My day (night) was made last night when I went upstairs to get ready for work. Our youngest kitty who was one of three feral kittens I saved four years ago this month, came up to my bedroom door and knocked (scratched) to get in. What’s remarkable about the story is that Baby Kitten is afraid to leave her home in the kitchen near the food and water. So, three times a day I pick her up and carry her to the litter box and wait for her then carry her back to safety.

She is the sweetest little thing but she’s only bonded with me and while Matty tries to make friends, she’s still pretty skiddish. Strangers; forget about it! I can only imagine the courage it took for her to travel from the kitchen through the den and up the stairs with all those “other cats” lurking around. She’s got a few pals like Owen and Iggy and Bootsie, but the rest of the customers she could do without. She also loves Daphne Davenport, the dog. So, you see, sometimes miracles do happen; you just have to be patient and wait a few years.

Boy, that last blog was about the most depressing thing I’ve read since the Congressional budget report. Good thing I look ahead and not back or I’d be one “feeling sorry for myself”, mama.

I noticed a LOT of changed-over leaves on my way home. This just ain’t right. When I was a kid growing up in the woods of central Mass., the leaves never changed this early! I think it must be global cooling or something.

As I sat quietly reading my last post about cousin Marge tonight, I thought how the blog made me sound like I’m some kind of saint in the “forgiveness” department. I am not. There are two people I will never forgive; the woman who ended my father’s life and my first husband.

Marrying my high school sweetheart was without doubt, the largest mistake of my life. But when you’re 14 or 15 years old, you can hardly look ahead into your adult future and rationally sort-out the pros and cons. That’s why your parents are there to help you make good choices. Only my parents weren’t there for me. I left home just about that time, fed up with all their yelling and screaming and hitting and whatnot. I knew I could do better. But at 15 and a half, I still had school to finish. I always loved school and that was a priority. So, with transportation being the largest issue, my boyfriend’s parents took me in until I got my license and a place of my own. So, here I was, almost 16 years old, working 3 jobs and going to school. It was very difficult. My studies suffered and I missed all sorts of things teenage kids should be doing and enjoying because I was at work. But at least I had gotten away from all the violence, or so I thought.

To help you with some background, you’ve got to realize my teenage friends, including my boyfriend didn’t drink or smoke. We weren’t nerds, but we weren’t troublemakers, either. My boyfriend’s parents owned a liquor store and he and I would clean it on Sundays. It was a good six hour Sunday job and seeing no one drank, it never crossed our minds to take liquor. There was plenty to keep us busy. We had a trash route, worked up at his mother’s rest home or down at the liquor store. Then, while I was still in high school, my boyfriend bought a seasonal restaurant, so that gave us one more place to work.

The very same day I got my driver’s license, I went to a furniture store in Brookfield where my best friend’s parents worked and picked out new furniture for my first apartment. I proudly paid for it in cash and waited for it to be delivered the next day. I remember driving down Route 9 that day thinking I finally had the independence I wanted. I was away from the abusive parents and no longer would I have to sleep on my boyfriend’s parent’s couch. From the outside, things seemed wonderful.

By the time I got my independence I had picked up two more jobs; jobs that I loved. One was at the local weekly newspaper and the other at the local radio station. I was 17 years old, the year was 1973, gas was 35 cents a gallon, I owned my car outright, insurance was paid, I had a new apartment full of new furniture, was working 3 or 4 jobs, making and saving plenty of money and finishing high school as senior class secretary. What no one knew was that my boyfriend was an abuser.

What started out with slams to the arm eventually evolved into slams to the head and broken glasses and being choked until I saw stars and passed out. One day he threw me out of a moving car. And those are only a few of the events worth recalling. The worst was seeing him throw my baby kitten against a wall and watching the poor little guy die.

Given where I grew up, this was par for the course. I knew from the age of six that I had to get away from that house. There was one especially bad day that year where mom was pregnant with my younger sister and dad was kicking her from room to room. She was bloody and screaming for me to “do something” because he was going to kill her. I jumped in the middle of things but got physically tossed aside. My little five year old brother was already hiding in the attic cubby, so he wasn’t any help. So, back when police departments were not a simple 9-1-1, I looked up the phone number and called state police. I didn’t call the local police because they were my neighbors and I was too ashamed to have Brud Fountain, the chief, know the truth.

Finally they arrived, two state troopers dressed in their shiny black boots. When they came to the foot of the sidewalk dad opened the door and one of the troopers stated that a little girl had called for help. That’s when dad told them to get the f*** off his property and to my horror, they just left. Mom was lying on the floor in a pool of blood and I was the little girl traitor who called police. From that day forward, I joined every organization that would have me just to have someplace to be other than home. I was a protestant but even went to CCD until the catholics found me out, and tossed me out. I spent hours upon hours at the library; anywhere just not to be home. The toughest part of all when I finally got away at age 15 was knowing I left my younger brother and sister in that hell. Sure, I escaped to grow up and live a relatively normal life, but both my younger siblings are mentally and physically disabled because of my parent’s actions. I still feel responsible to this day for leaving them there.

Like a fool, just before my 20th birthday I married this abusive man. Mom liked the fact we were a well-to-do couple and being battered herself, she didn’t want to hear the details of my relationship troubles. She saw what the public saw, seven corvettes and nice winter cars and houses and businesses. It was all window-dressing. All told, it would take me ten years to finally end this relationship. By the time the marriage was almost over, he was stalking me and threatening to murder me if I took any property from the marriage. And he meant it. So, one day I packed up my clothes and just left. When I saw a lawyer about divorce, he cautioned me against not making a claim on the assets. I told him flatly, “no” because I wanted to live to see the age of 30.

As you can read, I am certainly not the poster child for forgiveness. It is hard to forgive what happened 27 years ago when you can look down at your legs today and see exactly where you were kicked repeatedly leaving veins broken and bulging. It is impossible to get the images of that poor dead kitten out of my mind or of seeing car tires rolling-by inches from my face when I was thrown out onto the highway. Stuff like that stays with you for life. I liken it to a type of war where you sleep with the enemy.

If you’re a teenage girl reading this and your BF hits you now, trust me, it will only get worse. Find someone else. Ask for help. Back then police didn’t care about domestic violence, today it’s a total 180 difference. There are tens of thousands of women my age with similar stories. You can read them anywhere. The one thing survivors have in common, is that we do not want to see anyone else go through the horror. Yes, I have stared into the face of death a half dozen times and looking back at me were the eyes of someone who was supposed to love and protect me.

I know now, all these years later that I never have to live in fear again. But it was a hard-learned lesson. Sometimes you don’t realize the distance you’ve travelled until you look back at the footprints in the sand.

All this back-to-school talk got me thinking on the drive home about my high school days. Mostly, my experiences were very positive with just a few exceptions. One of the huge tragedies of my high school career was the one detention I was ordered to serve. Not only was I unjustly accused, but to make things worse, the accuser was a relative whose life ironically, would become dependant upon me 17 years later. Not until today had I made the correlation.

Marge Carey was my second cousin. Her mother (Lucia) and my grandmother (Lillian) were sisters. Marge was my high school history teacher and my senior class advisor. It was in my senior year that Marge accused me of smoking in the girl’s bathroom. Back then, I never smoked. I wouldn’t even hang with people who did smoke. Smoking wasn’t even a habit I picked up until I was in my 20’s, but here’s the rest of the story: Marge walked into the girl’s bathroom in the arts corridor while I was in a bathroom stall. The girl beside me was certainly smoking and we both flushed at about the same time. As we emerged from the individual stalls (there were just two) there stood Marge and she told us both on the spot, we had detention for smoking.

I shook my head and told Marge I didn’t smoke. No matter, I had detention. It would be my one detention of my public school career. In any event, I served the detention and never thought about it again, till this morning. Zoom ahead 17 years. My mother had just passed away of every cancer you could name. Marge came to me and said “I too, have cancer but I didn’t have the heart to ask this, until your mother was buried.” Marge needed me to take her to chemo and radiation since I was the next closest (proximity) relative. So, I did, happily. She had one of the worst cancers you could imagine; stomach cancer. Terrible. Her doctor was anti-morphine, so she suffered greatly.

Marge passed away after trying every experimental medicine Bethesda could offer (Navy/Pentagon veteran). I was in Danielson, Connecticut, in her hospital room feeding her and wiping her chin as the food came flying back up the day before she died. We stared at a picture of the Quabbin Reservoir for half an hour that afternoon trying to relieve her pain through meditation. Nothing worked. When dad and I went back the next day at 11am, she was “gone”.

So, to sum up the story, brought on by today’s back-to-school theme, I must be pretty good at forgiveness to let 17 more years (total of 34) go by before the case of the unjust detention ever came to mind.

Marge, you were wrong about me smoking that day, but you were right about how history impacts the here and the now. It took me a long, long time to love history Marge, but I always loved you.

Jeannie

Oh boy, back to school! Sure wish I were joining you. I so love learning something new. I’m not always good at stuff (like math) but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to know more.

I must confess however, in my entire 36 years of working, I have never been forced to estimate the distance out of the forest by using the length of a shadow divided by its degree angle from the tree. HELLO? That was one math problem I never understood. I also never got why it was so important to figure out which train got to Chicago, first. I was always mostly concerned that it got there safely and that everyone called their mother to say they had arrived. Mothers always worry about things like that.

I do once in a while (for ha-ha’s) draw a picture of a man leaning over the shoulder of a woman and put “y=mx+b” in the caption. You can fill in the blanks as to what his line might be. (p

In any event, welcome to another school year. Do your best. Like my favorite teacher used to have posted under the classroom clock, “time passes, will you?” Thanks for the scare, Mr. Murray.

Five days a week I stop and feed a feral colony of cats on my way into or home from work. Mind you, they don’t get $20.00 a bag Iams, but they get whatever’s on sale. I also put water in a bowl I’ve left there by the side of the road in the event they can’t find another supply.

Over the weekend I showed Matty where these fur-faces live and don’t you know it last night, on my way in, there was one of the customers sitting right in the middle of the road. When I flashed my high beams he didn’t move and as I drove by slowly, he still didn’t move.

I’m hoping he’s not flattened like a pancake when I drive home later today. But point is, no matter what we do to care for things/people, we have only so much control over the outcome. It’s a lesson I’m still learning at the age of 52.

That’s it for now.

meow

Hamel always picks on me for never talking with staffers here at the radio ranch. He complains that I’ll talk with the rest of the world but not to fellow workers. Hey, it’s not that I’m anti-social, it’s an old fashioned belief that they don’t pay me to socialize, so I don’t.

Mostly, I listen to what people on the street have to say. There’s a big difference from that and just talking with people. Listening is a skill. Inability to afford home heating oil this year or back-to-school clothing that’s out of reach are the two stories I’m hearing most, right now. Case and point; when I worked in Hartford I had dozens of people tell me they couldn’t afford coats one winter. So, I contacted a nearby mall and did a Saturday survey. It was a simple one-line question: do you need a winter coat this year but can’t afford one? After about 50 “well, hell yes” answers, I put together the “Coats for the Community” program which I brought with me to Keene in 1996.

The premise was simple; if you have an unused winter coat in good shape and you can donate it to someone who needs it, I’ll make sure it gets to the right place. We’ve done tens of thousands of coats over the years. Thanks locally to Hannaford and the Salvation Army for administrating the program and thanks mostly to you, the listener, for donating those coats.

It’s not that people at work don’t have causes; they certainly do. Wendy for example, never lets a breast cancer event go by without taking part. And collectively, they’re quite the group. This past spring when I needed furniture for a formerly homeless man, my co-workers came forward in droves to fill his new apartment and his needs. That’s worth talking about!

Mostly, I’m a writer first and a talker second and that’s okay with me. If you have something to say, this is a good forum. And if you work with me, best email because chances are, you’ll never catch me in the kitchen or chatting in the hall. BTW, I’m the gal with dark blonde hair who works overnights on KNE for staffers who’ve never met me, never mind talked to me. (p Don’t laugh, it’s true.

I’ve been twisting my brain around several ideas pertaining to commuter cost savings measures in rural areas. While Keene may have limited bus service, it by no means has mass transit. And for those who live outside the city limits, driving to work is almost mandatory. Therefore; I wonder why we cannot implement a program that allows citizens to share a bus ride in the morning and again, later in the day. If there were empty seats available and that person passed a background check, confirming they’re not a sex offender, why not charge a few bucks for the ride and subsidize the current system? We could have adults sign a legal agreement rendering the city/town and bus company harmless in the event of a no-fault accident.

For example, the mother of a Troy student may work in Swanzey and her son goes to school in Swanzey. Why couldn’t major employers in the area coordinate with the bus company so that incoming adults would be shuttled to their place of work after the school bus drops off the kids? It seems to me that if we could service 250 workers in the immediate area to start, that we’d be saving gas and infrastructure wear and tear, not to mention the environment plus maybe creating a few jobs. Third shifters could catch a ride from the point of origination into their hometowns, perhaps. And if the program shows a profit, expand it, by all means. Better yet, I bet with “parents on board” that kids would be a whole bunch less likely to act out. It seems like a win-win for children, adults, municipalities, taxpayers and employers.

Am I dreaming here, or can we utilize a transit system that’s already in place and expand upon it, thereby introducing the region to something on-par with mass transit?

Every night when I wake up, I read two or three newspapers with my coffee before heading into work. It gives me a good indication of where my (news) day is going. Tonight as I was reading, I came across this: Vicki J. Turner, a Bellows Falls resident, said she had seen a local yard sale where an elderly woman was selling off her possessions so she could pay for heating oil.

I talk to Hamel about things like this all the time, but reading it tonight absolutely broke my heart. Autumn cannot be denied. There’s a chill coming in through the window tonight. Fact is, if your heat is not included in your rent, then you’re scared silly about running out of heat this winter.

Fundraisers like the one in Bellows Falls Sunday afternoon will make a small difference. $1400.00 worth of heating oil won’t go far, but it will certainly help. I still can’t wrap my head around home heating oil above four bucks a gallon. For many, that’s half of their hourly pay! For the retired on a fixed income, it’s an unforeseen disaster not unlike a major catastrophe.

Here at home we’re talking about oil a couple of times a week. We’re even considering making the spare bedroom into an upstairs livingroom so as to take advantage of the physics that heat rises. That seems logical given the illogical price of home heating oil.

I am deathly afraid of fire because it would be impossible for me to round up all the animals and get everyone to safety. I know I would perish trying to get every last furface out of here. That’s why I’ve asked Matty not to run the woodstove or the fireplace in the past.

For the past two winters we have lived with indoor temperatures in the 50’s and let me tell you, that’s one cold shower. At my age I can put up with the shivering. But I cannot fathom someone in their 80’s doing the same. And frankly, it’s unconscionable to think my older friends and neighbors will be making that same choice this year.

As I sit here writing, the democrats have command of the TV and they don’t have an answer. Republicans aren’t solving the problem, either. So at this early date with winter sitting just around the corner, I am going to predict community warming centers this winter and news reports of the elderly being found dead in their frigid apartments. I can and will pray that I am wrong, but for the moment, I see countless yard sales between now and the first snowfall; possessions and dignity lost.

I read the obituary of an old friend over the weekend in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette. Gee, I hadn’t seen Louie in 30 years, but the lesson he taught me lives on.

It was the summer of ‘78 and I was selling cars at Carroll Chevrolet by day, serving supper at the rest home from 4 till 6pm then covering meetings for the radio station by night. Louie was the car cleaner at Carroll Chevrolet. He was a jolly guy in his late 40’s and Louie (or Eddy as the insiders called him because two Louie’s were one too many at a small dealership like that) would come in after his regular day job was over and clean the cars that were on tomorrow’s delivery list. Many days he’d bring his two young sons (Kevin and Duane) along with him and the three of them could be heard having water fights or worse in the clean-up bay. It sounded like too much fun to a bunch of stuffy sales and office people, some of whom complained. (p

In any event, Eddy and I were always happy to see one another. And because of the small politenesses I showed Eddy over the course of the summer, I somehow always had my cars ready first and cleaned up the best for delivery. The other guys at the shop used to yell at Eddy and get on his case for this or that; stupid stuff they could of handled. But not me, I knew better. I’d jump out into the wash bay and work side-by-side with Eddy if need be just to get the car ready on-time. And that’s the big lesson here.

Someone may be (just) the car cleaner. But without the clean car, the salesman has no product to deliver. And without the buyer, there’s nothing to sell. And that, is the lesson Eddy taught me in the summer of ‘78; that every wheel has cogs and each cog serves a purpose and once the balance is upset, it may never be regained.

So, no matter where you fit into this life, your efforts count and that without you, something may be amiss farther down the assembly line of life. Thanks, Eddy. God Bless.