#ROW80 SUNDAY CHECK IN – POST 14 – ONLY ON NEBRASKA AVE., 33602, 33605, 33604, ETC.

I believe I've mentioned that everything that can possibly happen has happened here on Nebraska Avenue, whatever the zip code. As I roam around pretty much within these 3 zips, it's safe to say, I've seen just about every kind of human failure, vice, venal and cardinal sin committed, along with just about every sort of human kindness, sacrifice and altruism given in aid as well, not as part of someone's job, but because someone cared and ached for a fellow being.

That being said, lots and lots of weird things happen and just plain, WTF? of the unfathomable variety. Laziness? Because you could? What part of no did you not get? Case in point being the famous hole in the counter between the registers in the Sweetbay Pharmacy. The hole is 2” across; not very big. People kept throwing garbage in it and it was a real pain in the ass for the pharmacists' assistants to get the little wadded-up pieces of paper and gum and lint and what have you out of the hole.

Look how happy he is! He's just waiting for you to throw your linty mint, chewed-up pencils and broken hair barettes in here. (Frankly, when inanimate objects start doing this, I'm outta here!)

The easy solution? They started out by writing “DO NOT USE THIS FOR GARBAGE.” Less than 20 feet away is a perfectly good garbage can for, ohbestillmybeatingheart: garbage. I know; right? Garbage kept magically appearing and the pharmacists' assistants kept having to dig the little wadded-up pieces of paper and gum and lint and what have you out of the whole.

The thing escalated. Next, one of the assistants put a medicine bottle that just fit in the hole. You could still see the “DO NOT USE THIS FOR GARBAGE.” This did not deter are garbage squirrelers or throwers, or lazy assholes, or whatever. They removed the bottle, and dumped their little pieces of wadded paper, gum, lint and what have you, so the pharmacists' assistants would now have to remove the bottle and dig out all of the day's debris.

Someone finally got pissed enough, after 2 years of this shit and put about 6 pieces of duct tape over the bottle, so that if some garbage scofflaw wants to get rid of his or her pocket trash, they will either have to peel off 40 minutes worth of duct tape, which will get them beaten to death by an angry Pharmacy department, or walk the 20 feet to the real garbage can. When I heard all of this, I just shook my head and said, “Only on Nebraska Avenue.” Two of the assistants live near me and they howled. They knew what I was talking about.

This is pretty much how we roll here. From shoe-guy on the bus, to slum landlords who think bedbug control is using a 1200 degree heat gun on your mattress, completely missing the "oops, my mattress caught fire" factor, taking bets on how long it will be before someone violates parole and ends up back in the slammer and the ever-popular bus stand game, "Can I have a dollar?" No. "Can  I have fifty cents?" No. "Can I have a bus pass?" Shut up. "Can I have a dollar? ...

This was taken from my porch. I face east. Directly south of this house is the homeless shelter where I lived, before moving here, when I received my disability. It's a magnificent house; there's a plaque on the front explaining it's history.  This is where Teddy Roosevelt stayed at times when he was mustering the Rough Riders, a volunteer corps. After the Civil War, there were not enough soldiers to engage in the Spanish-American War. There was also a fierce debate raging in Congress regarding interference in foreign affair. Isolationists v. Imperialists, so, Teddy took his own road.

Which brings me to my next story. There is a house across the street. It is a magnificent house. Theodore Roosevelt stayed in this house, when he was mustering troops, who later became renowned as “The Rough Riders” before they left for Cuba to fight in the Spanish-American War. They arrived in Tampa in 1898. The Rough Riders are still around, and each year for several years, I played “Mass in Timeof War,” By Franz Joseph Haydn. We would play on Veteran's day and the Rough Riders would come; we donated some of the gate to their cause, for homeless children.

The Rough Riders, circa 1898. The staircase leads to the Grand Ballroom of the University of Tampa. I have played in that ballroom many, many times when I was Principal Viola with the Tampa Bay Chamber Orchestra. The acoustics are marvelous!

A little diversion here, because that's how I roll. I always sat first stand and partnered with a fellow from Curtis freaking Institute. Julliard is Curtis's bitch, if you get my drift. William is an awesome player, and of course, he makes me play like I came from Curtis (ha!) but it's axiomatic, you play better when you're with better players. Anyway, we had to have this choral conductor who was no Dr. Charlene Archibault, or Sir Colin Davis, or James Levine, and certainly no Maestro Anton Coppola. Dr. No (not his real name) did nothing but scowl at us. But, he would never tell us what made him scowl. Sometimes, he'd have less of a scowl, sometimes more. After one of our last performances, William said to me, “What's up with him? He always scowls at the violas, but never tells us what to do to make unscowlable.” I said, “Dunno, but did you notice he had plenty to say about every other section. Mebbe he's just pissed 'cause we don't suck.” William and I shrugged and went off to our next gig, “Santa Claus in Whole Notes, Cause We're Violas.” Great use of that performance major. But, I digress.

This is close to the same image now. Check out the minarets. 

Anyway, that magnificent house has quite a history. I housed a high-class madam and her “hoors” for several decades. The mayor and the Chief of Police were frequent fliers there, I hear. Also, once upon a time, this town was pretty mobbed up by the Trafficante family, who had some dealings with a character named Jack Ruby. The Trafficantes pretty denied much any association with him and some of them are still around, but they engage in honest commerce.

Back in the 70s, I believe the house was sold to the present owners who completely gutted it and restored it back to its original state. It has been named a historical sight and is one of the key key attractions of V.M.Ybor (pronounced ee-bor) which is a part of Ybor City, just to the southeast of Tampa proper. V.M. Ybor's neighborhood association is a weird combination of young professionals and hoodlums. Very eclectic. The V.M. Ybor association had to fight like hell to get it named a historical monument. One for the good guys.

I love the piano. It doesn't love me. I had to take a semester in college and I managed a little Chopin and some Beethoven. I got to Rachmaninoff and had a crisis. I'll stick to the viola on ol' Rocky. That's tuff enuf.

Anyway, the guy who now owns the house has a bunch of musical instruments and he had bought himself a new piano. Either an upright grand or baby grand. He had it tuned and then they had to move it into the house. On the second floor. Understand, I'm a bit sketchy on this, because this is lore and happened about 25 or 30 years ago. So, the owner gets himself a piano mover, who is using an... I don't know what. Forklift? Crane? Magic? Whatever he was trying to use, it didn't work and he dumped the piano right spang in the middle of Nebraska Avenue. Other than being out of tune, the only thing that broke, was the little knob on the lid one uses to open and close the thing. Only on Nebraska Avenue. Actually, I say that, but what I'm thinking is this, “they know about pianos on Nebraska Avenue?” Sometimes, the people here make me wonder if they know about fire or the wheel.

#ROW80 1ST QTR SUNDAY CHECK IN - POST 21 – THE MEDIUM AND THE MESSAGE

Our regularly scheduled #ROW80 post will begin in a moment, after this update on goals or status or whatever we're calling it. Firstly, I'm so behind, my behind is behind. This is only Post 21 and I've done precisely 1/4 of mediocreness and that is being kind. What with pneumonia, JC falling, JC having cat-scratch fever or something, me having had some kind of horrid, awful part of my "Parkinson's Disease, or not Parkinson's Disease, that is STILL the question" the part where you are on the verge of tears, but just being on the verge of tears causes worsening tremors, choking, blinking lights, horrible sounds and this unrelenting black, black depression where all is lost, and what not, until I finally gave in with 2 tears and a squeak in the shower, then the angels sang, well, you can see not much has gotten done. I have all of the parts from when I was homeless pulled down and am trying to edit. This shit is hard and I've never done it, so there we are.



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In something akin to a cold open in a movie or a television series, I find myself in the midst of a scene of confusion and hellish sound. The air is heated and smells of diesel and metal. I seem to be near an industrial district and close by a bunch of underpasses. I know I’m on or near the West Coast, far from Tampa. I also know this is another dream, but not like the previous couple of dreams, which I am starting to think were dress rehearsals for something. Or were the dreams priming, much in the way, water used to be used, a cup or two sluiced through a kitchen pump to prime it for use.

Anyway, for some reason, I know that our country’s networked systems have been compromised and disabled over time. Much in the way a Trojan will replicate and replace 8 bits of data at a time over many thousands of iterations to slowly cripple the innards of an entire operating system as it morphs, this works with networking as well. In my dream, I have like this instant knowledge of time, place and the situation I'm in; none of which are really germane to the particulars; I just know what is coming.

Once the usual culprits (CIA, NSA, Pentagon and other Military Ops) have been disabled on the ground, I begin to see broader scope of the devastation; planes begin to fall from the sky (dream imagery in the Islamic world refers to illness, plague, smallpox, pleurisy. An aside; I’ve had death falling from the skies dreams all of my life, even as a small child and both of my parents were pilots.)

All planes are falling; big commercial ones, small private jets and as they fall, great plumes of fire and smoke billow from their wings and the backs of their fuselages. The newer ones fail first. They come down with huge, tearing impacts and grind the earth beside and slightly ahead of the underpass I am trying to shelter beneath. The noise is ferocious and jarring. The tempo of the falling planes increases, as more and more of them fail. You can see by the motions of the planes that some of their pilots are valiantly trying to “deadstick” them as they augur in. The heat and noise becomes too intense for us (who in the hell is in this car with me, driving?) to stay. Traffic is at a standstill on the expressway anyway. We are all sitting ducks. People are abandoning their cars and run for the underpass. We join the exodus.

We ( I still have this shadowy person tagging along and he's still unknown; amazingly, I am still blind and toting whackamole with me) run up under the cement abutment, because now, the newer vehicles are starting to falter and then explode. We both look at our phones. They are dead as doornails. Whatever is going through every computer system is acting like two things I know of, but was unaware they could be done together, although it was probably just a matter of time. The first part of this seems to be like a typical Trojan worm and just causes havoc as it cripples systems. The 2^nd part seems to more like an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse disrupter, which once detonated, fries every piece of circuitry in its perimeter; it makes ATMs, gas pumps, phones, everything dependent upon electronics unusable. I wasn’t aware that such things could be bundled together and maybe they aren't here, either. Maybe it's just me and my slap-happy, paranoid imagination. Me and shadowy guy just look at one another. Fade to black.

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 I’m sitting in a movie theater for one. Up on the screen, Nosferatu, the 1928 version is giving a spirited rendition of… something. Not sure what it is. He does some sleight of hand nonsense and one of his legs falls off and goes down a chute to the laundry room, I guess. He’s babbling away up there on the stage, but I’m not really paying attention. I’m too busy trying to decipher what in the hell was going on on the West Coast a few minutes ago and why it didn’t really happen and why it was just a message and why was it told to me.

Nosferatu does some other sorry shit and loses an arm this go-round. If this is a magic act, he needs to step up his game. Back to what happened-didn’t happen-happened only in my head. Trying to decipher all of this dream-within-a-dream crap. This hasn’t happened yet. But, I need to tell someone, but who and how. Prince of Lies loses his other 2 limbs. That is so sad. Hang it up, there, Count.

He promptly folds up into one of those little popcorn boxes, all foldy-like and falls to the floor. Curious, I get up out of my seat of one and go to pick up the box. The paper carton looks familiar. That widow’s peak hair and white visage. I turn the box over and it’s Nicolas Cage. Great. This is either going to be the greatest dream ever, or it’s going to go down in history as the suckiest thing ever, alá “Wicker Man.” I’m relieved when Nic plays it straight, well for Nic, and just gives me one eye roll and says “You must tell the Pandas, they will know, but you must be the one to save their souls! You must tell Panda 1 and 2 and Burkholder Panda, the Sensitive one.” I look at Nic, and shake my head. “That’s Sensei, Nic, m’kay?” Now, he goes all eye-rolling and crazed.

“You fool! IT has not happened yet! Tell them! Tell the Pandas! Tell them all!” He’s jumping around, his little cardboard tantrum is ridiculous. I put him on the seat. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell them. I promise.”

I have some vague impression, more like a sense of relief. I told Panda 1 and Panda 2, actually, I am telling them now. Lois, too. Panda Burkholder as well, although he does not really understand. But then, neither do I, with the exception that I have some work to do.

#ROW80 1ST QTR POST 16 – SUNDAY CHECK IN ON SATURDAY

Well, the stasis continues, sort of. I had a moment there, when I thought I might be in high dudgeon over something, but it turned out to be a low to medium dudgeon, so I decided it wasn’t worth the effort, I guess. Now, that I seem to be getting over this nuclear flu or whatever it is, the old “Parkinson's Disease or not-Parkinson's Disease, that is the question” symptoms are returning. Boy howdy, did I miss them. From weird pain, tingles, tics and twitches, to fake strokes and heart attacks, all of my old friends have shown up for the auld lang syne.

Can’t say that I’ve missed them a bit. Tonight, I made tacos. By the time I got through in the kitchen, it looked more like somebody had tossed a bunch of lettuce, tomato, taco meat, rice and shredded cheese in the general direction of some taco shells and 2 plates than actual meals. “Come and get it while it’s hot!” I warbled. JC is on his own; he very gallantly retrieved what he could. The cat enjoyed the parts that had fallen on the floor.

If my tacos did this, I'd be calling the taco exorcist.

The only thing I’ve been irritated about now that the insurance mess is more or less straightened out is this: what in the name of all that is holy gives men the right to think that I want nothing more in my life than to talk to them? Especially strange men I do not know? I’m really not pleased by this at all. Women don’t do this, do they? JC has not been able to get around for some time, so I have to go out by myself a lot. I’m not flirtatious, I don’t exude flirtatious, or come hither hormones, but this is really annoying. I know it’s not just me, I see it happen to other women. WTF? If I wanted your scintillating company, I would talk to you. Since I’m not talking to you, don’t talk to me, m’kay?

Case in point. Dude comes up while I’m looking at hamburger and practically stands on top of me. “Did you have a good outcome?” He asks out of the blue. I look at him. “What?” He points to my cane and glasses. “Did you have a good outcome?” I’m flabbergasted. “Does this look like a good outcome, you fucking moron?” Loud. He turns tail and runs. Meat guy at Sweetbay laughs.

The week before, I was in the soup aisle, bent over getting my favorite soup, which is on the bottom shelf. I hear, “Hi, My name’s Tom. Are you from around here?” I stand up to see “Tom,” who’s a good 18 inches from me; too close. “No, Tom, I’m on loan from Neptune.” I back up with my cans of soup, held close as if some type of man-shield. Just then, Shianna, the lady who sells the homeless paper and whose name I never remember comes running up and hugs me. “Hey girl! Whatchoo been doin’ since we got out?” Out of what is never specified and I can’t remember if it was the homeless shelter, the loony bin, hospital, or jail. I’m pretty sure I haven’t been there, guess I’ll have to run my own name through Crime Stoppers, but am not sure, so I totally Scooby her. “Oh you know, a little of this, a bit of that, helpin’ at the soup kitchen. I saw Shaneiqua and Shalala the other day, they said to tell you “hey.” Whatchoo doin?” I ask her in a shriek.

Tom is edging closer to the end of the aisle, praise the lord. Shianna yells back, “I’m sellin’ these here newspapers, only a buck a paper. Tampa has a no pan-handling ordinance and people like Shianna works to earn money to feed herself. She’s been a staple around here since I have. She’s neat and clean and works hard to sell her little news papers. Today, I give her a 5.00 bill and she tries to give me 5 papers. “Nah, go buy your coffee.” I get a big hug and smile and off she goes. I always have a momentary fugue when I see her, because she was in my shelter briefly, and now is at the Salvation Army. I see her here at the market periodically and since my psychotic break my short-term memory is really, really bad. It’s more fun this way.

I’ve also noticed that when 2 homeless or formerly homeless people get together, it’s glee unbounded. Probably because the mortality and morbidity rates are so high. So, when we get together, we can’t talk like normal people. It’s a reunion! It’s counted a success if you make it through the day. If you get your SSI and are able to pay rent, the gods have smiled upon you. If you get SSDI and you make it through your wait period to Medicare, that is good fortune indeed. I have made it. So, my blessing becomes blessings for others, as I see it. ViolaFury may be a bitch, but she can be a generous, empathetic one.

I see nothing derogatory regarding Italians here.

With the exception of dude who yesterday in the Walgreen’s in an attempt to get my attention, once again, made a trés stupid comment. My friend Alex and I stopped at the store to see if they had hair clips. They didn’t have any that I wanted. My radar kicked in, and there was a noid wearing a knit cap at the check out counter. There were a bunch of t-shirts, 3 for 10.00, various colors. I found some for JC, but they were these hideous day-glo colors, pink, orange, green, just horrid. I said to Alex, “Dayglo pink for JC won’t cut it.” Knit cap, with a smirk, said “you just made a racist Italian remark.” I looked at him. “Did you have to think that up all by yourself, or are you really that stupid?” Dumbass. Outside, Alex said, “Boy, you sure do attract ‘em.” “Like shit drawing flies,” I said.