various onlookers rolled on to take care of their grocery chores.

      ********    *******     ********

Hand over my shopping cart, mister, or I'm going to have to hurt you!

      After five minutes of edgy searching I was discouraged. The poor burdened basket which I had scooted through the store for over an hour remained invisible. As far as I knew it was a steel fugitive with wheels on the run. Wildly, I pictured my cart rolling all by itself out of the Kroger's door nervously, fearing that it might set off an alarm bell and be yanked back inside Kroger's for a tough examination by the police. I began to resent the rented security guards and the store manager types who seemed to be just standing around stupidly while an emergency cartnapping was played out right in front of them. These carts should be given customer name plates!, I considered wildly for a moment. Then I began to blame angrily a nameless, faceless octogenarian couple doddering along, you know, "krogering" away somewhere on the Spices, Sugar, Sweeteners Syrup aisle oblivious to the fact that they had nabbed successfully my big basket. I do not want to repeat this whole go-round, I moaned.

      Once I had inspected Aisles 11, 10, and 9 closely all the way back to the DAIRY area I had discovered only several stray shoppers moving languidly and more of those store managers with other low-rung employees chatting aimlessly while avoiding the public. Okay, that was it. I started to book my way rapidly across the store up by the check-out lanes. My sensible but leaky box of ice cream, drippy juice bars, and other Aisle 12 selections were still in my grasp. Clearly I was frustrated and more than ready to engage in a heated altercation any second.

      A big, floor to ceiling steel pole stood in the middle of the old Kroger building. Near it was the wide entryway to grocery's stupid Self-Checkout computers. Maybe my cart is there, I thought. But it was not of course.

     I spied two women leaning against the mighty metal pole. One was clearly an African-American. Her nametag identified her as Melda Crumb. The other appeared to be a Latina christened Lupe Loew. Each was wearing a bright red vest denoting that they were Kroger floor overseers poised to assist whoever needed Krogering assistance.

     Melda squinted at me skeptically over her reading glasses. She looked to be strong enough to mix it up with anybody, even handle a heavy boxer's punch. In me, I guessed, she was now beholding a long stretch of bad road, Mr. Troubletime, wedging into her space. Lupe just stared my way impassively.

     "Yes?" Melda with a skeptical, don't tread on me tone asked. She eyed suspiciously the cold perishables that I was embracing.

     "Well, huh-ha, I mean, ha ha, you may not generally hear this kind of thing. But . . . Or you may think that I've become unhinged. But look I can't find my cart with my stuff anywhere."

     "Did you look at where you left it?" Melda asked matter of factly. Lupe looked concerned.

     "Uh. Yeah I did. Aisle 12. It was gone. Up in smoke. Right by the cheeses and yogurt and stuff. You know?" I pleaded my case.

    "Did you look around any more? Did you see anybody with it?," Melba wanted to know. Lupe said yeah.

     "Yeah. I did all that. I looked hard in several places. Look, I don't want y'all to think I'm going crazy or anything but I don't quite know what to do."

     "Somebody just took it. They'll ditch it. Just ditch it. We find 'em all over here all the time," Melda said like the lead, investigative detective assigned to my case."

     "Really? Just like that?," I asked incredulously.

     "Look, don't be worried. You just go get you 'nother cart. Those things belong to you?," she nodded her head toward my full hands.

    

     "Yep. But they're fading on me."

     "I know it's a pain. But you go on and start over. Go on and get going. I'll look for your things. If you see your basket you find me right off. If I find it I'll find you once it shows up. Okay?," Melda assured me.

     "I'll be over here," I said unhelpfully as I pointed toward the distant FRESH FRUITS & VEGETABLES sign high on the wall.

    "Don't you worry none. Somebody'll look down, see what they done, and they'll figure it all out," Melda noted. Then she walked away.

*******    ********    ******

     In a matter of moments, I commandeered an empty cart (sadly, the larger model again)for my ridiculous re-shopping excursion.

     My first replacement acquisitions were a bag of jasmine rice, a box of basmati, and the Ragu sauce and supply of dry pasta that I had chosen earlier.  Then I walked, still rather mad, over to the fragrant valley of FRESH FRUITS.

     Once there I snapped with a little too much heat and vigor three plastic bags off the waist-high, circular bag dispenser near some wooden apple carts. Take it easy, I cautioned myself silently, the whole world will be watching. A big woman with a little black-haired girl assessed how much danger they might suddenly have fallen into -- me being all postal and worked up so close to them. I sensed the woman was also checking me up and down for concealed weaponry. These three bags would hold my replacement onions, a pair of green bell peppers, and one shined up red one. At that moment, my mind briefly replayed a childhood Krogering memory. I was about 11 or 12 years old. I had by special request fetched via a bike ride some less than stellar Granny Smith apples from our local store. My mom seemed disappointed in the condition of the fruit, not in me.

    'I know,' she perked up. 'We should forget about these. We should drive out to pick fresh apples, peaches, even some corn from the fields. How about it? We could stock up nicely.' In my short life I had never considered such treachery. I was not sure what to say first. In my budding moralist's book, stealing from the fields of diligent farmers was wrong. 'Why'd we do that? My teacher says the farmers have it bad,' I noted. 'Are we now poor or something?' Mom gave me her 'you are really a cluless piece of work' stare and sighed loudly.

     As I walked over to snag a second bunch of basil leaves, I noticed the deep green vegetables arrayed together on the open dripping shelves. The cilantro packs seemed particularly fragrant. I saw a woman about 40 or 45 checking out Napa cabbages with an apparently trained eye. Again, just to lift my mood with (hopefully) humorous nonsense, I motioned to her to extract her white earphones, which were decorated little round buds with silver skulls and crossbones (soooo ladylike!), out of her ears.

     "What's the problem, sir?," she inquired seriously.

     Wow, sir again, I huffed to myself. "I was just wondering . . . here," I pointed to the vegetables. "What do you think was green, could really sing the blues, and could dance up a storm?," I said with a straight face.

     "I dunno. Really. What?" She rolled her eyes ever so slightly.

     "Okay. Okay. Give up? Give up? -- Elvis Parsley," I said gleefully.

     "Oh," she said with a thin smile of exasperation. Then the lady shopper issued a slight groan then began to quickly stuff the buds with the crossbones in her ears.

     "Whatcha listening to?" I asked off-handedly. The light echo from the earphones hinted at a Whitney Houston or Christina Aguilera lineup of MP3 files.

     "Parsley's greatest, dude," the shopper retorted. Her eyes sparkled with a gamer's feistiness.

     "Ha. That's funny," I said. She fully inserted the earbuds. The gambit and games were over.

     Once that was done I stepped it up by doubling back to the Aisle 4 placard that said  LATIN AMERICAN, MEXICAN, ASIAN, INDIAN, INTERNATIONAL FOODS, SALSA. Ah, a crossroads for the peoples of the world I thought. But the aisle was deserted. I snagged a replacement General Wong's Spicy Sesame Stir-Fry elixir and a container of dark brown Mandarin Sauce that is produced by Panda Express.

     Then my life changed forever.

     On the overhead announcement system I heard loudly "Good afternoon. Will the customer who was missing his shopping cart please come over to the Bakeryland department? We have found what you were looking for."

      With a hint of embarrassment I looked around furtively. Thankfully I was alone in Aisle 4. I listened for derisive laughter to echo about the crowded store.

      Then louder, more forcefully and clearly, I heard "Attention. Atten-tion. I repeat, Kroger shoppers, will the Kroger valued customer who lost his shopping cart please come to the Bakeryland area? We have a special surprise for you. We have located your runaway."

      "Geez, announce it to the whole wide world why don't you," I was cowed.

      Once again I tried to rush across the front of the store with my wiggly basket wheels incognito. I worried that everyone now got it that I was The Loser who had lost his shopping basket. I picked up speed just south of the formidable Saturday checkout lines. True progress though proved to be difficult. Individuals with overflowing carts slowed me down by veering left or right suddenly. Two little kids in a kiddie cart hooked onto the front of their dad's big basket came at me from the left like an Indy car. I stopped hard as if at a Stop sign out on the mean streets of the city. One little child was chewing gum and stared at me. The other, looking dosed by a heavy hit of Ritalin, raised his left hand to flip me off. Beautiful, charming, I murmured. I looked at the dad. I noticed that he suffered from bigger problems than an irreverent child or two. At that, an old woman with clipped white hair who was leaning over like a dangling corpse into her wide basket creeped in front of me. I imagined her recently steering out of her rural doublewide at the Trailer compound in a rusty Ford pick-up. At Kroger's door she abandoned the truck unlocked in the red No Parking zone. The back of the woman's faded tee shirt held a picture of a fragile human fetus. Below it was the caption "Pretend that I'm a tree. Protect my life. God bless the unborn!" Granny inched forward like an aged snail with a Valium issue.

     Like a road raged driver, I began to consider ways to slice around the old white hair. I had begun to panic. If I did not rush over to Bakeryville, or BakeryTown, or Baskerville, or whatever it was called, my shopping cart might be ruled ineligible then emptied by leering minimum wage clerks. I would have to play the game all over. I was feeling exhausted. I would not slink back to FRESH FRUITS to get another loathesome grocery trip moving.

     My aide de camp with the red vest, Kroger logo, and khaki trousers, that skeptical and streetwise African-American named Melda, waved to me. She seemed genuinely pleased to be scooting my original cart, thank God, with the two tall Starbucks straws sticking up from the kiddie lockdown section, on a path that endangered all who ventured into her path. Clearly she had been this way before. Her smile exposed her front teeth. The lyric once was lost but now am found from "Amazing Grace" played in my head with a church organ in the background.

     "Your lucky day. It's done showed up, senor. Muy bueno. Como no?," said Lupe Loew the other Kroger lady from the big metal pole.

Lupe, let me recommend Melda and you for a big raise

      "Must be," I conceded.

      Melda Crumb rolled up to me. The raised eyebrows and don't tread on me attitude had apparently evaporated.

"I don't know how to thank you, ma'am. I really don't. Thank you. I really, really did not want to do all this over again. I was so upset. Melda you're great."

     Melda seemed much more talkative and outgoing, like we had magically become some secret society. "Oh sure. You know what gave it away? I saw them straws here clear 'cross the floor. Two green straws. Yessir. If you hadn't a said somethin' about 'em and your cold cup from Starbucks I'd probably still be looking."

     She handed the drippy cup to me. "Here. You look like you could use a stiff drink. This's been some kinda mess, I tell ya."

      "Wow, I was like really worried when I first came up to you ladies. I thought that you'd think I was unhinged, mental. Another "problem" customer. When I first told you what happened it sounded kinda weird even to me," I smiled. "It's kinda harshed my day for Krogering. That's for sure."

      "Look at all the stuff," Melda told me. "Does all this look like yours? Anything's not?"

      It all looked good to me. No mystery items in my basket. I snapped up the Aisle 12 acquisitions then transferred them to my recovered collection. I decided I planned to trade the melting ice cream and the drippy grape juice bars for colder, firmer replacements as my first order of business.

     "So where did you find it anyway?" I wondered.

     Melda answered, "Way back there near DAIRY. Just sitting there by the milk cases. Dumped. Ditched and left. All by it's lonesome."

      "Well, you are a lifesaver to me. Thanks for going the extra mile. I guess you were pretty surprised when I walked up to you with what my issue was."

     Matter of factly, Melda said, "No sir. Not at all. I will take your second basket. Put this doubled up stuff away."

     At that, Katniss strolled into my sight from behind Melda. She was bound for checkout. She was talking again on her black phone. "So like was I sayin' -- you know," the imposter Katniss said with a sarcastic smile and a light toss of her hair. "He starts moving away so I say Sir, oh Sir?. . . " Then she looked at Melda and me. She tightened her lips. Then she nervously grinned. Putting down the compact phone, Katniss saluted Melda and me wordlessly with the iconic raised left arm with three extended fingers of The Hunger Games. Next she raised her Super Big Gulp cup with its cheery red 7/11 straw as a toast to Krogering while likewise paying attention.

     "God the amount of sugar in that sucker must be lulling her into a standing coma," I noted in awe.

     "What's her problem anyway," Melda snorted.  "What was that she just done?"

Now this is my drink for the day

     "Oh nothing much. A badass gesture. Admiration maybe. Like I said . . . . So . . . Wait!! You said no you weren't surprised to hear my tale of woe?"

     "It was pleasure to help you, sir," Melda says politely.  "Happens all the time. Don't you worry none. Carts get lost (she makes exaggerated air quotes with fingers on both hands as she mouths lost) in this store all the time. Ditched and dodged we call 'em. Thurbert the old vet of our staff says so."

     "I guess Saturdays being so busy make for more disappearances. There's people and baskets everywhere," I said.

 

      Melda returns to her skeptical, Black woman persona and tone. Now she is playing with me I realize. The don't give me no trouble stare returns. She places her hands on her hips. "Uh. Huh! It do be busy on days like today, mister man. But with all the old people who come shufflin' on in on Senior Days on Thursdays I tell ya, the God's honest truth, it's a living nightmare in here. An ever  livin' night-mare. We always be chasing down one ditched cart after ta other -- all morning till night on Senior Day. The drama's enough ta knock Mr. Shire-lock Homes himself for a loop Um-Hmm. There it is! Dat's the truth. Word!"

      She raised a wagging index finger. She smiled. I expected her to whisper, Testify!

      Lupe Loew nodded seriously without further comment.

      Another old red vest had joined us. His badge reported he was as Thurbert Bumpus. Apparently Thurbert was fixing to see what all the excitement by the steel girder was.

     "Caught yo' another runaway did you eh, Mel?" Thurbert notes.

      I turned toward a checkout lane. Lupe would be my bagger. Darius the Great as I call him would be my checkout guy. I noticed a few departure lines away the nosy, female kibitzer who had earlier chimed in  You know people just up and go walk'n off with stuff -- just like that. I looked for the big hunk of Velveeta cheese in a box that she had been carting around. It was not in sight.

     I thought for a moment. I grabbed my large Starbucks container and swallowed a huge amount of cold green tea. Drips of water fell onto my basket handle. I felt fortified and restored. Suddenly I decided to say something strange to Darius the Great, who happens to be young, African, an NFL fanatic, a hipster, and a hip-hop fan. He sports a diamond stud earring too. D was making his electronic scanner go boop! boop! as he recorded my purchases. "My man, Mister Valued Customer" he exclaimed as he fist-bumped with me and returned my Kroger discounts card. No, I decided, I would say it to everyone.

      I blurted loud enough for all to hear: Senior citizens and other members of Kroger Nation in this District, beware and unite. For the good of us all!  Tighten your bows and quiver your arrows as you forage about. So . . . stuff your baskets and your goods with care. Stock up on life's vitals and supplies. For we learned in The Hunger Games that stupid folks can be so very dangerous. And because. Because. The whole world will be watching. Go out now. And claw for survival. And may the odds be ever in your favor. You know?

     I raised my left hand with three fingers pointed upright in a hushed store, then bowed my head solemnly just like Katniss Everdeen would have wanted me to do. I was ready to get back to the great game of life.

     "Word, my serious white brother," Darius cheered.

     I looked over at the Velveeta Lady. Then at the stunned and speechless lawyer. A number of people (so it seemed) worried about when my semi-automatic pistol with the enormous clip of deadly bullets would commence the day's shootout.

     An announcement boomed around us. "Attention, Kroger valued customers, thank you for Krogering with us today." It sounded like Melda again. "We have a lost little child in the FRESH MEATS department, a handsome little boy. He is missing his family. He is lost. He says his name is Efraim. If this is your child lost or missing, please claim him at the Meats counter now."

      People stared suspiciously at me as I walked hastily with my big basket, my plastic bags inside, toward the store exit. I felt suddenly I had been walloped by a rude and unexpected smack from heaven. A few cell phones chirped like texting mocking jays throughout the hushed checkout zone. That Melda, I mused, such a cut up on that microphone. She aims for the forehead every time. And what are all these people looking at anyway? But frankly I didn't care to find out.

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