The ordinary is extraordinary in VT: night sky

A few weeks ago I was writing on the general theme of when the ordinary is extraordinary. So, I thought that I’d revisit this theme as I prepare postings that will made to my blog when I am in Vermont and away from internet access. For those of you who are not familiar with Google’s blogger, there is this nifty setting that allows you to write a post ahead of time for publishing at a future date and time. So, as I write this, I am drawing on post memories of my time in Vermont.

In the section of Vermont where I spend time every summer, the night sky is relatively free of light pollution. On a moon free clear night, the sky is extraordinary. The stars are indescribable. There are so many stars that are visible to the naked eye, including but not limited to the band of stars known as the Milky Way. Most of you know that the Milky Way is the galaxy where our solar system is. But in a clear, light pollution free night sky, we can also see a faint band of stars of another section of the Milky Way.

My cabin faces west, so I am very familiar with the constellations in the western portion of the summer nighttime sky. I love to go out and lay on my dock looking up at the night sky. I am reminded of the magnitude of creation and find the stars comforting. I also get to see Venus when it is the evening sky as well as whatever planets are setting during the summer. In May, I saw Mars low in the western sky around 10 PM. Saturn was a little higher in the sky and should still be visible next week. Perhaps I will be to see the rings with my astronomical binoculars.

I’ll write back after I return and let you know if I was successful at making out Saturn’s rings with my binoculars.

Bob Gibson

I cannot write about baseball players who made an impact on me in my youth without writing about Bob Gibson. Bob Gibson pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1959 through 1975, with lifetime stats of:

ERA: 2.91
Won/loss 251/174
Strikeouts 3,117

I was not a National League fan growing up, but I saw him pitch in three World Series, 1964, 1967, and 1968. St. Louis beat the Yankees in seven games in 1964, beat the Boston Red Sox in seven in 1967 before losing to the Detroit Tigers in 1968. He was an awesome pitcher and I hated him. I hated him because he was such a good pitcher who beat up on the American League.

I am sure that I watched the 1964 series. Asides from the fact that the Cards beat the Yankees, there was nothing much that stayed with me about that series. 1967 was another story. Gibson, killed the Red Sox. I watched most of that series, The Sox could do nothing against Gibson. The Sox scored three runs off Gibson in the three games that he pitched (1, 4, and 7). Gibson pitched on three days rest, pitching complete games in his starts. That year he had a 1.12 fifth on the list for single season leaders for lowest earned run average. In case you are wondering, Dwight Gooden had a 1.53 era in 1985 (43rd on the list). All the players ranked between Gibson and Gooden played prior to 1920. Think about it. All these years later, I still shake my head when I think about watching Gibson pitch that year.

In 1968, he had one bad game against the Tigers, giving up four runs in the seventh and deciding game, losing 4 to 0 to Mickey Lolich and the Tigers. Lolich gave up only one run, in the bottom of the ninth inning, a homerun by Mike Shannon, the Tigers third baseman. Those of you who are into such things know that the Detroit Tiger’s Denny McClain won 31 games that year, the last major league pitcher to win at least 30 games..

My hat is off to you, Bob Gibson. The hatred of my youth is replaced by awe and respect. Will we ever see a single season era lower than your 1967 era?

*With the exception of the reference to single season leader for era, the stats come from The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball: Total Baseball, Seventh Edition (2001), Total Sports Publishing.

Trying something new

I am trying something new this summer during the next couple of weeks when I will be without easy access to the internet. There is a feature where I can write posts ahead of time and set an option so that my post will be published on a specific day at a specific time. So, I am trying this out and will be writing a few posts over the next few days that I will publish at regular intervals over two weeks.

Frank and Brooks Robinson

It was difficult to be a baseball fan in the 1960s and not to know about Frank and Brooks Robinson of the Baltimore Orioles. Those of you who are baseball fans, know that they are not related. Brooks was the 3rd baseman and Frank played the outfield.

As I was checking out baseball stats for my recent baseball writing in The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball: Total Baseball (seventh edition, 2001), I was reminded that Frank Robinson won the triple crown batting title in 1966, one year before Yaz. Considering that there have only been fourteen Triple Crown Batters in Major League history, it is notable that there were Triple Crown winners two years in a row.

That year, Frank hit 49 homers, 122 runs batted inn, and had a .316 batting average. That same year, not surprisingly, Frank was the American League MVP with Brooks finished 2nd and the Orioles Boog Powell finishing 3rd.. This was also the year that the Orioles beat the LA Dodgers in the World Series. Brooks got his own MVP in 1964.

Brooks was no slouch at the plate either and he played a mean 3rd base.

I would be remiss not to mention Boog Powell of the Orioles and give him his due, another awesome hitter. He won the MVP in 1970.

I actually think that I might have seen an Orioles game in person in either 1965 or 1966, but my memory is fuzzy, so I would not bet money on this.

I remember watching the Orioles on television in 1969, 1970, and 1971. I especially remember my disappointment that they lost the World Series to the Mets in 1969. Neither Frank nor Brooks hit during the series. Frank batted .188 and Brooks batted .053. That happens sometimes in the World Series. But I do not remember them for not hitting during the 1969 series, I remember them for all their accomplishments through the years, and their two World Series rings (1966 and 1979) and four American League Championships (1966, 1969, 1970, and 1971).

Carl Yastremzki and Harmon Killebrew

Carl Yastrzemzki (Yaz) of the Boston Red Sox won the last triple crown batting title in Major League Baseball in 1967. He had 121 runs batted in, a .326 batting average, and was tied with Harmon Killebrew of the Minnesota Twins with 44 home runs. I was thirteen that summer and remember the hitting competition between Yastremzki and Killebrew. It was exciting to watch (or read about in the newspapers). In addition, Boston and Minnesota were in a dogfight for the American League Championship during the last week of the season.

According to 1967 season statistics compiled by The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball: Total Baseball (seventh edition, 2001), Yaz and Killebrew were 1 and 2 in the following categories:

Runs: Yaz 112, Killebrew 105
Total Bases: Yaz 360, Killebrew 305
Runs batted in: Yaz 121, Killebrew 113
MVP (American League) Killebrew finished a distant 2nd (161 votes) to Yaz (275 votes)

Killebrew got his MVP in 1969, the year they lost to the Orioles in the first American League Championship Series. That was the year of the “Miracle Mets.”

I remember watching both Yastrzmezki and Killebrew on television during the late sixties and early seventies. Yaz retired in 1983, and Killebrew retired in 1975. They continued a force at the plate after 1967, but 1967 was special.

Horseshoe Crabs

I have always loved Horseshoe Crabs. I read about them in the New York Times science section on June 10, 2008. Seems that the marine biologists are concerned about a decline in their numbers due to habitat destruction and their use as bait. So there are counts of the Horseshoe Crab population going on in various places, including Delaware.

So, these articles got me thinking about the summer I was six years old when I met my first Horseshoe Crabs. My sister and I spent one month with our grandparents who lived on the north shore of Long Island on a small cove off of the Long Island Sound. My grandmother would take us for walks along the beach and we say many Horseshoe Crabs lumbering their way to or from the water. I think that they might have been spawning. Asides from our cat Figgy, and a parakeet that died of heart attack after being terrorized by Figgy, the Horseshoe Crab was the first animal that I remember seeing alive. I say this because we used to go to a museum where we saw stuffed animals in displays.

They are one of the oldest animals around, dating back to the time of the dinosaurs.

I have fond memories of seeing Horseshoe Crabs that summer and during subsequent visits if we were there at the right time of year. I tried to feed my banana one summer. Needless to say the Horseshoe Crab was not interested. I don't think that I have seen a Horseshoe Crab in years. I love them and I hope that we can keep our grimmy mits off of them and let them be.

Martin Luther King's March on Washington in 1963

Since I am writing about the summer of 1963, I would be remiss not to write about Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech that he gave during the rally that was a part of the march on Washington that year.

The only reason that I can say with reasonable confidence that I remember this speech is because this happened during the period when I was confined to bed. I can't say that I remember all that much about the speech itself. But I do have a distinct memory of watching Martin Luther King on television giving what could have been his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Perhaps all the networks televised this speech and I had no other option than to watch it. Or perhaps I watched it because of my mother's influence. My Mum was an admirer of Dr. King's. Even if my memory of watching this on television is a false memory influenced by the significance of this speech, I will always remember the summer of 1963 as being the first time that Dr. King entered my life.

Speaking of casts

The cast that I was referring to in yesterday's post was a rather impressive plaster cast that immobilized my entire left leg while my fractured left hip healed. I effectively spent the summer of 1963 in bed, about six weeks in traction in the hospital and another two months in this cast at home. It started just below my rib cage going down my entire left leg. At first it covered my left foot as well, but I soon managed to break the cast just below my ankle.

If memory serves, I got out of the hospital sometime in mid-August of 1963. My parents rented a hospital bed that they set up in my Dad's first floor study. This made it easier for my parents to take care of me. It was still summer. The cast was hot, and it itched.

As I said, I did not have a whole lot to do except homework and watching TV. Oh, and play cards. My Dad taught me how to play poker and black jack. I remember drawing into a straight royal flush in one of my first hands. I remember this because my Dad was absolutely amazed that this happened. A once in a life time occurrence.

I got the cast off sometime in October, and was gradually eased back into walking. Very gradually. By the end of October, I might have been in a wheel chair with restricted use of crutches. I remember sitting in a tiger costume giving out Halloween candy to the trick or treaters. On the day that John F. Kennedy was shot, I had an appointment with my Orthopod where I graduated to one crutch. I will always remember that day. As my Mother took me to the Orthopod, I remember seeing crowds lined up in shop windows watching television.

By Christmas I was walking without anything, not even a cane. After New Years, my sabbatical from going to school ended and I went to the fourth grade. Bummer.

Sandy Koufax

I don't think that I had any idea who Sandy Koufax was or what a great pitcher he was when I watched my first world series in October of 1963. I was still confined to bed, this time at home, recovering from my broken hip. My parents had purchased a small television (black and white) with a remote control that I kept in a little box near the hospital bed that they set up for me on the first floor. I was in a half body cast with the right leg free. So I wasn't going anywhere. So, I watched a couple of now defunct soap operas, cartoons, Dobie Gillis, and baseball. Oh, and I was supposed to be doing homework assigned by my home tutor who was supposed to be keeping up with my forth grade class.

In those days all the world series games were played in the afternoon. I suspect that as long as I did whatever homework assignment I had, or pretended that I had done my homework, that my mother would let me watch the baseball game. It was the Yankees versus the LA Dodgers. And I was rooting for the Dodgers. If you are so inclined, there is complete box score for this series found here. The Dodgers won in four games with Sandy Koufax winning two games. I watched Sandy Koufax in one more world series, the 1965 series

As a life long baseball fan, I am still awestruck by his lifetime earned run average (2.76). He retired at a fairly young age, somewhere around 30 years of age if I recall due to arm problems, perhaps arthritis. 165 wins. And hall of famer. Imagine what he could have done if he had been able to pitch longer.

Needless to say, Sandy Koufax was one of my first heroes, along with Don Drysdal. I knew that Sandy Koufax was special and in subsequent years I would find out how special he was. When people asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would respond:

I want to be the first female pitcher on the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Day games in baseball

Looking back on my childhood experiences as a baseball fan, it feels like there were more baseball games played during the day. For example, I can remember asking my parents if I could leave school early to watch day games during the 1967 and 1968 World Series. When I was recovering from my broken hip at home, I can remember watching the 1963 World Series, the Yankees v. the Dodgers. I know for a fact that there had to be some day games in 1963 because I had an early bed time and would not have been allowed to stay up late to watch baseball.

Baseball writers and sports radio talk show host will frequently bemoan the lack of baseball played during the day, especially around World Series time. All I am going to say is that I am glad that there were more day games played during the week while I was growing up in the sixties. I feel fortunate because watching day games gave me an appreciation for baseball and some of the dominant players of the era that I might not have gotten otherwise. I will be writing about some of these players, so stay tuned.

PATH tubes to Yankee Stadium one last time

For many years we lived less than two miles from what are known as the PATH tubes, in this case the Newark to World Trade Center line. So, for all those years and continuing after we moved further west in NJ when we had need to go into NYC we would drive to Harrison, NJ and take the PATH tubes into lower Manhattan.

The lower Manhattan station, as many of you may know was in the World Trade Center. There were some escalators leading from the mall–like promenade to the PATH station. Sometimes we would meet up with people, usually my older cousin, at the top of the escalators leading to the PATH station. This was a good rendezvous point, and reasonably easy to get to from the west–side subways. I have many found memories of the PATH station at the World Trade Center and environs. It was for many years, our gateway to New York.

When we would go to Yankee games with Anne and were husband, we would usually meet up at our house in west Hudson County and drive the short distance to the PATH station. There were some reasonably clean bathrooms in the PATH station that we would use. They also were not too scary in that we were never afraid to use them.

So when we had tickets with Anne for a September Yankee home game we rendezvoused with Anne in the PATH station at the World Trade Center. We were living in western Jersey at this point and drove to Harrison where we parked our car and boarded the PATH train. We met Anne and her husband in the PATH station, used the facilities and got on the C train to start the subway trip to Yankee Stadium.

This was an ordinary Saturday in September. We had ended up being invited to a wedding of some friends in Massachusetts after we had already purchased the tickets to the Yankee game. So, we regretfully declined the invitation. I was scheduled to have thyroid surgery 12 days later, knew that I would be busy at work finishing up various projects, and was looking forward to spending that Saturday afternoon watching a baseball game with good friends.

My scorecard showed that the Yanks were playing the Toronto Blue Jays. David Cone was pitching for the Blue Jays and Mike Mussina was pitching for the Yanks. The Yanks beat the Jays by a score of 9 to 1.

The date was September 8, 2001.

A memorable baseball weekend (part 3): May 28, 2000 Red Sox v Yankees

The four of us had purchased tickets during the winter to the Yankees home game against the Red Sox on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. We did not know that this would be our second game of the weekend. Our friends husband had to miss the game because of a bad cold, so we had a ladies night out and an extra seat for our stuff. The seats were pretty decent seats on the third base line in the loge (second) level.

I don’t think that I kept a scorecard because I had a notation on Friday night’s scorecard that this game was a pitchers duel between Pedro Martinez and Roger Clements with the Sox winning in the top of the ninth inning. I dug up the box score for the game on the Internet. Both pitchers pitched nine innings. Martinez gave up four hits and no runs and Clements gave up five hits.

Watching the two pitchers battle it out was awesome. The Red Sox – Yankee rivalry is one of the oldest in baseball. Crowds at either ballpark are always highly energized, and the crowds during the two games we saw this weekend did not disappoint. But the crowd on that Sunday night was even more energized because the game was scoreless into the top of the ninth inning. No matter whether the game is played in Yankee stadium or Fenway Park (in Boston), there are always a representative number of fans from the opposing team in the ballpark.

There were two buddies in their twenties sitting in front of us, one a Yankee fan and the other a Red Sox fan. Both were wearing Jerseys from their respective teams and were razing each other about the respective opposing team. As the night went on, they continued to raze each other getting a little louder towards the end of the game. It was all in good fun and they were very respectful to us, and especially so to our friend, Anne. Anne took it in her stride, later commenting that she is often treated as if she was someone’s mother.

In the top of the ninth inning, Boston’s Trot Nixon hit a two–run homerun off of Clements to make it a two –nothing ballgame. We did not lose hope, hoping for a bottom of the ninth comeback. The home crowd got even more vocal and more energized. The Yanks did not score a run and the game ended.

By the way, Anne’s husband watched the game on TV.

A memorable baseball weekend (part 2): May 26, 2000 Red Sox v Yankees

I think we got to our seats in time for me to fill in the rosters for the Red Sox and the Yankees prior to the start of the game. The seats were great, a few rows back on the first base side. We felt like kids, none of us had ever had such good seats at a major league baseball game. We were a little above eye level with the field. Shortly after the start of the game a waitress assigned to our area came by. It seems that club seating comes with seat side food service. She gave us a menu and said that she would be back to get our order. Since it was a night game and none of us had time to eat dinner prior to leaving for the game, we had decided to eat dinner at the ballpark. I have a note on my scorecard that we spent $68 in food, seems that seat side food service comes at a premium. I did not make a note of what we ordered, probably sausages, fries, and a soda.

The Red Sox got off to a quick lead, at the end of the third inning they were leading by a score of 4 to 1. David Cone took the loss for the Yanks with Ramon Martinez notching the win for the Red Sox. The Yankees only run came in the bottom of the third by our reserve infielder, Bellinger (playing 2nd base that night) with a solo homerun.

The most entertaining part of the game came perhaps one–third of the way through the game. We noticed a buzz in the crowd and everyone was staring at something behind home plate. It took us awhile to figure out what was going on. Finally, we looked in the netting behind home plate and saw a body lying in the net. We looked in stunned silence at the body before the body stirred and attempted to climb up the netting. The crowd cheered when they saw that the body, male, was indeed alive. He got up, took some bows and tried to climb back up the netting. It became obvious to us that he was drunk, because he was unsteady on his feet and kept falling down as he tried to climb back up the netting. We started to boo. At some point, we looked up in the stands over where he had fallen in the netting and saw some of New York’s finest. They were ready to cart him away. And when he finally got back up, they did escort him out of the area. And probably out of the stadium.

The game went on and we had a great time. We enjoyed being so close to the action. We were in foul ball territory. Nothing came our way, but I have a note on my scorecard that two balls bounced off the scoreboard near our seats.

At the end of the game, we walked a short distance to the parking lot. Since this was the first time any of us had driven to the stadium, the traffic jam inside the garage caught us all by surprise. Writing this almost eight years later, I want to say that it took us 30 minutes to leave the garage. The reality was that it was perhaps half that time. We resolved never to drive to the stadium again. The trip home involved going back a different way from the one we used to get to the stadium. I don’t believe that this was our intended route, but it worked out. We got back to Manhattan and eventually back to the GW bridge for the trip home.

A memorable baseball weekend (part 1): car trip to Yankee Stadium

Perhaps the most memorable Yankee game we attended was on Friday May 26, 2000. I think this was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. I got a telephone call that afternoon in my office from a good friend of mine. Her husband had just been offered four tickets to that nights game with free parking. The Yanks were playing a home series against the Boston Red Sox. I jumped at the chance for club seating. Now, the four of us had tickets for the Sunday night game against the Red Sox, and none of us wanted to pass up the chance to have such good seats. These seats are only available to season ticket holders. We thought it would be fun. What could be better for a baseball fan then a Yankee baseball in the Bronx against the Red Sox on Memorial Day weekend?

Our first adventure was driving to the Bronx. Our friends picked us up at our home. We were living not far from one of the exits to the New Jersey Turnpike. Given the fact that it was Memorial Day weekend and we had cross that bridge, otherwise known as the George Washington Bridge (GW Bridge), we allotted extra time for our trip to the Bronx. As we all expected, we ran into traffic perhaps a mile or so before the tolls at the GW Bridge. We were in what are known as the local lanes. The traffic was inching forward when we noted that a young man in a nearby car got out of the car, saying that he would be back in a moment. He climbed up the wall and disappeared. We entertained ourselves wondering where he was going, coming up with a few possibilities that I won’t go into here. A few minutes passed, more than enough time for him to do whatever business he was doing. The three of us (passengers) peered out the window waiting for him to return to the car. We were still close enough that the wonderer could have returned to his car. Several more minutes passed, and he did not return and we were beyond the last exit in NJ. We wondered what happened to him and how he would get to wherever it was that he and his friend in the car where going.

Our next adventure came as we prepared to cross the GW Bridge. Game time was beginning to creep up on us, and we faced more traffic. My friend’s husband knew how to get to Yankee Stadium from Manhattan. It went well, he knew the way and there was little to no traffic. He dropped us off near the ballpark before driving to the parking garage and joined us about fifteen minutes later. We went to our seats on the first base line: section D, box 73. I’ll write about the game itself tomorrow.

The first two Bees of Spring

I saw my first two Bumble Bees of this young spring season yesterday. I have two flowering shrubs , Andromeda (I think) on one side of my house where I always see Bees. I love watching the Bees. And today, I saw my third. She was hanging out on one of these same shrubs for a little while. My cat was fascinated as it gave him something new to watch on TV.

Summer of 1991

The summer of 1991 was a very busy time for me at work and school. Baseball was my comfort food that summer and early fall. The Yankees, while far from the greatness they were to display in the late 1990s were better than they were the year before when the finished in the cellar of the American League East.

When I was not working or studying, I was watching baseball or hiking. Oh, yes and there were household chores and that dribble.

Baseball played a very important role as summer turned to fall. I was getting a little stressed out over a difficult project at work  Baseballwas about the only thing that would calm me down. It is hard to explain. There was the comfort of going to Yankee stadium on Saturdays, watching the game and keeping score. In addition to enjoying keeping score as I watch a game, I hoped to do so correctly where my card matched the one in the paper the next day. Keeping score requires paying attention. There are no announcers telling you what is going on, so if you are not paying attention you are going to miss how a baserunner gets on base. For the whole point is to keep track of every pitch to every hitter. The Saturday games helped to take me away from the rigours of my exam preparation.

As my project neared completion, I took great comfort in following the 1991 post season. Before I cheat and look at my Baseball Almanac, I’ll say that either the Oakland Athletics or the Minnesota Twins won the World Series that year. Now I’ll go and look, yes the Minnesota Twins took the series against the Atlanta Braves, 4 games to 3. In what the Baseball Almanac called one of the great ones.

One of the players on the Minnesota Twins that year was a third baseman named Mike Pagliarulo. Mike Pagliarulo or “Pags” played for the New York Yankees in the 1980s going to the San Diego Padres before ending up with the Twins in 1991. I enjoyed cheering him on as he got a World Series Ring.

That same year, the Braves had a 24-year–old left handed pitcher, Mike Stanton. Mike Stanton played with Yankees from 1997 through 2000, the lefty out of our bullpen winning three World Series rings with the Yankees.

Spring flowers and trees almost ready

It seems like any day now the trees will leaf out. The buds on the dogwoods are larger. When I look at the pin oak outside my dining room window I can see very tiny oak leaves as they emerge. The daffodils are starting to bloom; the crocuses were in bloom for a couple of weeks now and are just past their prime. I am happy that they did not end up as deer or rabbit food. I know that there is a rabbit somewhere around here. I saw it last night near my driveway as I was coming home.

The grape hyacinths that I planted on the south side of the house are starting to come up. Most of the perennials are starting to emerge from their winter hibernation. Yesterday we had a warm early April day, shirt–sleeve weather. I went outside and played in the dirt for an hour, otherwise known as weeding.

I have often let these early signs of spring pass me by, waiting for the day when everything is in bloom and the deciduous trees have leafed out. I was too busy or too caught up in my own affairs to pay attention to the process plants and trees emerging from their winter sleep. It is pretty cool. I am looking forward to watching this process unfold.

People in the stands

The first couple of years we had our Saturday season tickets we had tickets in the upper deck behind home plate. These were decent seats about half–way up in nosebleed territory. For me part of the experience of attending a baseball game is watching the people around us in the stands. If your team is playing well then there is a special celebratory camaraderie. If they are not playing well, as was often the case during the time we had our season tickets, well there is the bond of hanging in during the hard times.

We soon began to recognize other nearby season ticket holders and other regular characters. Sitting in front of us was a “family” from Queens. I knew they were from Queens because we saw them on the subway on Saturday at one of stations where riders from one of the Queens lines transferred to our Bronx–bound “D” express train. From appearances, they were a married couple with an adult son. The older man always had recent stats on the visiting team including a press guide along with a small notebook where he recording information. He did this every Saturday for the two years we had these tickets. One Saturday we overheard him talking to his son about the Mets, leading us to believe that they may have regularly attended Mets games, perhaps a Saturday plan? Most of the time, the Mets and the Yankees are not home at the same time so it is conceivable that one could be regular attendees at both teams’ home games.

We wondered what this gentleman was doing with his notebook and visiting team guides. Was he a very serious baseball fan, a participant in a fantasy baseball league, or something else? We never did fid out.

There were other season ticket holders around us in the upper deck. Most were like us, out to enjoy a game, perhaps keeping a scorecard like I did. Some had a portable radio. They were young, middle–aged, and seniors, coming alone or with a friend, spouse, parent or a child.

A father and adult son were near by. The son would often engage in a running commentary about the game, along the lines of a radio or TV announcer. Perhaps some would this running commentary annoying, we found it entertaining.

Then there was an older gentleman who would walk around the stadium with a small pot that he would bang with a spoon. I don’t exactly remember what he would chant as he banged his pot, but others in the stand would get in the act. He would offer the spoon to people in the stands, especially children, who would bang on the pot and chant.

The third year we had season tickets, we moved down to the third–base side of the lower level. Most of the seats around us were taken by an every changing parade of groups. We wondered if the family from Queens still had their tickets. We saw them one Saturday on the subway platform and had our answer. We wondered about the man, who walked the stands banging his pot, we were reassured when we saw him.

Rookies

Most of the time we got to the stadium about 20 to 30 minutes prior to game time. Arriving at the stadium, there was a feeling of anticipation in the air on game day. Even during the 1990 season when they were cellar dwellers. It might be the excitement of watching the young players wondering if they might be the next breakout player or a flash in the pan. For example, Bernie Williams came up in 1991 when we had season tickets, and we saw him play at least twice in 1991 and once in 1992.

My scorecard for a game played on October 5, 1991 shows that he had 5 hits in 6 at bats with two RBIs in a twelve inning loss to the Cleveland Indians. He was in the game the first game we saw in 1992 against the NY Mets on April 4. This was in the days prior to interleague play when the Yankees and Mets would meet for a couple of preseason games. He lead off the game, according to my score card he reached first on an error. Kevin Mass batted him home. \

Kevin Maas was one of those “flash in the pan” players. He hit very well when he first came up. He came up in June of 1990, hitting 21 homeruns that year, and 23 the next years. His hitting slacked off drastically after that. Eventually, the pitchers started to figure out how to get him out, and he never again was the dominant hitter he was during his rookie year. But he was fun to watch in 1990, adding some excitement to a bad year when the Yanks finished in the cellar. According to my Baseball Encyclopedia he played four more seasons, finishing up with the Baltimore Orioles.

Another player who only played a few months in the majors was a right–handed pitcher named Wade Taylor. He game up in June of 1991 with another right–handed pitcher, Scott Kamieniecki. We say him pitch one game on June 22. He pitched for 7 and one-third innings giving up 5 hits, 4 runs, 3 earned runs, 2 walks and 6 strikeouts.

There are a lot of baseball players like Kevin Maas and Wade Taylor that don’t make it in the majors. Some, like Kevin Mass have their day in the sun, others are like Wade Taylor and only play in the “bigs” for a few months. Many would kill to have the chance to play in the majors.

Riding the subway to Yankee Stadium

I moved to New York City in the mid seventies and began watching or listening to Yankees games. For reasons that I won’t go into here, the road to becoming a Yankees fan evolved over the next fifteen years or so. What turned the corner for me was having season tickets to the Yankees to a Saturday plan for three or four years in the early 1990s.

About two and one–half to three hours before game time we would drive the short distance to the local light rail station, aka the PATH tubes into Manhattan where we would take the subway to Yankee stadium in the Bronx. Our transfer point from the PATH to the subway was the PATH station in the World Trade Center. We had one more transfer point, West Fourth Street in Manhattan where we would catch an “express subway train” to the Bronx. If we were lucky, the trip was a little more than one hour. If we were not lucky, it could be two hours. The usual travel time was a little more than 1.5 hours.

We would always see other Yankee fans on our ride to the ballpark, especially on the subway in Manhattan. The stop for Yankee stadium was the first stop in the Bronx and the subway would empty, sometimes literally, as we left the subway to go to the ballpark.

Most of the time the worst that happened was that we would have to wait for the subway. Going to the ballpark, was not so bad. Leaving the ballpark was another story. Remember that the ballpark is in NYC, and even if you had a car like we did, many take mass transit of some sort to the ballpark. So, at the end of the game, the crowds would descend to the subway station back to Manhattan. There were two subway lines to Yankee Stadium and both were equally crowded after the game.

If we were lucky, we would get to the subway platform just after a train arrived so the platform would not be crowded. Most of the time we were not lucky. We would get to the platform to find wall-to-wall people. Having lived in Manhattan for over four years in my early twenties, I learned some tricks to dealing with crowded subway platforms. One was to go the opposite end of the platform from the entrance. We would politely make our way to what was the southern most end of the platform, the least crowded end. Sometimes the least crowded end of the platform only meant that you were not standing in a sardine can. The worst was when it was hot and humid. Our subway was underground, no breeze, and it often smelled. The wait may have only been a couple of minutes, sometimes as long as ten or more minutes.

Sometimes the train that came along would be so crowded that we could not board the train. At other times, we would let the packed subway leave, gambling that the next one would be less crowded. Sometimes we would take the local train back to Manhattan. Once we got on the subway, people would be buzzing about the game. As you can imagine, the flavor of the buzzing depended on if the Yankees won.

I said that most of the time the worst that would happen was waiting for the subway on hot crowded platform with various subterranean odors. We never got on a subway that broke down, that happened to me once or twice when I lived in Manhattan. But late one Saturday night after a night game, something happened that had never happened before. We were on the local train from the Bronx that terminated at the World Trade Center. Our car was almost empty. A couple of stops before the World Trade Center we saw someone running through the train. Then we smelled a terrible odor. Someone had set off a stink bomb. Everyone got up and walked up a couple of cars to one that did not stink.

Behind homeplate

For my eleventh or twelfth birthday my Dad took me to baseball game. It was the second baseball that I had been to. He managed to get seats on the lower level behind home plate. I had a great time at the game even though we lost. My Dad taught me how to keep score at a baseball game. To this day, I can’t go to a baseball game without keeping score.

I did not appreciate at the time how wonderful those seats were. I remember thinking that it was a little disappointing to have to watch the game through the mesh screen behind home plate. What a snot I was. I hope that I had the sense to keep my mouth shut. I have been to quite a few baseball games since then and I there was only one time that I had seats that approached the quality of those seats. You can’t even get seats behind home plate in many ballparks as they are all spoken for by full season ticket holders

The best thing about that baseball game was going with my Dad. We had a great time.

As an adult I moved to New York City and then northern New Jersey and became a New York Yankees fan. We took my Dad to a New York Yankees game a couple of years before he passed. They were playing the Detroit Tigers, one of his favorite teams. He lovingly chided me for being a Yankees fan and proudly wore a Detroit Tigers hat.

When the baseball bug bit me

I remember when the when the baseball bug bit me. I was nine years old, the year I almost died. I spent a total of about nine weeks in the local hospital, first with a very serious bone infection in my left hipbone called Osteomyelitis. I came home for a couple of weeks before broking my hip on or about July 4, 1963 and was in the hospital for another six weeks.

The first hospital stay occurred over my ninth birthday. I was at my sickest on my birthday, throwing the nurses out of my private room when they came into sing happy birthday. I also had one of the few TVs in the hospital in my room. I know this because I have memories of being very sick and watching TV. I remember game shows and baseball. Bone pain is the worst possible pain. It is hard to explain but the sounds on the TV, the sounds of baseball and game shows gave me some comfort. It was like there was something outside of the pain and the fever that I could focus on.

I also remember the room. The door was to the left of my bed. The bone infection was in my left leg, so I either lay on my back or on my right side. Lying on my left side where I would face the door was not going to happen.

I got better; I had a wonderful pediatrician, a real sweetie. I continued to watch baseball, game shows, comedies and cartoons.

During the first hospital stay, my parents moved to a new house across town. I remember being disappointed because he rented a pick–up truck for the move. I desperately wanted to ride in the pickup trip but I was not allowed to leave the hospital so I missed my chance. My Dad drove the truck to the hospital where I could see the truck from the window next to my bed in the four–bed ward that I was in pediatrics. It wasn’t the same.

I got out of the hospital sometime in early June, before school let out for the summer. I got out of the last few days of school. This suited me just fine because I hated school. When I got out of the hospital my family gave me another birthday party. Grandfather gave me some birthday money and I used it to buy a baseball glove.

The house we moved to was a really cool old farmhouse vintage mid 19th century with a wrap around porch. The house next door was on the corner and was owned by a nearby private school. The school rented the house out. The tenants when we moved in had two boys, Bebo was a year or two younger than me. Bebo was a nickname, I don’t remember his birth name. Bebo had an older brother named Rob. I think that Rob was sixteen or seventeen because I have it in my head that he drove a car.

So, I would hang out outside on my lawnchair in either my yard or Bebo’s yard with my sister, Bebo, and our basset hound. My leg was weak, so I could not move around a lot. After being in the hospital for a couple of weeks, the last place I wanted to be was in a house. Rob was nice to me and we probably talked about something, but we did not pay that much attention to each other.

I loved my baseball glove. I think I even slept with that glove. Whenever possible, I’d sit in my lawnchair and play catch with whomever else I could snag. Bebo was easy to snag, so he was a frequent partner. I spent as much time as I could outside, so I don’t really recall how much baseball I watched during this time. But I must have watched some games.

On or about July 4 we went swimming at a local swimming club. I remember this because it felt wonderful to actually move around. That is the night I fell and broke my hip. The pain was even more awful then the Osteomyelitis. I remember the pain and the whole neighborhood must have heard me. I found out later that Rob was especially upset at hearing my screams before my parents could get me to the hospital.

After I was readmitted to the hospital, I spent a couple of days in a private room. I was in traction with weights off my left knee and ankle. I was to remain in traction and in the hospital for six weeks. I have good memories of the private room because I faced the door of the room. Since I had nowhere to go, I got intimately familiar with whatever room I was in. It was probably a couple of days after my fall when I saw Rob walk through the door carrying a small magazine, the 1962 yearbook for the local baseball team. I remember being surprised to see him but the baseball yearbook put me at ease. We talked baseball for awhile then he left. Rob and Bebo and their family moved shortly after Rob’s visit. I never saw them again. And I will always remember them.

I found out later from my parents that Rob was very shook up when he heard me screaming in pain the night I broke my hip. My parents said that he wanted to come and visit me in the hospital before they moved. He would have known that I loved my baseball glove because I was never without it, so he would have known just what I would like.

I don’t remember how many times I read the yearbook from cover to cover. I knew every player and their stats. There is an advantage to being a sick kid in for a longtime stay, so I got one of the very few televisions in the hospital. In the mid sixties, there were many afternoon baseball games on TV, and it was the height of the baseball season. So, I watched baseball that summer. It did not take long for me to get hooked. I quickly learned the game. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do. And someone brought me my baseball glove. The local team was not very good, but that didn’t matter, the magic of baseball took over.

And I always remember Rob visiting me in the hospital with the baseball yearbook.

Opening day of baseball season

I have been a baseball fan since I was nine–years old. Like most baseball fans, one of the signs of spring is the first day of baseball season. Today is the first day of the season for many baseball teams. This year, the season actually opened in Japan last Tuesday when the Boston Red Sox played the Oakland Athletics for two games in Japan. Last night, in what was called the US opening day, the Washington Nationals hosted the Atlantic Braves in the opening of their new stadium in Washington D.C.

The Yankees home opener is this afternoon. As I write this, the game is in a rain delay. Perhaps they will get the game in today. Perhaps they will postpone the game and play it tomorrow afternoon instead. If so, that won’t be the first time. There is often a “free day” after a home opener in case of a rain out. A few years ago it snowed on opening day, only a couple of inches, and it had melted by the next day. I don’t think snow will be an issue, at least not in New York City.

I love the start of baseball season, not only for the promise of warmer weather, but because of hope. All the teams start out equal. There are no winners and losers on opening day. As April grows older and the teams work out the various kinks that always arise in those early games, the teams are no longer on a level playing field. There are winners and losers, but April baseball, is well April baseball. A bad start in April can be over come buy a few good series.

Not all teams can be “winners” or “in contention” for a playoff berth. If the team you are following seems to fall into this category, there is still plenty to enjoy. Most important, the season is not over until the last game is played the last weekend in September. So, if your team can stay competitive or has a “turnaround” in mid–season, there is hope.

And if you are reasonably certain that your team still has a way to go to be competitive in their division, what do you do? Can you enjoy the game? You can, you take pleasure in small things such as watching the young players develop, a well pitched game, rooting for your top hitters, and being a spoiler. Then there is finding humor, in well, being bad.

But I am getting way ahead of myself. Today, many teams are playing there first game, and there are no winners or losers.

Here today, gone tomorrow

I looked for the small blue “glory-in-the-snow” flowers yesterday morning after breakfast. I could not find them anywhere in my garden. At first, I thought that being up and out of the house before having my daily dose of java was affecting my eyesight. I looked around again, more carefully this time. I finally found the chewed off stalks. Someone had dined on them the night before. Perhaps the small group of Deer I saw running across the street about 9 PM Thursday night as I was pulling into my driveway had a snack? Or the also abundant rabbits having an early spring meal?

As I write this, the thoughts going through my head is to appreciate the small things when we see them. Thursday, I rejoiced in seeing the small beautiful blue flowers of the “glory-in-the-snow” flowers. They were not there on Wednesday and they were gone tomorrow. If I had not been paying attention on Thursday, I would have missed them altogether. The flowers are gone, but the bulbs are still there and will bloom again next spring. The beauty of their early spring blooms lives on through my writing and in my memory.

Here today, gone tomorrow.

First spring flowers

Yesterday we had a nice early spring day; temperatures were slightly above normal in the upper 50s here in central NJ. I took advantage of the slightly warmer temperatures and did some more work outside. So, as I was picking up more detritus in my yard, I looked at the garden near where I was working and saw that the crocus are almost ready to flower. I don’t think that it will be long now. In this garden bed, the deep purple crocus are the first to bloom, followed by the daffodils.


Then just an hour or so ago, I looked out my back window onto the garden next to our driveway and saw some more early spring flowers, chionodoxa luciliae or “glory–of–the–snow”. These bulbs with small blue flowers are also early spring bloomers. I have some more daffodils that I planted in this bed a couple of years ago along with some daffodils that were here when we arrived.

I was never much of a gardener before we moved here. We inherited some of the flowers in our gardens from the prior owners and I have planted others. Some of the shrubs that I planted did not make it. Most of the perennials and bulbs have done ok. I planted a rhododendron eighteen months ago in the front of my house that I hope will make it. Last year it had one beautiful flower. I covered it and the young holly with burlap to protect them from the cold winter winds. The young rhody has many more buds this year and I have my fingers crossed.

I am not going to win any gardening awards, but I do find peace and solace working outside in the garden. However, I am proud of the garden bed where I planted the crocus bulbs. I had to find shade loving plants that would survive the toxins from the nearby Black Walnut tree and are deer resistant. In addition to the bulbs and the existing azaleas and the peony I planted: an ornamental grass, ferns, pulmanaria, fox glove, and something else I don’t remember.

So as I wait for the deciduous trees to leaf out, I rejoice in the hope that these early spring flowers represent, the promise of more bursting forth to come.

signs of spring

At 1:48 AM EDT, the sun crossed the celestial equator. This is the vernal equinox or the start of the spring season here in the northern hemisphere. I always enjoy early spring as new plant growth is getting ready to burst forth. The daffodils started to peak above the soil a couple of weeks ago and are now a anywheres from three to six inches high. The buds have not opened yet, it is still a might cold for that. Perhaps in a couple of weeks, less or more depending on the temperatures, I will see the first flowering daffodils.

Another sign of spring is seeing some deciduous trees just beginning to leaf out. I noticed the very, very tiny leaves on a maple tree in my yard this morning as I was cleaning up detritus in the form of twigs and larger branches that came down in rain and wind storms in early March. I took a break from gathering these sticks to look at up at the maple and saw tiny reddish leaf buds.

My task this morning is another rite of early spring here in the land of manicured lawns: spring clean-up, picking up branches before the lawn mowing season starts.

During these times of economic unrest and global warming, I take comfort in the signs of new life that emerge every spring. The new life emerging every spring is an extraordinary event. I pray that in my small way that I may be a better steward of my planet for future generations.

Lunar Eclipse

A couple of weeks ago the Moon put on a spectacular show in the form of a lunar eclipse. A lunar eclipse happens when the Moon is full, that is when the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon. During most full Moons, the moon is either above or below the Earth’s shadow. But a couple of times a year, the moon passes directly through the Earth’s shadow. Two weeks ago, we were treated to total lunar eclipse at 10:25 PM EST in the east coast of the United States. It had been raining earlier in the afternoon and evening, and there was a chance that it would still be too cloudy to see the Moon. However, the clouds began to break just in time, so we could see the Moon as at began to pass through the Earth’s shadow at about 8:45 PM. I was a little tired that night, but knowing that the next total lunar eclipse visible on the east coast of the U.S. will not happen until 2010, I made a point of staying up. It was worth it.

During a total lunar eclipse, the Moon is still visible, but it turns a reddish color. It was not the most spectacular lunar eclipse that we saw, but it was very cool just the same. Gazing at this total lunar eclipse, I was reminded about the wonder and beauty of nature. I am glad that I stayed up to see this lunar eclipse. Something truly extraordinary that reminded me, yet again, about how special the Moon is.

Moonshine and snow

Last weekend was one of those extraordinary nights, a clear cold winter night where the moon was a three days past “full.” It had snowed a couple days prior and there was still a snow cover on the ground. The moon was close enough to full that there was a significant amount of moonshine. I took a glance out our front windows and did a double take. It was 10 PM at night but for a few seconds it almost seemed as bright as an overcast day. The dull light cast by the almost full moon was reflecting off of the snow seemed to cause the snow to have a dim glow. I stood at the window momentarily entranced by the sight. The call of my pillows and a night’s sleep threw me out of my trance and the spell was broken. But the vision remains. Two ordinary events –– four inches of snow and moonshine combined to create the extraordinary.

copyright 2008 K. Tyler Miller

Moonshine

I love The Moon, yet all to often I fail to notice how extraordinary she can be. She is a regular in our night sky for about 25 days out of a month. The length of time that she is visible, depending on the phase that she is in, and the cloud cover.

When I lived in urban areas with their attendant light pollution, there were times when she was the only object visible in the night sky. Moonshine had little meaning to me for all those years because lights in the urban night sky masked it. I have vivid and fond memories of my first full moon in our then new house in semi–rural western New Jersey. It was probably in early June of 2001, and the sky was clear. Some time after the sun went down, I took a glance out side and was startled to see shadows. It was extraordinary. I went outside and watched my own shadow as I walked around our yard.

This was very, very cool! I was so excited. Like a little kid, I ran inside, grabbed my partner, asking her to come outside and see the moon shadows. I grabbed her hand, dragging her outside to look at the moonshine and the moon shadows.

That was almost seven years ago. I have seen, and am ashamed to say, ignored many subsequent nights where the full moon shines brightly, offering her soft light and shadows.

Sunshine

I was not quite sure what to write about today until I was sitting in my living room with my laptop doing some journaling. Our house is positioned so that we get some nice sunshine coming in our southwestern facing windows, especially in the winter. It was wonderful to see the sun, especially after a couple of grey days this week and some showers to come over the weekend.

So today’s ordinary extraordinary event is the sun, sometimes known as that strange yellow orb.

The ordinary

I wrote the other day about enjoying the ordinary. Ordinary activities have taken on new meaning to me over the last few months since returning from Africa. I met people who have so little and are among the poorest people on the earth, yet they are warm and happy people. So, I came back with new appreciation for what I used to call ordinary things.

And in the ordinary, I have found the extraordinary.

I get up early four days a week to go the local YMCA to work out. Since I get up about 6 AM, this means that it is just before sun up. I drove the two miles to the Y with a clear view to the pre–dawn sky in the east. And I saw Venus and Jupiter within about three or four degrees of each other. A simple thing, this pairing of these two planets was. Their quiet beauty struck me, shining in the pre–dawn sky.

Two planets I have seen many times before on an ordinary morning. But in an extraordinary alignment.

A couple of days later the were 1 degree apart. But I had to imagine the pairing because it is raining.

I'm back

I have to be honest. I have been struggling with resuming writing in this blog for a few weeks ago. I have been sitting here for about 40 minutes trying to figure out how to start writing again. Write a sentence, delete it, write another sentence, and delete it again. I went on like this for a while until I told myself to get a grip and just start writing.

I can only think of seemingly ordinary things to write about, such as the winter solstice. I always like the winter solstice because it is the shortest day of the year. The winter season lay ahead of us, but knowing that shortest day of the year is over always gives me some hope. It does take awhile before the longer days are noticeable. I write this in early February. A couple of weeks ago, I did notice that the days are a little longer. We go out to dinner to celebrate the winter solstice. I realized that this was my second winter solstice. This may have been a unique and perhaps once in a lifetime occurrence because I was in Malawi, south of the equator on June 21, 2007.

On that day, being from the northern hemisphere, I automatically thought that summer had started. Only to realize that, in fact, it was the first day of winter. And being in the tropics, the day was eleven hours long and much warmer than my usual first day of winter.

So in an otherwise ordinary year, I experienced two winter solstices.

Moving on

I have been posting about Malawi and related issues for the better part of a year now. Over the last six months, I have been posting about observations and thoughts taken from the hand written journal that I kept during my trip. Much of the focus of my writing on Malawi over the months since returning from Malawi has been in this blog, and I am at or near the end of what I can write about in this forum. While I have one or two possible writing projects that I will be working on privately and offline, I will be posting here about other things.

To be honest, I’m not quite sure what direction my blogging will take. So, my posts may be more along the lines of “random ramblings about what I am happen to thinking about at the moment.

Added on November 29, 2017 The writing projects on Malawi that I had envisioned when I finished writing about Malawi never materialized. Nonetheless, I am a better person for the two weeks that I spent in Malawi.

Nearing the end of writing about Malawi

I have known for a while that I am nearing the end of my blog entries based on my trip to Malawi last summer. At least this may be the end of this phase of my writing about Malawi. There are a couple of more things that I want to write about. One is my last afternoon in Malawi where we visited a program in Lilongwe, Youthcare Ministries, that has a residential/education program for young teenage boys. Those of you who read my postings from Malawi know that I was somewhat emotionally exhausted by this time of our trip. And I was homesick, counting the hours until I could start my trip home. I felt like I could not absorb anymore. Then we arrived at the Youthcare Ministries residential.

I met the boys in residence, toured the facilities including the residence and the classroom, and talked to the teachers. I was so glad that we visited. In some ways this was a highlight of my trip. I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps it was because as an urban planner who spent a couple of years working in urban America, I could “understand” what they are trying to do at Youthcare Ministries; to take children off of the “streets” and the associated lifestyles and give them a chance for something better.

I felt the hope because the boys are smart, friendly, and articulate. I can’t imagine what their lives were like before coming to Youthcare, but it was immediately clear to all of us how far these boys had come. So, there really was a feeling of hope. And when, even after six months have passed since my trip ended, I find myself despairing over some of what I saw, felt, and experienced in Malawi, I have only to remember the faces of these boys and the hope embodied in each of these fine young men.

Education in Malawi

One of the things that interested me while I was in Malawi was the difference in the education system as compared with America. Primary school, roughly equivalent to what we call kindergarten through eighth grade in America, is free. I am fairly certain that the government sponsors primary education, During our travels, we saw many school children, many dressed in uniforms, walking to and from school.

A Saturday children’s program we visited on our second full day in Malawi used the grounds of a primary school. The building was small. It appeared that all grades shared one classroom. If memory serves, there were few, if any, of the accoutrements in the school that we are accustomed to in America. Before traveling to Malawi I knew that school supplies that we take for granted here in America –– books, papers, pens and the like –– are often hard to come by. Many of us traveled with pens and pencils to distribute to children. Many Malawian children attend at least some primary school.

The situation is quite different for secondary schools. We were told that for every 10 to 12 primary schools there is one government sponsored secondary school. Entrance is by exam, where the exams are extremely competitive. I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that government–sponsored secondary schools are free.

There are also private secondary schools. While admittance is also exam–driven, I got the impression that the exams for private secondary schools were not as competitive as for the government sponsored secondary schools.

Sad to say, there is a gender disparity in secondary schools. One figure we heard is if 15 girls start secondary school in what they call form 1, only one will graduate.

There are four grades, or “forms” in secondary schools. I got the impression that students enter form 1 around the age of 11 or 12. After form 2, they must pass a test. If they fail, they either repeat the test, or they or out of school. After the graduate form 4, they must pass another test if they want to go to the University. The government pays the university fees for qualifying students. Students typically start university at the age of 16.

Many of the community–based programs that we visited try to include money for a couple of secondary school scholarships in their budgets. These scholarships then go to teenagers in the villages where they work.

People I met, part II

The other day I wrote about some of the people I met in passing while I was in Malawi. There were many people that we met who worked with Malawi-based organizations. In this group I include people that we met with over dinner as well as representatives from the community-based organizations we visited, and a couple of hospitals.

They are all extraordinary people with the same generosity of spirit and warmth that I wrote about elsewhere. They took time out of busy schedules to meet with us and answered our questions. Some of them acted as tour guides, showing us how to get to the remote villages where they worked. I always felt welcomed, never once feeling like we were imposing. Quite the contrary.

I wish that I could find the words to express that spending time with each and everyone of these folk had a profound and lasting impact on me. As the weeks have gone by, I have found myself thinking about each and everyone of them. When I do, I offer a prayer.

People I met

I have been reviewing my blog entries over the last couple of days. I don’t think that I have done justice to all the wonderful people that I had the occasion to spend some time with during my two weeks in Malawi last June. I am not just talking about the staff and volunteers working with the various programs that we visited, all but a couple being funded by the Global Aids Interfaith Alliance (GAIA). There were also people we met along the way: staff in the various hotels and lodges where we stayed, the children and adults we met in the villages we visited, storekeepers, customs officials at the airport in Lilongwe, South African Air employees at the airport, people we met in restaurants, etc. As I write this over four months after I returned home from Malawi, I am certain that there are people that I have left out of this list.

In some cases the people who stand out the most to me, over four months later, are the ones who are nameless, with whom I had the very briefest of encounters.

There was the smiling warm welcome of the customs officials at the airport the day we arrived.

All the children who mugged for our cameras.

The entire congregation at the Our Lady of Fatima Roman Catholic Church in Salima where we worshipped our first Sunday.

The foreign currency exchange teller the one time I exchanged currency at a bank. He had a nice smile.

The two young men at Senga Bay who sold me some beads.

A woman who worked at the Malawi Department of Health who told me where the restroom was. I did not know where to go, so I asked a woman in an office. She was very nice.

A couple of female police officers.

The students at the Lydia Projects secondary school.

One of the managers at the Hotel we stayed in Zomba.

The waiter who brought me some bread to eat during a power failure because I was feeling queasy from taking my malaria pill on an empty stomach.

A woman tending pigs in one of the piggeries we visited.

Some boys learning carpentry.

Our guide for our two-hour trip on the Shire River in Lilondwe.

A child with AIDS sitting in his mothers lap.

A village chief.

A young Malawian man who is a mountain biker.

Our guide at the Mua Mission who told us about tribal customs in Malawi, and how they differed from region to region.

Girls jumping rope.

After clearing customs at the airport in Lilongwe for the first leg of my flight home, Lilongwe to Johannesburg, I found that the rest room in that portion of the airport was closed. The customs official let me back into the main terminal to go to the restroom without having to clear customs a second time.

When people die

I was going through the journal I kept while I was in Malawi looking for my notes on the education system in Malawi, when I ran across something that I have been meaning to write about. That is, what happens to the possessions, including a house, when someone in Malawi dies.

In America, unless there is what is known as a Last Will and Testament providing otherwise, the house, possession, money, etc. will probably go to the spouse and children (or other family members) after the decedents debts are paid. I am being extraordinarily simple minded in that statement because I want to make a comparison to the Malawian way of doing things. We heard a couple of stories of how it works in Malawi. To put it simply, in Malawi the brothers of a man who dies can come and take the dead man’s property, leaving his wife and children with nothing. There was the young man, D, whom we met early in our trip. D had to leave the University in his third year when his father died to help support his family.

Another women we met, C, was finishing her Ph.D. at the time we met her. Her first husband died, and his family came and took everything. C was left with nothing. She worked hard, eventually going to graduate school where she met the man who became her second husband. C told us that there is a new law that says that the wife and children can keep the dead husband’s property.

Fish, part 3

One of the highlights of our trip was our two–hour boat ride on the Shire River. We got a chance to see fisherman first hand. Two or three men or older boys man a small wooden boat. I believe that the boats were similar to what I would call a row boats with one man standing in the stern (back) working the fishing nets. We saw several fishing boats during our two–hour cruise on the river.

We also saw large groups of people at a couple of sites along the river. According to both Luzu and our captain, the people gathered at these sites were wholesalers or distributors. The fishermen sell their catch to these wholesalers or distributors. They in turn, sell the catch to other distributors who then sell the fish to restaurants, grocery stores, or smaller operators who sell at open–air markets. Or they may sell the fish on their own without going through a middleman.

Fish, part 2

On our first full day in Malawi, we went to open a open air market in Malawi. And you guessed, there were lots and lots of fish for sale, sardines and tilapia (or chambo)

mostly. Two things interested us, one was that the fish sellers displayed the fish in very interesting decorative patterns. I’m sorry that I did not take any pictures, so you’ll have to take my word for it. I still have the image of circular patterns of sardines. Real pretty.

More interesting was that the fish on display was not on ice. And there was no refrigeration. We asked our friend at CARD and Luzu about this. Turns out that the sellers and the buyers know just how long fish keeps without ice or refrigeration. Buyers may have coolers and they can purchase ice blocks.

I had chambo, a whole chambo in Zomba. It is quite tasty. By a whole chambo, I mean whole, including the head. I couldn’t deal with the eyes. Someone told me that the eyes are good, but I decided to pass on the eyes.

Fish, part 1

We are big fish eaters, eating fish a couple of times a week. Like many other Americans, I go to the store to by my fish. In some cases, the fish has been prepared in some way, salmon is marinated, crab cakes are made, or fish is breaded. Yes, I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I do not marinate nor do I bread my own fish. We spend a little more for the fish we buy, but it is worth it. One of our few luxuries.

Thanks to federal regulations, I know the country of origin of the fish I buy and whether the fish is what they call “wild” or “farm raised.” It always tickles me to buy “wild” swordfish because I do not think that swordfish is raised on fish farms. But the law is the law. We like farm–raised salmon over wild salmon because farm raised salmon are fatter than their wild relatives.

Sometimes I think about where the fish comes from and the loss to fish populations. I know that I should not eat swordfish, because the swordfish population is severely depleted from over fishing. So, I compromise and only buy swordfish once or twice a month.

And we like to go to fish hatcheries. Don’t ask me why. We just do. Deep sea fishing, well let’s just say I had one bad experience on a fishing boat off of the Jersey shore watching people torture this poor blue fish. I prayed that I would not catch any thing, and I did not. And to this day, I rarely eat blue fish.

So, when I travel, I check out the fish. I know that my Lake in Vermont is stocked with trout. The Rivers near me are stocked with trout. I find out where I can buy good fresh fish, and when the fish deliveries come in.

When I traveled to Malawi, one of the first things that I noticed was fish. Fish was sold by in the open–air market in Lilongwe. Stay tuned for more on fish in Malawi, tomorrow.

Goats

I think that I already written about the large number of goats that we saw during our travels in Malawi. If I recall I wrote about the large numbers of goats that we saw on my second or third day in Malawi.

Fairly early during our two-week stay in Malawi, we realized that Malawians rarely used goats for their milk. Given the great poverty and the attendant hunger and malnourishment that goes along with poverty, some of us wondered why goats were not used for milk. I learned from some of my fellow Malawi travelers that goats are high milk producers. When we asked Malawians that we meet about this, many did not know. Some may have offered that some of the goats we saw were wild, but my notes may well be a little fuzzy on this particular point.

Our friends at CARD offered an answer to the question of why goats were not used for milk. The answer is that most families have cultural resistance to this because in their way of thinking, goats are only for meat. At least one of the agricultural programs in Colleges in Malawi are working on a goat dairy program. But this is on a small scale.

I should add that I don’t recall seeing many dairy cows in Malawi.

Food Security in Malawi

On the morning of our last day in Blantyre (June 25), we had our second meeting of our trip with staff members of the Churches Action for Relief and Development (CARD). CARD is affiliated with the Global Aids Interfaith Alliance (GAIA), working in the southern region of Malawi. The staff was a fount of information on a variety of issues relating to life in Malawi. While we were waiting for others to join us, we had a chance to pick the brains of these CARD staff members. I will write about a couple of the issues that we talked about in the next couple of blog entries.

My notes are a little sparse in places, so please bear with me. We were about 10 or 11 days into our trip at this point. At this juncture, I was mentally exhausted and very homesick so I was not journaling with the vigor and intensity that I was earlier in the trip.

The first item in my notes from that day falls under the broad issue of food security.


The context for writing about food security in Malawi is simple. There is not always enough food, especially when there has been a drought as there was a couple of years ago. Or when droughts are not an issue, excessive rains during the November to May rainy season can lead to excessive runoff and even floods.

Included among the discussion points were:

1. Is there enough food to sustain a family through a drought;
2. Nutritional value of the food;
3. Accessibility of the food, who gets the food, in a particular household; and
4. The right of children.

CARD does the following:

1. Responds to emergencies, i.e. something the people were not expecting such as drought, and floods.
2. Works with villagers on ways that their village can work towards being self-sustaining including: goat production, crop production, and water sanitation.

HIV/AIDS is an added pressure in the case when one income earner is lost due to illness or death.

I was interested to find out that something on the order of 40% of (family) harvest loss of is due to post-harvest infestation in the form of mice and insects. Chemicals are utilized, although I suspect that this come at an added cost that might be out of the reach of many families. A number of natural remedies are used. Ground up leaves from a certain trees or ashes are mixed with the maize to ward off weevils. This seems to work. Ashes are also mixed in with the potato crop to prevent weevil infestation.

One model for rodent control that we discussed could come through communal grain banks. Here individuals come together as a group and construct a brick structure – bricks can be made by hand – with rodent guards. The idea is that the individuals in the group will come up with an agreement on storing and then using grains and other groups. I got the impression that this model is not yet widely used, if at all. But it is an interesting one. And if the bricks can be made by hand and then cured by fire – to stand up through the rainy season, I think that this could be a very cost-effective solution for rodent control.

Resuming blogging

If you have been following my blog, then you know that I have not posted anything in over two weeks. I spent some of this time starting to write some private reflections based on my recent trip to Malawi. But the last of those writings were about ten days ago. I have been in a relatively dry period in regards to any writing. I am not here to go into a prolonged analysis of the whys and the wherefores of this dry period. Rather, I am ready to move on and continue with posts to my blog.

I am not exactly sure what I will be writing about here. It may or may not be about Malawi. I think I am at a turning point in my blogging about Malawi. If I am to post on a more regular basis and, at the same time, take time when I am preparing an entry on Malawi, I might want to intersperse my Malawi entries with reflections on other things.

Power Blackouts and Malaria Medication

By our third or fourth day in Malawi, we experienced our first power blackout. This one lasted about one hour. By the end of our first week, we had experienced three more. All around the dinner hour, at least what was our dinner hour. We tended to eat on the late side, sitting down somewhere around 6:30 to 7PM. Eating out in Malawi, often requires a longer wait for food than I am accustomed to in America. Sometimes we would not finish eating until 9:30 or 10PM at night.

Some places had generators, others did not. At the hotel where we stayed in Zomba, they had no generator. Between the power failure that meant that they could not cook, and needing to take my nightly malaria pill with food, I was not a happy camper. I usually had a package of nuts of a power bar in my bag for such a purpose, but had opted to leave all this in my hotel room. Silly me. The one night I really needed the power bar so I could take my malaria pill, I did not have it. I took the malaria pill about an hour or so after the “designated time”, designated because I was under physician’s orders to leave 12 hours between my malaria pill and my thyroid pill.

Some more time passed, and I started to feel nauseous from taking the malaria pill without food. I mentioned this Don, who is a physician, and he helped procure some bread from the kitchen so I could settle my stomach. It worked, and our food came not long after.

It was not until sometime in our second week that I found out the reasons for the power blackouts. That is, I asked Luzu. We were in Malawi during their dry season. Much of Malawi’s power comes from hydroelectric power. The problem is that during the dry season, there often is not enough hydro power to fulfill the demand for electricity. So, they have scheduled power blackouts that are advertised in the paper. The theory is that, assuming you can get a newspaper, you will know when your neighborhood is going to be blacked out and you can plan accordingly. I forgot to ask Luzu, how the word of the planned blackouts gets around to those who do not have newspapers. Perhaps the radio is used, or failing that there is always word of mouth. In any event, I finally had my answer.

Camaraderie in Malawi

There were eleven of us in the transformational journey group that traveled to Malawi. We ranged in age from 22to the mid-60s with eight women and three men. Seven were from the Pasadena/Los Angeles area, of these seven; five are members of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. Stephanie who joined us from South Africa grew up in Pasadena. I believe that her parents are good friends of Don and Mary. I am from New Jersey, while Adam and Rachel were most recently living in Tennessee (I think).

I had never met any of these wonderful people in person prior to traveling to Malawi. The one exception was Don Thomas, whom I had corresponded with over e-mail for about one year. Don had mentioned in an e-mail about how those of us traveling to Malawi together would become “life-long friends.” I had no idea how true his words would become.

To say that I was pleasantly surprised by how safe I felt with the other ten people in our Malawi transformational journey group is an understatement. From the get go, it was as if I had known the other nine people in our group for a long time (Jean joined us on our fifth full day in Malawi). The “normal” walls and barriers that Isometimes put up between others and myself were not there. Sometimes it takes a little while before I feel “safe enough” in a new situation to “knock down the barriers that I erect that may prevent people from getting to know me. Not this time, there were no barriers. In fact, on our first plane ride together from Johannesburg to Lilongwe, a couple of us remarked to the other about how safe we felt with each other.

A couple of days after we arrived, we were commenting on how it felt like we had known each other for “a long time.” While all of us were careful to respect each other’s boundaries, I felt a sense of safety, a sense of community. We were on this journey together and we took care of each other. A couple of us felt “sick”, mostly stomach problems, but nothing major. We never got stuck on a poorly maintained, badly rutted dirt road in a remote section of Malawi. If any of things were to happen, we would have taken care of each other.

I have not seen anybody since I got back. I miss everyone. Many are on the west coast. Don and Mary are embarking on a new adventure in New York City for the remainder of the year. I hope to see them before they go back to the west coast. Adam and Rachael are leaving Malawi on September 20th for Europe and the Middle East. I think that Stephanie is back in South Africa. Tim and Jane have family not far from me, I hope to see them when they visit.

I am assured that we will be friends forever. And even if it has been years since we last saw each other, it will be as if it was yesterday.

Tires

On our second full day in Malawi Luzu had to get the spare tire on the van fixed. This was the day we drove from Lilongwe to Senga Bay with two visits in the Salima area. As we approached Salima I recall noticing a group of young men at the side of road repairing bicycle and automobile tires. A tire repair shop without walls, so to speak. Our first stop was in the town center of Salima for the ATM and a grocery store.. When we had finished our errands in town, Luzu announced that he needed to get the spare tire on the van fixed, that it would only take an hour. Luzu dropped us off at our first stop of the day, the Salima Aids Support Orginazation (SAS0) before driving off to get the tire taken care.

Well before we ready to leave SASO, Luzu reappeared with the van. When we were done, those of us who were riding in the van piled in. Don and his wife and his two passengers got into the car and we were off. Luzu stopped at the same “tire repair shop without walls that I had noticed on our approach to Salima, paid the young men, got the spare and reattached the spare to the back of the van,

I did not think about getting the spare tire fixed at the time. After all, no matter where you live keeping your spare in good repair is a common sense. After all, no one wants to be caught by the side of the road with a flat tire and an unusable spare.

It took a visit to my mechanic the other day to have him repair a flat tire to get me thinking about what it might be like to be caught in remote Malawi on an unpaved road with out a good spare. Not fun. Even with a good spare, it might be difficult to jack up the car on a badly rutted dirt road. Nothing like that happened.

To be honest, it was Ed’s – my mechanic – interest in Malawi that gave me the idea to write about getting the spare tire on the van fixed. Ed, if you are reading this, this is for you.

Riding in pickup trucks

I experienced another first while I was traveling in Malawi, seeing 20 people or more crammed in the open back cargo area of a pickup truck. Yes, you are reading this correctly. As we drove around central and southern Malawi such trucks crammed with passengers in the exposed cargo area were common sights.

Here in America, riding in the open cargo area of a pickup truck is illegal in many States. As a result I see fewer pickup trucks carrying passengers in the open cargo area than I did when I was younger. But, I have never ever seen more than a few people riding in an open cargo area. Perhaps four at the most, and they were always – if memory serves – sitting down in the bed of the cargo area,. I don’t think that I ever saw anyone sitting on the “rim” of the cargo area.

Another common form of transportation in Malawi involves people the owner or daily renter of pickup truck cramming as many paying passengers as they can in the cargo area of the truck and dropping them off along a route. People will be sitting in the bed of the cargo area as well as all around the rim. I’m not making this stuff up.

The Malawians have a name for this, but I deleted the e-mail from Stephanie where she reported on her experience riding as a passenger in the back of a pickup truck along with the translation to the local language.

I wondered what keeps people who are sitting on the rim of the cargo areas from falling off, especially on a rutted dirt road. But what do I know?

Minibuses in Malawi

Common forms of transportation in Malawi are minibuses. The van that our group rented, driven by Luzu, was about the size of what I would call a cargo van, but our van had about four rows of usable seats. The last row was taken up by our luggage, so lets say the van could fit 10 to 12 passengers and luggage comfortably. If memory serves, minibuses are larger, perhaps a little the small buses (about one-half the size of school buses) often used in America for senior citizens and disabled persons transportation programs, Churches, Children’s programs and the like.

While we were reasonably comfortable in our van, even with our luggage and an extra two passengers, every minibus I saw was literally packed full of people with children riding on the laps of their caretakers, other passengers holding bags in their laps, etc. In addition to being crowded with passengers, minibus drivers always traveled at a high rate of speed. Luzu always let them go past him and was quite good at dodging minibuses when they pulled over to disgorge passengers.

I asked Luzu about the minibuses when I was riding shotgun on day. There seem to be fixed minibus routes both within cities such as Lilongwe and between towns and cities, e.g. Lilongwe to Zomba or Lilongwe to Selma. He went on to explain that the drivers rent the vehicle for the day from the owner for a fixed rate. The more trips that the driver can complete, the more money they can take home. I recall that the daily rental fee is not “cheap” giving the drivers even more motivation to make more trips. And they compete with other minibuses on the same route. So if a driver can get to the destination first, they can beat out their competition.

I received an email from Stephanie a few days after I returned to America. She reported on a trip she took to go scuba diving in Lake Malawi where she traveled part of the way by minibus. I can no longer find her email, having deleted it by accident. I do remember that her account of this portion of her trip was in line with the crowded minibuses that I observed. I recall that she enjoyed this crowded ride, in part because she was sitting next to an adult with a baby on their lap. She spent part of the ride allowing the baby to hold onto her finger.

Sharing the road

When I first got to Malawi, sharing the road with walkers, people on bicycles, ox carts, goats took some getting used to. The scene on the road as we approached a settlement of any size with market stalls an/or stores was unreal. There would be many more walkers and bicyclists than in rural areas. And I’m not talking about two lines of people walking down either side of the road. There would be people walking two or three abreast on each side of the street, along lines of minibuses disgorging passengers, bicycles darting in and out of traffic, and walkers making the "mad dash" across the street. Our drivers were very adept at navigating through these busy areas.

On the outskirts of the towns and in rural areas, there were the ever present goats that would dart in front of our van. Neither Luzu nor Don hit a goat. Walkers were always present, although in rural areas they would walk one or two abreast, often on dirt paths that ran along the road.

I lived in urban areas for about seven years in my twenties. In New York City where I lived the longest, I rode a bicycle sharing the road with cars, trucks, and buses. Not necessarily minding my manners, but getting away with it. If you are driving near a dairy farm in a rural area, you may have to stop while the cows cross the street to or from a barn or a field. You may have to slow down to follow a slow moving piece of farm equipment until it is safe to pass. Visitors to some National Parks in America and elsewhere may have to share the road with various types of indigenous wildlife. Nothing I had seen to date in America prepared me for what it means to share the road in Malawi.

About half way through our trip while I was riding shotgun with Luzu, he commented to me that “in Malawi we share the road.” Roads in Malawi are for everybody, not just cars, vans, and the like. There will only be something resembling “sidewalks”Only in larger towns and cities such as Lilongwe, Blantyre, and Zomba were then anything that resembled "sidewalks."

When I came home and drove around my town, I immediately noticed how quiet the streets were. Even crowded American interstate highways have taken on a new meaning.

Private Toilets and cell telephones

I went back and read the first posts I made from Malawi on June 14 (the day of my arrival) and June 15 (my first full day). The idea being that I wanted to compare what I wrote in my blog for those two days with hand written entries in the small journal that I carried around with me in Malawi. The idea behind this exercise is to provide new fodder for my blog.

You may recall that the first order of business on June 15 was to an open air market in Lilongwe. One thing I did not write about were, what at first glance appeared to be, public toilets. If I recall, these toilets were located just outside the entrance to the market. Given my interest in clean water and sanitation, I was quite interested in finding more about these toilets, so I asked Luzu. He told me that yes, these were flush toilets, and that people had to pay to use them. He went on to explain that the reason there is a fee to use the toilets is because if no fee is charged then the toilets fall into to disrepair. The fees cover, among other things, the cost of maintaining the facilities. I intended to go back to the market and see this facility close-up, paying the fee to do so. I never made it back.

In my early entries from Malawi, I listed my observations while riding in the van So, I have written about the many roadside stalls that I saw during our travels. By the end of our trip, they were a routine sight. People selling goods ranging from cell phone minutes to mice on a stick to vegetables to hand made furniture to coffins. On that first drive from the airport to Wendels, I noticed that a large number of small booths (or kiosks) with signage saying “celltel” or something similar. If memory serves, “celltel” is one of the cellular providers in Malawi. People at these booths had cellular telephones, selling time to individuals who wanted to place a call. In addition, some of these booths sold what are known as sim cards.

Unlike my cellular telephone that I can only use with a specific cellular carrier, unlocked cellular telephones can be purchased which can be used with a variety of cellular carriers. Activating an unlocked cell phone involves purchasing something called a sim card that contains a certain amount of airtime. When the airtime is used up, you purchase another sim card. The use of sim cards seems commonplace in Malawi. Americans can purchase an “unlocked cell phone” in Malawi at a much lower cost than in the U.S. However, to a Malawian, even a phone that is inexpensive to an American is going to be quite expensive. The cost of a cell telephone could explain the apparent popularity of “celtel” booths, especially around the cities and larger towns. If a Malawian could not afford one a cell phone, the “celltel” booths provided an opportunity to place a call. I never did find out what people charged for the use of their cell phone. My unanswered question is could a Malawian of average means, which probably means they are extremely poor, easily afford to purchase a couple of minutes of cell phone time at a “celltel” booth?

A little more about Luzu

I want to spend a little more time telling you about Luzu, one of our two drivers in Malawi. One of the things about Luzu that was interesting is that he grew up in northern Malawi, and we spent all of our time in central and southern Malawi. So, he talked a little about some of the customs and traditions that he grew up with. For example, the language is different and how village chiefs are elected is also different.

At some point he ended up in the Lilongwe area, I am sure that he told us how he ended up there, but because I did not write it down, I don’t recall the story. Anyway, he currently lives with his wife, two daughters, a (great) nephew and other relatives in an area known as Likumi about 8 km outside of Lilongwe. He took all of us to his house, actually a small compound on our next to last full day in Lilongwe.

Luzu works for a nongovernmental organization (NGA) in Malawi that works with wildlife preservation. In addition, at the time we visited him he had two kinds of chickens, about 400 layers and 500 broilers. His wife, whom I also met along with his youngest daughter, works for the government (I think). So, the chickens bring in extra cash. In a recent e-mail, Luzu reported that he sold the layers because they stopped laying eggs. He keeps the broilers for two months before selling them off and replaces them with a new batch of broilers. In addition, he had one or two roosters and some guinea fowl. I was very impressed with how clean and well cared for his chickens were along with the fact that they mix the chicken food themselves. He had a couple of young men who may have been part of his “extended” family who helped with the chickens.

They also had some fruit trees, and space for a vegetable garden.

I was quite impressed with his resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and his generosity of spirit. I met his wife, and although we only spent a little while together, I felt as if I had known her for a long time, a kind of “kinship” that is very special and perhaps very “African.” Whatever words I use to try to describe this are wholly inadequate. I hope you get the idea She too shares Luzu’s resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and generosity of spirit. My only regret is that I was too tired to think about getting someone to take a picture of his wife and me.

Both of his daughters are in school. I know that his oldest daughter is in secondary school and his youngest daughter may be getting ready for secondary school. I can tell that they will go far.

Back from Vermont

I have been back from Vermont for four days now. It turns out that with the exception of my “diary”, I did no writing to speak of. So, I have nothing to post. I did write one entry that I had intended to post here. I still may do so, but it will require revisions.

Hello from Vermont

I am one week into my vacation. A very nice and welcome interlude here in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The usual vacation activities. I have at least one entry that I will post when I get home next week and have more time to spend on the internet.