Ode to Grammy Jo

Mary Josephine Lutz - April 24,1939 to February 15, 2010

I was lucky enough to have two moms in my life - breathe easy, Mary Jo

On behalf of Bruce, Brenda, Brett, Brooke and their families we wish to than you for gather her to honor the life and memory of their beloved mother, Mary Jo Bowers.

Mary Jo was born May Josephine Lutz on April 24, 1939, the second  of eight childen to alcoholic parents. Because of their parents’ inability to properly care for them, Mary Jo and her siblings were sent to St. Anthony’s Orphanage in Toledo, Ohio. She always said that she was treated well, that her needs were taken care of and the staff and the charity of the townspeople saw that they got presents for Christmas. Of course, the basics were taken care of but not much else . When she would go to mass on Sundays, she would sit in the back of the church because she was ashamed of her appearance and felt unworthy to sit with the rest of the congregation. But she still went. And that tells you something about her strength of spirit. I don’t know if it was these early experiences or something in her nature, or a combination of both that molded  such a generous and loving soul but I know the rest of us were very lucky and maybe a little unworthy to have her in our lives.

Well, no child of Mary Jo’s was ever going to be embarrassed by their clothes, although sometimes this could have unintended consequences. Brenda tells about being sent off to school dressed to the nines in  matching sunsuits and panties from Tobey’s here in town.       which wasn’t quite the style for kindergarteners in Fort Loudon at that time. A lot of things with Mary Jo had unintended consequences. But that’s what made it fun or at least good for laugh after the fact.  It was a running joke between her and I about Bowers’ family vacations. I begged her not to include me in  any of them.  While I like to plan everything down to the last rest and gas stop, Brenda and Mary Jo would grab Brooke and the boys and hightail it off to the Jersey coast. Or what they thought was the Jersey coast. But it didn’t really matter because they would hadn’t arranged a place to stay, wherever it ended up being,  Getting lost was a given and breaking down all but a certainty.  And these were not the usual breakdowns, they had to be visually spectacular and catastrophic to the vehicle. Once they overheated and rolled to a stop beside a prison fence, during a prison break. Brenda called me late one night and told me she had a little trouble with Mom’s car. I hear Mary Jo giggling like a schoolgirl in the background.  Turns a “little trouble” included fleeing for their lives with a couple of bags of Wildwood souvenirs while the Estate Wagon burned to the ground.  The last trip I made with involved being chased by tornados across the Delmarva Peninsula.

Mary Jo lived in the Orphanage until she was fifteen, then moved to a foster home for a couple of years, until, at the age of 17 she moved to a trailer park with her brother and his wife. There was a handsome young man living a couple of trailers down, and liking what she saw, Mary Jo went over to borrow a cup of sugar. Two weeks later Mary Jo Lutz and Robert Bowers were married. So this woman, barely more than a girl really, bought herself a Betty Crocker cookbook, taught herself how to cook between having babies and keeping a household,  while moving all around the country where Bob’s work took him. Baking is not easy, baking well is even harder, but baking at the level of a Mary Jo Bowers is rare indeed. I’m sure most of you sitting out there have been the beneficiaries of her skills. And I’m pretty sure it’s not just Betty Crocker and a stove or we’d all be able to do it.

Mary Jo had an uncanny ability to connect to people and make friends. Before she got too sick to travel she would come down and spend a week at the shore with us. We would go to the same place every year and by the end of the week, not only would she know the names of everyone staying in the hotel, she would know their kid’s names, where they were from, what they did for a living, how they were feeling and probably what they had for breakfast. It’s been maybe a year or two since she’s made the trip but even now I have people I barely recognize coming up to me and asking about Mary Jo.

Now you can see that, given her early upbringing, family would become the most important thing in the world to Mary Jo. The difference between Mary Jo and most of us is family expanded enough to include everyone in the room. But Mary Jo was nobody’s fool. She was well aware of the weakness, selfishness and pettiness that we are all heir to. But she would look past those weaknesses and bring out the better nature in people. I know in some of my darkest times she was a source of hope and encouragement to me.

So, although our family has lost the person who has tied it all together for so many years, I like to believe that Grammy Jo has gone on ahead, and she’s breathing easy as she get things ready for when we come home.

He Tried to Warn Us

Eve wonders why Adam has nipples and bites the apple to find out

 

In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."

-Rick Santorum (R-yiff)

Ricky's right -  first Will and Grace , then an epidemic of inter-species sexuality sweeps the land. Even the Creation Museum, guardian of all that is right and Biblically proper, is not immune to this infestation:

 

 A penguin ,who missed the meatless garden memo, blows Adam while Adam tries to pursuade the lion to lay down with the lamb and engage in a little menagerie a trois. God, wondering what he hath wrought, creates Eve as a companion for Adam. Shortly thereafter Adam returns to the penguin and is tossed out of the Garden.  Eve tags along for child support and the penguin is banished to Antarctica.

(images, um, borrowed from Viceland)

Sarah's Beautiful Movement

“I am a supporter of this movement. I believe in this movement,”

This is a big movement for her. No glass ceiling for this gal but maybe a glass table. Palin delivers a true Memphis Steamer to her surf and turf addled fans.  Long in the making, the Tea Party, a movement formed in the bowels of the American heartland, shaped by ordinary freedom loving Americans, the very fiber of our great nation, is ready to be loosed on the body politic. No longer bound by rationality or the Constitution, Tea Partiers - we salute you! Now bend over, America. It's time for your enema.

Errata

I was going to use Erratum but I figured that by the time I was done with this post I would find more errors regarding my previous Wyatt Earp post which, surprisingly enough, has not attracted any notice in the historical community. But potential historical inaccuracies aside, it is my writing that I am most concerned about. You would think that the son of an English teacher and father of a soon to be Literature professor would be able to construct sentences that bordered on the comprehensible but, it is not so nor likely is it to be. I started my Earp post with "And not a guy you would want to mess with." My first inclination was, of course, "not a guy you would want to fuck with".  But a blog that links to me, Savannah Red, tends to the conservative side (well, more than tends), and, as the link prints out the first couple of phrases of my current post, I don't want to piss him off and lose a potential source of advertising. Either with fuck or mess the sentence ends up a fucking mess. Mom told me never to end a sentence with a proposition. What am I supposed to say - He is not a guy with whom you would want to fuck or Fucking with this guy is not something you would want to do? Sorry, but I don't see any way out of this. Ending with a prepostion? Sometimes I just have to.

Brave, Courageous and Bold

And not a guy you would want to mess with. I'm speaking of Wyatt Earp, of course. Pimp, gambler, killer, and all around iconic American hero. I'm kind of an expert on Earp, having read one book (Sacrificed Sheriff) and a Wikipedia article and so I was bitterly disappointed with American Experience: Wyatt Earp. You would have thought that between picking out cowboy hats and growing those Yosemite Sam mustaches, the talking head Western historians would have giddyupped down to the liberry and checked out some primary sources. Graphic descriptions (substantiated only by Earp himself) of how Earp gut shot some ne'er do well who may or may not have killed  his brother is all well and good but, sweet jesus, you got a whole hour, put things in context. What about the power struggles between the Republican and Democratic political factions that increased tensions to the point of violence? How did Earp make his money? What about Holiday implicated in a stage coach robbery? Why totally ignore the fact that Holiday and Earp were arrested and deposed after the gun fight at the OK corrall? Do you think that might have some bearing on the story? That the town unilaterally supported the Earp actions is flat out wrong and there are easily researched newspapers to prove it. Josephine Marcus is identified as  poor, slandered Johnny Behan's wife, which probably wasn't the case and hooks up with Earp later. This is juicy, could it have some bearing on Earp dissing Behan in his memoir? Earp lives in a whorehouse early on and is characterized as hired muscle instead of, oh my heavens, a pimp. Right. Like there's a difference. Earp had a falling out with Holliday and his brother Virgil. Why? That dynamic might actually be interesting. Instead we get an unexamined rehash of the Earp and Josephine story as told by Wyatt and Josephine. Now, I know the last one standing gets to tell the story but it's not like there is no other information out there. All in all, a second rate effort and typical of TV history. Pretend to be in-depth by showing a couple of warts on the hero while maintaining the made-up hagiography and leaving the basic cartoon narrative intact. Lamer than lame. This is why I like books.

Thorton Wilder - Eat Your Heart Out

I love my town

How About a Sponge Bath?

Welcome to O'Reilly's wet dream. Two days on the job as a political pundit and already she's made up a new word - "uncomfortableness". Which is kind of how I feel when I think about her being a heartbeat away from the Presidency.  Next week Fox unveils their new science correspondent - Ken Ham.

DeMint - "Unions More Dangerous than Al Qaeda"

OK, who ordered the Semtex Happy Meal?

Way to go, Senator DeMint. Obstruction for obstruction's sake. Much better to have highly motivated minimum wage workers screening airline passengers. Ya want fries with your underwear bomb, Senator?

(special shout out to Sen. Tom Coburn -(R-Douchebag) who suddenly found his fiscal responsibility principles in an old pair of pants he last wore to the Iraqi Blue Thumb Election Celebration and singlehandedly made it more difficult for families to care for severely wounded veterans)

Merry F#%king Christmas - The Tradition Continues

Well, if it's inevitable, you might as well relax and enjoy it. Regular reader(s) of this blog realize I am talking about the tradition where I bug out early from the Christmas Queen Mother's Festival of Family, go home to watch a movie by myself (last year it was Death Race 2000), listen to the Christmas Queen herself while she tells me all about the party I just left, find my attention wandering back to the movie which pisses the Queen off enough that she wishes me a "Merry Fucking Christmas" and stomps off. Then the boy laughs.

Now there are two ways I can go. I can be a loving and sensitive husband, attentive to my wife's needs, and help her to make this Christmas a warm and comforting expression of family love and togetherness. Or I could watch a movie. My question to you, dear reader(s), is which movie?* Please take the time to help me make my choice by filling out the poll in the sidebar.

*(Now, before you pass judgement on me as a complete asshole, realize that the Christmas Queen already has laser beams for eyes and is quivering in anticipation like a coonhound before the hunt, and that, whatever I do and however I do it, chances are about 90/10 that it will be wrong. I might as well grow a pair and take my medicine like a man.)

Bay Watch Circa 1958

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRO

Harry Potter and the Half Seen Movie

Or maybe Harry Potter and the Half Assed Movie. Filmed in a tone so dark, with a plot so muddled, that in half the movie you can't tell what's going on and in the other half you just don't care. I guess that's to set the tone for Dumbledore getting killed. Tragic, although by that time you're just glad something happened. And a love story - or a couple of them. Kind of - they also go nowhere. We get to meet the Dark Lord as a young man. He's the creepy Damien kid bussed in from the set of Omen III. And Helena Bonham Carter is great as a slutty Helena Bonham Carter witch. Lots of standing around. No good monsters. Two thumbs down.

Forever Young - Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad

Eulogy for Dad

 On behalf of my brother and myself and our families I wish to thank you for coming here to honor our father, Vito Scriptunas. I also wish to thank everyone in the community who helped my dad during his final days.- the neighbors in the Twin Lakes area who kept an eye on him, the EMT’s who took him to the hospital, the nurses who gave him wonderful care in his last hours, Dr. Jones who gave my father the tools to live out his final year independently and especially Dr. Chris Wetzel, who’s kindness and compassion helped us through a difficult time.
          Many of you know my father as that affable old gardener on Lakeview or that faithful church goer but he lived a long and full life and was a more complex and interesting man than many of you may realize. As one of three sons of a coal miner’s widow, with  the family scraping by on a meager miner’s death benefit during the depression, the prospects for anything but a difficult life in the mines were all but certain. My father’s own father died of black lung when he was 16. Often, when he would talk about his boyhood and his father, he would break down and cry. At the time I couldn’t understand this emotion over a man I never knew, about a death that had happened so long ago. Well, I know now, a father can’t be replaced.
    My father was a combat veteran of the Eighth Air Force, the 379th heavy bomb group. He received the European African Mediterranean China Medal with 3 bronze stars and the Air Medal with Four bronze stars. He flew 33  missions over Europe as a ball turret gunner. He was a war hero. Now my father would laugh if he heard me say that. According to my father  his entire military career was some sort of  big misunderstanding. To hear him tell it he was carried along through the war by forces neither rational nor intelligible. The only reason he joined up was because he was going to be drafted  anyway  and he wanted to try to get in the Navy. But the guy just  in front of him in line was the last one they took for the navy so he ended up in an artillery unit and one day they yanked him out of line because he was small enough to fit in a ball turret and they needed gunners so they  stuck him in a B-17 and sent him to Europe. But it didn’t really matter because by that stage of the war the Germans had jet fighters and they were too fast for his guns to track so he was pretty much just riding along looking at the pretty clouds.
    My father had an artistic side – his handwriting was beautiful and his lettering skills were superb. The colonel in charge of the base in Arizona discover this and offered him a stateside job lettering planes for the duration of the war. He turned it down, which irritated the colonel so much that, by the next week, he was assigned to an air crew and on his way to Europe. This kind of puzzled me so I asked him, “You mean you had chance to stay stateside for the rest of the war and you turned it down? Why would you do that?”
    He looked at me and said “Have you ever been to Kingman, Arizona?”
    I’m not sure what the term is for an exaggeration in the other direction but I found out later that he left out a few important details. I was fortunate to attend a couple of air crew reunions with him.  The waist gunner, Ned Rooks, set me straight about some parts of the story that my father had left out.  He told me that rather than being randomly plucked out of the regular army all these guys were volunteers. They signed up to be on a flight crew,  and that, at any time, they could go the flight surgeon and be assigned back to the regular army if they couldn’t handle it anymore. He talked about having to crawl down to the ball turret with a portable oxygen bottle to revive my dad because his oxygen line has frozen up in the minus 40 degree temperature, or how he and my father had to climb into the bomb bay and kick the remaining bombs out of the crippled aircraft so that they could land,  or how my dad would touch off his guns at approaching fighters even though he was soaked through with aviation fuel from a ruptured wing tank – or how my dad patched up a badly wounded radio operator and the crew decided to land the shot up aircraft instead of bailing out over the field because they didn’t think the radio operator could survive the jump. He was barely more than a boy, but that’s the kind of man my dad was. Ned’s wife, who was married during the war took me aside aside and told me that my father was the cockiest and most confident man she had ever met.
    This confidence stood him in good stead after the war. Dad thought seriously about Seminary after the war. My brother and I are grateful that he pursued a different path. So this kid with a general education degree from Scranton High manages to talk his way into Lehigh and come out with a degree in industrial engineering. He pursues and weds my mother,  who was from the same town but a different economic background and this at a time when a Lithuanian Irish match could still raise a few eyebrows. His combat training no doubt helped him in his marriage to my mother, who could be every bit as confident and hard headed as he was. But they ultimately had more than 40 years of a committed and loving marriage, and when my mother came down with Rheumatoid arthritis, nearly crippled and in constant pain, it was my father who stood by her, took her to countless doctor’s appointments and cared  for her until her death.
    So my father could do what needed to be done. He could wallpaper, tile a bathroom, sweat a pipe or build a stone wall.  He even designed a building that is still standing. This, after trying to explain to his boss that he was an industrial engineer, not a civil or professional engineer. His boss told him that an engineer is an engineer – do it. So he did it.
    We would spend some summers in Ocean City, NJ. One year my parents rented a surf board for my brother and me, a monster 7seven foot long board that took both of us to carry to the water. Unfortunately the very next day I broke my toe in the sand playing football with my father and I didn’t get a chance to ride it.  A sand  bar had developed  about a hundred yards offshore and beyond it were breaking some nice seven to ten foot waves. So I sat on the beach , feeling sorry for myself, as my brother, a little guy on a big board, struggled for half an hour to paddle out beyond the sand bar to where the waves were breaking. He finally got to where he wanted to be and was sitting on the board, waiting for a wave when my father walked over to me and asks “Where’s Neil?”.  I pointed  to a spot far offshore and said  “He’s out there and wow, look at that, he caught a wave, look at him go!”  My brother took off on the ride of his life, standing on the board and heading towards Cape May at an amazing speed. Two memories come back. One is my brother’s ride, which to this day, remains the single most impressive thing I have ever seen him do. My father thought otherwise, probably because my brother couldn’t  swim.  The second memory is my father running down the beach yelling, complete with sandals, socks, hat, watch and glasses and diving in the water to swim out and rescue my brother. I’m not sure what happened after that although I’m pretty sure my brother can fill you in.  
    I broke my arm badly falling out of a tree when we were visiting my cousins in New Jersey. Broke it so badly that the local hospital told my dad theat they couldn’t set it and that he would have to get me to a  specialist in Philadelphia. And not only that, that he would have to get me there  within an hour or permanent damage would probably occur. So the local doctors splinted my arm and shot me up with morphine and dad bundled me in the back seat and off we went.  The morphine took away the pain but my father took away the fear and I felt like things were going to be all right. And they were. Because my dad took care of it. He got me there in time and I can use this arm. Thanks, Dad.
    But my father would  also take care of situations that weren’t necessarily his responsibility. I have an early memory, probably one of my earliest,  of standing on the seat of the car, looking out the window, as my father, illuminated in the headlights, changes a tire to rescue a couple of stranded teenagers. That’s the man most of you knew. If you needed help you could count on him.
    As I got older (and smarter), I came to rely more and more on my father for advice. Sometimes I would even follow it. When I would be offered a chance to take a new position, maybe something that was more of a challenge and would take me out of my comfort zone, he would always urge me to try new things., telling me that I would have far more regrets not knowing whether I could do the job than trying and failing.
    He once gave me a training manual he had written for new managers in his company. In it he wrote that every employee has value and more importantly, every  employee needs to feel as though they are important.  And that’s how my Dad lived his life. When my father talked to you, no matter who you were or what you were doing, whether you were cutting his hair, or filling his teeth or bagging groceries or just walking by, he was not just exchanging pleasantries, he was talking to you. He was interested in you and what you had to say. Vito Scriptunas loved people. And people loved him back.
    So I would think that my father would want this for a legacy- that when we think of him we remember  that we are all important, that we all have worth, that we all have something to offer and that we should treat everyone we meet in our daily lives with compassion and respect.

Mr. Potatohead Asks the Wrong Question

Who cares? We all know the answer to that question. Later in the interview Barbour claims that the states are best able to deal with health care insurance and that the federal bill is useless because it has no provisions to deal with tort reform. He goes on to claim that Mississippi has slashed health care premiums by up to 60% because of the tort reforms his administration adopted. Mathews, still preening over his Palin gotcha moment, neglects to do his homework and ask two obvious questions:

1. If it should be up to the states to manage health care matters why federalize tort reform?
2. Why does a state like Mississippi have almost twice as many uninsured citizens as Pennsylvania, with its onerous malpractice judgments?
   

Mathews goes on to congratulate Barbour for sticking it to the Democrats. Yeah, we'd all like some of that sweet Mississippi health care.

Hey Sarah!

Make it out to Phil McCrackin

Will you sign my dead baby?

Must Be Lack of Vitamin P

What do Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, George Sodini, Nidal Hasan and Mohamed Atta have in common? It's not politics or religion. Those are bullshit arguments that these guys and their media facilitators use to put window dressing on what is obviously a deep seated psychosis. The answer of course, is that none of these guys could get laid. Not even if they had $5,000 pocket money and a bottle of roofies. There may well be something broken in men like this, but I'll wager that it takes a perfect storm of isolation and alienated frustration to set off these murderous rampages and if, at any time in the process, any of these losers had gotten a little snatch therapy, the cycle would have been broken.

So here's the plan:

• In the USA not much can be done, what with that pesky 2nd Ammendment and that whole innocent till proven guilty thing. In a culture as with as many overt and covert sexual images selling everything from Jesus to jeans, avoidance of sex takes a level of self loathing that is difficult to achieve. It shouldn't be too difficult to infiltrate and monitor the membership of white power, radical anti-abortion and muslim extremist groups. If any of these individuals take a sudden interest in assault weapons or corporate farming it would be time to introduce them to a cadre of highly trained massage professionals.
• Peace in the Middle East? Possible with the judicious use of American culture to lubricate the peace process. Baywatch, the first shot in the New Crusade has softened them up. The most popular show on the planet has enticed Arab youth to jack off to Pamela Anderson for the last 20 years. It's time to take it to the next level - forget cluster bombs and secret prisons - we need to drop tens of millions of iphones and blanket the entire middle east with free WiFi. They'll be no keeping them on the madrass when they have access to Arabian Nights   and Grand Theft Auto - Vice City.

Happy Veteran's Day, Dad - Connie's Last Flight

Dad in the ball turret on the way to Dresden

From the inside - Connie sustains major structural damage from flak

 

Shell went through the plane and exploded above. The crew donned their chutes and prepared to bail. The pilot, Walt Shultz, regained control, fell out of formation and limped back to Kimbolton Air Base at low altitude..

Connie, her spine broken, settled to the ground overnight and was towed to a nearby field for fire suppression practice.

Connie's crew with a new plane - all gone now except for my dad

The Rat Ladies of Pacific Palisades

“I’ve lived with rats since 1958, honey.... When I got the house in [1958], that’s the day I started feeding all the animals. And I fed them as long as I lived there.”

Funny about the interwebs, you can be minding your own business, wandering through the comments on a coyote hunting forum and end up finding a weird story about spintster twin sisters and their thousands of four legged companions. Apparently the only sightings of these two were their weekly forays to the store to haul bags of dog food home in a shopping cart to feed their rats or as PETA calls them, sewer kittens.. Also, apparently, the neighbors who moved in next door objected and sued the realtor and previous owner for failing to disclose a little thing like a colony of 10,000 rats living next door. Follow the above link for an unbelievable story of mental illness and governmental malfeasance. One of the twins uses Revelation to explain her behavior. Maybe she means this:

When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.— Revelation 6:7-8 NIV

Now I'm all for live and let live but I have to say that I'm against trying to hasten the End Times plague by feeding and sheltering thousands of rats. Particularly in a nice neighbor hood like Pacific Palisades.

Tom Tancredo - American Hero

Memo to Republicans: If you are a chickenhawk talking to some guy about what veterans want - make sure that other guy is not an actual veteran .

Coyote Attack

Strange story. Pretty unusual for a coyote or even a pack of them to attack an adult. Most of the attacks on humans involve children or adults trying to rescue  a child or a pet. It hard for me to imagine that a coyote or even two would attempt to take down an adult. When I lived outside Seattle I'd hear them far more often than I'd see them. They kept to the woods line at the edge of the field and were extremely skittish and the ones I did see couldn't have been more than 30 or 40 pounds. We heard stories that they would lure a dog into the woods and gang up on it and kill  it but that never happened to ours. Of course they were pretty big dogs, a pointer/dalmation, a big lab, a great dane, and a shepherd cross and they'd run together a lot. Tough as coyotes are, I imagine they would have trouble with that particular pack  but as far as I know they never got one. I ran the pointer (good old Fred) behind the car once  and clocked him at about 30 so he could move pretty good. He took off after a coyote once and it left him like he was standing still. So that's my limited experience with them.  I never even got a shot off at one.
The NE coyotes are bigger, possibly crossed with wolves and weighing up to 70 lbs which is a whole other scenario. I imagine even a large man may have a problem dealing with two animals that size. So far the information is sketchy. The size of the coyotes, the nature of the attack and the exact cause of death seem to be either unknown or not made public. Maybe it's just morbid curiosity but it seems like information like that may be of some use. If I see one in front of me, I'd kind of like to know whether I ought to be looking out behind me, too.