Castles Made of Sand: A Spider's Story

I was watching in awe a reddish garden spider, perched cunningly in the middle of his web on the front porch of my house this morning, presumably waiting for his breakfast, when "whoosh" both he and his web were gone! A bird got him.

I am reminded of Life's brevity. Here one moment, gone the next. Doesn't seem fair. You go to all the trouble to build up a life of security around you and it is obliterated in seconds.

My grand daughter called this morning to tell me of the horrible beating of a man in the apartment below hers. She woke up to a scuffle and shouts and went outside to find a man pale, and standing in his doorway covered in blood; he had apparently been beaten with a hammer. A crowd of people gathered to stare. No one did anything. Finally, she applied a towel to his head to stop the bleeding. Though the man had been rude, even mean to her and her roommate, she saw no reason not to help.

She is shaken. Her false sense of security has been stolen from her.

There is little relief in the thought that we are all in it together, insects, animals and humans, in the locked jaws of fleeting Life. A breath away from our own death. I have often wondered how and when I will die and whether it is ultimately a blessing that we don't know the answer. All we know is this moment.

I want to go (since I must) in my sleep of natural causes. Maybe in the middle of a pleasant dream. Recently, my wife spent a week in the hospital as a result of Pancreatic pain. Next to us was an Asian patient, a mother, with a big family. Often 6 or more visitors at a time crowded inside the room. They often stayed beyond normal visiting hours and were noisy. They irritated my wife, who was in intense pain, and I.

One night about 2 AM when they were particularly noisy and crowded all the way into the hallway, I stepped outside to ask them to please be quiet. They quieted down for a short while, then the noise resumed. When the night nurse came in to check my wife's vitals some time later, I complained to her. "I know", she said sympathetically, "but the mother just died." I felt embarrassed.

The next day, I stood outside the room and looked at the empty bed. She was gone, just like that.

A couple of nights later about 3 AM, as the night nurse attended to my wife, she accidentally set off the Code Blue alarm which is initiated when a patient is dead or dying, and the alert sounded up and down the halls on loudspeakers: "Code Blue, Room 1425", "Code Blue Room 1425" over and over. Medics and doctors came running into my wife's room! "I'm sorry, I'm sorry", the nurse pleaded with the entourage, "I set off the alarm accidentally."

So this is what the end feels like? The moral of the story I guess is: don't lavish too much time building up your web.

A Prognosis: Hope Your Cardiologist Didn't Cheat on HisTest

Face it, we are a cheating culture, a culture of cheaters and we condone it, explicitly or implicitly, despite our virtuous sermonizing against it when we do our taxes, get more change back than we should have and say nothing about it, or were not charged for an item we bought at the store and keep walking towards the door.

I read with horror yesterday about how teachers in the Atlanta School District were caught and confessed to helping their students cheat on achievement tests in order to preserve their jobs and not lose government funding denied to poor achieving schools. In some cases teachers met in a cafeteria and with the blessing of their administrators, erased wrong answers and bubbled in the correct ones.

As a former teacher I can sympathize with wanting your kids to succeed and the pain of seeing them fail. Many a time I lamented having to give failing grades to a student who tried hard or who I particularly liked. It was so easy to just give them a passing grade and no one would be the wiser. The student would certainly have not complained. Statistics show that most students cheat at one time or another on tests and that most do not see it as wrong "because everybody does it".

In fact, I remember at times looking at the answers of the kid in front of me or to my side in class and copying. In high school, I survived Biology by sitting next to one of the brightest  girls in class. She would do all my written work, and I would do all the anatomical drawings of insects, frogs and amoebas for her. We both got A's!

In my college English classes I often caught students cheating by copying essays directly from a book or magazine, or copying each others papers. I read every single paper and I could tell each one of my students after returning their papers what topic they had written about, so it was not that difficult to find duplicates. Easier to spot were those papers copied from professional sources; the vocabulary, diction and sentence structures gave them away.

In one case, I allowed three young men into my class who were on the school's basketball team who simply "had to pass their English requirement to play for the team", according to the coach who personally called me on the phone asking that I let them into my already full class.

On one assignment two of them turned in an identical essay, word for word! It was a no-brainer. At the very least, they could have tried to change a few words or sentences around, but no they were identical! They must have thought I was stupid. Naturally, I asked to speak to them after class, and told them cheating was unacceptable in college. I also took the opportunity to call their coach "personally" to tell him about the incident. Did they learn their lesson? Who knows.

But teachers helping their students cheat, now that's a new one for me. For the most part though, besides writing some prompts with a ball point pen on my wrist or palm once or twice in order to pass a test, I was mostly an honest guy and didn't cheat on tests, especially in my latter years in college (now, on taxes that's another matter), becoming my own anti-cheating patrolman.

Thus, I began each semester with a lecture on the virtues of not cheating the gist of which was the moral: When we cheat, we advocate and condone cheating and make it acceptable for every other person to cheat us, and ended it with this admonition:

 "For those of you who see nothing wrong with cheating on tests, I hope your Cardiologist or heart surgeon did not get his medical degree by cheating on his tests. Good luck."

Berkeleylandia: A Valley Transplant

Fresh out of high school from a small Central Valley California cow town, Modesto, California, I walked straight into the heart of Bohemia, U.S.A. and streets filled with bare feet, reefer smoke, the smell of wine and coffee, tie-died hippies, anti-war protestors, artists, musicians, self-made poets dropouts and losers.

It was the late 50-s, early 60's when I first set foot in Berkeley California and loved it; I was an art student just down the road, at the other end of College Avenue in Oakland, and spent much of my off time lurking and hanging around Telegraph Avenue.

It was the perfect excuse for an artist with a little black sketchbook to gawk at an sketch an incredible assortment of rogue characters, sipping wine or coffee in some cramped joint smothering in the smell of cigarettes, pot, and incense.

Small cafes offered venues of poetry and live music, folk and sometimes jazz combos. Stands lining the streets pawned tie-dyed t-shirts, homemade jewelry and incense. Young people with long hair, torn pants, and scrawny beards lined the streets and I was frustratingly straight, dieing to fit in somehow.

An shady dingy foreign film cinema with two screens and no soda and popcorn concession, was a hangout for audiences hungry for dark and austere foreign films with tedious English subtitles, films by Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Eisenstein, Satyajit Ray, Luis Buñuel, Cocteau, Di Sica, and Kurosawa. Speechless, I pretended to enjoy the films just to be hip and in the process broadened my world beyond imagination far beyond the Hollywood epics and musicals I had grown up with.

I stayed away from the protests over one thing or another, war, politics, freedom of speech, religious and artistic freedom. Mainly  I was afraid to take a stand on anything. I was a looker, an observer, a watcher. And Telegraph Avenue, that leads straight into the University of California was abuzz with colonies of anti-establishment beings, all at home with weirdness. I loved it. A weird Chicano boy from the valley.

So I was happy just pretending to be a citizen of Berkeley, never giving away my true origins. The underground station KPFA was airing strong then showcasing the best in subterranean folk and rock. On Friday nights they held a live open mike hootenanny allowing local musicians to play. I would accompany my old friend, artist and folk singer Barry Squires who often took a turn playing. I was amazed by the talent the show attracted: mandolin, guitar, sitar, banjo and harmonica players and crooners.

I  loved hanging out at the record and bookstores and spent hours scouring beautiful books full of exquisite reproductions of the masters, architectue and ancient art, books I could never afford. I even liked their smell ever since I was a kid in the public library in Modesto.

My favorite restaurant on one corner of the avenue, served decent Mexican food reminding me of my roots, and my favorite dish was Chicken Flautas, topped with guacamole and served with a side dish of hot salsa to dip into. I never ordered anything else. Once, after telling the owner I was an artist, he asked me if I could design him some new menus. I did, and instead of the fee, I asked if he could trade me free meals and he agreed. I was to eat there free for a long time afterwards.

To this day, I still get a kick out of visiting Telegraph Avenue, which to me and many others is Berkeley and never cease to be amazed how it still is a haven for misfits, drifters and dreamers just like me.

JFK: The Day I Saw The President

John Kennedy was easily my favorite president. He was the favorite of most Mexicans because he spoke to poor people and he was Catholic. My mother kept a picture of him and Jacqueline on her altar, right alongside the Sacred Heart, and the Virgin of Guadalupe.

It was 1962, and I was working as a florist in a small flower shop on Telegraph and Ashby Ave. in Berkeley not far from the University with the manager, Doug. It was mainly a "bucket shop" but we did do flowers for funerals, weddings besides selling flowers in bunches.

I had heard that JFK was going to visit the University, but I had no plans to see him since I was working that day. We had the radio on listening to music as we normally did when the announcer cut in and began to give a street-by-street rundown of the President's entourage.

"The President is now on Shattuck Avenue heading towards the university", said the announcer with a voice of anticipation. Shattuck was only about four blocks west of Telegraph Avenue. That meant they would be crossing Ashby Avenue in minutes!

"Doug, I gotta go see the President, is it alright? I'll be right back?" "Sure, say hello for me", he joked. I tore off my apron, rushed out the front door and started running. "What if I miss him?" I thought to myself. "What if he has already passed when I get there!"

I arrived at Shattuck Avenue to find that crowds had already lined both sides of the street. I pushed my way through the crowd until I found a space where I could see the cars. He had not arrived yet, but I could tell by the screams and claps that he was near!

Several black limousines sped by. But which one was he in?! Then, I saw his face through the backseat window. He was waving at the people. He looked right at me and waved. I furiously waved back.

I felt a thrill, a rush. I had just seen the President of The United States!! "Just wait till I tell my mom", I thought to myself. The trip back to the flower shop was uneventful. I went back to stripping thorns from roses and leaves from carnation stems, and consolidating flowers into buckets, but with a renewed sense of vigor.

Acronyms: America's Secret Love Affair

Have you ever noticed how we Americans just love our acronyms, especially the three letter kind? Following is a list of 93 popular ones I have compiled. See how many you can identify and then go to the scoring guide below to rate yourself. Feel free to add to my list.

USA, FYI, CSI, CNN, NYC, PBS, MIA, KIA, DMZ, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, GPS, BBC, AAA, WWW, GNP, FBI, CSI, SSN, DOA, IRS, HUD, KKK, MLK, JFK, LVN, DDS, LAX, SFO, MSG, MSN, MTV, APB, NBA, NSA, PDQ, RAF, SOS, TSA, WMD, DOD, BBQ, APR, INS, VIP, NFL, MRI, FDA, CEO, RIP, LED, EPA, MPH, RPM, ATT, TCP, JAG, PCP, OMG, WTF, GOP, CFO, POV, PDF, MFA, BFA, TLC, TNT, PFC, SMA, DMV, BMW, AKA, MVP, KFC, CPR, MJB, MGM, WAC, UPS, DDT, PCP, PPO, VCR, DVR, DVD, FTD, ARM, ATT, AIM, BBB.

Scoring Guide:
80-93 = True Blue American
60-79 = Bright Blue American
40-59 = Faded Blue American
20-39 = Grayish American
0-19 = Foreigner

What Happens When We Die and Go To Heaven?

 

Father Sarducci just has to be one of my all time favorite comedians. The outfit, the phony Italian(?) accent and his wit and satire still cracks me up. He is devilishly irreverent. 

In this riotous clip, Sarducci posits that life is a job, "Vita est Lavorum", and that God pays us $14.50 a day. But when we get to heaven, and he begins to settle our account, He deducts a certain amount of  cash for every sin, depending on the gravity of the offense!

I knew we had to pay for our sins, but this won't leave us much left in the end, speaking for myself.

LOL: The End of the World, Again

Being Catholic, before the 1950's we didn't hear much End of the World  stuff coming from the pulpit and it wasn't until I started dating a  protestant girl in high school and attending her church that I encountered the imagery and metaphor from the Book of Revelation, wars and rumors of wars, The Antichrist, Armageddon, the Seven Seals, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, earthquakes, fire and brimstone, and The Rapture.

My mother told me I was going to hell for attending another church but I decided to risk it for love. "Te vas ir al diablo", she would warn. But secretly I was enthralled with all this stuff I had never learned in mass. I even bought two Bibles, one the King James translation and the other, the Catholic Douay version and compared key passages in the New Testament!

One day, as I was telling her of the signs before the end time, war, earthquakes, famine, things I was reading about for the first time despite the Catholic Church's warning not to read the Bible for ourselves. "Se va acabar el mundo", I told her. I'll never forget her answer immersed in sarcasm, "Yes, the world es going to end alright, when you die!" And she laughed. It seemed a little sacrilegious to me because that is not what I meant. She seemed to derive pleasure from her ability scoff at things I was learning from the Devil's church.

"Beware of false prophets" the scriptures warned and of all the soothsayers who will arise in the end times, predicating the day and time regardless of Christ's admonition: "Of that day and time no one knows except the Father in heaven."  I looked for Antichrists, Hitler? The Pope? My neighbor? I trembled at the thought of the Heavens parting, and Jesus descending on the clouds, the dead rising from their tombs, and His parting the masses in two, the chosen whose names are written and the Book of Life, and the cursed damned to eternal damnation in a fiery hell!

I was puzzled by Christ's words "Behold, these things will come to pass before this generation ends." But many generations have passed and the end still looms, despite countless predictions like the latest one by Rev. Harold Camping who predicted our demise would occur at 6 PM (Eastern or Pacific Time?) on May 21, 2011. If he had been correct I wouldn't be writing this (or maybe I would if I had not been one of the chosen selected for the Rapture). But as far as I know all my buddies, family and neighbors are still here, except my compadre who I haven't seen since that day! Odd, because he doesn't go to church at all.

The whole thing must be embarrassing for believers since the fiasco served as a perfect opportunity for skeptics, atheists and non-believers to mock the faithful. Twitter and Facebook subscribers went nuts. Said one local believer "Something went wrong. God didn't give us the understanding correctly." That's right, blame it on God! He must have erred in communicating the details. I would say that Mr. Camping is the one who didn't "get the understanding right". Yet, I feel even sorrier for all the pitiable souls who sold their houses and belonging to follow this misguided fellow.

Yet, I'm going to confess something to my reader here. Though I too scoffed the whole idea, I didn't snicker too loudly in case the dude was right. I mean, he could have been right and had the last laugh. Reminds me of a religious billboard I once saw on Highway 99 which usually touted scripures. But this day it said: "I would rather believe in Hell and be wrong, than not believe in Hell and be wrong". In the former, if were wrong we have nothing to lose, except to perhaps have been a bit better person in life?

So I think I will continue to chuckle at these recurring prophets, but I will avoid laughing too loud just in case one of them gets it right! If enough people keep predicting the end of the world, one of them is bound to get it right. So I'll give it a shot, next Sunday at 9:AM. Pack your bags.