Omniscient Narrator

Yesterday afternoon I got into a heated discussion with members of the writers group I attend, about self-censorship in regard to the possibility of offending someone's religious beliefs. The argument was not about me, but about another member of the group who I was defending.

The point was made that we all self-censor to a degree, that none of us reveals the deep, dark secrets lurking inside us. I responded, "What do you want me to say? That I want to slaughter my family with an ax? That no matter how much I talk about love, I have so much rage and hated, frustration and resentment, that I want to shoot up a schoolyard with an automatic assault rifle? That if I had the money I'd hire some goons to drag every kid who bullied me in fifth grade with a black bag over their head to an abandoned warehouse where I could beat them to death with a lead pipe? That I want to watch my wife do it with a donkey? That I want my wife to watch me do it with a donkey?

I think I'm pretty out there with my writing. That I reveal a lot of my inner thoughts, no matter how personal or potentially embarrassing. That, if you'll pardon the pun, I'm an open book. That I do this in the meager hope that someone in turmoil or need will find hope or the strength to keep on living for another day knowing they are not alone in their thoughts.

I was then accused (again back to the religious thing) of not being a spiritual person because I do not blindly believe in an omnipresent, omniscient, triune God. I responded by saying that after everything I've read, and everything I've said during the last year week in and week out you don't find spirituality in my writing, in my words, in me? And I was promptly answered with a resounding, "NO."

Frankly this surprised the hell out of me, and I was further told that the use of the word hell was offensive to them. It's okay for them to say I'm going to hell for not accepting Jesus Christ (whom I greatly admire as a teacher and a prophet, and whose words and works I strive to emulate) as my savior, but if I say to hell with it, I'm a blasphemer.

After the meeting broke up, my son came to collect me, and as I transferred into the car and settled into my seat, I glanced up and saw the friend I had been supporting standing outside my window. I rolled it down and he looked at me and said, "What the hell was that?" I shook my head and said, "I don't know, man." We remained silent for a moment, and I asked, "Are you coming back?" and he said, "At this point, I don't know." I told him, "Well if you want to keep coming, I'll support you, but if not, I think I'm done." We agreed to keep in touch.

I have enjoyed the writers group. I always said that if my local library started a writers group I would support it. It inspired me to write, knowing I had a forum to present and discuss my work, and that of other writers in my community. That it got me out of the house once a week. And in all honesty, it was fun showing off.

I received an email this morning from one of the members who had taken offense at what my friend wrote, which, by the way, was merely a light-hearted and humorous retelling of an incident from his military high school days, where he mocked a teacher about a bible assignment. I guess it should be mentioned that he and I are the token Jews in a Christian biased community.

The email said that after the blow up, my friendship was important to her and she wants to meet at my home to discuss things privately. Since she told me point blank that my morality, that my charity, meant nothing to her or to God as a sign of my spirituality, why should I feel any sense of obligation to respond?

I have always shied away from groups because inevitably politics and the herd mentality take over. I have noted that my life is a series of expansions and retrenchments. I put myself out there, accept commitments and follow through on them, usually at my own emotional and financial expense, and then I pull back, and if you'll pardon the pun again, regroup.

Next Monday I have a legitimate doctor's appointment, and will not be able to attend the meeting. I think I need a week off to catch a breath anyway. Will I return to the writers group? Well, all I can truthfully say is that I don't know how the story ends.

Wrapped in Swaddling Clothes

Happy thirtieth birthday to Nikolaus Stephen Stromberg - my godson, stepson, and in every way that counts, my son. He is my namesake, and my main caregiver. He has put his own life on hold to take care of mine.

Nik's parents and I were friends from college, and I served as best man at their wedding. One beautiful spring day in late April of 1985, Nik's father called to tell me Shellie had gone into labor and they were headed to the hospital.

I kept myself busy and looked at the clock to see an hour had gone by and I hadn't heard anything yet. Another hour passed, then another, and still no word. By the time another hour passed, I had visions of the happy family celebrating without me.

Six hours had now gone by and I was starting to get pissed and defensive. How could they forget to call me?

"What am I, chopped liver?" I thought.

By now all the women are saying, "What an idiot."

Well, I did hear from Nik's father later that evening and he said Shellie was still in labor and having a rough go of it. Eventually pitocin was administered to induce labor by a jerk of a (male) doctor, and Nik was yanked from her womb with forceps gripping his temples.

Nikolaus was named for Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children, and the most recognizable symbol of Christmas.

His early childhood was marred by an alcoholic father who worked the graveyard shift for the post office, and dragged Nik in his baby carrier to bars as soon as they opened for the day.

Shellie worked full-time, and generally his father work stagger home shortly before she was due home, place Nik in his crib, and pass out until he had to get up for work.

At this time I was a young turk, employed as the Operations Manager of a newspaper in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. I would drive out after the Saturday deadline to spend the evening, sleep over, and take a road trip on Sunday.

Nik and his Uncle Steve doted on each other. I took him for walks in his stroller, fed him, played with him, changed and bathed him, and tucked him into bed. His face would light up whenever he saw me.

There are so many things I remember. I would have sworn it wasn't possible, but Nik survived on nothing but apple juice until he was five years old. When he was three, I took Nik to Disney World with my family. It shows the level of trust between me and Nik's parents, that they would allow me to take their only child out of state for a week.

One day, my family had lunch in the Magic Kingdom, and I gave Nik a small piece of meat to chew on. We went about touring the theme park and stopped to rest for a bit late in the afternoon. My sister exclaimed, "Hey, what does Nik have in his mouth?"

I made him open up, to discover that he had the masticated piece of meat from lunch, tucked in his cheek like a plug of tobacco.

I remember one poignant and painful episode. Nik's pet name for me was Boo Boo. I'm not sure how this came about, but it was a name of endearment. One time, coincidentally during the Christmas season, we were walking through one of the mall's big department stores, and I was holding Nik's hand. He was about five and a half.

He looked up at me to say something and called me Boo Boo just as a group of older boys walked past us. One of the boys said to his buddies, "Hey, did you hear what that kid just called his dad?" and they all started to laugh. Nik looked into my eyes with profound sadness and never called me Boo Boo again.

I often think about the time when Nik was around six or seven, and he was terribly sick. He was skin and bones anyway, throwing up, running a high fever, and he hadn't eaten in days. One night when the crisis was at its worst, I got up every fifteen minutes to check on him, even though I thought he could easily slip away in-between. I was convinced we were going to lose him, and I was steeling myself for the inevitable. We both survived the endless night, and in the morning his fever broke.

Shellie divorced Nik's father in 1996, and Shellie and I were married soon after, but I raised Nik from a pup, and I'm essentially the only father he's ever known. I love the kid more than words can express. He has gone above and beyond the call of duty in seeing after my most basic and private daily needs.

He sometimes laments the fact his life seems to be going nowhere, and it breaks my heart. All I've ever wanted for him was to feel the satisfaction of contributing to society, and to experience the joy of loving and being loved by a special someone.

I tell him to be patient; that things happen in their own way and in their own good time.

Until then he knows how much I love him because I make a point of telling him so, and although I often fail, try to show him as well. But what he may not know is the place he holds in my heart, and that I take a father's pride in the wonderful, young man he has become.

Happy Birthday Nik. Love, Boo Boo

Covenant

Many years ago I had the privilege to join in the celebration of my mother and father-in-law's golden wedding anniversary. As part of her remarks at the occasion, my mother-in-law said, "Every day for fifty years I awoke and thought I couldn't love this man more, yet every day I do."

Friday evening, my wife and I attended a production at the historic Sandwich Opera House, by our local theater troupe, of "The Wizard of Oz." The whimsical performance stuck faithfully to the beloved 1939 movie, and I was entranced from the moment Dorothy Gale and her faithful friend Toto took the stage. I am delighted that my wife and I are both still young at heart, and we love sharing magical times together.

The following morning my family gathered at Our Lady of Mercy for my granddaughter's First Holy Communion. As the children paraded up and down the aisles of the church, the girls in pristine white and pink, and the boys in slightly disheveled suits, I leaned toward my wife and said, "Is this what cherubim look like?" For indeed, my granddaughter looked like an impossibly adorable angel.

I got to hold my eight-month-old grandson for most of the ceremony. He is such a good boy, and we had so much fun inventing games to keep him occupied - gently squeezing my water bottle to make a little clicking sound, playing with the zipper of my sweater. I was again overwhelmed with love for my family, and the graciousness of God.

On the ride home, as I usually do, I was checking out my wife's profile as she was driving, and I thought for the hundred-millionth time, how beautiful she is to me, and I knew exactly how my mother-in-law felt.

I Like Big Blogs and I Cannot Lie

I have achieved a milestone of sorts. My blog (sjdgoingonrecord.blogspot.com) has surpassed 13,000 pageviews!

I did not make a big deal out of it when the count passed 10,000, 11,000, or even 12,000, but I happened to recently mention to my son Nik, a techno-geek, PC gamer, and VR enthusiast, how many visits my blog had, and he said, "Wow, that's a serious blog."

Of course, referring to my blog as serious is kind of ironic considering my strange and, so I've been told, often inappropriate sense of humor.

Also, 13 is an auspicious number. The fact this goal was reached on a Friday can be chalked up to coincidence, serendipity, or something else. I go with something else, because you can't make this stuff up. 

When I went into the reports, however, the statistics surprised me. The award for most pageviews went to the blog, "I Like Big Butts and I Cannot Lie!" a cautionary tale about what can happen when a person new to Facebook, "Likes" and "Comments," only to discover it's in full public view. Big Butts shared the link to my post on their Facebook page, and to date the blog stands at 853 hits.

(sjdgoingonrecord.blogspot.com/2013/09/i-like-big-butts-and-i-can-not-lie.html)

This might be as expected, considering the subject matter, but the runner up is not. In April of 2014, I came across an article about Edge magazine. Each year the online publication gathers together some of the most brilliant minds in the fields of science, engineering, and the arts, and poses a theoretical question. That year's question was, "What Should We Be Worried About But Aren't?"

Edge then published the book-length 151 answers they received. I was so intrigued I went through them one by one and edited them down to a long essay. I posted the blog and thought no more about it, except for the fact that I think it's one of my most fascinating blogs.

But when I looked at the numbers, the post had 697 visits. I don't use metatags, accept advertising, or publicize my blog, but I must have tripped a flag somewhere, and almost seven hundred people took a look.

(sjdgoingonrecord.blogspot.com/2013/10/what-me-worry.html)

By far the biggest surprise though is where the visits came from. As you might expect, the vast majority of views came from the United States (8923), but the second and third highest number of views came from Russia (1124) and Ukraine (762). I did publish several blogs that featured Russian President Vladimir Putin, but they were more entertainment pieces than political pieces.

Like I said to my wife, "Otherwise I'd be eating borscht in a gulag somewhere, freezing my tushnikoff off."

Europe was well represented. I got 59 visits from Poland, but my wife is Polish, and I often write about Polish customs and holiday traditions. People from France (409), Germany (206), and the United Kingdom (167), stopped by. But there were some strange ones too: Denmark (96), Turkey (82), and Brazil (53) of all places.

I noticed if you add all these figures up, that leaves 1,119 views unaccounted for. I know some of these came from Ireland because I have friends there who read my blog. I can only speculate about the rest. I have published blogs about Mexico (Cinco de Mayo), Japan (Fukushima), and China (computer hacking). Surely, this would explain some of the discrepancy.

To put all this in perspective, I started my blog on June 11, 2013. That means, on average, 20 people visit my blog per day. That's pretty damn good, except for all I know, 99% of these pageviews could have come from intelligence agencies, cyber-criminals, and keyword bots.

As of this date, I have not received a summons, a law suit, a cease and desist order, or a death threat. Of course, I haven't won a Pulitzer or Nobel prize, either.

I'm not sure what the take-away is on all this - that we truly do live in a global and interconnected world?

For those who have enjoyed my writing, I thank you. Writers are people who must write. Whether anyone reads it or not is immaterial. But the joy I get when people read my work suffuses my soul with gratitude.

I... Cry...

I have always felt that strong prose contained many of the elements that make strong poems - startling imagery, rhythm, concise sentence structure, and deliberate word choice.

This is what Poets.org has to say about prose poems:

Though the name of the form may appear to be a contradiction, the prose poem essentially appears as prose, but reads like poetry. In the first issue of The Prose Poem: An International Journal, editor Peter Johnson explained, “Just as black humor straddles the fine line between comedy and tragedy, so the prose poem plants one foot in prose, the other in poetry, both heels resting precariously on banana peels.”

While it lacks the line breaks associated with poetry, the prose poem maintains a poetic quality, often utilizing techniques common to poetry, such as fragmentation, compression, repetition, and rhyme. The prose poem can range in length from a few lines to several pages long, and it may explore a limitless array of styles and subjects.

Writers of prose poetry include Hans Christian Andersen, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, Gertrude Stein, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs.

My sister-in-law recently posted the following on Facebook. So in honor of National Poetry Month, I present:

I... Cry...

By Michaeline DeYoung

I'm not one of those people who get emotional. At least, I pretend not to be. I hold my emotions inside most of the time, but then, there are some things I can't help crying over. For instance, the sound of a church choir. No matter how hard I try not to, I cry like I have lost the most important thing in my whole life. To watch a couple, whether straight or gay or in-between, who are truly, completely in love, makes me cry. I'm so happy for them, and yet, I cry for myself because I don't think I'll ever know a love as deep. If I ever had it, I couldn't see the forest for the trees.

I cry over the smallest things, and I'm suffused with sadness. I have so many great friends and yet, I'm so alone with myself. I cry out the loneliness, I cry out, I cry out and no one hears me. No one really knows the pain I feel. No one knows because I'm walled in a tiny room with nowhere to run, nowhere to go, no one who cares enough about me to notice I don't think I'm well.

It amazes me how I go from day to day just existing. I have no motivation to do anything different. If I was miraculously gone tomorrow, I wouldn't be missed for long. It's so sad to think how alone I am in this world. I won't be remembered for even a simple achievement. But, I'll continue to exist for another day and another day and another day and...

I'll...

cry.

George DeYoung

This weekend, my wife and I commemorated the redemption of the body from slavery to freedom at my family's Passover Seder, and celebrated the redemption of the soul from death to life at Easter worship and dinner with our grandchildren.

My father-in-law, George DeYoung, passed away this morning, at age 91, after a long decline, peacefully in his sleep, in a VA home in Fayetteville, NC, attended by members of his family.

George was a WWII navy veteran, industrial engineer for the Whiting corporation, and devoted family man. He was married to his wife Marian for almost 75 years before she slipped away from Alzheimer's. He raised a son and three daughters and basked in the joy of many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

My wife has told me many stories about her father. They worked on cars together, went fishing, and traveled extensively with an RV club, including the time they met and spent an evening around the campfire with Carroll O'Connor, who starred as Archie Bunker on TV's "All in the Family."

I knew my father-in-law as an inveterate tinkerer, always puttering around the house (that he built) in South Holland, Illinois, where I spent many Easters, Christmases, birthdays, weddings, and family gatherings. Devoutly Catholic, and a deacon in his church, George welcomed me into his home, and encouraged my marriage to his daughter.

Slow to speak, slow to anger, and slow to say a bad word about anyone, when he did speak, people listened.

Plans are being made to have his and his wife's ashes interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

George was loved and respected by all who knew him. He will be missed, but his legacy and memories will be long cherished.

Da-Da-YEnu, Da-Da-YEnu, Da-Da-YEnu, DA-Ye-Nu, Da-Ye-NU!

The heart of the Passover Seder, other than matzah ball soup, is the song Dayenu. Dayenu reminds us of all we have to be thankful for to God for delivering us, literally and figuratively, from slavery. This lively song, replete with raised voices, table thumping, and joyous laughter recounts the things God did for the Jewish people when He led them out of bondage in Egypt.

Dayenu means, "It would have been enough for us," or "It would have been sufficient." Thus the verses go:

Had He brought us out from Egypt, and not carried out judgments against them, it would have been sufficient!

Had He carried out judgments against them, and not smitten their first-born, it would have been sufficient!

Had He smitten their first-born, and not parted the sea for us, it would have been sufficient!

Had He parted the sea for us, and not taken us through it on dry land, it would have been sufficient!

Had He taken us through it on dry land, and not drowned our oppressors in it, it would have been sufficient!

Had He drowned our oppressors in it, and not fed us manna in the desert for forty years, it would have been sufficient!

Had He fed us manna in the desert for forty years, and not given us the Sabbath, it would have been sufficient!

Had He given us the Sabbath, and not brought us before Mount Sinai, it would have been sufficient!

Had He brought us before Mount Sinai, and not given us the Torah, it would have been sufficient!

Had He given us the Torah, and not brought us into the land of Israel, it would have been sufficient!

Had He brought us into the land of Israel, and not built for us the Holy Temple, it would have been sufficient!

But God did do all these things for us.

The message of Dayenu is gratitude. We are thankful as a people and as individuals that God led us out of slavery and to the promised land.

But I thought about what this song teaches us personally.

Had God given me life, and not surrounded me with a caring family, it would have been sufficient.

Had God surrounded me with a caring family, but not brought me the love of my wife, it would have been sufficient.

Had God brought me the love of my wife, but not granted me wonderful children, it would have been sufficient.

Had God granted me wonderful children, but not blessed me with beautiful grandchildren, it would have been sufficient.

Had God blessed me with beautiful grandchildren, but not built for me a loving home, it would have been sufficient.

Had God built for me a loving home, but not the means to express my gratitude through the written word, it would have been sufficient.

But God did do all these things for me, and what better time to express my thankfulness than at Passover and Easter.

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Congress today reauthorized funding for Facebook, the massive online surveillance program run by the NSA. According to reports, Facebook has replaced almost every other NSA information-gathering program since it was launched in 2004.

NSA Assistant Director Marvin Stebbs noted, "After years of secretly monitoring the public, we were astounded so many people would willingly publicize where they live, their religious and political views, an alphabetized list of all their friends, personal e-mail addresses, phone numbers, hundreds of photos of themselves, and even status updates about what they were doing moment to moment. It is truly a dream come true for the NSA. Much of the credit belongs to NSA agent Mark Zuckerberg, who runs the day-to-day Facebook operation for the agency."

 - As reported by the Scallion News Network

Your shoe's untied.

Made you look. Made you look.