BOO! Were you scared???

'Tis the concluding days of the Halloween season which means children will soon be jacked-up on chocolate (even those mini-size bars pack some zip!) and most likely all those Halloween decorations will be taken down --- unless of course, you were one of the few who went with a pleasant, autumnal, corn-stalks and pumpkins theme.

As per the photo at the beginning of this post, that is not the norm in my neighborhood. Of all the ghouls and the skeletal hands reaching up through the ground, this house with it's hanging heads on the front porch and blood-stained guillotine complete with a vulture near the head-catching basket wins the award for most gruesome. I did find this house quite entertaining and actually circled the block twice to capture a photo. Decapitated heads in the doorway the exception, once again, large, menacing, movable spiders were popular this season. As one whom is not easily frightened by spiders this to me is just entertaining, however, if large, movable snake decorations every come into popularity I will not leave the house until November.

What is it about our penchant to want to be frightened? The fright business of decorations, stores and haunted houses, mazes, cornfields and caverns is a $7.4 BILLION industry in the United States!!! Is it our need to get the blood pumping and the adrenaline flowing? Is it a filler for the rush one gets from riding a roller-coaster? Is it the "comfort" of living in a society where for many of us our monsters are make-believe and distant?

As the first frost has arrived and I'm making the final purchases for the Halloween treat bags I'll give to the little goblins, ghosties and hundred Elsas whom knock at my door, I've had the urge to watch a good horror film. They are being featured prominently on the cable networks this time of year and in running through the remote I came across the movie, "Children of the Corn." It was campy and hokey and I started to watch it and then, I confess, I asked myself why do I want to watch a movie that's going to get in my head and frighten me? I clicked over to ESPN.

I've never been a fan of the fear genre. I trace it back to my sophomore year in high school when the movie "HALLOWEEN" with that knife-wielding, wouldn't die, Michael Myers was all the rage. A group of friends and I went to see it. I slept with the lights on for a week and everywhere I went kept looking over my shoulder. Therefore, I was completely floored recently when I saw a gaggle of teens each sporting t-shirts with the white-masked face of Michael Myers emblazoned on the front. Why?

As for me, I'll be filling my pre-Halloween evenings reading Washington Irving's "THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW." I'll let you know if I hear any hoof beats......

sj;

Journey Onward.....

I’m not sure where I heard it, yet, I know I like it and I’ve tweaked it and adopted it. “America is the great democratic experiment of the extension of rights until all are fully equal.”

The premise works. In the founding of this nation only white, male, property owners were allowed to vote and therefore they held all power and privilege. The democratic vision or spirit or movement would not let the country stay in that reality and throughout our 200 plus years of existence we have extended rights to persons of color, to women, to children, to immigrants, to the impoverished, to individuals who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and queer. Yes, the rights have and are being extended ---- we’re not yet there to full equality, not be a long shot, yet, we are on our way and can see the signs of our progress.

Last weekend, I went to see the film, PRIDE. Set in 1984 Great Britain, the movie is based on the true story of the coming together of a group of striking, union miners and young gay and lesbian activists in a show of support and solidarity. (For Pittsburghers, the film is currently playing only at THE MANOR in Squirrel Hill)

While watching the movie and discussing it later, I was amazed that a film set thirty years ago, definitely during my lifetime, could portray the treatment and bias and fear and hate once perpetrated on members of the GLBTQ community in a way that three decades later seem so shocking and horrible. It’s like watching the movie GONE WITH THE WIND and being blown away (pun intended) at the perception and treatment of African Americans two centuries ago.

I am not saying that we’ve arrived and I know that ignorance and injustice and hateful acts still exist in far too many ways and instances. However, we have made steps forward. We can watch a film depicting actions that took place in one’s lifetime and realize we lived through that and can now see that advances in how we hold our shared human community have occurred. The scene of the young man anxiously and fearfully stepping into the margins of the gay pride parade shifts in one’s mind to 2014 and the fact that in thirty-two states it is legal for couples who are gay to marry.

We are a people in process and a nation moving forward often in stops and starts. The key point is that we move forward and toward equality. Journey on!

sj;

Hi, Ho...Hi, Ho....

When I think of my father I think of his aluminum, workingman's lunch box. I see my mother making the ham-and-cheese sandwiches and wrapping them in wax paper, adding an apple, some homemade cookies and filling the red thermos with hot coffee, then latching the box and placing it on the kitchen counter top.

I am proud to be the daughter of a steelworker and one of the things I treasure most about Pittsburgh is our blue-collar roots and work ethic. You went to work...simply and strongly....you went to work. At the Allegheny Ludlum steel mill, my father worked shifts --- 8-4, 4-12, 12-8. During the weeks he worked 12-8 we played outside even more than usual so Dad could sleep.

I do not recall my father ever missing work, nor, do I recollect my mother taking a nap. Providing for the family and making a home, my parents went to work. When my oldest nephew, now an apprenticed electrician, was doing a report on unions, I called on my English-major skills and assisted in the effort. I am proud of Nathan and the success he's made of himself and the evidenced work ethic as he gets up before dawn to head to work. It's cool being able to look at a major project and be able to say, "My nephew worked on that." Our research of unions and the steel industry found that Western Pennsylvania was the second-leading producer of steel at one time and it was the workers from our region who produced the steel that built the Brooklyn Bridge, the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building.

As previously noted, I'm old and now can better appreciate how much society changes. Traveling and talking with residents in the many former mill towns and manufacturing hubs I can join in their lament that "we don't make anything here anymore."

Yet, on this Labor Day 2014, it's important to remember that once we did and those workers, quite literally and metaphorically, built the nation. As we shift into a more technologically driven and computer-fueled workforce, it will serve us well to take pride in the work we do, to contribute to our shared community and to have the ethic to get up and go to work.

Here's to the workers and the laborers! Think of them today in between snacking on a grilled hot dog and swimming at the pool.

sj;