Fair thee well, West Chester!

Hi y'all, (I can do that now without feeling silly) have you figured it out yet?  Had I sufficiently managed to put the writing on the wall?  Yes, I can confirm it's true, I've left West Chester for greener pastures, or in my specific case, whiter, sandier beaches.  It was a tough decision, but in the end, it's going to be for the best.  I'd give almost anything to have been able to stay, but it just wasn't in the cards.  I've moved to the sprawling suburbs of Jacksonville, Florida to take a job that's shaping up to be a much better fit for me and my career.

Am I going to miss West Chester?  Really? Do you have to ask?  Of course I will.  Now of course what I will miss the most about West Chester, is not the geographic boundries that make up the borough of West Chester, with all it's charming homes and buildings, but the people that live within those boundries. (and immediate area)  I resigned from the Borough Planning commission and that was hard, especially with the wishes of good luck from the people I worked with there, they really made me feel appreciated for the time that I put in to that labor of love.  Then there were the friends I made there, people like Dr. Jim Jones, professor at West Chester University and member of the Borough Council.  His interest in preserving and documenting the unique history of West Chester is invaluable as well as is his stewardship on Borough Council.  He was the one that encouraged me to serve on the Borough Planning Commission and I'll be forever greatful to him.  Mary Bigham, of West Chester Dish, bringing awareness to all things foody going on in West Chester is a gem.  Jim Breslin, local writer and founder of the West Chester Story Slam, simply put, you couldn't meet a nicer guy. He really has made West Chester a special place by bringing together some of it's denizans to tell our stories.  Finally no discussion about the character of West Chester personified could be complete without mentioning, the irrepressible John Young of Guerilla Drive In, Brandywine Rollergirls, and many many other side projects.  I would hate to embarrass him, but John really has been an inspiration for me, and I hope West Chester realizes what they have in him as a community cheerleader.  Good wishes to them all.

I suppose before I leave the subject of people of West Chester, some might find it incomplete without at least a passing reference to Mr. Bam Margera.  Now it's true that West Chester has generated some important and famous people, like Samuel Barber, the writer of Addigo for Strings, and Bayard Rustin, early civil rights pioneer, but the truth is the reason some people in the United States and the world might be aware of the borough of West Chester exists at all is due in no small amount to him.  People fall into either a love him or hate him catagories, and although I've only exchanged a few nods of acknowledgement from him when I would see him around town, I find myself not being a hater because he did bring "The Note" music venue into the borough, where I've enjoyed on more than one occasion an excellent show.  Having only been in Jacksonville a few weeks and learning about the passsing of his friend Ryan Dunn in that horrible accident, my thoughts turned to West Chester and how uncomfortable it felt to be away from a town that I love that had suffered a loss of one of it's own.

Oh one more mention of West Chester People, I have to admit what made me proud about living in West Chester was the weekly anti-war protestors/pro-troop supporters on the corner of the courthouse.  I'm glad I lived in a place where people felt strongly about anything enough to hold a sign and stand around for an hour once a week.  Suburbia doesn't have a lot of that, I assure you, unless you count the people holding signs for going out of business sales at furniture stores.

So to be truthful, there will be some physical places in West Chester I'll miss, one of the many places is this home on West Nields Street.  I've never met the people who live in it, but I've admired this home since the moment I moved to West Chester.  That Craftsman style with the Frank Lloyd Wright touches, the natural colors, if I were going to build my dream home, this is pretty much it in a nutshell, I wouldn't change a thing.

So this is it West Chester, my last blog about living in West Chester.  It might not be my last entry into this blog, as I have a feeling that West Chester and I will cross paths again and again, there's just to much things to draw one back at least to visit.  Meanwhile, blogging will continue, so would you consider following my new Blog, "Blogging the First Coast". It will be my attempt to make the greater Jacksonville area seem as interesting as West Chester is already.  Wish me luck.

Yours,
Andrew Rodriguez
arod138

PS, did you ever wonder where arod138 came from? arod from Andrew Rodriguez, and 138 from the 138th Aviation Company (EW), the unit I served with in the US Army.  Now you know!

Things I would miss, IF I was to leave West Chester

You know, it's an early Sunday afternoon.  The spring showers haven't come yet, a mild breeze flows through the open windows of the apartment, the grumble of the more and more frequently appearing Harley-Davidson passes by, and wafting through the newly leaved Oaks and Maples of West Chester is the lilting sounds of Irish Music.  Now it's true, we have an Irish Pub a mere steps from where I live, and occasionally, the sounds coming from there are no less as fine as to what I'm listening to now, but the source of the music in this particular case seems somehow a little bit more pure, and not sullied by the attempts of a money making saloon owner to draw in additional patrons.



Keegan, (age 11, on Whistles) and Alexander, (age 12, on fiddle) are simply playing there hearts out to raise money so they can go to Ireland to compete in a Irish Music competition this summer.  I'm not sure if I can say with any certainty, that at any given moment, somewhere in these great United States, some one, in particular a pair of some ones, more particularly a pair of young men someones, is out on a street corner playing beautiful music, raising money for a trip to represent us in a World wide competition, while at the same time adding to the ambiance and quality of life we enjoy here in West Chester.

I have very serious doubts, that if I were to live anywhere else in the country, say, Jacksonville, Florida for example, I doubt that I could open the windows to my place and hear the dulcet tones of fiddle and flute being expertly played just outside, and it is for that reason, and many many other reasons, that I would seriously miss, like SERIOUSLY miss the people and the place that is the community of West Chester, Pennsylvania.

If you are living outside of easy visiting distance of West Chester, I would highly recommend an evaluation of your life so much so that you might determine if you might be able to move here, I assure you, you wouldn't regret it...Oh, and if you hear them around town, can you throw them a few bucks?

Signs of West Chester

Hola Amigos....Let's just pretend that you're not wondering why I haven't posted a blog in over 2 months, and just get into it already, shall we?

(Boy I'm getting worse than Jim Anchower)

Anyway here we are, well into what is it, May? Crap! The year has moved along at a good clip, ain't it! And I'll be honest, I was kind of boycotting Blogging until the weather got better, but somehow, it managed to snow on April 1st, and we've had lot's of cold and rainy days since then, all the while the trees kicking in on the annual pollen pollution drive, so I've been out of it just trying to get by for a while. (Poor me, right? Yea, right as if I expect any sympathy from you guys...:)

When I finally got some time to walk around town, and the weather somewhat cooperated, I started to notice a lot of signs.  Sure, the signs of spring were finally here, like when the Cherry Blossoms fall onto parked cars along our borough's congested streets, but other signs too.

I suppose there is something about the skate culture that is more than prevalent in West Chester, that says you have to tag things with stickers.  Thank you Bam Margera, Shepard Fairy and Banksy for all that then. You know what I mean right?  You've seen stickers on signs all around town right? Like these? 

Don't get me wrong, I really don't have a problem with any of the stickers, it's part of our urban landscape, and heck some of the stuff is downright whimsical, like the ubiquitous STICKMEN in the street, but now there is Yawn Bombing, H/T to John Young for discovering this link.  I wish I knew what some of them meant, I have a hard time grasping the idea that someone took the time and trouble to silk screen some image onto some sticky sided polyvinyl to then post onto some random object in public only to perplex squares like me?

That's the mission patch for STS-95, the return to space of Astronaut John Glenn! I'd like to meet the nerd who put that there!

Of course there will be somethings I won't like, like stickers quoting Che Guevera, boy that's somebody's mug I sure could do less seeing of, but as long as there are clueless college kids with money, there will be his visage thrown into the faces of those of us with Cuban ancestry as a constant reminder of paradise lost. (Let alone of relatives lost to firing squads by his personal hand, but I digress.)

And yet these are not the only signs we see around West Chester on a regular basis.  Why just the other day, a lot of signs were seen at a rally to support education in Pennsylvania on the steps of the County Courthouse.  State Senator Andy Dinniman hosted the rally, with his dog a giant poodle for some reason.  I'm not sure if he couldn't get someone to watch the dog or what kind of image he was trying to convey here. (No, I'm not writing words dripping with sarcasm, why do you ask?)

Now I don't know exactly how one opposes supporting education, that's like being opposed to oxygen.  If there is a hitch to it all of course, it's the ability to afford it in a budget strapped environment.  We can have the most educated populace on the planet, but none of it is worth a hill of beans if we are an economic wasteland because we've defaulted on debt. I get it, really I do.  However amidst the hoopla, once again, there was another example among the signs that were there that seemed to have the sole purpose of vexing me was this one.

Was he being ironic?  Was he being allegoric? Was he being idiotic?  Was he just an asshole, I'll never know, I sure didn't want to find out what ulterior motive, if any, he had.

America, Fuck Yea

Circling the Wagons

Finally I figured it would be an interesting weekend to check out our 1 hour express war protests on the corner of Market and High in front of the Courthouse.  A lot's changed since President Bush left office, in so much that the population density of the protesters shifted from the anti war crowd to the support the troops crowd.  


I knew all along that there were few people on both sides truely commited to their ideals, in so much the anti-war group was really populated with anti-George Bush people, and right on que, when President Obama got elected, they were replaced with anti-Barrack Obama people.  I really respect anybody who really is for peace, but they got to be consistent.  That said, it warms my heart to see someone sending love towards a soldier and hoping for victory on the battlefield, but when the politics get involved, taxes, immigration, and birth certificates, it's such a turnoff.  All that being said, it was a weekend for the pro troops people, who didn't gloat or get any more jingoistic than usual, what with the very satisfying demise of Osama Bin Laden, they stayed on message.  So did the antiwar people believe it or not.  I think the few hard core peaceniks that are left have the honorable conviction of their feelings and are just wanting peace, and who can argue with that? 

Anybody seen my wallet? Oh there it is...

Anybody else ready for winter to end?  Yea I thought so me too.  I have to admit that we're much closer to the end of winter than the beginning of it, but this stretch of time when one day blurs into the next for days on end is so much tougher than in the beginning, when we are kind of eased into the season with the various holidays that we actually look forward to like Halloween, Thanksgiving and Kwanzaa.

Maybe it's a coincidence, that during these dog days of winter, (or is it "cat" days of winter?) where I really, really start to lose my mind.  Specifically, I've been losing my wallet lately.  Not misplacing it, but flat out losing it, only to have the great lucky fortune of having it be found by a kind stranger or in the last place I'd look, (as if I'd keep looking after I found it)

I think a lot of the reasons I'm losing it in the first place is because I'm usually doing something outside of my routine, like getting up early in the morning to move the car out of the parking garage to some far off corner of the borough where I can leave it there without paying.  Or going across the street to the YMCA to workout for an hour.  In both examples my wallet is not going into my right rear pocket like it does every morning of every day when I work, but it's going into a pocket in my sweat pants, or a pocket in a pullover which leads me to be lose track of it if it falls out into the snow covered streets without making a sound.

It should be known that I've yet to lose my iPhone, as that little collection of silicon chips might as well be surgically implanted into the palm of my hand at this point. Yet twice now in the last two weeks I've gone through the exercise of turning the apartment upside down, and retracing my steps through the streets of West Chester to see if I might come upon it, laying on the sidewalk, undisturbed, as if somehow I prearranged to meet my wallet here at some future point like the meeting of old friends in town for a drink.

I even go through the steps of bringing the spiritual world into the process, by reaching out to Saint Anthony of Padua, the Patron Saint of lost things.  I'm sure I got started on that kick by my mom, back when my GI Joe's head would somehow become liberated from the rest of his body.  She'd have me pray to him to help me find it, and sure enough, sooner or later I would find it inexplicably buried in the sand box in the back yard in some sort of ritual warning to the other GI Joe's to stay out of enemy territory.  I mean it's kind of silly when you think about it, to check in with a celestial lost and found, but hey, I'm not taking any chances.

You know the thing of it is, I could probably avoid all the hysterics, by making my wallet as exciting as the glove compartment in my car by reducing it to a simple carrying case for money, ID and credit cards only, as all of those can be replaced pretty easily in this day and age.  But I've got some really personal things in there, like my old Military ID, long since expired, my PADI Dive certification card that's still good, but, it's got a great picture of me being 21 years old at the time that I got dive qualified.  Finally it's got a picture of Lana and a lucky dollar bill that she gave me when she gave me the wallet, the first of many gifts she has given me throughout the years. (and I hope many gifts she will continue to shower me with in the years to come.)

That's what makes the wallet almost irreplaceable, it's a bit of the nostalgia I've got going on in there, and the sense of the future that's there too. Plenty of room for pictures of the kid(s) that may happen one of these days.

So, if you have to be walking up and down High Street, and you see a black leather wallet sitting on the sidewalk, would you stop by the Greentree Building and drop it off?  No questions asked, reward if returned.

Snowbound and down

Sigh.

First off, let me say Happy New Year! For that matter, Merry Christmas and Chappy Chanukah. (You like that last one? Yea me too.)  Anyway, sorry I didn't write a blog for December, I was going to put in my 2 cents about the local controversy about how the Philadelphia Free Thought Society (Atheist) didn't get to put up their "Tree of Knowledge" decorated with ornaments that are the covers of books written by famous non-believers.  I was going to juxtapose this with the fact that a few blocks down the street a homeowner who really goes all out for Christmas with the inflatable lawn decorations had some of them stolen right off his lawn so he pulled all his decorations inside in protest.  I was going to cleverly tie together with some wit and insight on freedom of expression, religious freedom, and commercialism, then I realized I'd get in over my head and decided to drop the whole thing because in the end I would have probably arrived at a depressing conclusion.

 Speaking of depressing, what's the deal with all this snow?  Again I've mentioned it before, despite my Florida nativity, and my Cuban ethnicity, I know snow.  In fact, here are some pictures of me in the snow from when I was in the Army.

Ok here technically I'm not in the snow, but I'm taking this picture hiding in my room in the barracks instead of going to PT in the snow, so I still count it. Ft Devens, 1986

Here I am in Chitose, Saporro, Japan, January 1989. Coldest place I've ever been.

They had us staying in WWII barracks instead of the Marriott this one time, can you believe it? 

Fort Sheridan, Illinois 1993

I think if you looked back at all my blogs over the last 3 years, you'd think I live in some Arctic frontier town or something.  Today of course is no exception, we've gotten snow overnight, with more snow coming this afternoon.  I tell you, it's bad enough with the snow and never seeing the sun during the day, but with the early darkness of daylight savings time, I'm inclined to lend a lot of credence to that whole "Seasonal Affective Disorder" thing aka "S.A.D.", can you believe it?

Well despite it all, one has to make the best of things, like today, when I had to go get Lana's car from where it was parked, (why is she parked outside, blocks away from our apartment, instead of in the warm comfort of the newly built parking garage you ask? Because if you are not out of the garage by 7:30 AM, they close the gates and start charging you to leave, 75 cents every half hour.  If she starts work at 3:00 PM, well, you can imagine it'll start to add up, so we play this game every other day of finding a place to park near Marshall Park) and of course when I got there the car had been covered with up to 6 inches of snow.

Trying to make light of things, I gave her car a Mohawk, (Snowhawk?) 

 Finally, coming back in from the cold, this is what my scooter looked like.

Well, what can I say, we're all hanging in there to one varying degree or another, it's very hard because it's very easy that in addition to the environmental factors, we allow that mental parasite known as the internet to get it's clutches on our brainstem, and we spend these dark evenings reading article after article about how everything is so terrible in these United States, whether it's about the economy, the war in Afghanistan, the rise of China, or ironically, the weather, for that matter.  Oh and let me tell you, it's really hard, but a bit of advice from me to you would be to avoid reading the comments on certain articles, the things people spout off these days because of the anonymity, I tell ya, sheesh!

Please though, don't be shy, feel free to leave a comment!  A special note to my readers from around the world, tell us how you are feeling?  Russia, China, Japan, Brazil, India, UK, I see you there landing on my blog, check in won't you? Does anybody else on the planet have a sense of brightness of future right around the corner, or is everyone feeling the same kind of ennui that we are here?

Maybe instead of hiding under blankets, I need to get out there and make the best of it.  I may end up in Arizona one day and then I'll be missing the snow.....then again, maybe not.  Oh the heck with it, I think I'll go build a snowman.

Snowmageddon, West Chester PA 2010

See you soon!


Oh by the way, anybody else think the title of today's blog entry is even remotely clever?  I do....just saying...