So Which Dwarf Am I?

Oh no, I couldn’t have done that!













What time do they do the pick up?















Alright so I just mailed my grocery list. It was an accident! This could have happened to anyone …at any time… at any age. It just seems that my capacity for actions in life during my Retroment are beginning to seem more ‘Monte Carlo’ and almost miraculous when there is the desired outcome. I feel like I am a monkey with a typewriter and am desperately trying to rally boomers to begin typing madly on their ‘senior’ typewriters so that we can gestaltingly produce The Electric Kool-Aid Proctology Test.

So is there a portion of our brain that we have disciplined through our youth and maturity that somehow cries havoc and lets slip the dwarfs of ‘yore’? You know, our new retroment buddies/attributes such as Sleepy, Grumpy, Dopey, Sneezy and Doc. Happy is babysitting Bashful but is having a blast eating popcorn and watching our new paradigm. Should any of them wake Snow White, she may need a minute to remember who Prince Charming is.


I seem to remember something about the Seven Dwarfs …let me see…Oh yeah! Sherman, set the Wayback Machine to the beginning of the ‘80s (yes, the 1980s). We are going to visit the University of Lowell in that textile Valhalla in Massachusetts. Our hero was gainfully employed as an adjunct instructor. ‘Adjunct instructor’ was edu-speak for ‘we can pay him cheap and not have to call him Doctor’.



The job had started as a transition from the Nuclear/Energy Engineering Dept to the Mathematics Dept upon the completion of a master’s program. There were not enough jobs in alternative energies (there still aren’t) and running a nuclear reactor seemed a bit tricky. So I headed back to the department where I was a rumor during my Bachelor of Science years when the place was called Lowell Technological Institute. I was warmly received as the return of the prodigal.

What started out as a slate of Calculus classes for the first two years soon changed. Computer programming had become a requirement for the engineering students and many others on campus. Since I had taken a two credit computer course back in 1970, I felt qualified to teach the course. I was again warmly received. This time because nobody else from that squadron of Math PhDs wanted to do it. Besides, it seemed so - adjunct.

So before you could hit "ESC" , I had 500 students who were just dying to learn FORTRAN. Tech support from the department consisted of two double sided blackboards on wheels that could be coolly flipped over when one side was filled with hypnotizing code. Meanwhile I thanked goodness that there was so much drug momentum from the 60s and 70s because I could read the material and stay a full week ahead of them as preparation and basis of authority.

Well this approach seemed to be lacking something – like computers. So in one fell swoop I bumped into a state grant encouraging corporations, like Digital Equipment Corporation, to donate equipment to state colleges and universities; designed and built the lab with the help of Rich Beaubien and John Tucker, his brother-in-law; wrote a course that consisted of thirteen complete lessons containing samples, lab assignments and explanatory text; made it 24/7 available to every terminal on campus; was given a lecture hall complete with fifteen foot screen and microphone (used it once); acquired a staff of eight graduate assistants to help with the lab; and one PhD math professor to help with the lectures. I be adjunct – hear me roar!

The dwarf nostalgia is now crystallizing. One of the fun components of having a staff of mostly foreign graduate students was having a weekly staff meeting at a local Lowell bar called The Old Worthen. Kerouac and Poe both threw up there.

During these meetings, the curriculum did get discussed. An important feature of FORTRAN programming was its ability to print in columns. To impart this skill to our students I wanted the assistants to demonstrate how to make a chart. This chart would list the Seven Dwarfs, favorite drug of that dwarf and how many days of work during the year was missed due to that drug.

Grumpy was on bourbon and missed 10 days of work per year.






Bashful was on Valium and missed 40 days.





Sneezy, of course, was on Cocaine. He missed 20 days.






Dopey loved marijuana and, in trying to relate to the students, I assigned him 8 missed days.







Sleepy was into barbiturates – 125 days out.






Happy loved his nitrous oxide but the restaurant supply house was only open during the week so he had to miss 1 day of work per year.









Doc, well he’s on LSD and missed 365 days of the work year.







Pride may not be the appropriate description for the demeanor of the assistants as they did this lab with their students. But I have to admit there were some twisted smiles on my graduate helpers when they were espied during a tour of the ‘first in New England, computer lab’ by visiting dignitaries of other universities. They dutifully lectured with gusto and joi de dwarf and loved recounting it during our meetings at the Old Worthen.

You Say It's Your Birthday!

Greetings!

So far Chicken Little is wrong. The sky is not falling because of my licentious declaration of ever-after-hood in the previous blog. It’s a good thing since we now enter the August portal where the existence of prayer may have to be a bit more concrete than say…happiness.

Gini and I were born three days apart (Aug 8 and 11. 1950 – the exercise is left to the reader). Integral to our relationship is Gini’s gleeful claim that I am older. To further densify matters we also married on Aug 11, 1973. It also happens to be my father’s birthday though the year is druidically etched in Roman numbers somewhere in Limerick, Ireland.

Now historically speaking during the first couple of weeks in August there is a delicate locus to occupy here. Atomic bombs, Manson murders, the death of Marilyn Monroe and the Watts riots teeter tantalizingly opposed to Woodstock nation and (my favorite) the resignation of Richard Nixon on my birthday.


As for Tricky Dick’s decision “to allow the nation to move forward”, we had decided to travel cross-country and see some friends in California. We thought that the family’s Rambler station wagon was too precious and delicate to take the trip so we bought our friend’s ’63 Chrysler for $35. It was dented and the panels were filled with ‘Bondo’ and consistently drew fellow drivers’ admiration as they yelled, “Where did you get that car?”. It had the push button transmission on the dash and got 20 miles to the gallon.

Our mission was to promote social utopia and, since we did not even have a radio, we decided we would scrupulously pick up hitchhikers who were looking for America. So on August 8, 1974 we picked up a young man in the Badlands of South Dakota. He immediately announced that the president had decided to resign and would make the formal announcement that evening. His immediate reward was a can of Coors and a tetra hydro cannabinol chaser. We, of course, would not be able to listen to the radio broadcast that evening but it does eternally play in the background on the car radio as Brad and Janet seek shelter at the Frank-N-Furter mansion.



Ah the Badlands, if only Bruce Springsteen had been with us and could have reduced the wait for when “…these badlands start treating us good”. Maybe he would have melded with us as
“…the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it aint no sin to be glad you’re alive.”

As for August 11 when Gini arrived and 23 years later wound up in Gilford, NH there is not too much to be said other than our wedding may have been the greatest party of my life. As usual a few details escaped us during preparation. When her parents, Anne and Charles Landry, were informed of our marital intentions her dad “..could not quite place me”. Thoroughly incensed I prepared a folder similar to the one that was used each week to open the TV series Mission Impossible.

I placed my ID from freshman year at Lowell Technological Institute on top (I looked about 12). Directly underneath was a paragraph declaring that the mission would involve tampering with Gini’s allegiance to the small but prosperous country of Landria. I submitted for his perusal (wait, that’s the Twilight Zone) an application for the “Why I Like Gini Contest”. Now, one needs to know that there was some cohabitation occurring on his dime without anyone really admitting the population of the apartment they were financing. So the opening lines of the application included:

Name – Chris Duggan
Address – Embarrassing
Phone – See Address
Goals - None
Assists – Twenty Seven

This was followed by a romantic narrative and a poem that should have been rendered on a black velvet wall hanging. Sad to say this really happened and one can only imagine the fear, nay, the trepidation permeating the Landry household at the time.

Gini of course came to the rescue. She designed and made her gown as any graduate of The Boston School of Fashion Design would. She made my dinner jacket and convinced the sisters to make their gowns. Oh, and since we did not attend the local church in Arlington, Mass., where would this marriage take place? No problem since the population of Gini’s apartment also included Dennis Kline, a Roman Catholic priest. He would gladly conclelebrate a mass at Our Lady of the Lakes Church in Gilford, NH. (Where was that? Only 20 miles from our, then, future and current home).

It would be a lobster bake. Ceremoniously, 125 net bags were steamed with each containing a quarter chicken, a dozen clams, corn on the cob and a lobster. Chowder would also be served.

Trying to contribute to the crescendo of planning that was enrapturing me I announced that I would also walk down the aisle and be ‘given away’ by my parents. Somehow I will never be able to fully describe the look on everyone’s face upon that declaration but it being 1973 allowed a lot of strangeness and ‘creativity’.
Also one of my fraternity brothers, a security guard, would meet us at the back of the church at the end of the ceremony and place us in handcuffs. Logical, no? Well, Gini was a good sport and we were ‘led away’ to our new bonded existence.

The energy that day was incredible. Some of it is still unexplained. For example, how did this picture come about? We are supposed to be inside the church but it sure looks like a hilltop sunrise/sunset to most:

Now the photographer was also a fraternity brother and developed the film himself and to this day claims complete bafflement to its occurrence. Did I also mention that about 20 wedding goers, the photographer included, took Timothy Leary’s advice for the day?


The party eventually moved to the fraternity house in Lowell, 90 miles away. It was there we realized that our planning had been a little short sighted and that we had not booked a honeymoon suite anywhere. Oh well, that’s another story for another day.
Thirty six years later she still knocks me out like I was kicked by the whole chorus line at Minsky’s.

Owed To A Fairy Tale

During retirement there is a crucial responsibility concerning free time. If you start watching movies that end with Hollywood’s optimistic crescendo of affirming life and love, you may need to affix a veil of Kleenex so as to keep your hands free to change the channel for the next one. Then there are these thoughts…




What is wrong with living happily ever after? Culturally the romantic blush wilts as we ‘mature’. Such idealistic notions are fine for adolescents, horny college students, aspiring poets and for the initial onslaught of love. It seems that in order for love to survive long term we must constrain hyperbole with realistic expectations. There must be a reason for contempt being the issue of familiarity, right? Marilyn Monroe died for our inevitable sinning itch of seven years so that we could maintain our tragic imperfection and still give roses on the eighth anniversary.

So which diminishes first? Depth? Breadth? Height? If only Elizabeth Barrett Browning were still with us to give us a clue. There must be some prescription for the kaleidoscope eyes needed to view our partner in a splendiferous eternal fashion that soporifically deludes while preserving harmony and longevity.

Maybe it is true that no one or no thing is perfect and that the blindness of love evolves into an efficient myopia. You know, sort of a cross between Pollyanna and Mr. Magoo. Maybe the truth and beauty of love are a factoid not to be confused with the constancy of 186,000 miles per second. After all we know the speed of light works relative to any speed. How can love compete with that? Its measurement is an oxymoron when penned by Byron or Keats and statistically betrayed by divorce rates.


So perhaps you will have to forgive my eternally nascent adolescent attitude that I aspire to the grail of Cinderella and Quasimodo (wrap your head around that!). Living happily ever after is not a goal. It is, at worst, a delusional condition but at best it is how we serendipitously are. For cripe’s sake, somebody’s gotta live happily after, might as well be me!

Before Von D'Lucci Was Rienzo

Last Saturday my Aunt Fran succumbed to an illness. So this week’s blog is dedicated to her memory. I have been working on chapters to a book called Cosmic Flux or Boomer Retirement. This particular chapter was written last summer after a family visit to New York when Aunt Fran was still alive and struttin’.

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Well before Von D’Lucci was Rienzo. Marie Josepina to be exact. East 138th street in the Bronx was her milieu. Her mother, Angelina, played the immigrant game. A child of Angelina’s would be born here in the United States to obtain citizenship and then she would pack up and go back to the Neopolitan part of Italy. When it became Marie’s turn they either forgot to go back or had disembarked to Plan B.

471 East 138th street would have to suffice as place d’etre as well as point of origin.

My own raison d’etre arose when Marie enjoined Christy Doo-gan for a lifelong safari wending from that concrete jungle. He was an Irish lad dressed in plus-fours whose saga with Marie led to ’I do’, me and my siblings.

Family and entourage soon became quickly interchangeable. Somehow my father had arrived from Limerick as an only child and stayed that way. Thereafter he traveled in an ethnic bubble with Italians in abundance.

Angelina’s brood of nine had suffered early attrition to six. Marie grew up with a sister (my godmother) who was the oldest and four brothers (my uncles) whose families would shape my world view in a most Skinnerian fashion. My cousins are still lifelong friends and fellow travelers with each decade a series of oar strokes along Siddhartha’s river.

Mom’s brothers left us first even before Angelina made her exit. Aunt Mickey and Mom too eventually shuffled off this mortal coil. Only one brother is left and he is a bit of a stranger. This is seemingly impossible in all the comings and goings. The wives of the brothers have had to reinvent their future. Each has done this in their own way. They are very dear to me and for them I am not comfortable with their loneliness when it emerges.

Not seeing any of them as often made us anxious that we might not get more chances. So retirement screamed for a road trip. Phone calls were becoming too infrequent and the annual Rienzo reunion was not really happening like before. We needed to go to Long Island to make this happen. Cousin Angela hosted us and arranged for her sisters, the oldest cousins and the aunts to come together at Aunt Ginny’s nursing home. We looked like a tour group as we eventually found the reserved lounge for our pizza party.

Aunt Fran could still pull off an entrance even in her eighties. Aunt Rose, the oldest of all of us, was bright eyed and cheery. The room buzzed for hours and we combined and recombined in an anecdotal waltz of relative activity. Some of it to be used later for gossip, depending on who was configured. Some of it to reach out and renew emotional bonds whose resilience was beyond question and to be marveled. Some of it to create hints at what each was doing since we didn’t really know all that our closeness assumed.

Later, the cousins retreated to Phil and Angela per mangiare (to eat!).

There is something very wonderful and very Italian about everyone having
dinner together. You get to vent, indulge epicurean urges, entertain and
sublimate at some point during the experience. A friend of ours is selling
small pillows with quotes on them. The one I had chosen was from Virginia
Woolf: "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined
well." So true.

Not enough can be said about how Von D’Lucci has been informed by Rienzo. Food, family and friends are life’s 401k. This becomes more meaningful and delusional as the current economy evaporates around us. One can only hope that the food part stays intact along with our ability to digest it.

A personal highlight of our visit to Phil and Angela was a commiseration about education and retirement. The three of us have evolved differently. Phil and Angela each have over thirty years of elementary teaching experience. Phil is currently reinventing himself as a math tutor for slow learners and is full of juice. Angela feels the years and wishes she liked the kids more. Neither are retired but Angela could probably indulge a New York minute to do so. I am retired … as we all know.

Sooo…. this all led to some heartfelt discussion about retirement and education. My early struggle with ‘calling it quits’ has been misgivings that have included the fact that I do not deserve to be successfully retired especially since I did not change the world as originally advertised. Whether based in evidence or not this uneasiness is associated with a severe loss in momentum. Similar to a performer (inappropriately I think of Dirk Diggler in the mirror) there is an element of gearing up and being a proponent of passion, authority and largesse. A huge internal flywheel gets ‘practiced’. Retirement initially releases the clutch and after that I am not sure of the physics.

So in a ‘bread and butter’ email to Phil and Angela after our visit, I closed with:

“…I hope, Angela, that you find some joy in teaching. I struggled with it the last two years. However you decide to handle it I hope you feel that you have invested in many a child's future and that there is a nobility to the pursuit of being an educator.”

Perhaps I was trying to speak to myself at the same time. But let’s take that nobility testament on a shakedown strut.

After thirty five years in education I am totally convinced that the Pubertyometer needs invention. It would replace any metal detector currently screening for weapons at your local schoolhouse. Any onslaught of puberty would produce a loud ‘Ding!’. That student would then be removed from class and put to work. The work could be to ride shotgun on the local oil delivery truck. All billing slips would be handled by our young budding adult and added up at the end of the day, correctly by the way. Or they could show up at a local nursing association for myriad possible assignments. Any and all adults willing to employ these tyros would be eligible for some kind of tax benefit.

The kids themselves would have to report to some educational location a couple of times of week to report orally and literally as to their occupational endeavors. Parents would charge some form of room and board no matter how nominal. This would balance privilege and loss of critical adolescent items both virtual and material.

During their return to the educational location they would, of course, have to pass through the Pubertyometer. Another kind of ‘Ding!’ would signal closing phases of puberty. The young things could then decide if they would like to continue working at whatever trade they have frequented or whether they would suffer returning to Academia for full time pursuit.

In fact, while they were in school, their mission would be to inventory their community for BTUs, kilowatt hours and gallons of water. They should know what their house, community and region require for energy units and the sooner the better. This would be real data that would be curriculimated and then baked at 350.

This solution made for great ‘hangin’ around the kitchen in the mornin’’ conversation with my oldest friend (Angela). We have known each other all our lives.

So let the Von D’Lucci apostrophe ring and the echoes resonate with Rienzo.

The Wonder Years

“Well, Gin, are these the Wonder Years?”
“Ah yes, Chris, I think of something and then I wonder what it was.”

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This beautiful view is the backyard of the ‘Old House’ on the Wolfson property in South Wellfleet, MA. And we are talking old. The house is centuries old. However its magnificent charm is really the yard.

It is dutifully maintained by actor/painter/sculptor/bus, taxi and Wonder Bread truck driver/husband/father/Marshall inventory manager/teacher/licensed to carry arms/friend Thomas Wolfson (www.thomaswolfson.com). The man is either amazing or victim of a career attention disorder or has disguised one with the other.

Here he is in action:

Can you believe this man just turned 60? Such vitality, such joi de vivre, such John Deere!

We were fortunate to be there last weekend when many friends and family celebrated the occasion. Wellfleet oysters, fresh bass and martinis. Tom, being of pure spirit, is clean and sober. He graciously allowed our consumption to go unnoticed until he Tourrettingly let “you’ll burn in hell from demon alcohol” casually escape his lips.

Besides celebrating our friendship with Tom the reason for the thematic inclusion has to do with retirement choices.

Many of us have worked long and hard to create a comfortable environment; taking advantage of serendipitous opportunities blended with strategy and goal setting. In the case of Tom and Michele their lot has been affected by a decision by Tom’s father around the start of the Big Depression to buy this land for a few hundred dollars (over 25 acres). Victor, Tom’s father, was also an artist and there has been an infusion of artifact with flora and fauna:





In the case of Gini and myself we have been fortunate to resurrect a chicken coop among the grandeur of the region around Newfound Lake:



There are many such examples of residential accomplishment among us.

The existential struggle to make one’s way through life with career and family becomes attuned to this home environment. What requires great energy is fed by a sympathy and empathy with the surroundings. So the energy, at times, knows no bounds in its harmony and reinforcement. Children remain in a virtual womb of a construct whose nature they do not, at first, understand. Adolescent haze crystallizes into fond memories of Home.

Friends, perhaps temporarily out of sync with their own milieu, drive great distances to share your hearth (or in our case, a Russian fireplace). Upon such a visit, Peace is possible, digesting seems inevitable.

Then comes retirement. The winter seems harsher. The wood is getting heavier. There are too many rooms – too much Stuff. Downsizing becomes a theme (though I don’t take it personally). Somehow feng shui intends departure and not domestic nirvana.

I love our home. It breathes us and we breathe it. When it comes time to say goodbye I will be sad. However, do not weep for me Von D’LucciLand – the Karma Express is still movin’ along – I just don’t really have a clue as to the next stop!

Chip Off The Old Block?

Chip off the old block? I don’t think so. Who is this adventurer? Latest reports have it that he has traveled 400 miles on the Appalachian Trail wending his way among planetary anomalies and existential vectors. Three or four hundred more miles await his vision quest. At least he does not have to kill a lion before coming back to the village.


For those few of you who do not know who Chip is, Exhibit A is in the photograph. He was born March 18, 1985 to parents ensconced in a chicken coop in Alexandria, NH. Somewhere along the way he evolved into this hiking phenomenon that carries from 30 to 50 pounds on his back with items that pass for his room and board.

Once Gini is outside range of her own home or room service then the rest of us are focusing on her creature comforts. Oh alright, I am focusing on other things too but can you blame me?

Maybe I could be talked into a week of tenting in the White Mountains at one time but this guy does it clean and sober and with fervor. Where did he get all this?

Now this is when he looks like a product of Gini and myself:

Cruisin’ around Rome, diggin’ the scene.

But somewhere he cut the feeder tube and made a decision to not be flotsam and jetsam. He declared himself an artist! The very idea!

This was not your here today, I’ll be a doctor tomorrow, announcement. There was this explosion of artifacts that made it very difficult to casually ignore. The charcoal supply seriously dipped within a ten mile radius of Keene, NH for about two years. Angst, self discovery and creativity proclaimed itself:








So what is it in this universe of ours that fosters this development?

One could write various guesses on pieces of paper and pull them from a hat:

family
love
stubborn refusal to quit
maybe he was switched at birth
desire
serendipitous confluence of synaptic chaos
a ripple in the force
being alert during the talent distribution phase of gestation

Well, as a parent I can only say I am proud of this young man. Long may he run…er walk…uh, fast…with poles…

Hi Ho Chip.

We Be Back

Greetings and aggiornamento:

After a great weekend with some friends who would not want to be categorized as “very old” friends but are very retromental to me, it was decided that the blog must go on. Retroment is just not the pure escape engendered by our January/February hiatus but all facets of this new phase of life. Besides there is so much scurrying going on to define Boomer retirement we might as well stay in the running.

When we last left our heroes they were listening to Sam Cooke on the porch of the Richard bayou estate in Port Barre, LA recovering from Mardi Gras in Lafayette. Much has transpired since then and, in keeping with the current economic climate, the financial component has been turned on its head.

Each year our one week in Miami was wonderfully anticipated and enjoined with gusto. The two of us would return to the frigid Northeast with resolve and fortitude to tough it out until the spring weather could take hold and we were in paradise once again. This year's sojourn of three weeks was lethal.

A few days before journeying to Louisiana we had conscripted a real estate agent to help us scour the South Beach multiple listings for a condo. It had to cost about what Peter Minuit paid for Manhattan and be designed for celebration on HGTV. Our real estate agent hailed from Vladivostok but did not even feign hilarity when I quipped, “You can see Alaska from there!” Thankfully Gini and Paul were within earshot and at least covered their burgeoning smiles in a loyal effort.

Whether it was her lack of appreciation of my humor or her walking by the properties she had scheduled for our visitation, we soon moved on to another agent who was a friend of Greg and Paul. Before you could say “no short sales please!” we were the proud owners of an Island Ave condo off the Venetian Causeway on Belle Isle; the same island where our friends reside.


Such a Kitchen!



From the balcony.




Cocktails anyone?

We also have made a small altar to what once was our portfolio. It’s a tasteful tableau with a profile/snapshot of a what some might wistfully refer to as a more….lucrative time in our life; perhaps an even wealthier time but, ah, we have our memories.

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So perhaps these extensions of the Retroment might gestate weekly and regularly appear. One never knows now does one?