Category Archives: Parenthood

I Got A lot, But I Got Nothing

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By GORDON GLANTZ

GORDONVILLE — As of today, there have been 233 mass shootings in this so-called land of the free and home of the brave.

Not all told. Just in 2022.

As of tonight, the president, Joe Biden, will make a national address on the issue that seems to have gotten worse once people have crawled out of their post-COVID holes with shorter fuses.

As of tomorrow, and the next day and night, the numbers will rise. And, sadly, Biden’s words will ring hollow.

And be debunked as mocked by the far right.

He will be scoffed at by politicians who have it in their power to start us on a path to change by taking baby steps to keeping our babies — and all of us — more safe.

The most tragic aspect of all this is that they refuse to budge despite the fact that 80-90 percent of Americans — Americans from both sides of the aisle — support some form of gun control legislation beyond the flawed laws that already exist.

It is tragically ironic that these same politicians (mostly Republican, but not all) are vehemently pro-life on the divisive abortion issue, even when the majority of Americans (right, left and center) support a woman’s right to choose.

It would help if Democrats, the world’s worst at self-labeling, didn’t allow the “pro-abortion” tag to stick (it’s pro-choice, period).

But that’s another argument for another time, other than that the irony is that the same politicians who are vehement about protecting the rights of a fetus are just as firm about allowing all sorts of loopholes for our children’s lives, among others, to be easy targets in places like Uvelde, Texas and Newtown, Conn.

They square dance and two-step around the core issue that even the smallest changes could net big results.

Some resort to saying it wouldn’t matter.

Hey, maybe not, but why not try?

And where is the American “can-do” spirit?

These are the people who claim they want to Make America Great Again, which is impossible with this American crisis.

We put a man on the friggin’ moon, right?

We can’t do this? Really?

This American nightmare points to ultimate attempts at solutions that shape the new American Dream.

The problem within the problem is that these NRA errand boys (and girls) like to parse out then double down on quick fixes that are rhetorical and proven to be nonsensical.

They will bring up mental health, when Republicans are the ones who consistently vote against mental health funding (statistics show that most with mental health issues are not violent).

Beyond that, is there really a way to police against someone who has stopped taking his medication? Can you spot this person? They are all not walking around with tin foil on their heads.

And what about those who go temporarily insane, meaning they woke up not intending to go on a shooting spree but snapped and immediately regretted it (probably to the point of taking their own life).

With major holes in those arguments, they turn to the old fallback about armed security.

They say that “a good guy with a good stops a bad guy with a gun.”

To quote Uncle Junior from The Sopranos: “What, are we making a Western here?”

The reality is that John Wayne with a Colt-45 doesn’t stand a chance against a well-armed kid on a mission with a military-style rifle, extra artillery and body armor.

And, I’m constrained to point out that the supermarket in Buffalo had an armed ex-guard.

He shot the assailant, but it didn’t penetrate the body armor. The assailant shot the security guard, a former police officer, and the security guard died.

I’m fine with armed guards at schools. I’m fine with metal detectors.

A lot of schools, especially in inner cities, already have them,

But where does it stop?

Are we putting security guards at every preschool? Every private school? Every alternative school? Every tech school? Every beauty academy? Every community college?

What about at after-school facilities?

That’s a whole lot of armed guards, and it raises serious issues about the ability — and sanity — of those being entrusted to protect the schools.

Example: Now we are into summer, which means summer camp season.

Now what?

Let me spin you a little yarn from my overnight camp days.

Back when I was a lad at Camp Arthur, they staged a test case at the teen camp (Beker), when some actors were paid to enter dressed as Neo-Nazis (armed with were not loaded weapons).

It was Jewish camp, of which they are still many, making them prime targets.

There was some rock-throwing and cursing before staffers quickly settled it down and it was then turned into a teachable moment, with the actors still in character.

The point is that these pretend Neo-Nazis pretty much walked onto the wooded Jewish camp and into the teen village.

There are camps all across America that will be hosting children, our children, all summer.

Bible camps. Dance Camps. Sports Camps. Camps for underprivileged kids. Camps for kids with physical and mental challenges.

And there are more day camps to count.

Are we arming the counselors, many of which are teens themselves?

The whole thought sends chills down my spine.

The scenes of carnage run from coast to coast, up and down. The motivations are out of racial hate (most recently Buffalo) and from generally troubled teens (Uvalde), etc.

A simple start would be to raise the age from buying a gun from 18 to 21.

I think of myself at 18 and at 21, and I was like two different people.

All you have to do is see the songs I was writing, and books I was reading, at each age.

And, at 18, I liked bimbos. By 21, I went for smart girls.

But, looking back, I really didn’t know much at 21, either. The brain doesn’t fully develop until between the ages of 24 and 30.

If you are a politician doing the NRA’s bidding, your brain still hasn’t developed.

Sooner or later, with national opinion swelling on this, their days are eventually numbered.

Unfortunately, we still have to live with them and their rhetoric and fatally flawed logic.

They will tell you that “guns don’t kill.”

They are right.

They will say it’s “people” who kill, and that they need to be stopped by the “good guys” with guns in some sort of Modern Day shootouts in the Town Square.

That would be nice, at least in a Ted Cruz wet dream,

The fact — and we all know it (even them) — is that is people with guns who kill.

Work to take away the guns from those who shouldn’t have them, and there are laundry lists of methods to try, and I like our chances to move the needle out of the danger zone.

And, no, I don’t mean doing door to door to and collecting guns from “responsible gun owners.”

I’d like to peel away at the onion and redefine what a “responsible gun owner” really is, given that the number of suicides by firearm and other shootings in the home (heat of the moment domestic disputes and “accidental” shootings between, say, a 7-year-old and a 3-year-old sibling) dwarfs the number of phantom bogeymen picking out your house for a home invasion (most are “inside jobs’ and not random).

But, to quote the band Foreigner, this is an “urgent emergency,” so the onion can wait.

What destroys me here is that none of this is new. At all. I have been a broken record on it for years. I still remember dropping Sofia at school after Newtown. She was in Kindergarten. Those victims were in first grade.

I told her I loved her that day. And I still do every morning.

I would’ve expected substantive change after what was the worst schooling shooting in our sordid history.

After our second worst, nothing has changed.

What angers me is that, during the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, this issue was swept under the rug. Whole debates, whether within the primary season or the presidential battles, would come and go without gun violence as a topic.

It was like it was mutually agreed upon not to talk about it. It was like it was taboo.

We heard a lot about other stuff — like what type of people can use which bathrooms in public places and about school prayer and some contrived war on Christmas — but not every single one of us being moving targets every single day on the streets.

I could on forever here, but I’m weary over my somethings on the topic equally nothing.

Never Can Say Goodbye … to 1971

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First 1971

By GORDON GLANTZ

GORDONVILLE – I’m told I was repeatedly played Civil Rights anthems like “We Shall Overcome” and “Blowin’ In The Wind” — after my earthly debut two days into spring of 1965.

Knowing my mother’s penchant for tall tales and exaggerations, I’m not 100 percent convinced of the accuracy of this folklore, but I think there could be a strain of truth it.

I can say, for sure, that I never had time for nursery rhymes.

My grandparents, a more reliable source of information, said I was fully captivated by the song “Georgy Girl” by the New Seekers, which was released in late 1966 and continued its heavy air play and chart climb in 1967.

I have vague recollections of being called “Georgy” because of this, so I’ll buy it.

I was just learning to walk, but I had an ear on the Top 40.

Fast forward to the holiday season of 1970, and I was totally hooked on “Rose Garden” by Lynn Anderson.

From there, well, there was no looking back.

If there was a time to fall in love with music, 1971 was it.

I was 6, but I could have been 16.

The feel of the breeze, the smell in the air, the feel of drizzle — they all collide as first-time memories with amazing music coming from anywhere and everywhere.

I guess it was car radios (some with 8-track machines), the turntables of my older cousins and stepsisters, or just piped in somehow from the skies above.

There was Carole King’s groundbreaking Tapestry album – featuring “It’s Too Late” and “I Feel The Earth Move” and “So Far Away” – and “You’ve Got A Friend” by James Taylor (written by King, and a deep track on “Tapestry”).

King Taylor

The Beatles were just breaking through with solo careers, with George Harrison hitting my heart with “My Sweet Lord.”

By the middle of the decade, no one was taking a piano lesson without learning “Colour My World” by Chicago or “If” by Bread – both 1971 megahits.

You also had “Wild World” by Cat Stevens, “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology” and “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye, “I Am … I Said” by Neil Diamond, “Mr. Bojangles” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and “Rainy Days And Mondays” and “For All We Know” by The Carpenters.

There is my all-time favorite of the year, Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind,” which had nothing to do with his first name (although I was pumped to find out once I was hooked on the song).

And there was the song that prompted this trip back in time, “Ain’t No Sunshine,” by Bill Withers (pictured below), who sadly became the latest to join so many of these artists in leaving us in body but not in how they touched us with their music (“Lean On Me,” though not from 1971, has quickly become the theme song in this current national crisis).

bill-withers-1972-feature-billboard-1500-1585946742-768x433

I could go on, but I’m actually getting emotional – with serious goose bumps – by scratching the surface here with this list that doesn’t even go into a lot of the classic rock that I discovered down the road.

I just turned 55, meaning it’s almost the golden anniversary of that year in music.

A lot has happened since 1971, that’s for sure.

Richard Nixon wasn’t yet impeached, Russia was still the Soviet Union, the Flyers had to yet to become bullies and win two Stanley Cups, the concepts of AIDS and 9/11 seemed surrealistic, Barack Obama had not be elected president and there was no such thing as the coronavirus to make us all freeze in place and, if we’re lucky, think back to simpler times.

“Godfather” and “Rocky” weren’t movies, and the concept of cable TV and original programming – bringing “The Sopranos” and others – seemed as far-fetched as home computers and microwave ovens.

A scruffy kid from New Jersey named Bruce Springsteen (pictured below in 1970) was a year away from releasing his first album.

1970 Bruce

Just like I had no latency period with music, I didn’t with the fairer sex.

I liked girls enough to propose to one in the schoolyard that first-grade year (maybe it was the music), but it would take another three decades until I got down on one knee and asked a woman to be my bride.

And then, in 2007, my daughter was born, becoming the rightful center of our universe.

It’s no surprise that she also caught the music bug early. A ballet dancer/softball catcher, it is the acoustic guitar that is her spirit device (see below). Her musical tastes are not the same as mine, but 1971 was not her time to fall in love with music.

It was mine.

One more song from that year, “Never Can Say Goodbye” by The Jackson 5, sums it up the best.

As deep as I’ve gotten into other kinds of popular music, including that of the 1960s leading up to it, I will never say goodbye to the songs of 1971.

Sofia Guitar

 

It’s About Time (to end DST)

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driving-with-headlights

The following column ran in The Times Herald on March 8, before coronavirus put us on all lockdown and matter that now seem more trivial were more in the mainstream:

By GORDON GLANTZ

GORDONVILLE — It doesn’t take much to move me to tears, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Tears of sadness. Tears of joy. Tears from a harsh March wind blowing so fierce in my face that they can’t be avoided.

Since getting a new used car last January, I have been able to cry tears of relief when we fall back and spring forward on the clock.

My new used car, which is a 2018 Ford Edge, came equipped with all the computerized bells and whistles. It’s so easy to change the time that, yeah, it makes me want to cry. I almost want to reset it and do it all over again.

While that makes today’s spring back drill easier to take, I’m not off the hook.

While the time automatically changes on our computers and phones, I still have to go from clock to clock around the house and reset them all.

Then there’s my wife’s near-antique car, a Honda that historians believe was used to transport troops to the front in the War of 1812. It requires a degree in nuclear physics to figure out.

Then, when we visit my mother at her assisted living place, it gets to the point that the best option for trying to figure out changing the time on a cheap clock radio is to just go get a new one.

Turns out, that this source of tears and frustration is needless.

I’m talking on the A-List scale of needlessness – with the likes of the Iowa caucuses, hockey shootouts, chop sticks, the running of the bulls, overusing the word “very” and playing games at carnivals that are impossible to win.

When we fall back, we gain an hour of sleep but lose an hour of daylight for months. We lose the hour of sleep by springing forward, but the days are longer.

You really need to be in another part of the country, in another time zone, to completely understand the extremes of it all.

A few summers back, we were in South Dakota, enjoying the indoor pool of a hotel with the worst excuse for a continental breakfast ever (Fig Newtons instead of donuts and no decaf coffee). The sun was still up at 10 p.m. Sounds cool, but the only view was of a trailer park across the street in a town where the hot place to eat was a Dairy Queen.

Really no need, in that time zone, for the sun to catch you crying.

It is more than some annoyance that costs me my beauty sleep in the spring and makes me take out the trash and walk Rex in the dark in the fall and winter.

This raises the deeper question: Why do we do this drill, Daylight Saving/Savings Time (DST) as if we were marching around like zombies at a military academy?

Turns out, falling back and springing forward are acts – like the creation of the electoral college – that have far outlived their usefulness.

While the concept dates back eons, and Benjamin Franklin pontificated about it as a way to preserve candle light, DST first became a “thing” in America during World War I to conserve coal.

That made sense at the time, but my history books seem to indicate that World War I ended more than a century ago.

While your president (not mine) lies to the faces of coal miners to get their votes, we know that industry is pretty much a shadow of its former self.

Repealed after World War I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt put the action back into play during World War II.

Following the war, it was more of a state by state thing until Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1966, set into law that DST should begin the last Sunday in April and end the last Sunday in October.

And so we sit, hearing some vague arguments for the status quo (mostly economic) but others against it (mostly health-related, such at workplace injuries).

According to those who have studied it, it would mean a lot to make a change – certainly a lot more than we think, beyond anguish over remembering how to change clocks and watches that do it on their own, to stop the needless madness of springing back and forward.

They suggest it would reduce headaches – fatal car crashes — especially to pedestrians — and heart attacks.

Consider two studies by the University of Colorado. One found a spike in car accidents the first week after the DST change (with the apparent cause being drivers less sharp with one hour less of sleep).

The other found the heart attack risk spiking 25 percent the following Monday after the “spring forward” but fell to almost normal when the clocks fell back in the Fall.

In this era of partisan politics, this surely sounds like one issue we can all get behind.

And it’s about time.

Turn and Face the Strange

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Change

By GORDON GLANTZ

GORDONVILLE  — It was the fall of 2000. I had become engaged to my now-wife (and Sofia’s “mama”) over the summer, and I could feel the winds of change in the air.

I had been a sports writer since 1988 and, other than not getting to be next Johnny Bravo (Greg Brady still should have gone for it, and then done college), I was content.

I liked to write, and I liked sports, so it fit (at least better than the glove on O.J.’s hand).

The problem was that sports are played on nights and weekends, a time when most of the spectating world is doing the opposite.

But if you’re a sports writer, it means you are working nights and weekends.

It was fine for 13 years, but I looked into the future and saw an abyss.

If I wanted to be a family man, I needed to make a change.

Some would call it a “Come to Jesus” moment. Lapsed Jew/atheist that I am, we will just call it a moment of truth.

While others in my situation had to either leave the business or go elsewhere, a chance to turn the beat around – quite literally — was right there at The Times Herald.

Newsroom turnover always had a mind of its own. We would have a set staff for long stretches and then, for whatever reason, everyone would seem to leave at once.

At this particular time, while we were full in sports, the newsroom had turned into a ghost town.

Skirting the tumbleweeds, I walked into the office of then-editor Mike Morsch – a straight shooter from the Midwest with whom I had a good rapport and still call friend – and, in the words of Tony Montana from Scarface, “proposed a proposition.”

I offered to fill one of the many empty chairs in the newsroom, but only under the condition that I would be the police reporter and nothing else. I wanted no parts of covering municipal or school board meetings.

Ever.

To my surprise, he was good with it.

For a while, I did both – helping out sports on busy nights, like when there were Friday night football games to be covered – while also learning the ropes of the police beat.

Within a few months, though, I really wasn’t even homesick for sports anymore.

News was growing on me.

But that’s easy for me to say.

I wasn’t going to meetings, like other reporters, and coming back to the office to write about complex issues – ones that truly affected people’s lives — while on the deadline crunch.

When I became managing editor in 2003, a large part of the job was scheduling reporters based on their meetings. If they had a conflict – there were more municipalities and school districts than reporters – we had to prioritize.

It was an odd thing, not having any personal experience with what was or was not important.

Until now.

The times they are a changin’ (nod to Sir Bob of Dylan).

As a concerned citizen, I have been to a handful of Whitpain Township meetings – and have gotten up to voice my opinion with more passion than I thought possible – about an ongoing issue in my neighborhood.

I won’t bore you with the gory details. Let’s just say that someone is looking to rewrite the zoning code to maximize his profit margin. Some of my concerned neighbors are primarily focused on the environment — water flow, trees being chopped down, the view from their back windows and water basins.

I’m with them on all that (even though my eyes glaze over with the water basin stuff), but my main thing – and that of a few others in our core group – is what even more cars will do to an already tenuous morning traffic logjam.

The other night, while we were waiting for our issue on the docket, the room was packed beyond capacity about the issue of what will become of the Mermaid Lake property.

As concerned citizens from that end of the township grilled the developers about many of the same concerns we have – only on a larger scale (school overcrowding chief among them) – it hit me just how much these meetings matter.

If citizens don’t turn out and speak up, a lot of these permanent changes – changes for the worse – will be made in their name.

During all of this heated debate, I noticed a few young ladies who appeared to be reporters furiously taking down notes (one had a small laptop and the other big yellow legal pad).

I don’t know where they were from, but I’m glad they were there.

It was another moment of truth.

While I remain eternally grateful that I never had to be in their shoes and cover a meeting, I am eternally grateful they exist.

Because these meetings matter.

Always did, and always will.

This column appeared on February 16, 2020

 

Breaking News, Broken Heart

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Bryants

By GORDON GLANTZ

GORDONVILLE — Weird thing with me, and I’m sure a lot of you, is that I can recall happenings from decades ago while needing to be repeatedly reminded to take out the trash every Monday night.

A certain song, as much as anything, can provide a ride in a time machine to other events.

This brings me to the song “Dirty Laundry,” released by Don Henley in a solo effort back in 1982.

It was a sharp condemnation of the media, particularly on the television side, as it came at a time when CNN was still a toddler learning to walk as a round-the-clock entity.

Because I listen to retro radio whenever Sofia isn’t in the car to dictate otherwise, I still hear “Dirty Laundry” from time to time.

Just the other day, I realized that as on-point as the song – written by Henley and Danny Kortchmar – was in 1982, when I had decided to major in journalism (primarily to avoid taking more than one math and one science class at Temple), it has proven only more ominous over the decades.

It was this verse that got the few marbles I have left to rattle around:

“We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blond

Who comes on at five

She can tell you ’bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye

It’s interesting when people die

Give us dirty laundry”

There is a later reference to the boys in the newsroom having a running bet about when someone will die.

It sounds unreal and callous, but it rings true. Sadly. The only real way to stay sane behind the curtain in the business is to become insensitive.

It took only events the magnitude of a 9/11 or a Sandy Hook — or a horrific local murder, like that of Lisa Manderach and her 19-month-old daughter, Devon — to cast a pall over the newsroom.

Not being a full-time newspaper guy in recent years, coupled with the birth of Sofia, has greatly softened my veneer.

When news affects me personally, it not only hits me, but I’m not afraid to show it.

When I cry at the end of the movie, which happens a lot, I’m that guy who has to watch all the credits roll in case someone sees me when I leave.

And when breaking news breaks my heart, it’s increasingly difficult to get up off the canvas.

Such was the case when Tom Petty died last year and, more recently, when the death of Neil Peart was followed closely by that of dear friend Hank Cisco.

These days, news just hits you in an instant.

On Sunday, for example, I was sitting where I am right now – at my laptop – when my cellphone flashed: “Kobe Bryant dead at 41.”

There was no other information, as it was one of the first initial reports.

“Oh, my God,” bellowed this atheist. “Kobe Bryant just died.”

“Oh, my God,” my wife, a practicing Catholic, replied.

When MSNBC was unable to provide much in the way of detail, we turned to CNN.

The news trickled in slow, and with a lot of the misinformation we didn’t run with back in the day, when we needed confirming sources and getting 2-3 people of authority on the record, and I took Sofia to her indoor softball practice not knowing for sure who else was on the private helicopter and how many people were on board.

Reports ranged from Bryant and daughter, Gianna, to the whole family to another teammate of Gianna and her parent.

We since learned the heartbreaking details, and the identities of all the nine victims beyond Bryant and his daughter.

The fact that Gianna was 13 (the age Sofia will be in two months, almost to the day) is enough to give me chills. Sports icon or not, I try not to think about what must have been going through Kobe’s mind knowing he couldn’t protect his daughter as the crash happened.

It was also personal on other levels.

Like an old song on the radio, the tragedy brought back a flood of memories.

Weaned on the Philadelphia Big 5, I remember his dad — Joe “Jelly Bean” Bryant — starring for La Salle before playing for the hometown 76ers (and later the then-San Diego Clippers) before moving on Europe (Kobe was born in Italy).

Back when I was a sports writer (1988-2001, with some comebacks after), the Bryant family had moved back to the area.

By the time Bryant was in high school, you only needed to say “Kobe” to know who was being spoken about. He starred at nearby Lower Merion High School, and was the area’s greatest scholastic player – in an area of many great ones – since the days of Wilt Chamberlain.

I saw him play in the Donofrio tournament at the Fellowship House of Conshohocken, at Norristown High, on his home court at Lower Merion and on the same hallowed Palestra hardwood where I saw his father.

Later on, as fate would have it, I had the opportunity to cover the NBA when Bryant was cutting his teeth with the same Los Angeles Lakers team that he stayed with his entire Hall of Fame career after coming straight to the NBA out of Lower Merion and being drafted 13th overall by Charlotte and traded to Los Angeles for Vlade Divac (after he made it clear he didn’t want to play in Charlotte).

Through this relatively short time interval, I rarely found myself alone – or even in a small group – of reporters around Bryant (including at The Fellowship House).

I know I asked a pre-game question, when he was playing for the Lakers, but I’d be lying if I said I remember what it was (it was possibly about getting booed in his hometown, but don’t quote me).

I just remember that patented smile of his as he looked back over his shoulder and answered.

For now, as the shock waves subside and morph into the dirty laundry of impeachment hearings, it will have to be enough.

This column ran in The Times Herald on January 29, 2020.

Thankful For This Guy This Year

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Rex

By GORDON GLANTZ

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” -Mahatma Gandhi

GORDONVILLE — I always have to laugh whenever a new multiyear study comes out proving that dogs show love.

That one has been proven, repeatedly, throughout centuries of their human counterparts not getting it right.

And yet, we have all these sayings – with negative spins – with dogs in the punchline.

-Lay down with dogs, you get fleas.

-So and so is “as crooked as a dog’s hind leg”.

-This place has gone to the dogs.

Sense a theme here?

Dogs, in terms of negative spins, are the new black (black mark, black sheep, etc.)

And considering all they give us, making houses homes, it would be fair to say that it shouldn’t happen to a dog.

That one, I’ll agree with.

Not to go all Sarah McLachlan on you here, but the way dogs are mistreated in America is all we need to see about how we see ourselves.

Because, as another saying goes, a dog is man’s best friend.

And we are, at least not as a whole, not always quality friends in return.

What does or does not qualify as animal abuse, particularly as related to dogs, is sketchy – particularly as related to what qualifies to varied levels of neglect.

Because dogs can’t speak to us, there is no way to know for sure. According to the Humane Society, human victims – those of domestic abuse – report staggering results: 71 percent say their abuser also targeted pets. The number goes up to 88 percent in households under supervision for child abuse.

While dogs in fighting rings get more media attention, there are an untold amount of cases wherein there is neglect ranging from being chained outside all day, in all kinds of extreme weather conditions, to being underfed.

I shudder at the thought that one of those dogs was our dog, Rex, but it is likely.

The other day, we were trying to do the math on just how long he has made our house a home.

This coming January will be six years. In mid-August, the mostly black U.S. Breed (Border Collie and Black Lab, who rank first and seventh in intellect) will turn 8.

We don’t know much about his past, other than a video – an appeal – from the shelter in Darlington County, S.C. (the same dot on the map that inspired one of the Bruce Springsteen songs, but I digress) asking for no-kill shelters up North to take pity on his soul.

Rex had been brought into the shelter in Darlington, and was physically separated from his owner, a female, who was beating him because he didn’t want to be left there.

Scared and shivering, he may not have survived the night had the workers there not kept him with them behind the counter, knowing that being with other dogs that were more aggressive could have meant disaster.

The next day, the video was made, seen and sent up to our area.

Not sure who was luckier, him or us.

On a bitter cold day in January while stopping by the local supermarket, an area dog rescue was showing dogs for adoption. His eerie likeness to our dearly departed Randall (1989-2005) caused me to stop and take notice.

Once he backed away, showing timidity, my heart went out.

Within a week, he was ours.

I’m not going to say we all lived happily ever after, because that would be a lie.

Rex was afraid to enter certain rooms in the house and he was about zero percent housebroken. Sure, if he was being walked at a time when he happened to need to do his business, he did it.

If not, he did it wherever (leading to a complete changeover from carpet to hardwood).

I can’t say I wrote the book on housebreaking a dog. I can just tell you that I got him from zero to 100 percent within months by just walking him so much that a neighbor at a cookout asked how many times a day I walked him (I always seemed to be passing by when he was grabbing a smoke outside).

These days, three walks a day, 8-10 hours apart, is fine. No accidents. Ever.

The only other requirement was a whole lot of TLC. That was the easy part. We gave him the love he did not get down South, and he gave it back to us.

These days, he is not only a long way away from Darlington County, S.C. in distance (8 ½ hours), but in how he lives his life in a home where he has three – yes, three – beds strategically placed around the house (including by the fireplace).

Sofia may give only one-word answers after being picked up from school, but she will immediately fall all over him – as he approaches, tail wagging like a propeller — when she enters the house.

His mama is his favorite person to curl up with, and I’m his daylong companion, as we read each other’s minds, including our favorite time of the day – the midday nap.

He just looks at me, gets the sense it must be time and runs upstairs and jumps up into bed. While some people have lap dogs, I have a nap dog.

We have three cats, and he has zero issues with two of them (the third is another story), and he doesn’t even seem to care that we have a rabbit, Buttons, living in the laundry room.

There are a lot of nasty clichés about dogs, but not here.

Sometimes, when the weight of a world in turmoil seems too much to bear, you just have to be thankful for the simple things.

We enter Thanksgiving thankful for Rex.

He can’t actually say thank you in return, but that’s not needed.

It’s just a crazy cool connection we have that makes it understood.

And it should happen to all dogs.

This column appeared in The Times Herald on Nov. 24, 2019.

Unique Coach Gets His Call To The Hall

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LouSofia2

By GORDON GLANTZ

GORDONVILLE — The first time I met Lou Lombardo, I was a know-nothing twenty-something cutting his teeth as a rookie sportswriter.

Already a fish out of water as a natural slacker thrust into the workforce, I was playing double jeopardy because the sports editor sent me to an American Legion game – the Fort Washington Generals against someone — instead of one in my comfort zone of the Perkiomen Valley Twilight League.

There was this short guy coaching third base for the Generals shouting out weird stuff to his batters and baserunners, and I half-wondered if he suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome before I was assured by someone, perhaps a writer from another paper (back in those bad old days of yore, multiple papers would cover sporting events), who said, “that’s just Lou being Lou.”

I covered the game, and warily approached this strange Lou character after the final out.

Before I could even introduce myself, let alone ask a question, Lou took one look at me and proclaimed “it’s Gene Wilder!”

He then summoned anyone he could – assistant coaches, umpires, players, parents, dog-walkers (and their dogs) passing by – to seek validation in his assessment that I could be Wilder’s stunt double.

Other than that I would have gladly traded paychecks with the star of movies like “Young Frankenstein” and “Blazing Saddles” – among a litany of others – I didn’t quite get the connection.

Once Lou settled down, he was an amazing interview, breaking down the game in such detail that I wondered if we had just witnessed the same one.

It’s now decades later, and I look more like Telly Savalas than the curly-haired Wilder. It was a minor miracle that Lombardo – the longtime coach for both the Generals and the Mustangs of Montgomery County Community College – seemed to have even a faint recollection of me when I called him last spring for more information on his career to build a resume for what I believed to be a long overdue induction into the Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame (full disclosure: I’m the chair of the Selection Committee).

Two fascinating hours after what should have been a 15-minute conversation, Lou agreed to let me bring Sofia by his backyard training facility for a hitting “evaluation.”

She had fallen into a terrible slump, and I was desperate for an expert assessment. He cautioned that most of his clients were baseball players, not softball players, but he would take a looksee.

I brought Sofia over for what was to be a 50-minute lesson early last May.

About 2 ½ hours later, her whole approach was broken down and built back up with what he calls linear hitting.

She did so well, that he had her elevated – as a sixth-grader – as being a Division III-level college recruit.

I left feeling like I had flipped Andre the Giant off my back, especially when he agreed to take her on as one of his few softball students.

It was like getting an acceptance letter from an Ivy League school (especially when we added catching to the course load).

The only remaining hurdle was Sofia.

Lou’s passion and enthusiasm seemed to have left her rejuvenated, in terms of confidence, and she couldn’t help but chuckle at many of his antics.

Still, would she want to come back with this guy who claimed to be 79 years old and was encouraging work with a hula hoop to increase power and naming her bats?

That question was answered as soon as we got in the car, even before the doors were closed.

“Wow,” she said, without being prompted, “that was fun. … And I can’t believe he is 79.”

Lou – who is actually a decade shy of 79 — made it clear that he was really an advisor, and only needs to see her every now and then, christening me as her new hitting coach.

I was initially reticent, but I now feel that I can break it down pretty well when we practice in the backyard.

He not only can teach the players, but also the teachers of the players.

And this is just a small sample of all the players – of both sexes and of all ages – that he has helped become better ballplayers.

Ironically, Lou gives homework to his students – and their parents, who he makes stay for the sessions (I would anyway, being a helicopter sports dad) – and I gave some to him as nominee.

As part of his Hall of Fame nomination process, to sell it to the rest of the committee, I wanted him to put together a coaching tree.

What that is, in layman’s terms, is a list of former players and assistant coaches, etc. who have gone on to carve out their own impressive niches in the baseball world.

Football example: Doug Pederson and John Harbaugh, both of whom won Super Bowls, are among those from Andy Reid’s coaching tree (not that I’m rubbing it in Reid’s face too much that he is still chasing a ring down like the last pastry at the buffet table).

The first “tree” Lou gave me was a page, but he knew he was forgetting some people. The next was a page and a half, but the retired history teacher at Upper Dublin High still wasn’t satisfied. The final product was closer to three pages long.

I don’t want to tell Lou this, but the committee barely glanced over the list. His reputation preceded itself, and he was in on the first ballot and will be inducted as part of the Class of 2019 at Presidential Caterers on Tuesday, Nov. 26.

Lou touched a lot of people’s lives during his coaching career, and has privately expressed – more than once – how he would like to look out over the room and see a representation of his career, from different eras, looking back up at him as he delivers an acceptance speech that he promises will be nothing short of the Gettysburg Address.

Tickets still remain for the event, and can be purchased at the following link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2019-montgomery-county-coaches-hall-of-fame-banquet-tickets-72532381305 or by calling 484-868-8000.

The Heart Of The Matter

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healthyheart_0

 

By GORDON GLANTZ

GORDONVILLE — The year was 1969. The place was Northeast Philadelphia, in a small twin home right off of Roosevelt Boulevard.

A man, age 73, was having chest pains but was in denial that it was anything serious and went to take a nap on the couch with a vow to feel better when he woke up. His wife, though worried, went along with the plan.

At some point, a few hours later, he fell of the couch and couldn’t get up. His wife called her children, asking what to do.

They said to call an ambulance.

By the time it arrived and took him to the hospital, it was too late.

The man was Morris Glantz, my grandfather.

I only I knew him as Pop-Pop and have only faint recollections of him playing with me for hours on the floor when my father, recently divorced from my mother, would pick me up on Friday evenings and take me on the other side of the boulevard for dinner and playtime.

I missed a Friday, I remember that, and then went back the following week.

“Where’s Pop-Pop?” I asked, innocently.

“Pop-Pop died,” my father responded.

I didn’t know quite what that meant. I got a vision of him diving into a bottomless pit. I knew he wasn’t coming back.

The look on my face surely broke my father’s heart.

I was 4, and down a grandfather.

My grandmother, Mom-Mom, looked worn-out and not overly cheerful as she placed a plate of chicken in front of me.

It’s all a vague memory now, but it stuck with me enough that I know that it is better to be cautious than sorry.

I recently experienced sudden and severe chest pains. They felt more muscular and were emanating in the center of my chest and, when I tried to move or lay down, hurt more on the right side.

I knew the odds of a heart attack were slim, but slim and none live in two different universes.

Heart issues run rampant on my father’s side of the family, and I generally tend to inherit those genes, with my father needing a six-way bypass when he was just a year or two older than I am now.

I know he dawdled about going, even after a minor heart attack when he was a few years younger than I am now, but he made the decision to go for it.

Back then, in 1988, bypasses were not sure things. He was laid up for weeks (they didn’t throw patients out of hospitals 16 minutes later, either). While it was not his heart that took him two decades later, he paid the price by losing a lot of business as a self-employed lawyer.

Still, as he withstood the humiliation of credit cards being declined and bill collectors calling, he was able to see his kids married and grandchildren born (although Sofia was barely a year old went he left us).

His maternal grandfather died of a heart attack in his mid-fifties. His older brother, Uncle Oscar, who I am most similar to in appearance (he was the best looking) also died instantly of a heart attack in his late seventies.

Knowing all this, and aware that I don’t want Sofia to grow up without a father because of some “I’ll be OK” macho act, I woke up my wife at 3 a.m. in a bit of a panic.

After some fierce Googling, and the realization that the pain was coming from a raised area in the center of my chest, fears shifted to a blood clot or lung cancer (although I knew lung cancer doesn’t just show up out of nowhere).

After we tussled over what hospital to go to, we settled on Abington-Lansdale, and we had the ER to ourselves in the pre-dawn hours.

I’m not sure who all the people were fussing all over me – I’m guessing a RN, NP, PA and an orderly – but I was well on my way to readiness when the world’s friendliest ER doctor greeted us and seemed semi-confident it was nothing more than something external.

The news, as it turned out, was all good.

It was some sort of muscle strain (even though I still can’t put my finger on the time and place the injury occurred).

The raised area? Not a tumor or a blood clot. It was my breast bone. And everyone has one.

They gave me a shot of something, and I was feeling better within 30 minutes.

In the interim, I got the best news of all. My heart, they said, not only looked normal but “beyond normal.”

The EEG, EKG – whatever they call it – showed that it “couldn’t be better.”

Relieved, we hit one of our favorite haunts – Tiger’s Restaurant in Lansdale – right as it opened at 6 a.m.

As I ate with a new lease on life, I couldn’t help but think of the people who have something more serious going on and don’t go the ER.

I’m not sure why Pop-Pop didn’t go that night in 1969, but a lot of people these days don’t want to deal with the onerous co-pay just to find out it was a false alarm.

There is no way to get an actual number of those who decide against it, because many are not alive to tell the tale.

But I am.

The current healthcare system stinks. We know that. But the actual medical care in this country does not.

All I can say is to weigh the two when faced with the same situation.

And I’ll add this: While I don’t believe in angels smiling down on me and all that stuff, I feel like I honored the memory of the grandfather I never really got to know.

This column ran in The Times Herald on Sept. 8, 2019.

No Friction With Fiction

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Anne with an E

By GORDON GLANTZ

GORDONVILLE — After nearly two weeks north of the border – in Halifax and Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island (that’s Nova Scotia, for those of you who can’t find Nebraska on a map) — it was interesting to see how long it takes for me to be impatient and brusque with people after consistently encountering the complete opposite.

And it will be interesting to note if I will ever want to see a lobster ever again or if I will now crave the best lobster on the planet.

Probably won’t take much more than some deplorable aggressive driving by a grunt in a pickup truck, but I digress.

Just about every elevator trip at both hotels involved friendly conversation.

And my Flyers tee-shirt was a key spark in the land where hockey was invented.

“Philly, eh?” I was asked.

Since the Flyers are pretty much struck in neutral and don’t inspire the same ire they once did from hockey purists, the conversation switched quickly to Philadelphia’s pride and joy.

Independence Hall?

Nope.

Liberty Bell?

Nada.

The Eagles?

If you saw what passes for football up there, you’d know better (although my Eagles’ shirt did get one passing thumbs-up).

Give up?

Try Rocky Balboa.

Rocky Raw Meat

It struck me as interesting that Philadelphia, known for being the alleged birthplace of the so-called liberty we enjoy, is universally noted for a fictional character.

Then again, Charlottetown was where the groundwork for Canada’s independence was first laid when members of the rest of the British Commonwealth gathered in 1864, for what became known as the Charlottetown Conference, to discuss how to break from the clutches of the Crown.

And yet, that is not why we – or most others – were there.

It was also for a fictional character that Sofia has come to adore after reading all the books about her.

That’s Anne Shirley, the semi-biographical alter ego of author L.M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery.

At the time of my elevator encounter, during which the friendly chap said “Rocky” was his favorite movie because of the life lesson about taking a beating and not giving up, the better half and Sofia were seeing a stage play based on the series of “Anne” books.

We spent multiple days in Cavendish, where the life of the author is a literal cottage industry, and we saw a musical version of the character’s life (I survived by dozing off for a good portion of it).

So I guess you would say that the two historic places are better known for their fictional icons is kind of messed up, huh?

Three mass shootings in a week, including two in the span of 24 hours? That’s messed up.

A grown man in Montana fracturing the skull of a 13-year-old for not removing his cap during the national anthem? Messed up.

Fictional characters being larger than life? No way.

As much as I dig history, and think it should be studied thoroughly (we did a whole walking tour to learn the history part of Charlottetown), I have to say it’s kind of cool.

Two characters were created that were so sympathetic — and relatable — that they are the first thought for many outsiders of the home terrains upon which they were created.

Visitors from around the world making it the first order of business of running up the Art Museum steps to play the role of Rocky, the brainchild of a then-struggling actor named Sylvester Stallone, is not an anomaly.

In PEI (Prince Edward Island), there was an abundance of Japanese tourists. It didn’t strike me as odd until it was explained to me that a local woman once went to Japan to teach and, due to the lack of age-appropriate literature of the time, she introduced the series of “Anne” books to her students.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with a Swedish co-counselor at summer camp, who happened to be a 6-foot-4 Olympic swimming hopeful that I could never convince to play on the counselor hockey team. He related how the original “Rocky” was common viewing at places where athletes there trained, and added how the sequels (there were only a few at that time) were a disappointment.

It struck me how what seemed to be the experiences of Rocky Balboa on the streets of my hometown were not uniquely unique.

That is the power of art.

That what makes bitter reality easier to swallow.

This column appeared in The Times Herald on Aug. 11, 2018.

Time Is On Our Side

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Snowy-School-Bus

By GORDON GLANTZ

GORDONVILLE — Often to my wife’s chagrin, Sofia and I are so much alike that is frightening.

If you ever wondered what the saying of two peas in a pod means, just observe us in our national habitat for a while.

But there is one area where we clearly differ.

I pride myself on being not only on time, but at least 15 minutes early.

And with the ongoing PennDOT conspiracy to road work in my path, I like to leave even extra travel time to get to where I need to be.

If we’re early, we’ll deal with it.

We can always sit in the car and chill with some tunes, until we don’t look too early, right?

I never want to hear the words “it’s about time” when I – or we – are late for wherever we need to be.

That vibe carries into the outside world, where I find myself saying “it’s about time” when enough red tape is cut for logical decisions to be made.

Today, I bring you some examples:

-Ana’s Corner Store, at Township Line and North Wales roads in East Norriton, was held hostage by road work for what seemed like a biblical 40 years. While I like to stop there on my way to make musical magic at Morningstar Studios, I have been avoiding it like the 11th plague that the scenario was. I feared for the survival of the privately owned business but, lo and behold, it has outlasted the road crews.

Instead of amen, let us bow our heads and say, “it’s about time.”

-Speaking of PennDOT –which has twice damaged my car with new road paint, but I digress — it announced that multiple police departments in Eastern Pennsylvania are launching a special aggressive driving enforcement campaign. It will last through the end of August.

Among the participating departments are Norristown, West Norriton, Upper Merion and Plymouth. They will be focusing on a host of aggressive driving behaviors (running red lights, tailgating, speeding, distracted driving, etc.)

I kind of sort of thought this was their job to begin with, and I also wonder what happens after August, when the initiative concludes (17 fatalities in Philadelphia’s five surrounding counties were the direct result of aggressive driving in 2017).

While my own temper is my own worst enemy, I have successfully tamed the beast within as I have mellowed with middle age. Still, nothing like a schmuck thinking the road belongs to him (and it’s usually a him, not a her) to get me angry.

It will be nice to know police will be out to curb this stupidity, which will protect me from myself as well.

Again, instead of amen, let us bow our heads and say “it’s about time.”

-Finally, we no longer have to hear about those a bit longer in the tooth than we are walking to school – 18 ½ miles, each way, in two feet of snow – and mocking us for calling off school before one flake hits the ground.

I guess it does seem a bit foolish, and there have been times when it has backfired, but it is better to be safe than sorry – especially with all those aggressive drivers out there who don’t respect the conditions.

As a kid, I loved snow days. The options were endless. Sledding, shoveling for do-re-mi, playing tackle football or – as it was often with me – sleeping in and then watching movies.

As the parent primarily responsible for Sofia’s transportation, I had quite a different view. There were a few times when the school attempted to stay open during a bad snow storm, and I had to pick up Sofia amid worsening conditions on a day when the school should have planned ahead.

It’s always a tough call, as school districts want to get in at least a half-day so that there won’t be makeups at the end of the year.

But extra buses on the road, with road crews trying to do their thing, make for an added mess.

Why mess with a messy situation?

Tom Wolf signed a bill (Senate Bill 440) this week that will allow the option for “cyber snow days.”

Translation: With computers, which have been around since Al Gore invented them, stay home and do your schoolwork – and still have a chance to be a kid in the snow.

“School districts need the added flexibility of ensuring their students’ continuity of education is not interrupted by the weather or any other unplanned school closure,” said State Sen. Kristen Phillips-Hill said in a statement.

Phillips-Hill, of York, was the sponsor of the bill that is open to all schools, public and private, for approved periods of three years.

To Phillips-Hill, we stand and applaud and say, “it about time.”

The following column ran in The Times Herald on July 15.