Giving thanks for some wonderful memories

“Traditions are our roots and a profile of who we are as individuals and who we are as a family. They are our roots, which give us stability and a sense of belonging - they ground us.” 

                                                                                        — Lidia Bastianich

AUBURN, Maine — A holiday tradition vanished with the death of my father.

But when you are the survivor, you long for the custom that brought you closer together with a parent.

I was fortunate to be raised in Italian neighborhood with nearly a dozen relatives on one street. Thanksgiving meant a stream of cousins and uncles, a smorgasbord of home-made food and booze — particularly fine wine.

There were traditions within traditions and one was rooting for your high school during Turkey Day football games across the state of Massachusetts. 

For nearly 50 years, you would find my father and me at a wind-blown, frozen football field watching Revere High School confront the Winthrop Vikings on a brisk Thanksgiving morning.

Spending a cold morning at Harry Della Russo Stadium or Winthrop’s ocean-side field was the prelude to a dinner for 20 relatives all vying for sumptuous meals and share a shot of Anisette to take the chill out of those football fans returning from the game.

During the games, we lamented about the cold and spent a couple of bucks on hot chocolate. There were adults who were seen reaching inside their jackets for  their flasks filled with rye or brandy.

I envied them. I found hot chocolate didn’t stop the shivers triggered by the biting cold. But a belt of brandy might be just what the doctor ordered in sub-zero temperatures.

Back in the day, the Div. I teams from the Greater Boston Area drew big crowds. The game gave former RHS football players like me a chance to catch up with former classmates as well as hang around my father — Albert John Blasi.

Big Al coached the Revere Patriots baseball team. He believed in supporting the football team and the game gave him the perfect excuse stay out of my mother’s way in the kitchen. My father did not find slaving over a hot oven a palatable way to spend the morning. Making soup or salad was the extent of his culinary skills.

Those talks in the car before we got to the field were precious to me. I watched my dad flip around the AM dial looking for other high school football scores as we raced home for a round of pasta, fish and Turkey.

Thanksgiving Day mornings watching high school football came to a slow stop when age caught up with my dad and the death of his close friend, Robert Marra. My father and Mr. Marra were fixtures in the stands. Both are no longer with us and a tradition disappeared with them.

The memories are sometimes painful, but I know I was lucky to have those significant moments with a father who loved his family and community. Going to a high school game would not be the same without my dad.

Thanksgiving traditions sometimes fade away with time, but those memories of my father standing in the cold watching a game come alive every holiday.

For that, I am thankful.

Goodfellows52: Cat and mouse with Cindy-Lou

Goodfellows52: Cat and mouse with Cindy-Lou: "Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function."  — Garrison Keillor AUBURN, Maine ...

Cat and mouse with Cindy-Lou

"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function." 

— Garrison Keillor

AUBURN, Maine  — It has been nearly five months since Cindy-Lou left  “The Upside Down” world — our dark, damp cellar — to hang out with the three of us and enjoy the creature comforts of the rest of our home.

For a while there, we thought Cindy would elude us for all eternity by hiding in every orifice in our three-bedroom home.

There were sightings and brief encounters with her, but for a month or, she preferred the “The Upside Down.” During her stay in the cellar, she chalked up three confirmed kills, ripping up three mice and ending our pest problem.

She was moonlighting as a deadly assassin and I applauded her precision in ridding our home of those vile, disgusting rodents. She was like Max von Sydow — who played an unfeeling G. Jourbert — an assassin for the CIA in “Three Days of the Condor.”

Nature gave her killer instincts and we needed to protect our home. She also kills and eats ants and flies when they covertly slip into our home. The insects are like snacks for the cantankerous Cindy.

We were in despair that we might only catch glimpses of a cat, which ate her meals while we slept, but suddenly Cindy came out — just like Boo Radley did in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”  

She, and only she, decided that we were worth her time and love.

She is a fussy dame for a five-year-old cat, but we have learned to live with her endless demands. When she screeches for a treat, her bellowing won’t stop until she is fed. We almost always give into her demands for peace of mind.

Cindy likes to swipe at all of us and I never pet her when she is the floor. She will bait you with those big eyes and then strike with her sharp claws. 

But she is always on the prowl for bugs and mice. The premises are safe under the watchful eyes of Cindy-Lou.

She never stops talking and it is funny when she lets out one of those “HELLO” calls in the hallway. 

We will keep her around because she is good company and we enjoy our fireside chats with a cat that just can’t keep quiet.

That’s because cats always have the final say and owners, deep down, know this autonomous animal calls the shots and has no sense of diplomacy.

Goodfellows52: Goodfellows52: A word to the wise from 2 poets and...

Goodfellows52: Goodfellows52: A word to the wise from 2 poets and...: Goodfellows52: A word to the wise from 2 poets and an educator : AUBURN, Maine — I lost two of my favorite New England poets and a brilliant...

Climate change is just warming up

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."

                                                                                                                  — Rachel Carson

AUBURN, Maine — The searing, summer heat and intolerable humidity that you’ve been experiencing in the Pine Tree State is a frightening preview of global warming.

Nature sent us another movie trailer featuring the cataclysmic repercussions of climate change. From California to the Mid West and as far as Maine and Quebec, the high temperatures are killing some of us.

You won’t have to wait for the movie when it premieres. It will be an Oscar winner, but we won’t be around to enjoy this horror film with a harrowing end for generations to come.

The heat wave claimed the lives of 70 people in Quebec and most of Maine feels like Miami at noon in July. In the coming years, certain areas around the globe will become unlivable and rising oceans will gobble up coastlines around the world. Everett, Mass., will end up becoming the new Revere Beach. 

Just ask the good citizens of low-lying south Florida during King Tides. The water gets higher during each event and no pump in the world will keep that part of the state afloat.

The next generation depends on us for their survival! It will be your children who will wake up to a world with no clean water to drink. Food will become scarce because humans have polluted the soil. 

A lack of resources means more wars.

According to a National Public Radio report, the western part of the United States is two degrees hotter and that means the snowpack in the mountains melts quicker leading to longer and more intense fires. 

If you dismiss these dire warnings from Mother Nature, you do so at your own peril. Expect serious consequences from an overpopulated planet that is beginning to look like one giant garbage scow.

The earth is ailing and we are the cancer ravaging our fragile home. We are the most destructive force on the planet and, well, the earth will pay us all back by whittling down the herd through starvation, crop failures, intense heat and polluted air, water and land.

“In nature, nothing exists alone. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.” Rachel Carson, author of “Silent Spring,” said.

Too bad we ignored her when her book was published in 1962. Many tried to silence her even though she was ahead of her time.

One of the latest headlines is from the Washington Post: 

"Temperatures near or pass all-time records in Europe as another heat wave blasts the continent."

A really terrifying report came from CNN about a California fire said: 

Carr Fire in California is so hot it's creating its own weather system

Your children will suffer in the coming decades because the naysayers and uninformed leaders in governments across the globe didn’t act to find cleaner fuels and end the polluting of our drinking water and food-providing oceans.

There is no deity to rescue us from catastrophe or another celestial body that is habitable in the Solar System — unless you have the cash to pay for a space suit, a ticket and a rocket that can ferry you to Mars.

Good luck with that.

Man has yet to step foot on Mars, but if we do, we will probably soil the Red Planet, too. We are indeed a destructive species — and large nations like the United States and China, — two industrial powerhouses — are responsible for most of the pollution.

“There is no Planet B,” French president Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron said several months ago. Our U.S. president just brushed off Macron’s remark, but that’s not surprising from a another careless leader.

As far back as 2014, the Portland Press Herald reported that climate change was indeed hurting the population and its animal life:

“The climate has warmed in Maine and Vermont more than in every other state in the past 30 years, a shift that scientists say is evident in the species of birds and fish that are moving into or out of northern New England.

“The six New England states, along with three of their neighbors in the Northeast, accounted for nine of the 10 states that have had the largest increase in annual average temperature since 1984, according to an Associated Press analysis of temperature records from the federal government’s National Climatic Data Center.”

I was listening to Maine Public Broadcasting the other day about climate change and how this seemingly endless heat is affecting Mainers. Experts agree that heat waves come and go, but this scorcher has intensified due to global warming.

One caller said his tomatoes were not turning quickly because of the hot temperatures at night.

This is true because my tomatoes remain green despite the warm sun. I have been gardening for nearly 20 years and I have noticed that frogs have disappeared and bees are scarce. 

Our planet is being stripped of its natural resources by greed, ignorance and neglect.

Think about that every time you refuse to put out a recycle bin or look your child in the eye.

Goodfellows52: A word to the wise from 2 poets and an educator

Goodfellows52: A word to the wise from 2 poets and an educator: AUBURN, Maine — I lost two of my favorite New England poets and a brilliant junior high science teacher over the past three months. Al...

A word to the wise from 2 poets and an educator

AUBURN, Maine — I lost two of my favorite New England poets and a brilliant junior high science teacher over the past three months.

All three contributed to the greater good and gave us insight into life’s travails and achievements in our brief lives. Gifted poets and teachers have the aptitude to get inside our heads with their life-changing works and their flair in a classroom.

Eileen Merullo, 95, served in the classroom and her country during World War II.

According to her obituary in the Revere Journal:

“She graduated from Revere High School in 1940 and received her B.S. from Boston University’s Sargent College in 1944. Immediately upon graduation, she enlisted in the United States Army and served as a registered physical therapist in the Army Medical Corps, working with wound- ed soldiers in the Amputation Center at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. Always proud of her military service, she was a lifetime member of the Revere chapter of the Disabled American Veterans, and a charter member of Women in Military Service of America, as well as other veterans’ organizations.”

Mrs. Merullo inspired her students, sparked my curiosity about the natural world and is the reason why I have never lost interest in science.

I will miss her and the way she handled herself in the classroom. She didn’t take any guff, but her compassion for her students came shining through during each lesson.

Diana Der-Hovanessian, who died in March, wrote a poem entitle “Shifting The Sun.” I read this poem to mourners at St. Anthony’s Church in Revere, Mass., when my father, Albert John Blasi, passed away from Alzheimer's in 2014.

SHIFTING THE SUN

When your father dies, say the Irish

you lose your umbrella against bad weather.

May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Welsh

you sink a foot deeper into the earth.

May you inherit his light, say the Armenians

When your father dies, say the Canadians

you run out of excuses.

May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Indians

he comes back as the thunder.

May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,

he takes your childhood with him.

May you inherit his light say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the British,

you join his club you vowed you wouldn’t.

May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,

your sun shifts forever

and you walk in his light.

Losing any parent is an ordeal and it is easy to get lost in a maze of grief. I am just fortunate I can still walk in his light. Der-Hovenessian’s poem is a powerful look at how people around the globe deal with the death of a patriarch.

I heard Donald Hall’s poem “Affirmation” on National Public Radio.

Those tender words about aging stuck with me and I began to read other poems by Hall and discovered he was a former Poet Laureate. He passed away at 89, but “Affirmation” has never left me.

Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything. 

Aging, everybody knows it. 

Even when we are young, 

we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads 

when a grandfather dies.

Then we row for years on the midsummer 

pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,

that began without harm, scatters 

into debris on the shore, 

and a friend from school drops 

cold on a rocky strand.

If a new love carries us 

past middle age, our wife will die 

at her strongest and most beautiful. 

New women come and go. All go. 

The pretty lover who announces 

that she is temporary

is temporary. The bold woman,

middle-aged against our old age,

sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand. 

Another friend of decades estranges himself 

in words that pollute thirty years. 

Let us stifle under mud at the pond’s edge 

and affirm that it is fitting

and delicious to lose everything.

“Affirmation” is blunt and doesn’t shy away from aging as life slowly slips away from all of us. But it was privilege to know them through their inspirational poems and in a classroom.

Goodfellows52: Goodfellows52: A good egg and my son remembers his...

Goodfellows52: Goodfellows52: A good egg and my son remembers his...: Goodfellows52: A good egg and my son remembers his dad : Mom on the nest and she's won't budge. A mad mom keeps a wat...

Nothing old about the Old Port Festival

PORTLAND, Maine — The Old Port Festival features mouth-watering food, a really cool parade, music, crowds — and heat.

My family has usually endured sweltering temperatures that sent us looking for the nearest shade tree or an air-conditioned eatery.

But Mother Nature broke with tradition and a chilly sea breeze took the edge of the summer heat. Sure, the sun was warm, but the cool air from a cold ocean was welcomed with open arms by festival goers. 

After dining on Pat's thin-crust pizza and fries, we listened to the harmonic band of Snod House, which played a different version Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road."

The did it well! Buying a Snod House CD is worth the investment.

We listened to several songs before deciding to shake the crowds and head to Portland's Eastern Promenade. Huge houses line the beachfront property and there is a perfect view of Casco Bay.

There was a small crowd of people up and down the strip of this ocean paradise watching the 2018 Atlantic Cup in Casco Bay. Watching these fast-moving craft glide across the choppy water was impressive.

I could go on and on about one of the brightest days in Portland, but I will let my pictures tell the story.

Goodfellows52: A good egg and my son remembers his dad

Goodfellows52: A good egg and my son remembers his dad: Mom on the nest and she's won't budge. A mad mom keeps a watchful eye on the home owner who  trying to get a go...

Goodfellows52: A good egg and my son remembers his dad

Goodfellows52: A good egg and my son remembers his dad: A mad mom keeps a watchful eye on the home owner who  trying to get a good look at her nest and the egg inside it. A Baltim...

A good egg and my son remembers his dad

Mom on the nest and she's won't budge.

A mad mom keeps a watchful eye on the home owner who  trying to get a good look at her nest and the egg inside it.

A Baltimore Oriole hangs around my blossoming cherry tree.

AUBURN, Maine – Every spring, I inspect my green hedges that surround my front yard, searching for nests with an egg in it.

The nests are usually empty, but I discovered one several days ago with an egg laying there, apparently abandoned by mom and dad.

But as I moved closer to examine my exciting find like an eight-year-old child, a large mockingbird let out a screech, warning me to back off.

The mother was peering down at me from high up in my blossoming cherry tree — and she meant business.

I slowly moved away, never taking my eyes off mom for fear of being dive bombed by the angry parent. Getting picked off by one of our fine-feathered friends hurts.

“Take it easy, mom,” I said. “Have no fear, ma’am. I am just another curious hominid marveling at your offspring like a little boy.”

Mom wasn’t buying my explanation, stood her ground and gave me the evil eye.

I surrendered the high ground and went back inside my home to watch from the window to see if this protective mockingbird would return to her nest.

She did and nestled in to keep her vigil.

Our front lawn draws a variety birds because those hedges act like a natural barrier between cats and other predators that can’t penetrate the protective thicket and strike at our winged friends.

Each spring, a pair of mockingbirds return to hang out there, chasing away other birds with a vengeance as they nest in my hedges. 

That’s why we have bird seed and sewett hanging on poles in the middle of the front lawn. They put on show just five yards from our picture window.

I have witnessed mockingbirds shooing away large crows and blue jays. Fearless mockingbirds are the neighborhood bullies who stake out their turf without mercy.

But I always enjoy nature’s live show in front of our picture window.

The return of birds in the spring reminds me that I survived another harsh Maine winter and have another opportunity to enjoy a splendid summer and fall.

Anyday above ground is a good day.

What a son of a gun

The past year, Anthony, a University of Maine at Farmington junior, co-hosted a two-hour afternoon show on WUMF — the school’s radio station can be heard on the Internet.

During his last show of the season this week, Anthony decided to play “Sarah” on Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” as a tribute to his old man.

So what’s the big deal, you ask.

Well hear out a dedicated father for a moment, please!

Being the family storyteller and a journalist, I have been feeding Anthony’s stories of our lives since our son dashed down the hallway in a diaper.

Anthony enjoys stories from our past. I told him about my radio show at Norwich University in Vermont. We had recently got the album “Tusk.”

I played “Sarah” that evening and was sure the band had another hit coming its way.

Anthony returned the favor last Tuesday. 

That’s what sons do for their fathers.