Tales of Uncle Chuck

My uncle Chuck's funeral was this past weekend, and Lyle Lovett summed up my feelings in a song he wrote over 15 years ago:

I went to a funeral
Lord it made me happy
Seeing all those people
I ain't seen
Since the last time
Somebody died

Everybody talking
They were telling funny stories
Saying all those things
They ain't said
Since the last time
Somebody died

I served as a pallbearer, honored to be asked. Pallbearers pay their respects to the deceased first, then wait in a room while the other mourners say goodbye. While waiting in the room, my cousin Chip told several stories about his father that I thought I would post, as I think they're too good to be lost in time.

My uncle was born to a wealthy, or once-wealthy but still pretending, family. He had a habit of getting expelled from the private schools in which he was enrolled, and it was during one of these enforced vacations that, rather than immediately tell his parents he was thrown out of school, Chuck decided to enjoy his freedom for a while. As a way of evading truant or police officers who might question what a teenager was doing driving around in a convertible all day, Chuck asked a friend whose late father had been a doctor to forge him a note saying that he had the measles. The ruse worked for a while until the unexpected happened: Chuck came down with the measles. Going for treatment, the inevitable questions came up: how does one get the measles twice? and how does one get treated by a doctor who's been dead for a couple of years?

I also heard the story of how my uncle messed up his nose. Apparently, he and some friends were having an impromptu kegger in the woods. They didn't have a tap but weren't deferred. They instead popped the cork and then poured all the beer from the keg into a small metal tub, dipping their cups into it punchbowl style. But the police raided the party and everyone scattered, with Chuck putting the tub of beer in the back of his convertible.

Trying to stay ahead of the cops, Chuck took the highway's curves at high speed. From the driver's seat, he reached back to steady the tub and keep the beer from spilling out, only to crash and smash his face against the windshield and break off (?)/ cut off (?) the end of his nose. He then dropped his nose in his cup of beer and drove to the hospital to see if they could reattach it. At the hospital, they put the nose in a sterile metal cup until ready for reattaching. This was in the 1950s, so plastic surgery was still fairly primitive, and from that day forward, Chuck had a nose that was always "off." Something else he had from that day: the metal cup from the hospital. It was used as the bathroom cup for many years afterwards.

"What?" my cousin Chris said. "I drank from that cup and it had his nose in it?"

"That's what he said."

"Keep in mind," my cousin Bill said "our father liked to embellish. A lot."

RIP, Uncle Chuck.

Sometimes

Sometimes it's just easier to post photos I've taken than try and write something new.

The Best of 00's (Intro)

To be honest, I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that this decade is ending until I saw the Onion’s AVClub summing up the last ten years by picking their favorite tv shows, albums and movies. Years ago, when my friend Troy’s Cheeky Monkey website was a collective effort, Troy actively sought year-end “best of” lists from his friends, including a decade overview in 1999. The most difficult thing about those lists was avoiding repetition. How many times could I say I liked “The Sopranos” before seeming like I liked little else?

Things have changed. This has been a strange decade and not just for culture. The Bush administration’s unnecessary war in Iraq in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2001 had a paralyzing effect on this country and its culture. We became the land of magical thinking: if we conform and don’t question, then we’ll be safe and we’ll win the war and the troops won’t be harmed. If you do anything else, then the terrorists win. This attitude wasn’t just about politics. The post-9/11 timidity seemed to influence all media. Anyone who challenged this mindset fought an uphill battle just to be heard. Not an ideal atmosphere for creating interesting work.

The other major influence on culture in the 00’s? You’re looking at it right now. My blog? Yeah, right. No, I was referring to the internet. With its immediate access to almost anything, mainly video and audio (text seems to be lagging behind, thank God), the internet has changed the economics of show business, helped put record and dvd stores out of business, and altered how we think of and experience entertainment. Two examples of how downloading from the internet has changed how I experience entertainment. Two weeks ago, I saw the tv show Glee for the first time. I liked it. Within a week, I had seen every episode save one, either by downloading or watching on the official website. Previously, when I discovered I liked a show, I would have to (old school) wait for re-runs and plan my life or vcr around them or (new school) borrow or buy dvds of episodes I missed. The difference is one of time. Then I had to wait; now I have easy access and instant gratification. I still pay for much of my entertainment and have justifications when I download something for free. The fact that I even care makes me a bit of a fossil.

A better example concerns Jacques Rivette’s movie Out 1. Long considered a holy grail among cinephiles, the movie seems made for obscurity (it’s French, it’s 13 hours long, there are very few copies of the film, a new print hasn’t been struck since the early 70’s, etc.). I had resigned myself to never seeing it and only reading about it in books. Then, in 2006, it was announced that the film would be showing in New York and in London. The New York screening quickly sold out. I began planning a trip to London to see the movie, but before I booked my airline tickets, a second screening was announced in New York in March 2007. I went, liked the movie, and accepted that it would be the only time I would see it. Two years later, I found a copy on the internet complete with subtitles and downloaded it. It’s now on my hard drive; I can watch it any time I want. From impossible to see to once-in-a-lifetime event to something I own (for free) in the space of two years. That’s how the internet has changed things.

I think this easy free access to whatever you want has fragmented culture and entertainment to an unprecedented degree. There is no more mainstream, the center could not hold. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if you live in times during which the mainstream sucks. When Michael Jackson died earlier this year, it was said that “there would never be another Michael Jackson,” meaning “there would never be a pop star that big.” To which I reply “Good!” If it saves me from having to hear his shrill threadbare music again, hooray! I would rather live in a world in which the mainstream has crumbled and I can find Out 1 or Deltron 3030 online than be stuck with a monoculture that doesn’t interest me at all. However, this fragmented culture doesn’t seem to produce anything that speaks to or explains our current times. Everything exists on its own terms, pursuing its own goals. There was a lot of work from the last ten years that was very good, but it’s hard to think of much that was great and even harder to think of anything that addressed the times and expressed what it was like to be alive during them.

Looking over my list of favorites from this decade, there’s little that couldn’t have come from an earlier decade. We often heard how this was a golden age for television, and while there were many good shows (sometimes it seemed like too many), nothing from this decade impresses me as much as The Dick Van Dyke Show or The Prisoner or Monty Python’s Flying Circus, shows that aired over 40 years ago, and are both of their time and transcend it. With few exceptions, there’s been little in the last ten years that does this.

Eventually I will post my list of favorites from the last ten years, but first I had to explain how difficult it was coming up with such a list.

Up On The Roof

Last night my friend Lysa and I were having a drink in the bar of a swanky new hotel downtown. After checking out the bathrooms in the basement, we decided to see what the roof was like. Well, there was no roof deck or public access, but the doors were unlocked so we decided to go ahead and see what the view was like, at least until security came up and dragged us off.

They never did.

Below are some iPhone photos of the view.




Along those lines, this past summer, I was hanging out with friends when one of them, Kevin, suggested that we go see the view from his roof. "They were refinishing and tarring the roof earlier today, but I think it's dry by now." His building was in Hell's Kitchen so we were surrounded on all sides by the skyscrapers of NYC, illuminated by white lights that compensate for the stars you can't see from the city.





I love these views of the city, so much that it kept my mind off the fact that it was difficult to walk around on the roof because the tar wasn't, in fact, 100% dry. We walked around with the grace of Frankenstein's monster when he is first off the operating table, and my friend Kevin hoped that perhaps his building's super wouldn't find out who it was that messed up the roof, a hope dashed after we noticed the trail of tar shoeprints leading to his apartment door. Actually, we looked back and saw there was an extra set of footprints belonging to Jesus that seemed to disappear during the difficult times of our lives. When we asked Jesus how He could abandon us during our times of trial, He said "perhaps you guys shouldn't have gone up on the roof. You are really in trouble."

Recent Graffiti Murals In My Neighborhood

Oy Vey

During my dream this past Saturday night, Groucho Marx told me that no-one in my generation had produced anything of any real worth. I checked with several other people in the dream as to whether he was kidding or not, but ultimately concluded that he was right.

Last night I dreamt I was at the Museum of Modern Art and there was an exhibit on the top floor that I wanted to see, but to get there, I had to go through an exhibit about the Holocaust which included exact reproductions of the train cars, sorting areas and shower rooms. I kept looking for another way to the top floor but couldn't find one and didn't have the heart to ask the staff members "do I have to see the Holocaust?"

Today's Headline

Ted Williams' Severed Head Reportedly Abused In Cryonics Facility

Well, if you don't want your severed head abused, maybe you shouldn't send it to a cryonics facility in the first place.

The Smiths In Cross-Stitch

Somehow it just makes sense.

Meniere's Disease - Inner Ear Problem or Gateway To Psychic Powers?

Found this at work. It was kind of a slow day.

The Way We Live Now

An acquaintance of mine (I avoid using the term "Facebook Friend" ever since the teenage son of one of my Real Existence Friends told me "You don't know how funny it is hearing an adult call someone a 'Facebook Friend'") updated his status this afternoon by noting that it was the anniversary of his father's death. Several people commented, writing that they were sad or sorry, but among them, there was one comment that was, in its entirety, and I quote:

: (

Really? Someone mentions how sad they are over the death of their father, someone who meant so much to them, and your response is a sad-faced emoticon? You can't even take the time to type "so sorry?"

I envision a day when we will only communicate through emoticons, a day when they will act like our typographical moodrings to quickly let everyone know how we feel. Orwell was too optimistic when he wrote about language being reduced to "double-plus good" in 1984. On the other hand, perhaps the depth of your feelings can be summed up by a colon and a parenthesis.

What Amazon.com Really Thinks Of You

It's always nice to find out what Amazon.com and their algorithms think of you. This morning, in the "You Might Like" section of my amazon page, was a recommendation for a book I had never heard of titled Nothing is Strange with You by James Jeffrey Paul. Thinking perhaps is was some sort of self-help book or perhaps guide to esoteric knowledge, I began to read their description:

A young man kidnaps his own nephew and makes him his servant and sex slave.

Thanks, Amazon. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's recommendation The Dos and Don'ts of Restraining Orders.

Last Friday

Last Friday I stopped in my favorite dive bar Grassroots for a drink after work. It's the perfect place to read and chat with the bartender and drink pints of Brooklyn Lager for $3 a pint. At one point, I got up to put music on the jukebox: Nina Simone, Charles Mingus and (out of character for me) the Rolling Stones.

But when I got back to my seat at the bar, I saw that this girl had take my seat. I stood by her, stared at the chair and then stared at her, waiting for either an explanation or an apology. Neither was offered. She just plunked herself down in my chair, and what was worse, had moved all my stuff one seat over to the left. What was really incredible is that she had taken the trouble to place all my stuff in the exact same position it had been in: beer glass, magazine, reading glasses, even my shoulder bag on the floor. She had arranged them exactly as I had left them....

They were exactly as I had left them, of course, because I had been sitting one seat to her left the entire time. Nothing had moved or changed. When this realization hit me, a moment later than it should, I stopped staring and sat in my chair. There was no way to explain what had happened without sounding even more stupid ("You'll never guess what I thought!"). Staring at her with an incredulous look without saying anything was awkward enough for one happy hour. No point in making the situation worse.

02:44 Columbine

Columbine
Dave Cullen

When I was young, one of the reasons I always looked forward to going to my Aunt Juleann’s house was the fact that she had a hardcover copy of Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi’s account of the Manson Family murders and his memoir of successfully prosecuting them. For a time, as soon as we got to my aunt’s house, my sisters and I would race to that book, whomever was lucky enough to get there first got to pour over its creepy crime scene pictures in blurry black and white with the mutilated bodies tastefully cut out, leaving an eerie ghost white blankness where the victims had been. The only comparable objects of fascination were the Sears and JCPenney’s Christmas catalogues that arrived every autumn.

Since then, every true-life crime book I’ve read has had to compete with Bugliosi’s luridly fascinating tale. Dave Cullen’s Columbine is written with a novelist’s skill, such that, while I had the book out of the library, all I wanted to do was read it until I was finished. It’s a book that reminds you of what you had forgotten and corrects what you (and the media) got wrong. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold weren’t loveless loners but had friends and girlfriends. They didn’t “snap” and decide to walk into school and shoot people. Harris had planned it for over a year and it was actually supposed to be a bombing, which, if it had worked, would have resulted in a death toll in the hundreds. The inspiration wasn’t lonely school shooters, but terrorists like Timothy McVeigh.

Why did they do it? Cullen’s answer is so simple you can’t help but try to reject it. Harris was a psychopath. Dylan Klebold was suicidally depressed and turned his rage to the outside world. That’s it. No inciting incident, nothing specific provoked the attack. The attack on Columbine happened because the boys conceived it, planned it and carried it out. It happened because they made it happen.

Cullen’s chilling debunking of Columbine myths takes an ironic turn:

Dylan was heavy into school stuff. Eric, too. They attended the football games, the dances, and the variety shows and worked together on video production for the Rebel News Network. School plays were big for Dylan. He would never want to face an audience, but backstage at the soundboard, that was great. Earlier in the year, he’d rescued Rachel Scott, the senior class sweetheart, when her tape jammed during the talent show. In a few days, Eric would kill her

Written ten years after the shootings, Cullen is able to jump around in time, highlighting victim’s lives before the shooting to give you a queasy sense of suspense, which contrasts with stories of survivors after the shooting as they try to put their lives back together. This structure also gives him the opportunity to address diverse topics such as the rivalries among local religious groups, how false memories are created, and the way the human brain can re-wire itself after a trauma. It’s not just about the shootings.

As mentioned, Cullen’s explanation of the crime is that Eric Harris was a psychopath who hated the world and wanted to destroy some of it, and Dylan Klebold was clinically depressed, wanted to die and eventually agreed to take as many people with him. No Trench Coat Mafia. No victims of bullying getting revenge. Cullen finds plenty of evidence of pathology in Harris’ notebooks. Sometimes what seems like pathology may be the typical thoughts of a teenager. Harris seems constantly amazed at how well he is able to play the role of whatever adults want to see and how easily adults are fooled. Seems like a typical teenager, though other excerpts from his journals are chilling.

After reading Columbine, I was curious to see what other readers thought. I went to the reader review section on amazon.com and was amazed at the hornet’s nest lurking there. There were a number of angry reviews from those for whom Columbine is simply the story of bullied boys lashing out. They believe it should only be discussed with the goal of eliminating bullying from our schools, which is a noble goal but probably about as realistic as peace on earth. At least they have a goal and a hope that human behavior can be improved. If Columbine is just the story of resourceful psychopaths, how do we prevent it from happening again?

Mr. Hearing Strikes Again

I was talking to my friend Troy about the usual things: work, music and friends I haven't seen in a while.

"How's Ron?" I asked.

"Oh, I guess he's alright, except he broke Val's heart."

"Oh no. What happened?"

"I don't know. These things happen. Accidents happen, things break, things catch on fire."

This seemed a little cavalier, especially when talking about a good friend's breakup. Even for Troy.

"But he broke Val's heart?"

"No! His boat caught fire!"

If anyone reading this ever meets anyone from the band Guided By Voices, please tell them that while I enjoyed seeing them in concert, I really would like my hearing back.

Begin Counting The Hours

People who know me might find this hard to believe, but I don't really think of myself as a complainer. Along those lines, I don't see this blog as the forum for airing what complaints or woe-is-me's I do have: that's not why this blog was created and it's certainly nothing I'm interested in perpetuating.

Having said that, this has been a shit week and I, for one, will be happy to see the end of it. When did it begin? When my mother called me last Saturday to inform me that she has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and that one of my sisters was going into the hospital for surgery? When I learned that J. G. Ballard, one of my favorite writers, had died of cancer? How about when I was yelled at at work for doing my job? I had not been yelled at like that, like I was a child, in such a long time I can not remember the previous occurrence. One of the advantages of not having a girlfriend is that I don't have someone yelling at me on a regular basis, so I've sort of forgotten what the experience is like.

Those were the various beginnings to a bad week. It continued: work was very busy, I felt almost punch-drunk at night, my sister had her surgery (I was concerned), I saw a friend go through a tough time, everything and everyone seemed to be suffering from a pre-spring neurosis or upheaval. A co-worker and I joked each day about having a liquid lunch and even though neither one of us did (to the best of my knowledge), it was a comforting thought.

So I'm counting down the hours until the week is over and I can just stare into space this weekend, hit reset and hope that next week is better. We'll see. Tonight in a bar I overheard two asshole businessmen make fun of the idea of working for a non-profit. I know that's sounds trite and cliched, but it is true. On the other hand, while walking home, I saw a toddler in a stroller get excited when he saw a bus. Happily, his enthusiasm was contagious.

40 Days of Lent: Day Forty

Sights

Not Graffiti Murals, But Drawings On Paper Plastered On Walls In My Neighborhood

Sadly, even more transient that graffiti murals.





Sounds
The other day, my boss' wife was in the office. She walked over to my desk and said "I hate orange shirts." I nodded, a little confused because no-one in the office was wearing an orange shirt, but said "oh, yeah." She repeated herself "I hate orange shirts!" I kinda shrugged, and while I agree, I couldn't understand a) why the bothered her so much and b) why she was telling me. She then presented a number of receipts and medical forms, and I finally understood that she was in fact saying "I hate our insurance!"

Amen.

Hope you've enjoyed this Lenten season. Sunday, I get to begin cursing again.

40 Days of Lent: Day Thirty Nine

If life's for living/ what's living for?
from "Oklahoma, USA" by Ray Davies

One of my pet theories, as far as I know unproven, though I really haven't done the research on that point, has to do with the way human beings will create meaning for their lives as a mechanism to keep existing. To wit: the reason we create reasons to live is so that we will continue living. I don't believe this is a conscious decision but something wired into our brains by years of evolution, a psycho-biological feedback system. It's as if the brain realizes that without a reason to live, the entire organism (the person in question) will fall into despair and eventually die. An individual can die from depression or despair if they neglect eating, sleeping, or bascially taking care of themselves. To prevent this, the brain will create meaning, even if it is harmful or a complete lie, so that the individual will continue to eat, sleep, breathe, and continue the fundamentals of life. Anything will be believed so long as it keeps the person functioning. What matters is keeping the individual alive; the belief systems or personal mythology their brain creates to keep them living is secondary.

This explains why people can live for years with outlooks that might seem self-defeating or negative. It's not what their values are, only that they have values that keep them functioning. The bitter man who lives only for revenge, the alcoholic who lives only for happy hour, the soldier who is willing to die for his country: all their minds have adopted belief systems that may eventually destroy them, but until then give them a reason to continue living. As I said, this mechanism isn't conscious. People think they believe things because they have thought about them and determined them to be true. But I say that people would believe things anyway: that the mind creates belief systems, narratives and personal myths just as sweat glands produce sweat, as a way of regulating behavior and ensuring continued existence. The mind creates meaning to keep the body functioning, which in turn provides the material that keeps the mind alive. The goal of all this activity is simply to keep existing for its own sake. Or, more likely, exist until you produce offspring, then protect and provide for them until they are old enough to produce their own offspring.

The world doesn't inspire meaning within our brains. Our brains naturally generate meaning and use the world as its raw material.

40 Days of Lent: Day Thirty Eight

I know that I skipped a few days, or rather, had three days in which I was unable to post. Spirit willing, but flesh is weak and all that. Actually, the flesh wasn't weak, but my internet connection was. I was staying at a friends' country house for the weekend, and didn't feel like writing and posting on my iPhone. This past weekend was about relaxation and hanging and re-hanging and re-re-hanging blinds.

Happily, this year is one of those years in which Lent runs longer than 40 days, so I will be able to make up the missed days before Easter. With that in mind, here's a nice picture of the Martyrdom of 10,000:

40 Days of Lent: Day Thirty Seven

Lake of Fire

I recently watched Lake of Fire, a documentary about abortion in America. The movie takes pains to be balanced, though in my biased opinion, it's not hard to side with those who admit that, unfortunate as abortion is, it would be worse to remove the control over her body from a woman and insist that she carry a child she doesn't want to term. The pro-life side in the film seems close-minded and controlling (why are all these single men so obsessed with telling vulnerable women what to do) and while the pro-choice side completely disregards the fact that it is a human that they are terminating, at least they acknowledge that it is a bad situation without any easy answers.

Yes, it is a human that is being killed. There are some graphic abortions in the film (thank God the director used black and white rather than color) and despite pro-choice propaganda, what comes out of the mother is not just a clump of cells. In fact, the doctor has to piece together the aborted child to make sure it is all there. Otherwise they need to remove whatever is left in the mother's body. So we see scenes of arms, legs, part of a head with eyes being reassembled in a metal pan. It is horrifying, which is the point. This is basic mammal biology: big things prey on and kill little things. It's not fair and it's not nice, but as Noam Chomsky wearily points out in the film, it's hard to take the opinion of those who obsess over unborn babies seriously when they don't seem to have the same concern or compassion for the suffering of other human beings who live in poverty or political repression.

I think woman have an interesting relation to abortion, which is that it is unfortunate, but it's just one more d*mn thing that they have to put up with in this world. This is brought out in the final sequence in the film, in which a woman goes for an abortion, admitting that it is just not the time for her to be having a child. After the procedure, she confirms that she made the right decision...and then breaks down and cries. But it's the men who are actively pro-life that amaze me. They don't just seem to worry about women having control, though there is part of that. Listening to the men in this film get emotional as they talk about how they have to save the babies, and obsess over the innocent babies, a different dynamic seems to be present. The men seem to be hung up on being heroes - life has given them little other opportunity to save anyone or make a real difference, so by preventing abortions, they think of themselves as having saved human lives. Trying to help others is certainly not a bad impulse, but the fact that it is so misdirected (not to mention misogynist) is truly tragic, especially when it manifests in murdered doctors and destroyed women's health clinics.

40 Days of Lent: Day Thirty Six

More About The Forever Family

In this post, I mentioned The Forever Family, one of the cults found in my hometown in my youth, along with my parents' reaction: "stay away from them!" In the comments, my sister Erin admitted she wasn't aware of them (she's lucky enough to have been too young) but said that a google search turned up the following article from Time Magazine:
-----------------------
Where Are the Children?
March 1, 1976
For several years they have been a fixture of downtown Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in the old hard-coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania. They wear pins that say GET SMART, GET SAVED. Abstemious, straitlaced, pushy in their missionary piety, they work the streets, buttonholing teen-age passers-by with provocative zeal.

They are members of the Forever Family, a youth-oriented evangelistic group. They say they espouse a return to a primitive "New Testament" brand of Christianity. With apparent success, they forbid drinking, drugs and premarital sex. Thus far, they may have made more enemies than converts. Their hard-driving proselytizing has led to arrests for harassment and obstructing sidewalks. Lately, they have had vigilantism to contend with as well. On Feb. 12,.four carloads of teen-age toughs invaded the sect's center in Wilkes-Barre and went on a rampage. They tossed furniture, spread garbage, and broke most of the windows in the place. Two days later, other raiders devastated a Family house in Scranton and roughed up Kevin Hoppes, 24, "guardian" (area coordinator) of the group's "lambs" (members). The Family had other troubles. Police hauled in member Steve Gattuso for getting a 14-year-old juvenile offender to stay in the Wilkes-Barre house for two nights without the knowledge of his parents, thus violating terms of the youth's parole.

But all this is minor compared with the accusations of at least eight area couples whose teen-age sons and daughters have disappeared. Like the parents embroiled in battles with Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (TIME, Nov. 10), they claim that the sect has stolen their children from them. The Family says it knows nothing about the missing youths. Leader of the parents is Scranton Salesman Donald Fetterolf, whose 17-year-old son Eric left home last Aug. 21 and is still missing. The latest to disappear is David Harris, 15, of nearby Tunkhannock, whose mother thinks that he joined the Family because he talked of being "born again" and "Roman Catholics don't talk like that."

No Figures. Beset by bad publicity, the Family has changed its name to the Church of Bible Understanding. No one knows how badly the group has been hurt by the attacks. Hoppes refuses to offer figures on the size of his flock, which includes residents in two communal houses and a fluid nonresident constituency. The Family, incorporated in 1974, has centers in 15 cities in eight states and, according to tax records, is headed by one Steward Traillis. Strangely, Hoppes claims he knows nothing about the man.

Reaction of mainstream clergy to the Family is mixed. Leonard Heffner, a United Church of Christ pastor in Scranton, feels that parents these days should be grateful if their kids are involved in a group that concentrates on Bible reading rather than something worse. But Msgr. James Timlin, chancellor of the Scranton diocese, warns youths not to be "taken in" by the zealots' "easy and simple solutions to very complex problems."
------------------------------

A few things about this article I love. First of all, "old hard-coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania." By the time this article was published, the coal mines had been closed for decades. Perhaps I'm being nostalgic, but my memory of the Wilkes-Barre of my youth is that it was, for a small town, a fairly cosmopolitan place. Not compared to Paris or Milan, perhaps, but certainly compared to much of America and the hometowns of friends of mine. Secondly, I love the "rampage" of the "teen-age toughs." They "tossed furniture" ("that ottoman would look better over here!") "spread garbage and broke most of the windows." While unfortunate and annoying and I certainly don't want anyone coming to my apartment and doing the same, the entire passage reminds me of comedian Bill Hicks' comparing American gangs (Guns!) with British ("This weekend, some hooligans knocked over a dustbin in Shaftesbury!"). Finally, I love that the pastor prefers that impressionable kids are involved in a cult that focuses on bible study "rather than something worse." Granted, my opinion is biased, but I think potheads sitting in front of a tv and giggling are less harmful to themselves and society than any religious cult.

The article did answer one of my questions: whatever happened to The Forever Family? Did they decide to disband or just sort of fall apart? No, they just changed their name to The Church of Bible Understanding and continued with their cult activities. I tried to find more up-to-date info, but sadly, the search engine for Wilkes-Barre's Times Leader website is so primitive it doesn't recognize that words within quote marks should stay together, so that searching for "forever family" brings up any article that features either word, including obituaries and stories like "Life Lessons from Mom" and "Feds Urge Prison For Track Coach." The Scranton Times-Tribune has a good article from 2003 about the Church of Bible Understanding found here. Not surprisingly, many of the characteristics of the church and its leader, Stewart Traill, can be found in other cults, whether it is the Lyman Family or the Scientologists.

Two surprising things: one, the Church of Bible Understanding is affiliated with the antiques store Olde Good Things, which I've been to, and it's - uh-oh - a great store. A really great store, actually. Secondly, according to wikipedia, the COBU was parodied on the Seinfeld episode "The Checks,' providing another example of that oft-heard New York expression "it's just like that Seinfeld episode..."