I'm writing but I'm not writing here

Most of the writing I'm doing now is over at my account at Gather.com so come join and read there. I might still use this a bit for memories of childhood but, as you can already tell, not as often as i thought.

But I've fallen in love with Google services, and they have a relationship to Blogger (own them?) so if I can connect it to my all-powerful mail service then perhaps it'll return!

Wonder how common it is for people to start thing, get distracted by another shiny object, and then leave the other to fester....?

Happy new year.

Story for sale on Amazon

My story, "The World's Most Famous Colorist" is now available for purchase for just 49 cents right here on amazon.com through Amazon Shorts- how much fun is that...

Short story contest :: Your vote counts!

Bryan told me about this Amazon.com Short Story Contest through Gather.com, so I entered a story I've been working on called, "The World's Most Famous Colorist." It's only up through Sept 13th, so please go today to join (it's free) read, and hopefully vote. It's sortof a flickr/myspace/squidoo for writing.

Note on 9/17: Voting is over, waiting to hear. If it doesn't make it, i'll re-post on gather.com

Stairs, architecture and modernity

With a cannonball lodged in its wall, the Cannonball House still stands on Morris Avenue, reminding us all of the Township of Springfield's role in the Revolutionary War.

The British, though, won the Battle of Springfield, and the rebel Colonists, under the leadership of George Washington, fell back to Morristown where they'd turn their eyes west to cross the Delaware. Pride in the township's history is evident also in the Colonial-style architecture of Town Hall, the high school, post office, and several other buildings.

The architecture of modern Springfield, however, is what Bryan notices most.
Ranches, split-levels, bi-levels. Much of the town looks like it was built in one week in 1950. I teach Bryan the difference between a split-level and a bi-level. Together, they're probably 75% of the town's homes.

A primer for the uninitiated: a split-level (pictured above, left), the more popular of the cousins has half-flights of stairs everywhere, so your living room is up half a flight from the entry, and the bedrooms are another half a flight up. The kitchen is either on the ground floor or on the half-flight up. The bi-level, however, is the more exotic, although awkward design: you actually enter the house in between stories. You must choose either down or up for the rest of the house. So the bedrooms are either down or up.

Growing up in a one-story ranch, I was envious of friends in split-levels, bi-levels or the best of all, the center-hallway three-story which had an elegant, full staircase right in the middle of a big house, with large square rooms. We had stairs to our ranch's basement or to my illegal attic bedroom, but it just wasn't the same. I never understood why my parents couldn't have us live like normal people in split-levels.

Things to come full circle, though. My brother lives in a split-level, my center has a center-hallways staircase, and I live on the top two floors of an 1846 brownstone.

Stairs, stairs, stairs.

Accents are for emphasis

Since childhood, I have preferred people with foreign accents. I believe accents adds dignity and character to, well, both of us. I was, after all, a modern American young person representing the future, and you were the old world, obligated to teach me it all. It was a crucial relationship to make up for the shortcomings of my 'situation' until I could correct it.

Manhattan was over thirty minutes and thirty miles away from Springfield, and our town's diversity was best illustrated by three different synagogues -- one each for Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. There was a small population of black people, who for some reason lived among four streets, which formed the "Square" on the south side of town. But mostly it was a town of Italians, Irish, WASPs, and Jews. Interesting in the fifties maybe when the town of split-levels was built in a day, but boring for 1978, when I started to crave the world outside.

My friends' parents from other places were my temporary outlet: just talking to them made me feel cosmopolitan. I wanted to drink coffee with them, to talk about art and literature and tell them I was taking French. Nate's parents, for example were from Romania, and there were times when I could barely and happily understand a word they said. Roger's mother was from Hungary, and when he would do something wrong, which was gratefully often, I could hear her yell Rogah!. He was embarrassed,but I was thrilled. Bland's parents were from China, and she taught me to drink hot tea during tennis practice, which showed you that it was more than accents. Chickie's mom was Danish, which I explained to my camp friends is a completely different country than Holland. And no, Pennsylvania Dutch is not Dutch, but a bastardization of German, which anyone who has ever traveled (in their mind or by aeroplane) knows is Deutsch. There were things to learn. And looking around their houses with sculpture, paintings, books and music, there things to see and hear.

Come to think about it, most of my friends were first-generation Americans. Diversity to me wasn't race or religion; it was nations. Curiously, Northern European, but still. And in Springfield in the seventies and eighties, it was a start. I really despised my own homogeneity and would quiz my mother for some background element to add color to what a gray and predictable northern European stock. From Poland and Russia who fled the shtetl at the turn of the century. They learned English quickly. Blah, blah. I wasn't even Sephardic, which would be interesting at Passover.

My friends didn't like it, of course. They were embarrassed by their parents' accents. Besides, in our teenager years, the idea was to avoid interaction with adults, not talk to them for more than two minutes in passing. We were too busy lying to them about where we were going. We had sleepovers with girls, we would drive into New York, we would sneak into a local bar.

Eventually, it didn't matter. I would start to travel. To Europe any chance I could, and then, finally, with every stomach and allergy medicine I could fit in my bag, to China.

Latch-key legends

I hated that my parents always were home. After school, at dinner, on the weekends. They were, always, there.

Cool kids had absent parents, parents who worked late, parents who traveled for business... parents who didn't hover.

The best example is probably Alex Miller's parents, whom I met probably not more than twice, though I knew him for ten years. The Millers were exotic (read: money), living in a fantastic Spanish style ranch on the top of the mountain. Alex, and earlier, his older sister and brother (who was in my sister's grade) was watched over by a housekeeper named Pearl, who was strict but with a smile. As far I was concerned, Pearl ran the house. Pearl seemed to like me especially and would serve us limitless treats and put up with Alex's demands for more cookies or me staying for dinner. There was warmth in their relationships, though, where he knew there was a line he couldn't cross and one in which she found blurred. I would go to Alex's house as often as I could. Not just because of Pearl. But because Alex had every toy imaginable, especially the latest Atari war games. My favorite was "Star Raiders." The only downside of visiting Alex, however, was that he was a total jock, and there always was a risk we'd have to play soccer, and once, even plastic jai-lai. At least my parents never forced me to play sports.

Chaz Weiss also had parents working, and I spent a lot of time at his big house on Hillside Avenue. Both parents were doctors, one a radiologist, and the other, well, I have no idea, but he did publish a book. Chaz also had a Pearl, but she wasn't 'live-in' and Chaz's adored me, especially because she thought I kept Chaz on the 'right track' - doing his homework and what not. A good influence is what they call it now. Chaz's Pearl encouraged me to visit often and I found myself staying over Chaz's constantly, nearly every week. We could stay up late, logging onto his parents CompuServe computer network (this is pre-internet) on which we'd pretend to be adult men hitting on women. We'd order sneak across the highway to play video games at the Ground Round, or we'd stay in, order in pizza, watch movies or go swimming -- Chaz has the one thing Alex didn't -- a pool.

Nitter's folks worked too, and his mother's ob/gyn office was even in the house. But they trusted him on an unheard-of level: when his parents went on vacation to, say, Mexico, Nitter stayed home alone. This was utterly fascinating and drove my own parents crazy. "How could they leave him alone? Maybe he should stay here?" But Nitter was a trustworthy, A-plus student, whose behavior was more mature than people five years older. He probably could microwave dinners by-himself and take out the trash. And he did have a moped to take himself places. But a thirteen year-old boy taking care of himself for a week...alone? Even if his parents were...European?!?!

Why weren't my parents rich? Why didn't they work more? Why didn't they trust me? Why weren't they... European?

The lasting lens of a 10 year-old

My mother was pleased to point out to her two sons in the back seat the gray buildings and wharfs along the river. "That's Electric Boat, where they build submarines."

We were on our way to visit my mother's cousin Iris in New London, Connecticut, and the trivia about these innocuous looking buildings made the trip more interesting. Certainly more interesting than Mystic, in which neither my brother John or I had any interest.

"Nuclear submarines," my older brother corrected. John was 14, I was 10. He knew everything, and I believed him. My sister was at college, so there could be no counterweight. Then John turned to me and confided, "This is a big nuclear target."

I looked out the window in horror. Each time we visited, I dreaded saying good bye to Iris and her family -- as if could be the last time I'd see them.

This was not the only nuclear threat on my extended family. We had cousins in Norfolk News in Virginia, which John said was another prime shipbuilding port.

John was fascinated by armies, navies, and air forces. He taught me the difference between the F-14 and F-15 fighter jet, and I read his back issues of Foreign Policy and marveled at his report comparing the Soviet and American navies

Decades later, despite the thawed cold war, I'm still nervous passing through eastern Connecticut. Not to mention, by the way, upstate farms with their supposedly innocuous silos. You might romance storage of animal feed. But I hear my brother's voice telling me the truth: "Mat, that's where they hide the ICBMs."