Internet memang menakjubkan. Teknologi, yang dasarnya mengemban semangat demokrasi informasi, memberi kemungkinan yang sungguh-sungguh melampaui batas dalam hal distribusi informasi. Sebuah situs internet, memajang salinan buku-buku dan arsip-arsip dari seluruh dunia. Nama situs webnya adalah www.archive.org

Inbi sejenis forum bersama, seperti YouTube (situs web bersama distrinusi video) dan Wikipedia 9situs web bersama ensiklopedia), di mana setiap orang bisa berpartisipasi mempublikasikan apa saja. Pada situs web arsip internet ini, berbagai arsip dalam berbagai bahasa dipajang dan tampaknya dengan tanpa konsekuensi apa-apa, semisal permintaan membayar uang atau keanggotaan. Lalu materi di dalamnya bisa diunduh begitu saja.

Sebuah komunitas penggemar sejarah masa lalu termasuk pengetahuan sejarah Blitar, yang membangun situs web www.djaloe.com membantu menunjukkan sebuah arsip menarik tentang gambaran kehidupan di Jawa, pada fase sejarah yang cukup tua, tahun 1864. Informasinya termuat di situs web arsip iru dalam bentuk dokumentasi buku.

Ini fase kolonial yang meski ada, tergolong amat sepi dari kegiatan dokumentasi. Judul bukunya, Life in Java, dengan subjudul With Sketches of the Javanese, ditulis oleh William Barrington d’Almeida.

Tahun itu juga merupakan fase yang agak lebih ke depan dibandingkan catatan yang dibuat Gubernur Jenderal Inggris Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, yang menyusun pandangan daru kultur barat (western construct) terhadap Jawa pada bukunya History of Java, 1817.

Buku Life in Java tak bisa dibandingkan dengan History-nya Raffles yang sangat terperinci, sudah bersifat ensiklik (kumpulan pengetahuan), dan di antara para ahli sejarah sudah dianggap sebagai kanon, atau buku induk sejarah Jawa. Namun, masa 1864 tentu tetap menarik, menilik amat langkanya informasi dan dokumentasu masa itu, kecuali lewat penuturan informan Eropa seperti ini.

Konstruksi pengetahuan

Masa 1864 juga menarik karena pada fase ini Jawa sudah melintasi periode yang pahit, setelah terjadinya Perang Jawa, yang dipimpin Pangeran Diponegoro. Salah satu periode sejarah Jawa tahun 1825-1830 yang amat berdarah, meski nantinya bukan periode ini sajas sejarah pertumpahan darah di Jawa. Namun, fase 1864 tersebut juga dekat dengan periode sejarah Raden Ajeng (RA) Kartini (1879-1904), putri Bupati Jepara dan istri Bupati Rembang.

Samar-samar bisa diingat pula bahwa Kartini pernah menolak beasiswa Pemerintah Belanda pada fase kebijakan politik etis (politik balas budi) Pemerintah Belanda, dan sekaligus menyarankan agar Pemerintah Belanda mengoperkan bantuan beasiswa itu kepada pemuda Agoes Salim. Ini adalah nama KH Agoes Salim, di antara tokoh perintis kemerdekaan awal senior Soekarno (Presiden RI).

Dengan demikian, buku Life in Java ini membantu mengonstruksi, bangunan pengetahuan kita tentang kondisi masyarakat di Jawa, pada masa itu. Amat penting bagi para pengkaji masyarakat Jawa pada masa pembentukan kepribadian itu. Yang kelak akan dirumuskan, diantaranya oleh Soekarno dengan temuan Pancasila itu.

Miskin data

Dodik Prastowo, warga Blitar, aktivis kegiatan pencarian sejarah Jawa, yang merintis pembuatan kaus unik, mengungkapkan bahwa sejumlah informasi yang dilaporkan Barrington sudah diselurusinya. Misalnya laporan Barrington tentang situasi di wilayah Blitar masa itu. Hasilnya agak mengecewakan, karena kawasan yang disebut dalam buku itu, kini sudah tidak ada lagi.

Artinya, laporan perjalanan orang Barat ke Jawa tersebut mampu menjadi pertunjuk untuk memahami segala kehilangan kekayaan budaya dan sejarah yang dialami oleh Jawa sekian ratus tahun terakhir.

“Di Blitar disebutkan tentang adanya desa yang berpemandangan indah, seperti di Swiss kecil di dekat Candi Penataran. Kami telusuri sesuai petunjuknya, tapi desa dengan dambaran itu sudah tidak ada. Dugaan kami sebuah desa yang indah seperti Swiss ini, mungkin terkubur oleh abu letusan Gunung Kelud,” ucap Dodik, produser kaus kreatif Blitar bermerk Djaloe, serupa dengan fenomena kaus unik di Yogyakarta dan Denpasar (Bali) itu.

Buku Barrington cenderung miskin data. Isinya berupa catatan tertulis deskripsi tentang perjalanannya ke berbagai daerah di Jawa, sejak dari Batavia (Jakarta) hingga ke kota-kota di Jawa Tengah, sampai Surabaya dan Malang. Termasuk perjalanan yang intensif ke Pasuruan, Probolinggo, mengunjungi Gunung Bromo. Juga laporan tentang pengamatannya di Candi Singosari.

Sayangnya, karena situs arsip ini merupakan bentuk kegiatan swadaya, tidak ada cukup informasi tentang Barrington sendiri termasuk informasi tentang perjalanan dan dengan alasan apa ia berada di Jawa. Perjalanannya dilakukan dengan kendaraan perahu dan kuda, tentu sebuah kegiatan yang berat.

Pada laporannya ia selalu ditemani resmi oleh para pejabat Belanda di setiap kota. Artinya, tentu ia bukan pelancong biasa.

Sumber  :

Jawa, 1864 – Dody Wisnu Pribadi | Kompas, 14.12.2009

Bagi yang memiliki cukup informasi, penggambaran William Barrington d’Almeida, pengunjung dari Eropa di Jawa pada tahun 1864, terasakan kurang cukup kaya dan lengkap.

Bukunya Life in Java tersusun menjadi dua volume, I dan II. Buku ini ditulis setelah melakukan perjalanan ke Jawa, sejak dari Batavia (Jakarta) hingga pedalaman Jawa Timur, akhirnya menjadi sejenis kisah perjalanan (travelogue).

Tidak cukup jelas apa yang sebenarnya ia lakukan kecuali sebagai pelancong, meski setiap kali di kota yang ia kunjungi ia diterima oleh pejabat Belanda, yakni residen, atau pejabat Jawa sekelas wedana. Ini menunjukkan Barrington bukan sekadar warga kulit putih biasa, meski ia melakukan perjalanan bersama istrinya.

Bukunya tidak melukiskan kondisi masyarakat Jawa masa itu, kecuali pengalamannya bertemu segala hal yang membuatnya terheran-heran. Seperti aneka cerita rakyat. Misalnya kisah yang diceritakan dengan porsi besar tentang Mak Coo-a-loon, tentu maksudnya bahasa Jawa mak kualon atau ibu tiri. Juga cerita pertemanannya dengan Dharman, kusir kereta kuda yang menemani perjalanannya, atau pengalaman ditawari keris yang diklaim oleh penjualnya (yang) memiliki kesaktian tertentu.

Meski tetap berharga, pelukisannya tak lebih kaya dengan laporan Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1817) Gubernur Jenderal Inggris, yang merekam nyaris seluruh aspek kehidupan orang Jawa masa itu.

Dibandingkan Barrington, Raffles sangat terperinci. Padahal, ia mengunjungi Jawa lebih (dari) 50 tahun sebelum Barrington. Raffles mencatat segala hal, termasuk sejarah awal peradaban di Jawa, sistem kepercayaan, alat-alat bertani, konversi ukuran-ukuran, salah manajemen pemerintah Belanda selama mengurus jajahannya, sampai ke hal-hal detail seputar huruf Jawa. Apa yang disampaikan Raffles hingga kini masih bisa dianggap sebagai informasi baru tentang Jawa.

Terbukanya akses terhadap manuskrip dokumen sejarah Eropa, seperti Life in Java dalam situs www.archive.org  menemukan dampak pentingnya, menyusul popularitas buku terjemahan Raffles ini. Penulis pengantar terbitan Indonesia penerbit Narasi pada History of Java ini, Syafrudin Azhar, mengungkapkan betapa besar kecintaan Raffles pada Jawa hingga memulai proyek penulisan bukunya itu saat berasa di Cisarua, Bogor.

Meski demikian tak kalah menariknya membandingkan buku Barrington dengan sebuah buku lagi yang mengungkapkan periode yang sama, hasil riset peneliti Jepang, Mikihiro Moriyama, pengajar pada Osaka University, yang pada 1980-an mendapat kesempatan meneliti Sastra Sunda di Universitas Leiden, Belanda.

Disertasinya dibukukan oleh Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia (2005), menungkapkan periode waktu masyarakat Sunda (baca : Jawa) pada masa yang sama dengan perjalanan Barrington di Jawa. Buku berjudul Semangat  Baru ini berisi riset Mikihiro tentang kebudayaan cetak setelah Jawa mengalami melek cetak (print literacy) pada fase waktu yang sama dengan kunjungan Barrington.

Betapapun, Barringtom membuat orang kembali tersadar atas masa lalu, yang pernah menjadi terminal sejarah bagi masyarakat Jawa ini.

Sumber  :

Barrington, Raffles, dan Mikihiro – Dody Wisnu Pribadi | Kompas, 15.12.2009

Every kid in Mrs. Schroeder’s 2nd Grade Class room was either a busser or a walker. My first two years at St. Joes I had ridden the bus home from school every day. But upon reaching 2nd grade, according to the calculus of the Batavia School District, I was now too old warrant a government subsidized ride over the mile and a half to Prospect Avenue. As Mrs. Schroeder liked to remind us, 2nd grade was the “age of reason”, the age at which children like ourselves could make decisions for themselves, and suffer the consequences. It was the age at which we could choose sin, and as such it was the age at which we made our first penance, and our first communion. These were big responsibilities that were being laid upon our slight little shoulders, but since we had reached the age of reason, we could do little to protest.

2nd grade was also my first year alone in St. Joe’s. My closest sibling, and constant tormentor, my sister Linda, had graduated from 8th grade the previous spring, and was now attending Notre Dame High School, with my other sister Rita, and my Big Bruddah. This meant several things as I prepared for that first day of school. While Mom would drop me off in the morning on her way to work in the Industrial Center, I would need to find my way home alone that afternoon. Granny was living with us by then, sleeping on a roll out bed in our front living room, and would be watching Days of our Lives, and Another World, waiting for me when I got home.

While Mrs. Schroeder may have been convinced that we were old enough to handle such challenges, I knew better. It was 1975, and I was a painfully shy, mop haired little freak of a kid that was still learning to tie his own shoes. Up until the end of 1st grade, Mom had humored me by buying dress shoes with buckles for me to wear to school. Granted, it was the mid 70’s, but I’m sure I still stood out like some little pilgrim hippy, as I walked the halls of St. Joe’s in my white shirt, blue Dickies, and blue clip on tie with SJS embroidered on the front. Peering out from under the bangs I combed straight forward over my forehead in a futile attempt to hide from the world.

Mom had coached me on the specific route I was to take on my way home. I was to take a circuitous path, up Summit Avenue to North Street, then west, past Platten’s delicatessen, up the State Street hill to the Blind School, where North turned into Richmond Avenue, through Centennial Park, past the Rowell Mansion, and turning left down Prospect Avenue to our home tucked snuggly at the bottom of two hills. By taking this route I would avoid the “rough” section of Washington Avenue, near State Street, where the great urban renewal was still in the process of tearing down old tenement apartments, and replacing them with vast grassy tracks of land. It was a much longer walk this way, but she was convinced that a trip down Washington would result in either kidnapping, or a tragic death. I needed little convincing of the danger.

I was not the only kid in Mrs. Schoeder’s class that was making the change from busser to walker. My friend Jimmy was also being kicked out of Eden. He lived on Bank Street, across the field behind the Hospital, and his route home would also take him up Summit Street to the corner of North. Despite my fear, I was convinced if we stuck together, we might at least make it to parking lot of the Hospital before tragedy befell us.

When school ended, the walkers would retrieve their coats and bags from the cubbies in the back of the classroom, and line up by the door for dismissal. The 2nd grade classroom was on the 2nd floor of the building, our first year upstairs with the big kids. When the bell rang we would process downstairs by grade in two orderly lines, across the parking lot, taking care to walk between the rock wall, and the double yellow lines that had been painted to separate us from the cars in the parking lot. Surly sixth graders with orange belts and gold sheriff badges signifying their authority, would see to it that we stayed in line and did not break ranks prematurely. When we reached the end of the chain link fence, by the sidewalk on Summit we would be released to our freedom.

After two years of cowering under the seats in the school bus, hiding from public school heathens, and St. Anthony greasers, I discovered to my surprise that being a walker wasn’t so bad after all. That first breath of freedom on the sidewalk was always a joyous release. We would throw our book bags in the air, and hoot and scream, and begin running about like wild dogs. The walkers were usually divided between the kids like us whose parents worked, and those that had stay at home Mom’s that would come and pick them up. Some kids turned left into the parking lot to their Mother’s car, or crossed over Main Street to a house on the South side, but Jimmy and I, and most of the others, turned right up Summit Avenue. Kids from Kindergarten to 8th grade would pair off into groups for their walk home. Lines would form to walk along the concrete retaining wall by the house on the corner. If the crossing guard lady that ruled the corner of Washington and Summit caught you walking on the wall, she was always quick to scold you. She had a little uniform that she wore, which gave her an air of authority normally reserved for Police and Nuns.

The corner of Washington and Summit was the most dangerous part of our walk home. Not because of any traffic concerns, but because it was the point at which our paths would cross with the kids from the Junior High School on Ross Street. It was a well known fact that the kids attending the Batavia Junior High school, were second only to the inmates of Attica State Prison in terms of cold bloodedness. Woe be unto any poor Catholic kid caught alone on that corner by a roving pack of juvenile delinquents from the Junior High. Rumor had it that one third grader had been found the year before swinging from a tree by his monogrammed SJS tie, his face the same color of blue as his uniform pant. Our school let out 15 minutes before the Junior High, so it was standard practice to walk double time to the corner, to be able to cross to the relative safety of Summit Ave. Like foxes, being released before the hounds, fifteen minutes gave us a sporting chance of getting home alive.

Jimmy and I were not the only walker in 2nd grade that turned up Summit Avenue. Kids from families that lived in the neighborhood’s off of Ross Street and had been walking since Kindergarten. One of these kids, our classmate Chris, had fallen into walking home on Summit with his sister, and the Welch girls. The Welch’s lived on Ross Street, and had 15 girls in their family, one for every grade in the Catholic School system. Notre Dame High School would experience a 15 year run of volleyball championships on the strength of the Welch gene pool. Despite their athletic prowess, in the eyes of Jimmy and I, a girl was a girl, and walking home from school with one was like putting on a dress and skipping rope. It only took a few days before Jimmy and I began walking behind Chris and the Welch girls, and singing in a high mocking tone “Christopher Robin likes to play with girls”. To his credit Chris followed the catetichal teachings of the Nun’s and Priest, and turned the other cheek. At least he did for a week or two until he’d had enough, and turned around and hit Jimmy upside the head with his book bag, knocking him down, and shutting us both up. From that point on, Chris came over to our side, and joined us in following the Welch girls home taunting and teasing them, and pelting them with snowballs when winter arrived. This continued for a few months until right before spring one of the Welch girls picked him up and planted him head first in a snow bank. From that point on, Pax Romana reigned the length of Summit Avenue.

One day in Spring, as it was time for us to line up to be released, Mrs. Schroeder called me up to her desk and asked me to stay behind after school. I had never before been held back for anything, and the look of shock registered on my face. I was struggling to learn cursive at the time, being a slightly dyslexic / ambidextrous kid, and I was having trouble completing my assignments on time. Mrs. Schroeder informed me that I had to return to my seat and finished the assignment that I had been unable to complete earlier that day. I was crushed and humiliated. Returning to my seat, I retrieved the giant blue pencil from inside my desk and began copying over the assignment one painful cursive letter at a time, as the walkers lined up to go home. They eyed me with the pity usually reserved for death row inmates. Soon, even the bussers had dispersed as their buses were announced one by one. Until finally, there was only me and Mrs. Schroeder left in the room. She sat at her desk correcting papers, while I toiled away with my pencil, nervously eyeing the clock, hot salty tears burning down down cheeks in streams. When 3:15 came and went, I couldn’t hold it any longer and began sobbing uncontrollably. Mrs. Schroeder approached and asked me why I was crying. In between sobs I gasped for air, and tried to explain that if I left for home now she would be condemning me to certain death at the hands of the Junior High heathens. I don’t think she could understand a word of it. Eventually my convulsions subsided, and she told me to pull myself together, and go home.

I left the school building shaking in terror. By the time I reached the corner of Washington and Summit, even the crossing lady was gone. Had they got to her too? My eyes darted around as I stood their frozen, waiting for the light to change. Looking across the street I could see a group of kids emerging from Quarterly’s corner store. Mr. Quarterly must have pull his shotgun on them, and forced them out at gun point. I look back up to the light, praying for it to change. When the electrical box on the telephone pole buzzed, and clicked, and the light changed from green to red, I sprinted out into the street, and started running. Down the length of Summit I ran, looking back over my shoulder, expecting at any moment to be taken down with a shot from a .38, or a stabbing pain from a switch blade. I was out of breath by the time I reached North Street, and collapsed with my back against a maple tree, panting for air. Looking back down the sidewalk, I couldn’t see a soul. I had gotten away. Turning quickly up North Street, I began running from tree trunk to tree trunk, like a soldier in a war movie. Within a half hour I had managed to reach Centennial park. There was nothing between me and home now, but the vast empty expense of grass and maple trees. Maybe I would make it after all. Crossing Ellicott Avenue, by the haunted mansion, my heart leaped for joy. I was on the same block as home. Nothing could stop me now. I knew every back yard, and porch, and lilac bush between Ellicott and Prospect, from my years of playing war, and spy, and kick the can with the kids on the street. I had survived. I ran the rest of the way, saying a quick Hail Mary to the Virgin Mother for her protection. Coming in the back door at 20 Prospect I expected to find my Mother sobbing tears of joy for my arrival. But it was oddly, eerily quiet. Granny sat in the rocking chair in the living room, crocheting doilys, and watching her soaps, her tube of Oxygen trailing into the front room. The clock chimed 4 o’clock, and she asked what had taken me so long. Slumping onto the couch in total exhaustion, I shrugged and said “Nothing Granny. Just walked slow today I guess”.

How could I begin to tell her of my close call with death? Surely, if she knew the truth I would never be allowed to walk home from school again. Grown ups just didn’t understand. No, some things were best left unspoken.

Vandaag is onze eerste campagne van start gegaan! Voor Batavia (Lelystad) hebben we op 10 plaatsen in Lelystad gecleanvertised! Wat een woord! Het was erg vroeg, maar meer dan de moeite waard om te doen. Zoals altijd leer je van elke nieuwe ervaring en vandaag was zo’n dag. Waar kun je nou goed cleanvertisen? Op asfalt niet, op nieuwe ondergronden niet. Maar het lukt erg goed op betontegels en ouderwetse klinkers, muren en hout! Toen we iets over de helft waren, was ineens het water op. Om toch verder te kunnen, hebben we (enigzins illegaal) bij een plaatselijk tankstation de tank weer aangevuld, zodat we de laatste plaatsingen ook netjes konden uitvoeren.
Als het weer meezit, gaan we op 4 januari 2010 onze volgende campagne doen voor Project Krach[t] in Den Haag. We melden ons dan weer voor het laatste nieuws!

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Why back when I was a kid...

It’s the first snowfall of the season, and if you listened to the weather forecasters you’d think the world was ending. I know, they think they are providing a public service, but the 48 hour hype fest before the most normal of snowfalls is a bit much. Like the boy crying wolf, what will they do when we get a real blizzard?

Growing up in Western New York, epic snow falls were fairly regular occurences. We all remember the Blizzard of 77′, but there were other big snows too. The Ice Storm of 76′, the Six Pack blizzard of 1985, the unexpected 2 ft. snowfall on Nov. 20th, 2000 that stranded thousands, the 82″ that fell from Dec 24th – 28th, 2001, and the Friday the 13th Storm in October of 2006. I have never experienced anything close to these snowfalls in my 17 winters in Minnesota. We just don’t have enough moisture in the air to get that kind of snow. Not that the 77 Blizzard was about Lake Effect snow. It was a very different and unique storm altogether, and one that may never be repeated.

1977

The Winter of 1976-77 began with some unseasonably cold weather. There was snow in October that year, and the average temperature for the month of November was 34ºF, the coldest on record. The cold continued into December and the snow began to pile up. By December 14^th the water temperature in Lake Erie had reached 32ºF, the earliest date it had been that cold. As the snow kept falling through December and into January, the Lake froze over, and the cold temperatures (January average a bone chilling 13ºF) kept the snow from melting, and forming a crust. The result was that by the time the Blizzard began on January 28^th, there had already been 150 inches of snow in Buffalo that season, and the snow depth was measured at 33 inches. Several feet of fine powdery snow covered the ice surface out on Lake Erie. What happened next was totally unexpected.

snow squall coming in off of Lake Erie

When the storm hit, wind gusts began, the temperature dropped and it began snowing. But within 2-3 hours of the storm hitting, the radar in Buffalo showed no sign of snowfall, yet visibility was zero. The 60 mile per hour gusts had begun blowing the snow off of the Lake ice and onto land. The high winds lasted for days, and the drifts that resulted buried houses, and cars in densely packed drifts that were impervious to plowing. Gridlock ensued, and the coming days and weeks were a struggle. There had already been a natural gas shortage prior to the Blizzard that winter, and the bitter cold temperatures only made things worse.

Abandoned car on Kennsington off ramp

Dad spent a lot of long days at work. Working on a streetlight and line crew for Niagara Mohawk, bad weather always meant overtime. But for a 9 year old kid like me, once the winds died down, it was a wonderland. School was canceled for 2 weeks, and my friends and I spent all our time climbing the snow piles on Prospect, and digging tunnels through the front yard. In the end, they had to extend our school year into late June to make up for the lost time, but it was worth it.

The stories of where you were, and what you did during the Blizzard of 1977, are legion. The storm, coming during the Mid 70’s malaise that had struck the Rust Belt, was like a punch in the gut, and Buffalo’s image has never recovered. I doubt I will ever see anything like it again in my lifetime. So I better quit before I head into Grandpa Simpson territory, and start telling you about the Onion I tied on my belt, which was the fashion at the time…

I will say this about the Midwest and the Great Plains, though. I learned very quickly to never venture out of town during a snow storm. When I moved here in 1993 I drove up from Nashville through a heavy snow in Central Illinois. Out there on the prairie, there isn’t anything in 500 miles to stop the wind, and it doesn’t take much to become lost. That was one white knuckle drive, and I vowed never to take a foolish chance like that again. Unlike Western New York, a guy could spend days buried in a drift waiting to be found.

So in the immortal words of Jimmy Griffin, the mayor of Buffalo during the 85′ storm “stay inside, grab a six pack, and watch a football game”. Sage advice from the mayor.

Growing up in the 1970’s the Christmas season always began with the arrival of the Sears Wishbook in the mail. There has never been a more aptly named book. If you were like me, this book defined the Christmas season. I’d take the catalog, lay down on the floor in the front living room, so as not to be distracted by the TV, and immediately flip to the toy section (It was always in the back) and commence dreaming. If a toy wasn’t in the Sears catalog, it simply didn’t exist.

So join me for a dream. The year is 1975, and I have just turned 7. It is a cold day, and I am sitting over the heat register in the front room, wrapped in an afgan, turning the pages…

Before we get to the good stuff, first we need to give some perspective. For anyone that grew up in the 1970’s, you have probably gone through therepy because of outfits like these. I can’t tell if the kids are singing, or screaming. It doesn’t get anymore more quintessential 70’s than the plaid polyester suit, with matching white leather belt.

And just in case you think the girls had it any easier, check these out. The poor girl on the right looks like she has been locked into a Holly Hobby Iron Maiden. Is it any wonder that 25% of my generation is on antidepressants?

About half the boys I knew had this bed spread in their bedroom. I was always jealous of them. Last year I looked, and looked for something similar for 20 Prospect Jr.’s bedroom, to no avail.

The mid 70’s was the dawn of the BMX craze. At the time a BMX bike was little more than a banana seat Schwin stingray with knobby tires. I fondly remember my Huffy Thunder road. Great for popping wheelies, or doing Evil Kneivil style jumps.

Did Sears only mail these to kids in the North? I used to always look at these backyard rinks and wonder if anyone owned one. In Batavia we never had the consistently cold temperatures to make outdoor rinks.

OK, now we are into the good stuff. We had the Air Hockey table on the lower right. We used to keep it in the cellar. I can still remember trying to muscle that thing up the basement steps to put it on the kitchen table to play. Plug it into the wall and the fan would come to life. The “ice” surface would rise, and the little red puck would begin to float. Then ka-chuk, ka-chuk, ka-chuk, ka-chuk, clunk SCORE!!!!

This one page was the very stuff of dreams. I got the Electric football game in the middle left. ($8.87!) Which my parents soon augmented by mail ordering four NFL teams for me (I think my Big Bruddah picked them out) The Rams, Raiders, Vikings and Cowboys. I spent countless hours playing this game. I eventually lost the cardboard stadium, and would fashion one myself out of poster board, drawing in multicolored dots for the people. I would also eventually add the Broncos and Seahawks to the list of teams. As Mike mentioned in the comments section last week, our Mom’s would bring home the little paper circles from the three hole punches, and we would spread them over the field to have snow games. Buzzzzzzzzzz…. it’s a fake field goal, Chester Merkel rolls left, touchdown!!!!!

In 79′ I would get one of those Coleco table hockey games as well, but in 75′ I was still playing my bruddah’s older NHLPA version (as pictured in a post last week). Big Bruddah’s game had the classic metal players. Oakland, and Chicago if my memory is correct…

Super Toe! I had forgotten about this guy. You hit him on the head and he kicked that hard plastic football. The harder you hit, the farther he kicked. Are you getting the sense that I was spoiled? What can I say… Mom and Dad always did love me best.

This was the grand daddy of them all. The AFX slot car track. Never did get this one, although Santa brought me a Tyco one. For those that had one you know that the Tyco version was the Betamax version of slot car tracks. It was fun, but it never quite matched the performance of the AFX. Of course, we were a Chrysler family, so I guess the shoe fit.

I was mad for trains as a kid. I had the good fortune of inheriting my big bruddah’s HO train set, which originated with one of my Uncles. Eventually I would get a 4′ x 8′ plywood board, and in the 7th grade I built my railroad empire down in the cellar. I still have the HO trains in a box, minus track and transformers. I really do need to bring them out and get them running for 20 Prospect Jr. one of these days. He’s old enough now to appreciate them.

GI Joe with Kung Foo grip! Ah.. the Kung Foo craze of the 70’s. When GI Joe grew a beard. Hardly Government Issue in my opinion, but it was the 70’s. Post ‘Nam, I guess the emphasis was on trying to make Joe into an “action figure” and not a soldier. Coulda been worse, they could have made him into an Alan Alda look-a-like that preached at you when you pulled the string. Still, we knew better. Firepower was what GI Joe was all about. You don’t liberate Europe from the Jerry’s with a shark hunting harpoon.

Eventually Joe got the “mange”, and the fuzzy hair fell out in patches. Poor GI Joe. I got hours of enjoyment out of that GI Joe Helicopter though…

This was 1975. The year before the Bicentennial when everything was painted red, white and blue. It was also the pre-Star Wars world. Look closely kids. Before Star Wars all an 7 year old boy had to dream about was the Bionic Man, and the Planet of the Apes. I forget how horrible Science Fiction was in the early 70’s. It was always about post apopocalyptic death. Soylent Green, the Andromeda Strain, preachy Apes reminding us we were a lower life form than them. You cannot over estimate the joy that Stars Wars brought, and how it liberated us to actually have fun again. George Lucas, we will forever be in your debt. I’m even willing to give you a pass on the Ewoks, but Jar Jar Binks?

So what awesome toys did you dream about when you were a kid? What pages of the old Sears & Roebuck Wishbook were dog-eared from your frequent wishing?

Check out this archive of scanned copies of Christmas catalogs going back to the 30’s, and let yourself dream like a 7 year old…

There are more signs of Funeral Industry decline in the USA today due to the recession. A  longstanding NAPA Valley Funeral Home has closed it’s door. And in the Chicago suburban area two major Funeral Homes have merged.

More signs of Funeral Industry decline due to the recession

Moss Funeral Home in Batavia, Illinois has purchased and merged with Norris Funeral Home in St.Charles, Illinois. The former owners of the Norris Funeral Home are retained.

Moss Family Funeral Home in Batavia has purchased Norris Funeral Home, a fixture in St. Charles since 1936…..

Moss has been in Batavia since 2001, when he purchased Yurs-Peterson Funeral Home in Batavia.

The arrangement with Norris Funeral Home will allow Lee Norris to stay on as funeral director and his wife, Jane, as funeral assistant. The couple has owned Norris Funeral Home since 1968.

via www.kcchronicle.com

In NAPA Valley The headline read, “Richard Pierce Funeral Home closes suddenly; owner vows to meet clients’ needs” The closing of this funeral home was unexpected. The owner stated that the preneed funeral contacts will be honored.

This post is about a single Christmas, but its truly an amalgam of many Christmases. These memories were compiled over the course of my childhood, and over time they have come to blend together to form but a single memory, of many similar events, all of which contained some, if not all of the following events. So that is why I have not dated this post to a single year. It could have been any, or all of the years between 1974 and 1986.

My father’s mother was known to us as “Ma”, and his father as “Pa” although we were far from the hillbilly type. Dad had grown up in McKees Rocks, PA and on the Northside of Buffalo (Black Rock and Riverside) and had lived in several different rental homes along the way. When I was small they both worked in the DuPont factory in Tonawanda, N.Y. just across the line from Riverside, but at some point before or after Pa died in 1972, Ma had retired. The fact is that in my memory she is always wearing a house dress standing in her kitchen as we sit at the table talking and snacking on government cheese, with pepperoni and mustard. But this is not about those  Sunday afternoon visits to Ma’s, it is about Christmas.

After opening our gifts at 20 Prospect, and going to Mass at St. Joe’s we would make the drive up to Ma’s. She lived in Tonawanda, not far from the Niagara River, in a 3 Bedroom Ranch home built at the very beginning of the 1960’s. I mention the three bedroom’s, because up until Pa died in 1972, there were 3 people living in the house. Ma, Pa, and Uncle Bobby, who wasn’t anyone’s Uncle, but an Army buddy of Pa’s that lived with them from the 60’s up until his death in the early 80’s. Each one of them had their own bedroom in the house, and like most things in my family this odd situation was never discussed. I grew up taking two things for granted, that odd living arrangements were “normal” in my family, and that my grand parents and their siblings were as crazy as bed bugs.

Ma and Pa had bought the house after living in apartments, and rental homes their whole adult lives. The neighborhood they settled in was just North of their old neighborhood, just beyond the industrial wasteland that abutted Buffalo. There were two different ways to get to their house from the Youngman Expressway. You could take the exit at Sheridan Drive, and take Two Mile Creek road past the sewage treatment plant, or you could drive past the Noco refinery to River Rd. and follow that down river to Two Mile Creek. Either way promised an olfactory experience. The smell of raw sewage, and oil is imprinted into my memory, and to this day reminds me of visits to Ma’s. That and the ever present smell of mothballs inside her home.

Since Mom & Dad liked to go to early mass, and get up to Ma’s by noon, this meant that on Christmas morning I would get to open the wonderful bounty of new toys that they showered me with (Being the baby, I was terribly spoiled ) and then promptly put them down again, and get in the car. Of course, I could always pick one or two to take with me, as Ma never bought presents for the grandkids, or anyone to my knowledge. Instead I received money in an envelope. $1 in my early years, and $5 as I came of age.

When we arrived Ma was in the kitchen, already cooking dinner, and Uncle Bobby was in his chair in the living room watching TV. My Aunt, Uncle, and cousins would arrive soon after us, and the house would fill up with the sounds of women preparing dinner, men discussing the latest round of layoffs at the Chevy plant, and kids downstairs in the basement getting into mischief. Ma’s basement was our favorite place to play. It had been partially finished off, and boasted a large dining room table, where dinner would be served, a second stove & oven, the usual washing machinery, and Pa’s bar.

By all accounts my Grandpa was a character. He died before I was old enough to remember him, but the stories that have been told paint him as a fun loving, heavy drinking, practical joker. He was a bear of a man, who’d played semi-pro football in Pennsylvania during the depression. Everybody loved Pa, and he loved his grandkids. Well, my siblings anyway. I was too young for him to play with before he died. When they had bought the house, Pa had immediately begun remodeling the back of the basement into his bar. It being the early 60’s, the lights, couches, and decorations had a certain swankiness common to the age. The bar itself was a gorgeous piece of maple, that twinkled in the light of his beer & liquor signs. It was fully stocked, and in the little pantry behind it, he had cases of booze. We used to love to sit on the stools and play with the swizzle sticks he brought back from his trips to Vegas.

Since Ma didn’t drink, the booze meant nothing to her, and it was her standard practice to fill the punchbowl at holidays with 2 cans of Hi-C and a fifth of whatever was handy. Usually this was a bottle of Pa’s whiskey. This being the 70’s, the parents were content to let the kids drink from the punchbowl, so unbeknown to us, that slightly tart stingy taste in Ma’s fruit punch was making us drunker than skunks. No wonder we usually fell asleep shortly after dinner.

Schenley's Three Feather's Whiskey

Dinner was always a feast suitable for a medieval king. Two or three different kinds of meat, usually Turkey and Beef, sometimes Ham, and all of Ma’s unique side dishes. “Golf Ball” stuffing, Potato “peanuts” (dumplings), and creamed spinach. She was a wonderful cook, and like most women of her generation, never wrote down a recipe. Most of her “original” dishes came from memory, and would be lost to us as she aged, and that memory slowly faded.

After dinner the grownups would sit around the table in the basement, and talk grownup stuff, while the kids retreated upstairs to goof around in the living room, drink some more booze punch, and slowly become sleepy on the couch. The TV was never turned on after dinner. Instead we sat in the kaleidoscopic glow of Ma’s aluminum tree.

Her Christmas tree was the most beautiful tree in the world to me. Shiny silver aluminum, covered in bright pink & blue glass ornaments, it rotated slowly as multicolor spotlights shone up on it. The result was a psychedelic array of colors swirling around on the ceiling. Studio 54 paled in comparison to the light display. I miss that tree so much. No Blue Spruce, Balsam, or Douglas Fir will ever compare with that ersatz, jet-age, silver tree.

When night came, we’d pile back into the car, and make our way home to Batavia, stuffed, buzzed, and sated. Ma would stand in the window of her living room next to that glittering apparition, and wave goodbye as we pulled away from the curb. Then I’d lean my forehead against the window, and look up into the night sky as the lights of passing cars threw shadows across the backseat. Another Christmas come and gone.

As the years passed, time and distance slowly eroded the people around the table. Uncle Bobby died in the early 80’s. My Uncle Joe would stop coming altogether, as his relationship with my Aunt deteriorated. My siblings moved away one and one, and didn’t always have the means to get back home for Christmas. My Aunt sold her place, and moved into Ma’s along with my cousins who never could make it out of the nest. Finally, Ma’s stroke brought an end to it, and when she passed away, bad feelings between my Aunt and my family brought an end to our Christmas visits entirely.

The house is still there, and my Aunt still lives in it with my cousin Joe, who never did leave home. I drove past it on my recent trip to Western New York. It has changed some, but the neighborhood remains very much the same as it was when I was a child. I didn’t stop, and wouldn’t know what to say it I did. Dad passed away over 10 years ago now, and I haven’t seen or spoken with my Aunt since the funeral. They say time heals all wounds, but it also erodes things away. These Christmases only remain as memories, twinkling like an aluminum tree, across the wide canyon of time.

After the physical hollowing of downtown

I’m currently reading “Hollowing out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What it Means for America” by Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, two sociologists who spent a few years studying the path to adulthood for young residents of an anonymous small Iowa town. As books on social research go, it is wonderfully accessible and clearly written, making it a very easy and compelling read. For two people who did not grow up in a small town, and are obviously highly educated professionals, I am finding that their portrayal of small town America is remarkably clear eyed, and not prone to the polemic images of rural American’s typically presented by the media. Most stories you read portray rural people as either gun toting, small mined, bigots, or patriotic, “motherhood and apple pie”, pillars of the American dream. Having grown up in Batavia, I find their book to be very sensitive, and deftly written, allowing the residents of “Ellis”, Iowa to reveal themselves as the complex, thoughtful human beings they truly are. It is a much more reserved, and non-committal representation than I could ever produce, having lived the kind of life they studied, and being far too emotionally involved in the subject.

If you are one of the small town Diaspora who left never to return, or someone who left but boomeranged back, it is a very revealing read. Not only do they highlight the demographic, and economic trends effecting rural America, they also catch the subtle undercurrents of class that play a large role in determining the opportunities and futures of the young inhabitants.  At times it is also a painful book, pointing out the paradoxes that exist, and how small towns have hastened their own demise, by investing so much of their limited resources in developing their “best and brightest” and encouraging them to leave the community behind. The result is what Patrick Deneen has called the “strip mining” of young adults from rural areas, to feed the coastal, and Midwestern, urban population centers.

As one of the “Achievers” who was groomed to leave, I find myself emotionally conflicted about where I have ended up, and where I began. In some ways that was the main impetus for this blog, and was clearly the thought process behind the title I gave it. I grieve the loss of connection to community and the sense of place, while simultaneously realizing that I could never be happy going back again.  As much as I miss the connection to the community, I also revel in the anonymity, and freedom that Urban / Suburban life offers me. I can re-invent myself here, and maintain a privacy that would never be possible in a place where everyone knows my name.

As a parent of two small children, I also look ahead to the future and wonder what inheritance they are receiving as they grow into young adulthood, and look to someday leave for a life of their own. Will they have the same connection to our faceless suburban home, or will they be another rootless generation following the jobs somewhere else. It is when I think beyond my own experience, and look forward and backward at the histories of place, that I begin to see how the issues raised in “Hollowing out the Middle” are both new, and as old as time itself.

Batavia started life as a farming community, founded on a cross roads of Indian trails, where travelers would camp, and take advantage of the (once) clear water flowing down out of the hills. During the 1800’s, it became the local center of government and retail, supporting the surrounding countryside of small family farms. It developed it’s own professional class, and with the coming of the railroads in the later part of the 19^th Century, began to experience Industrial growth  as factories sprung up to supply agricultural implements like harvesters, and plows to a rapidly growing country.

It was this dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Batavia that first began to change the character of the town, and introduce new demographics, and challenges. First came the Irish immigrants, and later the Sicilian, and Polish, to work the factories. This changed the dynamic of the city, and brought a diversity that does not exist in many small towns in the Midwest, like “Ellis”, Iowa, where German and Scandinavian roots still predominate. For this reason, Batavia developed many little quirks, that came to define the town, as Kaufman points out in his memoir. It is these little quirks that endear the place to me, and make me long for the odd mixture of solidity, and insanity of it’s inhabitants.

Batavia Carriage Wheel Company

As the 19^th Century gave way to the 20^th, Batavia, and most of Western New York, boomed. These were the years when Massey-Harris (formerly Johnson Harvester), Dohler-Jarvis, and other companies expanded, and the population grew with working class immigrant families. The years before, and after the Second World War were the high water mark for the town. As the 20^th Century progressed, the town began to age. A colossally bad decision on the part of the City, to “renew” it’s core by tearing down the 19^th Century buildings in downtown, and redeveloping the area into a less dense, suburban landscape of parking lots, and shopping malls changed the look of the place. A literal “hollowing out of the middle”. The disaster that ensued is well documented in Kaufman’s book, but what is often overlooked, is that this Urban Renewal coincided with larger economic trends that were relocating Industrial jobs from places like Batavia, to the Sun Belt, and which would ultimately have a far more lasting effect on the town.

The Johnson Harvester Company - 1896

That process began in 1953 when the Canadian company Ferguson, merged with Massey-Harris (also Canadian). By 1958, production had moved out of the 1868 built factory on Harvester Avenue. In retrospect, that was a harbinger of what was to come as smaller, locally owned Industrial companies combined, and merged into large multinational stock holder corporations all over North America. As the 20^th century progressed, other manufacturers opened factories in Batavia, such as Sylvania, and Trojan Industries, and this helped slow the decline. However, during the 70’s and 80’s the same story was to repeat itself with industries consolidating, and the manufacturing plants closing and relocating in lower labor cost regions.

Dohler

Batavia was not alone, these trends hit hard all over the “Rust Belt”, and 1970’s stagflation, and the Oil crisis further exacerbated the problems in an already shaky industrial base. For all the pain that Batavia went through, it was better positioned than many towns in Upstate New York, and across the Northeast. Being 30 miles distant from both Buffalo and Rochester, Batavia took on a new life as a bedroom community, which at least allowed it to support a lower paying service industry. Many towns, like Schenectady, that lived and died on the fortunes of one large employer, saw their tax base collapse, and residents abandoning homes and moving away.

Main Street before it's "renewal"

What these larger trends meant for the young in Batavia, was that good paying blue collar work like their parents had raised their families on, were disappearing. What was left was a shrinking job pool of lower paying service sector jobs, and tougher competition for the fewer professional jobs. A high school graduate intent on pursuing a college education found that they had priced themselves out of the labor market, and had the choice of relocating to an urban area, or being under-employed in Batavia. These conditions were not the result of poor planning, or disastrous urban renewal at the local level. They were the result of much larger forces at work in the global economy.

Destroying the town to save it

So where does that leave places like Batavia and “Ellis”, Iowa? Have the last 100 years of economic history cast their fate in stone? Are they just passing boomtowns that have seen history render them irrelevant? Or have they already reached the bottom, after their 30 year long depression, and sit poised to reinvent themselves?

What the future looked like in the 1970's - Same location as previous 2 photos

Perhaps Batavia history can shed some light on the future. As I have described above, the Johnson Harvester Company was a bellwether for Batavia’s economy in the 19^th and 20^th Century. In many ways the events that played out on Harvester Avenue were indicative of where the national economy was headed. From it’s opening in 1868 after the Civil War, to takeover by a foreign company (Massey-Harris of Canada) in 1910, to it’s merger with Ferguson and closing of the plant in 1958, the factory on Harvester foreshadowed the future of American Industry. So it is interesting to consider what happened when the building fell vacant.

In the late 50’s and early 60’s the Chamber of Commerce sought out new tenants for the building. When they were unable to find a large manufacturing firm willing to relocate to Batavia the property was sold to city resident Joseph Mancuso.  Mancuso came up with the idea to rent portions of the building to smaller manufacturing firms until they were large enough to strike out on their own. He hoped that this type of arrangement would allow startup businesses to save money and resources until they grew enough to move out on their own.

As the legend goes, one of the first tenants to the Industrial Center was a chicken company. Mancuso was traveling around the U.S. looking for other potential tenants and, using the chicken company as an example, he started calling it an incubator. Some people credit Mancuso with inventing the world’s first business incubator, a concept that is often touted in post-industrial towns as one way to revive their economy.

But did it work? The last 30 years of Batavia history has shown that despite some promising tenants through the years, no company was able to sustain that economic growth and provide the type of jobs that the depression of the later 20^th century took away. Some companies had success, but were unable to parlay that into longevity.

In my own family, my Mom went to work as the first U.S. employee of German heating and valve component manufacturer Braukmann Controls. I can still remember her picking me up at St. Joe’s, and taking me over to the Industrial Center on Harvester on her bicycle. The “office” where she worked was a cavernous warehouse space in the old Johnson Harvester factory, and one heck of a fascinating place for a 5 year old kid. To entertain me she let me play with the little company labels and stick them all over the bike. I can remember the excitement of watching the teletype machine rumbling to life with messages from Germany, and the dusty smell, and echoing emptiness of the place.

Braukmann expanded throughout the 70’s and relocated to the newly vacated Sylvania plant out on Ellicott Street. By the mid 80’s they had been sold to Honeywell, and had over 100 people working for them. Then history repeated itself, and during one of the late 80’s recessions, Honeywell closed the Batavia plant and moved the production to a plant in Ontario.

Damn Canadians! Why is it always Canadians that are the bane of Batavia? Since the day when Butler’s Rangers camped at the Great Bend of the Tonawanda during their raid into New York, those damn Canucks have been killing us. Is it any wonder they built a Tim Horton’s a mere 100 yards from their campsite? I think not! But I digress…

I am not sure what the answer is to the dilemma of towns like Batavia and “Ellis”. Surely the efforts of people like Mancuso, to re-establish a homegrown, entrepreneurial economic recovery are valiant attempts to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs. However, I think we need to be honest about the likelihood, and scale of such success. Lightning is unlikely to strike Batavia, and make it the birthplace of the “next Microsoft”, but building a diverse, human scaled economy is a worthy goal. Chasing the next Federal Penitentiary, Shiny New Industrial Plant, or Call Center, is merely running from one economic bubble to another.

What does any of this mean for the future of middle American youth in towns like Batavia and Ellis? Is there anything that will turn the tide of the rural “brain drain”, and convince the high achievers to stay behind in their hometowns?I see no current economic trend that gives me any hope that things will change. And as Carr and Kefalas point out in “Hollowing out the Middle” it will also take a fundemental change in the current education system, to stop encouraging so much investment of the educational resources into kids who are the least likely to live in the community. I can hear the educators howling already, should anyone suggest they focus on the underperforming students to better maximize the return on their investment, at the expense of the achievers.

In my opinion, until there are legitimate economic incentives to stay behind, those that can, will continue to leave. Who can fault them? Towns like Batavia and Ellis were founded less than 200 years ago by folks that also left behind their homes to seek out better lives.

Maybe the answer is to be found somewhere in our past. I just wonder how far back we will have to look to see the future.

Main Street Batavia - 1896

Saya kaget ketika mendengar berita bahwa pesawat milik maskapai nasional Merpati Nusantara Airlines mendarat darurat di Kupang hingga block runway. Merpati dengan nomor penerbangan 5840 ini menggunakan pesawat type Fokker 100 registrasi PK-MJD berangkat dari Makassar sekitar pukul 19.00 WITA membawa penumpang kurang dari 100 orang menuju Bandara El-Tari Kupang. Tadi malam kebetulan saya yang sedang dinas pada saat kedatangan (flight number MNA 5841) dan “memberangkatkan” MNA 5840 ini. Di Makassar tidak ada masalah apapun hingga pesawat berangkat. Pilot meminta untuk menerbangi ketinggian 27000 kaki. Pada saat take-off dan berbelok ke arah 180 derajat setelahnya pun tidak ada kendala, semuanya normal. Pesawat ini diperkirakan mendarat (ETA) di Bandara El-Tari pukul 20.10 WITA, dan akhirnya berhasil mendarat darurat pukul 21.32 WITA.

MNA 5840 Mendarat Darurat Di Kupang

Menurut seorang teman yang juga ATC di Bandara El-Tari Kupang, MNA 5840 melakukan pendaratan darurat, setelah main landing gear sebelah kiri pesawat tersebut tidak bisa keluar (down and lock). Telah dikonfirmasi seluruh penumpang selamat dan berhasil dievakuasi. Barang bagasi penumpang pun segera dievakuasi.

Hingga saat ini pesawat MNA 5840 masih block runway sehingga runway belum bisa digunakan. Rencananya badan pesawat akan dievakuasi setelah alat-alat berat datang. Akibatnya, beberapa pesawat harus divert dan menunda (delay) bahkan membatalkan penerbangannya ke Kupang. Jika ingin menyimpan file video detik-detik pendaratan bisa anda dapatkan disini dengan password “wahyuatcmanado.wordpress.com” tanpa tanda kutip. Jika ingin melihat langsung video dari youtube, silahkan ke bawah ini. Mohon diingat, video ini tidak ada tujuan komersil, unsur menjatuhkan pihak tertentu, hanya untuk tujuan pembelajaran dan pengetahuan (non-commercial).

Kejadian ini menyusul pesawat Batavia Air yang juga mendarat darurat di Bandara El-Tari Kupang pekan lalu. Permasalahannya pun sama, yaitu permasalahan pada landing gear. Semoga kejadian seperti ini tidak terjadi lagi.

This past summer I read Ray Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine, after hearing Bill Kaufman recommend it. I was never into Science Fiction, and the few Bradbury stories I had to read in High School English Class, never did much for me. (Although “All Summer in a Day” is still the saddest story I have ever read) So I was surprised and somewhat blown away at the novel. It is one of the most elegiac, and melancholy books I have read in some time. For those that haven’t read it, Bradbury writes of his youth growing up in Waukegan, Illinois, evoking what it was like to be a 12 year old boy, caught between childhood, and a coming adulthood, realizing for the first time that he is simultaneously alive, and mortal. Hard to believe I could enjoy a bittersweet tale like that

In one heart wrenching chapter he tells of his best friend, John Huff, moving to far away Racine, Wisconsin, and the pain and loss he felt. I think most of us have experienced something similar in life. That first time when they come to realize that loss of a friend, and the first of many changes in life as they grow and move on. In my own past on 20 Prospect it was Mike Ward, and not John Huff that moved away.

Mike moved onto Prospect Avenue when I was in about 4^th or 5^th Grade. He lived in an upstairs apartment across the street with his Mom and Stepdad. Like all new kids on the block, at first he was teased by the local kids. Being an only child, he played alone at first, and didn’t reach out to us right away. One day, after he went inside from playing matchbox cars in his driveway, we ran across the street and messed up the little roads he had made in the driveway gravel. He saw us and came running out of the house chasing us. Being the youngest and slowest kid, he caught me as I leapt over the pricker bushes into my yard, horse collaring me, as the rest got away. Him being 3 years older than me, he thankfully didn’t give me the pounding I deserved.

For reasons I won’t get into here, I had a falling out with the kids down the street, and not long after that day Mike and I became fast friends the way that only pre-teen boys can. He had been born in Baltimore, and moved to Batavia not long before I met him. He was into sports more than any other kid I knew, and he was the reason I began to follow sports with a religious zeal.

Being an only kid, he had some awesome toys, and many days were spent playing with his AFX slot car racetrack, his Electric Football, Coleco Rod Hockey, and Mattel Intellivision, but don’t think we spent all our time indoors. We played wiffle ball in the yard, football and street hockey in the street in front of our house. We organized our own little leagues, and wore different caps, and jerseys as we played out seasons and playoffs. We kept track of wins and losses, and made little championship trophies. Being 3 years older, he usually won, but I can still remember the thrill of hitting a grand slam over the hedges in his front yard, onto Mr. Jankowski’s front porch, and hitting their cat. I finished the running the bases before Mr. Jankowski, whom I would later work with at Graham Mfg. one summer in college, came out, and shouted over the hedges in his polish accent. We would mimic him for years “All right boyz. I tink dats enuf, boyz!”

Tudor Electric Football

Mattel Intellivision

Old Time Table Hockey

By the time I was in 6^th Grade, Mike had moved. His folks had bought a place over on Soccio Street. His moving was every bit as sad a day for me, as Bradbury describes losing John Huff. While he was only a mile away, at our age it may as well have been a different city. We still got together on occasion to play, but it didn’t last long. The bigger move came in the fall when he moved up from the Junior High into the Senior High. Now the 3 year gap between us became a chasm. A 10^th grader, and a 7^th grader move in entirely different worlds. By the time I went off to Notre Dame, he was already a Senior at BHS and was preparing for college. I saw him once or twice more during my High School years, as he was attending St. John Fisher to study Computer Science, but aside from some short, awkward conversation, our friendship was over.

I have often wondered what became of him. Perhaps he still lives in Batavia, just around the corner. Or maybe life took him far away, like it did to me. I like to think he’s out there somewhere, with a family of his own, and a son that loves sports as much as we did, living a parallel existence to my own. Time is a funny thing. It changes us in so many ways, and yet in others we remain forever the kid we were at 12. I think that is what Bradbury was feeling when he wrote Dandelion Wine. I know it’s what I’m feeling as I write these memories.

If your home is on the market, or will be, and the basement gets wet in a storm, HERE are some tips for you.

Linda Sloss, REALTOR, GRI, WCR
Keller Williams Fox Valley Realty
630-408-2956
lindasloss.yourkwagent.com
linda.sloss@kw.com

Everytime he goes to the restaurant he would go to the dilapidated toilet with no toilet seat and take a piss standing up and stare at the LINDETEVES sign painted on the water tank.

Or, more like L NDE I EVI S.

The sign has been painted over so many times, presumably with the same salted duck-egg colour, it is less a sign than a palimpsest.

Then he would go back to his table, pick at his beef strog, the creamed potato mash on the rim of his compartmentalized metal plate (what jail am I in?), the always al dente cauliflower, the icky bottle of Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce, and he would feel so tired.

He is so tired all the time.

This city looks so tired all the time.

This city is like an old dilapidated toilet missing its toilet seat.

This city is a palimpsest of the idea of a toilet.

With real flesh and blood people getting flushed down it clutching at their tired paper hearts.

Paper turns to mush in water.

on a cloudy like like today i always think of this bit from a sitor situmorang poem:

jakarta

kumuh

tercinta

can’t remember which poem, but that’s the whole stanza. he being mr. coy modernist and all. where did you hide pound’s personae, eh? i can see it bulging out of yer shirt pocket!

(it’s ‘beloved / decrepit / jakarta’ for you pasarayaman.)

now that i’m writing about what i think about on a cloudy day like today and not just be in it, i think about this too, and this, but when i only have my mind to think about it is

jakarta

kumuh

tercinta

that i think about.

because this has a tram in it; i’d start thinking of aminah cendrakasih singing and bobbing her way around the other passengers/backup singers in asrama dara and flowers would bloom in my head.

and this is in menteng, where flowers still bloom everywhere.

i have to make do with

beloved

decrepit

jakarta

i think of when i meet new people and the first thing they’d ask me would be, ‘what are ya? batak? chinese?’ and then it hit me, hey, you wanna run away too,

but you’re still here.

and that’s when flowers bloom in my heart.

two dutch officers on top of a makeshift watchtower

barefooted common soldiers kicking imaginary tumbleweeds

sweaty accountants in counting houses, bamboo fans, greasy watch chains

a javanese general shooting seven hundred of his own soldiers in the head

(he took off his blangkon before he shot the first one)

the dutch officers looking on with a mixture of disgust and awe

the mardijkers looking on with a mixture of disgust and awe

at petty thieves getting their bodies chariot-broken at the old town square

the javanese looking on

looking bored

at everything

the javanese

true laissez-faire artistes!

*lookout for the indonesian translation of Susan Blackburn’s (née Abeyasekere) Jakarta: A History, forthcoming sometime next year from Komunitas Bambu, publisher of insanely unsaleable but truly invaluable historical tomes on this incomprehensibly lovable city.

pour Edo Wallad

kau orang sunda, bahasamu seperti burung bernyanyi di pucuk angsana
pohon penyembuh segala, masih tersisa satu di pojok kota tua
ingatkah dulu waktu kita sering nongkrong di pinggir molenvliet
mengenang rimbaud dan sepatu yang lepas kulitnya, liburan di pusuk buhit
di sini kita hanya punya gunung salak, senja di beranda dengan budak setia
saudara saudaraku suka meloncat dari prau, menyulut menyan di klenteng naga
bersyukur pada maktjouw poo, semoga daganganku laku
laut cina selatan penuh marabahaya, perjalanan pulang penuh leliku
lebih baik menetap di sini saja, bapakku kapiten cina bercambang
tarik pajak dari rumah judi tenabang, opium den di luar batang
kuharap walau kau membaptisku dengan nama eropah
kau tetap tatahlah itu tembok dengan satu n saja, di sebelahnya hati tertembus panah

Another week begins on the Front Porch. I have to say that the past one was exhausting. I spent a lot of time diving deep in the sea of memory, and I’m afraid I have a case of the bends. So this week is starting off a little light on the memory side.

Old Friends on the Porch

This past weekend I was honored to have an old friend stop by 20 Prospect for a visit. Yes, it was time for a “guy’s weekend”, which means trips to sporting events, and bars, and partaking of smelly foods that the wife and kids don’t like to eat.  If either one of us were into hunting and fishing, we’d have done some of that too.

The “guys weekend” is something I never remember the Dad’s of a previous generation doing. Just like our Mom’s and Grandma’s never had a girls weekend get-a-way to Vegas. I guess it’s just a generational thing, another result of the atomization of social ties, and the increasing mobility of the population. I have known Chris since Kindergarten, when he arrived in Batavia after his family relocated from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is my oldest bestest friend, but we haven’t lived in the same town since he left the Twin Cities in ‘95. Now we see each other about every other year, sometimes with wife and kids, sometimes alone. But no matter how much time passes, when we are together we’re reduced to two kids sitting on the front steps talking until the street lights flicker on.

pasti rasanya sangat menyebalkan dan menyesakkan. itulah yang aku alami hari ini.
berawa dari kamis malam, aku berencana mengantarkan nenekku yang sedang menikmati liburan singkat di jogja menuju jakarta. rencana berjalan sukses (meskipun itu berarti aku harus rela meninggalkan latihan orkes untuk yang kedua kalinya)
kami tiba di stasiun jatinegara tepat sesuai prediksi, yakni pukul 5 pagi. rencanaku aku mau langsung beli tiket untuk perjalanan nanti malam. tapi ternyata reservasi tiket belum buka. okelah, nanti aku akan minta tolong mas imam untuk antri tiket sementara aku ikut mama ke JaCC.
jadi plan ku pulang jumat malam, sampai jogja sabtu pagi. jam 7 kumpul makrab, jam 9 latihan orkestra, jam 11 nonton japan festival. begitu perfectnya rencana ku , tapi sayang tidak berjalan sesuai rencana.
mas imam telpon kalo tiket habis sampai lebaran haji oh WOW, ngimpi apa aku semalem? sama sekali ga kedapetan tiket. dari yang bisnis ampe eksekutif segala merk. tadinya aku mau nekat naik bis malam itu juga, tapi dilarang ama semuanya.
well, tdinya aku da mau mutung. sempet timbul pikiran, kalo nenek ga maksa buat ke jogja. kalau nenek ga ngambel pengen liburan sendirian ke jogja, pasti aku ga perlu capek di jalan, bolak balik ke jakrt, bisa ngerjain semua tugas dan tugas makrab. ga perlu bolos les jepang dan orkestra serta bisa nonton japfest sampai puas. lalu uang yang terpakai untuk beli tiket bisa aku pakai untuk beli kamera yang aku mau.
tapi ga mungkin kan aku nyalain nenekku yang udah tua? maklumlah kalau nenekku mau liburan. hidup monoton di jkarta pasti bikin gerah. tapi kalo kayak gini ak juga yang sakit >_<
tante uni berusaha cari tiket pesawat
oke
akhirnya dapet, batavia air, jam 2.45 pm. 350ribu
mama anter aku sampai terminal, dari terminal aku naik bis damri tujuan bandara soekarno-hatta (bayar 20ribu) dan turun di terminal 1b dimana pesawat batavia berada.
awalnya sedikit canggung, da lama ga ke bandara soekarno-hatta. tapi ternyata aku masih inget seluk beluknya. langsung aja aku check in dan si petugas langsung pasang muka senyum sambil berkata : maaf ya dek penerbangan ke joga delayed 1 jam
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT???
rasanya da eneg banget
aku berusaha sekeras mungkin buat cepetan tiba di jogja tapi ternyata pesawatku delayed 1 jam
gada yang bisa aku lakuin, aku jalan menuju boarding pas. nunggu du ruang tunggu dan bayangin adegannya rangga ama cinta di ada ada dengan cinta. 1 jam itu lama. bingung apa yang harus aku lakukan
delayed nya tambah 0.5 jam which means pesawatku baru bsa terbang ke jogja jam 5 dan sampai di jogja jam 6, dari situ ak naik bis transjogja dan sampe rumah jam 6.30
sampai di rumah motor dipake anggun, ke ukdw. nyesek banget rasanya. aku berjuang tapi akhirnya gabisa berangkat ke japfest ukdw sementara anggun ada disana menikmati ukdw. grrrwa

Lets not miss out on an opportunity! This past Columbus Day and the current push to collect taxes from Native American-owned businesses has me thinking about the true meaning of what’s really happening today.

One of the problems with America is that people started believing our own myths and were never taught the true history of what actually occurred. Since the so-called “founding” of this country by Europeans, the people who lived here before us have been systematically annihilated. The modern-day term would be ethnic cleansing. Whatever you wish to call it, the fact is we have done everything in our power to try and eliminate a whole race of people.
We were all taught that this nation was founded on “Christian principles,” that the original Pilgrims were searching for a place to practice “religious freedom.” I ask you, what if anything resembles the teaching of Christ in all of this? How do we justify “religious freedom” for ourselves when we outlawed religious practices of others?

After hundreds of years of being pushed back, slaughtered, put in boarding schools to “erase” their culture, used as mascots for our sports teams, discriminated against and countless other atrocities they are finally beginning to have a chance to better their lives. Economic prosperity means independence from a culture that has forced dependence. We have an opportunity to begin a healing process that is long overdue. We have an opportunity to actually practice what many of us profess to believe. We have an opportunity to stop the madness fueled by greed that has been our true founding principal since the beginning.

My understanding and belief is that “we are all made in the image and likeness of God.” Let’s not miss out on an opportunity to humble ourselves and admit we are wrong, and embrace a people who survive in spite of it all.

Rev. James xxx
Batavia

Photo copyright randmkaos @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/randmkaos/3084904767/

They have been there forever. Sometimes I wonder if they were there before the church was built. From my first day as an altar boy in the 4^th grade, I can remember them, sitting out in the darkened pews before 7:00am mass, praying silently on their rosary beads as I went about my chores getting the altar ready. Setting out the water and the wine, lighting the candles, waiting for the nicotine smell of Father coming in from the rectory to turn on the lights. I could see them out there in the darkness, stiff as statues, silently rubbing their wrinkled hands over the time worn beads, their lips moving slightly to the imperceptible repetition of the prayers.

I always seemed to draw the 7 am mass, not because of an affinity for rising before dawn, but because Fr. Fred knew my Mom could be counted on to get me there. I hated being woken from the warmth of my bed before the sun had risen, and be driven to St. Joe’s to serve. Sleepily buttoning my black cassock, and pulling a white surplus over my head, I would go about my rounds fifteen minutes before Mass was due to start, but already they were there. They were always there.

I served for six years, until I was so tall the altar boys cassacks no longer fit. By the time I stopped, I had grown from a shy fourth grader into an awkward teenager. My schedule was taken up with practices, and high school sports, and I was embarrassed to be seen by girls at Sunday Mass. Quitting was a relief. Mass had become tedious to me. Something I did by rote. The mystery of the ritual, and the tradition had long since grown stale, and  become yet another thing I slept walked through, like preparing the altar in the pre-dawn dark. Surely those old woman sitting out there in the pews were sleep walking too. How else could they be there, day after day, repeating the prayers, and reliving the mysteries for literal decades.

As I grew older, I drifted further and further away from the faith, until a funny thing happened. As I turned thirty, and began a family of my own I started returning. Slowly at first, but eventually with deeper and deeper hunger to understand. Not just to sleep walk through the mysteries, but to understand them intellectually, and spiritually. Like a diver swimming at a great depth, I could sense a lightness above me, and I began to swim toward it.

Sometimes lethargy overcomes me, and I need to consciously shake myself from sleep to overcome it, but I have returned to the surface of the faith now, and I can’t see myself ever straying from it again. One day, entering the Chapel early for an Ash Wednesday service, I was startled to see them. There they were, as old as I remembered them. Kneeling and sitting quietly in the dark, counting the prayers as if they had never left.

In St. Joseph’s, St. Anthony’s, St. Mary’s, Sacred Heart, and in churches far beyond Batavia, they still kneel in the dark, praying. They are older now, which is hard to imagine, as they seemed ancient then. Stoop shouldered from years of carrying around the weight of their families on their backs, they have suffered long, and silently. They have watched their children fade, and disappear, from the pews beside them, like swimmers slipping beneath the waves. They have buried parents, husbands, children, and even grandchildren, but still they come each morning to kneel and pray. Sitting there quietly in the dark, their fingers work slowly on their rosaries. Knitting their prayers together, one bead at a time, until the mysteries reach like fishing lines, stretching back through the cold, dark years, their crosses like hooks glistening in the predawn candlelight, tethering us to a past we have long since forgotten, if we ever truly knew it.

Photo Copyright Daily Vis @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/njssli23/2178773493/

The past week around 20 Prospect was a long one. Trips home to Batavia are always full of memories and mixed emotions. It is hard to see what Western New York has become. Just because it has been in such a long slow economic and social spiral for a long time, does not make it any easier to take. In the some ways, it makes it even harder to accept. Surely by now the local government and populace would have figured out that what they are doing isn’t working and tried a different course of action. Maybe they have, and maybe the results have just been inevitable. Surely there comes a point in any disaster, where the course of events have progressed too far for the outcome to be changed. Maybe that is the fate of Western New York. With declining population, and the 30 years long flight of industry from the Great Lakes states, the result is a dwindling tax base that only reduces the resources available to government to try to actively manage their way out. What they are left with is boosterism, empty slogans, and long shots. Perhaps that is why they seemingly have given up on initiatives to stimulate small, human scaled, economic growth, and spent their remaining money on “magic beans”. Casinos, sports stadiums, and other developer boondoggles. Everything but the proverbial monorail.

I left not because of a desire to leave. I left in 1990 because I could not manage to land one of the relatively few engineering jobs available. I left out of a perceived necessity to get that high paying job in my field that was the sole focus of my college education. I don’t regret it. I needed the money, and there was no doubt that I preferred to leave home for an engineering job, than live there and be under employed. Academics and Front Porcher’s can complain about the siren’s call of the meritocracy that lures the educated youth of small towns to leave their homes behind, but they cannot deny the economic incentives that exist. Complaining about them is as effective as complaining that water flows down hill.

I am sympathetic to their arguments, but I am pragmatic as well. Until someone comes up with viable ways to offer economic opportunity in places like Western New York, the kids of Batavia, Tonawanda, Rochester, and Lyons will continue to leave. I wish I had a solution, but in the end I have little else to offer than some empty promise that staying behind and building something better is a worthy endeavor deserving of their lives. Pretty hypocritical for a guy that left it all behind and moved away. You’d think the least I could promise would be a job driving the new monorail.

Am 4. Juni 1629 lief die Batavia, ein Schiff der Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), 60 Kilometer vor der australischen Westküste auf ein Riff. 341 Personen waren an Bord, darunter 38 Frauen und Kinder. Die gerade im Jahr zuvor nach modernsten Techniken gebaute Batavia war auf dem Weg von Amsterdam nach Java, um dort für die VOC Gewürze an Bord zu nehmen. Die VOC war die erste Aktiengesellschaft der Welt – und wie alle späteren Aktiengesellschaften auch vor allem darauf bedacht, so viel wie möglich Profit aus ihren Unternehmungen zu schlagen. Die Matrosen waren schlecht bezahlt, wurden schlecht behandelt und waren schlecht untergebracht.

Bis auf etwa 20 Personen überlebten die meisten Passagiere die Havarie. Sie konnten sich auf benachbarte Inseln retten. Der Kapitän unternahm den waghalsigen Versuch, mit ein paar Matrosen in einem geretteten Beiboot die rund 900 Meilen entfernte Niederlassung im damaligen Batavia zu erreichen, um Hilfe zu holen. Er schaffte es tatsächlich.

Unter denen, die auf den Inseln zurück geblieben waren, befand sich der Apotheker Jeronimus Cornelisz. Er war mehr oder weniger aus Amsterdam geflüchtet, nachdem seine Apotheke Bankrott und seine Ehe in die Brüche gegangen war. Auf der Insel der Gestrandeten riss er alle Befehlsgewalt an sich und errichtete ein blutiges Terrorregime, um sich die Ladung der Batavia zu sichern, unter der sich Gold, Silber und Edelsteine befanden.

Christophe Dabitch erzählt in dieser Trilogie die Geschichte von Jeronimus. Jean-Denis Pendanx malt die dazu gehörigen Bilder ein bisschen im Stil der der damaligen Zeit, was der Reihe eine sehr authentische Atmosphäre gibt. Erfreulich zurückhaltend erzählt und prima gezeichnet beschreibt der jetzt erschienene Band 1 die Schiffsreise bis kurz vor der Havarie. Band zwei soll im März 2010 erscheinen, der abschließende dritte Band erscheint in Frankreich im Frühjahr, bei Schreiber & Leser dann gegen Ende 2010.

Jean-Denis Pendanx, Christophe Dabitch: Jeronimus
Bd 1: 80 Seiten, A5, gebunden, 18,80 Euro, Schreiber & Leser, ISBN 978-3-941239-24-1
> Leseprobe

Last day of the conference on Business Ethics. So far the presenters have been in unanimous agreement that business should be ethical. Maybe next year I should propose a paper arguing against ethics just to liven things up a bit.

It has been an interesting experience. I’ve presented at some ASME conferences before, but those were to a very technical crowd, and one that is dominated by folks from the business world. This conference was primarily academics. The similarities and differences are telling. Some observations…

Combs are still optional in academia

They get the “pony tailed consultant” types showing up at their conferences too, cornering unsuspecting presenters looking to latch onto them like leeches to extract business and/or original thinking.

This conference being sponsored by the Vincentian Colleges (Niagara- St. Johns – DePaul) begins each day with a short speech by an overweight, gregarious, ruddy faced priest. Made me feel like I was back in High School, and I mean that in a good way.

Academics aren’t very nice to each other. Odd.

I am as knowledgable about certain subjects as several of these professors. Seriously, even reading and studying on my own. What do they do all day?

My presentation was mostly well received. Not being an academic I was a little worried about that. Only one guy jumped on me when I stated that some HR Performance Management systems are unjust. Since he taught in an HR program he took some issue with that. But, several others chimed in to my defense, and I held my ground that when Human Resource performance management systems begin to manage people as resources, instead of humans, by imposing arbitray measurements, they are indeed unjust. The lefties in the crowd (which, this being academia was damn near everyone) nodded in approval.

As for the rest of my trip, it was bittersweet in the usual 20 Prospect way. WNY in autumn can be achingly beautiful. But still the ruins of what was, and the ghosts of what might have been were all around. Seeing family was wonderful, but seeing the real 20 P and all the other places from my memories really tore me up inside.

Farewell Batavia, until next time…