RICKSTER IS THE COLUMNIST FOR THE WEEKLY PUBLICATION, "THE SOMERS RECORD"

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Friday, October 27, 2017

KICKING AND SCREAMING

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (07-13-17)

      Is there any better idea than playing a family-friendly game of kickball on a beautiful, sunny Fourth of July afternoon? What I mean to say is that ANYTHING is a better idea than playing a family-friendly game of kickball on a beautiful, sunny Fourth of July afternoon. That is, if you are over the age of 50 and have any pride at all.

      Our friends Pete and Jenn had a lovely neighborhood Independence Day party and thought it would be fun to let the adults and kids play in backyard game of kickball. A great opportunity for us grownups to get out on the field, show the youngsters that we still have what it takes, and then get together afterwards for an MRI.

      By arriving late I spared myself the indignity of being picked last to be on the team. Traditionally, the team captain picks his or her squad out of the available pool of players based on athletic prowess. I'm used to being picked last, usually at some point after the game is over. I suggest that from now on that the teams be chosen alphabetically, starting in the middle. Sometimes I am selected as Equipment Manager or Head of Groundskeeping, which are positions of leadership far more important than actually participating on the field.

      Kickball rules are similar to those of baseball, with a couple differences. One is that if you hit a baserunner with the ball while in between bases, the runner is out. This rule is called "Indian rubber," which is either politically incorrect or completely nonsensical, depending on which Indians are involved. Either way, it's simply an excuse for little kids to throw things as hard as they can at adults, who are slower and larger targets. You'd better have good aim if you attempt it, because several throws ended up in the vegetable garden. We had to improvise a new rule involving zucchini, but I don't have time to go into that here. There were some trees on the field of play. The crabapple was foul and the fir was fair. If you kicked it into a tree you could wait for it to come down and catch it for an out, if you had the time.

      I thought I would be a little faster on the basepaths than I was. Little kids who seemed barely out of the embryo stage were zooming around me all over the place. I have long strides and I did get to first base using much fewer steps, when I got there at all. If that's not a legitimate statistic it should be.

      I managed to kick into a double play, and failed to get on base until I bunted by mistake, which brought forth jeers and catcalls, even from cats. I couldn't seem to get to third base, even though I had it punched into my GPS. It seemed even more difficult to get to third base now than it was in high school.

      On defense it didn't go any better. One ball bounced off my face before I was able to catch it (the ball, not my face). Another time I ran into a little kid as we were both trying to make the play, him with his hands and me with my face again. Then a ball bounced off the head of a statue that sat in the woods beyond center field and caromed back onto the field, where the second basegirl stepped on the bag to record an out, and I was forced to consider the possibility that inanimate objects were making better plays in the field than I was.

      We played for a while, paused for the seventh inning stretcher, to collect those fallen in the line of duty, then played some more. It's hard to outlast kids. Eventually the cheeseburgers started to come off the grill and food won the war of attrition. The last thing I wanted was to make an error at the plate.

Friday, October 20, 2017

HOLDING FOURTH

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (07-06-17)

     I would like to congratulate the town of Somers and the Lions Club for hosting another fun-filled Independence Day fireworks extravaganza this year at Reis Park. Watching fireworks is one of the few things that the internet has failed to improve upon, i.e., ruin. You can't watch them on a two-inch iphone screen and get anything out of the experience. Just for the record, the same is true for music, television, movies and newspapers, but I don't have time to go into that right now. You need to show up to behold the random patterns of exploding light, feel the power of the report hanging in the air. That reminds me, I have a report hanging in the air that I forgot to finish in the fifth grade, I wonder if it's too late to hand it in.

     Andrea was there again this year with her band, playing some classic rock. Classic rock means anything that actually has a guitar in it. She had a bunch of little girls helping her out by dancing around onstage. When the band broke into "I Want Candy," the girls seemed genuinely disappointed that there was no actual candy. The music stopped abruptly when someone reported a missing child, but resumed just as abruptly when it was discovered that the missing child was one of the girls dancing around onstage, and she had not missed anything.

     There was a drone hovering over the proceedings for a while, which was slightly creepy, and we were pointing it out to others. It was a "Superman moment," like when the townspeople, in a confounded frenzy, glanced skyward and cried, "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!" People who are that easily stupefied by birds and planes could cause a panic at a magic show.

     I don't know what the drone was there for, I assume to take pictures of the fireworks, although it could have been carrying out some sort of reconnaissance mission to try to find a Dunkin' Donuts or something.

     When I was a kid we used to light sparklers on the 4th of July and wave them around indiscriminately next to flammable objects, for fun. I don't see them much anymore, so I guess they were outlawed. Probably some kid lit his hair on fire, and because of him, now NONE of us can light our hair on fire, regardless of whether it would be an improvement or not. It was probably the smoke from his hair that violated the park's no-smoking policy. Instead, they sell these LED spinning light whirligigs and geegaws that look like little UFOs. They don't seem dangerous, but I bet they could louse up your cellphone service.

     I listened to the fireworks with my eyes closed and imagined Francis Scott Key writing about the only thing he could hear, confined in his jail cell: the bombs bursting in air. Hey, I'm a songwriter, too. If it had been me in that situation writing the Star Spangled Banner, I like to think I would have done the same thing, but I doubt if I could hear anything over the sound of my constant sneezing in that musty prison air. My National Anthem would have included a couple patriotic lines about dust motes.

     I was drinking water all day since I didn't see anything stronger available, and it was taking its toll. I didn't know if it was ethical to use the handicapped port-a-potty. My knee would certainly qualify as handicapped, but that's not the part that had to go, so I figured we should angle over towards the parking lot and slip out during the "grand finale" to beat the rush. Next year, I propose that they fire off the grand finale first so I don't miss it. I got caught in the traffic anyway, since the police make you wait until the shuttle buses are filled so you don't run over a bunch of kids on your way out. By the way, these are the same kids who almost ran ME over a hundred times before the fireworks even started.

Friday, October 13, 2017

SINGING A FEW BARS BEHIND BARS

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (06-29-17)

     I'm one of those guys who thinks that too much exposure to Broadway show tunes can cause nausea, dizziness, headaches, inflammation, stomach pain and blotchy skin. Please use only as directed, by a qualified stage director. Last Thursday was different. I was privileged to be among a select audience invited to hear a recital of songs performed by inmates of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. The roles were reversed, and we were the captive audience. I was curious to see if music could survive there, on a diet of frozen meatloaf and spaghetti.

     The place is a maximum security prison, so first we had to wait on line to be processed. That means we empty everything out of our pockets, and store our cellphones in a locker. Mine is still in there, but it's up for parole in six months.

     They waved us with those metal detector wands. I remember when security guards used to search you manually, and I almost got myself taken down plenty of times when I got too fidgety during the pat down. It would be so ironic to get tased for being ticklish, when there are so many other good reasons to tase me. There was no cavity search, but I had just been to the dentist the week before. After I was processed I felt a little better, like cheese but without the holier than thou attitude.

     Then it was showtime. The songs were presented in a cafe setting, which the inmates had painted and decorated themselves. They offered a sentence or two about the artist or the songwriter, and "sentence" is not a word to toss around lightly here. They belted out songs by Carole King, Johnny Cash and Leonard Bernstein. They covered "The Lion King," "Wicked" and "The Color Purple." They poked a little fun at themselves with "Ain't Misbehavin'," and provided some situationally-updated lyrics for "If I Were a Rich Girl."

     The girls were fantastic. All of them could carry a tune, although some carried it quite a bit farther than others. Judging by some of their reactions, some of the songs hit close to home, especially those about children, family and time lost. Led by Broadway veteran Anne Twomey Lloyd and ably accompanied by arranger/composer Michael Minard, they all shared a heartfelt enthusiasm, and a genuine feeling that special moments in life are found wherever you make them.

     Prison is a pretty regimented place. Every note that is sung there has to fall in line and play by the rules. You can't have quarter notes wandering around where only half notes are allowed, and you can't have a rest in the middle of a measure unless it is approved in advance. And yet even in a highly regulated environment, music rose from the auditorium. What probably seemed like growing a tree on the dark side of the moon when they started, blossomed into a magnolia by showtime.

     The program was made possible by Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a non-profit organization that runs programs in New York prisons through which inmates can express themselves through the arts and transform their lives from outwardly-based to inwardly-based.

     These are women who have done bad things in their lives, and there are those who would question why we should point resources in their direction, when so many other sectors of society go without. It's a good question, as austerity sucks the arts out of school and community budgets. The answer lies in the fact that most prison inmates eventually return to a life outside these walls. And while they are inside them, they can either learn skills that will make them better at what they did before, or they can learn self-discovery and self-worth. That choice is mostly up to us.

     If music follows these women around for the rest of their lives, it has been proven more likely that that the police will follow someone else. I'd like to thank them for an enjoyable evening, and I'd also like to thank them for not singing "Tomorrow," because you can bet your bottom dollar that I'd be singing that damn thing until somebody locks ME up and throws away the key.

Friday, October 6, 2017

LOFTY VIEWS ON A RIVER CRUISE

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (06-22-17)

     I've never gone on a cruise before because I've had recurring nightmares about all the things that could go wrong. In one nightmare I board the ship, and notice that the other passengers are wearing legionnaire's hats, there are legions of them and they all have runny noses and a persistent cough. In another the captain announces that we'll be experiencing some rough weather due to the confluence of a hurricane, monsoon and tornado occurring directly above the ship. In a third, I am singled out of the audience during the staff show and forced to wear a blonde wig and dance with a French woman to the song, "Barbie Girl."

     But I finally went, on a river cruise up the Rhine, and thank goodness none of those nightmares came true. Except the last one. And now I'm appearing in the nightmares of others. I expected to be forced to walk the plank sometime on the third day.

     I'm too cheap to travel first class, so we were in a small berth, more like a child berth, on a low level probably in between the boiler room and the cargo hold. We did have a nice big window, but it was right at sea level. You'd be surprised how many angry ducks there are on the Rhine river. We passed castle after castle, but we could only see into the basement. I could make out a dungeon, with a lot of torture devices, but it could have been a home gym.

     The castles were lovely but I don't see why they were built at all. If the Normans, for instance, came over from Norm or wherever they're from, and wanted to conquer our house, first they would complain about the driveway. Then they would raid the fridge, turn on the TV and ask, "Why does this couch smell like cat pee?"

     We boarded the boat in Strasbourg, which is the biggest city in the Alsace region of France. An Alsatian is the same as a German shephard, and that applies to all dogs and some humans. The next day we stopped in the wonderful little town of Rudesheim, overseen by the statue of Germania, which represents the unification of Germany. If you take the gondola up to the pedestal the views are breathtaking, although that might be the altitude.

     We proceeded on up the Rhine, our cameras working overtime, along with our barmaids. Greg, one of the only other Americans on the boat, noted, "Castle, church, village. Repeat as necessary."

     On the fifth day we reached our destination, Amsterdam. If you've ever been to this lovely city, and all went right, you probably don't remember a thing about it. Or so you allege. There are so many ways to get yourself killed in Amsterdam, and all of them involve crossing the street. If you can maneuver in between the bicycles and pedestrians, cars and buses, the tram suddenly appears out of nowhere and you have to dive for cover. Don't dive into the canal, because the traffic there is worse.

     Then we were off on the train to Berlin. We traveled the country of Hamburg and Frankfurt, and I got to thinking how nice it would be to get back to the States and get myself a hamburger of frankfurter. I dreamt of a REAL American breakfast. And by that I mean a Belgian waffle, French toast, a cheese Danish and an English muffin.