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“Birdman” Robert Stroud Ain’t Burt Lancaster

Robert Stroud was a convicted murderer, later to become a famous ornithologist and author, who was known as “the birdman of Alcatraz” for his work in diagnosing bird diseases.  A movie starring the great actor Burt Lancaster was made about Stroud’s life which was – take a guess – titled The Birdman of Alcatraz.

Lancaster was an actor who simultaneously exuded strength and gentleness. He was also quite handsome and female fans were devoted to him. Just like Cary Grant, Lancaster had been a circus acrobat and his body and movements showed this even as he aged. His portrayal of Stroud was brilliant and earned him an Academy Award nomination as best actor. His was a riveting performance.

Except Burt Lancaster’s performance had little to do with the real Robert Stroud. The real Stroud was like the Japanese bird monster Rodan to a pretty songbird who was Lancaster’s Stroud. Burt Lancaster’s Stroud was indeed strong in many ways and did challenge authority when it could be shown (in the film) that such authority was abusive.

In real life Robert Stroud was a psychopathic murderer, an unapologetic and vicious pimp, and a lover of chaos and struggle. He constantly fought and badgered the people he met and in prison he was no different; in fact, he might have been worse. You could say he was the top bird of prison fights, physical ones and verbal ones. His face was the sneer, not the smile.

Stroud didn’t like authority, that’s true; he also didn’t seem to like anyone at all. But he loved to argue and fight with fellow prisoners, with the prison guards and with the administrators. He even murdered a prison guard! This was not a Burt Lancaster type of man; women would not be fans of his. Homicidal pimps are certainly not good role models.

Stroud spent most of his prison career in solitary confinement. The other inmates hated him; they also feared him because of his mercurial personality. You never knew when an explosion would occur and they occurred often enough to keep everyone near him on their toes. In fact, had people near him been birds, they would have taken to the air.

Yes, we do owe this man a “thank you” for his groundbreaking work with birds. His books have been a great help for veterinarians and birders too; but we shouldn’t let a movie whitewash the awful facts. The prison psychiatrist labeled him a psychopath and indeed he seems to have been one.

The movie was good but the man was for the birds.

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

Die, Death, Diets

Donald Trump is in big trouble if what I think might happen, actually happens.

You can plainly see that the people who are protesting in the streets to reopen the economy—most of whom fully support Trump, as their signs clearly show—are older Americans, many of them in the most threatened category from the coronavirus. That’s right, these protesters most of whom do not wear masks or practice social distancing, are leaving themselves wide open for contracting this devastating virus.

Most look as if they are over 60 years of age and plenty of them look as if they have underlying health problems—certainly obesity being an obvious one. (Okay, now don’t get sarcastic and say their main health problem is mental.) As Trump supporters in states where the 2016 election was close, a small percentage of his followers catching the virus, being put out of commission or actually dying could seriously hurt Trump’s chances of getting reelected.

Now if you are a Democrat you should encourage Republican states and governors, and those people in closely contested states, to demand reopening of everything. The smart Republicans will realize why Democrats want this and will resist. The dumb Republicans will be going to the movies.

But are enough Republicans smart enough to see what is happening?

Are Democrats clever enough to trick the Republicans into destroying Trump’s chances at reelection by helping to kill off his voters?

This time period in our country’s history could be a do or die one for Donald Trump.

Death

What do Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Monroe, Jackson, Grant, Garfield, Teddy Roosevelt, and Kennedy have in common? Malaria; the most dreaded mosquito-borne disease in the history of the world. Malaria has killed more human beings than any other mosquito-borne disease.

There are 14,000 mosquitoes for every one person on earth. And they trouble me greatly because they are the biggest pain in my neck and everywhere else on me, and I don’t have any plans of being President.

Mosquitoes love me and that means they love to bite me; they’ve even bitten me through my clothes. I’ve used various repellents but none seems to actually work. I hesitate to go outdoors early in the morning or at dusk because those are the times mosquitoes are out flapping around looking for nourishment; meaning my blood. That is also the time they look for mates. By the way, the mosquitoes that do all this biting and spreading of disease are the female ones. (This proves to misogynists that you can’t trust women because they are after your blood.)

And finally, here’s what really bothers me about these buggers—the warmer planet Earth gets, the nastier mosquitoes might be as warm weather tends to bring them out. Between new viruses and old enemies, it is likely we’re in for a tough future.

Diet

During this pandemic, I have seen the lines of people at supermarkets and at food pantries. Some people are having a hard time getting food delivered to their homes or apartments as well. I have a simple solution to the delivery-of-food problem: Nutrisystem!

For about $300 a month Nutrisystem will deliver three meals a day to your abode.  You’ll have enough to eat to survive and if you are a larger-than-life person (okay, if you are fat), you might also lose some weight in the bargain.  Maybe you’ll get Marie Osmond to deliver the food!

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

Irritations

I know I am a grumpy old man, but unlike other grumpy old men I am right in my opinions. That makes all the difference in the world.

***Kars for Kids keeps running its free ad on the radio and sometimes on television. The ad is a simple one; a horrible, mind-numbing ear-worm of a jingle about giving your used, abused, crappy old car to their organization as a charitable contribution. Whoever wrote that jingle and/or arranged the music and/or hired those “children of the damned” to sing the jingle should have something horrible happen to them. Go check out that charity on the Internet and I think you will find it isn’t what you think it is.

***Gold and silver: Here’s another commercial that is constantly irritating me – and I’ve written about this idea a few times but it needs repeating. You take a former star actor, in this case William Devane, and have him spout off about how he votes in elections and how America was strong in the past and basically could kick everybody’s ass. He stands on a battleship to spew his company’s products.

He tells us about the rotten paper money that’s out there and tells us that he invests in gold and silver and he also votes. You can buy these precious metals too. Why would the company he’s hawking sell gold and silver to the rest of us saps and take our crummy almost-worthless money when they have two metals far, far more valuable than the money we are sending them for their gold and silver? Does that make sense to you? Why don’t they keep their gold and silver?

Here’s the pitch: “Send my company your rotten money and we will send you precious gold and silver and, yes, my friends, America will still be able to kick everyone else’s ass. You can bank on that!”

***Vice President versus President? I think the nominee of the Democratic Party for Vice President will actually be the person running against President Trump. Biden is a non-issue in this election. Most people that I have spoken to don’t think Biden will finish his term as President if he wins or he will gradually become the invisible man in the White House.

By the way, Biden looks like the actor Jeff Morrow in the movie This Island Earth. Check out a picture of him!

***I hate the car commercials that always tell you about their special prices and their constant great sales events. Their sales always say that they are giving a huge discount from the “manufacturer’s standard retail price.” Has any car ever been sold at the “manufacturer’s standard retail price?” So you get a discount on a make-believe price that has never been charged to a buyer. Isn’t this as fraud?

***Also about car commercials and real drivers: My wife, the Beautiful AP and I were driving on the parkway to go to a supermarket to buy some food. Given the coronavirus, there were very few cars on the road and those that were there, the drivers were speeding like crazy. The Beautiful AP said, “At those speeds there will be accidents even on relatively empty roads.”

On the way home there it was; a huge three-car accident and it looked as if some people were seriously hurt as their cars were mashed.

The car commercials often praise speed. Enough please! Those idiots speeding risk their own lives but also the lives of innocent drivers.

***And speaking of coronavirus, who are the idiots risking their own and everyone else’s lives by going outside in groups without staying a safe distance from other people? They risk other people’s lives too.

And those idiots are similar to the idiots in your classroom who made it difficult for teachers to teach their lessons. Now those same idiots are on the road, not ruining knowledge for everyone in class, but potentially ruining everyone’s lives.

***Speaking of idiots: What’s with these religious fanatics and their ministers and rabbis and imams who insist on holding services with a congregation in their houses of worship (make that houses of potential death) during the coronavirus outbreak? This is not a religious issue and no one is trying to destroy a religion during the coronavirus pandemic; it is a public health issue that affects everyone, including all the millions of people who are not involved in such religions. Your congregants should stay home and out of your churches and temples.

One televangelist claimed to have “blown the wind of God” at the virus and he asserted that with all the Christians in the country praying, the virus has now been defeated.

Israel had to cordon off the town of Bnei Brak because the ultra-orthodox townsfolk of the area refused to obey the mitigation efforts to stop the spread of the virus. They kept holding their services. Of the 200,000 people in the town 75,000 have already tested positive for the coronavirus at this time. Don’t let these people out. They are clearly dangerous to the rest of the citizenry of Israel.

In Pakistan, Muslim clerics refuse to stop massive prayer gatherings and there is real fear that such gatherings could spell doom for controlling the spread of the virus.

Enough of the idiocy; follow the right thing to prevent the virus from attacking countless people. Your religion is safe but the rest of us want to be safe too. Every believer who sanctimoniously struts about after attending these dangerous services is a threat to everyone they cross. Anyone who dies because of them means these holy-folk have committed murder.

PS: The same applies to those fools who partied on the beaches of America during spring break and the ploppies who held coronavirus parties (yes, people did this!). May they dance their way into an ICU that’s out of respirators.

***I now look at some political celebrities and affix a different career and/or character for them.

Donald Trump: the ever-yabbering time-shares salesman.

Mike Pence: the solemn funeral director.

Joe Biden: your strange uncle who sits in the corner at Thanksgiving looking at everyone because he’s forgotten everyone’s name.

Al Sharpton: a flesh-eating zombie.

Bill O’Reilly: your strange uncle who is always interrupting everyone at Thanksgiving to explain why he is right and everyone in that room and on this planet is wrong.

Andrew Cuomo: the toughest kid in the neighborhood.

Dr. Anthony Fauci: the truly deserving King of the Earth.

Dr. Deborah Birx: the truly deserving Queen of Earth

Joe Scarborough: high school senior who thinks he knows women.

Adam Schiff: your strange bug-eyed uncle who sits in the corner at Thanksgiving whispering to himself.

Rand Paul: Dr. No.

Mitch McConnell: the butcher who enjoys slicing bloody meat.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg: the immortal Hobbit.

AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez): one of the three witches in Macbeth.

Ilhan Omar: one of the three witches in Macbeth.

Rashida Tlaib: one of the three witches in Macbeth.

Nancy Pelosi: Lady Macbeth in Macbeth.

Ted Cruz: Macbeth in Macbeth.

Bernie Sanders: King Lear in King Lear.

Sean Hannity: Claudius in Hamlet.

Hillary Clinton: Gertrude in Hamlet.

Melania Trump: Ophelia in Hamlet.

Bill Maher: the jester in King Lear.

John Oliver: Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Good Books Defeat Virus

So you’ve been wandering through your house or apartment, looking to elevate your life from this coronavirus pandemic that has changed everything for every one of us. If you have kids you are at the stage where you are considering building a catapult and shooting them into “the wild blue yonder.”

Stop! I think I can help you, and maybe even your pre-jettisoned kids, by offering a reading and viewing list for you to check out. Most of the books are available on kindle or e-books but one isn’t – but so what? A good read is worth a good amount of money!

Wings for My Flight: the Peregrine Falcons of Chimney Rock by Marci Cottrell Houle (available on kindle): My favorite bird book of the 61 I’ve read thus far. It is a gripping true-life story. I’ve read it twice.

Wesley the Owl by Stacey O’Brien (available on kindle): A woman, an owl, and love. A fun, heartwarming and instructive story about the saving grace between a human and an avian. My second favorite bird book.

The next books are in no particular order but all of them are worth a read:

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman (available on kindle): If you have a parrot, you know how intelligent birds can be. This book will take you through the best and brightest of the winged world.

Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood by Terry Masear (available on kindle): Hummingbirds are amazing creatures but life in the big city can be rough on them. Terry tells fascinating tales of how she has worked to save hundreds of birds in deep danger.

The Delightful Horror of Family Birding by Eli J. Knapp (available on kindle): He loves birds; he loves his kids. This book combines them.

A Season on the Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration by Kenn Kaufman (available on kindle): The farthest I ever drove was eight hours, a few hundred miles in total. Now look at how far birds can go – amazing! This book shows you what migration is all about. I would never have made it as a bird.

Mrs. Moreau’s Warbler: How Birds Get Their Names by Stephen Moss (available on kindle): I have always been fascinated by names. This book is a fun read that explores where our favorite birds came to be called what they are called.

Birds of Prey: Hawks, Eagles, Falcons and Vultures of North America by Pete Dunne with Kevin T. Karlson (available on kindle): I make no bones about it; I love raptors! They own the sky. They are the true royalty of birds. Pete Dunne takes us right inside their world.

Birds’ Eggs by Michael Walters: No, kids, these are not eggs to be thrown on Halloween. Eggs come in all colors and varieties. Beautiful look at the beginnings of a bird’s life.

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

 

 

 

“Not everything in this world is nice.”

 

Long Island, New York, March 2020

We are on lockdown. The coronavirus is rampaging through New York State and the City is the hardest hit area in the country. We have to stay in our house but we can still go food shopping or to the doctor’s office or the hospital if we catch the virus. The more we go out, the better the chance we’ll catch this virus.

I turned to my wife, the Beautiful AP, and said: “I don’t remember anything like this. It’s like being in a science fiction book. The entire world is affected by a virus. It’s horrifying.”

“I’m thrown,” she said. “I don’t feel like myself. We’ve read about stuff like this happening but I never thought it would happen here.”

“This has spooked me,” I said.

“It’s spooked everyone.”

Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, 1953

I’m playing outside my father’s store at 7007 Third Avenue. I’m six years old, about to be seven.

There’s Lento’s Restaurant on the corner of Third and Ovington avenues; then Todd’s clothing store, then my father’s store, then a dry cleaners and then a grocery store, then Bedell’s pet shop. Across the street are Trunz Bakery and a new pizza parlor that just opened. Pizza was 15 cents a slice. I fell in love with pizza.

The grocery store had just been sold to a group of men who had accents just like many of the men in our neighborhood. But these men were not Italian or Irish or Norwegian like many of the men who had accents. The Norwegians owned the two delicatessens near us. They were very tall and blonde. And there were Pole-axe people in the neighborhood too.

We sat in the backyard yesterday. We have a beautiful deck that we rarely use. We wanted to get some sun. It was a pleasant day, about 60 degrees. We took two Coleman camping chairs outside. We have no furniture on the deck. Why bother? We might sit outside four times in a year. I get the best views of outdoors from my office which is three quarters windows. I spend a lot of hours in my office.

I have three fish tanks in my office: a 20-gallon, a 55-gallon and a 205-gallon. I love fish and have since I was a child.

I bought fish from Bedell’s. My mother always said to me, “You can have one small tank but when you grow up you can have as many tanks as you want.”

I wanted a lot of tanks.

The men who owned the grocery store were quiet. They had crummy-looking tattoos on their arms too; just like Kaplan the butcher, whose store was down the block on 72 Street and Third Avenue. Kaplan the butcher was not quiet. He joked around and complained about everything, even his customers. “They are always complaining and complaining about this, that and everything.”

He and my father were good friends. Kaplan the butcher would always say, “Your father is a great man, Frankie, a great man. Remember that.”

The new owners of the grocery store were very friendly to my father. But they did not talk a lot. A couple of times I saw their wives entering or leaving the grocery store. They were quiet too. I would wave to them and they would wave back. They didn’t smile. They had those tattoos on their arms too, usually covered up. They were the first women I ever saw with tattoos.

I asked my friend Stevie G. about those tattoos. He said, “They were in the Navy. All sailors get tattoos. My uncle has one too but my uncle’s is a woman bending over. It proves they were in the Navy.”

But were women in the Navy? I didn’t know.

One morning I asked my father, “The tattoos those men and Kaplan the butcher have. They are so ugly, just numbers and a letter or two. Why did they get them?”

My father looked at me for a few moments. I was six years old, going on seven.  “Frankie, you are right, they are ugly tattoos. They show us that not everything in this world is nice.”

 

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

 

Gambling with Coronavirus

 

The estimates for how many people will get the coronavirus range from 40 percent to 80 percent. This is the worldwide estimate. Based on our current knowledge of the disease, approximately two percent of the people who get this virus will die.

At first you might think that two percent is a very low number and that we really have nothing to worry about. Not so. Two percent is a large number.

Let us split the difference between 40 and 80 percent of world population getting the virus and calculate the deaths from those numbers. We’ll say 60 percent of the world will be infected. Since there are 7.5 billion people on earth, then 4.5 billion people will get the disease and with a two percent death rate that translates into 90 million people dying.

In blackjack, an advantage player using card counting can expect to earn between one-half and 1.5 percent of the money he wagers. Yes, casinos will throw out a card counter for having that kind of edge over them. Big money can be earned with such a small edge over the casino. So what sounds small is not really all that small. Two percent is a big number.

If your expectation is to die two percent of the time when you switch on a light; you’d probably forgo switching lights on. If you can expect to die two percent of the time when you turn on your car, you’d probably take up walking.

And 90 million people is certainly no small number of deaths.

The population of the United States is 330 million. If 60 percent get the virus that means 198 million Americans will catch it, of which approximately 3,960,000 will die.

Obviously it is important to do everything possible to slow the spread of this virus. A vaccine will take at least a year to get on the market and we have no idea if any of the “anti-virals” about which folks have been talking will work on this disease.

It is up to each one of us, including those sad excuses for intelligent beings partying in the parks, on the beaches, and on the boats, to take seriously the threat to 330 million Americans and those 7.5 billion people on our planet. Distance yourselves, wash your hands, and follow the advice of those who know a lot more about pandemics than we do.

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

Bad, Bad Bird Movies

Most of us have had our worlds turned upside down in the past months. No, no, the birds had nothing to do with it; just some crummy virus – and not the bird flu either.

Sadly, birds have given many of us stomach aches at some of the truly bad movies in which they have appeared.

There are bad movies that are actually fun to watch because they are so awful they make you laugh. The best of those awful bird movies are Rodan, The Giant Claw, and Q which stood for the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl. I hope the Aztecs weren’t bored with their god as I was bored by that god’s movie.

In 1954, Japan’s Toho Studios came out with Godzilla, a radioactive monster brought back to life by the atomic bomb to destroy everything in his path. That movie stunk, although the monster was a great idea, a borrowing from a fun 1953 American film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

Following up on Godzilla came Toho’s attempt to create a bird/reptile in the film Rodan. This movie was even worse than Godzilla, although Rodan was a great idea for a monster. Rodan actually looks great in the enjoyable American movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019).

The first problem we have with Japanese movies dubbed into English is the fact that the actors’ lips are not saying anything close to looking as if they are speaking English. In movies that are based on Romance languages (Latin-derived), the lips and the English words are often close approximations. Not so with Japanese movies.

In the Toho’s movies the actor’s lips will move and then a sentence or two comes out in English. There seems to be little correlation between lips moving and sound coming out of them.

Here’s how it goes: Actor points up to the sky and his lips move. Then we hear, after those lips have basically finished moving, “Look, it’s Rodan! Help! Help!”

The story of Rodan could have been a 10-minute short subject but Toho needed to make it an hour and a half. That means they had to stretch this thing out of all proportion. And that’s what you will watch; a movie that looks like a bad face-lift. Make some popcorn and enjoy.

Actors will take embarrassing roles in terrible movies in order to get paid because The Giant Claw is so awful – even “awfuller” than Rodan – that you feel sad for these professional actors in a movie where the special effects are so bad that my six-year old grandson said to me, “Grandpa Scobe, can we watch the news?”

Finally, we come to Q, a totally overacted movie by accomplished actors who should have known better than to lend their talents to this horrible project. Not only is the monster ridiculous in terms of special effects but the actors are all doing their Marlon Brando impersonations. At certain points in the movie you will shout out to an actor, “Please shut up! You’re not a contender!”

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. Frank’s books are available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.  

Ocean Resort Wins the Casino Race

 

The great Jerry “Stickman” and I spent last week at the Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City. This was formerly Revel which overextended itself, charged way too much for rooms and food, and folded as many another Atlantic City casino-hotel did as well, including two of President Trump’s, the Trump Plaza and the Trump Taj Mahal.

But the Ocean casino-hotel has been gloriously resurrected.

Our rooms were on the 24th floor with views of the city and ocean that were unsurpassed. The room itself was beautiful with one wall a full picture window. Mind you, this room was not even a suite but it was still large enough to feel like one.

Ocean Resort is at the very northern end of the Boardwalk and has unobstructed, spectacular views.

The casino is spacious, airy, beautifully appointed and clean. I’ve stayed at many casino hotels in Vegas and in much of our country and I can say that Ocean Resort is the best. If you have a hankering to go to the Queen of the Sea then give Ocean a try. Since this is still March, the room rates will be low and worth far more than every penny you spend. And once you have a player’s card, you will find that the future offerings will be amazingly generous.

As for eating, in which “Stickman” and I are experts; the hotel is loaded with great restaurants, cafes and food courts – and give the lamb a try at Amada. Best lamb I ever ate.

A word here: Controlled shooters, you must land the dice about nine inches from the back wall or you will go into a “jump” zone. The dice will fly off the table quite frequently. Until that zone, the tables are quite good. Odds were 3X, 4X, 5X, which mimics Las Vegas. They should go back to 5X and 10X odds as they had in the past.

Blackjack is the traditional AC variety. The slots are mostly those delightfully tall ones without endless slot aisles to squeeze through. Many carnival games are scattered throughout the floor and an Asian room is about to open soon.

Give this place a try. It’s superior.

All the best in and out of the casinos.

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at book stores.

Death

I fear death. I do; I fear death.

I want God; I do. I want God.

No, no, not the God of the Old Testament who condemned the entire human race to die because two people ate a fruit. Or the one who flooded the world killing all people except for Noah and his family or the deity who destroyed the unified language of man or the one who poured fire and brimstone to “smote” the people of Sodom and Gomorrah or the one who destroyed Egypt because of the institution of slavery which he allowed in the first place.

Not him. I do not want him.

Maybe I want the Christian God who was portrayed by Jesus as the loving father and the one who…no, wait, that God sent his son to earth to be horribly killed. For what reason? To rid us of the sins we didn’t commit?

Since many Christians believe that Christ is God, then God sent himself to earth to have himself slaughtered but at the end he said he didn’t want to do it but then prayed to God, who was himself, but accepted God’s will, meaning his own will, and went through with it.

I don’t want him; not him. There is something unsettling in that story.

I want a God who will hold me and comfort me, the way my mother did when I was a child. I still have some memories of those times—maybe I was five- or six-years old—as she calmed me in a world of hurt.

I want that love after I die.

I want to exist after I die.

Let me see my deceased family and friends now arraigned in their most beautiful guises.

I also want a heaven and, yes, yes, because I am human, I want a hell for those people who are awful people such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and all those other monsters from history who are too numerous to name.

I even want a heaven for dogs and cats and parrots and apes of every variety. Let the animals enjoy a heaven too. Let the lion lie down with the lamb without dinning on the wooly creature’s flesh. People with pets want that heaven to exist. They want a puppy paradise.

But does such a place exist? Seriously, does it? I doubt it.

The books about the God (Yahweh) of the bible and the gods of other cultures give me no credence for any of it. All those books that I’ve read leave me shaking my head that anyone of any intelligence can put stock in any of this.

What has brought me to this moment as I write this? It is death.

Death. Death.

Human beings have the ability to imagine their own deaths, usually sometime in the far future, or even imminently, as a sudden stroke of the awful slays them. But it doesn’t usually hang over our heads except in war. Mostly it is a vague feeling when we are young. Mostly.

But as we age, as we’ve lived an enormous segment of our lives and are well past our peak, we feel the tentacles of death truly heading to grasp us in their unbreakable grip. We have medicine, yes; but none of it has prevented anyone from dying the permanent death. Although, we fight death, we think about it and fear it. We lose to it.

I am now the elder of my family. I am the gray-haired one—I even have gray hairs in my nose! At Thanksgiving, I am the oldest one at the table.

Recently several of my friends died—two of them way too young. Their deaths were sudden; immediate, bam! They were alive, then dead. Just like that. These two people gave the world the benefit of their existences. Their lives were worth living and now they are dead. Dead. Bam! Just like that.

I am closer to death now than I am to my birth; I’d have to live to a 144 years to call this the midway point of my life. I doubt my storehouse of prescription drugs can help me last to 144 years old.

All the ideas about death and the afterlife sold to us in sacred books by supposedly sacred people and by pronouncements of true believers carry no weight. I just don’t see any of that speculation as at all compelling, as at all real. It’s spit in the wind.

Oh, I do see death.

I see death seeing me.

I know one thing for sure; death has no soul.

Do I?

 

Frank Scoblete’s books are available at smile.Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at book stores.  

My Wife is THE Boss

As Valentine’s Day fast approaches, the 27th anniversary of my marriage to the Beautiful AP is at hand. We married on Valentine’s Day so I wouldn’t forget what date our wedded bliss began. That date was AP’s idea.

Make no mistake about it, the Beautiful AP saved my life.

I was about 40 years old, losing my teaching job of 18 years, in debt up to Wilt Chamberlain’s eyeballs, paying child support and the mortgage on my first house and sending (who I hoped would be) my soon-to-be ex-wife to graduate school to become a librarian and taking the kids on weekends so they could be with me and also enjoy working with me in the theatre company I half-owned and I was depressed.

We were sitting on the beach at Cape May, New Jersey, and I was lamenting everything. I am an excellent lamenter.

“How can I get out from under all this debt? How can I send my kids to a private high school and then college? I do not want them to have to pay back college loans; I don’t want them to start their adult lives in debt. I don’t know where I can get all this money I need.”

Although I was not married to AP at that time, I knew we would get married as soon as my first wife and I could settle our almost six years of divorce discussions. As anyone knows who has gotten a divorce, the old song “Our Love is Here to Stay” must be rewritten as “My Former Love is Here to Slay” because divorce is a killing business.

But AP came in to save me. “Scobe, you are going to become a famous writer. You are going to take this gambling study you’ve been doing and make something big out of it. The kids will be totally taken care of and you’ll get out of debt. You’ll see, you are not down as much as looking up at where you will be going.”

She was right. In every way I was headed up. In every way.

And so it was that the Beautiful AP and I got married on Valentine’s Day once my now ex-wife had met a man she wanted to marry (I love that man!), moved to Texas in lightning-like fashion, so I now had custody of the kids, and all was right with the world. We paid the tuitions for high school and college; my debt was paid off; 35 books were published; television shows were written; consulting boomed; I did a lot of radio; I did a lot of television and I was free and clear and happy as could be.

And soon after our marriage I allowed the Beautiful AP to become the boss of my whole life. She deserved that much, did she not?

She is now in charge of everything. I watch her happily dusting, vacuuming the house and washing the floors and cleaning the bathrooms in her delightful manner. I see her scampering to do the laundry and to take the clothes out of the dryer and fold them and put them neatly away in our closets and cabinets. Our bathrooms are spotless. She is totally in charge

The whole house is hers! She deserves this power. She saved my life and now she runs everything. A woman in command is a wonder to behold.

When I sit in my recliner for hours and watch her exercise her authority over the whole house, I am in a state of joy. All women would enjoy such empowerment. Too many husbands do not allow their wives to have such strength in life as I do with the Beautiful AP. She even works a full-time job that she loves.

For our anniversary I bought some slippers for myself; wrapped up the box and gave them to her so that she could now joyously slip them on my feet when I call for them. I have stocked the refrigerator with grapes for her to bring to me and feed them to me—one at a time—as I enjoy an endless stream of movies.

I bought her an easy-to-use snow blower so she can make sure our property is clear after a storm. She’s even promised me that she would clean the garage.

What a woman!

Happy 27th anniversary to my Beautiful AP

(Do not, under any circumstances, let the Beautiful AP read this article.)

 

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