Where Is Spring?

Where Is Spring

An indomitable groundhog scurries across my lawn, signaling the start of Spring. A hairy woodpecker drills at sunrise on the dead branches of a nearby locust tree, signaling the start of Spring. Pyramidal piles of pea like deer droppings accumulate by my patio, signaling the start of Spring.

But, ‘where is Spring’?

The calendar confirmed it days ago. The incessant honking of returning geese announced it from the heavens. Well tanned ‘snowbirds’, returning home from sea, sand and sun, gave us reason to be excited about the start of the new season with its clear skies and bright sunshine, Spring. Even weather reporters proclaimed its arrival, albeit nervously.

But, ‘where is Spring’?

Baseball players pass hours oiling their gloves and tarring their bats, hoping that fields will be green and plush for Opening Day. Golf courses are accepting starting times and streams have been stocked for the legal fishing season to start anew.

But, ‘where is Spring’?

Easter Sunday is days away. Schools are starting their Spring break. Pot holes turn roads into obstacle courses, following winter’s thaw, challenging drivers at every turn. The early crocus gallantly pushes through the frost covered ground as a colorful reminder of the changing equinox.

But, ‘where is Spring’?

Hand warmers are sold out at local stores, garden gloves fill their spots. Shovels are stowed and rakes are displayed. Surely, worn flannel sheets will be replaced by lighter cotton covers with the new warmer season, the Spring season.

But, ‘where is Spring’?

Mother Nature was not kind to western New Yorkers this winter. Sunshine was scarce. Dark, dank clouds covered us like a thick wet blanket, day after day, so it seemed. Only a symbol on the calendar gave rise to the notion that Spring had arrived. And while my weather app just flashed this warning, ‘snow flurries starting soon’, I am compelled to ask…

‘Where the heck is Spring?’

srbottch.com

What Was The Weather?

In this very evening, December 25, 1776, George Washington led his somewhat ragtag band of soldiers across the Delaware River and surprised the Hessian mercenaries, beating them soundly at the Battle of Trenton for one of the earliest victories in the war for independence.

“The weather when George Washington crossed the Delaware River in 1776 was horrible, with temperatures ranging from the 20s to just above freezing, about 33 degrees, and a strong wind from the northeast making it much colder for the men. A blinding snowstorm and sleet also made the conditions almost impossible.”**

It’s been chronicled that many soldiers of the Continental Army that night were without boots or their feet were wrapped in straw, whatever was available. When I think of them, I’m both awed and grateful for their fortitude, bravery and the leadership of General Washington.

**americanhistorycentral.com

Steve

December 2024

Are You Presbyterian?

An odd question from a gentleman I had just met in the locker room at my local gym. Adjacent lockers force you to get acquainted quickly, since at any moment you’ll find yourself in various stages of dress or undress. Might as well break the ice with small talk.

But my religion?

Being a gentleman, and curious, myself, I politely answered his with one of mine.

“Presbyterian”?

“No, Congregationalist, however, still under the Protestant tent.”

“Why do you ask?”

His bemused look was quickly followed by a benign smile, as the proverbial light went on in his head.

“Pescatarian! Pescatarian! Fish eaters!”, he repeated, obviously recognizing that my light was barely flickering.

“Are you one?”, he asked, again.

Nothing makes you feel older, and might I say, dumber, than someone repeating themselves, in a louder voice, accompanied by a blunt definition.

The verbal faux pas stemmed from our impromptu discussion about food and exercise. Apparently, my flippant comment about avoiding deep fried foods, fish & chips, for example, confused him.

Clarification followed when he declared himself a vegitarian and pescatarian, explaining that a pescatarian is someone who eats fish as the only meat source in an otherwise vegetarian diet. Apparently, he thought we were kindred spirits.

No, I’m not a pescatarian, nor a vegetarian. I enjoy meats, occasionally but generally avoid the red ones.

However, it’s not the first time I’ve misunderstood words from casual conversations. And it seems to be happening with an uneasy frequency.

“Do you think you need a hearing aid”, she asks. Yes, the same ‘she’ who calls out my other shortcomings, the queen of common sense, my wife of 55 years.

My audiologist also reminds me that I am a candidate for a hearing aid if I felt the need. I’ve yet to find the need. A hearing aid wouldn’t help conversation spoken from opposite ends of the house. Five decades of being together, we pretty much know what the other is going to say, anyway. Hence, we talk less and economize on words.

However, I would like to hear the ‘expert’ conversations in the sauna. There, on any particular day, someone will be holding court on the best grilling method, the latest medical advice, which vitamins to take and what investments will pop during a new administration. Now that might be the incentive to push me into getting fitted for a device.

As for my new locker room friend, I’m just thankful that he didn’t ask me if I was ‘presbyopia’. I wouldn’t have seen that one coming.

Steve

December 2024

She Loved My Poetry, I Think…

(Note: this first appeared in April 7, 24 and was republished, here, following a correction revision)

Not my poetry, in the sense that I wrote them. No, they belonged to real poets: Clemente Clarke Moore, Ernest Thayer, Robert W. Service, Hugh Antoine D’Arcy, Grantland Rice and Abraham Lincoln. I just memorized and recited them to her.

But she didn’t know, or care, who wrote the words. I think she just enjoyed the rhythmic sound that accompanied our steady pace. She never sighed or balked when I began each line, or repeated sections until I had it right.

The Night Before Christmas may have been her favorite. I’d recite it over and over and over until I couldn’t change the inflection points and it got boring, probably for both of us.

Spring came along and with it the start of a new baseball season. What could be more appropriate to memorize than Casey At The Bat. I did, a little bit a time as we walked along, side by side.

It was the All-Star game before I had it down verbatim and recited it ad nauseum. By the ‘dog days of Summer’, it was wearing thin on both of us. I sensed her boredom.

Following a short break, I picked up memorizing again and locked down Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address before the November 19th anniversary of the President’s iconic speech.

Lincoln, himself, may have delivered the speech in a quiet manner but each dramatic line found me delivering it with gusto. Neighbors probably thought it odd to see me talking and gesturing theatrically, only stopping to pee or sniff.

Memorizing poetry gave this Senior’s brain some very good exercise, I’m uncertain what it gave her, but she didn’t complain. Dogs are like that, they give you all the attention you want and don’t ask for much in return, just your love.

Over time, I managed to conquer The Cremation of Sam McGee, Alumnus Football and The Face On The Barroom Floor. She approved them all.

I still walk daily but since Daisy passed away this February, I’ve stopped with the poetry. Music accompanies me, now, on the same paths where we walked and talked. She’s deeply missed.

The Last Battle is a poem about a pet’s message to its guardian in its final days. The message is clear. The following is the opening stanza and the author is unknown but I like to think that our pets wrote it…

If it should be that I grow frail and weak
And pain should keep me from my sleep,
Then will you do what must be done,
For this — the last battle — can’t be won.
You will be sad I understand,
But don’t let grief then stay your hand,
For on this day, more than the rest,
Your love and friendship must stand the test.

Steve, 040724

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To pet lovers, everywhere.

THE VOICE….I Can’t Hear You!!!

For any soldier who put on government issue white boxer shorts or had his head shaved to the skin in the first few days of Basic Training, these words are forever etched in your mind…

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU, TRAINEE!”

Whether inches from your face or in front of the assembled company, be it a Drill Sergeant or Officer, regardless if we were already at the high end of a decibel scale, our replies were never loud enough, hence…

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU, TRAINEE!”

Why? Harassment? No, the military trains young men and women to be soldiers, and soldiers need to respond with certainty, confidence and INTENT.

Following months of training, we became soldiers, found our voices and took on our missions with INTENT

Fast forward decades later, and the drill sergeant has been replaced with a speech pathologist who sends the same message but with a softer tone…

“I can’t hear you, Steve.”

I have Parkinson’s Disease and one mark of many Parkinson’s patients is a softening of the voice associated with an expressionless face. Thankfully, there’s help, speech therapy.

I suspected there was an issue with my voice and it festered until I found the right people to help me. After a month of therapy sessions, I’m happy to report that I’m on the right track to returning my voice to appropriate audible levels. I understand the importance of ‘speaking with INTENT’ and, if I waiver, I have a ‘toolbox’ to correct myself.

Just as I exercised my body in Basic Training to build strength and endurance, now I’m exercising my voice box to strengthen my speech. Instead of daily runs, countless push-ups, jumping jacks and the rest of the army’s ‘daily dozen’, I’m exercising my voice with ‘speak out exercises’ and reaching decibel levels that heretofore were routine and automatic

It’s challenging

And, like the physical military exercise, if I don’t make my vocal exercises a regular routine, the voice will soften, again. The program is ‘SPEAK OUT, Speaking With Intent’ and the local effort is part of a nationwide practice to teach Parkinson patients how to fight back.

The challenge is to be aware of my speech and apply vocal exercises on a daily basis to improve and maintain voice quality.

Parkinson is a slowly progressive neurological disease that afflicts each patient differently. It can impact speech, motor skills and memory over time. Other than a pill, a recommended course of action is to ‘fight back’ with rigorous physical exercise for the body and voice.

Big movements! Big voices! Big rewards!

And there’s no need to yell, “YES, DRILL SERGEANT”, a simple “thank you, Jaime and Heather” will suffice.

Steve

080124

To my two speech pathologists, Heather and Jaime (URMC), who guided me without intimidation, just INTENT.

Why Do I Raise The Flag?

As a youngster, I was taught about the flag and what it meant. I learned about the flag by listening to my parents and watching them live as Americans in a free society, being responsible citizens, demonstrating the finest values of growing up and being good stewards of this special place, America.

Through teens and into adulthood, I learned about the issues and challenges we face as Americans. I witnessed our strengths and weaknesses, our successes and failures. As an old man, I see those same attributes today, as we struggle to grow and become better citizens.

I learned to love our country through education and service, a brief stint in the military for the latter and a wonderful patriotic school activity for the former.

Every Memorial Day, my elementary school would gather in the schoolyard to sing patriotic songs, military songs, our National anthem and to recite our Pledge of Allegiance. The chorus of young voices filled the neighborhood, locals gathered to listen and sing along. It was a happy time, a proud time, a patriotic time. It was the 50s.

The celebration ended with a recital of our Pledge of Allegiance and the playing of ‘taps’ from an unseen trumpeter in the distance. Our American flag flew from every corner of the old brick school building. The moment was exhilarating, even for a kid.

I remember that annual event as though it was yesterday. I can still sing the military ballads and belt out the Star Spangled Banner, and I do when the spirit moves me.

These many years later, on Memorial Day and Independence Day, my wife lines small American flags in front of our house. It’s attractive, but more importantly, it quietly expresses our feelings about our ‘home’, America, while paying silent tribute to all those who sacrificed so much to protect and preserve the American spirit and way of life.

Why do I raise the flag? Simply because I’m proud to be an American and I love my country.

Steve

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A repost from May 2020

To Box Is To Dance

Slip right-Slip left… Jab-Cross

Slow-Slow… Quick-Quick (Foxtrot)

Can you sense it?

Duck right… Cross-Jab

Duck left… Jab-Cross

Slow, Quick-Quick

Slow, Quick-Quick (Waltz)

Do you feel it, the rhythm, the flow, the choreography?

Yes, it’s there, the melding of two precision athletic disciplines, boxing and dancing.

Jackie Chan, martial arts actor, cites iconic dancers, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, in an interview for Kung Fu Magazine, as two of the primary influences on his fight choreography. * Now, Chan was not a boxer but the correlation is the same. (* mentalfloss.com, Anna Green, 5/10/2017)

World heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali once quipped that he “floats like a butterfly..,”. The same can be said for dance, good dancers glide on their feet, on their toes, flowing through moves, ‘like a butterfly’.

A boxing match might look like a wild affair with fast flying fists, but, like dancers, boxers use all their upper and lower body, arms and legs, in well disciplined moves, changing positions, moving their opponent (partner) while repositioning themself, back and forth, left and right, preparing for the next move, a punch combination, or for a dancer, a twinkle or turn.

Like a dancer’s steps that move to a count, the boxer’s punches have numbers, one thru six, and names to match. Watching a match with an understanding of the names, one can easily see the choreography of the punches, the combinations, the head fakes, the ‘dance’, regardless the speed.

Boxing has its ring, dancing, a floor, the arenas where boxers and dancers ply their craft with music to stimulate the action and accompany the performer.

I’ve danced socially for enough years to appreciate the athleticism of the art of dancing. an activity that is cognitively and physically challenging. The same for boxing. Both keep you thinking and moving continuously with varying changes in tempos.

My dancing was undertaken for fun and exercise, the boxing I do now is to stay fit, strong, alert, have fun, a prescription for better health.

The medical community looks approvingly on boxing as one component in a toolbox of physical activities to fend off the travails of certain ailments.

“Boxing’s varied and high-intensity workouts offer a blend of strength and cardiovascular conditioning that improves agility, coordination and balance, and which may be especially beneficial for people with neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.” (NY Times, 5/23/22, Rachel Fairbank)

My punching is improving as I learn new combinations, but my footwork is sloppy. I’m not at the butterfly stage…yet.

Steve (050124)

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The ‘Yellow Jackets’

The ‘Yellow Jackets’ are laser focused, waiting patiently and watching for their quarry, prepared to act. Their instincts are sharp, with keen eyes alerting them to singles or groups entering their territory.

The ‘jackets’ are confident in their mission and blessed with a friendly demeanor. Then, at the right moment, they engage….

“Good morning, kids!”

These are the men and women of the Brighton, NY ‘School Crossing Guard’ team, recognizeable by their bright yellow coats emblazoned with the words, ‘CROSSING GUARD’.

During the school year, they stand at their posts, like buoys in uncertain channels, and manage the crossing of the district’s school children across the busiest intersections and streets in Brighton, to their respective schools. They do it with enthusiasm and grit.

From the students’ early morning trudge to school, to the afternoon scamper home, these extra eyes wait at their spots to ferry kids along, safely.

In frigid winter temperatures, or in the warm fall and wet spring days, the children have a friendly voice greeting them and sending them on their ways,.

And what is one of their rewards? A common refrain from students,

“Thank you, have a nice day.”

How rewarding and exciting is it to hear that from our young people? Very! Brighton should be proud.

When all goes well, these public servants go unnoticed and unheralded. The next time you’re driving by a ‘yellow jacket’, give a honk and a thumbs up, or a wave and a smile. A simple act sends a heart warming message of appreciation to this important link in the safety of our town’s children.

The ‘yellow jackets’ are a proud group. Like other public servants, they show up every day and serve this community well.

Steve Bottcher 041824

To the Brighton, NY school crossing guards and crossing guards, everywhere.

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There Was A Time

It’s autumn and in the western plains of New York State, along the shores of the Great Lake Ontario, Mother Nature is trying to decide to be warm or cold. The calendar will tell us what it’s supposed to do, but She will be the final arbiter.

September is done. October and November are beautiful months: family birthdays to be celebrated, holidays to enjoy, homage paid to soldier heroes and quiet remembrances of loved ones passed.

Leaves are falling. The front yard sugar maple, a full palette of colors one day, bares itself the next.

The Japanese maple sheds its leaves, leaving a stunning necklace of magentas and reds under its drip line.

If I’m lucky, the air will stay dry and the leaves will be light, easy to gather. If I’m very lucky, the wind will blow them away and shift the burden to a neighbor’s yard.

It’s a routine that repeats itself annually.

I remember a time when falling leaves meant afternoons of exhaustive running, jumping and disappearing into tall piles of those leaves that had been raked and gathered along sidewalk curbs of our ‘three decker’ houses in central Massachusetts. Childhood was the time for play.

I remember when residents burned the leaves in the streets to get rid of them. Smoke from the fires would fill the neighborhood, wrapping itself around houses, leaving a smelly calling card in its path. I would fall asleep in sheets saturated with the odor of burnt maples and oaks if those sheets happened to be hung outside to dry on leaf burning day.

Not anymore, mind you. The leaf pile jumping has been replaced by tablets and video games. And the leaf burning has gone the route of composting.

Life changes, we grow older, become serious. Nowadays, I see the piles of leaves and am reminded of those fun filled innocent days and for a brief moment I contemplate jumping. The thought passes, I come to my senses and leave it for the dog to enjoy.

Do you remember when ‘there was time’ and you enjoyed leaf jumping?

Steve (112423)

To Daisy (RIP)

Whistling: A Three Women ‘Melodrama’

Do you whistle?

The back room storage area of the downtown haberdashery was dimly lit and the old floor squeaked as I danced the long handle broom across the narrow hardwood boards, sweeping away the light dust to the rhythm of my high pitched whistling.

A ‘clean-up’ boy in a men’s clothier shop, owned and operated by a ‘quirky’ old couple who rode home in separate busses to assure the survival of at least one partner in the unlikely event of a fatal accident. You never forget your first job and the people who hired you.

It was a men’s speciality store. With neatly arranged merchandise under glass counters or on shelving behind those counters, to be presented by a salesperson, not self served, expertly dressed mannequins in window displays, and crank out awnings to protect those windows from harsh sunlight, this was an iconic men’s wear store in downtown Worcester, before the exodus of retailers to suburban shopping malls.

Not surprisingly, whistling while working was frowned upon, it detracted from the aura, the ambiance, the atmosphere of a high quality clothier.

I should have known better. I should have been more respectful. However, I was 16 and only working because my ‘old school’ father suggested that I was old enough to get a job, albeit a part time job.

More often than not, the best lessons learned are the harshest. Being dressed down by the owner wife, one half of the probable survivors, was a deserved embarrassment. It was the first time, but not the last, that I would be on the receiving end of a woman’s wrath.

I’ve enjoyed whistling since boyhood. I find it fun, relaxing and wildly entertaining. Wildly might be an exaggeration, but the elderly lady on the front porch swing of a house I passed on my daily route to high school found it so. “Young man, your whistling lifts my spirits”, she shouted from her post. I think she waited for my passing each day and I happily obliged her with a harmonious whistle.

My singing is terrible, so I’ve been told. And my whistling is shrill, as I’ve been reminded by the third woman in this story, the one I whistled at more than fifty years ago. She must have liked it then, because we’re still together. However, now I limit my singing and whistling to when I’m alone and can belt it out without contrarian commentary.

Yes, I find myself wildly entertaining during those times.

Let’s hear your best whistle.

Steve (102023)