Covid

The City Of Brotherly Love At Night

Yeah, Another Blogger127 Comments

As readers of Yeah, Another Blogger know, I do a fair amount of walking. Many of the walks take place in my suburban neighborhood, whose pavements I pound for 25 or 30 minutes per session in the hopes of maintaining a decent level of cardio fitness. I would describe those outings as meh, because suburbia ain’t exactly crammed with interesting things to look at.  

Pretty regularly, though, I head into Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, which is close to my town, to walk for pleasure. There, sometimes by myself, sometimes with my friend Gene, I cover a bunch of miles, avidly checking out multitudes of this, that and the other thing, many of them fascinating. I never get tired of spending time in The City Of Brotherly Love.

Now, just about all of the Philadelphia hikes have been in daylight. So, when the notion popped into my head recently to stretch my legs extensively in Philly under darkened skies, I gave it the thumbs-up. After all, I hadn’t indulged in a lengthy nighttime stroll in the city since the one I wrote about in 2018.

Thus, on a balmy Tuesday evening earlier this month, I rode a train into central Philadelphia, and then spent two hours wandering all over the place. I took nearly five dozen pictures along the way. A selection of them illustrates this story.

A bit to my surprise, none of the city sections I visited were anything resembling deserted. The sidewalks weren’t crowded, but they were busy enough, with folks popping in and out of stores and eateries, going about their business in other ways, or just plain hanging out. Not bad for a Tuesday night. I was glad about all of that in terms of my personal safety, and also because it showed that the hard hits delivered by the COVID pandemic have been reversed substantially.

A group of locals on a Chinatown street corner.
The China Gate, in Philadelphia’s Chinatown section.

When it came to hanging out, nobody I saw that night did it any better than a group of folks chatting away on a street corner in Philly’s Chinatown neighborhood. I’d have liked to have walked right up to them and ask if it would be okay for me to take an ensemble portrait. But I’m a chickenshit when it comes to approaching strangers for photographic reasons. My loss, of course, as I’ve missed out on any number of revealing pix over the years. Nonetheless, I like the snapshot in which, from a distance, they appear. The mural on the side of the TeaDo tea house anchors that scene with pride. And I like even better the picture of The China Gate, the magnificent welcome-to-Chinatown arch that straddles 10th Street a block from where I blew my chance to get up-close and personal with the locals.

A guy on a blanket in Rittenhouse Square, one of Philadelphia’s best parks.

A similar situation presented itself an hour later in Rittenhouse Square, one of Philadelphia’s stellar parks, where a guy was seated on a blanket. He was as content as can be under tree branches that smiled down upon him lovingly. Once again, a close-up would have been cool. On the other hand, the park’s calm vibes wouldn’t have been as evident in a close-up as they are in the picture I took instead.

City Hall (left) and skyscrapers.
A block of Sansom Street, not far from City Hall.
Hard Rock Cafe, Philadelphia.

Calm vibes, in fact, filled the air everywhere I went. The city was quieter, more welcoming than it is during daylight hours. The semi-darkness helped bring that about, and I was under its spell. Hell, just about everything looked good to me. City Hall, smack dab in the middle of central Philadelphia, and the modern skyscrapers just beyond it dazzled in an understated manner. Streetlamps and store signs bathed narrow blocks, such as the Sansom Street corridor west of City Hall, gently and warmly. A giant guitar sculpture, lit up like a Christmas tree and hanging from the facade of Hard Rock Café, never looked better.

But all good things must come to an end. A few minutes after admiring the guitar I entered Jefferson Station, within which I hopped aboard the train that took me back to my little town. It had been a big night in the big city.

Yeah, long solo walks in stimulating places are my cup of tea. I live in the moment during these mini adventures, enjoying the heck out of being able to go here or there as I like, answerable to no one and curious to see what’s around the next corner. They make my cares and woes disappear, leaving me with a sense of freedom that normally I don’t experience all too deeply. Man, I’d be golden if I learned to incorporate that orientation much more fully into my everyday life. Will it ever happen? Well, . . .

Hackensack

Yeah, Another Blogger147 Comments

The other day, while driving to Hatboro, a town near mine in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I heard on the radio a song I adore. It has a simple title — Hackensack — and always has made me go weak in the knees. Powerfully gentle, Hackensack tugged at my heartstrings as I made my way along the road. I hadn’t heard the tune in years, in effect had forgotten about it. Now it is stuck in my head.

Hackensack is by Fountains Of Wayne, a pop-rock outfit whose career spanned the years 1995 through 2013. During that time the band had one big hit, Stacy’s Mom, which came out in 2003 on the album Welcome Interstate Managers. Hackensack also is on that album. Without further ado, let’s give a listen to the recording I’ve become reacquainted with and addicted to.

What’s Hackensack about? Well, I used to think of it as a bittersweet lyric — I guess I viewed the words as both wistful and vaguely hopeful — woven into a melody that is as delicious as a summer breeze. A guy, probably a 30-something, pines for a girl he went to school with years earlier in Hackensack, New Jersey, the town he has lived in his entire life. Despite his infatuation, in reality he never knew her all that well. She moved away long ago and has made it big as an actress. Tell me, is it possible not to sing along with these lines, though they might also cause a lump to form in your throat?

But I will wait for you/As long as I need to/And if you ever get back to Hackensack/I’ll be here for you.

As noted above, I can’t shake Hackensack. Nor do I want to. A day or two after visiting Hatboro, where I got my cardio in by walking vigorously around town, I did a bit of research into Fountains Of Wayne. I read that the band consisted of Chris Collingwood (lead vocals and rhythm guitar), Adam Schlesinger (electric bass), Jody Porter (lead guitar) and Brian Young (drums). They recorded five studio albums, Collingwood and Schlesinger writing all the songs. The only band member whose name rang a bell with me was Schlesinger, though years ago, in my music-junkie days, I probably knew all of them.

During the research I also learned something I was aware of when it happened but had forgotten. Namely, Adam Schlesinger, poor soul, succumbed to COVID in 2020. He was 52. And I also learned something I hadn‘t known before: Three weeks after his death, Fountains Of Wayne, long disbanded, came together (with Sharon Van Etten filling in on bass for the departed) to honor Schlesinger.

The song they played was Hackensack. I watched the video of their performance. It really got to me, the words taking on new meanings and hitting home. I realized that Hackensack is not bittersweet, which, as I’ve mentioned, is how I previously would have described it. No, it’s emphatically a sad song. Hackensack’s protagonist is lost and clueless. He isn’t exactly climbing the ladder of success. And, of course, he isn’t going to get the girl. Or any girl, most likely. Man, I can relate. I once was in similar straits, going nowhere fast during much of my 20s. It was only because of the grace of who-knows-what that my ship righted itself eventually, allowing me to establish a decent career and find someone — the absolutely correct lady, no less — to be with.

I see now that, at their root, Hackensack’s lyrics imply what we all know to be true. That is, life can be scarily unpredictable and fragile. It’s a crapshoot, really. Nothing is guaranteed, certainly not longevity. Adam Schlesinger’s death, I think, touched his former bandmates deeply. By regrouping briefly in 2020, they are saying, by way of the song they chose to play, that they miss him a lot. He won’t be returning to the town of Hackensack, or to anywhere else. But they wish he could and would.

Here is the video:

Streaming Services, Where Would I Be Without You?

Yeah, Another Blogger152 Comments

A few months before the COVID pandemic erupted in early 2020, my wife Sandy signed us up for Netflix, a streaming service. She immediately dipped into its vast catalog of offerings, but I didn’t. This was predictable, since, for years, I’d been watching very little TV. However, when the pandemic halted the activities that until then had shaped my life significantly — such as going to concerts, movies, museums and restaurants — I was in need of high doses of entertainment. So, I turned to Netflix and HBO, another streamer, in order to fill the gaping void. (We already were HBO subscribers, because Sandy loves Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.) I’m damn glad that I did. Man, it became a five-to-seven-nights-a-week ritual, which has continued to this day, for Sandy and me to watch an hour or two together of one series or another, or sometimes a movie instead.

And the selections available to us expanded luxuriously about a year ago when we decided to give Jeff Bezos some needed cash by becoming members of Amazon Prime, one component of which is Prime Video, a streamer supreme. Around that time, too, we transitioned from HBO to HBO Max, as Max offers shitloads more series and movies than traditional HBO does. Holy crap, my mind was and remains blown by the nearly infinite mass of scripted, ad-free visual content a few clicks away from me. Though the world in many ways is a nightmare, its streaming realm is f*cking miraculous.

It was a good move on my part, at the start of my infatuation with streamers, to begin compiling a list of the series that Sandy and I jointly watch on television. After all, in a way the list is a partial record of our lives. The list also includes the series that she and I have viewed individually, but there aren’t many of those. Well, I ain’t lying when I say that the list has become really long. The number of productions that we’ve seen in tandem absolutely astounds me: 87, comprising limited series and also multi-season series of which we’ve taken in one or more seasons. Yup, though I don’t spend an inordinate amount of time in front of the tube, I’m a freaking streaming addict nonetheless. I haven’t partaken of scripted fare to this extent since I was a kid ages ago, when I feasted regularly on innumerable network-television series: Bonanza, Have Gun Will Travel, and Peter Gunn, to name but a few.

A good indication of the strength of my addiction (and Sandy’s too, it must be noted) is the fact that, as a team last month, we polished off every episode of Mo, A Very English Scandal, Entrapped, and Wednesday. We also devoured season one of The White Lotus and the first two seasons of Catastrophe (we’ll watch the remaining two seasons in February). I liked all the shows, one especially so.

The standout is Catastrophe. It initially ran on the United Kingdom’s Channel Four, ending in 2019. Prime Video started carrying it somewhere along the line. A rip-roaring rom-com that isn’t all fun and games, Catastrophe tells the mid-life tale of Sharon Morris, an Irish lass living in London, and Rob Norris, an American who hails from Boston. At the start of the show, Rob is in London on business. Friendly, frisky and 40-ish, Sharon and Rob like what they see in each other when they meet by chance in a pub, and lose no time in getting it on, repeatedly, over the next week. Rob then returns to the States where, some weeks later, Sharon phones him to announce that she is pregnant. Well, though they barely know one another, Rob moves to London, Sharon decides to have the baby, Rob proposes to Sharon, who says yes, and a married couple they become. A few hours after the wedding ceremony concludes, the unborn child silently proclaims that it is ready to meet the world ahead of schedule.

I won’t say any more about the plot. I will add this, though: Catastrophe (created by, written by and starring Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney, who, as best I can determine, were/are not romantically involved) leaves me breathless. Its eight or so principal characters are beautifully drawn and played, its dialogue whip-smart. The show, however, is not for anyone who isn’t up for getting drenched with candid sex talk and robust sexual situations, all of which, mind you, Catastrophe presents with a twinkle in its eye. Catastrophe truly is something else.

So, that’s the latest on the TV-viewing front from my abode. Seeing that Sandy and I always are on the lookout for series and movies to watch, we’d love to learn what you recommend, on streaming services or elsewhere. Thanks!

Back To Work!

Yeah, Another Blogger145 Comments

When I bid adieu to my government-work career 13 years ago, opting to cash in on retirement pensions, I knew that the regimented style of life I’d engaged in for decades was one I’d be remiss to discard entirely. I mean, I liked the job and didn’t mind the commutes. And, of course, I was very used to the overall arrangement. Thus, there was no doubt in my mind that I’d be lost at sea if I didn’t replace it, to a decent extent, with a similar routine.

That’s why, three days after hanging up my paid-employment spikes, I began trying out part-time volunteer jobs at various institutions, six or so months later settling down for the long haul with assignments at a health system (a hospital and its related facilities) near my home in the Philadelphia suburbs. I enjoyed the medical-related gigs quite a lot. But when the devilish coronavirus conquered Planet Earth in early 2020, the health system lost zero time in placing its volunteer staff on hiatus. The risks of us contracting the virus, or of infecting people with it, were just too high for the organization to keep us on board. And the same thing happened with a local food pantry where I helped out a little each week.

Wham! All of a sudden I had a bunch of extra hours on my hands, as if I didn’t have more than enough of them already. I took the easy way out, spending more time than ever on my living room sofa, one of my closest friends. I’m not proud to admit that last year, upon said sofa, I eclipsed the previous Guinness World Records top mark in the “Most Time Devoted To Scratching One’s Balls” category. Hey, what can I say? I ain’t all that genteel!

I’m glad to report that now I’m less of a slacker and balls-scratcher than I was, because in July I returned to one of the jobs that I had held with the health system, which has opened its arms to volunteers once again. Though I’m on site only four hours each week, I feel pretty damn good to have some amount of scheduled work in my life, and to be of service. More likely than not I’ll soon try to expand my hours by getting an additional assignment within the organization.

My official job title is Greeter. And greet people I do, via a “how’s it going?” or a nod when they arrive at the three-story medical office building whose ground-floor information desk I man on Thursday afternoons (the medical office building is across the street from the hospital). And I say “see ya” often too, as visitors, having completed their doctor appointments, head to one of the building’s several exits.

The main point of my being there, though, is to help people. A lot of them, for example, aren’t sure which office their doctor is in (a staff directory, mounted on a wall of the sprawling ground floor, is easy to miss), or can’t find the public restrooms or the alcove where vending machines are located, or aren’t even sure if they are in the correct building (more often than you’d expect, they’re not).

That’s where I come in, verbally or physically directing the lost souls to their proper destinations, answering a substantial variety of questions, and sometimes becoming involved in fairly complicated matters. Such as when I go to the multi-level parking garage behind the building with those who, their appointments over, can’t remember where they parked their cars. I have an excellent track record in locating the misplaced vehicles.

The job may not be top of the ladder on the excitement scale, but its pace and quality fit me comfortably most of the time. On average I respond to questions and unravel situations around ten times per hour, which is enough to keep me interested. And I like the fact that I never know what question or dilemma will be presented to me next.

I’ve been involved with people-oriented volunteer work for much of my adult life. As clichéd as it sounds, I believe in giving folks a helping hand, in paying back and paying forward. And I get a nice amount of satisfaction from my modest deeds. Thankfully, most people are on the same wavelength about all of this as me. If that wasn’t the case, the world would be an even more unsettling place than it is, right? Right.

Here’s Some Of What I Liked In August. What Rang Your Bell?

Yeah, Another Blogger159 Comments

Yup, August has come and gone. And in a few blinks of an eye, 2023 will have arrived. Zoom! I tell you, there’s no doubt that time flies at accelerating rates the older we get. And being genuinely old, I ain’t happy about that. To say the least. I don’t know how many grains of sand remain in the upper part of my hourglass. But, whatever the number, a shitload more would suit me just fine.

Anyway, there’s nothing I can do about it. So, to steer my mind away from the above paragraph’s depressing direction, let me mention some things that brought a smile to my crinkled face during the month that waved goodbye to us a handful of days ago.

First up are peaches and corn on the cob, without which life wouldn’t be as sweet. It being summer here in the USA, the harvesting season for those fine forms of produce, my wife Sandy and I would have been fools not to indulge in them during August.

I’ve loved peaches for nearly all of my life. I think, though, that their deliciousness began to make truly deep impressions upon me somewhere in my 40s. Man, what a treat it is to bite into a peach. A good peach, that is, not one of the mealy ones that have become more commonplace in recent years. Such beautiful flavor, as luxurious as you could hope for. And a texture, in the happy zone between soft and firm, that was made to seduce. I had some real good peaches in August. And tossed aside a couple of very sub-par examples too. You win some, you lose some. In any case, the peach season in the States hasn’t all that much longer to go, a damn shame.

Likewise, fresh corn’s availability already has peaked. Last month, getting while the getting was good, Sandy and I chomped down on boiled ears of corn at dinnertime three or four times. We gave them a thumbs-up. Helpful public servant that I am, I’d like to give you a tip for dressing corn on the cob: Peel back the paper a bit on a stick of butter, then rub the exposed butter all over the corn while twirling the cob. This method is much better than attempting to place pats of butter on the corn with a knife. Those pats, as we know, usually end up skidding all over the f*cking place. I’ve already accepted your thanks in advance!

Now it’s time to talk about television series, a media format that has pleased the hell out of me since the start of the pandemic. Hungry for entertainment, I began watching series in earnest at that time, something I hadn’t done in years. Sandy has been my viewing companion. And, even though Covid’s roar has lessened, we haven’t slackened our pace, for during August we devoured two limited series (We Own This City and the scripted version of The Staircase, not the documentary by that name) and one season each of multi-season productions (Capitani and Never Have I Ever). The first three that I mentioned are very much worth watching, but they are grim. Ergo, I’ll limit my commentary to the sole smile-inducing series among August’s fare.

Never Have I Ever, a thoughtful comedy on Netflix, tells the tale of Devi Vishwakumar, an Indian-American public high school student in California. Devi, smart as a whip but fairly low in the self-confidence department, isn’t one of the cool, popular girls at school. She has a loving family, fortunately, and several trusted, loyal girlfriends. Thus, her situation overall is quite decent, despite the cruel fact that the death of her father, during her freshman year, was a blow that tests her mightily.

There have been three seasons of Never Have I Ever so far. Sandy and I have watched them all, polishing off the latest run in August. During season three’s ten episodes, Devi loses a boyfriend, attempts to land a new beau, contemplates losing her virginity, and completes her junior year of high school with top grades. And her pals are no slouches in the busy-lives department either. Wow! There’s a lot going on in this show. Cleverly too, partly because of the sarcastic, sometimes-exasperated voice-over narration by, if you can believe it, John McEnroe. He’s the former tennis champ who was known for his verbal outbursts on the court as much as for the beauty of his game. McEnroe does a great job, adding volleys of whams and bams to a coming-of-age story that’s handled with insight and care.

With that, I’ll toss a tennis ball into your half of the court. What rang your bell last month, food-wise, entertainment-wise, nature-wise, anything-at-all-wise?

Short Books And Lots of TV: That’s Entertainment!

Yeah, Another Blogger168 Comments

Well, good ol’ 2021, part of the ongoing COVID era, found me doing this, that and the other thing to fill up the 17.5 hours during which I’m more or less conscious each day. None of those hours were spent at a workplace outside my home, because COVID deep-sixed the volunteer jobs that I had engaged in happily for years. I’m still working, however, because I spend a fair amount of time writing pieces for the shaky, suspect publication titled Yeah, Another Blogger. Yo, you take your part-time jobs where you can find them!

Writing aside, I’m left with shitloads of hours on my hands each week. Many of them are spent on my living room sofa, where I’ve mastered the art of staring into space as I twist the six strands of hair remaining on the crown of my head into fascinating shapes. Then I untwist them and start all over again.

Fortunately, I engage in a variety of more fruitful activities too. If I didn’t, my wife Sandy would have had me committed long ago.

For instance, I read books. Not an extraordinary number — hell, I know of some fellow WordPress denizens who tear through three or more books per week — but enough to keep my mind percolating a bit.

I’m picky, though. Any book that I contemplate tackling must be short, as in no more than 260 pages. And fewer than 200 as often as possible. I began taking this approach because my attention span and stamina, when it came to book-reading, began to fall off the table in 2015. I found my way to the ends of a mere two books that year. 2016 proved to be even worse, as I recorded a big fat goose egg.

Ergo, to kickstart my dormant love of books I devised the short-book strategy in 2017. And it has worked. Last year, for instance, I polished off 17 books, fewer than in my glory days of book-reading, but a number I feel good about.

All are members of the fiction category, including two mysteries (Sleeping Murder; And Then There Were None) by Agatha Christie that are as breezy and enjoyable as they can be. My list of conquests also includes Cathedral, a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver. Carver’s world is populated by people who have never figured out, or been encouraged to figure out, how to lead productive, happy lives. Matter-of-factly, but not depressingly, he lays out their plights in language that grabs hold of you from the opening paragraphs.

As it turns out, though, the first book I read in 2021 was the one I thought was the best: Flight, by Sherman Alexie (I expounded upon it here). It’s the tale, as vivid as daylight on a cloudless afternoon, of a 21st century Native American teen trying to come to terms with himself and with the country — the USA — that conquered and subjugated his peoples.

Yes, books entertained me mightily in the year that just entered our rearview mirrors.  The jollies that I got from them, though, paled in comparison to those provided by the magical medium known as television. Yeah, I spent quite a few hours in front of the home screen last year, continuing the practice I’d adopted at the start of the pandemic. Sandy used to watch the tube alone in the evening. But lack of outside-the-house entertainment options caused me to join her when coronavirus reared its f*cking head. We quickly developed into an adorable TV-viewing couple, settling in for an hour or two of laughs, gasps and whatever, five or six nights each week.

During 2021, Sandy and I watched around 20 movies on the tube and many more series than that. Almost every one was on commercial-free platforms and networks, mainly Netflix and HBO, both of which have become two of my closest friends. I’ve turned into a series addict, limited series particularly. Some of the limited ones that I especially liked last year are The Chestnut Man and Giri/Haji (tense crime dramas), Chernobyl (a dramatization of the nuclear disaster), and Maid (where relationships go very bad and where pure love is on display).

In closing, I give a hearty tip of the hat to Godless, a Western that, as is common to its genre, portrays a battle between decency and wickedness. This limited series is set in late-1800s Colorado. Jeff Daniels (Is there a better actor anywhere?) stars as Frank Griffin, an eerie bad guy who bosses around his band of associate baddies and takes his amputated left arm with him, like a good luck charm, everywhere he goes. (A bad wound necessitated the amputation.) In the end, does good triumph over evil? You’ll have to tune in to find out, because I ain’t one for dropping spoilers.

Thanks for reading, boys and girls. What activities/books/TV/music/etc. rang your bell in 2021? Feel free to comment.

Happy New Year!

Cape Cod 2021 Turned Out Just Fine

Yeah, Another Blogger153 Comments

I’ve mentioned before on these pages that Cape Cod, a 65-mile-long chunk of sandy land bordered on three sides by magnificent open waters, is a locale in which I truly love to place my aged, scrawny ass. My wife Sandy and I fell for the Cape, which is in the southeastern part of Massachusetts, USA, during our first vacation there. That was in 1998. Since then, to both of our amazements, we’ve returned nearly every year, usually in autumn. Who’d have thought that there would be a somewhere we’d want to visit again and again? Not us!

Cape Cod satisfies us in many ways. For example, we spend plenty of time outdoors, walking on sands, in forests and beside marshes, and gazing at the endless seas. We go to museums, art galleries, movie theaters and restaurants. We play mini golf, fly our roughed-up but seemingly indestructible kite at one beach or another, and wander around villages that range from stately to countrified to funky. Yeah, Cape Cod is cool, a combination of ingredients and opportunities that both soothes and invigorates.

Atlantic Ocean and Coast Guard Beach. (Eastham, Cape Cod)
Marshes at an ocean inlet. (Orleans, Cape Cod)

Last year was one of the two or three, since 1998, in which Sandy and I didn’t meet up with Cape Cod. There was little point in going there during a time when our artsy and gastronomic options would have been severely limited by coronavirus.

Autumn 2021 seemed worth taking a chance on, though. For one thing, and it’s an important thing, we’re vaccinated against COVID. Also, life in general is far less restricted than it was 12 months ago. Thus, in early October we crammed a shitload of clothes and other stuff into our car, and drove from our home in Philadelphia’s suburbs to Cape Cod. We unloaded the shitload in the house we’ve rented many times before, in the town of Orleans.

Provincetown dunes. (Provincetown, Cape Cod)
Provincetown village. (Provincetown, Cape Cod)

Thankfully, the vacation, two and a half weeks in length, turned out A-OK. Sure, due to staff shortages and other virus-related reasons, a good number of art galleries, cinemas, restaurants, you name it, had reduced their hours and days of operation. But we worked around all of that as best we could, planning our activities with care. We didn’t have to worry about the sands, forests, marshes and waters, of course, because they hadn’t altered their ways of doing business. I’d have sued the f*ckers if they had!

Little Cifff Pond, nestled in a forest. (Brewster, Cape Cod)

So, in the end we were almost as busy as we were in past years. We didn’t feel shortchanged at all.

Now, I could go on and on about where we went, what we did. But I’m going to leave most of that for another day. I do, however, want to write about an activity that I didn’t mention above, one that as far as I can remember wasn’t in my repertoire prior to Cape Cod entering my life. I’m referring to sunset-viewing. Man, I suppose that Sandy and I have watched our pal the Sun drop below the horizon something like 40 times during our Cape sojourns. We’re fans.

Sunset at Cape Cod Bay. Many of the sunset-viewers are elsewhere on the sands. (Skaket Beach, Orleans, Cape Cod)

Our fondness for sunsets led us one evening this month to Skaket Beach, a smallish stretch of sand on Cape Cod Bay. Although it’s in Orleans, our home base, we hadn’t been to Skaket in years. Pulling into the parking lot, I  couldn’t believe my eyes. There were a lot of cars there. Several dozen. And strung along the beach were 75, maybe 100 individuals, more by far than I’d ever seen gathered to witness a sunset. Most of the attendees were seated on the sands upon folding chairs that they’d brought with them. Folding-chairless, Sandy and I grabbed seats on a bench a few feet behind the beach and admired the lovely skies. It was almost 6 PM, and the Sun was only minutes away from saying bye bye.

Well, as soon as the sun disappeared a good round of applause filled the air. Not only that, quite a few folks immediately left the premises. Huh? What the hell was their rush? The curtain hadn’t fallen. I mean, sunsets are generous. They linger and linger, gradually changing their patterns and color intensities. Sandy and I stuck around for another 20 minutes, oohing and ahhing and shooting the breeze. Maybe we should have stayed even longer, but darkness was descending and dinner beckoned. Back to the emptying parking lot we went, soon making our way to a nearby restaurant. We’d just seen the best show in town.

(Please don’t be shy about adding your comments. Mucho gracias. All of the photos are from October 2021)

Seven Pix For Seven Months

Yeah, Another Blogger135 Comments

I don’t know about you, but for me this year has been flying by at an insanely fast pace. I have no idea why. I mean, time seems to zoom when a person is busier than usual and/or is having more fun than usual. But those conditions haven’t applied to me. And yet, boom! Just like that, seven of 2021’s months are over and done, and month number eight is nipping at their heels. What the hell is going on?

January 20, 2021 
(Sunset viewed from Willow Grove, Pennsylvania)
February 11, 2021 (Willow Grove, Pennsylvania)
April 12, 2021 (Abington, Pennsylvania)

So impressed am I by 2021’s fleet-footedness, I think it’s only right to offer up an essay that photographically honors its seven departed months. One photo from each month. I took six of the pictures and would have taken all seven if such had been possible. However, seeing that it would have been a major no-no for me to snap a selfie while being inoculated against COVID, I asked my wife Sandy to document the event.

May 14, 2021 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
June 5, 2021 (Jenkintown, Pennsylvania)

I’ve decided against using any of the dozens of 2021’s photos that I’ve already placed in this publication’s stories. As for the seven included herein, only two hold any special personal meaning, and I’ll get to them in a minute. The other five just look good to my eyes, and would have been mad as hell at me if I’d not deposited them on the internet. The parking lot scene, for example, which contains a lady so wrapped up in her thoughts that she’s oblivious to the sharp red car doing its damndest to get her attention. Hey, the car threatened to sue if I gave it the cold shoulder!

Now, on to the two pix that, plain and simple, had to be presented, and about which I’ve got a few things to say.

March 19, 2021 (Elkins Park, Pennsylvania). Photo by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin

Sandy and I frantically and tirelessly tried to schedule appointments for COVID vaccinations when vaccines became available early this year. Basically, it was an exercise in frustration. But then, five or six weeks later and from out of the blue, appointments for March 19 fell into our laps. I tell you, it was a powerful day for me, one I ain’t going to forget any time soon. As the needle entered my arm I breathed great sighs of relief and shed some tears of joy.

Four weeks later my second dose of Moderna was administered, and since then I’ve felt free. Yes, coronavirus remains a major concern, but far less so for the vaccinated as opposed to the unvaccinated. Man, vaccine refuseniks, brimming with loopy and misguided beliefs, astound and annoy me. The common good is suffering because they won’t grab hold of the lifelines being tossed their way. I tell you, we reside in a world that too often is surreal and disappointing.

Due to the f*cking pandemic’s intrusion, the fireworks event that Sandy and I attended on July 4 was the first impressive show of any kind that we had been to in 16 months. (In the USA,  July 4 is a holiday that commemorates the states’ declaration of independence from Great Britain in 1776.) It took place on the sprawling grounds of a public school, in a town a couple of miles away from our suburban Philadelphia home.

We walked and walked on the school’s ball fields and lawns till we were very close to where the explosions would originate. And then we waited and waited as the skies grew dark and the time advanced to 9:40. At that point I got up from my chair to try and find someone who might know the scoop, as the show should have begun no later than 9:20. No luck, natch. So, I walked back to where our chairs were set up, looked at my phone to check the time, and said to Sandy, “It’s 9:49. I don’t think the fireworks are going to happen. We should leave.”

July 4, 2021 (Abington, Pennsylvania)

Three seconds later I was proven wrong, as the skies lit up with wonderful shapes and colors and thunderous sounds erupted. For the next 25 minutes Sandy and I oohed and aahed. In the end, we were in the right place at the right time.

(Please don’t be shy about adding your comments. Gracias.)

Words From A Philly Fan

Yeah, Another Blogger144 Comments

I’m proud and relieved to say that I am fully vaccinated against coronavirus, the microscopic beast that, for us humans, likes nothing better than to cause pain and death and to make an unholy mess of things. And though there are plenty of unknowns about what the future holds, for the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, I’m proceeding on the assumption that the two doses of Moderna I received have done their job. In other words, protected me from developing COVID.

That’s why, earlier this month and for the first time since the pandemic began, I packaged together activities that used to be semi-regular parts of my repertoire. Namely, I hopped aboard a train, a means of transport that I deemed too risky to use pre-vaccination, and rode it for an hour from my suburban town to a station in the heart of Philadelphia, the city I know better than any other. Then, upon arrival, I took a substantial walk through The City Of Brotherly Love’s streets.

(Yeah, I could have driven into Philly at pretty much any time during the past year, but said drive is a major pain, as is finding somewhere to park in the sections I like to walk around in.)

Vivid sunlight greeted me as I exited the train station at 10th and Filbert Streets. With no game plan, no specific destinations in mind, I looked this way and that, shrugged, and let my legs and feet take me where they would. Three and a quarter hours later — a chunk of time that passed almost in a flash — I had walked upon a fair number of central Philadelphia’s blocks, covering about four and a half miles in all.

Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood

The area that I traversed on the Friday in question forms a large rectangle and includes a host of neighborhoods. Among them are Chinatown, Old City, Society Hill, South Street and Center City West. Old City and Society Hill, by the way, encompass much of what was within the city’s boundaries during its emergence as a major player in the 1700s. Reacquainting myself with these and other Philadelphia neighborhoods felt damn good, though my absence didn’t seem as long as it actually had been. What surprised me more than anything was that, despite all the walking I’ve done in central Philadelphia over the years, I probably never had been on some of the blocks that passed beneath my feet. For instance, had I ever before walked past or seen the enormous mural that proclaims WORK UNITES US on a building that is close to both Chinatown and Old City? I think not.

Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood
Philadelphia’s Society Hill neighborhood

Well, the conditions were as fine as any I might have dialed up. The skies were a sweet blue, the temperature mild, and a healthy number of young ladies strolling around looked superb. Within the eastern half of the rectangle that I visited, the sidewalks were not particularly crowded. Its Old City and Society Hill areas normally teem with tourists, but not now, needless to say. Add to that the fact that mucho workers who used to be on the streets during their lunch hours are now working from home, another consequence of the virus. I saw quite a few more people, however, within the rectangle’s western half, mainly because of cafes and restaurants whose outdoor tables, in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood, were packed. But not as many as I would have a year and a half ago.

Philadelphia’s South Street neighborhood
Philadelphia’s Center City West neighborhood

All in all, COVID has put Philly, and just about all American cities, I suppose, in a hell of a hole. For one thing, Philadelphia never will return to its former self should working-from-home remain a significant way of doing business. I mean, can you imagine the ripple effects that will occur if the city’s office buildings, whether modest or skyscraping, become half vacant, or worse, permanently? Man, I’m very worried about this.

Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square neighborhood
Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square park

However, all is not lost. The city has much going for it. Deep history. Parks galore. Handsome buildings several centuries old. Modern skyscrapers tantalizingly sleek. I saw examples of all of that during my walk. What’s more, during the last 25 or 30 years Philadelphia’s restaurant scene became world-class and its cultural offerings exploded in number. Restaurants, in general, have hung in there fairly well during the pandemic, though there have been casualties of course. And culture is slowly returning as pandemic restrictions are being relaxed more and more.

No doubt about it, I’ll head back to Philadelphia a bunch of times pretty soon. To trek again. To dine. To take in movies and rock and jazz concerts. I dig the city a whole lot, as if you couldn’t tell. If I didn’t, I’d have moved to another region long ago.

(Please don’t be shy about adding your comments. Gracias.)

Looking Back And Looking Ahead

Yeah, Another Blogger125 Comments

Well, the Covid pandemic demonically dominated the year 2020. And so far it’s doing a number on 2021. But vaccines have arrived and are being administered at an escalating pace, so there’s absolutely no doubt that the pandemic will end in the foreseeable future and that, as a result, happy days will be here again. That’s the opinion, anyway, of Anthony Fauci, a top doc and the face of the USA’s fight against coronavirus. My wife Sandy and I heard him say so earlier this month on a late night talk show. Man, he better be right.

When the f*cking virus gripped the States last March, I was scared shitless. As were zillions of my fellow citizens. Initially, I went to places frequented by others (I’m mainly referring to supermarkets) only once a week, wrapping up my business as quickly as possible to try and avoid becoming infected. But two or three months later, as my health remained stabile and my worst personal fears didn’t materialize, I began to gain courage. Since then I’ve been out and about for a fair number of hours each week. Cautious yet unafraid I keep my distance from others, wear a mask when inside stores, and use hand sanitizer liberally, Still, those precautions don’t guarantee protection from an invisible enemy. The vaccines do though, apparently. Needless to say, Sandy and I can’t wait to get jabbed a second time (we each got our first dose of Moderna on March 19).

My life has been diminished by the pandemic, but not incredibly so. Who am I to complain about anything anyway, considering that the virus has ended more than two million lives and significantly disrupted countless more? I’m an old guy on a pension, so I don’t have to deal with anywhere near the number of demanding familial and economic situations that are typical for many folks.

Yeah, I miss the part-time volunteer jobs that gave me heavy doses of satisfaction. By necessity, they were put on hiatus when the virus hit. And I miss the very decent social life that I had. But it hasn’t entirely disappeared, because I have met up with friends now and then, most notably in October. That’s when Sandy and I vacationed for a few days with two pals in Cape May, New Jersey. Social distancing went out the window among the four of us during that time. Very thankfully, we all remained virus-free. And those several days of normalcy have gone a long way in helping to keep my spirits up. 

And though I miss seeing my brother, sister-in-law and other relatives, most of whom live too far away to make getting together possible right now, I’m in regular contact with them. And it’s been tough not being able to go to movies and concerts — two of my favorite activities —  but TV-watching has kept me nicely entertained.

Overall, I’m in a fortunate place.

However . . . there’s no doubt whatsoever that I’m itching madly to reinstate the lifestyle that I’m accustomed to. A big part of which involves casually exploring places near and far, something that I’m wired to do. The good ol” pandemic has limited that dramatically.

When it comes to near, in normal times I often investigate on foot various sections of Philadelphia, a fascinating city a relative handful of miles from my town. But doing so, at least my way of doing so, requires the use of public transportation to get to the areas where I want to be. And I’ve felt that it’s just too risky, virus-wise, to situate my aged ass inside trains or buses. Yeah, soon after I get jabbed a second time it will be Philadelphia, here I come! 

In regard to far, heading to New Mexico with Sandy, to visit my brother and sister-in-law, is high on my list. Not only because we are close with them but also because they dig exploration as much or more than I do. Ditto for meeting up in Europe with Sandy’s and my friends who live in Gay Paree. We’ve had fabulous times with that couple in their city and also in Amsterdam and Edinburgh.

It’s almost closing time for this essay. I shall not depart, however, without expending some wordage on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which isn’t anywhere near my home but isn’t terribly far away either. I’ve written about the Cape maybe too many times before. But I can’t help myself. The reasons? Cape Cod fills me with wonder and delight. I feel totally at home there. At peace. Sandy would say the same about her Cape relationship.

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A small section of the enormous dunes in Provincetown, Cape Cod (October 2019)

On Cape Cod I’m almost as free as a bird. And nowhere more so than on its Atlantic Ocean coastline, a stunning expanse of water, beach, dunes and sand cliffs that never ceases to floor me. I’m anxious to stare once again at the ocean, and to do my old-guy scampering thing among the humungous dunes that dominate a long section of Cape Cod’s farthest reaches. The pandemic nixed the Cape vacation that Sandy and I would have had last October. But I’m taking Dr. Fauci at his word. In other words, I expect to be on Cape Cod with Sandy this coming autumn. Being there is going to bring me to tears.   

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Atlantic Ocean coastline (Eastham, Cape Cod, October 2019)

(How has the pandemic affected you and yours? Are you hopeful for the future? Please don’t be shy about adding your comments about those or any related topics. Thanks.)