Two churches in Vestal change their names in 2013

Sometimes changing a church name means something, and other times not so much

In 2013, two churches in Vestal changed their names.  There's Bridgewater Church where the South Vestal Baptist Church used to be and there is Grace Point Church where Twin Orchards Baptist Church used to be.  One change appears cosmetic, the other, momentous.

In the case of Grace Point, the change happened in July, but while the name perhaps clarifies the mission, the change has not been accompanied by other dramatic changes. No new leadership.  No new worship style. Not really a different way of doing ministry. They likely lost a few members over the name change and will likely pick up some members in time, perhaps as a payoff for the name change, but no major changes are evident looking in from the outside.

Grace Point is about marketing, specifically rebranding.  The change hasn't fully been implemented - on their website is still a dropdown menu titled "About TOBC."

Bridgewater, on the other hand, is a name change that signifies big change.  South Vestal Baptist Church had aged and dwindled to a very small, elderly congregation.  It was a change or die moment for the twenty or so in the South Vestal church when Bridgewater Baptist Church of Montrose, Pennsylvania agreed to adopt them.  South Vestal became the third site for Bridgewater, which also has a congregation in Hallstead.

Bridgewater South Vestal launched in September.  51 members of Bridgewater Montrose committed to become part of Bridgewater in Vestal, so the church more than tripled before they launched.  Today, the church packs the parking lot every Sunday for a building that can hold 80 in worship.  The building and grounds need work, but Bridgewater in Vestal has made a great start.

In both places in Vestal, the Baptist identification was removed from the name.  In South Vestal, there has been growth.  Grace Point was a strong church when they changed their name.  For Grace Point, the results will likely take time to discover.

Buses, Trains, and Automobiles

Growing up, trains were something special.  Trains took you to special places like New York City.  Buses, on the other hand, were commonplace.  We learned this early on with the school bus.  Our family lived in a new community and the school district seemed not to know what to do with us.

For two years, we were bused to Schirra Elementary School.  At the time, NASA was cool, and honoring astronauts was in vogue.  I found out later in life that Wally Schirra was from New Jersey, a little over an hour from home.  After Schirra, it was a year of bus travel to Madison Park School.  There was nothing too cool about Madison Park.  Most of the people were great, but I had my Little League team catcher’s mitt stolen at that school.  My mother had to buy the team a new one.

The next year, we were all in a brand new Middle School, and yes, we took the bus there too.  Then on to high school and another bus.  College was another time for buses – around campus, to town, and another bus home on breaks.  Buses were basic transportation to summer jobs.

The train was a commuter line.  In South Amboy or some place around there, the train would stop to switch locomotives.  The switch from diesel to electric could take minutes, but sometimes more time.  My dad said that the liquor store near the tracks did an incredible amount of business from the trains.

The auto was everyday travel and mom was the pilot.  There was nothing exotic about the car, but it sure beat any bus I had ever been on.

How many hours do we spend getting from one place to another?  I don’t think any of us could add up the hours, but one thing I do know – I’d rather take a train.  How about you?

A reflection on an art form called circus

An internationally renowned circus historian and former Associate Artistic Director of the Big Apple Circus, Dominique Jando serves as curator and editor-in-chief of circopedia.org, an online circus history resource.

Jando has a great appreciation for the circus as an an honest, tangible art form. In this excerpt from an interview shot for the CIRCUS series, he explains that the circus showcases ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Dominique Jando writes:

A friend of mine once asked, “What’s the point of juggling ten balls, or doing a triple somersault?” What’s the point indeed? But not everybody can do that, and this is why it is so fascinating to most of us; to see fellow humans for a moment flying in the air or dancing on a tight wire is, after all, an amazing image. If it is done with ease and grace, as if it were just a beautiful thing to do, this image becomes even more powerful.

Actually, before sports and gymnastics became fashionable again at the end of the nineteenth century (leading to the creation of the modern Olympics), juggling, dancing on a rope, and performing acrobatic jumps were considered funny. In the early circuses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, equestrians and trick riders were the stars of the show. Juggling, rope dancing, and tumbling acts were, by and large, performed by clowns. Audiences thought they were silly things to do (and, if we think of it, indeed they are)—a sort of eccentric behavior that was amusing to watch. In the mid-nineteenth century, it is a clown, Little Wheal, who performed the first recorded double somersault on the ground.

Today, Little Wheal wouldn’t need to wear a clown outfit to “sell” this amazing trick! But his audiences were awed, nonetheless. Circus, when well done, is a metaphor. It reminds us of the boundless potential of our human nature. It shows us, by the way of an artistic, living image that we can overcome our limitations—and, in some cases, that we can survive apparently life-threatening situations. Circus is really what remains of our primal rituals of survival, codified into an artistic form (like many other old rituals) for modern consumption. We needed them then as we need them now.

The Chinese link many of the traditional acts of their acrobatic theater (what we call the Chinese circus) to old rituals performed after a good harvest, for instance. The peasants who performed in these rituals gradually improved their skills until they eventually became so proficient that they turned them into a show—giving them an attractive, artistic form. This led to the birth of the Chinese acrobatic theater and the Chinese opera. The same evolution happened in the West, developing first in Egypt and continuing from Greece, to Rome, and to the rest of the European continent.

In Europe, where the one-ring circus has always been the norm, audiences are used to focusing their attention on single acts—and they have learned in time to see, understand, and appreciate the subtleties of an artist’s craft. But generations of Americans have been exposed to the three-ring extravaganzas created by P.T. Barnum and his associates in the 1880s, and further developed by his followers. Thus, artistry became diluted into a spectacle where the human cannonball was more likely to catch the audience’s attention than the intricacies of a refined hand-balancing act. And there was the menagerie, the sideshow and the midway, which were added to the mix, transforming the original circus Philip Astley had created in England in 1770 into a vastly different experience.

Things have changed in the United States since the emergence, in the 1970s, of the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco, the Big Apple Circus in New York—and later, the Cirque du Soleil in Canada—which all shifted the focus back to the performer’s artistry. During its last American tours of the early 1990s, the Russian circus also showed to which heights the artistry of a circus act can go—think, for instance, of the magnificence of the Flying Cranes, who, for ten years, were saluted with standing ovations at each of their performances.

Actually, we don’t say “circus art;” we say “circus arts,” since circus is a composite performing art, with a great diversity of disciplines, often very dissimilar in style and content, and each of which is appreciated in a different way. But there is still a common thread: whether an acrobat turns a somersault on a galloping horse, a juggler maintain nine clubs moving simultaneously in the air, an aerialist swings on her trapeze hanging by a single heel, all of them are doing something extraordinary, all of them show us that, yes, we can overcome what seemed to be our limitations.
And, as John Steinbeck put it, “Every man, woman and child comes from the circus refreshed and renewed and ready to survive.”

Source: pbs.org

I-376 and John Cigna

Traveling into Pittsburgh from the east on I-376, at one point the city skyline comes into view and it is a beautiful site, as you can see above.  But, a picture really doesn't do it justice.  I was in Pittsburgh this week, and I saw the 376 view of the city one more time.

One summer, I had this view through the windshield five days a week, but I don’t recall really reveling in it.  I was doing a portion of my seminary education at the hospital in Greensburg, and I would travel west to Greensburg in the morning and back to Ambridge, just west of Pittsburgh, each evening.  Fortunately, I was generally traveling in the opposite direction of the heavy traffic each day.

I remember listening to KDKA-AM with John Cigna each morning while commuting.  Cigna was the morning drive guy for KDKA from 1983 to 2001.  The morning show was mostly a news/weather/traffic program, but Cigna brought his personality to the show.  There was a little music, but not very much. 

Cigna was a Brooklyn kid who brought that NYC-brashness to his work.  He died at age 75 in 2011.  A bit about his on-air chutzpah:

"Several of his April Fools' pranks are the stuff of radio lore. Once, he reported that a flying saucer had landed in North Park. Many believed it. "My general manager didn't even know it was a joke."

On another April 1, he claimed there was an alligator roaming the sewer system and urged listeners to collectively flush their toilets to get the critter out. People bought that one, too. "People were calling up at 11 o'clock in the morning, saying, 'Should we continue to flush?' It was crazy.'"

A classic Cigna quote: "The greatest accomplishments are done in defiance of management."

“Your Wildest Dreams” by the Moody Blues was popular the summer of my 376 commute, and Cigna played it at the same time many mornings.  The song would usually come on as I was approaching the Squirrel Hill Tunnel, and I would race through the tunnel to hear the end of the song.  The song reminds me of a friend in college, and it’s my favorite Moody’s song.

I-376 is one of those weird interstate highways like the ones around Chicago.  378 is labeled east-west while most of the road runs north-south; a few of the interstates around Chicago have similar confusing directional designations.  

The traffic tends to slow down on the Fort Pitt Bridge, and right before the two tunnels east of the city.  The traffic around the bridge is the worst as different roads converge and drivers cut across lanes to head in the right direction.  

The traffic around the tunnels isn’t so bad, especially if you’re listening to a favorite song.  And if you're traveling west toward Pittsburgh on 376, don't miss the skyline view.

Finding refreshment in Boston and Philadelphia

Why is it that time away can be so refreshing?  Last summer I spent six days in Boston with my son.  He was part of a group of high school students who were meeting up with other high school students at Boston University for some work on and learning about Network Science.

I sat in on some of their meetings, but I was primarily there as a chaperone.  With the free time I had I walked from B.U. (the other B.U. for our Binghamton folks) to the harbor area.  I walked through parks, along the waterfront, and around all kinds of historic buildings.

I also went to two Red Sox games, one with my son.  Fenway Park is an experience that every American baseball fan should have.  I was thankful to be able to go to a number of games at Wrigley Field when we lived in the Chicago area, and Fenway is right up there with Wrigley.

That time in Boston was the most refreshing time of the summer.

This past week, I was in Philadelphia from Thursday to Saturday.  I was there for the inaugural synod of the CANA Diocese of the East.  CANA stands for Convocation of Anglicans in North America, which is our church's affiliation.  We met in the Philadelphia suburb of Wayne.  Each day I passed Valley Forge on the way to meetings.  Unfortunately, our schedule was so full that I didn't have time to visit the historic sites at Valley Forge.

We began with an opening dinner on Thursday, we had a full day on Friday (8:30 AM to 9 PM), and half a day on Saturday.  Afterwards, I hustled back home.  It was tiring, but also refreshing.

So, what is it about new locales that is so refreshing?

Can canoeing ruin a marriage?

One of the most frustrating recreational experiences that my wife and I endured was a rowing trip in Ocala, Florida.  The trip started off well; we were camping at Silver River State Park and it was beautiful.  In the park there are spring fed ponds that are clear as clear glass and it was fascinating to watch the marine life in a pond near our campsite.  The weather was comfortably warm and it wasn't too humid.  The night was quiet and peaceful.

We went to the Ranger Station in the morning to rent a canoe.  With vests on and paddles in hand we pushed away from the boat basin and started down Silver River.  The river water was translucent, and fish, otters and other water creatures were visible as we paddled along.  Deer could occasionally be seen along the riverbanks.  It was an idyllic scene.

Inside the canoe was a different story.  Who knew that two people could be so unevenly matched for rowing a boat?  Neither of us had a lot of experience or training in rowing or canoes and it showed.  Rowing a canoe in a straight line is not as easy as we thought it would be.  Bumping into the riverbanks happened more that either of us had anticipated.  By the time we made it to the transportation point we were both glad our little excursion was over.  We pulled the canoe out of the water, put it on the trailer, and gladly headed back to our campsite.

I can't say whether canoeing can ruin a marriage.  Fortunately, beyond this one dalliance, we haven't been canoeing since.  What I can say is that not pursuing canoeing may have saved one marriage, and maybe that's all you need to know.

Are you a low information voter?

We're into the second month of second Obama term and tomorrow the sequestration cuts will hit some Americans hard.  Even political liberals and Obama supporters are frustrated with the lack of leadership from the White House.  So, who's to blame?

How about the low information voters who gave Obama four more years?

Amherst student and Obama volunteer Lawrence Pevsner wrote in the Huffington Post about low information voters (LIVs).  Rush Limbaugh has been talking about them for months

As Pevsner explains, LIVs are generally undecided voters who don't follow the candidates, the campaigns, and most importantly, the issues.  Arguably, with millions of fewer votes cast in the 2012 elections, LIVs were an important block in Obama's winning coalition.

So, we have a president who won't lead elected by people who weren't informed.  The result: we have a president who is making cuts that are calculated to harm Americans.  This isn't just my view.  Last night on CNN, David Gergen, left-leaning professor at the Kennedy School for Government said as much.  He called what the president is doing "despicable."

The renowned journalist Bob Woodward has been threatened by the White House for saying what is demonstrably true - that sequestration was Obama's idea.

So, have you been following all this?  Or are you a low information voter?

Free Movie Tickets at Two Rivers Assembly!

                              Pastor William Hampton (photo: Pressconnects.com)

I received a postcard recently and maybe you did too.  It was mailed to 50,000 households in Broome County.  The postcard is from Two Rivers Assembly, a church that will hold its first worship service this Sunday.  I honestly wish them well, but I have some questions about what they’re doing.

The postcard and an article in this morning’s Press & Sun-Bulletin play up the “fun” aspect of this church.   In the newspaper article, William Hampton, the pastor of Two Rivers Assembly says,

“We are working very hard to be a church where people who don’t go to church will love to attend,” said Hampton, who moved from Springfield, Mo., about nine months ago to launch Two Rivers. “The days of being bored in a dry environment are over.”

If you are currently not active in a church, by all means, please try Two Rivers Assembly and score some movie tickets.  It’s great that they want to be a church that reaches out to the unchurched. I applaud the effort, but question the methodology.

Many churches are boring, but for reasons that Pastor Hampton doesn’t mention.  It’s about what is taught and believed - liberalism is killing mainline churches.  It is a pandering based on the liberal mindset of secular society.  We see this most glaringly in the denomination that is losing members the fastest, the United Church of Christ (the UCC).  The UCC is also the most liberal of mainline denominations.

The Episcopal Church (TEC) has become increasingly liberal in theology and since 2003 has been losing over 50,000 members a year.  That pace has slowed a bit more recently, but a current trend is for entire parishes to leave the Episcopal Church for the Roman Catholic Church.  Our parish, St. Andrew’s Church in Endicott, left the Episcopal Church in 2007 and became part of the evangelical Convocation of Anglicans in North America. 

The church building where St. Andrew's now worships was built by George F. Johnson in 1923.  It was constructed for a Methodist Church.  In 2000 or so, St Paul’s Methodist Church at 400 W. Wendell St. closed and disbanded.  The problem?  Liberal theology.  At the end of the block is the building that was once the home of St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church.  That church also closed and disbanded.  The building is now home to a Russian Orthodox Church.

Liberalism spawns death; it’s happened in the UCC, it’s happening in TEC, the Methodist Church, and the mainline Presbyterian Church.

On Saturday, I attended an ordination service in Syracuse at a cavernous church building on Genesee St.  It was a former Presbyterian Church with gothic architecture and beautiful stained glass windows.  The church in that building now is called Missio, and they've planted another church elsewhere in Syracuse.  The liberal Presbyterians are long gone.

The postcard and the newspaper article I received make it sound like the problem is being boring.  I suggest that the problem is liberal preaching and teaching.  With solid, biblical preaching and teaching, bathed in an atmosphere of prayer (yes, prayer is important), there should be an environment that is centered on God.  There is no boredom in the presence of God.

I suspect that the new church that is starting at the Regal Theaters in Binghamton is working from a marketing plan based on pandering to the felt needs of the unchurched.  There’s nothing wrong with reaching out, that’s a good thing.  What I suspect given what has been said, particularly in the newspaper article, is that the methodology of mission is based on appealing to the lower nature rather than the higher nature of humanity.  

What do I mean by this?

An entertainment approach to worship suggests that worship is about giving people an experience.  Actually,  genuine worship has always been about connecting people to God.  Humanity’s deepest yearnings are for connection with God, but entertainment-based worship appeals to more base yearnings like the desire to be entertained.  The hook for entertainment-based worship is often contemporary music and teaching based on felt needs.  The contemporary music can be shallow in lyrical content, although it doesn’t have to be. 

The felt needs approach to teaching tends toward sermon series like “5 Keys to a Happy Marriage.”  This isn’t bad in itself, but whatever happened to God-centered worship?

Christian educator Marva Dawn calls the entertainment approach to worship “dumbing down.”  In an article excerpted from a book and published last year in Christianity Today, this phenomena was called “the juvenilization of American Christianity.”  It could also be called the trivialization of the Christian faith.

The church that pioneered this approach was Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago.  Willow Creek took a four-year self-study of their congregation and published their findings in 2007 in a book called Reveal.  What was revealed by that study was that Willow Creek had a surprising number of members whose faith-journey was “stalled” or dissatisfactory to them. 

It was courageous of Willow Creek to publish that study.  They have since shifted to more depth during their weekend services .  As the study shows, surface-depth just isn’t deep enough.

I am praying for Two Rivers and their launch.  I hope that they are successful in reaching unchurched people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I also hope that they’ll take them deep into the life of Christ and not just give them a fun time in the shallow end of the pool.

RIP Hotmail, 1996-2013

I know that I have a Hotmail account; I just don't remember what year I used it last.  How about you?

Microsoft is replacing Hotmail with Outlook.com by the summer.  Hotmail accounts will still be usable, but they will be rerouted to the Outlook.com site as will MSN.com accounts.  Microsoft is expecting the Outlook service to rival Gmail and will be actively courting Gmail users.

There are already 60 million Outlook.com accounts and it is has just passed out of the beta stage, which began in July 2012.  Hotmail has roughly 350,000 accounts.  It was launched in 1996 and bought up by Microsoft in 1998 for $400 million.

If you're not prepared to switchover, be prepared for this: Microsoft is rolling out a $30 million marketing blitz.

Restoring human dignity in the hospital

It's a great leveler.  It doesn't care whether you're rich or poor, what you believe or where you're from.  The hospital gown is short on modesty, but long on convenience for the hospital staff.  It's design is purely convenience, and this is the unfortunate reality for a patient's humility.   As Marketing Profs say, 

"The hospital gown has been around for centuries. It’s no news that the ill-fitting, dignity-stealing flimsy covering clearly needs an overhaul."

Even the Wall Street Journal has chimed in:

"The traditional American hospital gown -- flimsy in front, open to the breeze in the back -- has been around about as long as the Band-Aid. If anything, it has changed less."

With you in a hospital gown, the doctors and nurses can pick, poke and prod, examine your vital signs, and get right to surgery if that's what you need.   Friday morning, I was in a hospital to have a kidney stone procedure, but the hospital gown neither knew that or cared.  To anyone else not connected to my care, I was just another hospital patient.

After checking in and being brought to the nurse's station at the ambulatory care center, I was directed to room 6, and told to take off all my clothing and get into the hospital gown that was handed to me.

Room 6 turned out to be more of an alcove with a curtain that could be drawn across the opening to the hall.  I put on the hospital gown and waited for the next piece of hospital business.  Sitting in a hospital gown I looked like every other patient.  Of course, we all retained our physical features, but we shared the same garb, the great leveler, the hospital gown.

Blanton Godfrey, dean of the College of Textiles of North Carolina State University is quoted in the Wall Street Journal article, saying "It is amazing -- we have created a product nobody likes."  The college is working on new designs with $250,000 of funding from the Robert Wood Johnson of Princeton, NJ.

Did you know that the hospital gown market in America is a $76 million enterprise?  For something nobody likes.

The size of that market has attracted not only the attention of a college in North Carolina and a foundation in New Jersey.  Designer Nicole Miller has gotten into the act, as have others.  There are even designer gowns for men, although they are promoted as "luxury gowns."

A few minutes later after changing into my hospital gown, I was taken by wheelchair for an x-ray.  I said that I could walk, but I guess they didn't want my rear end peaking out of the gown on the way to the x-ray department.  So, I was seated in the wheelchair and pushed there.  I sat in the hall for about 20 minutes while they prepared the x-ray machine for its first patient of the morning.

It's a bit humbling to be sitting in a wheelchair in a hallway wearing nothing but a hospital gown.  Medical personnel walk past, people in normal clothing walk past, everyone has somewhere else to go, and meanwhile, there I sat.  I could hear some mechanical sounds behind the door to x-ray room 2, and every once in a while someone would come out of another door and report that they were getting ready for me.

After the x-ray, I was wheeled back to room 6.  I signed some papers, was hooked up to an I-V, was visited by the anesthesiologist and my doctor, sedated and then wheeled on a gurney to the operating room.  The last few details I tell you  what I was told;  I was knocked out until about noon.  

When I woke up in the recovery room, I was laying face-up on the gurney, facing the wall.  The most prominent item in my view was a monitor with blue, green, and  yellow lights.  Every so often an orange blinking light would come on and I was told by a nurse to breath deeply.  As I did so, the light would go out.

As I waited, I was told that my next destination was being prepared for my arrival.  A nurse finally did come and started unhooking me from the various lines that fed into the monitor.   

I was transported again, this time in another wheelchair, to another room 6 in the ambulatory care center of the medical facility.  

In room 6, I was seated in a standard issue hospital reclining chair, still hooked up to the I-V that was attached to my arm at about 7:30 that morning.  I was permitted to change out of the hospital gown.  

As long as you're in a hospital you're as much a property of the hospital as the gown.  At least if feels that way.  It felt almost like I was back in the Army.  Fortunately, my enlistment in the hospital was a few hours rather than three years.

A Jersey girl has a better life for you

Maybe it just seems like Marie Forleo is popping up in every nook and cranny of the internet.  You may have not even heard of her, but she is all over my email and she's on Facebook (who isn't?).

Marie Forleo runs an online business school for women, she does youtube videos that she calls Marie TV, and she promises women a better life.  She does this on Facebook, through intermediaries like Amy Porterfield, a savvy online marketing expert from California.  After Porterfield's Facebook mention of Forleo, I received an email from Lewis Howes of Inspired Marketing touting, who else, Marie Forleo.

Then I got an email from Derek Halpern of socialtriggers.com.  After that it was Liz DiAlto, a fitness and lifestyle coach.  According to Halpern, he gets compensation for each person that he directs to B-School, so I would expect this is the case for the others as well.

Since the initial forays, Amy Porterfield has been sending regular emails touting Forleo's online business school, and since I checked out Forleo's site I have been getting regular emails from her too.  Can anyone here say full court press?  I knew you could.

Forleo is a smart, attractive, and like Amy Porterfield, a savvy online marketing expert.  Porterfield credits Forleo as a mentor.  On her videos Forleo will tell you about her journey from Seton Hall University to Wall Street, to fashion magazines, to personal coaching, and now to MarieForleo.com.  It's quite a story.  She now lives in the west village in New York City.

Forleo is definitely a determined and hard worker.  She's definitely paid her dues.  And now she offers you the same opportunity from what she has learned on her way up.

Forleo is a big-time name-dropper who is only too happy to tell you of her associations with the rich and famous.  Her Marie TV videos are sprinkled with a Sarah Silvermanesque smattering of profanity.  She brings great energy to her work and in all earnestness she promises that you too can have the fabulous life that she has built for herself.  She even throws in some of her new age spirituality.

She doesn't promote any get rich quick schemes, but she does sell a view that if you work hard enough and you are focused enough, you too can achieve great success.  She recently sent out an email that links to her website, highlighting 26 success stories.  That's a nice number, but how many are not "killing it," as Forleo likes to say?

One of the most positive aspects of Forleo's work is her commitment to charities that align with her vision of a better world.  They look like good charities.  How much Forleo contributes is not mentioned.

She is also generous with free materials.  Like other online marketers there is a host of emails that link to videos that present potentially helpful information.  I have learned from Marie Forleo, and I believe you can too.  I'll give her some praise, not only is she a compelling presenter, in one of her videos she even quotes one of my favorite contemporary Christian writers, Max Lucado.  However, given the overall spiritual content of her work, it is obvious that she quotes Lucado appreciatively from a stance of religious pluralism.

The problem with the paid program aspect of MarieForleo.com is that for every success story there are many others whose lives are not appreciably better.  Maybe they haven't worked hard enough.  Maybe they weren't talented enough (Forleo was valedictorian of her class at SHU).  Forleo has passion, drive, focus and discipline; not everyone does.  And it is difficult to believe that everyone who enrolls with Forleo has a glorious success story.

Not everyone has a glorious success story.  But that won't stop Forleo from selling her vision to whomever will listen.  She says "it doesn't take talent or luck to succeed."  I am skeptical of that claim.  Forleo believes that if you have the right commitment to success, you will make it.  Really?

Some will profit, many won't, but there are worse ways to spend a few bucks.  Perhaps those who pay the $1,999 tuition are extraordinary people.  However, Forleo says that you don't have to be extraordinary except in commitment to your goals.  Somehow, I have a hard time believing that's all it takes.

Growing Up Jersey

Do these places mean anything to you: The Land of Make Believe, Wild West City, Palisades Amusement Park?

How about these names: Soupy Sales, Sandy Becker, Sonny Fox?

No?  Yes?  If you were a child growing up in the metropolitan New York area that extends into central New Jersey, they might mean the world to you.

The Land of Make Believe is an amusement park in Hope, NJ.  It is filled with kiddie rides and attractions and has added a water park since I was a child.  This place was magical for a young child, and I would guess that it still is.

Wild West City is “a western city smack dab in the East.”  With a circa 1880 Main Street,  22 live-action shows spaced throughout the day, a stagecoach, a train ride, a pony ride,  and a barnyard zoo,  what red-blooded boy wouldn’t love Wild West City in Netcong, NJ?

Palisades Amusement Park closed on September 12, 1971.  I still remember the ads that they ran all summer.  Tuesdays and Thursdays were bargains days, with “many rides 5 and 10 cents.” 

Our family visited Palisades Amusement Park during the last week of operation there.  There was a bit of a surreal character to the experience.  There was something in the atmosphere that was detectable, even to a child. 

The employees were grieving, the long-time patrons of the park were grieving, and yet, we were all still there for fun.  Palisades had a long run, but its location resulted meant that its run would be terminated by local officials who saw the potential for high-rise condominiums that would normalize traffic on the roads and bring greater income to the municipalities. 

Soupy Sales was on WNEW-TV during my childhood.  He brought “The Soupy Sales Show to New York City in September 1964 and his show ran until September 1966.  Soupy had a zany wit, an engaging smile, and an energetic act.  He sang, danced, mugged, and laughed, and of course, he brought his pie-throwing shtick with him.  Puppets and regular characters were a significant part of the show and the characters that Soupy and his crew came up with are legendary: White Fang, Pookie the Lion, Black Tooth,  and Hippy the Hippo were just some of the puppet characters.

Sandy Becker was an elegant man and a mainstay at WNEW-TV.  He did morning shows, afternoon shows, evening shows, weekend shows –s there any time when Becker wasn’t on camera?  Becker also employed puppets and created characters like Hambone, Big Professor and Norton Nork.  Becker was the first host for Wonderama, and then his own weekday afternoon program, The Sandy Becker Show, from March 27, 1961 to September 4, 1968.  Becker’s run on Wonderama included six hour shows on Sundays from noon to 6 pm.

Sonny Fox took over for Becker on Wonderama and hosted the show from 1959 to 1967.  Fox brought his own personality to the production that included slapstick comedy, audience participation games and impromptu interviews, and cartoons.  I still remember the tongue twisters like unique New York.  Say that five times fast.  How about ten times.

Those were special days, never to be duplicated, and always to be remembered.  

The differences between a tramp, a hobo, and a bum

You probably haven't thought about this, and honestly, either have I.  It came up in a book, Turning Pro, by Steven Pressfield.  Pressfield was picking apples in Washington State when he met Dave, a fellow picker.  It was Dave who explained the differences between a tramp, a hobo, and a bum.

Dave explains, "A tramp is an itinerant worker.  A hobo is an intinerant non-worker.  A bum is a non-itinerant non-worker."  p. 50 of Turning Pro

I thought you might like to know this.

The Sunset Limited

So, you're inside on a snowy day and wondering what to do.  How about watching a good movie?  Have you seen The Sunset Limited?

It has two actors in one room for an hour and a half.  If that sounds boring, consider this - the actors happen to be Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones.  Sound interesting?  If you have HBO on Demand or (I am guessing here) Netflix, you'll find The Sunset Limited worth your time.  Check it out.

Here's what Rotten Tomatoes says about it:

 A God-fearing ex-con (Samuel L. Jackson) saves a despondent college professor (Tommy Lee Jones) from throwing himself in front of a speeding subway train, and struggles to comprehend the suicidal man's unwavering despair during a series of intense philosophical debates. Adapted from the play by Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses, The Road).

Nemo finds us

It was The Weather Channel who came up with the idea of naming winter storms.  As Ned "the bull" Ryerson says in Groundhog Day, "it's a doozy."  Not exactly an entertaining fish story.

So, what are you doing while we are snowed in in the Northeast?  I'm starting a new blog and I hope that you enjoy it.

Nemo the winter storm has really socked it to New England, but down here in upstate New York we've gotten our share of show.  It's about eight inches deep outside my front door.  If you live in the Twin Tiers of New York and Northern Pennsylvania, cheer up.  It's blizzard conditions around New York City, and New England's got up to three feet of the white stuff.

WHCU-AM in Ithaca is reporting 30 car crashes being investigated in Onondaga County.  Undaunted, the Syracuse Crunch AHL hockey team says "Game On" no matter what.

It hasn't been a very snowy winter in upstate, but hopefully this latest snowfall will be good for our ski areas and skiers.  Otherwise, it's good exercise to shovel the driveway and walks.  That's where I'm headed, how about you?

The mosaic of life

Life is a mosaic, is it not?  

Patterns are produced by people and events that shape our lives and form our souls.  Sometimes we are acted upon, but we are always actors in the mosaic of our live.  As fellow travelers, perhaps we can muse a bit about the mosaic of our lives.  Are you game?

mo·sa·ic  

/mōˈzā-ik/

Noun A picture or pattern produced by arranging together small colored pieces of hard material, such as stone, tile, or glass.

Verb Decorate with a mosaic: "the mosaicked swimming pool".

Synonyms tessellation - inlay