Anybody want to explain this? Anyone?

Call me naive, but I want to believe it's about the troops, I want it to be about patriotism and love of country, I want it to be about victory, and duty-honor-country, but can anybody explain this? (Look closely at the center, or look at the blow up photo below this one)

Ok, maybe it's about victory over fascism. Maybe this guy is saying, "See this flag? It's a "Riechskriegflagge", and my grandpa captured it from some Waffen SS troops when his platoon took the bridge over the Rhine at Remagen as part of the Big Red One." (1st Infantry Division) So he's implying that by showing the banner of a vanquished enemy that could easily be described without hyperbole as evil incarnate, supporting the troops is in fact a noble thing to do.

Or, maybe he's saying he likes white people and hates Jews...

No matter what, it's a question of messaging, with the question being, "What's the message?"

What is the message when 100s of bikers roll into town, and rally to support the troops? Is it only bikers that support the troops? Are these people racists? I think most importantly, are they intolerant of intolerance among their midst?

Why didn't anyone confront this guy and ask what his deal was? If anybody wanted to make the anti-war protesters job any easier and to help reinforce the narrative that anybody who disagrees with President or waves the American flag is a xenophobic, jingoistic, white supremacist, this guy did it perfectly! You can imagine them yelling, "You see?, you see?, they ARE a bunch of jackbooted Nazi thugs!"

I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that I can throw out every comment on every article I read online, because only extremists on the left and right apparently have the time (and are otherwise cowardly in that they don't speak out in person) to post such lunatic ravings. I wonder why those who lean left don't tell some of those among them to shut the hell up, because they are making them seem crazy, but as one can see by what's demonstrated today, people that lean right are just as either ambivalent or feel just as non-confrontational to say anything to the crazies that they hang out with as well.

I hate pointing out things in life that are wrong without offering a solution, but this here problem sure has me buffaloed. Anybody got any ideas? Anybody want to brainstorm this?

Anybody?

That Stupid Cake! (Flickr Stats)

Hey all, just a quick note, I'm super busy what with having just got back from Saratoga Springs New York, and having to do a quick turn (2 weeks) to head down to Florida. Saratoga Springs was great, boy that town is like West Chester on Steroids, I'll never complain about the crowds or the nightlife here again. Their little burg is hopping on Friday and Saturday Nights, it's as if half of Manhattan caught the train into Saratoga Springs for a little shopping, swimming and night life. Anyway, I was up there for a military reunion, actually the whole story probably deserves its own blog post, so I'll see if I can get around to it soon.

What I wanted to post about, and I still haven't posted about what Grinds my Gears, that's coming soon too I promise, is this seemingly innocuous photo I took last summer at the "Back to the Future" Guerrilla Drive In Show on the roof of the Bicentennial Garage.



Why, is this freaking photo so G.D. popular? I mean it's my number one searched for photo on my Flickr page! I mean, every G.D. day, someone, somewhere Google Images queries this photo by looking for the keywords "Jailbird" "Uncle Joey Cake", or some combination there of.
I mean sure, it was clever, to have a cake who's design was taken from a movie prop and some throw away dialogue that never really entered into the main plot of the movie, but still, what gives?

So, curiosity got the better part of me so I Googled it and sure enough, my photo on Flickr is the number one result! Upon further investigation, it turns out that according to none other than the big "O" herself, (that's Oprah people, come on!) people throw "Back to the Future" themed parties, and no party is complete, no matter how many DeLoreans show up, without the freaking "Welcome Home Uncle Joey" cake!

If you've been paying attention, and I'm sure you have as I'm sure you always hang on my every posting, my every tweet, is that I've been posting a lot of photos I got scanned of me "back in the day" doing the whole Army thing. It's mostly pictures of a 100 pound lesser version of me drinking a lot of beer and looking cool in Ray Bans and a Flight Suit. Despite that though, I think generally I've got a lot of cool photos of Airplanes, Scooters, beautiful places, beautiful people, but are people interested in that? No. People are interested in a stupid cake.......

Wish I had baked it....

Man, Blogging is hard!

Hey all, just a quick note to let you know I'm alive. I don't know how I let the month of May come and go without writing anything, certainly not because there hasn't been much to write about, but I'll catch up soon since I've got stuff on my mind I wanted to share.

Otherwise, I wanted to say we here in West Chester have successfully made the transition from Winter to Spring, and are about to turn the corner into Summer. Allergies have come and gone, with only a hint of pink eye. I even missed the World War II weekend in Reading, PA, my first in 5 years. Of course living with a female again might have had something to do with that, especially since we went last year. That said, I'm going to try and drag her to the air show at New Garden Flying Field in Toughkenomen this weekend, June 12th and 13th, Saturday there is supposed to be a flyby of a B-2 bomber, so that'll be cool! Anybody else want to come with? Anybody? No? Ok fine, whatever.

Oh, and another quick note, Tuesday is West Chester Story Slam, with the theme of "Broke", and I still don't know what I'm going to talk about, (I wouldn't know anything about not having money, *ahem*) and Thursday I'm one of about 10 people hosting walking tours of the neighborhood of Northwest West Chester starting from the Chester County Historical Society and compared to some of the human encyclopedias that live here in West Chester, I'll be lucky to finish my tour with the same people I started with and not get lost.

So on all counts, wish me luck, and once I get over the hump here, I'll write more about what's grinding my gears....

West Chester Film Festival in Review.

You might have noticed, if you spend anytime downtown, that this weekend was the West Chester Film Festival. Signs posted in store windows, banners hanging across High Street, obnoxious Hollywood types walking around yaking on their cell phones, not paying attention to traffic, ordering their fu-fu Soy Decaf no foam lattes...oh wait, that one is probably one of us. Seriously, unless you are not the observant type, you might have missed it. And based on the attendance I saw, a lot of us did, and for that, for shame!

Listen I'm not trying to lay a guilt trip, don't feel bad, I get it. That's the one thing about living here, the plethora of things to occupy our time. We've got to shop, and feed ourselves and work out, and get the job done generally, and heck we simply do not have a shortage of things to do.

Heck, me and Lana took the bikes out on a trail, so we missed some of the movies...

Perhaps though, maybe we need to look at things from the perspectives of "wants to" and "needs to". When it comes time to support the arts, maybe that should be something we "need to" do. We manage to be athletic supporters, (I've always loved that joke) as there is no shortage of decal Eagle's heads or giant red letter "P"'s on the backs of cars around here, and Political Supporters, as there is no shortage of Obama/Palin stickers on the backs of cars around here. (Did you ever think you'd see those two names separated by a slash in the same sentence in your life? Yea me neither...) And you know you won't find argument in me that we are all supporters of our kids. Especially the ones that are on the honor roll, although God help me I can't find any bumper stickers that say "My kid is just your average kid, and he's great anyway!"

So we, Americans, and West Chesterarians, specifically, (I think that's right) at the beginning of the 3rd Millennium, do we have time for patronage of the arts? Now I know we are not all DiMedici's or Rockefellars, around here, and we can't pay out of our own pockets to commission works of art, be they sculptures or paintings or arias or amphitheaters, but we really should find some time in our busy schedule and treat ourselves to something like independent films, right? I mean if for nothing else but purely selfish reasons, why not entertain ourselves? The beauty of it is though, is through the act of entertaining yourselves for a couple of hours, you support people who are involved in telling stories through the medium of film. Through that, ideas are communicated, alternates points of view are shared, minds are changed, and can't this only be a good thing?

I managed to catch 3 different blocks of the Film Festival and enjoyed each one. There were on average 7 or so small films within the block of films running anywhere from 3 minutes to 15 minutes in length. The diversity was definitely there, Polish, Jewish, Israeli, Women, African American, Dutch, Chinese and of course French subtitled films made appearances. (You can't have a pretentious film festival without something French in there!) Honestly though, "Alter Ego" and "Le Hobby" both excellent movie shorts and hardly pretentious.

Oh did I mention we even got to vote for our favorite movie in the block that we watched? Thing of it is though, I felt a bit like Homer Simpson in the episode where Springfield has a film festival, and he votes for the movie, "Man gets hit in groin by football" in so much that I pretty much went for the obviously funny (but with heart) movies.

Heck and where else, after watching a movie, can you turn around in your seat and ask the director or the producer of one of the films you just watched a question as to how they made it?

I think maybe, and here's my two scents, both smelling good of course, is that a way to involve the West Chester community more is to, well, involve the West Chester community more? If Sundance has it's Slamdance, than why couldn't we have a Slam Chester film festival tie in? How about we grab our home movie cameras and make a few, few minute shorts? Invite the college kids to enter, keep them from drinking for more than 20 minutes anyway, (if you believe some of the people around here that that's what they are all about) Test our talents and entertain our neighbors, why not? Everyone a star or a writer/director for a day.

I'm sure there's probably some issue about releases and Unions and such that I'm not aware of that would play into this thing, but still, if you don't want to make a movie, can't you at least watch one?

I probably could have tweeted this...or not...

Can I ask you a question? If I say to you, "...more beans Mr. Taggart?" wouldn't your natural inclination, your almost Pavlovian, involuntary response to this query would be, "I'd say you'd had about enough!"? Or any variation on that statement. It doesn't have to be perfect, for some reason we imagine dialogue that may never have taken place, but in our mind, the statement is incomplete without it.

What am I talking about? In a nutshell, we had free lunch at work, tacos, and somebody whom I THOUGHT was cool, was changing out the serving dish and replacing it with a new one that had more beans in them. Naturally, instincts kicked in, and I asked him the beggingly obvious question, "More Beans, Mr. Taggart?" and with giddy anticipation I awaited the correct response, like a challenge/response used in the military, like "Flash/Thunder", I was returned with a weak, "yes, more beans...." and an otherwise annoyed, blank look.

Now come on! I was so deflated after that. If ever I have more living proof of my "square peg" status at work. True, when a boss of mine actually wanted to end a meeting on a high note, and I said without missing a beat in my best falsetto, "AAAAAAAAAH", although everyone stared at me like I was choking on something, my boss said simply "History of the World, Part 1".

I shudder to think if he hadn't gotten it.

So, you would have gotten it, right? Kind of like if I ask you if you've got a pool back there, and you would say "............................................."

Right?

By the way, speaking in terms of quotations from Pop culture; a sign of advanced or stunted social development? Any worse than memorizing Baseball statistics from 20 years ago?

West Chester Awakenings

Hey all, Did you ever see the movie "Awakenings"? Robin Williams, Robert DeNiro? No? Yes? Well I did. I saw it on a date in 1991 when I was stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. For that matter, have you ever been to San Angelo, Texas? I'll bet you didn't know it's the largest city in the United States....NOT located where a major interstate highway passes through. So, to sum up, you probably didn't see Awakenings, and you've probably never been to San Angelo, Texas at the same time. I guess it was just me. As far as the movie, the date, and the town of San Angelo, trust me you didn't miss much.

ANYway, lately, I'm reminded of the movie Awakenings by the schizophrenic weather we've had around here lately. Let me explain.

The basic plot of the movie "Awakenings" (SPOILER ALERT in case it was actually on your Netflicks list for that Robin Williams retrospective film festival you were going to have down in the basement.) is that Robin Williams is a Doctor working with catatonic patients, and that he stumbles across a drug that can bring these patients out of their catatonic state. Enter Robert DeNiro as the patient that "Awakens" to a world of brightness and opportunity and love after years of darkness. The problem of course, is that the drug's effect is temporary, and he begins to exhibit signs that he's about to go back into that catatonic state and there is nothing he can do about it. The movie ends as it begins, with Robert DeNiro once again catatonic.

Remember that weekend a few weekends ago where the weather was bright and sunny, seemingly only weeks after all that snow? Dudes walking around in ubiquitous cargo shorts and flip flops and ironic statement t-shirts with a red backward Phillies ball cap. Chicks parading in short shorts and tight tank tops, cleavage spilling over ever so slightly and appealingly. Dogs and baby strollers. Skateboards. Harley-Davidsons. That's West Chester on any given weekend when the weather is nice.

My question is, "where did it go?"

This is for John Young and Dr. Zibbs, another great Ben Folds cover, when he's not covering Dr. Dre, the Clash, the Cure, the Flaming Lips, the Buggles, the Postal Service, or working with William Shatner covering Pulp's Common People!

Well we are, West Chester that is, catatonic again. The cold is back, the rain is back, the darkness is back. I knew winter wasn't done with us quite yet, it was too early. I suppose it was a nice treat to get a preview of what's to come, but frankly, it's pretty depressing! We've collectively survived a tougher than usual winter, and I'm looking forward to getting on with the business of living the good life.

I'm looking forward to getting on my scooter and riding! I'm looking forward to the May Day festival at Everhart park, I'm looking forward to Swinging Thursdays, Grower's markets, Guerilla Drive Ins!, Turk's Head Music festivals. Continued Story Slams, Heck, I'll even be giving walking historical tours of West Chester this summer! (More on that when I have more info) The Airshow at New Garden Flying Field near Kennett Square, Then of course there is the Iron Hill Criterium Bike Race. Did I miss something? Of course I did, that's the beauty of it. There's a lot going on, a lot to do, so let's get on with it already!

(Mother nature you have my email when you're ready to apologize and fix this whole weather thing)

Goodbye Walter, I wish I'd said more... 1939-2010

Walter and Friend, West Chester Swinging Summer 2009

Walter. You all knew Walter. Even if you swear up and down you didn't know Walter, I'm telling you, you knew Walter. Metaphysics aside, the deal is, if you hung out in downtown West Chester in the last 4 or 5 years, you knew Walter. Ok let me put it this way, you "saw" Walter, or you might have been "aware" of him. You saw him at the Coffee Shop before the Starbucks opened up, you saw him at Peace of Pizza, you saw him shuffling up and down Gay Street, the slight hunch of his back, his coke bottle glasses, his ubiquitous baseball cap, the cane he would use to steady himself, and his never ending smile.

And what I mean when I say "You knew Walter" even if you're reading this blog post from your corner of the world, you knew "A" Walter. A kindly old gentlemen who no matter what, managed a polite and enthusiastic one word greeting of "Hello".

I knew a Walter when I was a kid, an elderly man that we called Colonel Sanders who would come over to watch us younger kids play football on our front lawn in Titusville, and always at a pause in the game he would start into an unsolicited Speech about America, and Patriotism, and how great it is to live in these United States. The other kids I played with were kind of ambivalent towards him, and of course the neighborhood teenagers were a lost cause, but I kind of liked and defended him. One Christmas, before becoming a hyper conscious and angst filled teenager, before it became uncool, I convinced "the gang" to go around the neighborhood and specially Colonel Sanders house to sing Christmas carols. When he cracked the door open, behind padlocks and chains, surely put there by his experiences with the egg wielding teenagers at night, and saw us singing, tears filled his eyes and he offered us candy and of course, gave us one of his speeches. Maybe there was hope for our generation after all.I am ashamed to admit though, having become an adult, or for becoming for what passes for an adult, that I became the cynical, ambivalent, irony and sarcasm spewing elitist asshole the 11 year old version of myself would never thought, and would frankly be disappointed I'd be.

Walter Wright, was the first person I knew in West Chester. Having arrived here in town after an ugly, ugly breakup with a live in Girlfriend, the newly single me was a guy hoping to integrate myself into my newly adopted community. A pretty tall order to fill, what with my aversion to actually striking up conversations with people whom I convinced are not like me hence not worthy of my efforts to get to know them, or the seemingly clique-ish, clan like coteries that seem to exist in most specifically the Northeast USA. It seemed to me, (or maybe I convinced myself) that people around here just weren't into meeting new people, or allowing new people into their circles, because let's face it, people here are born here, they go to parochial school together, they vacation at the shore together, the ski in the Poconos together, they die here, they don't really have any room for a "new" guy.

Yet there was always Walter.Walter lived in my building, the illustrious Greentree Building on the corner of Gay and High Street in beautiful downtown West Chester. When I was going to work, there he was in the lobby, making his slow, deliberate journey to the coffee shop. I'm sure I'd be on 202 on the way to work before he made it across the street, but he always made it, and he always managed to stay there and hold court all day long. If I was going the Laundry room, there he was in the elevator, on his way to the Basement Recreation Room to watch TV on the Big Screen. And if I was in town picking up my dry cleaning, getting a Latte, buying a slice of Pizza, there was Walter, with baristas fussing all over him, people of all walks of life stopping to say hello to him, lawyers, construction workers, the *ahem* temporarily un-homed, everyone knew and loved Walter.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Walter too. I always said hello to him, I always held doors and elevator gates for him, I was quick to return his smile. If I saw him on the street I'd ask him how he was doing, and what was going on in our building. He was definitely wired in to what was happening in town.

But a part of me, god I hate to admit it, rolled my eyes when I saw him. A part of me cringed at the thought of having to start a conversation with him. "Geeze, what if he invites me to some kind of Bible Study group or something, that would suck." I'd think to myself. Or, "Crap, 2 years in West Chester, and do I know any girls? Do I know any cool people I could hang out with to have a beer? No. The only person I know by name in this burg is a 4'10 inch 90 year old man, could my life suck any worse?"

Last Summer, I noticed Walter shuffling along a heck of a lot slower than his usual pace. I really did give that guy credit, for the determination it took to be on his own and make sure he made his rounds around town. Alas though, about a month or so later I learned that he was taken somewhere to Pocopson where he could get the full time attention of people that my god, the man had earned by now. There were actually moments where I thought to myself, "I'll have to head out there and visit him, I'm sure he'd enjoy that." Then I thought to myself, "Yea right Andy, who are you kidding, you don't even call your parents on their birthdays....I'm such a Jerk"

Well, as you may know by now, I'm on the Borough Planning Commission, I'm on the REGIONAL planning commission, I'm a liaison to the Historic Preservation Steering committee, and between Guerrilla Drive Ins and Story Slams and having Lana up with me full time, I've got a pretty nice life now. I'm even enjoying meeting the people from the Chiropractic office in town when I wrenched my back a few weeks ago. So with my busy life, I came home to a photocopied article taped to one of the doors at the entrance of the Greentree Building.

Walter C. Wright of West Chester

Walter Caldicott Wright, 70, died Sunday Feb. 21, 2010.

Mr. Wright was known as the unofficial Mayor of

West Chester and was a longtime resident of the

Greentree Apartments.

Continued....

My heart sank. Then I knew I had no right to feel bad. Did I ever reach out to him? Did I give him a chance, to get to know him? Shit no.

I went to the Cornstone Christian Fellowship where he liked to hang out, no doubt he enjoyed the homecooked meals and the fellowship to pay my respects, but I had already missed the Memorial Service and managed only to observe a gymnasium full of Walter's friends sitting down to eat some great looking fried chicken dinners. Me? I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to say hello to anybody, I couldn't enjoy a free meal on his behalf, I just took a few pictures, thought about Walter, and got back on my Scooter and went home.

Don't be like me, don't let the Walter's that you know pass into obscurity, be fearless where I was cowardly, get to know people, life is too f'ng short. (God I hate cliches, but if there is something else more apropos to say, I don't know it.)

Ok, I'm impressed...

First of all, to all of my followers around the United States and around the world, (if that Global Visitor Tracker Widget is to be believed) I want to assure you that I am indeed well and none the worse for wear.

I'm in my apartment with electricity, heat, gas, (I made Chili with beans) natural gas, Hot Chocolate and of course, in order that you may read this, Internet. You are probably reading online or watching on TV in your native language how we're going through our 2nd snowstorm in a week, and are probably worried to death, but no fear fearless reader, I assure you of my good health.

Part of me still feels like really, I've seen worse, and what's the big deal, but in truth that taken in context for the kind weather that we typically get here, it's kind of an impressive amount of snow. Remember, I was licensed in the Army, in addition to kill, licensed to push snow blowers along the sidewalks of the Officer's housing areas so their precious kids and wives wouldn't slip and crack their precious skulls open when I was at Ft. Devens, Massachusetts, and let's face it, the Boston area gets it's share of real snow storms. Later in Utah, where they have "The Greatest Snow on Earth" (if their license plates are to be believed) and Colorado, where 3 feet of snow can fall in an hour on Memorial Day Weekend and be gone the next day, I know my snow, so it should come as no surprise to anyone that I am impressed by two, day long storms of non-stop snow fall that have brought havoc two my small town.


Now some people might complain about the quality of snow removal, or the condition of the streets, but are you kidding? It's a freaking storm out there OK? Look I know, this is the United States of America. We are a nation of business and commerce, and we have places to go and money to make. But seriously, can't we take a break and sit home with a cup of Cocoa? Let these snowplow drivers do their job without having to dodge snowbound cars in the streets. Let's meet our neighbors on the street and say hello as we shovel snow. Take a walk and breath in this clean fresh air! It's a once in a lifetime event, when we are all off doing our own thing this summer, with either the steady routine drudgery of work or making trips out to the shore, the mall, or the city, you might look back with regret that you squandered this opportunity to enjoy a unique aspect of our life here in town.

West Chester....Rising

Hi all,


I won't even go into apologizing about the lack of frequency of my postings, on the one hand one a month is not really bad per se, but I know how often you refresh your screens in the hope I've posted a new blog musing, and after a while, with nothing new, one might tend to give up hope. I'll endeavour to do better, I promise. Shit so much for not apologizing...

So what's up in town?

Well, I finally found my scooter in the parking garage flipped on to its side, ever so undignified and distressed. Was I mad?, oh yea, I'm pissed, but one can look at it as it having either being violated by the drunks in this town, or, basically, it has earned its stripes as a true urban hipster conveyance, since no scooter worth it's salt could have remained so pristine forever in this rough and tumble little burg of ours. Maybe the scratches to the paint and the headlamp will make it seem cooler, more authentic, give it "street cred" who knows. Anyway it fired right up, so life goes on.

What else is going on?

Well, what's going up (or down) I guess is the more apropos question, what with a couple of cool construction sites in the works and all.

First, the Monolith. Now of course I'm no architect or engineer, but I'm assuming that it wasn't planted by a race of ancient aliens that will change the course of human events here in West Chester, (or...will....it?) What I do assume it is, is the beginning of the elevator shaft, of which around the rest of the building will be built. Seems reasonable, right? This is just west of the New Courthouse complex. I'm not sure if they've got it rented out, (it seems to me we may have a glut of free square footage office space in town as it is, but maybe they know something about the economic recovery that I don't)

Second, is our new garage. Now I had assumed that it would be called the "New Mosteller Garage" but it will be known in fact, per Borough council, as the "Walnut Street Garage". Man oh man is this thing is shaping up to be a behemoth. When the big red crane showed up to help put up its prefabricated pieces, I sure nobody had quite a grasp of the scale of this thing. Now it seems obvious, that it could be a 20 minute drive just to get to the roof of this place, as cars will be high in the sky for sure. The place sure will have some good views of West Chester, no doubt, but Goth teens smoking homemade clove cigarettes and writing bad poetry will be attracted to the roof like moths to a porch light, so I'm afraid we may lose one or two of them going forward to blunt force trauma injuries because this place is going to be pretty tall and I'm sure won't have 24/7 security and you know how those kids seem to be less than sure footed in high places.

Now on to one of the few "FAILS" of our community, and that is the 124 Market Place project on East Market Street. Now as I understand, the buildings currently on the lot where these super hip condos were supposed to go up were suddenly and mysteriously "condemned" in the name of not having to salvage them for historical sake so work could get started right a way on these high end pads. Well in life just like everything else, timing is everything, and it seems that all this went down just as the financial crisis hit, drying up construction financing, especially in the area of home construction, what with nobody seemingly interested (or at least bank approved) to drop more than 400K on a 2 bedroom Condo with views of a Mexican Bodega and a Salvation Army across the street. Look I certainly don't begrudge someone holding off on some serious expenditures of capital in an economic environment like the one we are in, but come on, we have to live and work here every day, this is an eye sore, can't we get this if not covered in some sort of shroud, perhaps leveled and turn the property into some temporary surface parking while we sort this whole economic mess out?

To me, bottom line is, it's a quality of life issue. A broken window....if you will. If we leave things like this undone for months and months, the next thing you know, people are knocking over your scooter in the parking lot and not leaving a note or anything. I mean, when will it end? Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! That's what'll happen, I tells ya!

Generally we are in the right track, but we need to see more managed growth, growth that has the affect of benefiting the residents of this town. If only there was some sort of commission, made up of citizens, that could ask the tough questions of developers before they run roughshod over our fair community, oh wait, there is, it's called the West Chester Borough Planning Commission, and guess what, yours truly has joined it for a 4 year hitch!

I'll see what I can do about getting this place straightened out, and I'll update you from time to time on how it's going. There's a doings a transpiring down in the southern part of town by the University, (Dormitory demolitions, recreation centers and more parking garages being built) so I'll be in the know for that, and whatever I learn, I'll pass on to you.

In the mean time, wish me luck!

West Chester Snowpacolypse 2009

Hello from under over 13 inches of snow in West Chester, Pennsylvania!


Now for those who know me, I grew up in Florida. Despite that handicap, and I do call growing up in Florida a handicap, I do know my way around snow, and I know that 13 inches in the great scheme of things, ain't a lot of snow, but allow me to make my point.

When I was 18 years old I was made qualified to push a snow blower around Ft. Devens. At the US Military Academy at West Point, I watched the snow fall on the shoulders of the bronze statue of General George S. Patton, as if he was frozen in that moment of time when his forces raced to Bastogne, Belgium to relieve the 101st Airborne at the Battle of the Bulge.

General Patton in much better weather than Belgium 1944

Then there was the infamous Thanksgiving weekend spent in a quiet farmhouse outside of Ft. Devens. (That's a story for another time, maybe I'll tell that one at the West Chester Story Slam in January!)

To continue proving my snow pedigree, I participated in an exercise with the US Army and Japanese Ground Self Defense Forces in Sapporo, Japan, in January, I've had Snow ball fights at Fort Sheridan, near Chicago, Illinois, I've skied in West Virginia, Washington State, Idaho, Colorado, Utah and Pennsylvania, and I've lived and worked in Salt Lake City and Denver for a year each.

So again, I know my way around snow. Unlike the Eskimos however, I have only one word for it. Snow.

Grounded Zero Zero

And did it ever snow in West Chester! Well, for West Chester it was a lot of snow. So much Snow that Starbucks had the nerve to close down early on Saturday. Was it a lot of snow by the standards I've seen? No. Was it enough to paralyze the borough? Thankfully no, but not because it was an underwhelming amount of snow, but of an overwhelming response by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Borough Management team.

I've got to hand it to people around here but they were on the ball. The timing to deal with the snow seemed right. Not wasting time and resources in the middle of the storm, but attacking the roads full force the moment the last snowflakes fell. Dump trucks, Front End Loaders, Pickups with snowplows, even Bobcat mini front end loaders got into the mix, clearing sidewalks, roadways, alleys, pretty much everything you might walk or drive on. Of course private individuals and business owners did their share too.

Did it help that the snowstorm came on a weekend? Man you bet your life it did. Still, the fact that it was for all intents and purposes a non event, and as such it allowed those of us without the responsibility to do anything about the piles of snow the opportunity to simply enjoy a winter wonderland. It is this fact, and I have said this countless of times before and will continue to do so, that reminds us of the quality of life we share here in West Chester.

Mr Developer, tear down this barrier!

Hey y'all. Going a month without blogging is pretty much unforgivable, but you know I want to crank out a quality product so you'll come back for more. Geeze what am I talking about, come back for more, utter nonsense, let's get to today's story.

Actually we've had a lot go on in West Chester since the last blog, there was both the Halloween parade and the Veterans Day parade of which I wrote about last year where you can read about them here, and here. (BTW, one has plenty of turn out, the other one, not so much, but hopefully we can change that.) and then there was the 1st ever, West Chester Story Slam! Now if you're thinking about a bunch of soul patched, beret wearing hipsters smoking clove cigarettes from those long plastic filters and drinking espresso while snapping their fingers in approval after every story, it wasn't like that at all. It was more of a cross between open mic night at a comedy club, and an AA meeting.

It was pretty cool, listening to people I didn't know that well if at all tell us stories under the theme of "New Beginnings". I ended up telling the story of when I first arrived in Utah, when I got "diverted" on a tour that I thought was supposed to go to Park City, that ended up first stopping by to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Mormon History Museum, and the Genealogy Library. Not my strongest story, given how I've got some "go-to" gems like the High Altitude Chamber at McDill AFB story, and others, but it was a good start that just like skydiving, you're nervous and scared as you stare out the back end of the plane, but when you're safely on the ground, the adrenalin, man you want to do that again. So I'll be getting my fix again in January. Hope to see you there!

So, it's been an interesting month as it often is here in West Chester, we didn't burn the place down when the Philly's lost the World Series, so that was kind of nice, and the weather has been kind of bi polar, with dreary rain sprinkled days that last for days, and days of CAVU, (Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited) as we aviators say. :)

With the weather so good, Lana and I even checked out Longwood Gardens, my first time if you can believe it, and it’s clear that our timing was off, because the batteries on both my Nikon Coolpix camera and my iPhone dropped dead, that and if we waited a couple of weeks, we’d get to see all the Christmas lights and decorations. So guess who is going to drop another 30 bucks on getting back in to Longwood Gardens in the next couple of weeks? Yup, me.

Truly though it’s worth it, I’m not a plant guy by any stretch of the imagination, but I do find myself wishing I knew my botany better, if for nothing else than to be able to drive around West Chester on my scooter and say, “That’s an Elm, that’s a Maple, that’s an Eastern White Pine, that’s a Larch,(The Larch) that’s a TREEEEEEEE....as I wreck into one as I’m not paying attention...:)

Oh so I almost forgot, what’s with the title of this blog entry, right? A minor annoyance of mine is all, let me explain. You know it’s also the 20^th Anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall, which got me to thinking about freedom, which got me also thinking to Yoani Sanchez, the Cuban blogger who got beat up by the Cuban police, which made reminded me of the Veterans Parade and the freedoms we have here in West Chester to post anything we want, which led me to today’s blog. See, when the Rite Aid corporation bought out the Eckerd Drug corporation, they obviously had a redundant presence on Gay Street. So when they consolidated their West Chester operations into the one on the first floor of the Greentree building, they abandoned the storefront across from the Post Office. This lead to one of those amazing happenstances in borough life, that of FREE PARKING. With the Mostellar garage a gravel pit now, can you imagine, a place where you can park, in the center of town, FOR FREE, without fear of being towed? Now I play by the rules, and I pay for parking as part of my rent with the Greentree Building, but I was always happy for those people who could park there whether it was for them to run errands, buy a stamp at the post office, or for a night out on the town.

That's my other Blue Scooter, the '98 Chevy Lumina. Yea I parked there, want to make something of it?

That’s why it kind of upset me to see them put up Jersey Barriers around the parking spaces. It’s like the forces at work here couldn’t live with the idea of not making any money off of the 10 or so spaces, so they just denied it to everyone simply because they could. I’m not sure who’s responsible for it, but this strongly worded Blog about it should shame them into removing those barriers, tearing down those walls, right? Right.....

Happy Thanksgiving y’all, if anybody knows where I can mooch an invitation to dinner, let me know! :)

Just a good old boy....

I wish I had a better way to illustrate today's story, but because I believed that it would in my best interest to make sure I didn't inadvertently create evidence that could later be used against me, so I didn't document my activities using my iPhone. I'm hoping though that perhaps my words alone and images from pop culture can effectively put an image in your mind of what I was up to on Saturday.

Was that previous sentence overly wordy? I'm working on trying to convey things with verbal efficiency. I am open to any and all constructive criticism.

ANYway.....

So, after 10 years of faithful, unfailing service, my $200 futon, bought in Salt Lake City, moved into 3 different apartments and having spent 6 months in a storage facility in Denver, then making the trek to the east coast, and 3 more address changes before settling into West Chester, finally broke. Splintered actually. It was an inelegant demise, with loud cracking, creaking and popping noises as it gave up the ghost, embarrassingly reminding me that I'm fat, as if it could simply no longer deal with the enormous pressure of serving as my couch and bed.

So I needed a new futon.

You're probably wondering, what's a successful, handsome guy like myself still doing living in a studio apartment, sleeping on futons? Hey, did you see that Philies game? Wow!

Soooooo, I found one at IKEA, a METAL futon frame, (I saved the large foam mattress, since it has had 10 years to memorize my unique body shape, so much for memory foam) that seemed to be the perfect solution to my dilemma, and at $80 bucks, such a deal!

There was one major problem, how was I going to get this unwieldy thing home? As you know, Ikea does the whole flat packaging thing, and it sure as heck wasn't going to fit IN my car, and I didn't have those roof carriers, so I thought I was screwed, but it turns out they have a cool solution, these triangular thingies (again, a problem with vocabulary) that you put on the roof of the car, and it helps to distribute the weight of the item on the roof of your car. They even give you free twine, as much you need, you just have to, you know, do it yourself. So, guess what I did?!

I muscled this 60 pound beast on to the roof of my car in the cold, unrelenting rain mind you, and man, I tied the shiiiit out of it, ask Mike Sawyer one day about his flying bed. There was noooooo waaaaay I was going to have this thing set sail off the top of the roof of my car, because I ran all of that free twine around the top of my car, threading it through the windows of the front and back seat, up top again, pulling tighter and tighter with each successive round trip, enjoying by the way my new driver's side window that rolls both up and down, thanks to me correctly deducting that I had a bad contact on the power window switch, not some $700 window motor that the dealer wanted to charge me. Sorry, off tangent a bit, but man I'm so proud of myself that I fixed it with a simple replacement after market window switch, and not getting ripped off by the dealership.

So, back to the pouring rain, and me tying down this flat futon to the roof of my car.

I probably went 6 or 7 times through the windows of my car with this twine, tying it down to the point that there was veritably no slack at all when one plucked at the individual strands of twine. I stood back and wiped the rain off my glasses so that I could better admire my handiwork. Then it dawned on me. How am I going to get into my car? You see, in my haste, or lets say in my unbridled exuberance, I neglected to you know, think it all the way out. I should have opened the doors first, and I'm assuming you, my loyal and more intelligent than me reader, would have figured it out from the outset, right? Right....

Now if you know even a little about me, it's not that I'm lazy, (no really!) it's just that I, (like electricity) prefer to take the path of least resistance. There was very little chance in hell that I was going to undo the all ties in the twine that I just spent the last 20 minutes tying off in the cold October rain, so with the windows already down, (ah, that new power windows switch, sooooo nice) I figured that if Bo and Luke Duke and every NASCAR race car driver can slide into their cars through the driver's side window, so surely despite my Boss Hogg size, I could do the same. Long story short, it wasn't pretty, it wasn't graceful, but damn it, I somehow managed to get into my car feet first through the drivers window.

I sat in my car for a moment, laughing at myself and my ingenuity, before tentatively setting out of the parking lot of Ikea for the ride home. I tell you what, I started off, 25, 35, 45 miles an hour, occasionally looking up to make sure my futon was still with me, although trust me, if it had blown off, I'd have known about it right quick. But with more time and confidence I had it up to nearly 60 mph on 202. When I pulled in to the back entrance of the Greentree building, all I had to do was grab the P-38 can opener on my key chain, and one by one, cut the individual twines until the last one popped, and "Ta-Da!" I was free, I could open the door to my car and exit it in a much more dignified manner than which I had entered.

The rest of the day is of course anti-climatic, putting the thing together was a piece of cake as is all Ikea furniture, and although most of my old futon is scrap wood now, I still have the original arm rests and mattress to remind me of my humble beginnings, aaaaaaand it reminds me of my humble present.....damn I need to buy a real bed, maybe get a real place to live while I'm at it?
Since I'm wishing for things, I want a puppy....sheesh.

Is it October already?

A few things. Hello all, I'm writing to you to what amounts to my living room, (since I really don't have one in my 1 man cell, er, I mean studio apartment in the Greentree building) other wise known as the Starbucks across the street. First, welcome everyone to the fall season, here in beautiful West Chester, as if on some pre agreed upon signal, some of the leaves on some of the trees begin to wimp out on life, turn yeller, and make their suicide leap to the ground. Like lemmings I's tells ya these leaves are...

Second, my scooter crossed over the 1000 mile mark of trouble free service. I took this very clever picture at the northern gate entrance to Everhardt park as it crossed 1000, as if to give the casual viewer the idea that through fortuitous circumstance and fate that it just happened to cross 1000 ever so randomly at that particular location, but of course the truth is that I circled the park several times during the last mile, 999.0 to make sure I ended up there when the numbers rolled over. Sorry for perpetrating such a heinous fraud upon my loyal readers, but, well, whatever!

Third, as if this humble blogger cannot be given an even bigger head, I got quite the compliment from Godfather of West Chester Blogging, WCJIM, otherwise known as West Chester University professor and city councilman Dr. Jim Jones. I like to call him Dr. Jones, because it sounds so Indiana Jones-ish. Anyway, to read his post about myself and other local area bloggers, click here.

Finally, with the fall weather upon us, it can only mean one thing. ROTORFEST. Now I've always been, and will continue to be, a fixed wing man, but I do have a fond memory of flying in a Bell 47 up and down Cocoa Beach for 4th of July, 1975, and then several years later in a UH-1P as a Civil Air Patrol Cadet at McDill AFB, 1983, and most recently last year flying side by side with my brother Joe right before he went to Afghanistan in a Hughes 500. So suffice to say, it's difficult for me to imagine under what circumstances I'd miss a chance to check out ROTORFEST when it comes to town. This year it was Lana's turn to ride in a Helicopter, and surprise, surprise, she enjoyed it. She managed to get some great shots of West Chester off in the distance, and those miserable McMansions that are a sadly ubiquitous in the suburbs, no offence to my readers who are rocking the McMansion lifestyle, more power to you, no seriously, you use up a disproportionate amount of power! :)

So, with October off to a high and mighty start, I find myself looking forward to the last 3 months of the year, what with the Halloween parade, Veterans Day Parade, and Christmas Parade all on the horizon. The twitter-verse is all a twitter with talk of a Guerrilla Drive-In float in the Halloween parade, and you just know that's going to be fun! Also, the Phillies are also in the playoffs, so let's hope they make it all the way to the fall classic, but let's hope we avoid last year's celebration in the borough, what with the flipped cars and the fires and whatnot...

Charleston, South Carolina, or as I like to call it, West Chester by the Sea...(why not right?)

Hola Amigos, I know it's been a long time since I've rapped at ya....(ok, who always starts off their editorials with that opening? Anyone? Anyone?)

It's been a great summer, and I ended it by taking some time off the week before Labor Day to take the train down to Southern Pines, North Carolina, my newest favorite get away location and of course to spend time with Lana.

Lana is the blond.....on the left

With us both having the time off together, and as nice and relaxing Southern Pines and Pinehurst is, we both wanted to strike out to someplace new and to her credit, it was her idea as she had heard some good things about Charleston and wanted to road trip it out there. Now I'm not sure how it happened, but I consider myself one of those gentile Southern gentlemen who knows his way around the South from Atlanta to Birmingham to Columbia, and all points in between.

Yet somehow, on those countless trips up and down I-95 from Orlando up to Ft Bragg to go shopping for uniform items, or those great Additional Flight Training Programs where we'd fly to Fort Rucker Alabama to hit a Barbecue shack in Enterprise, or St. Simmons Island Georgia for some low country seafood, I'd somehow never made it to Charleston. Maybe because it was out of the way, a good 50 miles off of I-95, and although come to think of it I might have briefly landed at Charleston AFB long enough to drop off some parts or something, I had not had the pleasure of checking the place out.
Here's the takeaway from today's blog entry, and that is that Charleston is a great place, and you should go there right away! (and no, just like I don't work for the West Chester BID, nor do I work for the Charleston Chamber of Commerce.

Charleston is a little bit older than West Chester, and I'd be willing to bet that they have as many historical buildings as we do here in town. Great architecture, great shopping and great restaurants, but the difference of course is that beautiful waterfront view. I just have a feeling that as great as life is here, could it hurt if from say the top of Coyote Crossings we could look out over the water and see a giant Aircraft Carrier permanently tied up to the docks serving as a museum? Colorful sailboats darting in and out of coves? Merchant ships escorted by small pilot boats in and out of our harbor? Yea, I know, nice thought right?


So, just like Charleston, West Chester is kind of off the beaten path, you have to almost go out of your way to visit here, but as I go along in life, I've learned going out of your way usually pays off in many ways, don't ya think?

Local Blogger survives second bombing attempt

As many of you recall, last year an as of yet unidentified person planted an explosive device in the Mosteller Garage, in what was no doubt an attempt to ruin my day. Recently, after a relatively quite period, a second attempt was made, using nothing short of a JDAM, or Joint Direct Attack Munition, a GPS guided bomb dropped from the thousands of feet in the air by either a B-1A or B-52G bomber that was once again directed at the Mosteller garage where I park, but this time, with devastating effects....

Ok so that didn't exactly happen.

Still, my life has been somewhat disrupted because....god forbid....I have to walk a block, A BLOCK, to another garage in town. I mean I have it all timed out, if I can make it to the garage before the the courthouse clock tower rings 8 o'clock, I'll probably make it to work on time. If you want to watch the real time progress of the destruction of the garage on a webcam, click here!

When they closed the Mosteller garage, they didn't do anything to it for the first couple of weeks, thus for a short time it became the boro's largest indoor/outdoor skate park, with town's troubled teens running roughshod all over it. However it wasn't long before the concrete chomping machines came and began to wrought their distruction. The project is progressing along just fine, sure it would have been cool if they had imploded it, and let's hope the new garage goes up quickly, because it's really one of the only visible works going on in town, what when you consider they are supposed to be building a hotel behind the old Warner theater building, and those cool looking condos on Market Street next to Coyote Crossing. Then there's that proposed Zukin hotel on the old Rite Aid site across from the Post Office, we'll see if that ever get's off the ground.

Clearly the economy is going through a transition, and by extension so is West Chester, but hopefully things like the new garage will position the town for it's next incarnation. And I'll have front row seats for it....if people would stop trying to plant bombs in my way....

Insert "Intercourse" Joke Here.

Hey, if the Amish can cash in on the name of their town, why can't I, right? I mean, who knows what kind of readers are going to find their way to my blog based on the word intercourse, but hey, traffic is traffic, right?

This weeks story...

I got it in my head, when I managed to get to Toughkenamon, you know, just beyond Kennett Square and back on the scooter, that further distances were possible, especially if you used the "walking" feature on Google maps, where you indicate you want directions to where you want to go by foot than by car, thus keeping you off the interstates and such, places where my scooter and I have no business, what with the highway speeds and all that we cannot possibly reach.

So, I found out that there was going to be this small fly in of airplanes at the Smoketown Airport, not far from Lancaster, Pa. Sure enough, there was a route of back roads I could take to get there and back, all 35 miles, so I figured why not?

So the trip starts off good enough, breakfast with my friends at Penn's Table, and then riding out of town on West Strausburg Road. The problem, if one can call it a problem, is the fact that there was a bridge out in Mortonville. This led to a very nice detour through Embreeville and Unionville before getting back on track. Thank God I had the iPhone with the Google Map and GPS feature, at one point I found myself at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere, cornfields at every side, I almost expected the devil himself to come out and make me a deal so that I could play the guitar really well or something.




There's definitely a change in the topography that takes place from where we are in the cool shade of the trees that hang over the roads and over the Brandywine river to where it begins to open up to our north and west into rolling farmland and open spaces. The other sign that things are a little bit different? Horse drawn Buggies. Men in suspenders and straw hats, women with scarves on their heads and long skirts, riding the scooter through piles of horse manure on the road, yup, the Amish.



The Scooter made it perfectly to the infamously named town of Intercourse, Pennsylvania, the gateway to where the Amish cash in. Who can blame them really, between their fresh farm grown products, the quilts, the handmade quality furniture, who can't resist the desire at some point living in the Mid Atlantic states or beyond of just packing up the car and making a little road trip out to this bucolic countryside and do some shopping or ride on a buggy?



Just to cover their bases though, because surprise surprise, not every guy likes going over quilting patterns for hours and hours, right in the middle of Intercourse is the American Military Edged Weaponry Museum. I saw this place and had to stop, I mean, a military museum? How can I not? I mean, knives and pointed sticks? I mean, I can defend myself against fresh fruit, (you know, loganberries, bananas) but a bayonet in the gut? I had to check it out. 3 bucks gets you buzzed into an old bank branch complete with vault where they have display cases of every kind of knife we have ever used in wartime. They even had several versions of the knife I used in the Army, the Aircrew Survival knife, through my skilled hands many a coconut has met it's demise when we were in Key West.

So, back on the road, and after a fill up first as the scooter refused to go an inch further without some gas, we made it through Intercourse (no sex jokes, have you noticed?) and went through Bird in Hand, (that's a town, Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania) before finally making it to Smoketown.


There regular pilot folks, with regular old general aviation airplanes, not a whole lot of warbirds, or fancy schmancy airplanes, just a few classics, getting together for spot landing contests and flour bombing contests. That's right, a contest where a pilot flies 500 feet above the runway and throws out a sack of flour to hit a target below. Something I don't see every day, that's for sure!

Beriev 103 Seaplane from Russia

It seemed like controlled chaos, but somehow it worked. Airplanes took off and landed, entered the pattern, all without the aid of an Air Traffic Control tower. This is what happens when people who have a passion for something, they can make anything possible, from the flying right down to the hot dog grill.

Planes and Trains or Amtrak and Airplanes

Before long, it was time to make the reverse trip home, and it was relatively uneventful, now that I seemed to know what I was doing. The bridge being out still forced me to take another scenic detour, but honestly, every turn it seems is a new path of discovery around here, I really hope I have a chance to try them all.

Hibernation

This was just such a good weekend to hibernate for me. This morning, 10:00 AM was as dark as 10:00 PM, with rain on and off all morning long. This led me to knocking out my laundry several hours earlier on a Sunday than normal, since all I did this weekend was take naps throughout the day. I guess I'm making up for the lousy sleep I get during the week, and yes I know they say that getting exercise will make for better and more efficient sleep, so you won't be so tired, so you can do even more exercise which will then make you sleep even better, well you see I know there is supposed to be some up cycle to it all, but I'm on the other end of the energy spectrum, the part that is too tired to exercise, which makes my sleep lousy, well, my point is made right? I need to break that cycle, any tips?

So, I alluded to laundry a moment ago right? I'll get to that in a moment, but let me tie it in by mentioning the other things going on around here at the infamous Greentree Building, West Chester's most exclusive address! (um, not really) It's been one week since I've started walking to my car that's now in the Bicentennial Garage, since they've closed the Mosteller Garage. That'll be worth of it's own headline blog, but in a nutshell, so far so good. The other thing is there's been a change in maintenance management for the better, as I'm no longer showering in ankle deep water in my bathtub, I guess all the hair I've lost over the last 4 years living here finally managed to clog the place up. (Oh wait, unlike my brothers, I've not lost my hair, so what could it be????)

Anyway, one day coming home from work I find a note slipped under my door, (you know, it's the passive aggressive way our building managers communicate with us tenets.) to tell us they are installing new washers and dryers in the building. Are you kidding? Talk about exceeding my expectations! I had checked them out, and they are pretty cool, pure white, front end loading washing machines with black tinted windows, looking all futuristic out of 2001: a Space Odyssey.


Wait, can that statement be correct? Can something look futuristic if the aesthetic is set 8 years in the past? I guess it's easy for futurists and science fiction writers to have taken what was going on in their eras, and apply a little forward looking Darwinist evolutionary thinking to propose that if they were in 1968, by 2001 we'd have space stations and moon bases, just like with the decay that was evident in 1970's New York City, that by the late 20th Century, New York would be a dystopian, maximum security prison in need of being escaped from. Ahem. Anybody else saw The Disney Company coming into Times Square? Yea right. And no, Disney cannot be considered Dystopian...

Why do I get the feeling that my prediction of the year 2020 will have me driving a 30 year old car? I don't want to know, who moved my cheese, I want to know, where is my jetpack?

Ah the heck with it, it looks like rain again, I'm going to take a nap...rawr! (That's my bear imitation, woof, woof woof, that's my other dog imitation.)
Any body who can name where that last reference is from, (other than Ralph), I'll buy them a Coke. Ya Oddball!

Oh and if this post seemed to ramble, remember, I'm only now coming out of hybernation.