Mongeville and Big Pharma, with Guest Appearance of Peter Breggin. I Take it All Back What I’ve Said About France

Huh! Here’s something I’ve never seen before. Is it just me? It’s at least everyone in France.

American detective shows are too violent and/or banal to watch, so sometimes we opt for foreign offerings. This is how my wife and I  came to enjoy Manara, an Italian series. It is delightful, witty, empathetic, visually stunning—but with one major caveat. You can forget about any Hebrews 13:4 notion of the marriage bed being undefined. That doesn’t mean you’ll see anything super steamy but the idea is ever-present.

Anyhow, that’s just background. 

The next show up is the French detective show Mongeville, running 8 years, in which a retired judge teams up with a perky woman police officer. So far, no hanky-panky, nor does the tone seem set for any, but there are many episodes to go. We are just at the 4th. Neither of these shows, at least by American standards, are particularly violent. It’s hard to do a murder mystery without someone getting killed, but there’s no gore. It’s just a premise for some cute interaction of characters. Think, in the case of Manara, Jim pining after Pam, as in Office, then Pam pining after Jim, yet miscommunications and mishaps always occur so that they cannot connect.

It is episode 4 of Mongeville season 1 that introduced something new to me. A sub theme of early episodes is that Judge Mongeville’s daughter disappeared long ago and he is trying to track her down. In episode 4, he interviews her old med school teacher. That teacher relates how the girl was brilliant, so brilliant that pharmaceutical recruiters hired her for one of their ‘missionary’ projects. When she saw what was going on there, she was so repulsed and in some way so fearful lest her response bring trouble to her family, that she disappeared into yet another country.

See, pharmaceutical companies test their products, but they test them in developing countries so that “if anything goes wrong” there’s no one to complain about it. The statement is made matter-of-factly by the daughter’s med school teacher, not with the air of being shocking, but with the air that everyone knows about this, companies all do it, and if any of them do not, they quickly fall behind the competitive curve of those who do.

Well, I’d never seen it—such a statement made on a popular TV entertainment show. Shows featuring ‘rouge doctors’ are a dime a dozen. Occasionally even a ‘rouge’ medical company, a bad actor in an otherwise beneficent industry, enters into plot, but never have I seen a show that sets forth the entire industry as villainous. 

It reminded me of something in Peter and Ginger Breggin’s book, COVID-19 and the Global Predators, over the campaign to discredit cheap and effective anti-Covid drugs so that people would have no choice but to pine for a vaccine. He tells of one of the studies embraced as proof the drugs were no good in which patients were administered those drugs at known toxic levels so as to achieve the desired results: 39% died.

“The Brazilian authors of this study must have known they were treading on dangerous territory by purposely causing many deaths. Coming from a poor area of the country, they may have felt they could get away with sacrificing their patients without local reprisals. They simply gave lethal doses of chloroquine to patients to prove that the drug and its derivative hydroxychloroquine were too dangerous to treat COVID-19.”

It was shocking to me read this statement. Not unbelievable, because if you’ve been around the block a few times, few things are unbelievable. But shocking it was, completely new to me. Yet here is Mongeville in effect saying. “So what else is new? It’s just taking what we all know happens to next level.”

D453CDA1-8451-4460-AFEB-C4B469167FE7

I take back all I have ever said about France. I even take back what my right wing brother said about them during the French Fries / Freedom Fries brouhaha a few decades back, when my globetrotting cousin complained that she could no longer use the word gay because the homosexuals had commandeered it, and I said, ‘She’s just mad that she can no longer refer to Gay Paree.

“Why can’t she?” my right wing brother said. 

I take it all back.

I even forgive (temporally) that France is the birthplace of FECRIS, that government-sponsored anti-cult agency that has greatly expanded the definition of cult to include most anything that is not firmly secular. You know, the agency that doubtless was behind that’s government imposing a 60% tax on Witness donations in a clear attempt to stamp out the faith, reversed with damages only many years later by the European Court of Human Rights. You know, the agency whose Russian vice president has labeled Witnesses extremists in that land of the bear and has caused them to suffer serious harm—even jail time and torture. Jehovah’s Witnesses will not take life under any circumstances—how extremist can they be?

Even, whereas devotees of the Enlightment swooned with ecstasy when the power of the people escalated into the American revolution and representative government, but they cringed when the other result of that Enlightenment, the French Revolution, descended into murderous mayhem consuming even its early supporters for not being ‘dedicated’ enough—I overlook that too.

I overlook all of it on account of the French show exposing the wiles of Big Pharma.

“But don’t forget. ..” Abraham Lincoln related the tearjerker tale of a man on his deathbed making peace with his adversary. “If I get better, that grudge still stands!”

That doesn’t entirely fit but it does give me opportunity to relate a favorite Lincoln anecdote. 

******  The bookstore

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

The Forest in Symbolism and History

Could this really happen?

“Absalom was riding on a mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a large tree, and his head got entangled in the big tree, so that he was suspended in midair while the mule he had been riding kept going.” (2 Samuel 18:9)

That’s one bad boy of a tree is all I can say!

Maybe the problem was the mule. 9966A8AB-262E-4143-B56A-46A12C52ABD9 “A mule will labor ten years, willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once,” wrote William Faulkner. Absalom’s mule may not have kicked him, but it sure did do him dirty, hanging him up so hit man Joab could off him.

Maybe it was was the forest. You ‘can’t see the forest for the trees,’ but in this case Absalom can’t see the tree for the forest. 20,000 combatants died and “the forest devoured more of the people than the sword did on that day,” says the verse just prior (8). Maybe it was one of those ‘Lord of the Rings’ forests.

‘Lord of the Rings’ forests are built on a solid tradition of forests being treacherous, even places where the Devil hangs out! 116BEC57-458D-4F1F-B90F-A5EF81889517Mistress Higgins is forever trying to lure folks into the forest for unsavory shenanigans with ‘the Black Man.’ (The author of the Scarlet Letter, Nathanial Hawthorne, modeled her after a real person, Ann Higgins, who was executed for witchcraft in 1656.) That forest was one foreboding place, where “the boughs were tossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath, or constrained to forebode evil to come.”

But at the same time, push deeply enough into the forest and break freeeeee! or at least settle for that illusion.

Backward to the settlement, thou sayest!” Hester remonstrates with Dimmesdale. “Yes; but onward, too! Deeper it goes, and deeper, into the wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step; until, some few miles hence, the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white mans tread. There thou art free! So brief a journey would bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy! Is there not shade enough in all this boundless forest …

Guelzo (without quoting Hawthorne—that’s mine) points to early writers of American history with this Janus-view of the forest. (Janus—the ‘two-faced’ god facing both left and right) Fearful, on the one hand, but promising on the other. Though the ‘promising’ is for an ‘unpromising’ reason. Press into the forest deep enough and you can escape your own screw-ups from the past! The early American view of history according to Guelzo? “Don’t have any, don’t need any, don’t want any.”.  In new America, the “human experiment” can begin anew!

(“Gimme that fruit!” Adam said. “Let the ‘human experiment’ begin!” ‘No, no, no,’ God tacitly says. ‘You’ll screw it all up! Trust me on this, you do not want to usurp the duty of telling good from bad!’ ‘Nah,’ comes the reply—what can go wrong?)

It’s not winners who came to America. It was losers, those driven out for religious reasons, crushed by financial reasons, or refugees from ‘man dominating man to his injury’ reasons. The first settlers “were radical Puritans who were looking for a way out from under the thumb screws of the Church of England. It was only after every other avenue of escape [was] closed off to them that . . . they turned to those vast . . . countries of America” (Guelzo) And “looking over the bow of the Mayflower what could they see [but a] hideous and desolate wilderness full of wild beasts and wild men. Why, said [William] Bradford, even the air, diet, and drinking of water in America would infect their bodies with sore sicknesses and grievous diseases.”

That forest was a dangerous place, make no mistake. It remained ever dangerous in waves of westward expansion, though fear was mixed with growing confidence as humans invented, and then led, with bulldozers Upon reaching the coast and finally conquering the forest, what remains?

“Space—the final frontier,” intones James T. Kirk, introducing a show that would have been dead on arrival were it not for Lucille Ball. The forests are all conquered, some trees rounded up for a ‘tree museum’ for which you must pay a dollar and a half just to see ‘em! (Joni Mitchell) Space is the new frontier. Boldly going where no man has gone before! What is discovered out there? Guys that look just like us, save for pointed ears. Is that evolution great stuff or what!? Pour me a double-shot of it!

What do aliens gain from their new contact with humans? “One damn minute,” Spock pleasantly responds to one of Captain Kirk’s commands. He’s learned to swear! He had just spent the entire 45 previous episodal minutes on 20th-century earth; he had time-traveled there for some reason and Kirk had told him to use profanity. Keep tuque pulled over ears, swear, and they’ve never know you’re not one of them, he tells the Vulcan.

What a stupid, brain-dead, ignorant stab at science fiction prophesy! How unrealistic! However, had he said, ‘One f**ken minute,’ the forecast would have been spot-on. That’s the course ‘evolution’ has taken.

They didn’t learn that in no forest. No way. They were in all their civilized glory when they adopted that new norm.

To be continued:

******  The bookstore

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

The Normalization of the F-Bomb

Sat through a crime drama recently in which all characters used the f-bomb. (Yes, I know it is not ‘wholesome.’) Good guys said it. Bad guys said it. High class said it. Low class said it. They said it when angry. They said it when not angry. Men said it. Women said it. Everyone said it—constantly. It used to be that people said ‘um’ as a word whisker. Do they have any idea how ridiculous they sound?

And no, I’m not worried about bad associations spoiling useful habits. “Pass the f-n salt, please,” I said at the family dinner.  (Not hardly. Not yet. Not never, assuming I don’t make a practice of watching such shows.)

Too bad, really, because it’s otherwise not a bad show, as cop shows go. I can even put up with ‘a little bit of poison,’ to use the expression. I’m not so sure I want to chug it by the vatful however. Sheesh!

And to think I took Pops to the movies 15 years ago and he objected to the cursing—cursing that wasn’t one tenth as bad but was still novel for him. (And no—he was not a religious man.)

***

The gallery: “I hope you don’t get taken out into the virtual back room.

I’m not all that worried. Obviously, bad words are things to avoid. They have a corrosive effect, and I do avoid them, save for when the jacked-up car slips off and lands on my foot. But there is the type of person who would never ever use a swear word and points to that abstinence as ‘Exhibit A’ in his claims to be a Christian. Would that it was so simple.

After all, if upbraided, I could always point to the elder who said, ‘S**t!’ after smacking into my car when it was in the turnaround spot he didn’t expect it to be while backing up. He apologized. “Don’t worry about it,” I told him, ‘that’s what bumpers are for.”

***More from the gallery: “I have a 6 year old grand daughter that uses it frequently in conversation. Unbelievable!”

“I have a little story from a number of years back. When my little buddy (my dog) and I were walking through the park by my place one fine summer day, we were walking behind two girls. They were late teens, early twenties. Between the F-bombs, and the word "like," for the life of me I had no idea what they were talking about. No clue how they knew either! Amazing in it's own way.”

“I remember a couple of (fleshly) brothers that I used to run into occasionally at lunch time that worked in another body shop across the street from the one I worked in at the time.  I wasn't a Witness then & I definitely wasn't a goody two-shoes, but those guys embarrassed me with the flood of 4 letter words that came out of there mouths.  I don't believe they could say 3 words w/o one of them being f---.  Now adays, a lot of TV shows and movies are almost as bad as those brothers were.  We will, quite often, quit a program after a few minutes into it because of that.”

“You have to switch off the TV. Personally I think it is used to fill up space in modern films instead of pithy dialogue. If you took away the f__ words used those 90 minute films would likely only last around 40 minutes.”

We’ve come a long way from the days where moviemakers were allowed one F-bomb to avoid a no-no rating. ‘Make it count, son’ moviemakers would say as they maneuvered so that F-bomb would be the crescendo of the film. Maybe it is still that way, but it doesn’t matter. A torrent of entertainment venues have arisen that don’t give a hoot about what the rating police want. 

B25E760E-8B89-4350-9DF2-A91144E6282BAnd to think that, as a boy, I was on the beach with my family, surrounded by other families with beach towels, umbrellas, and picnic baskets. A group of teens passed by. One of them uttered the S-word. My dad rose like a grizzly bear. “Hey! There’s decent families here! Watch your mouths!” They may have made fun of him, but not until they were very far away.

(photo by mana5280 on Upsplash)

******  The bookstore

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

Another entertainment discussion—each comment more restrictive than the last.

Another one of those text discussions this evening—the service group does this via Zoom every non-meeting night—about entertainment. There was an article on the topic during the year, and this is the 2nd time it has come up on the rotation

The trouble with this kind of discussion is that it so easily devolves to a competition as to who is the most restrictive, each remark topping the other, as though whoever that is takes the crown as most spiritual. And you can’t go the other way. You can’s say, “Well, brothers, we should be reasonable here,” or “sometimes there is some redeeming value”...or “it’s not that bad,” for fear of being seen as one who advocates we all watch crap. Last time, with little righteous ground not already taken, when it was my turn I all but pledged that if a character so much as proposed a toast, that was enough for me to rip the TV off the wall, and throw it in the trash!

But this time I was ready, Before the same routine could play out as last time, I interjected that a discussion like this need not devolve into a contest of who is the most restrictive, & that person wins, as though he or she must be the most spiritual; it isn’t necessarily so. 

Would you put even a little bit of poison in you?—someone repeated that line. Actually, we would and we do. Fast food is horrible for a person, yet how many swear it off entirely? Even non-fast-food—read the ingredients on the can or box someday. Not all of those chemicals are great stuff. Since our physical diet is not perfect, why think our entertainment diet must be perfect? 

Everyone came around to that remark, for it is a little silly when one comment follows another, each more restrictive than the last. Still, it’s not said much, and there was a little squirming, as though I was recommending filth, so I said that I wasn’t. My entertainment diet of any sort is pretty light.

Someone commented on the verse in James. “But each one is tried by being drawn out and enticed by his own desire. Then the desire, when it has become fertile, gives birth to sin; in turn sin, when it has been carried out, brings forth death.” Ah— a chance to redeem myself. “Enticed by his own desire,” are the operating words. Watching a whodunnit and the bad guy is taken out? You have to take them out. That’s what bad guys are for. That’s why God made them. But when you get all pumped up, teeth gnashing, salivating, “Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!!! And it should have been ME to pull the trigger!!!!”—that’s being enticed by one’s own desire. 

So it didn’t go the way it went last time. I just hope I don’t hear that everyone tuned in to that sicko slasher flik playing later that night: “Brother Harley said it was okay.”

....see Hurry Gwen, They’re Killing People!

Visit Smashwords bookstore.  Also available at Amazon & other ebook retailers

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

A JW Connection With Perry Mason?

Look at how State Prosecutor Hamilton Berger (center) pouts like a little kid when Perry Mason outmaneuvers him, which he always does, because it is his show. Here Hamburger has raised an objection, Perry objected to it, and the judge overruled him. Flustered, isn’t he?

317DFE21-DD4D-4134-B484-EECE787AA5BF

But after the case—he loses every single time—sometimes he will reconnoiter with Perry in the latter’s swank office as though old friends. He will even drop his prosecution mid-trial when Perry’s tightening net prods some poor cornered rat in the gallery to jump his feet—“I did it! I killed him! He had it coming! He cheated at Scrabble all the time!”

“Doesn’t Hamilton tire of getting his clock cleaned every episode?” someone asked William Talman, the actor who played him—he called his record “the longest losing streak in history.” Of course not! he answered. Justice was served—what more could a prosecuting attorney ask for? Overriding ambition with this guy? I think not.

Hamburger disappeared from the show in the 1960s because Talman was arrested for “lewd conduct” and smoking grass at a party. CBS suspended and then fired him, even after a judge threw out the charges! These days a tawdry reputation does nothing to hamper an actor’s career—it may even enhance it—but Perry Mason was from the days of squeaky clean TV. The show endured a series of dud replacements for Prosecuting Attorney before a deluge of letters made CBS hire him back.

Now look at how Hamilton’s right hand man, Lieutenant Tragg, beams with pleasure at the prospect of messing Perry up, here by arresting his client. He disapproves of the crime, I suppose, but it is compensated for by being able to stick it to Perry. He, too, loses every time. He, too, never holds a grudge. He, too, sometimes hashes out the details afterwards in Perry’s swank office.

A8DF7C8C-17CF-44FB-9336-4D5A94983091

Ray Collins was the actor that played Tragg. He took on the role in his late 60s, and it would be his final role. With fading health and memory, he filmed his last Perry Mason in early 1964. Everyone knew he would not be returning, but the producer knew he watched the show every night and kept his name in the opening title sequence so as not to make him feel bad. That, too, like Talman getting fired, is not something that I think would happen today. Is this another bookends of a different age scenario—one bookend in seemly times and its mate in one unseemly?

My wife and I have rediscovered Perry during Covid 19 time, maybe even before. We like a good whodunnit, of course—who doesn’t? But the trouble with a whodunnit is that somebody has always dunnit, and these days they do with with blood splashing the screen. Murders in Perry Mason are kinder, gentler, friendly killings—they just drop without undue fuss. Half the time you don’t even see the killing—they’re already dead when Tragg or someone comes across them. It is another seemly-unseemly contrast.

Is it true that Jehovah’s Witnesses HQ gets a nickel each time you watch a Perry Mason episode? Maybe. Erle Stanley Gardner, the show’s creator, married his long time secretary after his first wife died. That secretary is supposedly the inspiration for Della Street, Perry’s super-capable TV secretary, who was always taking on extra missions to save the day. The real-life secretary was a Witness—just when she became one is hard to track down. She survived Erle and at age 88 was still administering his estate, which included a huge archive. When she died at 102, did she leave anything to her charity of choice? I’ve heard she did.

But it is hard to track down. Actually, I used to be able to, but an article that flat-out stated the connection has disappeared—is it behind a paywall? Dunno. It is for someone else to tease out if they are so inclined. I’m pretty sure it is so—I’m not usually wrong on these things except for when I am mistaken. At any rate, you can’t count your time watching the show, so don’t even ask.

Ray Collins died of emphysema at age 75. William Talman was 53 when he died of lung cancer in 1968. It was nothing to see any actor of the day lighting up a cigarette. Talman was the first Hollywood actor to film an antismoking public service announcement, not to be aired until after his death. He was by then pretty sure he would lose his battle with cancer. “Take some advice about smoking and losing from someone who’s been doing both for years... If you don’t smoke, don’t start. If you do smoke, quit!” I am reminded of how the JW organization in 1973, persuaded by the growing evidence that tobacco use was one of those 2 Corinthians 7:1 defilements of flesh, decreed it unacceptable for Witnesses who wished to remain in good standing. Just how many lives did they save in doing that?

Perry Mason the series ran eight years, from 1957 - 1965. I remember it, but I was too young to take much interest. My wife remembers that her mom never missed an episode. Netflix users as late as 2014 still rate Raymond Burr, who played Perry, as their favorite actor.

Roughly speaking, Matlock is the equivalent of Perry Mason. It is a legal drama of 20 years later with an equally engaging star—Andy Griffith. It is just as entertaining and the murders are also, if not friendly, at least not uber-grisly. So why do my wife and I watch Perry reruns and not Matlock? It’s because of the cars—memorable in Perry’s day, but toasters in Matlock’s. In last night’s exciting episode, Perry impales the escaping villain on the tail fin of his Cadillac.

9B3EDDC6-5ADB-4FA0-9B58-65B85CD8E71B

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

Stardate 45836: Insulting Citizens via Billboard

‪“Captain’s Log, Stardate 45836: We have landed on this really strange planet, where public officials use technology to identify persons with ‘perfect faces for radio’ as they approach on the highway, and insult them through digital billboards”.”

A1993011-A711-450A-B94A-BA0BE8E394CA

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

Searching for the Twilight Zone—in Binghamton NY

2AA43371-AB93-4362-8CA6-E5FFC39D78FA

Pictured above is the bus terminal of Binghampton, NY. It is no longer just for Greyhound—all county buses now launch from the site. Built in 1938, it is of the Art Deco design known as Streamline Moderne—I love this design!—intended to convey aerodynamics and speed. Only a half dozen of such terminals still exist—there were once ten times that number.

This particular station was the inspiration for Rod Serling’s “The Mirror,” an episode of the anthology series The Twilight Zone. That episode terrified me. All Twilight Zones did, but I didn’t see too many as a boy because it was past my bedtime. Every so often, however—due to circumstances I no longer recall—I succeeded in outmaneuvering my parents and scared myself silly with the off-limits show.

A4CA5492-00A6-426C-A714-8CDC91E607C4

The Mirror is a story of a woman waiting for the bus who becomes unnerved when her exact double appears from another world, intent on replacing her. She is assured by others that such things are imaginary and do not happen, but then she looks up from outside the bus and—gasp!—there is that double seated on board, gazing down upon her.

Rod Serling narrated every opening and closing of The Twilight Zone. For “Mirror Image,” he began with:

Millicent Barnes, age twenty-five, young woman waiting for a bus on a rainy November night. Not a very imaginative type is Miss Barnes: not given to undue anxiety, or fears, or for that matter even the most temporal flights of fantasy. Like most young career women, she has a generic classification as a, quote, girl with a head on her shoulders, end of quote. All of which is mentioned now because, in just a moment, the head on Miss Barnes' shoulders will be put to a test. Circumstances will assault her sense of reality and a chain of nightmares will put her sanity on a block. Millicent Barnes, who, in one minute, will wonder if she's going mad.”

A young man in the episode, concerned for Millicent’s visibly deteriorating mental health, settles back in his seat at the terminal after the officers he has summoned have taken the woman away for help. He notices his bag is missing. He spots the thief absconding with it. Overtaking him, he discovers that—gasp!—it is his double!

Serling closes:

Obscure and metaphysical explanation to cover a phenomenon. Reasons dredged out of the shadows to explain away that which cannot be explained. Call it 'parallel planes' or just 'insanity'. Whatever it is, you'll find it in the Twilight Zone.”

Rod Serling was a favorite son of Binghamton, born and raised there. You can run around and view, as we did on a recent visit, the homes in which he grew up—well, two of the three, anyway. It is a small city. Getting from anywhere to anywhere else is a snap. The Rod Serling Archive produces a map that lists other sites. There is the site of Serling’s Market Sanitary—it is a parking lot today. There is Serling’s Market—now a vacant lot, as is the former site of the Arlington Hotel, the inspiration for an episode of Night Gallery, a show he later hosted. The temple where his family once worshiped is now the Binghamton Housing Authority. His six Emmys and Peabody Award are housed at Ithaca College, about 45 minutes away. His own nondescript gravesite is at Interlaken Cemetery, another 45 minutes to the northwest.

328E0289-D0DD-4A86-9AEA-25B827B20FDF

Other episodes of the Twilight Zone were fashioned in his home town. The carousel and bandstand of Recreation Park serves as the setting for “Walking Distance.” This is the episode—not particularly scary, though it probably terrified me at the time—in which a man named Martin has his car break down—they often did back then—necessitating repairs in his hometown that he happens to be driving through. While waiting, he wanders into the park that he remembers so well, and finds that time there has stood still. Why—he spots himself as an eleven-year-old riding the carousel! He calls out to his younger self. His call distracts the boy, who tumbles off the horse and breaks his leg. Instantly, the adult Martin feels the pain. And so forth—on goes the storyline.

83716FC8-80D0-4473-9515-FEB16A9C92F8

Closing narration:

Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives—trying to go home again. And also like all men, perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too, because he'll know it isjust an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone.”

We stopped at Recreation Park. The bandstand is still there at an intersection of sidewalks. It is dated, a bit ragged, and is perhaps no longer used for its intended purpose, but the nearby carousel was only closed up because fall had arrived—during summer it sees regular use. Sturdy trees tower over both structures, indeed over all of the park except for what looks like a more recent addition of athletic fields. The leaves were turning—yellow and oranges predominated—and only some had fallen. The small city itself is surrounded by hills—bursting with color during our visit. The day was sunny. The autumn air was crisp.

D91784DF-8887-45A5-B466-5F69E1F1B69A

Then there was Fowler’s (now Boscov’s), a department store on the corner of Court and Water streets. In the old days, the Boscov’s salesman told me, a piano player entertained shoppers. This site was the inspiration for “The After Hours,” an episode featuring a woman named Marsha, who chances into the store and passes all the mannequins. For a transaction, someone asks her for ID, and hers only goes back a month! More strange things transpire. She tries to run away, but freezes into plastic as she does so. The show ends with her a mannequin on display—her turn to be a human has expired—and another store mannequin, one that she passed earlier, is now taking his turn walking about shopping as a human!

Imagine standing forever still, unable to act, to speak, to touch a reassuring hand. If you were released from such a fate, even for a while, wouldn't you hope to forget that in reality, you're only on a short leave of absence...from the Twilight Zone?”

27B720F0-CF3D-4AD6-80E6-5D357E9D3DED

Boscov’s proved an interesting find in itself, if only because downtown department stores are a dying rarity in most cities. This one is growing—not dying at all—and it is one of a chain of 48. It began as a single dry goods store in Reading PA purchased by Solomon Boscov, a Russian immigrant who arrived in 1914 speaking only Yiddish. 26 Boscov stores are scattered throughout Pennsylvania—it’s first (1962) out-of-state store is this one here in Binghamton, just a few miles over the state line—with four floors, escalators at center, elevators on the side, adjacent to a four-story parking garage, so that you can exit on any level and walk straight to your car. Mirrors make the interior seem larger than it actually is.

Is Boscov’s the department store equivalent of Wegman’s, the family-owned supermarket chain from my home town, Rochester, which opened its 101st store in Brooklyn this week? I left my wife in the store while I walked around the downtown area to snap a few pictures for this post. When I returned, she was exactly where I would have imagined she would be—in the bargain nook on the 4th floor—the Auditorium, probably a preserved holdover from Fowler’s. “This place is like a mall in itself—it has everything!” she exclaimed. I left her there to stroll the floor, where the salesman mentioned previously tried to interest me in furniture. “I might buy a couch if you could deliver it to Rochester,” I responded.

2FE9131C-2797-4CF4-AFE9-6F8F16EFCFD8

We fell into conversation about my visit to Binghamton. He knew about the Twilight Zone episode at his store, but he hadn’t seen my Archive map of Rod Serling destinations. He didn’t endorse our previous visit to the Cracker Barrel for lunch because each year the chains take about 2% from the business of the struggling Mom and Pop diners that he favors—he had been one of the Pops himself and now he is selling furniture at Boscov’s. So I told him about Dave back in Rochester from my season or three of carrying newspapers.

Newspaper carriers arrive at a ridiculously early hour to pick up and bag their papers for morning delivery. They do this in one of several large warehouses, and I got used to preparing my stock across the table from old Dave, who was preparing his. I lamented the morning that Wegman’s Chase Pitkin home repair store chain went down. Wegman’s had declared that they wished to focus on their core grocery business. The real reason, I said, was that they were steamrollered by the out-of-town corporate Home Depot’s and Lowe’s, and wasn’t that too bad. But Dave didn’t have a bit of sympathy for them. What goes around, comes around, he said. He had once been the Pop of a Mom and Pop hardware store, and Chase Pitkin had sent him packing—now here he was, in his 70s, delivering the morning paper. Karma might be a bitch for Chase-Pitkin, but it but it didn’t bother him even the slightest.

87 Court Street is the former home of Resnick’s Woman’s Apparel, which inspired the Twilight Zone episode “Where is Everybody?”

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space, and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, and it lies between the pit of man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area that we call, The Twilight Zone.”

In this episode, a man in an Air Force uniform—he cannot recall why—enters a town, finds it completely deserted. As he wanders, he grows increasingly paranoid that he is being watched. His fears grow upon spotting the paperback on the spinning book rack—who set it spinning?— “The Last Man on Earth, Feb, 1959”—his time! Panic mounting, wildly running through the street, he hits a pedestrian call button and screams for help. The pedestrian call button turns out to be a panic button. Military personnel stop the experiment. He has actually been in an isolation booth, and they have been running tests to see if he can endure the long periods of isolation he will encounter on his upcoming space launch to the moon.

The barrier of loneliness: The palpable, desperate need of the human animal to be with his fellow man. Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting... in The Twilight Zone.”

There is no Resnick’s Woman’s Apparel anymore. It disappeared long ago, as though it, too, had been part of the experiment. The street-front building now houses university students.

D08AF5E3-69DD-4329-8E74-8C8C4E3CFEC2

Housing students is a growth industry for Binghamton today. The students like to move off campus and into town—same as I did when I was in school. Binghamton University is growing, even though the Bundy Museum docent told me that only 10% of those who apply are admitted. Its prestige shot up recently when one of its professors was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry—highly unusual for a college in the state SUNY school system—it is a prize that generally goes to the most prestigious universities. Professor M Stanley Whittingham had, years prior, conducted research that led to the development of the lithium-ion battery. “I think it’s no question this will make more people know of the university and make people look up, ‘Where is Binghamton,’” he said at a press conference.

Professor M Stanley Whittingham, a brainy type, a man whose claim to recognition came and departed long ago. Some would call him a has-been, his deeds overlooked by time. A pedant who now teaches ordinary students at an ordinary college in an ordinary small town in upstate New York, the professor long ago resigned himself to a slow downward slide into obscurity. Impossible for such a forgotten man to receive the Nobel Prize, you say? Ordinarily yes. Unless that college happens to be located in the town that forever remains the birthplace of...the Twilight Zone.”

[Paragraphs in italics are the words of Mr. Serling, except for the last, which is mine.]

 

******  The bookstore

 

 

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

WBBF in Rochester Bans “They’re Coming to Take Me Away—Ha Haaa!”

The stressor that triggered a mental breakdown in “They’re coming to take me away, ha haa” was a runaway dog, not a girlfriend! The artist included the line, “They'll find you yet and when they do, they'll put you in the ASPCA, you mangy mutt" to defuse the charge that he was making fun of mentally ill persons. “And it worked!” said Jerry Samuels, the songwriter.

It didn’t work for Rochester’s WBBF, the station for kids throughout my childhood. I well remember the 1966 novelty song. It instantly soared to the top of the station’s playlist—and then it disappeared. A most unusual public service announcement (as though from God, from the perspective of a child) then stated that the song had been pulled because it made fun of the mentally ill.

Apparently, WBBF’s action was as unusual as their PSA. Wikipedia (accessed 10/15/2019) makes no mention of the song’s being unwelcome anywhere. And yet it clearly did make fun of the mentally ill—WBBF was right. “And I’ll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats, and they’re coming to take me awaayyy ha haaa! — to the ‘funny farm,’ where life is beautiful all the time”—you don’t think that’s making fun of the mentally ill? What difference does it make whether the trigger is a runaway girlfriend or a runaway dog?

In fact, I remember that line about the “mangy mutt” and I took it for just bitter words directed at the girlfriend—I’m not sure that I knew what the ASPCA was back then. Had the lyrics been, “Lollypop Farm,” it would have been a different story for anyone in Monroe County, even if meaningless for those anywhere else.

This makes me reflect on the AM radio of my youth, WBBF. Only that station, and the more avant-grade and unpredictable WSAY played the songs popular with my g-g-generation. All the rest played Perry Como. There was no FM radio at the time.

Was WBBF unusually responsible back then—a pillar among young-people stations? I am inclined to assign it that grade retroactively. I certainly know that it could be hilarious. Jack Palvino was the morning host, and he intertwined jokes that still hold up, decades later. I still remember them, and smile whenever I do.

“Friends, do you have bills to pay?” one seeming commercial began. “Well, please give it back. Bill’s head is getting cold.”

Jack ran a lot of spots like that. It must have been some subscription service for jokes—unless he just made them up, which is possible. Even the more raucous ones like the teary, “I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!” and a sympathetic Jack would say, “You poor man! You can tell me—what is it you can’t stand?” to which the answer would be, “YOUR FACE!” still prompts a grin, juvenile though it is.

And don’t get me going about Chickenman, a spoof on Superman! Chickenman offered his services to the city as crimefighter, and they would have just as soon that he dropped dead. A horrible klutz with a secret identity like Superman—he woke the police commissioner’s secretary, Miss Helpinger, out of a sound sleep, disguising his voice (which she instantly saw through) to report that he had been kidnapped. Somehow he managed to set his wings on fire with his utility laser light and as the approaching fire truck sirens could be heard in the background, the exasperated secretary advised him to flap his wings, for this would serve to put out the fire—or perhaps it would serve to spread it, which may have been her real aim.

As young teens, Jack Palvino inspired us to try our hand doing the same. My best chum, a few houses down, was a hobbyist with electronics. He built a radio station. We named it WNOR. It’s antenna stretched from his bedroom window to a weeping-willow tree 100 yards away. WNOR station had a radius of about a mile—we walked around the block to check—and we would spend much time after school spinning our limited number of records during on-air sessions. The “Evil One” in our mind, at the time, was the FCC, which supposedly raided and shut down stations such as ours—this reputedly was the fate of one such pirate station (I loved the term—pirates!) several miles to the south of us.

We copied Jack Palvino’s techniques, inventing the series of short snippets, “Golf tips—-(cue a golf swing by the mike)—with Jack Bogey”—Jack Nicklaus was all the rage back then. A listener would ask Jack if he preferred his woods, and Jack would say that he did not because he lost too many balls there. We were kids, you must remember.

The creative phase even carried through when I later attended Potsdam State and volunteered for the student radio station—I forget what the call letters there were. Another chum and I took the morning slot—just like Jack had done in my childhood. A few minutes after the sports report, read off the AP wire, we wrote alternating “special” sports reports, with mine running down his team (Syracuse) and his running down mine.

Jack Palvino made his life career in radio, though he was only behind the microphone during my youth. From time to time, his name would pop up in local news, as would that of Nick Nickson, another WBBF mainstay. I wonder where they are today—and even if they are yet alive. I will look it up after finishing this post.

And—coming back to the topic of mental illness—if you had a mental breakdown in Rochester, they would take you to the R-wing of Strong Hospital. Throughout my adult life this has been so. It still is. It has never occurred to me to ask, “Where does the R come from?” Nevertheless, I discovered the answer to the question I had never asked during a recent visit to the Jello Museum in nearly Leroy, NY. Heir to the Jello fortune, Helen Rivas gave $2.1 million to the hospital for the purpose of a facility to treat those suffering mental illness, and the R stands for Rivas.

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

Live From the Locker Room

After Trump was caught saying the bad words, he dismissed it as locker-room talk. Reporters were not so easily duped and launched an investigation:

....

“Good evening. We’re broadcasting live from the locker room tonight to reveal to America just what goes on in this previously obscure culture that has so suddenly thrust itself upon the national stage. We’ll interview some players in this intriguing venue. Ah, here’s comes a jock now. “Hey! Yo! Whazzup? We’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Why, good evening sirs, madam. You must be members of the news media. Welcome to our humble locker room. It’s not much, but we like to call it home.  Please make yourselves comfortable. There are refreshments in the adjacent room, just past the gentleman snapping his neighbor’s buns with a towel.

“Charlie, it’s as we thought. They’re not crude at all here. They are quite refined and sensitive to gender rights. They are just…”

“HEY, YA WANNA GET YOUR CRAP OUTTA HERE?! I CAN’T GET TO MY @%!# LOCKER!”

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

Weather Then and Tomorrow

Has it always been that way, with bad weather dominating the news? I borrowed Paul’s time machine again - he’s always tinkering with something - and zipped back fifty years. A snowstorm had blanketed the country. I turned on the TV news, expecting to see reporters standing in snowdrifts, pointing to smash-ups on the roads. Nothing! Not until 35 minutes into the program: “We now break to our weather reporter, Sergeant Garrett. Sergeant, what can you tell us?” “It’s winter,” Sargent said, “suck it up! From Frozentusch, Iowa, back to you, Walter.’”

What barbarians! I hopped in the machine and headed home, but when I hit 2014, I got stuck in a snowdrift. I got out to push. All the networks were there. They rushed over. One reporter fell on her keister.

“Whoa! It’s really slick out there! Here’s a man stuck in a time machine! What do you have to say to America, sir”

“Whoa, it’s really slick out here!” I said. “And cold!”

Reporters helped me break free my time machine and gave me a push-start, but I slid right past my exit into year 2038. It appeared that covering snowstorms had brought such good ratings that television news had expanded their coverage to nightfalls.

“All across the country, Americans are coping with encroaching darkness! We now break to our correspondent General Garrett, in Blackentusch, Iowa. General, what can you tell us?”

“Thanks, Charlie. Well, it’s really something out here since the sun went down. I can’t see my hand in front of my face! It’s really very dangerous.”

‘Thanks, General. Now we’ll go to the Federal Bureau of Aggravation.”

“Every day we warn people, and every day there are some who wait till the last minute! You must make sure that you have light bulbs in all lamps and that all lamps are plugged in!”

“Thanks, General. Excellent reporting as always. Good advice. This is potentially very serious and it’s easy to forget that during daytime. But scientists tell us that the sun will absolutely go down tonight – this is not something you want to play games with!”

From 'No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash'

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'