A cat by any other name; Oh deer me; We (Scrooge and I) come a wassailing

"Cats have it all - admiration, an endless sleep, and company only when they want it."

AUBURN, Maine — This holiday season the Blasi family made a momentous decision to change the cat’s name — or at least use several other aliases.

The resolution will affect the household for the coming year. We debated and debated — for five agonizing minutes — at the kitchen table over a bowl of hot punch. After all the haggling, we agreed to a new name for a cat that never ever stops talking.

We will be in court on Monday to make it official after we file papers with several lawyers. The cat will also be summoned by several aliases depending our our moods and how much this hairball bothers me when I am filing a damn story at the kitchen table.

My wonderful, beautiful wife named the cat “Cindy Lou Who,” the sweet kid from Whoville in “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.”  Every time I hear Grinch, I think of a nonsense-filled Washington, D.C. occupied by Li'l Abner and his hillbilly friends.

Terri has also called the Cat — Diva — which has several definitions, including “a self-important person who is temperamental and difficult to please.”

In this case, it is a cat and it owns our hearts — and she knows it. It screeches when it demands to be fed and wanders the house, bellowing “Hello.” It really does sound like that.

The cat, which we bought from an animal shelter the past March, is a drama queen — and we are convinced “Diva” is appropriate. She wakes us out of a sound sleep in the dead of night with her ear-piercing, unbearable screech. She is miserable until she has her morning, stinky food, much like I feel when I suck down my first of cup of coffee.

Diva never stops talking and screeching — and it can be intolerable until you give in and crack open another can of smelly cat food. This is a cat with a hair-trigger temper that will take a swipe at you when she’s having a moment— and there are many.

She’ll steel your chair because Diva is a rascal and an assassin, who knocked off several mice and screamed at the top of her lungs after she committed the bloody deeds.

And so Diva will be the cat’s name — along with several aliases.

To be honest, I don’t think the cat gives a damn so long as it eats — just like a Scrooge acquaintance — who wouldn’t attend “The Old Screw’s” funeral unless he was also fed.

Oh deer me!

I was hustling back from a University of Maine at Farmington men’s basketball game that I covered a couple of Friday’s ago in Farmington.

It was a dark and cold night, my friends. Everybody was at home enjoying their wood stoves while I kept my eyes on a lonely stretch of road in search of danger.

I had to file a story, because that’s what reporters do.

I raced around a hair-pin turn on a hill at about 50 mph on dangerous Route 4 in Livermore when a giant buck leaped in front of my Rondo Kia. 

I had a three-second window to decide if I wanted to live or die on a dimly-lit country road on a freezing Friday night.

I skidded, veered a bit to the right, hit the gas pedal and slammed in the deer’s ass. I hit it hard and it limped off into the woods. I drove off to call it in. I accelerated to lift the hood to prevent the deer from crashing through the window.

I heard the glass cover on the left-front headlight shatter after the impact, which could be heard for miles. I limped home with one headlight and a fear that there were other deer lurking on the side of road ready to pounce on other unsuspecting drivers.

I needed to file my story because that’s what reporters do.

I also needed a stiff drink because that’s what this reporter required after dodging the Grim Reaper.

The Old Screw warmed my heart

I have read just about everything that Charles Dickens published over his lifetime, but I never sat down with “A Christmas Carol.”

I’ve watched several movies called a “Christmas Carol” or “Scrooge.”

So I promised myself that I would read the Dickens’ story about angry old man — like Henry F. Potter — who despises the world and tries to make Bedford Falls a hellhole for young George Bailey.

There’s a real-life versions of Scrooge or Potter in our nation’s capital.

I was enthralled as Dickens took us through Ebenezer’s tumultuous life — with three diligent spirits who slapped around the miser along the way.

He certainly had it coming to him.

The short story is spectacular, especially the way Dickens reveals his characters through sharp dialogue. The book has certainly withstood the test of time, just like Philip Van Doren Stern’s short story, “The Greatest Gift,” which we all know as “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Dickens and Van Doren Stern had it right when they penned two ageless stories about miserly, selfish old men whose only concern is themselves and the bottom line.

Sound familiar?

But “The Old Screw” figured it out in the end when he said: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

I leave you with Scrooge’s epiphany and bid you all a happy holiday.

A tale of the macabre that jars a loving memory loose

The Blasi family gets spooked by a lurid tale told by Ira Glassman on National Public Radio's "This American Life."

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

AUBURN — A spooky story told over a radio is more terrifying than a slice-and-dice movie on the big screen.

Don’t believe me!

Orson Welles' broadcast of H.G. Wells’ "War of the Worlds,” which is a tale of a Martian invasion on Earth, drove the residents of New Jersey mad with fear on Oct. 30, 1938.

Listen to a story of the macabre over the radio and your mind wanders when an adept narrator scares the living crap out of you. Weird and horrifying images pop into to your mind when you hear about two kids who were nearly kidnapped by a bunch of psychos near a cemetery — or the guy who used foxhole humor to describe his working environment in a morgue. The narrator cracked jokes about mangled corpses and organs kept in glass jars. 

I couldn’t stop laughing.

TV just doesn’t cut it when it makes a sorry attempt to frighten us with ridiculous images of a guy with chain saw dissecting another human being. It’s all fake or worse — computer generated crap.

The mind is a scary place to be when tales of terror are spun over the radio. There are more horrible thoughts or weird incidents stored in a human mind than can be recreated on television. Real-life horror stories abound in the deep recesses of our fragile brain.

The three of us gathered around the dinner table as dark skies gave way to a warm sun on a quiet, chilly, autumn Sunday afternoon.

I tuned into WBUR, Boston’s National Public Radio station, on my Mac. I love radio, and my MacBook Air offers dozens of radio stations. I really hate TV where pathetic reality shows or 24-hour news stations like FOX, which features unfair and unbalanced reporting about all the crazies from the Republican Party, permeate the air waves.

We got lucky and found Ira Glassman, the host of NPR’s “This American Life,” airing a bunch of old horror stores. After all, the devil’s night is upon us — Halloween — which is a bunch of bull, but Beelzebub's favorite holiday gives retailers a chance to fatten their wallets.

I don’t believe in ghosts, and when you die, you are dead as door nail, to quote Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” You are not coming back to haunt a house or scare some poor bastard in a cemetery. You are worm food unless you decide to be cremated.

We sat like the “The Waltons” as we listened to one horror story after another, but instead of an old Philco radio, we listened to a computer. I wonder what Johnboy would think?

The first story was about a woman who was attacked by a rabid raccoon outside her home, and her nightmares when she tried to get treatment for rabies.

But the next vignette of horror was a story I heard before with my 10-year-old son in 2006.

Ten years ago, Anthony and I sat on the bed to listen to Glassman’s tales of horror. The story was about two brothers who hitched a ride with people who resembled members of “The Adams Family.” All I could think about a group of drugged-out, disfigured, dastardly people in the front seat.

It is a true story

As the two boys traveled with the occupants of the car, they began to realize these adults were up to no good and they wanted out. The boys plotted their escape and bailed out of a running car as as those crazies drove up and down a cemetery in the dead of the night looking for their escaped prey.

My son would leave the room as this tale of an abduction grew more terrifying by the minute. The boys in the car opened the door and leaped out and ran for their lives. They raced to a house lit up in the distance where somebody was having a keg party. The car and its ghoulish occupants followed in hot pursuit through the graveyard.

When they got to the home, partygoers heard the boys’ story and saw the spooky car off in the distance in the cemetery. A few brave souls from the party tried to get the car’s license number before the ghouls disappeared into the darkness.

Anthony is now a 19-year-old college freshman who sat at the table to hear the entire story. He was amused and no longer afraid.

But what is more frightening to me than this lurid tale of abduction was where did nine wonderful years with my son go.

Now that’s terrifying to parents who adore their son.

'Tis the season of hope and remembrance

"Remember, hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable."

-  the Scarecrow on the "The Wizard of Oz"


AUBURN, Maine — A pair of Geminids meteors streaked  across a dark, cold Maine sky, and in instant, I had this absurd thought that my deceased parents were chasing each other around the cosmos.

Grief does strange things to people during the holidays, but I am old hand at managing melancholy.

If you live long enough, you get really good at dealing with heart-wrenching loss. Now that my parents, Al and Louise, are gone forever, I work feverishly to fend off sadness — especially during the Yuletide.

Say what you will about the holiday, but the last thing I want to be remembered as is an Ebenezer Scrooge wannabe who spreads endless grief in his wake.

Christmas is no humbug. Old Jacob Marley found that out the hard way. Dickens’ wretched character was condemned to roam the night wrapped in heavy chains to atone for his indifference to his fellow man. Scrooge was taken out for a walk by the three spirits on Christmas Eve and given a comeuppance he never forgot for ignoring forlorn souls drowning in endless poverty.

Nobody wants to be the guy who spoils everybody’s good cheer with his poison personality. For me, holidays are for gathering up what’s left of our family to celebrate another year of good food and cheer.

There is a huge emptiness we all face everyday, and that void gets deeper during the holidays.

Perhaps, Christmas is like a role call of who is still here and serves as reminder that every day you reach for your morning cup of coffee is a good day — and you only have so many on this earth.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are two holidays that trigger our worn-out memories of the past. Sentimentality rises to the top when decorating the tree, wandering around crowded store aisles or preparing a traditional holiday dish. A special ornament your late mom gave you makes your eyes water as you place it on a tree. Christmas songs chime about the specialness of the holiday, but many face this day with a heavy heart.

I still browse the aisles marveling at those innovative toys. Another new line of Legos — my son’s favorite gift under the tree— is introduced to shoppers. Then I remember he is now behind of the wheel of a car and those plastic building blocks of his childhood no longer amuse him.

Alas, my son is 18 and his adult toys consist of skis, watches, a cell phone and history books. His childhood slowly disappeared with each inch he grew.  The little boy who meant so much to us has grown into a fine young man, and while I am proud of him, I miss the inquisitive child who built these intricate toy ships with Legos that littered our parlor floor.

This will be our first Christmas without my parents, and while I have done an impressive job of spreading good cheer, there is that ever-present emptiness.

Look, I have seen the face of depression and watched loved ones disappear into that long tunnel of desperation. I won’t allow grief to swallow me whole. The long walk back from slipping into that dreadful darkness is too steep for me to climb.

So I will buy the presents, make the shrimp linguine, enjoy a holiday meal with my sisters and grieve for my father — all at the same time. The two-hour trip to Boston will be a welcomed diversion from the daily  chore of missing a man I admired all my life.

We will make merry on Christmas Eve, but we will also notice the empty chairs on that special night.

And there’s not a damn thing we can do about our heavy losses except embrace the memories of them, and of course, raise a toast to all who are present at the dinner table for another holiday.

Good show, England

"Democracy no longer works for the poor if politicians treat them as a separate race."

                                         Frank Field, British Labour Party politician

Dear good citizens of the United Kingdom,

Pay no attention to an American from across the way.

Mitt Romney's critical comments were uncalled for and unfortunately became a small distraction to a world-class event — the London Olympics.


Romney, who desperately wants to be the next resident in the White House, was trying to prove he is an authority on foreign policy and belongs on the world stage, but his visit hardly won the hearts and minds of the British people. Insulting one of America's staunchest allies didn't help persuade the world that he has honed his diplomatic skills.


I can see why Brits might be offended when the GOP's presidential hopeful questioned London's handling of the Olympics. The British government doesn't need an arm-chair critic to conduct its affairs.


After all, England is a nation that gave us Winston Churchill, World War II General Bernard Law Montgomery, William Shakespeare, Henry Purcell, Charles Darwin, Ernest Shackleton, Charles Dickens (one of my favorite writers), Masterpiece Theater and most importantly — the Beatles.

By the way, chaps, Prince Charles and I share a common bond - we are avid environmentalists who love gardening.

Despite a world economy that remains fragile at best and the constant threat of terrorism, Great Britain forged ahead to gather athletes from across the globe to compete in London.

Pulling off such a succesful extravaganza in these tumultuous times is a Herculean task for any free nation. I am also convinced that the British government has taken every precaution to insure the safety of athletes and spectators.

I know a majority of Americans believe Brits are a splendid people who have done a bang-up job when it came to organizing such a spectacle.

Look half of America has trouble taking this presidential candidate seriously. I urge Londoners to dismiss his comments and enjoy your moments in the sun for the next two weeks.

By the way, England, good show!