Random Musings – Page 3 – GringoPotpourri

Remembering My Mother

Ann M. Skinner, 70, passed away Monday, September 19, 2016. Ann was born and raised in Chicago, IL, graduating from Maryville Academy and attended the Moser Secretary College. She raised her family in Plainfield, IL where she was very active with her children’s schools and the community. She and her family moved to Memphis in 2004. Ann spent most of her career in the secretarial field, however, the last 15 years she spent as a telephone operator with Target Stores which she retired from in 2011. After retiring she then relocated to Morristown with her husband.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Stanley and Alice Poterala.

Ann leaves her husband of 47 years, Greg Skinner; son, Scott Skinner; daughter, Shari Riley; granddaughter, Taryn Riley; sisters, Barbara Hanas and Jackie Nogle; and extended family members of various cousins, nieces, and nephews.

A Celebration of Life Service will be held at 2 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 24 at Mayes Mortuary with the Rev. Gordon Smith officiating.

In lieu of flowers the family asks for memorials to be made to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, 1311 Mamaroneck Ave., White Plains, NY 10605 or www.LLS.org.

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My mother’s funeral was yesterday. The facts are summarized in the obituary clipping above that featured in Wednesday’s Citizen-Tribune; the paragraphs below are from my eulogy to her:

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Where I Come From – Part Two

Last June, I published a blog entry that was near and dear to my heart. In it, I wrote about my paternal family tree. I first told of my grandfather, a WWII sailor, Middle East adventurer, Paraguayan coffee plantation owner, and Prohibition-era beat cop who fathered eight children with three different women. I then blogged about my grandmother, an incredible cook who outlived three husbands and had a closet filled with identical-looking blue house dresses. Finally, I introduced Loyal Readers to my father, a decent man and Army vet with an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball and a functional case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the latter of which is simultaneously annoying and endearing.

But that is just half of the story.

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Top Ten Life Lessons for My Younger Self

Roughly half of my blog posts these past few months have been top ten lists. Alas, here is one more.

I woke up this morning* at the not-so-ripe age of 41, and to a plethora of Facebook greetings from friends near and far. Social media has its ups and downs, but I must confess: it always makes me smile to receive birthday greetings via Instant Message, Tweet, or Wall Tag.

*Written one week ago but not published until 5/21 because of computer problems. Meh.

FB birthday greetings notwithstanding, this hasn’t been much of a birthday. Efforts by coworkers to invite me over for a night of card playing and beer drinking failed, through no fault of their own. And I have been feeling under the weather ever since I awoke this morning to the fetid aroma of dog farts. “What is wrong with me?” I thought, and then the answer dawned on me: I am 41 years old. Holy crap.

Where does the time go? It seems like only yesterday that I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, driving cross-country with my friend Chuck and stopping off in Denver, Las Vegas, and the Grand Canyon en route. But that life-changing relocation happened in 2000! Likewise, I can hardly believe it’s been six years since I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest peak and the tallest free-standing mountain in the world. For that matter, I can barely fathom that it’s already been two years since I moved to Tennessee from Mexico City with my tail between my legs.

I never really “got it” whenever I’d meet someone who entered a depression upon turning 30 and still being childless or single. But my first day of my 41^st trip around the sun has been something of an eye-opener. I am tired, and I have seldom felt less certain about my place in the world than I do at this moment. If this is just, as the saying goes, the first year of the rest of my life, then I should relish it. But can someone pass the back pills first? 😉

Here, with a hearty dose of humor packed between the dollops of honesty, are the top ten life lessons for my younger self:

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A Concentration of Holocaust Horrors

The winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Film was the Hungarian drama Son of Saul. In the movie, a concentration camp inmate receives special treatment from the Nazi guards because he assists with post-execution clean-up. To be more specific, he separates the corpses from their gold fillings, eyeglasses, and wedding rings.

I haven’t seen the film so I cannot say for certain which camp the story was set in, but the premise seems in line with tales I have been told at all three “death camps” that I have had the opportunity to visit. In 2000, I toured Auschwitz-Birkenau, in southern Poland. In 2009, I visited Dachau, in Bavaria. Finally, in 2012, I explored Sachsenhausen, in the former East Germany. Three different places, three sobering experiences.

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The Three-Ring (Electoral) Circus of 2016

It is the last day of January as I write this, and in just over nine months, Americans will be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief. I am referring, of course, to the fact that the three-ring electoral circus of 2016 will finally be over.

The race kicked off almost a year ago with just one candidate for each party: Ted Cruz for the Republicans and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats. The early bird gets the worm, as the saying goes, and both Cruz and Clinton have remained at or near the top of the polls ever since announcing their respective candidacies. Soon afterwards, however, the doors to the clown car opened up and ever more campaign rivals emerged. Some had more political experience than others, a few even managed to not come across as batshit crazy (at least not for a little while), but in general, the who’s who of candidates is a veritable potpourri of cray.

The 2016 Iowa Caucus is tomorrow, so let’s review, tongue firmly in cheek:

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Giving Thanks – 2015

If you are thinking that the bird in the photo above can’t possibly be turkey, you are right. That is a Cornish game hen – succulent English chicken stuffed with savory long grain and wild rice. This is Thanksgiving with the ‘rents, estilo-Casa del Gringo.

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Top Ten Songs about America

After a year of Tennessee living, I continue to have mixed feelings about America as it is today. That statement isn’t directed at The Volunteer State in particular; it’s just that with defense spending out of control and with an ever-widening partisan divide, I cannot help but feel as if this nation of mine is falling woefully short of its potential for greatness.

Although I wasn’t alive at that time, it seems to me that America’s general fall from grace occurred during the late 1960’s, when we fought in the streets over the color of our skin while politicians escalated an overseas war that didn’t really concern them in the first place. And all of this not long after we lost a president, his brother, and a civil rights leader to assassins’ bullets.

In compiling a list of the ten best songs about “America,” I kept coming across songs that were unflinching in their portraits of America coming apart at the seams. Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” comes to mind, as does “Let’s Get Together,” by the Youngbloods. Other, later songs echo the sentiment but update the anger to reflect the Iraq War and the big bank-orchestrated financial crash of 2008. I am thinking of “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” by Bruce Springsteen, or of Neil Young’s damning “Let’s Impeach the President.” Even more songs pay tribute to our hardworking rail splitters and truck drivers. “Driving the Last Spike,” by Genesis, strikes a chord, as does “Cold Shoulder,” by Garth Brooks. Fortunately, there are fun songs about the American experience as well. These tunes, Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” and Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” to name just two, are not to be discounted.

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A Potpourri of Updates

It has been almost three weeks since my last blog post. So much has happened that I’ve barely had a chance to come up for air. But for the next 13 days or so, I’ll have a respite from the usual craziness, and even a chance at my first solo vacation since My (Not Quite) Coast-to-Coast Trip Report of 2014.

Meanwhile, I thought you might appreciate a CliffsNotes-style update on my life, and on things that are of interest to me. I am still alive and well, Loyal Reader. I promise not to be offline for so long before my next post.

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Where I Come From – Part One

My genealogy is fairly straightforward: mostly Polish on my mom’s side and Norwegian on my dad’s. There is a smattering of other ethnicities as well, most of them Anglo-Saxon: Lithuanian, Scots-Irish, Welsh, Dutch, English, Danish, etc. And Cherokee Indian. No, seriously. According to a family tree that my father sketched out as far back as he could, my great-great-great grandmother was a Trail of Tears-era Cherokee by the name of Running Fawn. I wish there was a photograph of her in existence somewhere.

Where am I going with this? Well, Father’s Day was 10 days ago, and I’ve been spending a lot of time with my own father these past few weeks. My mom has been visiting her daughter and granddaughter on the other side of the state, and it has given my dad and I time to get to know each other better. Our recent time together has confirmed something that I long suspected: although we are sometimes so different that I wonder – jokingly – if I was adopted, I know that most of the time, I am my father’s son.

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Adrenaline Rush

I recently read about a roller coaster accident at Alton Towers amusement park in the UK. Apparently, one carriage on The Smiler ride crashed into a second, empty car. Several passengers on the moving car were injured, one critically. This BBC link details the full story.

I love roller coasters. Back in 1999, I received the computer game Roller Coaster Tycoon and spent countless hours designing theme parks of my dreams. There isn’t a coaster in the world that I won’t ride; I raised a few eyebrows after telling friends that I rode every coaster at Happy Valley, a Disney-esque amusement park in Beijing (wiki site here). China does not have a great reputation for quality control, but I survived the experience without even a trace of whiplash, and would rank Happy Valley as one of my favorite amusement parks anywhere. Far scarier was Rutschebanen coaster at Tivoli Gardens, in Copenhagen. On this 101-year-old wooden coaster, the operator responsible for braking is a passenger on the ride!

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