Two Kinds of Rich: Adventures with Milton S. Hershey and Bobby Flay

Hershey Park (an amusement park in Pennsylvania) and Bobby Flay's restaurant, the Mesa Grill, in New York City, may seem unrelated to you, but to me, they both made statements about the relationship between money and perception to me over the last week.

We did the small family vacation thing this year. We spent two days in Hershey, Pa. There's an amusement park and it is the home of the chocolate company, founded by Milton S. Hershey, way back. It's a cool place to go, just to see a good example of a business that built a town and to take the tour, replete with animatronic, talking cows, that explains how the chocolate is made. But, we are also a roller-coaster-loving family, and some of our faves are in the park.

1st Class Cabin, Titanic

Since we were going small, this year, we shelled out a pretty obscene amount of money to rent a cabana at the park. Doing this made every fiber of my musician/teacher's body tremble with Scroogiosity, but we had saved the money just for vacation, so...what the hay?

The cabana got us a shady place to sit when we needed a break. It also gave us instant access to "The Lazy River" -- no line waits. We got a refrigerator stocked with water. We got "free" towels (I figure they were more like, maybe, thirty dollars a piece). We got a tote bag for "free" towels and a little restaurant stand that was just for cabana people: no waits, and they would bring your food right to the cabana. We also got a "free" soda machine we could use with out "free" souvenir cups.

Roller Coaster Arabesque

A rare re-posting in honor of a recent family day trip. Gotta love roller coasters!


Yes, it's true. Even in an amusement park, atop the crest of a roller coaster pre-drop, I'm thinking metaphors. For instance: roller coasters, themselves, as examples of the way people seem to look at life, at least in terms of what is interesting to them.

I like roller coasters. Always have. But there have always been some that I had no interest in riding because, it seems to me, there is a fine line between being scared in a fun way and being scared in a losing control of one's bowels way.

For instance, on a family outing to a mega amusement park the other day, we rode a wooden roller coaster called El Toro. We also rode Kingda Ka. (The latter's very name annoys the crap out of me. I don't know why -- it just angers me to say it.) Kingda Ka is a metal spike up into the sky which shoots straight up, drops straight down, once, and reaches ridiculous speeds of somewhere around 130 miles per hour.

What Ever Happened to the Sweet Science?

from "The Bells of St. Mary's"

My friend and I were talking about fighting the other day. It began as a discussion as to when is the right time to tell one's child to fight -- to "throw down," in order to free himself from bullying or torment. We didn't come to an over-arching conclusion. But we did wander into talking about an older film; I think it was The Bells of St. Mary's, with Bing Crosby -- not sure. In it, the priest in charge (Bing) breaks up a fight between two boys. He then makes them put on the gloves and duke it out in the ring. With rules. With order.

Again, I'm not even sure how I feel about that -- about encouraging the boys to fight at all. Part of me thinks that's the whole point of civilization: to control, but not to eradicate human nature. Another part of me thinks fighting is something we need to rise above as a species. But I think, in the end, I might lean toward putting on the gloves when necessary.

The Ladder of Light (A Parable)

Ansel Adams: "Clouds, Sierra Nevada."

The old man fell asleep in his chair. He died.

He only knew that he died because when he sat up, bleary, everything around him had turned to foggy shapes. From his upraised hands extended, upward, a ladder wrought of light.

He began to climb, with no effort, feeling the way he had as a boy when he had lifted his smiling father in the pool, amazed at his own strength in the water.

It was like being a weightless astronaut. He could climb forever, without effort. With no muscles to tire, with no heart to race, with no brow to sweat, "effort" was a word with no definition.

He climbed and climbed until he reached a platform of mist where some others had stopped climbing. There, near his ladder, hovered a guardian spirit, as bright as a solar flare and as dark as anesthetic sleep. Without speaking, it said, Go. Climb. And the soundless tone of those words made him feel as happy as a cuddled dog.

Escaping Streaming Virtuality

I even joke with myself about my being an "early-onset curmudgeon." But, the truth is, I have always been a bit of an anachronism; a fan or solitude; a guy with a distaste for either conformity or blatant, conformist non-conformity; a lover of conversation over wasted hours under flashing lights and noisy, empty-headed music. I've always been a reader and a thinker. I college, I used to sit in the woods and write before the mists had lifted for the morning. I've always valued reason and good-sense over unreasonable fulfillment or risk.

The only time I ever got "in trouble" in high school was because of a piece I wrote for the school "newspaper"; a short, satirical play called Spamlet. Otherwise, not a single detention.