Why Are We Doing This?

Not many people ask themselves this question. Have you ever noticed? The world is awash in frantic activity, and nobody ever says, why are we doing this? This particular activity. This task. What outcome are we hoping for?

Not Lambertville, but you get the idea

Case in point. I spent three and a half hours at a local zoning board meeting tonight. The man who needed a variance had already disturbed the land around his house beyond what was allowed by the city steep slope ordinance by a factor of something like ten. Storm water was already a problem. If you live on a hill, you know what I'm talking about, gullies washing, soil eroding. But the thing was done. He needed a variance to say it was okay, so that he could get a certificate of occupancy to live in the house where he was already living, where he had been living, in fact, for two years.

I knew why I was there. I'm on the board. It's my job, among other things, to try and keep the hill from sliding down onto Route 29. The man knew why he was there; he had to show up to get his variance. His lawyer, from what I could tell, was there to talk at the board for two hours, because, of course, if you appear before the board they'll grant you a variance, right? Especially if you wave some visuals at them. And their engineer was there because the board likes you to have an engineer.

But nobody was taking care of business. The man who wanted the variance wanted to make excuses for whatever he had done to the property. The lawyer, for all his talking, said very little of substance. The engineer hadn't done much engineering on the project that we could see, at least nothing that addressed our city engineer's concerns about storm water. Yes, we understood why they had to move the sewer pipe. But what about the storm water? No plan. No drawings. So no variance for another two months, at which time we'll have to go through the whole dreary charade all over again.

This is why bureaucracy is such a drag. The bureaucrats never ask themselves why they are doing things. They just do them because it's the rule. This is why making yourself write a thousand words a day is such a drag. You need a plan. You need diagrams. Otherwise the whole muddy mess will go sliding down the hill.

Kate Gallison

The Great Falls at Paterson

Formed in the Ice Age in an area later inhabited by Lenape Indians and early Dutch settlers, the Great Falls on the Passaic River in northeastern New Jersey is a wonder to behold. When Alexander Hamilton visited it in 1778, he saw not a marvel of nature and a thing a beauty but a source of manufacturing power to spur the economy of budding nation.

Hamilton helped found Paterson—named for Governor William Paterson—and he commissioned no less than Pierre Charles L’Enfant, designer of Washington, DC, to lay out a system of canals to harness the falling water’s energy. There soon grew up a mill town that made cotton cloth, paper, locomotives, and even the Colt revolver and the first submarine.

Throughout the 19thCentury, immigrants streamed into the city to work in manufacturing and founded businesses in the burgeoning city. The Falls and the city that grew up around it inspired great writers. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg called Paterson home.

William Carlos Williams wrote a sprawling epic poem called “Paterson,” which won the first National Book Award for Poetry. It describes a leap over the falls by Sam Patch, who also survived going over Niagara. In a less benign and less lofty (pun intended) cultural event, the mobsters in an episode of the “Sopranos” threw a drug dealer to his death off the bridge that spans the Falls.

After many years of neglect the Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park became a part of the National Park System two years ago this coming Friday. Now the 77 foot Falls has national protection and park rangers to help visitors enjoy the sights.

Even if you can’t make it there to see The Great Falls in flood stage, here’s a film to give you a taste of its power and wonder.

Annamaria Alfieri

NoirCon 2012

It’s a chilly, rainy day here in Philadelphia, a fitting day to contemplate the Noir genre. Noir is not everyone’s cup of tea. But then, cups of tea are for the cozy readers. Noir is for the straight Scotch at one gulp readers. I have tried to write Noir novels, to no avail. The last time I tried, a reviewer wrote, “Hathaway’s latest novel can be safely read by your teenage niece or the country vicar.” Since then, I’ve given up on writing Noir, but that doesn’t prevent me from reading it and enjoying it, or — from attending Noir conventions, such as NoirCon 2012 in Philadelphia, November 8th to 11th.

Deen Kogan and Lou Boxer are a great team that always put on a wonderful show. I’ve been to two of their productions, and there was never a dull moment. This year, Lawrence Block is the winner of the “David Goodis Award.” Goodis is one of our best Noir writers, from the 1940s and 50s. Library of America has just published a collection of his works.

At the last NoirCon, many of us tried to define, “Noir.” We said things like, “Well, er, it’s about losers with, er, no futures, stumbling into criminal activities, uh, making poor life choices, er, leading to self-destruction, uh….” Others claimed it was the setting that distinguishes noir novels. They are more atmospheric than other crime novels, set in gloomy night clubs featuring used-up torch singers surrounded by swirling smoke, or abandoned warehouses, or third-rate motels. After many attempts, we settled for the French translation of Noir, which is simply — black.

Ironically, despite all the gloom and doom, I’ve never been to a conference where there was more laughter than NoirCon. So, if you’re looking for a really good time, in a dark and depressing atmosphere, sign up for NoirCon 2012.

I’ll be there — laughing.

Robin Hathaway

The Persuasion

Dr. Herbert Lipscomb, my college Latin professor, was a rara avis, a real charmer!

I kind of inherited him in high school. My Latin teacher, Mary Lee Tillette, had been one of his star pupils at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. She often sang his praises, on the same level with Cicero, Ovid and Virgil. I revered the guy before I ever met him.

So, when I entered that college it was destined that I would major in Latin and become one of the Great One's girls. I soon learned that only the really favored ones were called by their first name in his class. You had to be "Miss Straw" until that magical moment when he would say, "Miss Thelma, will you please translate for us."

Finally, that moment did arrive. I could scarcely speak. Every eye in the class was on me, some with envy, others now including me in their sacred club.

It was a school tradition that when you arrived your friends took you out to dinner at the local inn, The Columns. (Steak was about $1.50!)

Dr. Lipscomb was a fastidious bachelor who loved the adulation of his pupils. When we invited him to dine with us, he always brought a bunch of flowers from his own garden. He wore a signet ring on his pinkie that rumor said was given to him by his lover Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The summer after my sophomore year I got a job up north - as a counselor at the Henry St. Settlement House Camp. It was such an enlightening experience, I decided to go into social work and change my major to Sociology. After all, Latin was a dead language.

Quaking in my saddle shoes, I entered the Great Man's office to break the news. You'd have thought I was confessing to murder or grand larceny.

He listened, his noble face a doleful study.

Finally, the majestic, sonorous voice began. "Miss Thelma," (my courage began to unravel)... "If you want to help a mother who has just lost her child, you need to understand her. To have a deep feeling for her life, her loss, her misfortune.

"Only if you have read the noble words in Seneca's Trojan Women can you feel the pain of Hecuba, who lost her husband, most of her beloved children. Or mothers today, and the children who are victims, the deaths, murders, betrayals, the ageless themes - the callowness of those in power. Only after you have lived through the pages of these noble souls will you have the strength and compassion to feel what people today are suffering.

"This century's unspeakable evils, the Holocaust, the Gulags, the bombs of Hiroshima. If you have lived - line by line - with these ancient women, only then will you have the armor and the understanding you will need."

The next day I renewed my place in the Dean's office as a Latin major.

Sometimes I've wondered how life would have been if I'd not been persuaded by that magic voice...

T. J. Straw

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

Not long ago I passed one of those milestone birthdays where people say, gosh, I didn't know she was that old, and one's hairdresser says, gallantly, you certainly don't look it. They may be serious, I don't know; when I was younger than I am now I used to look younger than I was then. "You don't look that old" isn't always a compliment. Sometimes it means, geez, your face doesn't reflect any knowledge whatever of real life.

And yet here I am, having passed this milestone. I ought to know about real life now. My life has been as real as the next guy's, I guess. Where is my wisdom? When am I going to achieve the wisdom of age?

There are several ways for geezers to deal with life successfully as it moves on around them.

One can become Andy Rooney, and complain about everything all the time, in as charming a way as one can manage. I could do that. My feelings for the twenty-first century and its folkways are well known.

One can assume that one now knows everything worth knowing, and heap one's knowledge and advice on the heads of one's cringing children, grandchildren, and friends (if any), in the manner of the Dowager Duchess of Whatever. It's probably too late for me to fully develop that as a personal style.

One can turn off one's hearing aid, go a little batty and spend one's days in a sweet pink cloud. My hearing is too keen for that, and I have no real tolerance for sweetness. The batty thing I can do with very little trouble.

One can threaten to write one's memoirs.

I could totally write my memoirs. Because my life, while not in the least influential, in the grand scheme of things, or in any way inspirational, has been weird. Now and then I'll tell some story to my friends and acquaintances and one of them will say, "Kate, you should write your memoirs." Some of those stories are too good to let die. The time I mustered out to be a guard at Trenton State Prison. That's one of my best stories. And there are others.

We'll see how it goes. Someday I may become too batty to suffer embarrassment, and I might just let 'er rip. If I knew you in the old days, tremble. You know who you are. Meanwhile I'm writing a YA novel in the hope of connecting to a new generation. Nobody I ever knew is in it.

Kate Gallison