Writing Reality

  It's funny, the times I felt compelled to help someone in my therapy business. I didn't concern myself with a payback. I barely thought that they would take advantage of me or lie to me. I saw my business as the need for some selflessness, thinking altruistically. That being said, about six or seven years ago I had a wicked week in my office. Business was down. Yet, people needed me. So I was busy. I was giving discounts for a variety of reasons. Any excuse i could find to give them to reduce the cost to them I figured. And then the six people of that week who I knew I wouldn't take money from. I ran my business, like usual as I had for nearly three decades. I knew who couldn't afford me. Or rather my full price. I knew the very elderly may have money, especially those living in my county. However, they also would need finances for living, medications, proper medical care, perhaps a live-in caregiver for a better quality of life versus a riskier lonely one. Too,...

‘Mom you’re barbaric’. Well not said exactly like that, but close. It was said by our then youngest an eighteen-year-old senior in high school after the January 2 nd Monday Night NFL game was postponed due to Damar Hamlin’s cardiac episode during the game. Both our oldest, who was then home from college for winter break, and our youngest agreed at the dinner table the following evening on that subject. They felt fighting and contact sports such as contact football like played in the NFL were too dangerous to exist. I was only slightly taken aback by their thoughts on such sporting events. I reminded them that fighting sometimes saves people from doing something illegal. I explained how it may help ‘air-out’ one’s frustrations. I explained how it was my own form of art. They weren’t buying it. Yes, I still have it in me to fight, to throw leather, to wrestle, to choke people out and so forth. I know what my excuses have been for training and fighting legally. Those feelings are all...

  "I'd do this again." I commented at the end of my exit review with my boss's bosses. The two men were stunned. "Really?!" I remarked, "Well, yeah.  Either next year or the following year. It was fun and a great experience.  The people were great too." The two looked at each other then at me. "Wow!" One stated. Yes, the work was difficult.  There really was no pay, for it was service to country. The stipend given paid for my $189 hiking boots, my walking poles, backpack items, spray bottles of deet and natrapel. My protein bars, my car's usage, gasoline,  dungarees, cammies, socks and other miscellaneous items I needed for the three month service stint. Most serving were between ages 18 to 35. My immediate boss was 45 and his boss's boss was age 50. However,  everyone else involved in service were under age 36. All thirty-nine service volunteers. Few were above age 28. And I knew I could trust these young minds. Trust them li...

  "You could have a steam trainIf you'd just lay down your tracks..."---Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' lyrics. This is not the tune that lay in my mind this morning as I reminisced about yesterday's volunteers to help on trail crew.    However, as I looked up the proper definition of sledging that song popped up. I say sledging, which is my own take on swinging a hammer that we call a "Double Jack". The Single Jack is six pounds. I know that because our regular crew of five including me and one staff supervisor are handling Harriman State Park Trails, and have to carry about four of those, two shaping hammers, along with a hoist, belay bag with heavy equipment, first aid kit, double Jack, three 18lb rock bars, a lopper, three buckets, three eye to eyes, two burlap straps, two green wrapping straps, two pick Mattox, a roe hoe or two, a bar for either the two ton or one ton hoist, the feathers with pegs for splitting rocks that we drill... s...

 Today 07/01/2016... This below story started 07/01/2011, five years ago... Sometimes, It Takes A Prayer A sunny day in June, I was getting ready to run and I saw an acquaintance walking around the block. I hadn’t seen her much, due to our schedules being busy. I knew something was up. I’d seen her husband outside for the first time the week before. He looked like death. They were not an old couple. Their children were in their twenties.   I saw her and asked, “Hey. How are you doing?” She sighed uncharacteristically, for she was not someone who complained about anything the times we’d known each other and spoken. She responded, “A little stressed.” I asked, “Not that I want to ask this personal question, but how’s your husband?” She responded, “Not good. That’s why I’m stressed. He goes for another scan in a week or so. He has cancer. We moved our daughter’s wedding up by two months. This way he wouldn’t miss it.” Here it was Thursday, June 30th , the wed...

One may wonder what would inspire someone to work hard labor voluntarily. For me it’s the love of many things. It’s the passion that won’t be broken. Because there are so many aspects to such service for me, that it may seem beyond comprehension. I’d compare it to my youthful desire to enter the military as a young child. Then for a multitude of reasons only to follow through thirteen years later at age eighteen entering the Marines. There were things that followed me throughout my life. Sometimes they were questions of how I ever gave up my over decade’s life dream to become a New Jersey State Trooper. My childhood desire to never wed—to never have any serious relationships with another human being. I desired only service in military and law enforcement nearly my whole childhood. Too the extent that even one of my Marine Corps superiors expressed to me last July, “I never thought you’d ever get married. It just wasn’t who you were. You were always a loner.” I replied, “Yeah. I know....

  This afternoon as I watched a documentary about a tragedy. I whispered an expletive followed by, “And you can go to hell. For real.” It was after William Lucas a former director of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center stated many years later in a documentary of 2020, “I would have made the same decision to launch as I had back then….” Lucas continued, “I did what I thought was right in light of the information I had, and if I were going over it with the same information I had. I’d make the same decision.” Yet it was clear that he had knowledge that the launch could be compromised if the outside temperatures were below 53 degrees Fahrenheit. It was 38 degrees at the time of the launch of the shuttle Challenger on January 28 th , 1986. Lucas repeated in the documentary that they needed to stay on schedule. I then whispered to myself, “Who were we still racing? The Russians?” I knew that they weren’t fairing well in general in January 1986. I sat back and watched as William Lucas who...