I Don't Care

I Don't Care

So I'm sitting in the back row at the opera with my friend Ray and...

Hold on, wait just a minute. Before we go any further I just wanted to say how much fun it was to type those first few words! I don't suppose the context of what we were saying could be any more interesting than the fact of where we were, but let's head onward and find out, shall we?

As I was saying, I was sitting at the opera with my friend Ray...

OK, let's stop again. For your edification it was a LIGHT opera, as if that hardly makes any difference. They have those sort of things, you know. It wasn't at all the 250-pound Brunhilde warbling in German about her Viking lover being dragged away in chains to some erstwhile Valhalla. Or whatever GRAND opera is all about. This particular variant on this particular day in my hometown was a George and Ira Gershwin production from the mid '20's with lots of jazz and a silly play in between the musical numbers. It was light-hearted and quite toe-tappingly entertaining. Not at all “Der Ring des Nibelungen” or anything of that ilk. You know, ponderous and momentous.

But the light opera, as glorious as it was, wasn't what I wanted to talk about right now.

So we're sitting there, waiting for the entertainment to commence, and Ray starts recounting to me his take on one of the big stories in the news at the time. You may know the one I'm talking about. A security guard (or armed hooligan) of some sort has an altercation with a young man (or vicious criminal) and, after some sort of scuffle (or perhaps some sort of not-scuffle), a shot was fired and the young man was killed (or murdered). This discussion at the opera took place soon after the trial was over and the shooter had been found not guilty. Ray was under the impression that justice had not been served and someone had “gotten away” with murder and he continued along this path for some time.

I like Ray a lot. He's a very nice man and was smart enough to have married one of my favorite people from college, so I nodded at the appropriate places in his dialog and agreed that he had a point.

Maybe.

But I was also sure to tell him that I didn't necessarily agree or disagree with his opinion. I think he was a little disappointed that I didn't jump on the bandwagon with him and echo his suspicions that the “wrong” verdict had been reached vis-a-vis the security guard.

Truth be told I may have even been leaning in the opposite direction.

To be honest, I hadn't been following the story very closely. I'd seen it reported on the news quite a lot, of course. You couldn't turn on the television during the trial without seeing the story. But I hadn't paid too much attention to it.

Some people might gasp in shock that I would not pay attention to that particular story. Wasn't I concerned about the situation? Couldn't I immediately see that things had happened because the security guard was a bigot and had essentially laid in wait for the young man? How could I be so blind not to see this truth? Was I myself not some kind of bigot for not seeing the situation for what it was?

The answers to the above are no, no, I don't think I'm blind and no I don't think I'm a bigot.

To be brutally honest, I didn't care very much either way.

Do I hear a gasp from my faithful readers? Are you all mortified that I didn't ache for the slain young man? Are you angry with me for not vilifying the shooter and thirsting for his comeuppance? His blood?

Think about this: On the day of the incident, how many other people were shot and killed – justifiably and not, how many other people died in car wrecks, household accidents, cooking accidents, bathing accidents, lawn mowing accidents and other various ways that people seem to have discovered on how to shuffle off this mortal coil? How many people were maimed and dismembered? How many people got divorced and how many spouses died? Not to mention how many lives were lost in the myriad of wars around the world every single damn day of the year?

Do I mourn those lost lives? Do I thirst for the blood of the people who may or may not have taken them?

I don't know about you, but over my six-and-a-half decades of life I've become somewhat of a master at filtering out things, of ignoring things that do not affect me or do not interest me. It is a process that we humans all acquire or else we join the inhabitants of mental institutions. Your brain cannot assimilate all the mayhem that surrounds us. You have to pick and choose.

And I'll be damned if I'll let some television editor or some media programming director decide which particular tragedy I should be concerned with. I'm not going to rise to their bait like a befuddled trout chasing a tasty-looking mayfly with a buried hook inside.

I will choose which sad thing I will pay attention to. Or happy thing for that matter.

Again to be brutally honest, the death of my friend's dog a few weeks ago saddened and concerned me much more than the present brouhaha playing itself out on the airwaves. As to whether I feel much like demonstrating or marching for a cause, I've never really considered myself much of a Don Quixote and jousting at windmills isn't now and never will be an occupation I'm much interested in.

As I see it, an incident occurred. An investigation was performed. A person was indicted. A trial was held. A legal verdict was arrived at using the laws of that particular state. A person was found not guilty. Story over.

Story over!

Did a bad guy get away with it or did an aggrieved person gain exoneration? Was justice served or cruelly thwarted? Who am I to say. The jurors saw the whole thing presented to them, from both sides, in excruciating detail, and they said let him go. Why should my judgment, gathered from many minutes of television watching take precedence over theirs?

How foolish would that be?

I may not be happy with it or I may be. I may think the right decision was reached or I might not.

In the final analysis, what I think or what I feel are just opinions and should be taken with a grain of salt.

Because, God help me, I just didn't care very much.

As an aside, my son is a security guard. Did that color my view?

You betcha!

Rivers and Battlegrounds

Rivers and Battlegrounds

Day One…

It was one of those days when you didn’t know if you should set the windshield wipers on low or leave them on intermittent.  The rain was of that sort that morning, letting you know that it was still around, still flexing its muscles and not wanting to go away, but still easing off once in a while to tease you with begrudging dry spells from time to time.

We’d chosen to proceed to our first destination by a different route than maybe someone else would have chosen.  Our GPS directed us south and east for about half the journey, then more north and east for the remainder.  It wasn’t a terribly long drive, but far enough for all of us to get a little fidgety in the car.  So in the late morning of the first day we arrived at the Carnegie Science Center just across the river from downtown Pittsburgh.  Walking from the car to the building helped ease some of the stiffness from the trip and soon we were inside.  The three of us, my wife, my son and I had toured similar places before, so the contents weren’t terribly unfamiliar.  Plenty of science exhibits and demonstrations, of course.  My son seems to enjoy checking out things like that.  Along with the permanent displays and artifacts, most places like this have special exhibits that show up for a certain period of time and then are replaced by others.  The special ones at Carnegie at the moment all seemed to concern robots.  They had displays of famous movie and television robots – Robbie from the movie “Forbidden Planet”, the similar one in the TV show “Lost in Space” (who used to shout “Warning, Will Robinson!”) and Gort from “The Day the Earth Stood Still”.  Then there was the HAL9000 from “2001 A Space Odyssey” and maybe the two best know ones, R2D2 and C3PO from the “Star Wars” franchise.  There was an operating robot that shot basketballs, one that played air-hockey with you, another that would converse with you and numbers of others.

Another fascinating exhibit was a gigantic model train setup with dozens of different landscapes.  Even if you weren’t a model train enthusiast it was very interesting.

An exhibit that we all enjoyed was displayed in the Ohio River just outside the museum.  It was the submarine USS Requin.  It was available for touring and we enjoyed ourselves doing such.  It never fails to amaze me how many sailors and officers served on one of these subs.  At one time!  It felt cramped with a dozen or so civilians like us wandering around onboard, so it seemed incredible as to the many men who would normally crew it.  We enjoyed ourselves squeezing through the tight quarters and maneuvering through the difficult hatchways.

A little later we watched an IMAX movie about repairing the Hubble space telescope.  Watching the astronauts do the repair job while weightless in space was fascinating.

Many, many children joined us in our museum adventure.  There seems to be NO escaping kids when you tour one of these venues.  They are as common as freckles on a redhead’s face.  You just quickly learn to step aside when they surround you and let them through.

After touring the Museum and after a few minutes to check into and rest a bit in our hotel, we adjourned to Rivers Casino to meet my cousin Lorraine and her husband John.  We ate at the very nice buffet they have there and enjoyed the food and conversation for quite a while.  I ate a LOT of things and, of that, I’ll talk about a bit later.

We finally finished our dinners and wandered down to the casino.  Lorraine pointed out a few slot machines she had been lucky at in the past and we gave them a try.  It was a good decision for me, at least for a while.  I was up to about 4 times my original wager and feeling pretty good about it.  I was going to stop there, honestly, but got a bit greedy trying for the big one, and ended up “donating” a large portion of my winnings back to the casino.  Easy come and easy go I suppose.  I was playing with their money you know!  At least that’s what all of us gamblers like to say.  Of course, in reality it wasn’t.  Once you win it, it’s yours.  It was fun though and we always go into a place like that with our eyes open and a fixed amount we’ll wager and no more.  We never really get hurt.

After bidding adieu to my cousin we returned to our hotel where I spent a restless night with a too-soft mattress and a too-soft pillow.

My stomach was also quite active during the overnight hours.

Day Two…

We ate the hot breakfast provided by the high-end hotel we were staying at in the morning.  Food was good, unfortunately my stomach wasn’t.  Apparently something I’d eaten at the buffet the previous evening was playing havoc with the ol’ digestive system.  I won’t go into details about the specifics of my difficulties, but needless to say I was NOT good company for my wife and son for most of that day.  Perhaps it was the 88 crab legs I’d devoured?  (not really quite that many)  Or the sushi and wasabi?  Or the coconut gelato?  Or some ruinous combination thereof?  In any event, I suffered for better than half of this day with the stomach jimjams.

We’d planned to take a tour boat along the rivers to see Pittsburgh that day.  My son had never been there and it’s a good introduction to the city.  It was raining hard and thundering when we awoke, so we played the waiting game at the hotel to see if it would pass.  Our luck was good that day and by noon we were sitting on the dock waiting for our boat.  The tour was quite enjoyable and we were blessed with a brighter sky for its duration.  We even got a little bit of sunburn through the clouds!  After the river excursion we rode one of the two existing incline rails up to the top of Mt. Washington.  We took some pictures of the stunning city views from there (the day was clearing nicely by then) and soon were back at the bottom of the hill, in the car and heading east toward our second destination.

I let the GPS show us the way down the road to our next stop – Gettysburg.  The road trip was fairly uneventful besides my still quite uncomfortable stomach.  Luckily, one of the plazas on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, along with a variety of fast foods, had some Pepto Bismol for sale.  Hurrah!  After purchase I chugged a couple large gulps of it and my misery started to ease almost at once.  We arrived at our destination in the late afternoon.  Our hotel this time was a more economical one than the previous night, but the beds were blissfully firmer as were the pillows.  A good night was anticipated.

Supper that evening was at a family-type restaurant recommended by our hotel’s clerk.  Quite tasty and my belly had recovered enough that I could enjoy it.  We were soon back to our accommodations a little after 9 p.m. and asleep before 10.

Day Three…

Breakfast this morning was at a Perkins – slow service, good food – and then we were off to the Gettysburg Tour Center not long afterward.  We took the 11:15 bus for a 2-hour tour of the battlefield.  Our guide, who narrated the entire trip, was extremely knowledgeable and kept our interest up with fascinating stories about the 1863 battle.  He was one of the officially licensed guides and those boys really knew their stuff!  We stretched our legs and looked a little closer at two stops during the tour and listened to our guide again describe what was going on at those points back during the Civil War.  I’m a bit of a history buff, so this sojourn into the old days was one of the highlights of my trip.  After a mandatory (according to my wife) trip to the souvenir shop, we walked over to the Jenny Wade house, which was quite near.  Jenny Wade, as astounding as it seems, was the ONLY civilian casualty of the Gettysburg battle.  We walked all over the house she was staying in during the battle and shuddered at the number of bullet holes on the outside and the inside, including the one made by the bullet that bored through two doors and took her life.  It was a fascinating story and well worth the time to see it.

We headed to the official (run by the National Parks Service) tour center then, toured the museum and saw the Cyclorama.  This last item is a 360-degree painting, originally 42 feet high, 365 feet around and weighing six tons.  It was first viewed in 1883 to critical acclaim.  It’s a breathtaking depiction of Pickett’s charge and other scenes of battle from an elevated viewing point.  It’s an amazing sight and a very lifelike depiction of the battle that day.

We took a hotel break after this to cool off and relax a bit.  In the late afternoon we drove our car back to the battlefield and took some pictures of the more distinctive state and regional monuments on the field.

Please be aware that visitors to Gettysburg can be deceived by first impressions.  As you tour the battlefield you can easily see that this is a very peaceful and bucolic area of south central Pennsylvania.  The bees buzz, the birds sing, the wind blows through the green and verdant landscape and you couldn’t visualize a more gentle place on earth.  But superimposed upon this present view is the knowledge that one of the most savage battles in our country’s history took place where you now stand.  The fields and the creeks in those three days in July literally ran red in blood.  Many Americans, both North and South, either died or were horribly wounded in the three days of that battle.  It is a place that, if you listen closely, the peaceful summer sounds will fade and the echoes of war will take their place with booming cannons, the crackling of musket fire and the cries of men dying or in the frenzy of war.  It’s even been said that on certain nights you can make out ghostly campfires far out in the battle fields and smell the bacon and johnnycakes cooking in the breeze.

And, if you’re into that sort of thing, it’s purported to be a very haunted place.

After supper we drove to the shop where our next “adventure” would take place.  We bought tickets at one of the flourishing ghost tour establishments.  A lady dressed in black period costume nicknamed Spooky was the one who led our tour.  She took us down some dark alleys and side streets near the shop and would stop every now and then to tell stories concerning that area 150 years ago and what had happened there during and after the battle.  She recounted tales of bloodshed and horror and was very good at describing the spookier aspects of them!  She encouraged photography during the tour and warned us that lots of times people would get pictures of ghosts!  I was, of course, quite skeptical, but kept on taking pictures all along the tour, just in case.  Spooky was a good talker, an interesting woman and her tour was quite interesting.  We’d all endorse it enthusiastically!

As a side note, when we examined the photos taken during the ghost tour on the computer at home after the trip we were astonished to see orbs in a number of them!  I’d known about the orb phenomenon from before and was quite surprised to see it demonstrated in pictures I had personally taken.  Apparently the orbs are manifestations of ghosts or ectoplasm in spherical form.  Still don’t know if I’m a firm believer yet, but the evidence, such as it is, is right there.  As Mr. Spock from Star Trek might utter – “Very interesting!”

Side note number two.  This week in Gettysburg was bike week.  All throughout the town there were motorcycles, motorcycles and, you guessed it, more motorcycles.  They rumbled and growled up and down the old streets of this town in their hundreds and hundreds.  It seemed, sometimes, like all the men you’d see had bandannas on their heads and gray beards on their faces.  An “interesting” added attraction to our visit.

The trip home was long and, with the exception being the beautiful mountain vistas we enjoyed, fairly uninteresting.

All in all it was a nice trip to Pennsylvania with many interesting things done, many historic sights viewed, many ghosts visited (?!?!) and, as a bonus, a great get together with one of our favorite couples, my cousin and her hubby.

Who could ask for anything more?