Life and Times at Cranberry Lake

This blog is about the life, wild and otherwise, in this immediate area of Northeast Pennsylvania. I hope you can join me and hopefully realize and value that common bond we share with all living things... from the insect, spider, to the birds and the bears... as well as that part of our spirit that wishes to be wild and free.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Young Mother Picked Up on Charges of Not Having New Plates on the Car

A friend shared with me a completely unfair legal issue, and to show empathy, I told him this old incident:

Just to let you know how unjust the police can get, I'm going to relate a story of way back -still in the 1960s when I had moved to Vestal, NY.

My daughter Jo was about 3, and my son 4. I hadn't bothered yet to change my license from my Connecticut one, but had my fairly new Ford station wagon registered, and for some reason that year they were sending new plates for cars that year when people sent in their annual application for registration renewal. We weren't to put the plates on a day before the date unless we weren't out on the road [don't really think it would have mattered]. I didn't want to forget, so I had the new plates in plain sight on the dash.

The children were driving me nuts (the day new plates should have been affixed to the front and rear bumpers) so my cure for that was to go for a drive. They were both in their child or booster seats, and in my harried state, I didn't even think about the plates until I was headed towards Endicott on route 26--still in Vestal--and saw the Vestal police ahead of me. They had pulled someone over. I immediately remembered the plates, and was wondering what I should do, and pulled over about 100 yards in back to figure it out. Then I realized that if I make a U-turn to go home, I would look suspicious. So I just pulled past the police, knowing that they would and they did immediately signaled me to pull over.

This little Tin Soldier of a police man comes over to me and questions me. I said that I forgot to change the plates, indicating those on the dash, before leaving the house. [The kids were quiet and fascinated... too bad they didn't act up, maybe he would have just let me go.] He looks at the plates and says, "How do I know that they are YOUR plates. Let me SEE YOUR LICENSE! [I could see that he was really angry and aggravated... must have been the previous pull-over, and he was taking it out on this harried young mother] I was close to tears by this time. He looks at my license and says, "This is a Connecticut License... How long have you lived here?" [I lied at that point]. I said, "Oh, about a year... maybe less."

He says something like, well "I don't know what I'm going to do with you!" and I got really mad. I'd had had it with the kids, and now this?! I then said, while I opened the door right into his chest. "WELL, THEN YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO ARREST ME AND THROW ME IN JAIL. IT WOULD BE A GOOD BREAK TO GET AWAY FROM THE KIDS!"

[I didn't mean to hit him, but now I realized that I could be in deep trouble having hit him with the door, and was almost in tears... angry red-eyed kind of tears were welling up.]

He says, "YOU'RE GOING TO COOL DOWN, SISTER!! I'M GOING BACK TO THE SQUAD CAR, AND I'M GOING TO COOL DOWN, AND THEN I'LL BE BACK... YOU STAY 'RIGHT THERE'!!"

By then I was getting kind of giddy with the idea of sitting in jail, and what would they do with my kids? My husband was still at work. Would they throw us all in jail?

He comes back to the car. (His partner was probably thinking he was crazy for even stopping me at this point.) He says, "Here's what we're going to do! You are going to turn around and go home, and we are going to follow you. Once you get home, don't leave until you've put the plates on the car!"

I did what he said, and they followed me to the bottom of my street, Galaxy Drive. [Thank goodness they didn't follow me up the street. I was worried what the neighbors would think.]

Days later, when I could see this objectively, I realized that that police man was probably close to the breaking point when I came along. I guess the previous pull over had given him some grief, otherwise I couldn't understand his having stopped a woman and practically accusing her of being a criminal... AND ...with two babies in the car). Gads, how inconsiderate and cruel! I almost wrote to the Police Station about the incident, but was afraid they'd find out how long I'd lived in Vestal driving with a Connecticut license. Instead, I went to the Drivers Registration and Licensing Bureau and got my NY license. Didn't even have to take the driver's test.

Police can be so unfair in accordance to how their day has been. I also think the uniform does something to them. Anytime I've worn a uniform, even as a child as a school crossing guard, I've felt that surge of power. I still had that feeling when I was working for the airlines and, though optional in the reservations' office, and would wear my uniform to work.

I don't know if my incident long ago helped him in my telling it, but I hoped it did. Then I figured it would make a good blog.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

SEASONAL PREPARATIONS:

No, I'm not going to talk about Thanksgiving or Christmas, but hunting season and future cross country skiing.

It seems almost instinctive that when I walk my trails year long that if improvements can be made, I'll just automatically make them. Then when the leaves start falling, and that nutty smell, like the smell of a cracked open English walnut, doesn't actually fill the air, but when I take a deep breath through my nose, I can smell it and it must click into some throwback instinct to prepare for winter. Then instead of walking with my trekking poles, I'm apt to have one pole in one hand, and either the small pickax or the large clipper in the other. The pickax is just the height of a cane, so I can actually use it for knee therapy lightening the wear and tear on my problem knees. There are rocks to remove from the path, and roots that cross the path above the soil, and are best removed just so it's a smoother walk. The wood doesn't scar the skis. The rocks, however, scar the bottom, and my skis are Bushwhackers from Trak: a wider ski for maneuvering through obstacles or going down hills with sharp bends on the path, and they already aren't very speedy, so I want their bottoms slick as possible. But I think I just like the job of clearing and smoothing the paths. I don't really need the exercise or extra work, but it doesn't feel like work to me. It feels good. It's getting into the NOW. It's good meditation. My cares and woes just dissipate when I work on my trails.

Meanwhile, Tom takes trips to and from where he hunts during deer season in Tunkhannock, for checking and repairing his tree stands. When he isn't doing that, he's getting his hunting equipment ready... his camouflaged outfit, and safety orange hat and vest or coat washed in special odorless detergent, and hung out to dry. He checks to make sure his guns are clean, oiled, and sighted in. His ATV has become an important vehicle for helping him get to his tree stands, and to haul the venison out of the woods. There are knives to be sharpened, and string, twine, and ropes to consider for getting the quarry from the hunting area to his truck. This year he got better ramps for driving the ATV up into his truck.

All of this sounds like work... (?) ... did I say work? Like me and my trails, his preparations are a prelude to the experience of hunting where my man goes out alone and becomes One with Nature. All the problems of the world: the economy, politics, worries and woes are lost in the silence of the woods, up in his tree stand where looking out at the land everything seems smaller, and the wild world seems bigger. Peace and harmony come over him and he becomes a new man... refreshed and rejuvenated.

I love the autumn... not just for the colors, but for what it does to us internally when you go out to even just rake the leaves. We feel it even if we are trying to get our gardens cleaned up: the dead stocks from flowers bloomed and gone to seed; or the cornstalks in the vegetable garden bundled and "...why, they're kind of pretty. Why not decorate with them." Pretty or not, just the action of end of season activities, which are really beginning of the fall season, bring us a peace we'll never get from a couch in front of a TV.


Enjoy life. All is not lost. Climb a hill, look out at the land. Like Emily said in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town", "Oh earth, you are too wonderful for anyone to realize you."

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

"THE OFFICE" SHOWS US WHY WE NEED TO DISTRACT OURSELVES:

My husband hates "The Office", so I hadn't been watching it until I started recording it for my friend who cannot get NBC, as she picks up by antenna the channels from Binghamton, New York. She told me about some of the scenarios from the shows, and I said, "Oh, I don't watch it, I just record it for you." We usually like the same things, so I then began reviewing the tapes myself before loaning them to her to watch. Well, at first I thought Michael would drive me crazy with his being so politically incorrect. My God! He says the damnedest things! [It's a show one either loves or hates, I guess.] But that show makes me laugh out loud like no other... and we all need a good laugh at this point in our American lives.

Last night I was reviewing the episode from November 12th, and a feeling of doom or hopelessness came over me. I couldn't imagine why, because it was one of the funniest episodes yet, as they played a game 'like Clue', but not. They call it Belles, Bourbon, and Bullets. Let me quote parts of how Wikipedia summarized that episode:

"The day gets off to a rocky start when rumors from the Wall Street Journal point to financial troubles for Dunder Mifflin. In an attempt to get the worried staff under control, Michael (Steve Carell) and Jim (John Krasinski) call the monthly staff meeting to provide what few assurances and optimistic viewpoints they can on the steadily worsening news. In a moment of quick thinking, Michael pulls out a party game, Belles, Bourbon, and Bullets, and forces the rest of the staff to play along. Jim tries to stop him, citing that today is one of the few days they cannot afford to play around, but is reminded that he owes Michael 'one' after he stopped another idea called 'Tube City.'

"The game is set in Savannah, Georgia, and everyone has to find out who amongst the party goers is the murderer (from clues and questions they are given)....Almost everyone present starts to play along."


Their taking on the characters along with appropriate Southern accents was absolutely great. I didn't understand the game, but was having such fun watching. Steve Carrel as Michael gets so into the game, that Jim and Pam, begin to worry about his mental state, as if Michael really thought he was back in 1955. Steve's Savanna accent was wonderful, and he managed to be adamant enough about others assuming their character, that just about everyone maintained their role, against Jim's good judgement. But when really pressed with what could be really bad news, Jim sees value in what Michael is doing. [again from Wikipedia]:

..."Dunder Mifflin['s] CFO David Wallace (Andy Buckley) finally returns the phone calls to Jim, and reveals that while nothing has been officially decided yet, Dunder Mifflin is expected to be insolvent by year-end. Knowing how damaging this could be to his staff, Jim deliberately hides this news from them and nudges them back into the party. At the end of the day, Jim is 'happy that we have two co-managers today,' realizing it helps having someone to distract people from pressing issues."

Point is... about there I had this feeling of doom come over me for the rest of the evening. After a night's sleep, I picked up the notebook this morning to I write my thoughts, and after pondering my mood of the night before, I realized that the reason Tom and I search for good programming each evening after the nightly news, until we turn in at night, is because we also need distractions. Just as no one can do much when working in an office which it caught in the economic downturn, there is not much we can do from our living rooms about the Nation's downturn. What Jim actually says about the way that Michael had the office distracted was something like this. "If your ship sinks, and you manage to get into the lifeboat with your family, maybe it would be faster if both parents were at the oars, but sometimes a parent has to play games with the children so they won't be so overwhelmed by the disaster."

I even thought back to what I'd heard about Hollywood surviving the Great Depression, as more people than ever were still going to the movies. People have to either be distracted by entertainment, or do as I do and take a walk to a high hill and look out over this great earth, and proclaim that "God is in Heaven and All's right with the World." It's not for me to say not to do anything, but despairing is absolutely not the way to go. I had identified with The Office's despair. At the end of last evening, I picked up the Sue Grafton ABC Mystery novel I'm now reading, and read until I was sleepy.... (Hmmm, A bit like LA's version of Bells, Bourbon and Bullets.)

Sunday, November 01, 2009

THE UNIQUENESS OF YOUR OFFSPRING:

I'm not talking about the next Einstein here, just the wonderful things our childlren sometimes do of their own invention.

When my son August was a preteen he took valuable(?) lessons away with him after attending Sunday School. They only have an hour, and were doing art that day when he discovered the fan and the plastic bag idea. I guess the teacher had rigged up a place where they could put their wet paintings set up inside a big plastic bag with a fan blowing directly in on the wet paint to dry fast so they'd be able to leave with their paintings when their parents picked them up.

I had tried that black plastic, used to keep down the weeds between rows, back when I'd tried gardening about that time, and he asked me if he could "have" the rest of the black plastic. Sure, I said, thinking there was very little left. He was always doing some project with his friend Eric and Johnny. This time it was a humdinger. With the use of duct tape and the black plastic, they had found that they could make a rather large "bag", and when they taped it to the blower side of a standard floor fan, after rolling the bag up, by turning on the fan full blast, the bag would unroll and fill up ...no matter how big the "bag" was.

His father and I were watching television in the living room, and he set up this bag thing so it would fill up in our direction. It was so funny. We had no idea. He set it going, and the big black blob started growing, and growing until it practically swallowed us on the other side of the room. August had a great time with that, even leaving the fan on at night downstairs in the rec room where he would have sleepovers inside his big black blob of a room. To my memory, this is the most unique thing any of my children have done.

We had a dog that would ring the doorbell in order to be let back in the house, and my husband Al, would stick the dog outside when company came to show them that trick. So, of course, Al had to pull the "Hey August, get the fan out and show our guests your big black balloon room." Then he would watch the expressions on the company's faces while the blob kept expanding and expanding like some horror film blob that was going to eat them, and grow bigger and bigger until it claimed the world.

If you have a remembrance of something unique you did as a child, or your child or grandchild did, I wish you'd leave a comment... or go to my Facebook page with it. But comments on blogs are welcome.