Raising Arizona

The recent events in Arizona have done something no one else has done before to this level, talk about the inept actions about our border security. Now I am not agreeing with or disagreeing with the law but what I am saying is that our Federal government has dropped the ball and maybe the folks who live in these areas of the country, where border security is a problem, are fed (nice pun but not intended) up with the inaction.

As Americans we take so much for granted in our lives, police protection for one. We do not have the widespread corruption and lawlessness that plagues our neighbors to the south. Why is that? We are a country that is founded on laws and courts to address these issues. We might think otherwise sometimes but the fact is that our population is very well protected from the crap going on south of here.

The people in Arizona and other southwestern states are getting the brunt of the spill over of these illegal immigrants and the trouble that follows. Read sometimes the local papers from the border region and see how farmers are killed, property damaged or stolen, crops ruined or livestock killed or stolen by these illegals. This is stuff we don't hear on CNN or Fox. Why? Because it is not glamorous or sound bite worthy. Our attention span can only deal with fast action news and tailored soundbites.

The border has always been a problem, but it is getting worse. Congress has done nothing but wring its hands about how to protect us and I'm not saying just the borders. Our security at the airports is a joke. It is reactionary rather than preemptive. Our casinos have better security than many of our government facilities. Why? Because their livelihood depends upon a secure environment for their guests.

So why can't the government take the same pro active stance as a private industry? Oh, someone will get their feelings hurt. We'll be acting discriminatory against our neighbors to the south.

Our government in Washington just doesn't get it. They are not for the people they are only there for themselves and those who do make it to Washington with a great deal of ideology and gusto find out they have to pay to play and the next thing you know they are just the same as those who are there.

I have to give praise to those legislators in Arizona who had the wherewith all to take a position. Whether or not they took a stand. A stand when others just stand and wring their hands and find a million excuses why we can't get things done.

The courts will probably decide the law is unenforceable and ill conceived and probably unconstitutional but the fact remains that someone had the nerve to stand up and tell Washington that they need to act.

I'm from Albany ...

I was in a hurry this morning to get to work, so I dashed into my favorite morning stop for my chocolate iced doughnut and Dr. Pepper, and a quick perusal of the morning headlines. One caught my attention, "OTB Bailout".

OTB Bailout? How can horse betting, done in the open and legal, be in a financial mess? Oh wait, I see it now, the government has a hand in it! No wonder it flopped. It is amazing that for decades many "Families" controlled the para mutual industry and they lived very handsomely. They employed probably more people than the government and they made a good profit.

Well along comes the government, wanting their cut of the profits in addition to the taxes, and they create Off Track Betting (OTB). Many years go by and suddenly OTB goes belly up! Go figure. This answers many questions about how we've gotten into this mess. Remember, "I'm from Albany, and I want to HELP!"

Stop and Look, or It will Pass you By

I remember my dad taking the same train into Hoboken each day, so he could work in Manhattan. It was the same route day after day, just so he could sit in an office all day without interacting with the world outside. Then taking the same route in reverse to get home. Each day was almost as if it was programed. I looked up to my dad, even though he probably never knew it for all the grief and aggravation I gave him. I often thought that it would be fun to travel each day on the train to and from the City. But life had other things in store for me.

I traveled the same route to and from home to work for many years. Just a few blocks for the first 16. After that work wasn't always in the same place. The past 17 years it was in one local until last April. But during all the past 35 years I worked outside. I could see, feel, taste and embrace all four seasons. Summers were ungodly hot, winters down right nasty and fall and spring could be no picnic. But persevere I did as I enjoyed seeing how the earth lived and breathed with each passing day. But yet I couldn't see the forest for the trees.


Spring and Fall are my favorite times of the year. Summer is a close second but I'm still having a bit of trouble getting my arms around Winter after 35 years of working out in the cold and damp collecting garbage, plowing or shoveling snow and just never getting warm enough to feel good.

For the past 20 years I ran my own business and I tell you it couldn't have been located in a better part of the world. I've traveled extensively around the US and some parts of Europe. I have seen a lot of this country but I still feel the Catskills and Hudson Valley reign supreme. The Rockies have their snow covered mountains and all, but here it's just something to see these mountains rise up from the river and reach almost a mile high. At early evening looking westward, as the setting sun silhouettes the Catskills. You can see the "purple mountains majesty" as the prolific words penned by Katherine Bates, the author of "America the Beautiful" standing right there for all to see.

The Rockies start at one mile in elevation and grow to about a mile above that so the height issue is negligible. The Western States have their forests and streams and rivers. Well so do we. I'll stack any waterfall in the Catskills against anyone anywhere (I'm bias as you can see) in the US.

So, I have been driving around on all these highways and back roads of the Catskill / Hudson Valley Region for the past 20 years and enjoying it. Like the other day for instance; I came across a heard of 20 or so deer just wandering around. I also saw a group of beavers working on their latest addition to their lake side villas. Besides the animals I love the birds.


On Friday morning, on a ride up to the Ashokan Reservoir I saw blue birds, gold finches, cardinals, orioles, blue jays, red tailed hawks, and many more colorful birds I can't begin to name. Woodchucks abound in the woods, and I'm not talking about the environmental types. Rabbits go scurrying about trying to decide which way is safe? Ever the nervous Nellies. And the squirrels, those useless "park rats", running and hesitating, just waiting to become the latest pot hole filler.

But now as I am slowing down my life style and not living solely by the "clock" I have been able to really appreciate the view outside my window. Like my dad before me, I began to take everything I saw as being "just background" to the everyday work routine. From time to time I noticed something spectacular or different, but those were like candid snap shots in life. Filed away in some distant scrap book in the synapse of our memory. Today those candid stills are becoming more like an I-Max presentation. Showing feature length in our mind when we sit back and close our eyes and relax.

If I see something now, I stop and take the moment to fix the scene in my mind. Breathe a cleansing breath and give thanks to God for his beautiful handiwork on our Earth.

Like this morning the visuals with all the flowering trees and the small green leaves awakening into bloom for this year, and a low angle sunrise made true "Kodachrome Moments." Moments we all take too much for granted. We need to just slow down, appreciate and give thanks for a wonderful world we live in. For if we don't stop and look, it will pass us by.

Cable or Sattelite?

Every evening I sit in my recliner, pull out the lap top and watch TV while I check my e-mails and dig for trivial information. During this evening ritual there is always a slew of commercials about cable or satellite tv services. Like always, everyone is trying their own spin on their product vs. their competitors.

Having grown up with TV and rabbit ears I would have never thought about paying for television. Isn't that what the ads are for? In 1974 I moved to Kingston, NY and tried my hand at a roof mounted antenna. No Good! We got more ghosts than a Casper Cartoon marathon. I had to go with cable. It was a bitter pill that I had a hard time swallowing. Paying for TV? So I tried to put it into perspective, the cable company was providing me with the antenna and I was paying for the service of them delivering the service to my home. OK, that worked. I could understand that explanation. They had a vast array of capital investment and they needed to be compensated for operations, maintenance and upkeep.

Premium channels at the time were either Showtime or HBO, depending upon the cable company you had. Nobody in those early days had both, at least not here. And of course you had to pay extra for those "Premium Services." If you chose not to then you didn't spend the money.


Then, without noticing the cable companies started raising their prices and changing the overall makeup of the channels provided. I started to question, early on, about why we had all these "Sports Channels" in the basic package but you had to pay extra for educational programming. It didn't make sense to me. I like some sports, baseball, curling, Iron Man competitions but did I need ten channels of this stuff? The marketing gurus at the cable companies were pushing our youth towards a precipice of untold proportions. The sports figures making mega bucks and really doing nothing but playing some game for entertainment value gave rise to the unrealistic dream of youth who put aside their studies to seek a lotto payout with some sports franchise. These kids had a better chance of a dollar and a dream than making those seven figure figures playing some game. This should have been "Premium service," not the educational channels.

When cable first started we were paying $15 a month to start and now well over $50. The cable companies became larger, and more powerful. Big conglomerates bought up all the small systems under the guise of economies of scale will give lower prices. I can't say how many times I heard that one! Never did I see the cable bill go down. Pretty soon the wire into your house became a thing of the past. You had to rent converter boxes to watch you TV plus you had to pay a rental on the remote for the converter box.

Now I might have been born at night, but I did have my eyes open and I just can't see how we let this animal get so big it's eating us out of house and home. Let's look at the facts:

We pay for the cable or satellite service to entertain us. So if we want to see the service we are paying for we have to rent their controller and remote. We want local stations in the mix, yet the cable companies got some high pressure lobbyist in Washington to let the cable or satellite company decide what's local. Case in point, Kingston is 50 miles from Albany, NY, and 90 from New York City. New York City are the local stations, Albany are not! Another thing is the offering of channels YOU want! Well how about offering an ale carte menu of channels? Buy just what you want to watch and not pay for those channels that you don't want!

So I recently looked into this whole morass and found that the cable companies have a franchise with each municipality that allows them to operate as a monopoly in that community. So there is usually a cable commission that oversees the franchise in each community. I asked a member of the local commission about this and I was told, they have no power over regulating the cable company!

No power? The cable company comes to the community every few years to renew their franchise. It sounds like to me there should be some bargaining room here. Have the commission set the tone. Some one will have to blink. What would happen if a competing cable company would come in and offer a better arrangement? What happened to competition? I think we all need to get on our local cable commissions and demand they have the cable companies to stop fleecing us!

Easter Message

Easter is here! Holy week is finishing up, as today is Good Friday. I'm really not an avid church goer. I go on the usual holidays, Christmas, Easter, or whenever the mood strikes or there is some special event, Baptism, Confirmation, First Communion, or a Funeral.


Why don't I go more? That's a question I've debated all my adult life. As a youth, I would walk with my sister Peg to our church, four blocks away for Sunday school and then Church services. I really had the passion to go each Sunday. I especially enjoyed going with my grandmother to German services, held in her church on the other side of Staten Island. I was so captured by the wholeness of the "Church" experience I even thought about being a minister. I studied for 1 1/2 years for the Lutheran Ministry until there was a "parting of the philosophical way."


Church services were really special things, I thought. Everyone was there. People were dressed in their best clothes. The women and girls wore hats and gloves. The minister in his vestments had a regal and noble air about him. He always had a kind word, spoken in a low, metered tone that instilled hope, compassion, reverence and authority.


Sunday mornings we had sometimes three services. The pews were always packed. The organist or musical director was always on cue and filled the church with a sound that reached deep down into your soul and brought it out for all to see. The minister would dazzle us kids with his "Fire and Brimstone" oratory. He had a knack of looking us all in the eye yet watched the congregants with the sharp eye of a modern day surveillance system. His sermons and readings of the gospel would leave us kids so scared to do anything wrong, lest we be "smote by the hand of God!" Whatever that meant! It just sounded down right scary, until about Tuesday when life returned to normal and us kids would be getting into trouble all over again.


Christmas Eve service was always a grand occasion. The Church was festooned with all kinds of Christmas decorations, evergreens, candles, bows, pointsettas and other decorations. The place smelled of pine. (You would think the Pine Sol lady was cleaning the floors.) And right there in the center of the Church, by the altar, was the manger, with the baby Jesus. A sacred location. No one ever dared to approach the manger while it was there. It was also revered when it was stored in the closet of the Sunday school auditorium.


Church service was always at midnight on Christmas Eve. By rights I should have been tired and cranky, but the adrenaline was flowing. The count down clock was on. Minutes dragged slowly. First there was dinner with the relatives, then Christmas cookies. Cookies that my mother thought she had hidden out of my reach. Never underestimate the power of a kid! (I learned to scale vertical objects at an early age and find the treasure that was hidden!) A quick car ride to Church, the service then it was home for PRESENTS!!!! That's how I saw the world on Christmas.


Easter was a similar production, only the time slots were different. We got up before the sun. No breakfast. Got dressed. In the car and a quick ride to Church before the sun rose. Once through the doors to the Church, the dark cool night exploded with light, sound and fragrance and all the majesty that could be crammed into the four walls of the Church. The Church was wall to wall flowers. It was like going with my father to the nursery to buy flowers for the graves. Only the dirt smell of the geraniums was missing. Walking into Church made it seem like we walked out of Winter and right into Spring! It was a true sign that Spring had now arrived and bloomed in the Church since Friday at noon time, when all the windows were covered with dark heavy purple drapes shutting out all the light.


Easter service, called sunrise, was a spectacular event. It seemed the choir was really more into the spirit of singing, the organist played louder and longer. And it was like a great play performed before an obliging and participating audience working at a fevered pitch to an absolute climax! A climax of such proportion that as a kid you would expect Jesus to descend slowly out of the eaves of the Church right on cue onto the alter. That climax, of song, music and pontificated religious oratory hit a fevered pitch just as the mornings first rays of sunlight exploded into this packed gathering of the faithful! It would make me tingle all over!


I don't know what changed when we moved to New Jersey but it seemed a lot of the magic was lost. Yea, the services were the same, to a degree, but the setting seemed more sterile and bland. Maybe it was the newer built church? Our old church was one of those end of the 19th century Victorian Churches with a vast array of stained glass windows that illustrated various scenes of the life of Christ in vivid detail as opposed to the newer church and it's modernistic interpretation of the Savior.


I knew my father and mother missed the grandeur of the Church we left behind, for we went to many different churches in Jersey over several years before settling where we did.


I was always a kid who loved the out doors. I never knew why but I always felt being alone in the woods as an almost spiritual experience. The complex underlying and intertwined sounds of the stillness of nature had a narcotic effect and would lull me into a trans like state. The more I sat and listened the more enveloped I became in the grasp of the natural world. A world created by God.


My educational experience in school really bored me to death. My teachers would always point out to my parents that I had such "High capabilities and Intelligence!" But I seriously failed to apply myself. I felt bored and disconnected. The education I was being given did not answer the questions within my mind. Questions I knew I had but couldn't formulate. Things I wanted to learn about but were not taught.


Then one summer I spent a few weeks with my best friend at his Uncle's farm in upstate New York and that's were it started to come together. I was on my own for the first time in my life and I could experience things, explore, investigate and absorb. This is where I felt the hand of God came down and laid on my shoulder and encouraged me to go forward to be a minister. Yet I was not a "Holy Individual". Me a minister? Man that got a lot of laughs then and still does from those who know me. Yet that was the path I choose to take.


Fast forward a few years and I was as disillusioned about organized religion as anyone could be. The politics, the absolute acceptance of the dictum's forced on the students. It was as if they were producing robots to go out and put on the show each and every Sunday. I was devastated!


Here I thought that the minister had all the answers and found him to be as frail and unknowing as I. The only difference I could find that his absolute faith in the religion was his faith in the religion.


Now my faith on the other hand was unshaken. Rock solid in commitment. But I needed to explore why it was and I found no suitable answers. I guess it was the scientific mind at work. For everything there is an answer. I felt and still do in many ways that life is a very big riddle and we have to search for the answer for full satisfaction and understanding of our faith. Unknowingly I set myself down a long road to answer that question and many more. That road was the road of life and the experiences that are set before us.


Some people argue that life is pre-ordained and it is totally God's plan as to how our life unfolds. Others say it is totally happenstance and you take the chips of life where they fall. Others have no clue and don't care and blame others for their lot in life.


It is my feeling that it is a combination of many forces and situations that determine where our lives head. I feel that everyday we are given a choice when we get up as to what is going to happen. The circumstances and choices we take and make each moment change and alter our course in life. This alteration in life is sometime minute or great depending on the choice or choices made. The random happenstance of things and events happening are all part of equation. Let's say the loss of a loved one. It's not our lot in life as to who gets called home to God. He is testing our faith in His decisions as to how we will accept the loss.


I used to be really upset about the loss of a loved one or friend and would question why. I evidenced the loss of children in accidents or fires or by the hands of others for no reason. I couldn't comprehend why God could do such a thing. When I would ask a minister about this they would always say the same thing, "Gods will!" I just couldn't by that simple phrase. They never seemed to go much further than that. I felt almost ashamed that I did not have it within me to be that strong in my faith. I felt my faith was unshakable but there was always something more I wanted something i thought they knew but never said. Was it that I failed to know enough to ask the right questions or was it back to my annoyance with the ministry studies that they never gave us the fundamentals about faith?


But through the years of seeing loved ones called home and the loss of total strangers I slowly began to realize that it is nothing more than God testing our faith and his ultimate will. He is providing us with eternal life after we leave this mortal coil. A gift that many people have a hard time putting their heads and or arms around simply because we fail to grasp the totality of it and the beauty and reward that is within the Divine gift.


Have I sat down and studied the Bible or any other religious text and come up with this conclusion? The answer is no. Have I sat in on study groups and debated this with a room full of theological experts? Still the answer is no.


The way I came to this "Epiphany" was over the last 40 years of my life distilled into the last year where I was truly tested by the loss of my life's work. I had rolled the dice and worked for the last 35 years building a career, a business and what I thought was the best for my family only to have someone yank it out from under me. This put all those life experiences and unanswered questions into a complete and comprehensive thought about life and service to God. But still how did one event become a catalyst for this clarification of Faith? Simply put, my granddaughter.

My granddaughter Emily has developmental issues. They say she has ADHD and autistic spectrum whatevers. I think a catch all for, "well there's something amiss but we haven't got a clue so let's put her in this group." To look at her and talk with her you'd never know it. But I think that through this child's shortcomings God handed me a tool of unprecedented value. This little girl will sit transfixed and watch that nun on EWTN saying the rosary and Hail Mary's for hours. Her questions about religion are unbelievable! Since I am now driving a school bus I am her day care provider when school is out. It's a great fit! She has such unconditional for her E-Pa and I for her. Because of her issues she will ask questions after questions on a subject. Much like I thought but never had anyone to discuss. She see the world in a much simpler and innocent way that we as adults overlook.

A year ago his past Christmas Eve she lost her other Grandfather. This is where I think the beginning of this religious experience began. I wrote about George in a Blog titled "Good Bye and Good Luck." A piece I never thought I had in me. A piece I wrote about someone who was involved with my daughter but not so much with my life. I person I knew but not closely. I needed a tool in which to explain the death of "Pop Pop's" to Emily. In soothing her emotions I did so to many of my daughter's in-laws with the piece.

It was as if God sat down beside me and placed his hand on my shoulder and said, "Curt, you have the answers you have been seeking all these years now here's how you will see them!" Even as I write this "Novella" I can feel his presence here with me.

He handed me another opportunity last summer, shortly after I lost the bulk of my business when my Father in law passed away. I was the one the police notified and I had to break the news to my wife and family. I could feel his hand on my shoulder again guiding me and giving me the strength to make it through the ordeal and to help console others. A real skill I never could understand how a minister could obtain. It's not something that is taught. It is something that is felt and is deep within. It is like a sleeping part of our psyche that comes to life when we really need it without fail. It is the true believer that can understand this emotional component of ourselves.

Am I a sinner? Yes and will be to the day I die. The last and only person I know of who was so pure and without sin was Christ. We all sin. It's a fact of life and we all must try to avoid the temptation to surrender to the "Dark Side". But succumb we do. Some a little, some a lot. Yet our God is so loving and forgiving that he casts our sins aside when we ask him to. I see into the innocence of the child and I ask why must this child be subjected to the trials and tribulations we as adults must face? Again the answer is faith. Much like some of the moralisms from the George Burns movies "OH God!" We have to have opposites in our life in order to know the right from the wrong, the pleasant from the cruel. How can we know faith without doubt. Our faith is the result of our doubts. It is those very doubts that give us the strength to look for the answers that give us the faith we need and require to become fulfilled.

I remember some Bible passages and one that really sums a lot of this up is that God has created us in His Image. As a kid I always had this image in my mind of this huge bearded entity in the heavens throwing lightening bolts out and looking really pissed off. But the question that really needs to be asked, answered and understood is: "If we are in his image do we all possess God within us?" And if we do possess him within us then why aren't we more like him in our actions? Why do we inflict such hurt and discord on our fellow man? Why can't we live by his simplest rule of life, "Do unto others . . . ." Such a simple statement with profound implications!


As many scholars debate and pontificate their positions and interpretations of the theological teachings of all the worlds religions the simplicity of it all becomes hidden like the forest for the trees.

That is why this Easter, I will go into Church with a renewed spirit of my faith. A faith that has not been reborn, remade, repackaged or reconstituted but a faith that is restored with the fullness of it's meaning. As the Easter lesson tells us that "Christ has died!, Christ has risen!, Christ will come again!" It is that last statement of Christ coming again I really think is something more than the old boy showing up in Times Square on New Years Eve and proclaiming the second coming. I think it is something much deeper and exquisite. Like the finding of Christ within us all. And the day that we all can say and truly, truly without hesitation and doubt that we have him deep within our hearts and souls is the day that he will come again to embrace us in his entirety and save us from all temptation and give us the full eternal life without hate and sin.

Happy Easter to all







I'm not a born again. I'm simply a Christian who is deeply connected to God within myself and I feel that while religion and its teachings should be shared religion is still a deeply spiritual thing that is between ones self and the creator.