My Sick Mind

Sunday is Father's Day. My father died on April 3, 1967.   He suffered from arteriosclerosis, or as we were told, hardening of the arteries.  In those days, the treatment involved taking nitroglycerin pills and baking fish for dinner every night. As the end grew closer, we decided to take a few day trips and short vacations.  I wasn't told, but I knew that his days were growing short.  At one point, he was put in Cooper Hospital, in their Intensive Care Unit.  When he got out, it was still against the rules for a child to go up and visit him.  My mother hid me inside her raincoat and got me into the elevator so that I could go up and see him.  I remember how happy he was to see me and getting a big hug from him.  How could a hospital deny a child the right to see his father, I wondered in my child's mind? This was the man who threw my first baseball at me and allowed me to hit left-handed, even though most of the world hit right-ha...

New Jersey has been running TV and radio ads proclaiming victory over "Superstorm" Sandy. Side note:  I'm not sure how this thing got to be called a "Superstorm."  I've studied meteorology and I've never run across the term Superstorm. It was a hurricane .  TV turned it into a Superstorm. OK, now we've gotten that straight. Let's move on. I've been listening to those " Stronger than the storm " ads for a while now, and I'm a little put off by them.  "How?" you ask.  It's like this: First, you are not stronger than the storm.  The storm kicked your ass. Second, the Jersey shore is all about the boardwalk, beach, rental properties, and commerce.  That's what the ad campaign is aimed at.  There's nothing about people - just implied images of how you should come back to the shore this summer and spend your money because the state spent the whole spring getting all their businesses back so ...