The solar eclipse: Party like it's 1919

As I just put on Twitter, we watched the eclipse old school at The Buffalo News. Scott Scanlon, my neighboring colleague in the newsroom, remembered the old Boy Scout trick where you poke a hole in the cardboard.

That is the eclipse pictured at left!

We were all excited bounding down the stairs to give it a try. Scott is the editor of Refresh, the health section, which explains why he takes the stairs and also why he views the eclipse safely with a piece of cardboard.

Outside we found almost everyone else in the office already out there. Of course the really cool people were the people who stayed inside at their desks and didn't care at all. However I have never attempted to be cool and that has served me well in life.

A few eclipse statistics I loved...

One was that in Buffalo, it began at 1:11 and hit its peak at 2:34. You went from 1-1-1 to 2-3-4. It was easy to remember and that is how Scott and I knew enough to go downstairs at about 2:30.

Another is that when was the last eclipse like this, 1919? Somewhere around then.

Leonard Pennario went through his whole life without seeing such a thing!

It got Howard and me thinking about other eclipses in history and one thing we pondered was whether there was an eclipse mentioned in the Bible anywhere. I thought of the Crucifixion when darkness descended over the land. And the curtain in the Tabernacle was torn from top to bottom, and the dead came out of their graves and walked around and were seen by many. I am sorry, once I start with this, I cannot stop!

That could have been an eclipse, however, if it were, it would be a lunar eclipse, not a solar. There are scholars who have figured that out. And apparently there was a lunar eclipse in 33 A.D. I will have to look into this further.

Meanwhile, the big question is:

When eclipses occurred in Biblical times, would someone have been there with a piece of papyrus with a hole poked in it?

It is undoubtedly so!

Chutes and ladders

I took the picture of my lunch today because it is one of the last days at my old desk. I must soon be moving!

We are all moving. I am sort of looking forward to it. I like my co-workers and I likmeane the thought that I will be more in the swing of things instead of around the corner where I have been with just a few other people. On the other hand I will miss the view. Plus I am nostalgic. This desk was right where I was sitting when I spoke with Leonard Pennario for the first time. There has been so much water over the damn. Did I write damn? I meant dam.

One thing, I am a slob as I admitted the other day, so it is good for me to have to start afresh.

There is all this old stuff that has to be moved including stuff I stuck into drawers and forgot about. It makes me think: Could I move my desk at home too? I should. There is all this stuff and it gets away from you.

Sometimes I fantasize about one of those big chutes you see at construction sites. I want one hooked up to my window. And I will just pile all this paperwork, early drafts of my book, mean letters from mean people, and it will all go Schlooooop! into this chute and be gone.

Wouldn't that be great?

Could I have one of them hooked up at my home permanently?

What I should do is move constantly around my house. That way things would not collect. From occupying the south bedroom we could switch to the east bedroom. From the east bedroom, to the west bedroom. The west bedroom is full of junk so that would have to be moved. The east bedroom also has its share of accumulation.

Furniture would have to be moved so that means that it, and the area under it, would have to be dusted and cleaned. I would be traveling light, in my own home.

Perhaps this is an idea I should patent.

Perhaps I am onto something!

The mystery movie

I have been going again to Zumba at the downtown gym. It fits in well with my schedule so I can knock off a class without too much time taken away from my, ahem, busy schedule. Plus, there is this great new teacher. She never stops the class! The old teacher had good moves but she always used to stop the class.

So there I am the other day at Zumba at the downtown gym. It's a small class because this gym is sort of empty now. And three of the other Zumba-ers are guys. Two of the guys I know, and we say hi to each other and everything, and the third guy I don't know.

And after class the third guy comes up to me.

"Is your name Mary?" he asks.

And I say yes.

And he says: "We went to a movie together once."

I looked at him. No memory. "We did?" I said.

And he said yes, that it was a long time ago, the movie was about Christopher Columbus, and that I criticized it as being inaccurate and unfair to Columbus. I had to say that had the ring of truth. That is me, like Leonard Pennario, criticizing movies and defending Christopher Columbus and slinging opinions around.

"Oh, I kind of remember now," I said. But I was fibbing. I did not remember. "Where did we know each other from?" I asked.

And he said I was working at American Color.

That killed me. I temped at American Color for about a month. That was where they printed the color comics. I was a receptionist, or I sat in a warehouse and answered a phone, something like that. Here is a snapshot this guy had held onto of me on the job.

The American Color job was not as dramatic as my brief but glorious temp stint in the vaults of Manufacturers and Traders Trust. But it was one of my better temp jobs. I thought of that just last week when I went down Military Road. Now here was someone who remembered me from there! I love that.

And it did not even take Facebook! Usually these people turn up on Facebook.

So now this guy, John, and I are friends. Because we once went to the movies together. I imagine the movie was this one: "1492." It came out in 1992 which I think was when I was temping at American Color.



Hmm, this looks pretty good!

I would have to see it again to see what it was that I criticized about it.

I am sure I had my reasons!

I confess .... about my desk ...

Because of my clean desk I have become the confessor for people who sit at desks.

They tell me how clean or cluttered their desks are! I guess I am an extreme case because mine was so messy, and so people feel comfortable confiding in me.

One thing I used to do with Leonard Pennario, when he asked me to, was occasionally help him straighten out his desk. We would go through random papers and try to figure out what could be thrown out. Most of the time we would give up and just end up sitting there laughing about something. But the time was not wasted because it led to things I might not have found out otherwise. For instance if I had not happened on the correspondence from the Motion Picture Academy I would not have realized that he voted on the Oscars.

Speaking of voting, I remember we worked together on his absentee ballot for the government election. Haha, no privacy with me around! Pennario was fun that way. He didn't care what I looked at. I remember that now with such affection.

I am happy to say I have a letters organizer that belonged to him. It used to sit on his desk and hold papers and now it does that on my desk. It is just this cheap little thing but I like it because it reminds me of those afternoons, sitting around with him.

Looking at my clean desk I am haunted by something I once heard a comedian say. I can't remember who the guy was -- he might have been famous, he might not have been.

He said:

"There are some people, ain't nothing on their desk ...

".... Ain't nothing in their head either!"

So true.

Allergic to allergy pills

About every 10 years, zut alors, I get allergies. Something turns up floating around in the air, some peculiar pollen maybe, and it gets to me.

That happened yesterday. The night before, my eyes had been itching, and yesterday morning it was driving me crazy. Eye drops didn't help. Nothing helped. I was desperate to make it stop. So I did the dumbest thing. I took allergy pills.

Nighttime allergy pills! As in, "Don't make any plans."

"Why did you take those?" Howard said. "They'll put you to sleep."

"Too late, I already took them," I said.

Did I ever regret that!

I had to go into the office and I had a dozen things due. Plus two interviews! La la la la la la la la.

The bright side was, my eyes had stopped itching. But I was drugged. This one guy I was interviewing on the phone asked me a question about did I know so-and-so and there was just this silence while I sat there. I had to say something so out of desperation I just told the truth.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I have these allergies and I made the mistake of taking these pills. I am afraid I am kind of a zombie."

This was a comedian I was talking to and he did not laugh! Oh well. Pennario would have thought it was funny. He used to laugh at my jokes, one of the many things I loved about him. I was not technically joking about the pills but it was kind of funny, you know? Well, I thought so.

One of my co-workers at the paper took this picture of me.

Luckily as in the case of Nyquil, these pills are like a parking meter. Eventually your time is up. A few hours later, around 1 p.m., I started coming out of it. I was on the phone interviewing my second interviewee and I felt the fog lifting. Gradually I awoke. And my eyes began itching again.

Systems normal! Well, almost.

I have learned from this mistake! No more Glenn Gould behavior.

No more pills!

Hello, world

Today at work at The Buffalo News I have to do live chat at noon. This is a first for me! It took me forever to decide what to wear. I will get mocked out no matter what so finally I just settled on a blue sleeveless top. I am also wearing a pink skirt I bought when I was in San Diego with Leonard Pennario. But you will not be able to see the skirt.

One trouble was, I have misplaced both strings of my, ahem, signature pearls. But I have an emergency double-strand string in the Vic's glove compartment so all is not lost.

Listen to me!

Ain't I just like a woman?

Here I am supposed to be talking about my live chat and instead I am talking about my clothes.

Anyway. For the live chat I am going to be appearing with our Arts Editor, Jeff Simon. He normally does this chat with Jeff Miers, the pop critic. They go on as the Jeffs. But Jeff Miers is on vacation and so Jeff Simon asked me to do it and I said yes.

If anyone asks a question of me please do not make it one that makes me look stupid, OK?

Ahahahaa... One friend, for my research on Leonard Pennario, sent me a recording of Pennario on live chat in Los Angeles. Well, it was not exactly live chat because this was before the computer, but they had him on the radio, and people called in to ask him questions.

And what happened was, his friends were calling in. You could tell. The very first question, about how many concertos were in his repertoire, I was listening and I said out loud, "Plant! That's a plant."

And Pennario called it! Out loud! He said, "Oh, I recognize that voice. It's Freddy Sheinwold, the bridge master. Hello, Freddy."

Next call, he said, "Oh, that's George, the head of the Santa Monica Symphony. Hello, George."

Ha, ha! Here these people thought they were helping, calling in. And Leonard would not let them remain anonymous.

Dear Leonard. He was the greatest.

Well, with our chat the questions are texted and so I cannot recognize voices.

I will have to recognize typing!

"That must be my brother George. He always misspells Saint-Saens. Hello, George." (I am just joking. George can probably spell Saint-Saens.)

"That must be my husband. He never can get that apostrophe straight. Hello, Howard."

Hahahahaaaa!

Anyway, the chat starts at noon. Should the spirit move you, you may find it here.

While walking into work

This morning arriving at the office I walked through the group of protesters at the entrance to The Buffalo News. There were maybe 40 people. I am a bad judge of numbers. And I see now that you certainly can not tell from the picture I took up above! Ahahahaha! Good thing I am not a news photographer.

Anyway, what startled me was the man at the microphone, the man giving this impassioned speech, was my friend Sam from Zumba class!

I stood agog. I met Sam to begin with when I had been taking Zumba maybe a couple of weeks. It was his birthday, and he made this announcement that he was going to celebrate by giving a rose to every lady in the class. Sam always says "lady." As in "You ladies did a great job with that song."

That day all of us ladies walked out of the gym carrying our roses and feeling proud and special. We giggled about it and I joked around about it in the Buzz column. I got to know Sam because of that and often in class we wind up Zumba-ing next to each other.

But today, all I could think was: How is this for an awkward situation?

I sort of tried to catch Sam's eye as he was making his speech. On the other hand I did not try too hard because I did not want to throw him off. All of a sudden he would stop thinking about his grievances against The Buffalo News and start thinking about Charleston step, cumbia step, hips in a circle, shake it.

Maybe he would not even place me out of context. That happens to me so I would totally understand.

This being Buffalo where we talk to strangers I had to talk to someone and I approached a gentleman on the fringe of the group of protesters. "That's my friend," I said, pointing to Sam. "I know him from Zumba class."

If you did this kind of thing in Toronto they would look at you funny and move away but this being Buffalo, the gentleman moved politely and interestedly closer to me. "Oh yeah?" he said.

"Yeah," I said. "I can't believe he is up there giving this speech."

"Where do you do Zumba?" the guy asked me.

Buffalo, gotta love it.

We chatted for a couple more minutes during which time I did not manage to work Leonard Pennario into the conversation but did manage to mention that I had lost five pounds. The protest is because some people object to how The Buffalo News covered our recent downtown shootings, pointing out the victims' criminal backgrounds. While I stick with how the paper covered it, I told this protester that I felt bad that this event had divided our town.

The gentleman smiled at me and he said, "Sometimes good comes out of bad."