Archive » May 2015 » Columns

Believe it or not, a lot of people tell me they love reading my column. There's no accounting for taste, haha, but today I'm very sad because I just lost my number-one fan. My mother, Gertrude "Trudy" (Colasanti) Palmeri, just died and I have such a heavy heart I can barely breathe. Truly the Earth just lost one of those bright lights that make the world a better place.

When you grow up as the oldest son in an Italian family, you are treated like royalty, for better or worse. For example, I still can't make a bed properly because I never had to. Same thing with washing clothes and other general cleaning and housework.

I'm bad at these things not because I'm lazy or don't want to do them; I simply don't know how. I'm trying to learn — I really like clean things — but, with Mom around, I never had to worry.

Mom and Dad moved to Guilderland from Brooklyn a couple of years ago, but her health had degraded so much that we could never do the many fun things I had been hoping we'd do when my parents finally moved up here. You know, the free concerts, the nature trails, the museums, etc. — the many rich and varied activities that make the Capital District such an appealing place to live.

Mom hadn't felt good for a long time, and, when you don't feel good, you don't have any enthusiasm to do anything. I can sympathize because I'm the same way.

The irony is that Mom was always such a strong person. She never needed to see a doctor her whole life until the last few years, but, when she finally needed a doctor, she needed several.

She had Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or COPD (breathing problems), heart issues (including a stent), and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Combine all that with being almost 80 years old and I know it shouldn't be a surprise that she's gone, but it still hurts so much.

I don't know if all Italian mothers have anxiety issues, but my mom had them all her life. A good example is when I moved upstate from Brooklyn. I had some clothes, some record albums, and not much else, yet she insisted I rent a large U-Haul truck for the move. When my friends came to help me unload, they said they'd never seen such a large truck for so little stuff. Yet that's what she wanted to make sure I'd be safe.

The other day, we put Mom on hospice care. In case you don't know, hospice is a great program — my lovely wife Charlotte volunteers for them — and we felt really good that Mom was going to get some great care, but it was not to be. That very same night, we had to decide whether to let her die at home or bring her to a hospital.

Since it happened so fast, we chose the hospital, and that's where my mother gave me her last lesson. I know now I'm going to fill out a health-care proxy with the orders “Do not resuscitate.” Trust me, you don't want to be connected to machines at the end; it's much better to go peacefully. I can thank my mom for making that abundantly clear to me and the rest of my family who were at her bedside.

My mom loved her family — including her husband of 60 years, Frank, and her three boys — more than anything. I could share a zillion stories about Mom but I'll limit it to just one.

When I was around 8, I was in a department store, wheeling a shopping cart, with my little brother in the child’s seat. I was heading for the checkout line when I accidentally bumped the lady in front of me with the cart.

This lady then yelled at me in a very loud and mean fashion. At that point, I saw a side of my normally calm and docile mother that I'd never seen before, as she let that lady have it up and down and every way from Sunday for yelling at her young child.

That's when I knew she would always "have my back," as we say in Brooklyn. How lucky I and my brothers are to have had such a great mom.

Life is nothing more than one decision after another. It occurs to me that, when I asked myself, "What would mom think of this?" before making a decision, I invariably made the best choices. Too bad I didn't do that much more often.

Still, she was so, so proud of me. If you'd seen her lately, you may have noticed how fat her purse was. That's because she'd cut out all my columns and stick them in there to read and show off to friends. When I say I lost my biggest fan, I'm not kidding at all.

Let me take this moment to thank everyone reading this and the rest of the Capital District for being so nice to my parents from the moment they moved to Guilderland. I warned them that, as true Brooklynites, they would find it very different living up here rather than in the big city. They used to complain that it was too quiet up here, but, after a while, they admitted that they should have moved here much sooner.

The best was when they'd tell so many stories of random acts of kindness that all of you did for them, from little things like giving directions to helping inflate their tires. Little acts of kindness that we upstaters take for granted but that get lost in the hustle and bustle of the big city.

It made me so proud to be a Capital District resident every time they'd tell me one of these stories. Again, thank you for your kindness. It is so much appreciated.

Now we have to make sure Dad can find a way to move on without the love of his life. It won't be easy, certainly, but maybe, like Ringo, he'll get by with a little help from his friends.

“Falls are never ‘nothing’,” stated Kathy Greenlee, United States Assistant Secretary for Aging, at the National Council on Aging Summit on Falls Prevention in Washington, D.C. The summit took place on April 30, to inform policymakers for the 2015 White House Conference on Aging.

As many readers know, a fall for an older adult can be a game-changer.

There was a lot of discussion by experts at this summit.  And it’s indisputable that fall-prevention priorities and strategies include funding and reimbursement, engaging new stakeholders, and expanding evidence-based programs known to help reduce falls. Conversely, fall prevention barriers include lack of funding, missing clinical-community connections, and low public awareness. 

This is where small community-based agencies, like Community Caregivers, can help make a difference: by raising public awareness about falls and strengthening community connections. Community Caregivers has at the heart of its mission helping individuals “maintain their independence, dignity and quality of life within their homes and communities.” Preventing falls, especially among older adults, can make an independent life a reality.

Community Caregivers Inc. is committed to fall prevention education. Earlier this year, in Caregivers Corner, we provided winter safety tips to prevent falls.  Underlying causes of falls, however, know no season and can occur at any time.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention promote four things that individuals can do to prevent falls:

— Begin a regular exercise program;

— Have your health-care provider review your medicines;

— Have your vision checked; and

— Make your home safer.

The Community Caregivers’ website, www.communitycaregivers.org, has resources on fall-prevention education. You may also request a speaker for your community group by calling us at 456-2898.

Nora Super, executive director of the White House Conference on Aging, notes, “Prevention is better than treatment. That’s certainly true when it comes to falls and older adults.”

Clearly, the fall that never happens is the best outcome for any of us. 

Community Caregivers Inc. is a not-for-profit organization that provides non-medical services and caregiver support at no charge to residents in Guilderland, Bethlehem, Altamont, New Scotland, Berne, Knox, and the city of Albany through a strong volunteer pool of dedicated individuals with a desire to assist their neighbors.

Editor’s note: Linda Miller is the Outreach and Education coordinator for Community Caregivers.

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Well, the Old Men of the Mountain made it through another week and were able to make it to the Chuck Wagon Diner in Princetown on Tuesday, May 19.   The OMOTM reported coming through fog on their way off the Hill.

This scribe does not know how many, if any, of the OFs stopped to vote on a school’s budget on their way to the Chuck Wagon. Generally, unless there is some radical proposal, the school budget and school board members’ election is light, so the OFs would not be bothered by lines no matter what time the OFs stopped anyway.

Some of the OFs were talking about farming equipment that was used when they were young, and what the equipment is like today. The operations are basically the same, mow the hay (i.e., cut the hay), bale the hay, chop the hay, mow the hay away in the barn, (i.e., place the hay in a mow). Mow, and mow, two completely different operations on the farm, yet spelled the same. That’s the English language for you.

Farmers plant the corn, plant the grains, and milk the cows — how that work is done stays pretty much the same, but the way it is done now is where the “wow” shows up.

The OFs started talking about the same story that happened to three of them. In olden days (“In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, but now, heaven knows, anything goes” — thanks to Cole Porter).  Anyway, in olden days, with a Case baler it took three people to bale the hay.

One person was on the tractor, and two people were on the baler. On the baler, one person poked the wires through the bale, and the one on the other side twisted them together.

Two OFs reported the same type of story. One OF had a neighbor farmer who had a daughter who would come and help with the fieldwork at times, and the farmer’s sons would also go along and help them. One day, the farmer’s daughter was on the baler twisting the wires, the son’s father was driving the tractor, and one son was pushing the wires through the bales. Just a routine summer’s workday on the farm in olden days, only on this particular day the farmer’s daughter suddenly took off running and screaming across the field.

The OF said his dad stopped the tractor and ran after the girl to see what had happened.  The OF said he ran around to the other side to see what had happened there, fully expecting to see a hand cut off or something like that. What he saw was about six inches of a large live snake sticking out from the bale, frantically, flaying back and forth with its forked tongue darting in an out and the rest of the snake in the bale. This reptile was in a ton of hurt and not a happy camper.

The OF said, if he had been on the side of the baler, twisting the wires, and he saw that snake coming at him with each lunge of the plunger, he would have been gone too.

The other OF said they had the same exact experience of baling up a snake with parts of that reptile protruding from the bale, again flaying back and forth. This OF did not mention if it was a wire baler, or a string baler but that part is irrelevant — it was the exact same occurrence.

What other critters have had the unfortunate experience to become baled up inside hay bales, or for that matter caught up in the corn chopper and blown into a silo, we don’t know for sure.

However, one OF mentioned, “Well, it is a good source of protein for the cows.”

The OFs looked at this one OG and wondered what kind of farm he had where cows ate meat. The protein for cows comes from grain.

Another OF said that, while they were baling (this again was a normal afternoon of putting in hay) his dad was on the tractor and all of a sudden he noticed a doe charging in front of the baler. The OF said his dad stopped immediately and shut the baler down.

When his father went to see what was going on, he found that there was a little newborn fawn on the apron of the baler just ready to go into the plunger. The OF said his father picked up the fawn and went to put it in the grass and there in the grass was another fawn.

The OF said they stopped baling in that area, and the next day when they went to the field to finish up, there was the deer with the two fawns; it appeared like she was saying thank-you to his father for saving her baby. Farming is hard, dangerous, work but at times can be very interesting. 

More buzz on bees and blossoms

The OFs were on a brief nature kick, and, although the OFs have mentioned a couple of these items before, at this breakfast, they were discussing them again as if they were new.

The apple trees, along with other flowering trees and shrubs are loaded with blossoms, and the OFs noticed the lilacs have more flowers than leaves, but there are no bees. One OF said a bee here and there is nothing like it used to be when the apple trees at his place would have so many bees in it that the tree sounded like a factory humming.

Some of the OFs have noticed the absence of woodchucks. One OF who does brushhogging says he hasn’t run into a woodchuck hole in about the same period of time.

“There are a few woodchucks around,” another OF said. “But not many.”

On the other hand, the OFs noticed how many wild strawberry blossoms are around. This is a year for wild strawberries like in the past. The OFs reminisced about how, when they were younger, being sent out by their parents to go and pick them. The OFs said the berries have disappeared for some time but now they seem to be back; however, now the OFs don’t have parents around to send them out to break their backs picking them.  

Those OFs who made it to the Chuck Wagon Diner in Princetown, and who are not about to go out and pick wild strawberries, were: Henry Witt, Miner Stevens, Roger Chapman, Robie Osterman, Roger Shafer, John Rossmann, Andy Tinning, Harold Guest, Chuck Aleseio, Mark Traver, Glenn Patterson, Art Frament, Bob Benac, Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, Gerry Irwin, Bob Fink, Bob Benninger, Bill Krause, Duncan Bellinger, Henry Whipple, Mike Willsey, Gerry Chartier, Elwood Vanderbilt, Harold Grippen, Gil Zabel, and me.

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The Enterprise — Michael Nardacci

A gigantic upended fragment of the Helderberg escarpment dwarfs research assistant Devin Delevan. The fragment, partially buried in sediment, was probably brought down by some of the last glacial ice to leave Albany County.

Geologists, I have often told my students, have a name for virtually everything.  For most people, an expression such as “debris that collects at the base of a cliff” would be sufficient to describe debris that collects at the base of a cliff!

But geologists find such an expression rather cumbersome — many of them write astonishingly fine prose — and to avoid that wordy phrase they have coined the term “talus.”  It is a generic term, for when cliffs are as high and massive and diverse in their layered rock types as our Helderberg escarpment is — some layers being soft and thin-bedded and easily weathered, others being extremely hard and massive — they will break down and produce fragments ranging in size from clay particles to gigantic, jumbled slabs.

Then under the force of gravity and the many agents of erosion—ice, water, and wind—they will begin their journeys to lower elevations on the slopes:  journeys that may take moments or days or centuries.

The Helderberg escarpment rises from close to the level of the Hudson River near Ravena and then moves northward on a gradual tilt that lifts it a couple of hundred or so feet per mile, reaching its greatest elevation at High Point above Altamont, where it turns west and gradually diminishes.

Its most prominent cliff is made of two layers of hard limestone — the Lower Manlius and above it the Coeymans — but those layers sit on alternating beds of relatively soft sandstone and shale known as the Indian Ladder beds and are capped by the Kalkberg and the New Scotland limestones, and other beds of shale, sandstone, and limestone.  All of these layers have been subjected to millennia of attack by the forces of nature, and the result is that the escarpment sits on a talus slope hundreds of feet high.

It is a hauntingly beautiful environment, radically different from the orchards and cornfields that border it. The haunt of crows, ravens, pilgrim thrushes, and (in spring) migrating white-throated sparrows, vast forests of deciduous trees and hemlocks on the slopes have had to grow to great heights in order to reach sunlight and have produced a world of perpetual green shade and trickling water.

Since the slopes also face north, whatever sunlight gets through the forest canopy never strikes the ground at a steep angle and the environment tends to be very humid.  Humidity is conducive to weathering and so the bedrock layers are buried under dirt and gravel and larger rock fragments, providing an atmosphere like that of a terrarium, and with similar results.

 

A view of the woods on the steep talus slope of the escarpment reveals a world of perpetual green shade, birdsong, and the trickling of water emerging from the ground. The Enterprise — Michael Nardacci

 

Every surface is covered with plant life, from the top of small, flat rocks to the massive boulders that moved down the slopes long ago, probably under the influence of the last glacial ice that covered this area.  These are plants that thrive in a wet environment with limited light: violets, trilliums, jack-in-the-pulpits, wild ginger, trout lily, Dutchman’s breeches, and a vast variety of ferns, among others.

They appear soon after the last snow is gone and bloom for a few days and then vanish for another year.  But one in particular is sought after not for its exotic flower but for its odor and taste:  the wild ramp, also known as spring onion, wild garlic, and by other names.

The leaves of wild ramps somewhat resemble those of the lily-of-the-valley, but to the alert eye they signal the presence of a wild onion with a sharp taste that is both sweet and spicy; its odor and flavor can make something very special of an otherwise commonplace dish.

Once their shiny leaves appear, it is a matter of just a couple of weeks before the bulbs swell to half an inch or more in diameter. Then, as they are dug from the ground, their zesty onion odor permeates the air.

 

Wild ramps, pulled from the ground and scrubbed, their shiny white bulbs releasing their fresh, onion fragrance. The Enterprise — Michael Nardacci

 

Washed and with their roots cut away, the ramps may be used as flavoring in dozens of dishes; they may be boiled or roasted, or they may simply be eaten raw, giving the tang of spring to salads or plates of raw vegetables.  After a few more short weeks, the leaves wither — among the first of all forest plants to turn yellow as the season progresses — and vanish until the next year’s spring melt and first warm days awaken them again.

An Internet search for “wild ramps” yields upward of 60,000 sites; one quickly learns that wild ramp festivals are held in many Appalachian sites in the spring.  And many of the websites deal with the folklore associated with the plants.

Medieval and early American populations believed the plant to have medicinal qualities — but, of course, onions have long been known to be good for digestion and for the heart.  Probably the more outrageous claims of the ramp’s health-giving qualities are myths, but one can easily understand why the stories have arisen.

For following a cold, snowy, barren winter such as the one we just experienced, suddenly the newly greening forest features a modest-looking plant, which — when drawn from the ground — yields a fragrance as fresh and as invigorating as spring itself.

And what better way to experience the return of the warmer weather than to take a stroll through the forests of the Helderberg talus slopes to enjoy the greenery, perhaps catching a glimpse of the 42 shades of green that it is said every Irishman can distinguish; to listen to the music of the newly-arrived birds and the trickling of the last snow melt; and amid the exhilarating smells of the woods to be fortunate enough to catch the tang of the wild ramp.

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I just saw a new study that indicates taking vitamins may increase your risk of developing cancer. Really. I also saw one that clearly shows no link between vaccinations and autism.

I also saw one that clearly shows that re-using plastic water bottles will cause you to develop cancer of the left nostril. There have been studies that show a link between marathon running and early death. Studies that link statin use to reduced and increased cancer risks.

There are even studies that show that reading too many studies can cause stress, which studies have shown can cause weight loss, weight gain, more stress, lack of sleep, which can cause weight gain and cancer.

Are you dizzy yet? Confused? That makes umm, well, all of us.

The problem with all these studies is that the way they’re reported causes almost as much trouble as they way they’re performed and interpreted. Here’s how it works.

First off, a (hopefully) legitimate scientist gets a grant to do a study on a subject. The scientist and his or her staff does the study over a period of time and then publishes a paper in a scientific journal that tells other researchers about the study, the methodology, and the results.

And finally, they note their conclusions based on the results. I worked for about 10 years with many scientists doing this type of thing, and they showed me their completed papers. And to be honest, I could not understand about 95 percent of what they were writing about. Really.

You see, scholarly papers are written for, and by, people with advanced degrees using terminology only understood by other people with advanced degrees. I think before you get a Ph.D., you have to take several highly secretive courses in obfuscation, obscure terminology, and just plain old BS.

So what does this have to do with the cancer-causing properties of kale? Look up one of those news stories. They usually say something like, “Researchers today announced a clear link between eating too much mint chocolate chip ice cream and increased risk of uvula inflammation in South Sea islanders, according to a study published in the journal Advanced Studies in Obscure Ice Cream Maladies.”

Having seen real scientific journals, I can say, with a fair degree of certainty, that most mainstream journalists (especially TV types) would not understand enough of a true journal article to be able to actually report intelligently on what the article said or means.

So, they wing it. Thus, we have reports of every sort circulating on TV and especially on the web, where editing is rare and oversight nonexistent. And then the TV types pick up the web reports and repeat them or even embellish them with some sort of local “expert” commentary.

If you really want honest scientific reporting, try The New York Times or a similar large media outlet with enough budget and staff to actually hire scientifically literate staffers who focus on science reporting, as they have actual scientific training. Beyond that, unless you can read a journal article yourself or have a friend who has a Ph.D. who can translate for you, you’re pretty much in deep trouble. As are we all.

But, beyond bad reporting of good research, there’s also bad research. Every once in awhile, you’ll hear a story that seems so in opposition to everything else, that you have to wonder where it came from.

This leads you to the world of commercially sponsored research. These are the sorts of studies cigarette makers used to commission to show no link between smoking and heart disease, lung cancer, oral cancer, throat cancer, and ummm, well, death.

Large corporations, hiding behind “charitable foundations” will quietly give researchers grants with a specific task in mind and then loudly trumpet the favorable results. Just remember the age-old axiom about statistics: They can be interpreted in such a way as to show pretty much any result you want.

So now we have questionable studies compounded by questionable reporting. So what do we, as health conscious people who worry about our uvulas, do to keep ourselves informed?

Well, I suppose the best advice is that, if you hear a report of a study that causes you concern, look up and find out the truth. That is, find out who did the study. Are they from a reputable institution? Where did the study get published? Maxim? Bad sign. Cell? Good sign.

And can you find a legitimate story about the study from a trusted news organization? You could even ask your doctor or another professional who would be qualified to actually understand and explain the study.

I know it sounds like a lot of work, but studies show that having real knowledge lowers stress, which other studies show makes us all much saner and live longer.

Editor’s note: Michael Seinberg says he is considering trying to get a grant to study how much misinformation negatively affects people without Ph.D.s. And their uvulas.

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In the merry, merry month of May, the Old Men of the Mountain met on Tuesday, May 12, at the Duanesburg Diner in Duanesburg.

The Duanesburg Diner has a neat way of keeping track of who has regular, or who has decaf, coffee. This restaurant does it with black and white mugs, black for regular, and white for decaf.

This way, the waitress, or waitresses, do not have to keep asking who has the decaf, and, with 20 to 25 guys, that is a lot of coffee to keep track of. Then there is always the orange juice or water guys thrown in to mess things up.

 It was a great summer-type morning on Tuesday, and the OF weathermen did not complain about our, so far, two-season weather pattern for 2014-2015 of just a nasty winter, right into 80- to 90-degree summer-type days. The OFs commented but did not complain — yet.

The OFs mentioned all the weather that is going on in the central part of the country. One OF said, “No matter what, weather is going on all over the world.  It has to.” What the OF was referring to is the bad weather and tornadoes.

Another OF said, “These things have been going on for years, only now we have instant information in real time brought right into our living rooms, and that seems to make it different. Also, there are more people now than 70 years ago to get in the way of these weather systems. The world stays the same; it is the numbers that change and they change the world just so this old planet has a hard job keeping up.”

All that dialogue sent this scribe to check a few things out and, as usual, the OFs are right. When the OFs were YFs (1940), there were 132 million people in the United States.  Today there are 320 million.

The average water usage per person is 80 to 100 gallons a day: 320 X 80/100 is considerably larger than 132 X 80/100. Now we are talking big numbers.

Then there is the irrigation to grow food for 320 million when, in 1940, that was not even necessary. The OF was right — it is the numbers.

China will scare the pants off you when looking at its numbers. The paper wouldn’t be long enough to support all the zeros behind the initial number.

Time jumping

The OFs did their usual time jumping from 20 to 30 years ago, and on occasion dipped into more recent history and coupled that with current times in quite often the same sentence. The subject of this conversation was businesses and farms that are gone from our area and have not been replaced.

The areas included were basically the Johnstown-Gloversville area, and the cities of Amsterdam and Schenectady.  The OFs were talking and reminiscing about the places that are no longer here — places and businesses like Coleco, Mohawk Carpets, all the glove factories, and tanneries, and the small knitting mills.  Most of them have vanished into our memories.

One OF said that these businesses are gone but a few others have replaced them; however, even some of the replacements of those businesses are gone now, too.

“Times change,” one OF said, “but many times the changing of time is not good.”

Then one OF opined, “Life is cyclical; small towns are all painted up and look good, then for some reason many seem to fall into a slump.” Then the OF continued, “As long as it keeps a viable core and property becomes cheap it has a resurgence. The problem with us is we are too darn old to see the plus side return to some of the small towns we are talking about.”

Tattoo craze

The OFs mentioned the tattoo craze that is going on right now, and we mentioned how those things fade as people age, and the only color left in the tat is black. Some of the OFs who were in the military, especially the Navy, got tattoos way back when, and some woke up in the morning and there was “Mom” tattooed on their shoulder and they didn’t know how it got there.

Today it is hardly legible and is just a black blob. One OF mentioned it was the stuff they drank from those dark blue tin cups. Not only did the stuff send smoke out of the OF’s ears, it also melted the bottom out of the tin cup.

“Whatever it was,” the OF said, “You could cut off my arm and I would have said thank you.”

Duct tape

From this small talk, we again turned to duct tape. The OFs are beginning to think that the whole world is held together with duct tape, or is it now duct tape because the word “duct” has become so common place for industrial tape that it is now a generic term like aspirin.

Every car, wagon, and tractor should come with its own small roll of 2-inch-wide duct tape — just in case. It is used to hold race cars together at 200 miles per hour, temporarily patch leaks in just about anything, wrap heating ducts, and repair vacuum-cleaner hoses.

Why, some people have even been known to repair a favorite pair of slippers with it. If it breaks, tape it with duct tape.

“There are a few things duct tape doesn’t work on,” one OF said, “and one of those is carpenter bees.”

This OF reported that he has tried taping their holes at night and in the morning there is a bee that has chewed his way through the tape and died, but he had cleared the way for the others.

The other problem?  Duct tape does not take to heat very well. One OF said, “Don’t try taping a muffler with it.”

Those OFs who made it to the Duanesburg Diner in Duanesburg and missing Red Green (a long-ago TV personality who used to duct tape anything and everything), were: Dave Williams, Robie Osterman, Roger Chapman, Miner Stevens, Glenn Patterson, Mark Traver, Roger Shafer, John Rossmann, Frank Pauli, Harold Guest, Bob Fink, Bob Benninger, Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, Mace Porter, Gerry Irwin, Art Frament, Bob Benac, Ted Willsey (sling and all), Jim Rissacher, Bill Krause, Mike Willsey, Gerry Chartier, Duncan Bellinger, and me.

The Enterprise — Dennis Sullivan
Row by row, tender plants grow in Dennis Sullivan’s carefully tended garden.

Just as there’s a difference between baseball players and people who play baseball, so there’s a difference between gardeners and those who garden.

Those who say, “I think I’ll throw a few tomato plants in this year” are not “baseball players,” telling us in code they’re not interested in watching things grow. And, though differing at the genus-level, growing a plant is no different from raising a child.

Therefore I have rules and views about gardening. The first is: The way a person’s garden looks is the way that person’s inner landscape is, in shape and content.

When a garden is helter-skelter, that person’s mind is helter-skelter. Gardeners might be forever catching up on things that need to be done, but are never slipshod about what sits before the eyes.

Which means that, since each plant has its own growing needs to enjoy its stay on Earth, before growing a plant, the gardener finds out about it, especially wanting to know what other gardeners have said about it.

Growing kale is not growing potatoes or laying an asparagus bed and growing any sort of thing does not mean dousing it with Miracle-Gro. The gardener is, as the person who grows things is not, interested in fostering conditions that insure diversity.

And let me add that people who say they hate weeding are not gardeners. I am amazed at the number of weed-whiners, people who act as if they’ve been besieged by an unhealing rash on a sensitive part of their body.

First of all, weeding is healthful for gardener and plant alike. For the gardener, it’s meditative, restful, and contemplative. It slows the city in us down and curbs the ADHD in everyone.

When Cicero was defending the Roman poet Archias in 62 (BCE), he told the prosecutor Gratius why Archias was so important to Rome: “You ask us, O Gratius, why we take such great delight in this man. Because he supplies us with a place where our souls might be refreshed from the din of the marketplace, and our ears weary from its clatter find some peace of mind.”

Cicero could have been talking about weeding and gardening generally. Weeding refreshes the mind by allowing the ears to breathe freely; the process of thoughts-arising as we move from bed to bed instructs us in a hundred different ways.

And because the gardener is attentive to the livability-quotient of each plant he is ready to do battle with any being that diminishes it.

I’m not saying pull every weed as if you’re intimate with it — there may be large sections to clear — but that “killing a weed,” “taking it out,” “neutralizing it” with precision requires attentiveness to its demographics.

Some weeds burrow deep into the ground and taking off their heads breeds gorgonesque effects. They threaten like Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Terminator”: “I’ll be back.” The gardener’s bible says: Know thy weeds; they will be back; be prepared.

The meditative aspect of weeding ought not be minimized. It induces endorphins. When the mind sees the cultivated plant more relaxed, freed from invading hordes, the gardener relaxes too, feeling that something has been done to promote livability (the plant’s and ours from its fruition).

Mutatis mutandis, in a day or two the freed plant will be less constrained and the vigilant gardener — a redundancy of course — will record that transition, if not in a book, mentally — in gardening terms indelibly.

A good training ground for learning this vigilance is starting plants from seed, maybe upstairs in your room after winter’s done. And not to decry the efforts of those who do “the windowsill thing,” lights are essential. It’s strange but plants are more accepting of our diversity than we of theirs.

Starting life from seed, the gardener learns how to make a home, how to hydrate, how to feed a being trying to get a leg up on life.

The great tomato aficionado Craig LeHoullier says in his just-released “Epic Tomatoes: How to Select and Grow the Best Varieties of All Time” (Storey Publishing) he feeds his seedlings nothing — contrary to the wit of most — because today’s potting soils are fully fit.

It’s a great book; if you are a tomato fan, get it, study it; I have problems with aspects of its design but the content is far beyond a 100-percent solid. He and Carolyn J. Male are the best there are, though she talks about tomatoes in a way that enraptures me.

The last thing I’ll say about method has to do with successive plantings. If green beans are a favorite (bush, say), you’ll need to plant a row every 10 days. I’m surprised at how many people treat growing as a one-shot deal.

And, in terms of planting lettuce, we have nearby greenhouses such as Gade’s and Pigliavento’s to get us an early start, so there’s no reason to buy lettuce from late May to late October — and infinitely better tasting than any store-bought.

And because the gardener refuses to let winter have the final say, toward the end of summer he counts back from the first frost and plants accordingly what the family likes, well aware that peas planted in early August present a different set of rules from those set out in April.

My father knew this; he was a gardener. He cut grass for rich people on weekends and took care of their flower beds but in our backyard, the size of a postage-stamp, he had fruit trees from upstate nurseries producing five kinds of apples on a single stem.

Once when I was a kid he asked me to go to the library with him at night; he had a horticultural question to review. I saw him in the reference room wrapped in silence seated before tomes on a large oak table in another world. He had an aura. 

That day (night) I fell in love with gardening. I had my own when I was 18 and living in a monastery, a whole other world under a whole other set of circumstances, but his other-world devotion stayed with me.

Each day when I go to weed and support the conditions of life, in some way my father is with me and I keep in mind my first garden when my soul was freed from the din of the marketplace and my mind from the clamor of its death.  

Oh, and for the record, any gardener I know is beyond happy to hear anyone say at any time, “I think I’ll throw a few tomato plants in this year.”

Anyone anywhere who has an interest in attending to living things we’ll take. That is the nature of us gardeners.

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On May 5, the Old Men of the Mountain met at the “Your Way Café” in Schoharie.  Years ago, there was a “My Way Café” on Route 9 around Clifton Park. This particular café was all done up with Frank Sinatra paraphernalia; however, the one in Schoharie has no such motif.

It is a clever name implying how you might want your food prepared, but, on the other hand, this may lead to some discussion between patron and cook.  There was none of that discussed with the OFs; everything came in large portions, and just as ordered.

The OFs for the most part are grandparents, and a few are great-grandparents, so, when the OFs start talking about their own grandparents, the conversation is going back a ways. That is what some of the OFs were doing Tuesday morning.

They were remembering what they did with their grandparents, and what type of people they were and what they talked about.  For instance, say the OF is 80, and the grandparent of the OF was 80, and the OF is remembering when he was 7 to 10 years old, and the grandparent was remembered when they were 25 to 30 years old. Now the OFs are talking of events around 128 to 130 years ago. That is getting back there.

Even though this has been mentioned many times before, we spoke again of how the parents of the OFs went from horse and buggy to men on the moon. Some OFs’ parents went from the Great Depression, to the Regan era.

Most all of the OFs’ parents went from farming with horses to tractors that drive themselves. One OF mentioned that we could see the progression of time then, and even when the OF was in the work force. This OF continued ruminating that now the progression of time is so fast that what is new today is obsolete tomorrow.

One OF said, “I love it.  I would like to be 6 or 7 years old now and just see what the world will be like in another 60 to 70 years.”

Another OF chimed in, “Yeah, if this old planet is still here and we haven’t blown it up by then.”

New cars for old hands

How the OFs segued into new cars from this previous conversation is almost understandable, because one OF just purchased a new vehicle for his wife (yeah, right).  This might have been the reason for the discussion that followed.

It was brought up that some of the new cars do not supply even a “doughnut” for a spare tire. The vehicle comes with a can of “Fix-a-Flat.”

“That stuff does work,” one OF said. “But it’s a mess, and what if you sliced your tire on a piece of angle iron, how is ‘Fix-a-Flat’ going to fix that flat?”

The OFs remember when cars came with two spare tires, one in each front fender. A couple of the OFs noted cars came with a parts book, and even tools for the parts that required specialty tools.

Along with that, the cars had lines; each make and model was different, and it was possible to tell which model was which. One OF said, when a bank robber was making his getaway years ago, the witnesses could say the car was a 1935, black, four-door Buick custom sedan, and the police would know what they were looking for.

Today, all they can say is, “It was a gray car, Officer, or maybe it was a pickup truck.”

The witness might be able to identify a red SUV. That’s about it. If it was a Honda, or Toyota, Mazda, Ford, Chevy, hey, they all look alike!            

When the OFs were YFs, they used to play a game on trips called “name that car.” When a car was spotted coming at them, they would start calling out the name and make of the car when it was just a dot on the horizon.

“Plymouth Coupe,” someone would shout, and everyone else would say, “Oh nuts,” because the friend or sibling spotted it first. It would be rare that somebody else would call a different car.

Plastic tractors

After reminiscing about cars, the OFs talked about tractors, especially lawn tractors, and mentioned the new ads they have seen from Cub Cadet. There was a time when International made the Cub Cadet and it was made like a tractor, now it is made by MTD, and just as tinny.

Only it’s really not “tinny” and an OF implied the tractors are all plastic and that stuff doesn’t last five or six years before it starts to crack, and things loosen up.

Another OF said, “You can’t hammer dents out of plastic, and you can’t weld a stiffer piece onto where you have a problem.”

“Not made to last, like lots of other equipment,” one OF opined. “We are a throw-away society, planned obsolescence, tough and long lasting is a joke.”

Another OF asked, “Have you ever tried to get a part for something older than five years?”  This OF said, “If an OF buys something they really like, they should buy two of these products. That way, you can start up the second one when the first one goes bad, and then the first one can become a parts machine.”

“Not a bad idea,” one OF replied.

The frog that got away

Now for a completely unrelated story (and it’s too bad the OF did not have a camera for this one). The OF said that he was out getting the garden ready and he saw a snake trying to eat a frog.

The snake had half the frog in his mouth and the half of the frog that wasn’t in the snake’s mouth was holding on a stick trying not to go down the snake’s throat. The OF relating this tale said that he did not know how a snake could eat something that large.

He also said he got a stick and struck the snake so the frog got away. The OF did not elaborate on how long this took, or how it happened, but that is what he said anyway.

Those OFs who made their way to the “Your Way Café” in Schoharie and inaugurated their first breakfast in a familiar building with the new name were: Roger Chapman, Roger Shafer, Dave Williams, Dick Ogsbury, Otis Lawyer, Chuck Aleseio, Mark Traver, Glenn Patterson, Frank Pauli, John Rossmann, Karl Remmers, George Washburn, Robie Osterman, Miner Stevens, Harold Guest, Bob Fink, Bob Benninger, Art Frament, Bob Benac, Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, Mace Porter, Don Wood, Warren Willsey, Mike Willsey, Bill Krause, and me.

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It appears spring has finally arrived and area golfers are back in full swing.

Community Caregivers’ 11th annual golf outing (wow, has it really been that long?) will be held on

Monday, June 15, at Orchard Creek Golf Course in Altamont.

This year’s sponsors for the event include:  Adirondack Environmental Systems Inc., Albany Medical Center, Blasch Precision Ceramics, the State Employees Federal Credit Union, and Wells Fargo Advisors.

We welcome back last year’s golfers —  and many of you who have faithfully played faithfully over the past 10 years.  And new golfers are always welcome. The format is a scramble with three divisions (men’s, women’s & and mixed). and This year, we will be using a team handicap.

The day is filled with great food,  and skill contests (we have a new one this year — Use the Pro’s Drive on a Par 5). We also have  along with many great drawing prizes and a silent auction featuring golf for four with carts at Pinehaven Country Club, Albany Country Club, Orchard Creek Golf Course, and Colonie Country Club.

This year, the live auction also includes  along with a clubhouse box on the finish line for the Saratoga meet.  Price per player is $145, which includes driving range, golf, carts, lunch, cocktail party,, and dinner.  Tee boxes are still available.

Invitations are in the mailout. They  and are also available on the website (www.communitycaregivers.org) or and at the Community Caregivers office located at 2021 Western Ave.  For additional information, please call Petra @ at 456-2898.

Editor’s note: Regina DuBois is the event chairwoman for the Community Caregivers’ 11th annual golf outing.

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Sometimes Tuesday rolls around so fast, and at other times it seems like it will never get here. Tuesday, April 28, seemed like it was the day after the 21st; it was here in a flash. On the 28th, the Old Men of the Mountain met at the Country Café in Schoharie.

One of the OFs mentioned he needed new semi-dress pants so the OF bought what was his size, or at least he thought it was his size; when he tried them on at home, the button came nowhere near the button hole. The OF was not ashamed to mention the size he purchased, which was “Dockers 40” x 30”. So the OF looked at the size of the jeans he had on and they were 38” x 29”, and fit perfectly.

In order to get a pair of Dockers to fit, the OF said he would have to go to 42 or maybe even 44. The OF continued complaining that, if he purchased jeans that size, there would be room for another person.

Then an OF mentioned there is the same problem with shoes. He tried on a pair of 10W and they were so tight, they curled his toes — he looked at the shoes he had on and they were 10W.

What is it with shoes and clothes? Don’t they know how to read a ruler?

“If I am building a shed,” one OF said, “and I need a 2x4 cut 50 and 1/8 inches, by golly, it had better be 50 and 1/8 inches.”

How can there be such discrepancies in wearing apparel?  38” is 38” — no ifs, ands, or buts.

The OF with the shoes said he tried 10W by the same manufacturer, only a different style, and that one slipped up and down on his heel, and looked as big as a small swimming pool yet it was marked 10W, on the box, and in the shoe.

The question the OMOTM are asking is: How in the world do manufacturers size clothes?  If they screw up sizing simple men’s clothing (which is basically just shirts and pants), what in world do they do with women’s clothes and shoes?

This must be some sort game with these people to see how many trips people will have to make back and forth to the store, or how long they can keep them shopping in the store so they will purchase other items. The question still remains: How can there be such discrepancies because reading a ruler is not that hard?  

New bulbs

We have gone from the incandescent lamps and bulbs to those new energy-saving bulbs that can catch fire, and now the OFs say we are into the age of LED lighting. The OFs don’t seem to mind this new type of lighting. Light-emitting diodes seem safe and use very little power.

The OFs still haven’t adjusted to the energy-saving bulbs. These things do not always fit the fixtures, or the lamps. Some of the OFs say they think that the light from the energy-saving bulbs gives them headaches. One OF wondered if there has been a study done on this phenomenon.

Concerns over the fate of fox kits

Switching to another topic, we hear that some of the OFs have spotted red fox around with their kits. Foxes are neat animals to have around.  They are timid and not at all aggressive.

“Foxes,” one OF said, “are like snakes.  They keep the rodents and other unwanted pests down.”

The first OF said the fox that hangs around his place had four or five kits, which is about average for a litter of fox pups. But the OF said, in the last couple of days, he hasn’t seen the kits, or heard them and he is afraid some other animal has got them (like a cat or bird) because, when born, they are very small, only about four ounces or so.

One OF suggested it might even be a coon that got them because in the same area they have spotted a couple of coons.

Draft could fix brats

The Navy guys were at it again.  This time was on how well most sailors eat.

Apparently the cooks in the Navy are well trained, because this has been brought up before. This scribe thinks that a cook aboard ship had better get it right; the cook has no place to run and hide, particularly on the smaller ships of 120 men or less.

When the OFs were YFs, there was a thing called the draft. Everyone was given a draft number and, if that number came up, that was it — you were off to the military.

For many guys, it was the best thing that happened to them (when the OFs were YFs, it was guys; girls did not get drafted — they could enlist but were not drafted).  The camaraderie and the stories of events that happened in this period of the OFs’ lives continues well into the senior years to bring people together who have had the same, or similar, experiences.

Some OFs think there should still be a mandatory draft to teach some of today’s spoiled, bratty kids discipline and respect. The back talk and sass some of the kids give their parents and teachers make the OFs cringe, and sometimes it is the way their own grandkids treat their parents.

One OF said, “Should you back talk or sass just once to some tough, old drill sergeant, you wouldn’t say or do that again to anybody.”

One OF had a kid in his unit who was a real wimp, and who couldn’t even ride a bicycle, but during basic training he toughened up a bit and was assigned to a tank division. He became a tank driver, and in two to three weeks he was putting a Sherman tank through its paces as a tank commander. There is a young man who will go home a completely different person.

Those OFs who made it to the Country Café on Main Street in Schoharie, and were all dressed in clothes that seemed to fit, were: Roger Shafer, John Rossmann, Harold Guest, Chuck Aleseio, Dave Williams, Miner Stevens, Dick Ogsbury, George Washburn, Robie Osterman, Glenn Patterson, Mark Traver, Roger Chapman, Steve Kelly, Bob Fink, Bob Benninger, (who got a hug and a kiss from the waitress who is his granddaughter), Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, Gerry Irwin, Mace Porter, Duncan Bellinger, Jim Rissacher, Gill Zabel, Elwood Vanderbilt, Mike Willsey, Gerry Chartier, Harold Grippen, and me. 

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