America's answer to Susan Boyle?

This summer, it's America's turn to discover its hidden talents, and along with the positively horrible auditions so far have been a few diamonds in the rough on the show "America's Got Talent". Chief among those that have impressed me so far is Kevin Skinner, 35, (left), from Mayfield, Kentucky. He told the audience he was a "chicken catcher", whatever that is, and that he was basically a country boy who liked hunting, fishing, mud trucking and some of the usual pursuits that one might come to expect from a down home southern guy. But he also showed a sensitive side when he spoke softly of sitting on the front porch gathering his thoughts and counting the stars in the night sky and strumming his guitar. Walking out on to the stage dressed simply and unadorned to introduce himself, he was naturally met with rather derisive looks from judges and audience alike, as if to say, "Who in hell is this hayseed and what business does he have coming out here to sing for us?" He has a thick southern accent that makes him sound like something of a back country hick, but once he began to strum his guitar and sing, none of that mattered. Kevin sang a tender ballad by country singer Garth Brooks called "If Tomorrow Never Comes" and wowed both audience and judges alike with his soulful singing and eloquent guitar strumming. What moved me was the emotion conveyed in the song, as if Kevin had gone through what the song spoke of - if you should die suddenly, would your loved ones know how much you loved them, and could they soldier on without you? Naturally, with the recent deaths of my cousin and an old childhood friend, thoughts like this have been uppermost on my mind, so the song moved me very deeply and I found myself tearing up listening to it. The audience was absolutely silent during the song, spellbound by this plain spoken Kentucky back country guy singing soulfully and emotionally, and by the end, the judges could not contain themselves with their praise and sent him on to the next round with ease. It's people like Kevin Skinner who come out of nowhere and blow everyone away that make shows like this fun to watch. I hope that he continues to do well in this competition and gains some apparently long overdue recognition for what is an obvious talent that he has. It was a pleasure watching and hearing him sing in a simple, heartfelt, unadorned and emotional way. Best wishes, Kevin, I'm sure that you've won many fans who are looking forward to your next appearance on "America's Got Talent". I know that I am!

Hiking The Portage

As I mentioned in the comments of my previous blog post, the other night, I explored a new section of The Portage Hike and Bike trail that has recently been completed. Now I can go from downtown all the way to either Munroe Falls in Summit County or to Ravenna to the east of Kent. The Portage now links up on one section to the Summit Hike and Bike Trail, allowing you to go all the way to Munroe Falls if you want. This is the section that I explored, not knowing where exactly the trail would end. As it stands, I went all the way to the Portage/Summit trail borders and then turned around again to head back downtown, since I had a previous activity planned for that evening (my Monday night T'ai Chi class). I was rewarded with some spectacular scenery along the river banks, walking along sections that were both rapids and placid quiet river. I was also rewarded on my way back downtown by watching a Great Blue Heron fishing along the rapids section of the river close to downtown. It was so nice to see folks out walking, biking and enjoying this new offering for our area, sure to add a great deal to the quality of life in our area. I encountered people of all ages, from children to seniors, so obviously multiple generations are taking advantage of this new trail. People need green spaces and encounters with nature, especially in these times of massive suburban sprawl and disappearing farm fields. It was so wonderful to take in all the sights, sounds and smells along the trail and to see what it had to offer. The river is something that people are just now beginning to realize is a real asset to our area. Restaurants along the river are beginning to add outdoor patios overlooking the river and people are flocking to these places to take in the scenery and the atmosphere now that our river is far cleaner than it was in past years. People are also beginning to see the benefits of having hike and bike trails, not only to have something to so, but for the sake of their health, as they see the benefits of walking and biking, so our river is beginning to be viewed by the folks who count as a recreational asset to our area. We missed out on receiving a grant to create a whitewater park in downtown Kent, and with this bad economy, it's not likely to come up again anytime soon, but I doubt that those who are pushing for it will stop trying. In fact, I hope that they continue their quest to create such a facility to attract kayakers and canoe enthusiasts to the river. Hopes are that if such a thing goes through, it will create new businesses catering to river sports in downtown and its vicinity, and that can only be a good thing. I wonder if we can get some federal stimulus money to go forward with this idea since it'd create jobs and opportunities for the Kent area? Wow, wouldn't that be a plus for Kent, to add to the recreational and business opportunities that the river has begun to create in recent days!

A week of celebrity deaths

In addition to the passings of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, this week also saw the deaths of two other celebrities, albeit lesser ones, but still, it seems that this week has been a fairly noteworthy one in celebrity passings. Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson sidekick for as many years as anyone could remember, died this week at age 86 after a period of declining health. If you grew up on "The Tonight Show", you knew how Carson and McMahon fit together like a hand in a glove. They were the perfect duo and it was the end of an era when Johnny signed off for the last time, turning his show over to Jay Leno, who has now passed the baton on to Conan O'Brien. Gone are the sidekick days. Now, hosts just come on by themselves and do the show as a solo act instead of having a straight man to play jokes off of like they used to. It's a different era now, and Ed and Johnny were late night fixtures of an older crowd that went to bed early and watched "The Tonight Show" in bed with a tiny TV usually perched on a dresser or vanity or on a small TV stand at the foot of the bed. Well, it's a different era now, and we all enjoyed that rare camaraderie of Ed and Johnny night after night. Years ago, in fact, the neighbor of mine who used to live across the hall from me got this wacky idea that we should host an "Ed McMahon Birthday Party" to celebrate Ed's birthday. He called Ed's publicist and got a lovely PR package from Ed's agency, full of nice photos, which my neighbor photocopied tons of and pasted them up on all the walls in our hallway and in his apartment. The party was.....unforgettable. My neighbor's roommate was a med student and all of his fellow med students were invited, along with my neighbor's friends and who knows who else, but we somehow crammed at least 200+ people into these two tiny apartments on a damp March night and I still have one small souvenir from that party hanging on my bathroom wall to commemorate that amazing night. It took the entire next day to clean up the damage from the party - lots of mud, beer and munchies ground into carpets that made a total complete mess and took forever to repair and clean. I can laugh about it now, but it was a nightmare to clean up our entire upstairs of this house before the landlord could find out how bad a mess was created by the party!

Now I have heard that Billy Mays, a semi-famous pitchman on commercials for various products, was found unresponsive today and died at age 50 in his Florida home. Cause of death is unknown, but still....what a week for celeb deaths! As they say, when it rains, it pours! Mays was apparently on a flight that experienced a blown tire and a rough landing in Tampa a day or two ago and was apparently hit on the head hard by falling luggage, so this may have contributed to his death, but not until an autopsy can be done will we know for sure what happened. Mays and Jackson were only 50, younger than me, so I feel bad when I hear that folks around my age are kicking the bucket, buying the farm, going belly up, dancing the last dance, checking out, cashing in, running down the curtain, pushing daisies and generally shuffling off this mortal coil, to quote a few terms used in my late cousin Terry's final blog post, "The Final Thump", on his now well known blog "Thumping My Melon". It just doesn't seem right when people younger than me die like that, and I guess I am beginning to see that one of the effects of growing older is watching people pass away who are in your approximate age group or thereabouts. I mean, someone like Ed McMahon, in his mid-80's, well, it comes as no big surprise when someone that age passes away. They've lived a full life, retired and spent time enjoying whatever retirement brings them. But someone around my age group is in their prime of life and still has a lot to give the world. You don't expect people in their 50's to die - that's just too young anymore, with lifespans increasing every decade. But it seems to happen more and more, as evidenced when I read the obituaries daily in the newspapers. I see more and more people my age and younger dying and it makes me wonder if our generation is ill fated to die younger than our parents generation. Maybe we've lived our lives too pampered and soft. Maybe we're just too fat, too lazy and had things too easily to where we never really had to work hard for anything like our parents did. I don't know. All I know is that I intend to stay around a good long time and defy those odds! Boomers, you who seem bent on maintaining perpetual youth, get up off your butts, turn off the TV (and not with the remote, but walk over and manually turn the thing off), get your sneakers on and at least go out and take a good brisk walk, 20 minutes, daily. Trust me, your body will thank you for it! Go on, turn off your computer and get out there! Now! Y' hear me? NOW!

The end of an era

Yesterday marked the end of an era - two icons of entertainment died hours and just a few miles apart: Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. Jackson supposedly died of cardiac arrest and Fawcett bravely battled cancer for three years before succumbing yesterday. It seems totally amazing that these two had such a profound impact on pop culture and died the same day hours apart in the same city. They were such different people and yet were created by their fans. Fawcett seemed to be able to rise above her image as a golden girl and sex symbol and bravely worked to remake her image as a dramatic actress, achieving admirable success in so doing. She was also brutally honest in her battle against cancer and wanted the world to see her fight through losing her hair, intense nausea, a pale and drawn face, and yet you could clearly see in her eyes a fierce courage against what she was fighting and a desire to do anything to beat it. To the end, she never gave up hope and remained strong to the absolute end. I admire people who put up such a ferocious battle against the insidiousness of cancer, including my own cousin Terry, who battled brain cancer for two long years before succumbing a few weeks ago. Jackson, on the other hand, seemed overwhelmed by his fame and increasingly seemed bent on bizarre behavior and remaking his face surgically until he became a strange parody of himself with his seemingly bleached skin and weird, almost skeletal face. Still, you have to admit that he had talent beyond his years when he was young, and who can deny that the album "Thriller" was just an amazing piece of artistry? I'm no fan of pop music, to be sure, but when I saw the music videos for that album, I was blown away by it all. Dance-wise, he could do things that were seemingly impossible, including his famous "moonwalk" and dancing up on his toes like a ballet dancer. His athleticism was truly astounding and set a new standard for pop singers/dancers to come. His downfall was truly astounding and it seems so sad that he manifested such weird behavior. I suppose his lament of never having had a childhood was largely responsible for it and his constant remaking of his face until it became a weird parody was apparently an attempt at erasing any resemblance to his overly controlling father. You couldn't help but feel sort of sorry for a kid who never really got to be a kid but who spent his entire life in front of the camera being a superstar. So it's the end of an era, two pop icons gone in the same day. Michael, Farrah, goodbye and rest in peace.

Save Ohio Libraries!

Ohio residents, I need you to do something very important today. I need you to get on the phone or jump on your computer and contact Governor Strickland (614-466-3555 or e-mail him from his contact web page, Governor Strickland) and tell him that the proposed state budget cuts of 50% to public libraries is wrong and will mean closure for many public libraries that don't have operating levies on which to rely for additional funding. Even those with operating levies will be severely impacted and will be forced to shorten hours, curtail services and programming and stop purchasing new materials for their collections. In these difficult financial times that we are going through right now, the last thing we need is for libraries to be asked to take a 50% funding cut. People use libraries to seek new employment, file for social services and gain valuable training for new skills like computer literacy. They use libraries to check out materials that they otherwise could not afford to buy, like DVD's, books, magazines and newspapers. They use libraries for free high speed internet access. Teachers use libraries for curriculum support for their classes. Libraries do so much for the life of a community that to lose any library in any community, no matter how large or small, would be a catastrophic blow to the people who make their homes there. While the state budget in Ohio is suffering under a mind boggling $3 billion deficit, it seems unwise to ask libraries to take such a hit at this difficult financial juncture. We're already suffering under current budgetary cuts and to ask us to take even more would severely strain our ability to provide the valuable services we provide for every spectrum of society.. So please, Ohio residents, get on the horn to the Governor and your state legislators TODAY, Thursday, June 25th, and DON'T DELAY, because the state budget must be finalized tomorrow, Friday June 26th, so that it can be voted on and signed by the Governor by June 30th. If you have a Facebook account, you can join the Save Ohio Libraries group that currently boasts over 22,000 members and you can use Twitter as well to get the word out. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your co-workers, tell everyone you know about this critical and crucial issue, and DON'T DELAY! DO IT TODAY! Save Ohio Libraries for future generations!

Family

Even though it was under rather sad circumstances, it was good to see members of my family recently at my cousin Terry's memorial services. I got to see cousins, aunts and uncles that I had not seen in a very long time and reconnect with them. In the photo on the left is pictured some of the people who came for Terry's services, from left, my sister Emily, my cousin Tim (Terry's eldest brother), my cousin Mike, my cousin Luke, me and my Uncle Ed, Terry's father. Cousin Luke was the surprise visitor. He came all the way from Providence, RI to attend. I hadn't seen him in a number of years so it was good to reconnect with him again. In fact, I haven't seen most of my cousins in close to twenty years, so it was especially good to reunite with them again. We're spread across the US, from New England to California, so it's tough to get everyone together for reunions because of families, careers, travel arrangements, etc. We had been planning a family reunion to take place in August of this year, planned by my late cousin Terry and my sister Emily. Despite Terry's passing, the reunion will still go forward as planned and will be dedicated to Terry's memory. I'm hoping to meet some of my relatives for the first time. So many of my cousins have kids who I've not yet met so I am looking forward to seeing some of them. I truly hope that my kinfolk from Alaska will come, because I don't think I've ever really met them, or at least haven't seen them in so many years that I cannot remember meeting them. My cousin Beth in Alaska has a son who plays for the Detroit Red Wings hockey team, Ty Conklin, who I have never met, but I seriously doubt that a famous athlete like that would come to the reunion, but who knows? Stranger things have been known to happen, I suppose. Well, even if I never meet him, at least when I mention his name to hockey fans, they rave over him, so it's kind of nice to have a famous relative like that! So here's hoping to see many more of my extended family in August. I'm so looking forward to this occasion, certainly a far happier occasion than when we met a few weeks ago to memorialize our cousin Terry, who will be forever missed by our family.

HEALTH CARE REFORM

I have been following the debate in Washington over the proposed health care reform that is being debated in Congress. Unfortunately, I am not optimistic that an agreement can be met by all parties that will satisfy everyone. The drug and insurance lobbyists are too powerful and monied for ordinary citizens to overcome so I suspect that whatever it is we end up getting will be a shadow of what most of us would like to see. Frankly, nearly everyone I talk to would like to have a single payer plan, including medical professionals, but that seems to have been taken off the table permanently and even the public option being promoted by Obama will probably die a swift death at the hands of the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats. As someone who currently finds myself ridiculously underinsured ($2000 deductible and high co-pays), I am not too eager to stay with my employer provided plan and if a public plan were available to me, I'd leave my insurer in a New York minute and sign up with that. As it is, I bought a supplemental policy through work, but even that doesn't really plug any real holes for me because it includes a clause that does not cover pre-existing conditions, and just about everything I've been treated for in recent years has had to do with complications of old auto accident injuries from almost 40 years ago, so it really won't do me a bit of good. About all it will do is pay me $1000 if I am hospitalized, which will help cut my deductible a bit, but that's about all it will do to help me. Not that I expect to be hospitalized anytime soon, but one never knows, so better to be safe than sorry. Still, it seems ridiculous to have to carry more than one health insurance policy just to get any kind of coverage. Still, with any kind of power in Washington being bought and sold by drug and insurance lobbyists, it's not likely that we'll ever see any kind of meaningful health care reform. I'm sure Obama had good intentions when he stepped into office, but I've no doubt that he's rapidly found out the realities of being President and how limiting it really is and how in debt to lobbyists you ultimately become, even though he pledged not to do this. Sad fact is, it's a cold hard reality of Washington that you are ultimately in thrall to lobbyists and not to the people who elect you. They have the money that politicians need to get elected. We don't, and thereby hangs the tail. So the reality is that health care reform won't happen until people get so fed up that they demand it unconditionally, and unfortunately, that won't happen, either. So we're stuck with whatever it is we get out of Congress, and I don't expect that to be too much, if anything, at all.

A Letter to my cousin Terry

Dear Terry, I write this letter after having spent the weekend in Indianapolis at your memorial service. Cousin, I can honestly say after hearing what everyone had to say about you that I regret not having gotten to know you better. You were obviously much beloved by so many people and lived your life to the hilt. I heard so many hilarious anecdotes about the kinds of things you did and said that I really began thinking what a loss it is to both your family and friends that you are no longer with us. It sounds like you were sort of a natural comedian who lived life to make others laugh and feel good about themselves and the world around them. I envy your co-workers. They had some particularly funny things to say about you and you sounded like great fun to work for. Of course, when it came to business, you obviously were serious about what you did, but you sure had certain flare, to say the least, that followed you unto death. Terry, the whole weekend was pretty hilarious. Trying to coordinate among all of the relatives when it seemed like no one knew what we were doing or where we were going or when was pretty funny. Thank goodness for cell phones. It at least allowed us to communicate with each other and to try to figure out what was going on, with whom, where and when. And of course, it didn't help that Indianapolis was a pretty busy place this weekend. Your neighborhood had an annual flea market going on, meaning many of the streets were blocked off, making navigation pretty tricky, and then downtown there was a big Shriner's parade on Saturday, making it impossible for us to meet up with those folks staying at the Embassy Suites near the circle downtown (We were sure that you conspired to make your exit when you did so that we had to cope with so much craziness this weekend!). So we had to park the car many blocks away and do what almost felt like what I call the "Indy Death March". We spent much of the day downtown on Saturday, I did a bit of sightseeing at the Eli Lilly Civil War Museum while others sat in the sun and we pretty much killed most of the day in the environs around the hotel area. We went to Happy Hour at the hotel in late afternoon, which stretched into Happy Two Hours, and as people departed for your memorial, John and Emily and I decided to go in one vehicle but Emily and I, staying in your neighborhood, decided we'd best go back to our accomodations and change into warmer clothing, resulting in John, Emily and I being an hour and a half late for the ceremony and missing the entire thing. (And it turned out that we really need not have bothered changing, as it never really got that cool after dark.) Terry.....we had to drive miles out into the middle of nowhere to an unpaved gravel road and then up a long wooded trail to get to where everything was taking place! Talk about remote! At least we got there in time for the reminiscences, so we all got to hear some funny stories about you around a warm campfire. We were joking that you were probably deriding us for being late - your last laugh, so to speak. Well, you certainly had a flare for the dramatic and this time, you did not disappoint. You led us on a wild goose chase to some remote location in the middle of absolute nowhere, only to find out we missed your memorial ceremony. That sounds so like something you'd plan, Terry. But the night was clear, the moon was full and it seemed the perfect way to send you on to the next leg of your journey, wherever that will take you. I'm sure that wherever you are, you're busy singing all those songs you know, leading one heck of a karaoke session up there and drinking plenty of Maker's Mark as well. Rest well, cousin. You led one hell of a life, and now you're on to the next phase, whatever remains beyond time and space. We'll always cherish whatever memories we have of you and we will love you forever. Goodbye, cousin. You're missed. More than you know.