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Text of the page (random words):
ding we have the real things right here why put up a clip art picture of a quaint townscape when motorists can see the real things right out the windows of their car banner salesmen and the companies they represent must be having a field day what one little town sees the next one wants these being essentially efforts to scare some dollars into the coffers of the local businesses who struggle to survive in the face of questionably sound discounts at big box stores a rather desperate ploy adopted by most every business on the main street was pitched to them by the local chamber of commerce that got them all to purchase at a discount matching open flags as if the reason people weren t stopping and buying was because they were confused as to whether or not the establishment was open rather than the fact that there are too many country knickknack and consignment stores the proliferation of these banners suggests drunken town planning with decisions having been made just before passing out what makes them all the worse is that there have previously been some excellent decisions made there are sturdy professionally rendered historic looking wooden signs at a few of the entryways into the village these were erected after some banners were already up but rather than take them down more were added david greenberger originally published in mungbeing november 2006 posted by david greenberger at 6 22 am 0 comments tuesday september 30 2008 the most expensive tramps in bloom my creative and commercial endeavors over the past three decades have been to the casual observer or international spy a series of elliptical paths that sometimes overlap or intersect but often seem to spiral off into outer space from trying to market a product to send messages through mail on wood shavings to writing scripts for animated cartoons one thing just well leads to another in the mid nineties my little self published magazine called the duplex planet was adapted into a comic book series duplex planet illustrated years after publication ceased there was a comic convention held at a hotel in manchester vermont the guy who organized it knowing i lived nearby asked me if i wanted to appear i did not he then went on to offer me a table at no charge where i could display the significant overstock of my discontinued comic along with anything else i d care to bring with the rosy possibility of converting these boxes of assorted and ultimately fragile paper goods into hard cash i came around this could be good maybe great i went it was not great the large conference room was arranged into aisles lined with tables at which were seated various publishers writers and artists selling and signing their goods most of which was super hero stuff i should probably explain here that my comic like my magazine presented a range of stories based on my conversations with nursing home residents and a range of other elderly people the connection between my comics and the world of caped adventure was limited pretty much to the fact that they were both produced on printing presses and utilized staples as a means of binding it quickly became apparent to me that the attendees at this convention focused on such things as the comparative flexibility of the joints of various action figures were not going to be intrigued by my anecdotal explorations of the day to day comings and goings of relatively immobile old people a big name comic book personality had a table next to mine such was his popularity that the long line of rabid fans awaiting their moment with him talked amongst themselves as if he himself had recently turned away an alien armada his line of almost exclusively male fans went right past my table effectively closing me off from any potential customer s view these fans stood directly in front of me and tried not to make eye contact with me or my little cottage industry lest their fantasies somehow get infected with visions of old people dancing in their heads only if i d been giving out cupcakes frosted to resemble wonder woman s bustier would my being there have risen above the level of mutual discomfort into something more robust then lo and behold a young man looked at the table saw an issue of my magazine and said hey that picture was on the cover of an album by men volts here i should explain a few more things what he was seeing was an image of a naked man tactfully obscured by a post hole digging device he was using this photo was from an issue of the 1950s nudist colony magazine sunshine health and i had also used it for men volts another one of my ventures which caused no distress to the workings of cash registers but was a rock combo that had its origins as a captain beefheart cover band so you can understand why this woke me right up i was in men volts i exclaimed this seemed to alarm him oh i ve never listened to it he quickly set me straight he explained that he worked for a cut out company which if you don t know resells unsold albums to used record stores and deep discount bins the place where records go to die even i had to admit that this made more sense regaining my footing i immediately shifted from embarrassment to wheeler dealer and leapt into action i asked if the album from the mid eighties tramps in bloom was the french version with actual foil stamped lettering on the cover he said it was so i asked about buying some copies of this rare item especially since at the bargain basement price i could turn them around handily for at least ten dollars each the company didn t do any direct retail themselves he explained but he thought he could make some arrangements according to plan i called the following week but he wasn t in and i left a message a week went by and i tried again no call back but i was a man with a mission and i persevered on my third attempt i was told the guy no longer worked there i explained my situation and this guy said he could take care of it he thought there were about ten copies left he d let them go for two dollars each you do the math i said i d take them all a week later a box arrived for which i paid about 18 which covered the postage and c o d it felt very light and upon opening found out why there was only one lp enclosed i called and it turned out that that was all they had left the final result of my having reluctantly attended that comic convention was that i had paid more than anyone else ever had for a copy of my own record posted by david greenberger at 6 35 pm 1 comments monday september 08 2008 how vowels endure winter on a recent family cruise to bermuda and the bahamas i took it upon myself to write down the words erie and greenwich repeatedly while saying a word aloud over and over again in succession can turn it into sonic gibberish writing the words did not obscure their meaning the pair retained their status as information representing a city and village i tried to hold the pen in a relaxed manner successfully forestalling writer s cramp this activity was not meant to be meditative as it took some focus to keep my printing consistent the similarities and differences in these two words came to occupy much of my conscious mind i d made them unavoidable objects of examination on a personal level the primary similarity is that the largest part of my life has now been spent living in one or the other of them erie greenwich they re both two syllable words and they both employ the same vowels two e s and one i but this is where the differences come in to play allowing for a solid example of how english has absorbed a broad range of approaches to the construction of words both words have a long e sound but arrive at them through different means for me the most compelling fact is that erie uses only one consonant in delivering its two syllables while greenwich has latched on to a half dozen thinking about each name in relation to the geography where that municipality is located opens the door for a metaphorical overlay erie on the shores of the great lake which shares its name can be a bracing place to be in the winter as winds blow across the frozen waters with but one r stuck near the center to barely keep them warm e e and i look exposed and vulnerable meanwhile out in the rolling protective hills of greenwich the same trio wrapped themselves in a pair of double consonants at the front at back ends with an additional pair near the center making for a warm two room shelter words appear in my mind in upper and lowercase though i print in all uppercase i enjoy thinking of words as their shapes and greenwich offers a tidy little yard with the taller end letters shading the row of seven within my first name when not busy reveling in its alternating consonant and vowel construction also enjoys a similar sort of responsibility erie short and with its height all at one end looks powerful like a locomotive that s a connection i may have made in my youth because of the general electric plant there where my father worked and which still makes those mighty train locomotives to this day david greenberger originally published in my column i still feel like myself main street 56 2006 posted by david greenberger at 5 36 pm 0 comments tuesday july 29 2008 this is the duplex planet in 1979 a year after graduating from art school in boston i took a job at the duplex nursing home where i worked for a couple of years as an activities director there i found not only a rich pool of potential friends but also recognition of something in myself a long standing interest in capturing through the written word the character of a person in particular elders oral history has a valuable place in our culture but that isn t what i m looking for i don t see old people as merely windows on their past no matter how much i m told about events that predate my life i ll never be able to go there on the other hand i do hope to grow old most of the important decisions we make about our lives from career choices to whether or not to have a family are made from observing what other people do in these situations when it comes to aging our glimpses of the process are primarily limited to watching family members grow old witnessing the aging and decline in older generations can t help but draw attention to one s own mortality furthermore having known these elders over the course of an entire lifetime it s hard not to mourn the loss of who they used to be i can trace my interest in befriending elders back to a trip i made to palm springs in the mid seventies where my grandmother would spend the winters with her elder sister this visit was notable because of time spent with her neighbor herb feitler herb and hannah feitler had been childhood friends of my grandmother during my time there herb and i made several excursions into the surrounding desert communities mostly stopping at flea markets i was in my mid twenties and to me hanging out driving around and becoming friends with a guy in his late seventies was the height of exotica he wore one of those cloth fishing hats that i associate with jack klugman norman lear or woody allen herb was authentically who he was and that simply connected with me when i returned home to boston herb and i stayed in touch through occasional letters and postcards though i didn t recognize it at the time what was so striking to me about meeting herb was that i never knew him before i had no familial connections or past history with him unanticipated and unforeseen our friendship was borne out of a chance confluence he was an engaging contrast to my grandmother with whom i had a clearly delineated and ultimately rather limited relationship based solely on the grandmother grandson dynamic herb became my friend i moved to upstate new york from boston twenty two years ago the duplex nursing home has long since closed its doors as with any of my friendships with the passing of time especially if they re no longer living many of those residents show up in my dreams what began as an interest has become my life s work i set aside the brushes and canvases that had been my focus before during and briefly after college i found my voice as an artist in a different medium words fit me like a better tailored suit first i created a little magazine called the duplex planet and subsequently book collections a comic book adaptation cds and performances all based on my relationships and conversations with a range of elderly people my washington county neighbors and trips to other parts of the country are now the source for my work and ongoing friendships we already know the obvious things that old people have in common with each other i want to know what makes them individuals the more people i meet the more different they seem from each other amid all these differences there is room for us all david greenberger posted by david greenberger at 8 35 pm 1 comments saturday june 21 2008 my paris map paris the city of lights my daughter norabelle is there for the entirety of her junior year of college we went to visit her in january renting an apartment for our ten day stay it was in a five story building on rambuteau a block or so from the pompidou center and near the edge of the marais this is norabelle s world all the more so since she speaks the language and i don t she knows her way around these circumstances dispensed with the dynamic of the parent being the one who holds the knowledge and the child as the one who learns we saw all manner of compelling historic places and ate great foods in paris but the thing that i feel will be a deathbed memory for me was walking a dog norabelle has a room in an apartment with a woman who has grown children and takes in a student each year we walked the twenty minutes or so from our place to hers as the dog saba needed her evening walk and no one else was home i knew how to get there from the map she d drawn us a couple nights prior but this time learned shortcuts and side streets with norabelle leading the way we got there walked up the few flights of stairs with saba audibly scrambling about relieved when she heard the key in the door it was drizzling so lightly that it required no rain gear but gave a shiny glow to the night lit streets we walked around the block just norabelle and me and the dog on her leash life s ordinary moments allow for our personal emotional overlay to give them their meaning whereas extraordinary events are generally defined by their own particular dramatic arc i find that it s not the extraordinary things that stay with me and move me more and more through the years but the ordinary things the small map norabelle drew for us to get to her apartment is now in a big envelope labeled paris 2008 going for a nighttime walk on some of those same streets with my daughter and a little longhaired white dog created potent images that will flicker in my mind for the rest of my days originally published in mungbeing magazine 19 april 2008 posted by david greenberger at 1 09 pm 0 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