Second thoughts

My social skills group met yesterday. The group members are high school students with various emotional problems and diagnoses who need help with social interactions. Jeremy, age fifteen, is a somewhat sullen, quiet boy who complains about being unable to make friends. Last year one group member brought up the topic of sex. I suggested that the topic was perfectly appropriate and we would talk about anything they wanted concerning sex. Jeremy became quite upset. He rushed to the door and tried to lock it. He pleaded that I talk low, lest someone would hear us. "You'll lose your job," he warned.

This year Jeremy has become somewhat more self confident. Yesterday he rushed into the room, unable to contain himself. "I did it," he beamed. "I did it. I made out five times with a girl. I think I'm in love." He agreed to discuss his feelings with the group. This led to a general discussion of relationships, friendships, love, and marriage. Although the group five boys and one girl, was somewhat embarrassed and giggly, they were able to bring up most characteristics that distinguish love from mere friendship--passion, atttraction, trust, intimacy, communication. I pointed out that they had omitted one important characteristic--commitment. "When you are truly in love you wish to spend all your time with that person and not have other loving relationships," I offered.

"Wait," Jeremy sputtered. "I didn't say that. I don't want someone else telling me to brush my teeth and change my underwear. I already have a mother." "That's right," Stanley added. "I want variety." "David, a rather vociferous eleventh grader diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, had the last word. "I want quality, not quantity."

On readng and writing

This long, hot summer allowed a great deal of time for reading and writing. Gardenening and walking were severely curtailed because of the heat. My family obliged by several presents of books. I went through a long biography of the early twentieth century novelist and editor of the New York Jewish Daily Forward. It is a detailed and often tedious description of the origins of the Socialist party in this country , which was largely composed of Russian, Polish, and German immigrants around the turn of the century. I started the very long Mark Twain "Innocents Abroad." His vacation cruise took him to the Azores,Gibralta, France, Italy, Morocco, Turkey and the Holy Land. After 300 pages that's as far as I and he have gotten so far. He was a compulsive and humorous writer but also a misanthrope, cynic, and cumudgeon. His dislike of about every place and people he visited gets old after while.I'm not sure I'll finish this tome. I also began James McPhearson's monumental, one (long) volume history of the Civil War, "Battle cry of freedom. It is beautifully written but, nevertheless, a heavy read. My sister gave me Studs Turkel's "The Good War" because of my interest in WWII. That also gets tiresome because of the poor writing. I just finished Tim O'Brien's "The things they carried," an autobiographical account of the life of combatants in Vietnam War. It is a compelling amd often brutal account but the author warns you several times that he has embellished the truth. I wish I could retain all I read.

My short poetry book "Oliver Twists in America" came out and I have purchased sufficient copies to distribute to friends and family. It was written when I worked with abandoned and abused kids in a residential treatment center. I wanted to call it "Placement" but the publisher already had a title with that name. I continiue my unblemished record of writing books that go unread. I began a fourth part to my Shrink series but left it for several months when I painted the hero into a corner and could not figure out a way to extricate him. I'm trying to complete it but still having difficulty. The plot is a little too contrived. Morrie and Naomi visit their future burial site and find a gravestone with his name and date of demise. I am going to try to put all four parts, three of which have been separately published, together, leaving out some of the original mostly autobiographical material which I gave my alter ego. I'll need an agent to sell this--no easy feat.
So much for my post-summer blog.

old blogsite

Please be aware that because of identity theft I can no longer post blogs on my original blogsite which you can still access as psychwrite. I have not been able to import these blogs to the present blogsite.

Dream

Several years agoI became interested in dreams because of a peculuar dream that I had. I would up writing two books about dreams, Demystifying dreams, and Sleep and dreaming)and giving a dream lecture at Bryn Mawr Hospital. My understanding of dreams is that there are not merely noise in the nervous system (maybe sometimes) but represent meaning (not purpose expressed poorly by a sleeping, but not dead, brain. As Freud pointed, it is one's personal associations that can be used to interpret dreams and there are no universal symbols. I collected about 200 of my own dreams before writing my books and found that the same themes kept repeating in different ways. My dreams were mostly boring. My novel, Shrink, started out being called Nightmnare, and involved a great deal of dream interpretation by my therapist hero and alter ego, Morrie. I have since gone on to other interests and writing, and only occasionally write down a rare dream that I find interesting. This is such an occasion.

The other night I had a dream I had difficulty interpreting. The dream was in two parts. The first part found me in college. I had to complete a ridiculous assignment--to classify something in major and minor categiories and to arrange the objects using a set of different colored hooks to hang each level of the organizational chart. I did not have the required hooks. Someone advises me that the man selling the hooks was just next door and may still be outside. I am in my underwear but I go out anyway and purchase the hooks. I am thinking, "What a racket. The instructor must be getting a kickback from the vendor."

The second part of the dream finds me at a railroad station. I am going to Boston. My brother-in-law, Marty, in driving me. I take out my wallet to pay for the tickets and cannot find my credit cards. Marty offers to lend me his credit card. However, I find one card (two are still missing) and decline his offer. I look at my wallet and realize it is not mine. Somehow I have switched wallets with another Marvin. There is a name in the wallet and an address. I read the name and remember it clearly upon awakening. I write it down as well as an outline of the dream because it is most unusual that I would see a name spelled out in a dream. The loss of a wallet is not hard to interpret. It is an anxiety dream. Usually I dream I cannot find my car. Here I am worried about not receiving some money due me from a patient as well as needing to spend some money to have the house painted. (I also had to spend money in the first part of the dream on silly colored hooks.) The name that I wrote down is Marvin Dauber. I know of no one by that name and have no associations to it. I Googled the name and find a listing on a geneological site. Someone is trying to locate a Marvin Dauber who lived around 1920. It was his grandfather's father whom he is researching. I have never seen that website before. I look up daub in the dictionary. It means splashing on paint or plaster poorly. Is this the meaning of my dream? I am upset about spending money poorly on someone who is only a paint dauber. I had mentioned painting that day to a man who is going to do some odd jobs for me at home. He tells me he doesn't like to paint. So he might, indeed, be a dauber. Painting is my wife's idea and I have resisted it for two years. Daub is not a word I ordinarily would use. Dreams do the strangest things.

Summer doldrums

The end of summer approaches rapidly now. I can't say I am disappointed. The record heat this year in the northeast has sapped my energy and reduced the time i can work outside. I look forward to returning to work after Labor day. Other than a trip hiking in the Rocky Mountain National Park the summer has dragged. We look forward to four days in the New York Finger Lakes the first week in September. The wine trails around Lakes Cayuga and Seneca are worth doing.

The summer has been largely non-productive. Private Practice has been slow. I've submitted a grant proposal to a private foundation for a leadership training program conducted at the high school to which I consult. I have had a short book of poetry, Oliver Twists in America, published by PublishAmerica. They have raised their prices and do not respond to telephone calls for author discounts. I order two copies of my new book and only received one. They continue to offer promotions attached to book purchases. I have resumed writing the fourth Morrie Scwartz story after about a year layoff. I wrote myself into a corner and was disappointed with book sales of Shrink and Finding Jackson. In Nobody, Morrie visits his future gravesite and finds it occupied. The grave marker indicates his date of death. The book depicts the ultimate identity theft. Morrie becomes involved in finding the culprit, who has also attacked his mututal fund savings. I was a victim of identity theft myself but it occurred after beginning this book. This will be the last Morrie book. I would like to bind them all together in one volume if I even finish this latest adventure.

My summer reading included Dan Brown's latest, "The Lost Symbol." It is a real page turner. A more ambitious read is Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad." Someone published his autobiography recently, which was reviewd by Time Magazine. It motivated me to tackle this very long narrative in an Unabridged copy of Twain. He was a very funny man but a bit of a misanthrope. I follow his travels in an atlas. So far he didn't like the Portugese, the Italians, the Turks and the Catholic Church. Politically correct he was not. I particularly enjoy his reactions in the 1860s to cities I visited a few years ago.

Back in the saddle

It's been a tough summer. Unrelenting heat in the notheast has sapped the energy of everyone. Too hot to work outside, too hot to work up enough motivation to do anything, even write.

All of this is just a poor excuse for not blogging. Worse than that, no writing at all. My second book of poetry, Oliver Twists in America, did finally get published. It is a short collection of poems written over ten years ago describing the kids in placement at the residential treatment center where I worked as psychologist. But no new writing since Finding Jackson, my sequel to Shrink.

So, why now am I suddenly motivated to finish Nobody, a second sequel? A discussion with Abe (identified as Irv in Shrink) about our recollections of growing up in New York City, me in the Bronx and he in Brooklyn, led to his observation that people become more interested in the lives of their parents and grandparents around age fifty. I mentioned that in my early years of professional writing I would save my published papers in folders meant for my children. They were never rally interested in reading them and eventually I destroyed the folders. Even my semi-autobiographoical novel Shrink aroused bad feelings in my daughter because my character and alter ego, Morrie, said spomething unkind about my first wife, her mother. "That's temporary," Abe advised. "Wait until they are a little older. They will become more interested in what you've had to say about yourself. Keep writing."

I returned to the manuscript this morning, which was sitting on my computer,untouched and without an ending. Morrie is asked to treat an man with intractible pain in his arm and no neurological evidence of a cause. In the course of treatment the patient reveals that he is Confederate Civil War Commander Stonewall Jackson, accidentally killed by his own men at Chancellorsvile, but now reincarnated. I had painted myself into a corner in my story about a year ago and put it aside. Now I must extracate my character and solve a crime. In Nobody Morrie is the victim of the penultimate identity theft. In attempting to find the culprit and make things right, Morrie's clinical acumen and emotional resources are seriously challenged. Now I've got to help him find his way. We'll just have to see how this turns out.

Colorado trip

A week in Colorado last month was a delight. We avoided Denver and stayed at a condo owned by an acquantance in Estes Park, just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park.

The town has a population of 7,000 in the winter but swells to 30,000 during the warm months. It is a family town and mostly a tourist trap. The restaurants are Ok but there are some fine dining places a few miles outside of town. We had some contacts to advise us once we arrived and were able to visit parks and restaurants that were quite nice. With a senior pass we were able to enter the National Park wihtout charge as often as we liked and spent much of our time hiking. The driving trail through the park is magnificent and reaches over 11,000 feet above sea level.
It crosses the Continental Divide. Road maintenance going on this summer slow the trip considerably but it is, nevertheless, spectacular. We saw numerous elk on the mountain, some up close, although park rangers warned us not to get too close. The females had given birth and are very protective of their brood. The road leads to the town of Grand Lake on the western side of the mountains--a beautiful spot without the tourist clutter of Estes Park. We hiked at Bear Lake to the falls at the top. Although we had done considerable walking and hiking, Joyce and I underestimated our capacity for hiking at 11,000 feet. We found ourself sucking air and needing frequent rests. However, we persevered and made it to the summit, which is spectacular. The rest stops had no running water in June. The pipes were still frozen. We threw snowballs at the summit.

A side trip to Cheyenne, about 80 miles to the north, was a waste of time. I wanted to see Wyoming. Except for two museums and a very nice park, Cheyenne is mostly a cow town without appeal. The Railroad Museum, displaying the Union Pacific RR history was poorly done. Too much time spent on the locomotives which would be of interest primarily to train buffs but boring to the casual visitor. The Cowboy Museum in the park is primarily a rodeo commercial. I would like to see the real rodeo but it was the wrong time of year. We couldn't locate a decent restaurant for lunch in the entire city.

Bottom line. The mountains of the west are wonderful. They make our Poconos look like pimples. It's a great vacation area in all seasons. The people in Colorado are warm and friendly. The lakes are beautiful and well fished. Trout are the only fish that can survive the ccld. Wild flowers abound. Even irises grow wild. Our winter brings only rain on the east side of the Rockies.. It snows in April but the snow lasts only a day or so. We look forward to our next trip to Colorado.

Neighborhood

At a recent dinner party, with couples aged sixty-five, and older someone asked the question as to whether things were better when we were growing up than they are for children today. Most of us agreed that was, indeed, the case. This from people who had been witness to the aftermath of The Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War. A recent article in Time Magazine indicated that life expectancy in 1900was about 47 years and is now 78 years. It is projected that children born today have a fifty percent chance of living to 100. Nevertheless the "good old days" aeem to us seniors to be just that.

I believe my growing up years were better than those of my children, who were born in the sixties, largely because of location--a residential area of West Bronx v. the suburbs of Philadelphia.

3280 was, and still is, a six story apartment house for perhaps forty families. There was a fenced-in roof "garden" for residents to sit and take the sun. In those days 3280 was predomimnantly Jewish. It sat behind what was then an elementary school and was a block from a large park commnecting two larger parks. Bronx Park housed a Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Zoo. Van Cortland Park had a large lake for skating in the winter. Two major shopping areas, two movie theatres, an Indepndent Subway System station and bus lines were with walking distance. The schoolyard provided recreational activities for thousands of children. Motherts congregated on summer afternoons, sitting on camp chairs and rocking baby carriages. Husbands had their oiwn area where they chatted about businbess and smiked their pipes and cigars. A large playground area surrounded the public reservoir and had football fields, playground eqipment, a wading pool, a running track and bicycle path. Public benches aorund the "Oval" provided respite for people on hot summer evenings. 3280 housed at least half a dozen families with children my age. We would wander from one apartment to the next, moving only when the parents became intolerant of the noise or horseplay and commanded, "Go play sopmewhere else." In the days before television we never lacked for friends or activities to occupy us. A Superintendent,the Super" was there to service the heating system, shovel snow, cut the hedges, and make minor repairs. Schools were free of drugs, teachers commanded respect, and the education provided was good. All of my friends went to college. Subways were safe so that, as adolescents, we were free to travel to other aras of the Broinx, to Manhattan, and, later, even Coney Island by subway. What I am describing here would be called today a "community." We called it our "neighborhood."

Aftert VJ Day post-war America entered a peiod of relative prosperty, at least for the middle class. The next step upward from The Bronx was a move to the suburbs where houses had lawns and the area was less crowded. My parents moved to Yonkers. We became lawn mowers and gardeners. No longer convenient to public transportation, my father had to drive to work in Manhattan and pay for parking.
When I married we started out in a garden-type apartment in the Germantown area of Philadelphia. The tenants were young families, like ours, with babies and toddlers. As soon as I was able to afford the downpayment we, too, moved to the suburbs. My children had few friends on the block. Pople largely kept to themselves.

Shortly before my mother died, my sister and I took her to visit the old neighborhood in the Bronx. 3280 was now occupied by Hispanic people. The old school yard was a parking lot for teachers or others. The area may still be a neighborhood but no longer middle class. We rode the old elevator to the fifth floor but I was reluctant to ring the bell of our old apartment. Thomas Wolf was right. "You can't go home again."
Posted by Psychwrite at 5:31 AM 0 comments
Labels: Community, extended family, neighborhood, suburbs

Of dreams and arrogance

I suppose I should change the name of this blog to "occasional psychwriter." No apologies but here I am again. The end of the school year may herald greater productivity but no promises. I will continue to transfer some of my old blogs
here (I can access them but not post new blogs on the original site) and add a new
piece...occasionally.

Sharon Bagely,science editor of Newsweek did an article titled "The hidden brain." Until recently many neuroscientists described default brain activity, when a person is doing nothing but resting, staring off into space or dreaming, as meaningless, random noise. The neuro establishment now seems to be reversing itself on this position. When the brain is in a default mode and our mind is blank, brain neurons are chattering away, expending twenty times as much energy as when we are consciously engaged in thought--thinking, feeling, and using our senses. Scientists are now concluding that this activity is more than just a background murmur; it must serve some important function. One theory is that default brain activity prepares it for future contingencies. It creates images that help us make sense out of real experiences. It integrates memories,imagines the future, plays out possible scenerios to help us navigate social situations.

I am no stranger to neuroscientific hubris. When I was writing my dream books I ran
smack up against an NIH neuroscientist that Chelsea House Books used as a consultant. He had a distinct bias against anything subjective and was not at all happy with psychology, which I'm sure he categorized as a pseudoscience. Like many others of his ilk, he considered dreams to be noise. The publisher insisted that half of my book be devoted to the brain. I acquiesced and the title became "Sleep and Dreaming," not he book I intended to write, and I had to scrap the best parts of my manuscript.

My thesis was that dreams have no Freudian, unconscious purpose, but do have meaning. I found that to be so in my own dreams as well as those of patients I had treated. Begley's summary of recent neuroscientific thinking drives home both the arrogance of those who dismiss subjective processes as unimportant and my own faith in the significance of many drerams. They provide evidence of what the brain is doing when we sleep, perhaps as important as brain wave readings. If the new theories hold water, then we can learn from dreams by considering them as the sleeping brain's efforts to organize, process, sort out, integrate, classify, utilize past and present experiences, and to prepare us for future events. If we can interpret the information gleaned from dreams then we are in some ways better off for the effort.

Cloakie

I am not dissatisfied with my profession as a psychologist. I believe I have helped people with emotional problems and I continue to do so now. Yet I often wonder about the road not taken.My father, Sam, manufactured women's coats and suits in the grament district of New York City. They were called "cloakies." His business was housed in a ninth floor loft on West 38th Street.Sam made a high priced garment and sold to the better department stores in the city. Summers I helped out, assisting the packing and delivery man. I pushed the carts loaded with fur trimmed broadclothes to middle men or stores within walking distance, took packages to the post office, swept up around the operators and Louie the pressor.Sam made a good living, especially during the war years, but he never wanted me to take over his business. My parents' plans for me were to become a doctor--an aspiration which represented high status and was worry free in their eyes and which I never completely fulfilled. Yet it might have worked out differently.Our neighborhood in the West Bronx was one of the nicer sections of the city. We overlooked the public school and were within walking distance of parks, shopping areas, playgrounds and public transportation. Most of us were second or third generation children of immigrants who had succeeeded economically. My father was unemployed during the Great Depresion but bounced back and was able to start his own business. The children of our neigborhood became physicians, dentists, lawyers, teachers, scientists, and successful businessmen. A block from our apartment house teens gathered alomng Mosholu Parkway and socialized on warm summer evenings. Among the group were two boys who later made it big. Calvin Klein and Ralph Lipshitz, now known as Ralph Lauren. I didn't know either of them but would have recognized them at thew time along the park fence. I've read that Lipschitz returns to the neighborwood frequently to visit his old apartment.When I need to get a rise out of friends who know me well I point out that I, too, might have gone into the garment business and become a "cloakie." I, too, might have become a Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren. "You can't properly match a shirt and a tie," I am reminded "and if you dress well today it's because your wife picks out your clothes."My mother, let her rest in peace, would say, "It was nicht bershert." It was not destined. So be it.
Posted by Psychwrite at 5:25 AM 0 comments

One tooth less

I take good care of my teeth. I brush after meals. I floss. I visit my dentist twice a year. He's a nice guy. I don't have insurance anymore so he charges me reasonably. He has only one fault. He's a sadist. He works on me two hours at a time. He has large hands. I call him Dr. Relentless. He doesn't understand why I complain. I don't know why I keep going to him except that he's been my dentist for twenty years and keeps my teeth in good shape. I wouldn't want him to read this but I know I'm safe. Although he owns a computer, he's never learned to use it.Last week I suffered through an hour and a half scaling and x-rays. Everything looked fine and I thought I was home free until he picked up the pictures of my lower left quadrant. He always says what he thinks:"Oh my God! This is terrible. You've got a bad cavity on the root of your last molar. I can't even get to it. I don't know if I can do this.""You're not inspiring confidence in me. I guess I'll have to get it pulled."No, no. We'll try. It's always good to try.""But it sounds impossible.""Maybe I can save it."He shoved the x-ray in my face. I didn't really need to see it. It was in a food pocket that I can't brush or floss. He jammed a probe into it he area and I elevated."Why did you do that?""I wanted you to see it was really there.""I believed you." Today I went back for what I knew would be an ordeal.His first words after taking a second x-ray to search for an abscessor nerve involvement:"If I can save this it will be a miracle."An hour and a half of drilling without let up.His nurse, Susan, who always arrives late, asked what he was doing to me."Damned if I know," he answered. I can't see in there.Ten minutes later, despite the anesthetic, I became intimately acquainted with my neurons--cell body, axon and dendrites."OK, I've exposed it. It's got to come out. You don't really need that tooth."He walked me over to the next door office of the oral surgeon, who could see me in forty minutes.The surgeon was a kind, gentle man who tried to prepare me for everything he did. I requested a local anesthetic because I don't like being put asleep if there is any other way. (I'm a control freak.) He looked surprised but said he would do whatever I wanted."It's a very difficult extraction. It's right up against another filling in the next tooth. And it's hollow from all the drilling you just had. It's probably going to crack. I've got to drill some more and also cut your gums. You'll need stitches.""I've just heard an hour and a half of difficult. Don't tell me difficult any more. Besides, I'm Dr. G's patient. I'm used to being tortured."The nurse, who knew my dentist, laughed. The surgeon didn't see the humor. It took an hour and a half when finally the last root was removed.He asked me how I was doing so often I finally told him to just do his job and I'll take care of me.As I left the office Dr. G's nurse stopped me. "Do you want to schedule your cleaning?""Susan, leave me alone!"

Bird Altar

Bird altar

I’m not much of a carpenter but I’m a wannabe. I especially like to use old fashioned hand tools. So when we moved to our new home in the country and I I found some old lumber in the garage, left by the previous owner, I was itching to build something. My wife, away on a business trip, had been feeding birds in our old house. On arriving here I had erected her feeders on a hill, adjacent to a wooded area and thick thicket of berry bushes. She was attracting scores of finches, cardinals, bluebirds, jays, grackles, and chickadees. I thought I would surprise her with a bird feeder, similar to one I had seen in a book. In an hour I had completed my project. I nailed it to a wooden stake left on the property line by the builders and erected it on the hill. I could watch it from my porch with a pair of binocular. When I sat down that evening to observe the feeding frenzy I thought would ensue, I gasped at the view. I didn’t need magnification to see that I
had manufactured, not a feeder, but a crucifix. The much too narrow feed-tray made a perfect cross with the upright. It resembled a gravesite. I had killed my spouse and planted her on the hill.

I am Jewish. I have nothing against religious symbols but this made me somewhat uneasy. Furthermore, the birds wouldn’t go near it. I pulled down my creation and redesigned, widening the feed tray. I re-erected it and
added dead braches and brush to disguise the base.

My wife returned the next day and questioned why I had built an altar on the property.
My son thought it looked like the preparation for a Klan meeting. The birds still avoided my offering.
That night, under cover of darkness I removed my masterpiece and relegated to the scrap heap. “Must be Jewish birds” I muttered to no one in particular

Neighborhood

Neighborhood
At a recent dinner party, with couples aged sixty-five, and older someone asked the question as to whether things were better when we were growing up than they are for children today. Most of us agreed that was, indeed, the case. This from people who had been witness to the aftermath of The Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War. A recent article in Time Magazine indicated that life expectancy in 1900was about 47 years and is now 78 years. It is projected that children born today have a fifty percent chance of living to 100. Nevertheless the "good old days" aeem to us seniors to be just that.I believe my growing up years were better than those of my children, who were born in the sixties, largely because of location--a residential area of West Bronx v. the suburbs of Philadelphia. 3280 was, and still is, a six story apartment house for perhaps forty families. There was a fenced-in roof "garden" for residents to sit and take the sun. In those days 3280 was predomimnantly Jewish. It sat behind what was then an elementary school and was a block from a large park commnecting two larger parks. Bronx Park housed a Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Zoo. Van Cortland Park had a large lake for skating in the winter. Two major shopping areas, two movie theatres, an Indepndent Subway System station and bus lines were with walking distance. The schoolyard provided recreational activities for thousands of children. Motherts congregated on summer afternoons, sitting on camp chairs and rocking baby carriages. Husbands had their oiwn area where they chatted about businbess and smiked their pipes and cigars. A large playground area surrounded the public reservoir and had football fields, playground eqipment, a wading pool, a running track and bicycle path. Public benches aorund the "Oval" provided respite for people on hot summer evenings. 3280 housed at least half a dozen families with children my age. We would wander from one apartment to the next, moving only when the parents became intolerant of the noise or horseplay and commanded, "Go play sopmewhere else." In the days before television we never lacked for friends or activities to occupy us. A Superintendent,the Super" was there to service the heating system, shovel snow, cut the hedges, and make minor repairs. Schools were free of drugs, teachers commanded respect, and the education provided was good. All of my friends went to college. Subways were safe so that, as adolescents, we were free to travel to other aras of the Broinx, to Manhattan, and, later, even Coney Island by subway. What I am describing here would be called today a "community." We called it our "neighborhood." Aftert VJ Day post-war America entered a peiod of relative prosperty, at least for the middle class. The next step upward from The Bronx was a move to the suburbs where houses had lawns and the area was less crowded. My parents moved to Yonkers. We became lawn mowers and gardeners. No longer convenient to public transportation, my father had to drive to work in Manhattan and pay for parking. When I married we started out in a garden-type apartment in the Germantown area of Philadelphia. The tenants were young families, like ours, with babies and toddlers. As soon as I was able to afford the downpayment we, too, moved to the suburbs. My children had few friends on the block. Pople largely kept to themselves.Shortly before my mother died, my sister and I took her to visit the old neighborhood in the Bronx. 3280 was now occupied by Hispanic people. The old school yard was a parking lot for teachers or others. The area may still be a neighborhood but no longer middle class. We rode the old elevator to the fifth floor but I was reluctant to ring the bell of our old apartment. Thomas Wolf was right. "You can't go home again."
Posted by Psychwrite at 5:31 AM 0 comments
Labels: Community, extended family, neighborhood, suburbs
Saturday, February 20, 2010

Euonomous

Euonimous



One day when riding on a bus
I thought I’d plant euonimous
And so next day without a fuss
I bedded my euonimous.
I named it Marvinonimous
And thus
It also was eponymous.
A neighbor cat strolled by uponomous Devoured my green and white euonimous
Then died of variegated gastro-enteronomous
Ad so this poem is signed ...

Anonymous

My friend Burton

Growing up in the Bronx in the 1930s and '40s was a mostly happy and secure experience. We survived the Great Depresion and World War II, unscathed. High school was a challnge. My friends were bright and most applied to and were accepted by The Bronx High School of Science. I did also by default. Started around 1947 it was an experimental school that prepared kids for scientific and medical careers. Almost everyone went to college and most were succesful in their careers. I lived in a six story appartment building in West Bronx and my best friend, Burton, was one story up. He too went to Bronx Science. Burt was a loyal friend and a very funny guy. His sense of humor, often, self-deprecating, kept me laughing all through hich school. After graduation I went out of town to Cornell and he attended the City College of New York. He worked as a teacher for a while and also a writer for TV comediens. Neither occupation suited him and eventually he pursued a successful real estate career with his brother. Always introspective, he became in later years, a poet and has published three volumes of verse. The last was nominated for a national award. Last month, after receiving an e-mail announcing the 60th reunion of my high school graduating class, I contacted Burt and we both decided to attend. It was a nice affair, only the fouth reunion our class ever held, and my first. Although I enjoyed the event, held a an upscale catering hall in Battery Park, I found most of the attendees more motivated to boast about their own success than to learn of what anyone else had accomplished. All but Burt. He was the same jovial, caring friend I remembered. We got together the day before for lunch with my wife, and renewed our friendship,laughing, reminiscing, and vowing to see each other more often in the future. The master of ceremonies for the event provided a short talk, providing statistics on the large proportion of the class who had become scientists, physicians, lawyers, and other pretigious professonals. Our most illustrious class member won the Nobel prize in physics. Another old friend, Rick, a retired brain surgeon, was quick to point out, "Yes, but I beat him out for the physics award." (I assured him that his prize was by far the more impressive.) Midway through the list of successful attainments Burt leaned over to me, whispering, "He hasn't gotten to my category yet...beggar." I still laugh when relating this remark. Later, as we looked over the group of infirmed septagenerians we had become, he remarked, "The next reunion will have to be a seance."

Back again

Those two of you who followed my blog, www.psychwriter-psychwrite.blogspot.com may wish to continue with me. My Google e-mial was compromised. I can no longer access it. Since my blog is attached to Google I can no longer post blogs. I will continue writing periuodically on this current blog site and will try to transfer the best of my old blogs.
Marvin