The Corona Diaries

The Corona Diaries

March 18, 2021

This is my final Corona Diary entry. A year ago Martha Rial, the project manager of the McKeesport Community Newsroom, asked me if I would consider recording my thoughts on life during the pandemic. We were both certain that this would be a short term project that would end in a few weeks or perhaps, in the worst case scenario, a few months later when the coronavirus went away. Today, a year later Covid-19 is still going strong but it is time to wrap up this project.

As I sit down at my computer to write this final entry I am filled with gratitude for the opportunity to participate in this project. I am of course grateful to Martha, who not only invited me to take on this challenge but who has enriched my life by allowing me to take part in both the Tube City Writers and the Mon Valley Photography Collective. I have learned so much and made some wonderful friends through my association with these two groups. I would also like to thank my wife, Glenda, who is my proof reader and the love of my life. Finally, I’d like to thank the loyal readers of The Corona Diaries. Thank you for taking the time to read my essays over the last year.

In preparation for writing this final essay, I went back over the year’s diary entries paying particular attention to what I wrote over the first few weeks of the project. One thing that was immediately apparent was that the length of these pieces grew over the year. I believe that this is a reflection of my growing recognition of the severity and significance of this crisis. While the world was struggling with the pandemic, I also had to deal with a much more personal crisis.

Shortly after the pandemic struck, I had to deal with a more personal health crisis; my wife was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. My wife’s cancer and the coronavirus will be forever entangled in my memory of this time. Her condition weakened her immune system making her more vulnerable to Covid-19. This kept my wife at home and isolated at a time when she desperately needed distraction and her family around her.

My wife and I have faced every aspect of life, both good and bad, together for the last 50 years. Because of the lockdown I could not be with her when she heard the worst news of her life or when she was being treated. For me this was the greatest hardship I had to face due to the pandemic. This came to a head when my wife was hospitalized for almost two weeks and I could not hold her hand or even see her. 

In reviewing my diary entries I was surprised how quickly things, for lack of a better term, went to hell. In just my third diary entry on March 21, 2020 I wrote the following:

“Seems like the panic buying is starting to abate. There were parking spaces in the lot and I didn’t see any one with overly large orders. A few days ago, I saw several families with two and three shopping carts full of supplies. Going to the parking lot they looked a bit like a wagon train in an old western movie. Perhaps there were bandits lurking over the over the horizon ready to swoop down and rustle their Charmin herd.”

And on the following day:

“Went to Giant Eagle for a paper and to pick up a couple of sweet potatoes for Glenda. The world seems to be slowly edging toward a new normalcy. Still no toilet paper on the shelves but plenty of parking spaces and only a handful of people in line.”

In just a short time the narrative went from, “There’s this new pneumonia in China, no big deal” to, “OMG we’re all going to die and I will have to wipe my butt with tree bark.” We were all taken aback by how rapidly the disease spread and how quickly our lives changed. Even the experts were caught off guard which resulted in a lot of confusion on how to deal with the disease.

The ever changing and sometimes contradictory advice we got from the CDC and other agencies added to the sense of uncertainty which further undermined our confidence. Because the pandemic struck in the midst of a contentious election year our response to the coronavirus was highly politicized. At a time when we needed to pull together, this tore us apart. The only thing that seemed to be spreading faster than the virus was misinformation and downright lies.   

During the last year, I have noted how the pandemic brought out the best and the worst of us. I wrote about everyday heroes who put their lives on the line to help others. Some of these people were highly trained medical professionals and other were blue collar workers who spent their days running cash registers in the middle of a sea of virus germs.  Some people tried to profit from the crisis while others donated their time to food banks and other relief efforts.

The last year proved to be very difficult economically for many American families. I am retired and this year proved that living on a fixed income is not necessarily a bad thing. When the pandemic hit, I was working as journalist for the Mon Valley Independent. On April 5, my last article, a feature on Bette Ford, McKeesport’s “Lady Bullfighter” was published in the paper. While I missed the extra income, I truly missed interviewing people and covering community events.

I recorded the impact of the pandemic on my family in my ninth diary entry when I wrote:

“The Coronavirus hit my family like a tsunami today. This morning my daughter-in-law learned that she was laid off from Trib Total Media. It is unlikely that she will be called back and it is possible that the entire company may not survive the recession and the lockdown.

Next, we learned that our niece’s husband would be let go from his job at a UPS warehouse. This was followed in short order with the news that her sister had been rushed to the hospital with a severe headache and numbness on the left side of her body. She had been stressed over homeschooling her children and financial difficulties. Her husband, also home from work, experienced chest pains and was rushed by ambulance to another hospital. My wife’s sister had to care for their two children who were understandably upset over both parents being taken away.”

Today almost a year later, my daughter-in-law is still out of work although my niece’s husband is back working part time at UPS. Every one of the “young people” in my family who are still raising children and working for a living are still constantly stressed and worrying about the immediate future.   

One theme that came up over and over in my diary entries is how individualized our experience of the pandemic has been. Some people have suffered greatly while others have been merely inconvenienced. Some children have adapted well to remote learning while others have struggled. Some people have thrived while others have sunk into depression. Many of us have grown personally, learning new skills and benefitting from slowing the pace of our lives. Some of us have ended our lives.

I have to admit that I have had it easier than most people in the past year. As I’ve said, the pandemic did not significantly impact me economically. My wife and I live a somewhat archaic lifestyle, we don’t go out a lot to eat and make most of our meals at home. We don’t have much of a social life and we both know how to keep ourselves amused. Before and after the pandemic, I spent a lot of time working alone in my workshop/studio while my wife baked bread and experimented with new recipes in her kitchen.

Reading through the last year’s Corona Diaries, I realized that two things helped get me through it without going completely crazy. One is my love of nature and the other is books. I spent a lot of time taking long walks by myself in the woods around my home. While the human world felt apart, I watched the normal cycle of the seasons unfold in the normal manner. I saw the earliest spring wildflowers pop up through the leaf litter, I saw hawks circling in the summer sky and I saw the forest canopy turn from a luxurious green to a kaleidoscope of colors to a palette that looked like a big bag of M & M’s. This habit of mine turned out to be the perfect social distanced activity.

Considering what others have gone through, I am almost reluctant to say that the closing of the library was one of the biggest Covid related challenges I faced. Even though the library is finally open on a very limited basis, I miss the interaction with the librarians and the other library regulars. I am a bit of a literary “prepper” and had a stockpile of books that would provide me with enough reading material to last me through ten pandemics. My diary entries are filled with references to the books that I have read over the last year. I think it was not the books I have missed, it was the discussion with other book lovers that affected me.

Today not only marks the anniversary of the Corona Diaries, but a year since the first Covid-19 death in Pennsylvania. While I was sitting at my computer writing about the pandemic, a half a million Americans took their last breaths. This toll included several people that I know and liked. I do not have the words to tell their stories.

Looking back over the year, I am very glad I took on this project. It was a lot of work, I estimate that I’ve written over 400,000 words, enough for several paperback books, over the last twelve months. I’ve gained a new respect for newspaper columnists who have turned in a column day after day for decades on end. It was sometimes a challenge to come up with a subject on some days. But I just closed my eyes, thought back over the day and something always seemed to pop into my head.

Although I have fared better than many other people in 2020, it was a tough year for me. I struggled with the pandemic and my wife’s cancer. Writing these entries has helped me to process this information. It has helped me stay sane. I hope it has helped others navigate these times. I am glad that I am ending this project when this pandemic seems to be coming to an end.

I hope that we all have a better year going forward than we have had over the last twelve months. So, I thank you again for reading my words, and I will leave you with this wish, I hope you and yours stay healthy and happy in the coming years. I hope that the trials of the past year have given you a new appreciation for your life and the people that you share it with.    

 - Jim Busch

One year ago my world as I know it came to a shrieking halt. Never in my life had I experienced anything like a pandemic. Before this last year I barely knew what a pandemic was. About two weeks before the shut down my mom had already caught wind of this possible disaster, and after 16 years I have learned that when my mom is worried about something it must be serious. But I still shrugged it off, even though her warning voice clung to my thoughts. I was too concerned with my day-to-day life.

That’s when my world slammed on the brakes, giving me a whiplash that I’m still recovering from. Everything had changed, many things in my life started to slip down the drain. My academics faltered, my social life began to wither, and my mental health was like a never-ending roller coaster. After dodging bullet after bullet, I finally caught the Covid-19 bug.

Trust me, I am a faithful mask wearer, I washed my hands, and I tried my best to social distance. My mistake wasn’t of ignorance, but of carelessness. After being in the pandemic for ten and half months, I got too comfortable with the new routine and wore a mask made more for show than it was for protection.

This was the scary part. While my body had begun recovery from that agonizing state, my parents still had a ways to go. The same pain I had fought through was passed on to them, and our positions of caretaker and “caretakee” had switched. The countless cups of tea and use of cleaning products started to amount to the large piles of guilt and worry that crushed my heart, although I tried the best I could to pretend I felt fine and just needed rest.

My heavy heart and the far distance from my friends and family only made it more difficult to maintain. I remember calling one of my best friends late in the night. I stood on my back porch in the gently falling snow and poured my hailstorm of emotions on her, simply because I couldn’t keep it inside any longer.

After that night I felt lighter and the reassuring remarks that this event wasn’t my fault began to sink in. My parents still have some healing to do, even now though we are covid free. Things are looking up.

After this pandemic, I think there are a lot of things all of us are going to have to bounce back from. In the meantime, I guess all we can really do is to be cautious, do our best to take care of ourselves, and pray for good health, prosperity, and happiness.

-Nya O’Neal

Daydream Winter Away

I love gazing into a warm night's sky to admire the magic of twinkling stars. I wonder about infinity of space and my mind is filled with amazement.

I adore the sight of flitting hummingbirds, fluttering butterflies, and want to hear birds chirping through branches of green-leafed trees.

I enjoy the sweet scent of flowers on a gentle breeze, colors reminding me of my artist’s palette, and the sight of freshly cut grass that welcomes robins to gleefully peck for food.

I'm daydreaming winter away. I long to wake up in the morning’s golden light and feel the warmth of sunshine bathing over my face.

- Vickie Babyak

Let me start by saying that before the pandemic, I was going back in my social world and I was finally hanging out with friends, I was enjoying my days, I was back on the saddle, as people say. You know, asking my friends to hang out or asking someone out. I was finally getting back in the sphere to things.

 I was also happy that I was volunteering the Carnegie Science Center. I was felt like a teacher, and I was getting all this education and stuff. Three months before the pandemic of 2020, I started to do my first real job at a bakery.

 It felt like, Oh, my God, this is finally happening. I'm finally getting what I want. But the moment the pandemic was announced, I could not believe it. I had to work two jobs just to help out my family because my mother was unemployed for a little bit. She was waiting for a phone call from her boss telling her the schools are open again, so she can go back to driving a school bus.

 In the summer of 2020, I worked at Kennywood which was great. We had to do social distancing. We could allow customers to come into the café and we had to wear paper mask which felt so uncomfortable because I felt like those strings were scarring my ears and everything. I didn't know why.

 Kennywood would not allow us to wear our fabric masks. I really felt like I needed a fabric mask instead of a paper mask.  But I was so impressed they kept Kennywood open, even though it was only for two months.  They decided to open June 11. When the pandemic became worse, they canceled the Halloween and Christmas events which made me very disappointed because I really wanted to see my friends.

But what made me even more disappointed was missing the Fall Fantasy Parade. August 7 was our last day and it was so crowded.  Luckily, I still had a chance go to Kennywood during the pandemic and go to the movies with someone I asked to go with me.

I wish it really didn't have to be like this. During the pandemic, I felt it was a wakeup call. I felt that it took me back to when I was a little girl when I was playing outside, going to the parks and enjoying events. I was enjoying picnics, I was enjoying recess, I was enjoying like a whole bunch of things before the pandemic happened.

 Ever since technology has improved, it made us feel that we should stay indoors all the time, now it's even worse because the pandemic. People can't go outside to enjoy events and they can't go to the park. They really can't do nothing much because of the pandemic.

 But I think the pandemic has given us a wakeup call. It is said that you should never judge a book by its cover, you should never misunderstand something that you don't really understand. The pandemic has reminded me to enjoy sunshine and enjoy the summertime. What I am missing out now is what I was missing out when I was growing up. These kids and their families don't really understand that they need to go outside. They need to do things outside the house and stuff.

That's another thing when it comes to people, you should always put yourself in front of a person and talk to them face to face. When I found out that Pittsburgh is number one on the most singles list. I was thinking, Oh, my God, are you serious? That's when I realized a lot of people are downloading dating apps these days. I cannot believe it.  The only reason I don't do dating apps is because I want to do something face to face. They may have a false profile which can lead to a fake picture and false information about them. They could be lying about a whole bunch of things and you don't even know when you're being led into a trap.

 This pandemic is really gonna wake people up. I want to go back to the bars, I want to go to the park, I want to go to events, everything is starting to wake up and trying to get back to normal later on this year. Face to face is so much better than virtual. We need to start walking, we need to start exercising, we need to get outside sooner than later. If we don’t clear up the virus this year, we will be looking at a raise in obesity. And that is a dangerous thing for any of us, especially for young kids.  

I definitely think that we need to be more creative at home. We should dance to exercise videos. Use technology a little bit more. There is this app TikTok where they are showing dances and doing challenges. You should never forget the outdoor life and start getting out there. I believe these are struggles everybody is going through, especially people who need jobs. They need to get out there, they need to do try lot of things that will help.

I definitely believe there is a silver lining to the pandemic. I believe that you should never judge a book by its cover, or even better, never judge a pandemic by what it's doing. Just try to understand why it's happening. I realize there's a lot more than meets the eye. When a pandemic is going on, try not to get upset about it too much.

So, pandemic or no pandemic. It's a wakeup call.

- Maria Palmer

The year before 2020 I anxiously went to Ms. Martha’s workshop Tube City Writers for encouragement, friendship, a sharing of writing and great cookies!  We had meetings and workshops with guest speakers and a live storytelling event that November.  And then suddenly it all stopped – a thing had come into our lives and everyone else life – it was called coronavirus or the pandemic.

We had to meet by Zoom meetings, using a mix of computers or phones from home. Going to your favorite fast food restaurant meant waiting in a line for 20 minutes with 7 or 8 other cars as you waited for your order to be taken at one window; driving up to pay for it at second window, receiving your order at another window and then checking to see if they gave you enough, salt, ketchup, napkins and a straw. We were not allowed to eat inside the restaurant because the pandemic.

The year Before the pandemic, Christmas was spent with family, the year Of the pandemic was much quieter.  I felt very sad and almost did not put up my Christmas tree. No one could visit relatives because of the pandemic. The news stories focused on the death toll, the suffering, the fear of a contagious disease, standing six feet apart in a line.

And then to happier ending- a vaccine that can save a life.

- Colette Funches

March 17, 2021

Today is the day when everybody is supposed to be Irish. It is St. Patrick’s Day, a day for celebrating the patron saint of Ireland and Irish culture. Normally, “St. Paddy’s Day” is a raucous holiday complete with parades led by pipe bands, Irish music, and loud gatherings fueled by copious amounts of green tinted beer. This year’s celebrations will be much more subdued because of the continuing coronavirus pandemic. Last year’s celebration and parades were cancelled as the country went into lockdown. This year, the ever optimistic Irish are hoping to hold their events in the early fall after most of the population has been vaccinated.

Only about 9.7% of Americans are of Irish descent but Irish immigrants have had a disproportionate impact on the history and culture of the United States. While the green beer and great music are a lot of fun, I think that it is the Irish world view that makes them stand out. In these difficult times, there is a lot that we can learn from the Irish immigrants that came to our shores.

My last name was imported to this country from southern Germany. My dad’s father migrated to this country from Frankfurt in Bavaria. We are the happy cuckoo clock carving, leather pants wearing happy Germans, not the goose stepping lets go invade France ones. In fact, my grandfather came here to avoid the Prussian draft. On the way here he met an Alsatian woman and fell in love.

My paternal grandmother was of French and German descent. Alsace, where she comes from was one of the most disputed patches of land in Europe. When she was born, it was part of Germany because they had won the last war. My dad remembered that she was trilingual, able to speak fluent French, German and English. I never met either of my grandparents on my dad’s side, but in pictures, my grandmother looked very French with long straight black hair and an intense gaze.

My mother’s father was Scots Irish. He always referred to our ethnicity as coming from “Scotch Irish Pioneer Stock.” The family originally settled in Centre County near Bellefonte and my grandfather took pride in his family role settling in the Pennsylvania frontier. They moved to Duquesne sometime after the Civil War to seek employment in the Mon Valley steel mills.

The Scots Irish were actually 100% Scotch. The name comes from the fact that they stopped in Northern Ireland for a few generations before finally moving to the British colonies. They remained insular and clannish right down to my grandfather’s time, his brothers never spoke to him again after he announced his intention to marry an Irish girl and to adopt her Catholic religion.

My grandmother’s parents came to America to escape the poverty and hunger of the Potato Famine. They left County Kenny and originally settled in Northeastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region where my great- grandfather took up the miner’s trade. My grandmother was never quite sure why her family moved across the state but she heard from relatives that her “Da’” was mixed up with the Molly Maguires and was involved in some violent labor activities. Somehow, she wound up in Duquesne where she met a young Scots Irish lad who worked hard and liked to tell a good joke.

If you do the math, that makes me one quarter Irish but I’ve found that the Irish genes are dominant. Mixed in with my Scottish heritage, my personality is decidedly Celtic. This natural tendency was enhanced by spending time listening to my grandparent’s stories and absorbing their outlook on life.

Though I lived just a block from my elementary school, I never went straight home. I always stopped to visit my grandparents who lived across the street from Lincoln School. Some of my favorite childhood memories involved sitting in my grandmother’s Vick’s VapoRub scented living room watching Queen for a Day and Who Do You Trust on her black and white TV. She always would give me chocolate covered graham crackers and a cold glass of milk, but the best treats were her Hahntown stories.

My grandmother spent most of her childhood just outside of Irwin in an Irish coal mining “patch” called Hahntown. I loved her stories about the hard living miners many of whom were alcoholics, like her father. She remembered them getting drunk, playing music, singing the old rebel songs, telling stories and getting into major donnybrooks with fists and loose teeth flying in all directions. Death was a constant presence from disease and slate falls in the mines, so she especially remembered the wakes. She told me that it was not unusual once the party got going to take the stiff corpse out of the coffin, stand it in the corner and dance with the deceased. Once, one of her brothers stole a spool of black thread from their mother’s sewing box, tied it to the dead body’s right hand and looped it over the gas light in the ceiling. At an opportune moment he pulled the thread so that the body pointed his hand heavenward to the amusement of the gathered crowd.

My grandmother was a wonderful story teller and was able to take me back with her to her childhood. A superstitious person, she could send chills down my spine by telling me about the time she saw a banshee coming for the soul of her ailing mother and how she fought him off with a broom.  Though she was born and raised in Westmoreland County she had a lifelong hatred of the English, tied to a folk memory of Irish atrocities and the famine. The only thing worse than an Englishman was a “Black Irishman” her name for a Protestant Irish person. Given this prejudice, it was amazing that she wound up spending her life with a good Presbyterian boy.

While my grandmother’s stories could scare the pants off Stephen King, my grandfather’s tales were folksy and fun. I would help him in his workshop and he would tell me about hoop snakes that would put their tail in their mouth and roll downhill to escape their enemies. He told me how the Youghiogheny River got its name. He told me that pioneer Christopher Gist was walking along the river when an Indian shot an arrow from the other side. The arrow hit him in the backside and Gist call out “Yough.” When the native archer hit him a second time in the posterior, he cried out “Yough againy!” Somehow the local history books missed this historical vignette.

The story I liked the best was in retrospect a little cruel. He told me about a fellow he worked with in the mill. He was born in Scotland and fought with a Highland regiment in the First World War. My grandfather told me when he got drunk, he would pick up a cat, hold it under his arm, and bite the end of its tail. When the cat began to yowl, he would squeeze its sides and play him like a bagpipe. I don’t think the poor cat would have enjoyed the performance very much but this image really made me laugh as an eight year old.

When I think about my grandparents I think about their great stories, chocolate covered graham crackers and learning to drive nails in boards. I don’t think about the troubles they went through and the tragedies they faced. My grandmother grew up in an alcoholic household with a sickly mother, her brother was killed the morning after his wedding because he was hung over and fell from a moving railroad car.

My grandfather’s family disowned him for marrying outside his faith and he lost several fingers in an industrial accident. When my grandfather was hurt, he lost his job which cost them the tiny farm that they had scrimped and saved to buy. With his injuries he could only find work as a low paid school janitor so they never had much money. Despite this, neither of my grandparents ever complained or gave up hope. They simply rolled up their sleeves and got to work, making the best of even the worst situation.

I think this is why we love the Irish; we admire the Celtic spirit and their resilience. The Irish were a conquered people for centuries, yet they never gave up fighting against overwhelming odds for their freedom. The potato famine was one of the most horrific events in history. Almost two million people died of starvation and in some towns not enough people survived to bury the dead. Those who didn’t die were forced to migrate to countries that didn’t want them. Men like my great-grandfather went to the mines because it was the only work he could fine. Many businesses posted signs that said “No dogs or Irish allowed.” Despite all of this, they never quit and they never let these hardships get them down.

I once heard an interview with Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes. He described the appeal of Irish literature despite its dark nature. In his answer he compared Irish literature to Russian literature. “In a Russian story, Boris the peasant suffers unbearable hardships and goes home, hangs his head and cries; in an Irish story, Paddy the peasant suffers unbearable hardships and goes to the pub, has a jar and then sings a song.”

This is the lesson we can learn from the Irish; that no matter how bad things get, no matter how big the challenges we are facing, we have to keep our spirits up and keep fighting. If we need to get our troubles off our chest, we might want to sing a sad song before getting back into the fight. It also doesn’t hurt to tell a story or two to keep our and our compatriots spirits up. Embrace the Celtic soul and enjoy the fight. The English writer G. K Chesterton hit the nail in the head when he wrote:

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

- Jim Busch

March 16, 2020

I have been interested in history for as long as I can remember. I think it was the combination of the historic fare popular on television when I was a child and my grandparent’s stories. Our TV made me fall in love with Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, the Swamp Fox and Matt Dillion. My grandparents told me stories of growing up on the farm or on smoky Duquesne tough streets. Growing up, I was convinced that everything interesting happened long before I was born into the 1950s suburbs.

History and social studies were always my best subjects in school. While other kids were reading comics and The Hardy Boys, I was checking biographies of historic figures and American history titles out of the library. When it was time for vacation, I begged my parents to take me to Gettysburg or to Williamsburg. I found Ulysses S. Grant far more interesting than an animated cartoon mouse and his pals. In college, I took a double major in English literature and history.

I never grew out of my interest in history, there are still a lot of history books on my reading list. I watched the Grammy’s this week but the only names I recognized were included in the “In Memoriam” portion of the program. On the other hand, I can name a long list of contemporary historians. I am almost a “groupie” for H. W. Brands, Erik Larson and Rick Atkinson.

My historical interests have evolved over the years. As a child, I was interested in military history and the American frontier. I imagined myself defending Missionary Ridge or heading west with Lewis and Clark. As I grew older, I became more interested in political and economic history. Now that I have grown old, I find myself far more interested in art and cultural history. Today, I am more interested in the history of ideas and how people’s lives have been impacted by the events going on around them.

Lately, I’ve been wondering about how the pandemic will change things. It has already changed science. We have become comfortable taking our time to work out solutions to problems. We convinced ourselves that the process of developing new technologies was a long drawn out time consuming process. It took over 15 years to develop a treatment protocol for AIDS.

In the past year, we have not only developed a treatment protocol for Covid-19 but we have created multiple vaccines to prevent the disease from spreading. This is not unlike the response of American industry to World War II when our factories went from building Buicks to building bombers almost overnight. This effort changed how we did things forever and resulted in the explosion of new materials and products after the war. I can only wonder how the new techniques and methods developed in our laboratories to fight the Covid crisis will impact our world in the future.

Major events like economic depressions, wars and pandemics always change how people see the world. My parents survived both the great depression and World War II. For the rest of their lives they pinched pennies and never wasted a dime. My mother kept her pantry so well stocked with canned goods that she puts modern day “preppers” to shame. Living through a time of economic uncertainty and wondering if they would have enough to eat left its mark on them.

The last year shook a lot of people’s faith in our economic system, millions of people who have never been out of work found themselves unemployed due to the virus or the resulting shutdowns. The long lines at food banks around the country are a 21st century version of the depression era bread lines. The severity of these experiences are bound to leave deep scars on the psyches of many people like the depression left scars on my parent’s generation. I would not be surprised if consumers will think twice before going into debt for unnecessary items. It is also likely that American basements will contain a good supply of toilet paper and canned goods.

For the last 30 years or so, political pundits, especially those of the right, have been preaching the gospel of government ineffectiveness. They hold the view that any governmental intervention in our lives is unwanted and harmful. They chant Ronald Reagan’s words, “The most terrifying words in the English language are I’m here from the government to help you!” as a mantra. This phrase would seem absurd to people like my parents who remembered how FDR’s agencies had come to the rescue of the American people.

Today, I saw a number of interviews with people who have been struggling economically because of the pandemic. The interviewer asked them about last year’s stimulus checks and the extended unemployment benefits. These people were also asked how the payments included in the American Rescue bill recently signed by the president will affect them. All of the people interviewed said that the payments helped them from becoming homeless or being unable to feed their families. I doubt that these people will ever be convinced that this aid is a government overreach or an attempt to take away their liberty. I am sure that the pandemic will be the catalyst for a major shift in American political rhetoric.

I am anxious to see how our artists respond to the pandemic. Since the first artist painted the first buffalo on a cave wall, they have been very sensitive to the changes wrought by historical events. One only has to look at how art changed after World War I or again after the World War 11. Once the galleries, museums, and concert halls reopen, I am sure that works presented there will be radically different than the work seen there before the shutdown. Artists are the canaries in culture’s coal mine. The purpose of art is to help us understand what is happening in our culture. It is an artist’s job to allow us to look through another person’s eyes to give us a different perspective on the world.

My dad used to say, “It’s hard to remember the objective is to drain the swamp, when you’re up to your ass in alligators.” We have all had a very personal view of the pandemic. Some of us were able to work from home and didn’t suffer economically; others had to work on the frontlines. It is hard for us to understand the big picture unless we are shown different viewpoints. Art is like a lunar orbiter, it shows us what the dark side of the moon looks like while expanding our understanding of our satellite. I look forward to seeing paintings and sculptures and to listening to new symphonies written in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

As more and more people get vaccinations and Covid case numbers decline, we are hearing the phrase “back to normal” more and more. The dictionary definition of normal says it is a state where things are, “usual, typical or expected.” I do not believe that the post Covid world will be what we were used to, what was typical or expected a year and a half ago.

I hope many things will be new, exciting and wonderfully unexpected.  This may or may not be the case, but one thing is for sure, the pandemic will, for better or worse, change our lives and our world in thousands of ways.

 -Jim Busch

March 15, 2021

I had a busy day planned for today. My “to do” list took up most of a sheet of tablet paper. I got out of bed, wolfed down a couple of waffles and a glass of juice and got dressed. I wanted to hit the deck running so I could have the pleasure of scratching off every item on my list. I was a motivated man with a plan. As is usually the case, things started off well but then I hit a roadblock named Ralph.

Ralph is my best friend, I have known him for about 18 years. We worked together at Trib Total Media and discovered that we had a lot in common. We became great friends. Ralph is 75, six years older than me as I will soon be 69. We’re both steel mill town kids from solidly blue collar families. Ralph grew up in the shadow of the Carrie Furnaces in Rankin. I grew up in White Oak just a couple of miles from U.S. Steel’s Tube Works in McKeesport. Ralph’s dad worked in a Braddock foundry, my dad worked as a machinist at Westinghouse’s massive East Pittsburgh plant a short distance up the Turtle Creek valley.

I was the company’s director of training and it was my job to orient new hires and help our sales people close more business deals. By the time we met, Ralph already had many years of advertising sales experience. He had taken his first sales job with the McKeesport Daily News when he got out of the Navy in the mid 1960s. From there he took a job with the Pennysaver where he had a long and successful career before being lured away to sell ads for a cable TV advertiser. It didn’t work out, and after a stint at the Clipper Magazine he returned to the Pennysaver which by that time had been acquired by the Tribune Review.

Training Ralph was a walk in the park for me. He knew as much as me, and probably more, about selling advertising. All I had to do was bring him up to speed on our product mix and our current pricing structure. Since I would be working with all of our sales people and their managers in the long run, I always tried to get to know as much as possible about our new employees. To this end, I always made a point of taking all new hires out to a long lunch where we could talk and get to know one another. In Ralph’s case, this was the first of hundreds of lunches we would share.

During our first lunch, I learned that Ralph was married and had one son. One of the things that I noted was that he had nothing but good things to say about his family. This might not seem to be unusual, but I was always amazed about the number of people in this same situation that complained about their families, particularly their wives or husbands. I discovered that we shared an interest in history and in art. Ralph had actually attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh after high school and had been a photographer’s mate in the Navy. Though our paths had never crossed, we discovered that we knew many of the same people since we had both worked in advertising for a long time.

Our friendship got off to a flying start at that first lunch together and has continued without interruption ever since. I still keep in touch with some of the people I worked with but Ralph is the only person I saw regularly until the pandemic cut us both off from the wider world. We would go to exhibitions and lectures together and shared many lunches. On occasion, we would get together for dinner with our wives who also found that they had a lot of common interests.

As much as we have in common, Ralph and I are very different people. I often tell him that he is the “Most Italian person I know.” He has that wonderfully animated spirit Italians are known for. He has never lost his sense of wonder and still takes a childlike delight in life. Ralph loves to eat and considers spaghetti an important component of any meal.

An instantly apparent difference between Ralph and me is that he is a very sharp dresser. He always wore tailored suits to work with designer ties. He coordinated his belt with his shoes and felt undressed if his ensemble didn’t include a properly folded pocket square. My personal dress code is much more, “form follows function.” I am a natural slob and usually look a bit rumpled, I don’t worry about polishing my shoes let alone matching them to my belt. Since we’ve been retired, I tend to show up to lunch in a chambray work shirt and a pair of well-worn blue jeans, Ralph is always nattily attired in a coordinated outfit and a pair of designer shoes.

The biggest difference between Ralph and I is that I tend to be a loner and he is anything but. I can spend hours alone puttering in my workshop or walking in the woods. I enjoy my own company and have no problem amusing myself. This is why when we got downsized and forcibly retired, Ralph took it so much harder than me. I saw retirement as an opportunity to pursue some of my interests, Ralph saw it as being sentenced to solitary confinement.

I actually worried about Ralph’s reaction to losing his job. He was uncharacteristically sullen and depressed. I tried to get him out as much as possible and keep him supplied in history and art books but he still felt very down. His solution to this problem was finding a part time job at an Appleby’s Restaurant near his home. Ralph loved his job, chatting with the customers and getting to know his coworkers. Ralph is very charming and the young wait staff instantly took a liking to him. Ralph was in his glory and although he didn’t make much money in his job, it lifted him out of his blue funk.

Everything went well until about a year ago when the pandemic caused Applebees to shut down. While he understood why Governor Wolf ordered the shutdown, he still missed being around people. In addition to his isolation, Ralph has had some health problems crop up in 2020. His wife is a few years younger than him and is still working. She does merchandising at chain stores, so she is still working long days leaving Ralph alone in their home.

It has been over a year since we enjoyed a lunch together and I have only seen Ralph face to face two times, once to drop off his birthday present and again to drop off his Christmas gifts. On both occasions, I stood in his yard or on his porch trying to hold a masked conversation while standing ten feet apart. Not the most conducive atmosphere for stimulating conversation.

For Ralph, the worst side effect of the coronavirus pandemic is chronic loneliness. Ralph and I have been talking on the phone once or twice a week for the last several months. We don’t really talk about anything that’s too interesting, we just catch up on one another’s families and talk about what we have been reading or watching on TV. Ralph often tells me about his time in the Navy which I enjoy.  Usually these conversations last an hour or so, but I feel it is time well spent as it seems to recharge his batteries. If I don’t hear from him for a few days, I make a point of calling him. He knows how busy I am and doesn’t want to tie me up.

Today, I had finished the first few items on my to-do list when my phone rang. I looked at the screen and saw Ralph’s name pop up. One of the reasons people love their smart phones is that it allows them to screen their calls. If they don’t want to talk to someone, they simply let them go to voicemail. I knew that if I spent an hour talking to Ralph, several items on my list might not get done today. Without hesitation, I answered the phone and greeted my friend.

Our call actually lasted a full hour and fifteen minutes. Mid call I had to sit down in my car and plug my phone into the charger. It was all a matter of priorities. The stuff on my list was important but my friend instantly went to the top of the list. I knew he needed me and that I could help him get through a tough day. Sometimes talking about nothing is the most important thing we can do.                     

 - Jim Busch

March 14, 2021

I have come to the conclusion that I should stop watching the news. It is just too aggravating some days. I should stop watching, reading and listening to the news but I won’t because I am a confirmed “News Junkie.” Always have been - always will be.

Perhaps my addiction to watching the news is genetic, an inherited trait. I never had any trouble joining in the discussions of “current affairs” in school. Sitting around the table with my parents and grandparents, the discussion centered around the issues of the day. Since I grew up in the 1960s many of the discussions centered on the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. Everyone could agree that the U.S. had no business fighting in Southeast Asia.

I can remember my grandfather with a few boilermakers under his belt, sitting in his chair in the kitchen, waving a lit Marsh Wheeling “Stogie” cigar and declaring, “What the hell did the Viiii-Et-Naaameeeese ever do to us.” My dad said the only thing good that came out of the war was that it made jobs for the guys who worked in the “bomb mill.” This is what he called U.S. Steel’s Christy Parks Works along Walnut Street where they actually made bombs and shells for the U.S. military. He always added, “It’s a shame that people gotta die so some guys can get some extra overtime pay.”

For some reason, this discussion always led my dad to give me a history lesson on World War I. A lesson that I am sure was passed down from my dad’s German immigrant parents. I never knew my dad’s parents but he had told me that his father had come to the United States to avoid mandatory conscription into the German army. Despite his reluctance to serve the Kaiser, our family was proud of our Bavarian heritage.

My dad was convinced that Germany would have won the war if it hadn’t been for the intervention of the United States. He told me that the only reason we had joined the war was, “to save J.P Morgan’s ass. His bank had loaned all kinds of money to the Brits so if they lost, he would have been out a bundle. He convinced Woodrow Wilson to join in the war. You know the Kaiser wasn’t like Hitler, he was no worse than the English king. There was no reason that our boys had to die except to keep Morgan from losing money.”

Though I learned that most of my dad’s theories about history and world affairs were not based on facts, his lessons proved to be valuable to me later in life. He taught me to do my own research rather than accept what I am told without question; no matter what the source might be. My parents also taught me that there is more than one way to interpret the information we see on the news.

My mother was very sympathetic to the civil rights movement, she particularly liked Martin Luther King’s nonviolent approach. My dad’s thoughts on the civil rights movement were a bit to the right of Alabama governor George Wallace. He felt the best response to a nonviolent protest was guns, police dogs and fire hoses. This difference of opinion taught me that there are two sides of a story, even if one is hateful and wrong.

The story that aggravated me today was a piece on the crowds gathering in Texas and Florida. The CBS news showed crowds of people partying in the streets of Miami. Hundreds of young people were gathered holding Solo cups of alcohol, hanging all over one another and literally dancing in the street. They then switched their coverage to a restaurant in Texas featuring similar behaviors. Prior to the pandemic these stories would not have caught my eye; young people have been behaving like this since the alcohol in their hands were gourds full of mead and the crowds were dressed in skins. In the midst of a pandemic, this behavior is suicidal.

It is especially disturbing as we are hopefully coming close to the end of the pandemic. If everyone continues to follow the CDC guidelines, things could be back to (almost) normal by the end of summer. These people are not only endangering themselves but are putting us all at risk. They are making it that much harder for our medical professionals to finally bring this nightmare to an end. 

I see this as a sign of the fracturing of our culture. Civilization is held together by shared values and shared beliefs. One of the beliefs that has been central to our American ethos is that liberty is inextricably connected to civic responsibility. That we are free to live our lives in the way that we wish as long as we do not interfere with others trying to live their lives freely. Acting in a way that risks the lives of others does not fall within the terms of this social contract.

Some say that mask mandates impinge on their personal liberty. I have even seen reports of protests where masks are burned to assert one’s personal freedom. The question is does one person’s right to not be inconvenienced by wearing a mask more important than another person’s right to remain alive? When the bond between freedom and responsibility is severed both concepts are placed in danger.

A recent survey of Republican voters found that a full third of them plan to refuse being vaccinated mostly for ideological reasons. This puts the entire country at risk because it delays the onset of “herd immunity,” a necessary step on the road to ending the pandemic. When I was a child we were required to have a small pox vaccination before we were allowed to enroll in school. In first grade, we all had to roll up our sleeves to show our teacher the scar from the vaccination. This proved to be a problem for me, I didn’t have the required scar. My parents had dutifully tried to have me vaccinated, but it didn’t take. This meant that I had to have the painful procedure repeated three times to no avail. It seems that my natural immunity to small pox almost got me barred from an education. Only a notarized letter from our family doctor finally got me into first grade.

No one questioned the reason behind mandating everyone get a small pox vaccination. No one claimed that it was government overreach or that getting this little scratch on ones right arm took away their liberty. Virtually everyone understood that this procedure not only protected one’s own health but the health of the community at large. Getting a vaccination was not only a good idea, it was one’s civic duty and it was what a responsible citizen does.

Over the past year we have learned a lot about dealing with pandemics and have started thinking about preventing, or at least minimizing the impact of the next one. I think a part of our future planning should include reinstating civics classes in schools and launching a major advertising campaign to remind Americans about their responsibilities as citizens.

It is hard to estimate how many deaths were caused by people who decided that as “free people” they were not bound to follow rules about wearing a mask or maintaining social distance from others. Their selfishness deprived others of not only the right to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness” but also of “life” itself. We are suffering from two interrelated pandemics, one that stems from a deadly virus and another which stems from a deadly blend of selfishness and irresponsibility. We will never eliminate the first type of pandemic until we address the other.         

 - Jim Busch

March 13, 2021

I hope that a few months from now that I will remember today as the beginning of the end of the pandemic, for my wife and me at least. Today, we got our first dose of the Moderna vaccine. This afternoon we both reported to the Rite Aid Pharmacy on Lysle Boulevard in McKeesport for our injection.

We have to thank our son for getting us our vaccination appointments. We tried scheduling our own dates but couldn’t navigate the labyrinth system for requesting a time for a shot. Jesse is very good using computers and quickly arranged our appointments for today. We were lucky to get appointments so close to home, our daughter had to drive a hundred miles for hers. It was also very convenient that we both were scheduled for the same location and at almost the same time. My appointment was for 3 p.m. and my wife’s was 3:45 p.m.

More and more, when I encounter people and ask them if they’ve received their shot, their answer is “yes.” It seems like the government has finally gotten a handle on the problem and has ramped up both the production and distribution of the vaccines. I have read that anyone with training in administering an injection has been enlisted to deliver the vaccines. Active duty troops, dentists and now even veterinarians are helping with the efforts. Actually, I hoped that I would get my shot from a veterinarian; that way I thought after receiving the injection I would get my belly rubbed and told, “Who is a good boy, who is a good boy, you’re a good boy, yes, you are!” followed by a delicious treat. Unfortunately, no vets were available, so I had to settle for a pharmacist. Although, I was still hoping that I would get an orange sucker.   

Comparing notes on vaccinations with other people, most people were impressed with how well the process was organized and managed. My daughter-in-law had her vaccination at the Rite Aid in Squirrel Hill. She told us that there was signage set up outside the store instructing patrons where to go for their shot. Once inside the store, she was greeted by a person who checked to make sure she had an appointment and helped her complete her registration. She was then directed to an area designated for administering the vaccine. This area had chairs spaced more than six feet apart to ensure proper social distancing. Once she got the shot, she was advised to remain in the store for a minimum of 15 minutes as a precaution against potential side effects. She was told that she could either remain seated or shop in the store. Everything went off without a hitch and she was in and out of the store within 45 minutes.

My wife and I had a very different experience at our local Rite Aid. We arrived early for my appointment. I walked into the store and based on what my daughter-in-law had told me looked around for signage or a registration person. I panicked for a moment, thinking I had the wrong day or wrong store but a quick check of my registration form assured me that I had everything right, so I waited in line at the front cash register. Inquiring about the vaccinations, the register operator pointed to the back of the store and said “pharmacy.”

I walked to the back of the store and again seeing no signage, I got in the line leading up to the pharmacy checkout. After about five minutes in line, I told the pharmacy assistant the purpose of my visit and again I was told to go somewhere else. Pointing to her right, she said, “consultation desk.” At least this time, I was the first person in line.

After about another five minutes, the pharmacist came and asked my name. He asked for my driver’s license and medical cards. I had already removed them from my wallet and placed them in my pocket. I handed them over and the pharmacist threw them in a plastic basket with some paperwork as he told me we’ll call your name.

This turned out to be my longest wait yet, my name wasn’t called for at least 45 minutes. I stood patiently waiting in front of the pharmacy counter and observing what was going on. After years as a business manager, I am always looking for the root cause of organizational problems and then try to find solutions. The problem at the McKeesport Rite Aid was as plain as the nose on my face. They were understaffed.

Despite the added responsibilities of administering the Covid vaccine to a steady stream of customers, Rite Aid had not scheduled additional help for the pharmacy department. In addition to delivering vaccines, the two people behind the counter still had to staff the prescription desk, work the drive up window, answer phone calls, as well as answer customer questions about their medication. Given the critical and complex nature of all these tasks, I was concerned that the stressful pace of simultaneously handling all of them could lead to mistakes.

When my name was finally called, I was directed to an alcove to the right of the prescription counter. This space was about ten by ten feet and lined with chairs spaced about just three or four feet apart. The chairs were filled with people either waiting for their shot or sitting there for the mandatory after shot waiting period. In addition to the vaccine recipients, several were accompanied by their children or in the case of some of the older people, by their caregivers. After months of social distancing I felt very uncomfortable in this crowded space. I did a quick mental calculation and decided that getting vaccinated was worth the risk of entering the crowded space. I tightened my mask, walked over to an open chair and sat down.  

Actually getting the shot was almost anticlimactic. I had to unbutton my shirt and slide it off my shoulder. The pharmacy assistant gave my shoulder a quick pass with an alcohol wipe filled a syringe from a vial and injected me. After waiting a year for a vaccine to be developed and months to get scheduled for a shot, it was all over in about 30 seconds. As I buttoned my shirt, the young lady who had given me the shot gave me an appointment card for the second dose said, “You’ll need to wait here for 15 minutes.”

I looked her in the eyes and said, “There is no way I will sit here in this germ filled crowd, I’ll wait out the 15 minutes in my car.”

Surprised, she repeated, “I need you to wait here for 15 minutes,” and then hesitantly added, “in case of side effects.”

Reactivating my retired executive and authoritative voice, I said, “I will be in my car. Thank you!” and got up straightened my shirt and walked away. My wife had a similar experience and, like me, was disturbed by the “crowded elevator” feel of the waiting area. She too refused to wait in the small alcove after her shot. I am sure that the Rite Aid staff has deemed our entire family a “band of impatient rebels.”

I fared much better than my wife from the shots. I only have a small tender spot on my arm at the site of the injection. It is only noticeable when I press on it. When I do this I can feel a hard knot of flesh. My wife’s entire right arm is very painful and it seems to be stiff when she moves it. If this persists, we will contact her doctor. Based on my discussions with other vaccinated folks, our experiences seem to be typical. My son did tell me that one of his friend did have an anaphylactic reaction to his shot causing a few frightening moments as he had difficulty breathing. My son said that his friend is “allergic to everything.”

Our next vaccination appointments are set for four weeks away on April 10. Adding in the two weeks needed for the vaccination to take full affect we should be fully protected, or as protected as possible, by the end of April. Since all of my immediate family are all in various stages of the vaccination process, we will have to observe Covid protocols for Easter but we should be able to celebrate the Memorial Day weekend just like we did in the “good old days” of 18 months ago.

Only time will tell if our efforts to vaccinate the majority of Americans will finally put the pandemic in the rear view mirror. I heard on tonight’s news that the number of new Covid cases have been dropping for the last six months and the rate of vaccinations is steadily growing. It is certainly nice that the news is becoming more optimistic. If this helps save our country, I will gladly put up with long waits and less than ideal circumstances any time.      

 -Jim Busch

March 12, 2021

March 12 marks one of the most important days of my life. It was on March 12, 1973 that I became a father with the birth of my son, Jesse. It was at once one of the proudest days in my life and one of the scariest. From that day forward, I have never lived a day without worrying about my children and about being a good father. Today, my son and his family came to our house to celebrate that amazing day of 48 years ago.

Of course, the birth of a child is just the grand finale of a series of things going back at least eight or nine months. In my case, the beginning of the story took place two years and four months before in October of 1970. 1970 was a big year for me, I graduated from McKeesport High School, and I started college at Penn State McKeesport, bought a cool car and fell desperately in love. The last two items on this list are actually closely related.

All through high school I drove a beat up 1959 Ford Fairlane that I bought for $75 and pout in a lot of hard work to get it running. Every inch of the car, including the chrome trim and the door, had been brush painted a Rustoleum red by the previous owner. It exhaled oily blue smoke from its tailpipe and the fenders flapped in the wind as I drove down the street.

After graduation, my dad decided that I needed a better car and hooked me up with Tony Campoli, a young guy who worked at Westinghouse with him. Tony had bought an English MGB sports car when he came home from Vietnam in 1965. Though he loved the car, his wife was pregnant and he needed to buy a car with room for three. My dad and I went to look at it and my dad got him down to $600 and we bought the car. It was a cash deal as I had been saving most of my paychecks from my job at a local grocery store.

The MG had two leather bucket seats, a four speed manual transmission, wire wheels and some of the first radial tires anyone around here had seen. It had a canvas top that required building a frame which made it more like putting up a tent than raising the roof on an American convertible. Tony had bought a fiberglass hardtop for the car which he threw in on the sale. The car’s styling coupled with four cylinders and tuned exhaust system made it look and sound much faster and more powerful than it actually was. It was the sexy European look of my pearl blue MG that ultimately led to my son’s birth.

My wife and I had known each other since the seventh grade. We went to different elementary schools but from junior high on we had attended many of the same classes. During most of that time and especially in high school, my wife considered me, to put it kindly, an obnoxious jerk. Since I was a teenage boy, she was absolutely 100% correct. For my part, I wasn’t all that interested in girls at the time, I dated a little but I was more interested in making money and in cars.

After high school, I decided as a “college man” I needed to become more mature and work to become an intellectual. I have never achieved either goal but I must have made some progress because I was a different person when I started classes at what we called, “Renzie U.”  I also decided that girls were much more interesting than gearboxes. This new discovery led me to ask Glenda out for a date and she turned me down flat. Not deterred, I tried again a few weeks later and she said yes. I didn’t learn until some years later, that she changed her mind because she had seen me in my MG and though she still considered me a jerk, she liked the car.

We went to a movie at the old Eastland theater and then to Kings Country Shoppe for dessert. It turns out that she liked the “New Improved Jim Busch” and I was smitten with her. From that night forward, we never dated any other people and were soon spending a lot of time with one another. I don’t know precisely when it happened but it was not long before we were madly in love with one another. It has now been more than 50 years since that first date and the MG rusted away a long time ago, but we are still crazy for each other.

We were young and in love and in the summer of 1972 we let our passion overrule and Glenda got pregnant. We had never talked about marriage, at that age we weren’t inclined to think that far into the future. But I knew in my heart that this was the woman I wanted to share my life. I was afraid to ask her if she felt the same way but it turns out she did.

The worse part of this unexpected crisis was telling our parents. We first told Glenda’s parents and they were concerned, but kind and compassionate and promised to help us get through this dilemma. My parents were another story. My mother never liked Glenda or any girl I had ever dated. I believe that she was jealous that I might love another woman. They told us that I had ruined my life, suggested that the child might not be mine and threatened to move to another town to hide their shame. They never changed their attitude and always treated my wife badly.

In attempt to placate my parents, we got married in a catholic church by a bearded priest who smelled of pot and kept forgetting the words of the service. We took a two day honeymoon at a North Versailles hotel and got on with our lives. We tried living with my parents because they had room in their home. This proved so stressful for Glenda that I worried that she might lose our child. Though we couldn’t afford it, we rented an apartment and moved out, widening the rift with my family.

I worked and went to school, I had transferred to Pitt and we scraped by with help from Glenda’s family and a food stamp program that was much more generous than today. My anxieties grew faster than Glenda’s belly, I was terrified that I would lose her in childbirth. We enjoyed playing house in what would be our only time when it was just the two of us for the next 40 years. I have to admit that my wife handled this much better than I did, a pattern that repeated itself over and over in the coming decades.

One evening Glenda started feeling contractions. I wanted to go the hospital right away but she wanted to wait. I stayed home from school and called off work. Late in the morning she decided it was time to go, so I drove her to the McKeesport Hospital where they wheeled her into the delivery area. In those days, fathers were not part of the delivery process, I was directed to a smoke filled waiting room and told to stay put. My mother-in-law soon arrived to keep me company, though I don’t think I was much company for her. Just like in the old movies, I paced back and forth and then I read a number of eight or nine year old Field and Stream magazines. After what seemed like an eternity, a nurse came in and told me that I had a son. My wife had been convinced that she was going to have a boy, but in those pre-sonogram days, one could never be sure.

Later that afternoon, I got to meet Jesse. We had decided that if we had a boy, we would name him after her grandfather who was dying from cancer at the time. I held him briefly and handed him off to my mother-in-law. Babies scared the hell out of me and, quite frankly, they still do.

At the age of 20, we had become parents. I think the secret of our long happy marriage is our shared goal. We both have dedicated our lives to caring for our children and the family. Jesse was a challenging baby. He suffered from colic and didn’t like to sleep. Many nights we would have to take him for a drive in our 1963 Plymouth Valiant to get him to fall asleep.

As he grew, we realized that Jesse was a bit of an odd child. Even before he could write, he would make “lists” of bullet pointed scribbles. He used to slowly walk in circles with his head down. When asked what he was doing, he would answer, “thinking.” When he went to school he both surprised and charmed his teachers. The school administered an IQ test and Jesse placed in the highest quintile, it turns out that he was a genius.

Jesse was placed in special gifted classes and always did well in school. Some teachers found him challenging because he was smarter than they were. Jesse spent his junior year in high school as an exchange student in Sweden. While overseas, he applied to Wabash College in Indiana. He liked their intellectual rigor, Wabash still requires every student to take a class on classical Greek or Latin. I told him that I couldn’t afford it and he confidently said, “I’ll get a scholarship.” Jesse did get a full scholarship and later he also received one to law school at Pitt. He did well in all of his classes and is now a successful attorney in the pharmaceutical industry.

While I am proud of his academic and professional success, I am even prouder of the kind of man he has become. He is kind and never misses an opportunity to help someone. He has been good to us and to his sister. Jesse and I always had a good relationship. We liked to go backpacking together, and I taught him to enjoy shooting. Some of my fondest memories are the two of us going to movies together and we still talk a lot about films we have seen.

Jesse is a good father to my grandson, Max. It gratifies me to see how they get along and how Max is developing into a good man in his own right.

This year because of Covid we just had a small gathering at our home to celebrate Jesse’s 48th birthday. We spread out thorough my home eating Mexican food from small TV tables. Afterwards, we had ice cream cake. In place of the traditional blowing out the candles which would be a germ spreading nightmare, Jesse held a single candle and put it out with a fast wave of his hand. It was a good day.

One could say that my son was the result of an accident. I suppose this is true, but it was certainly a “Happy Accident.” Being a husband and a father has given meaning to my life and brought me endless happiness. Sitting in my living room with my family all around me, I am sure even if it was in my power, I wouldn’t change a thing in my life.     

- Jim Busch     

March 11, 2021

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear

525,600 minutes, how do you measure a year?

The words of Seasons of Love from the Broadway play Rent has been running through my head today. Because today is the first anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaring the coronavirus a “pandemic.” An awful lot has happened to our country and our culture in the intervening 525,600 minutes. In answer to the song’s question, most of 2020 and early 2021 is measured in the number of face masks used, the number of times we have assiduously washed our hands. And the number of days we spent in lockdown trying to avoid the virus. I suppose we also include the number of hours we spent fretting over the availability of toilet paper or in search of the elusive rolls.

In the midst of those 525,600 minutes I turned 68 years old or, in keeping with the song that adds up to 35,740,800 minutes. It’s been a tough year, and I am an old dog who has been forced to learn a whole lot of new tricks in the last 12 months. I am becoming set in my ways, I was used to going where I wanted and when I wanted. If I got hungry for a burrito, I’d pop into the Acapulco Mexican Restaurant, when I was jonesing for a gyro, I was off to Rodos Greek Restaurant.

I never fully understood the old saying about not missing the water until the well runs dry until the past year. I never realized how much time I spend hanging out at the library, and at the Carnegie, Westmoreland and Southern Alleghenies Museums of Arts until I was cut off cold turkey. All three of them shut down on March 12 of last year. For a long time, the library was completely shut down for months until they finally set up a system of curbside pickup for books. Staring at the library books I had checked out and read weeks before sitting idly on a shelf made me feel extremely guilty; I was raised to believe having an overdue library book was a mortal sin right up there with cussing or not cleaning your plate. I wasn’t myself until I could return the offending books to the library drop box and order other books to replace them.

I ordered dozens of art books from the library to help with the symptoms of severe art withdrawal. They were sort of placebo to ease my suffering, not quite the real thing but it eased the pain a bit. Normally I do a lot of art tourism, driving around the country to take in exhibitions of my favorite artists work. Because I usually order advance tickets online, a lot of museums have my email address. This came in handy during lockdown, several of the museums started producing great online content featuring their collections. I started regularly watching gallery talks from the Cleveland Museum and the Barnes Takeout series from Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation. I have never been one for watching YouTube videos but these programs proved to be my entry drug; I am now regularly watching instructional videos to improve my own art skills.

The hardest part of the Covid year was the dead of winter. In the spring, summer and fall I could get outside and take long walks. This was good for my entire being, body, mind and spirit. I tend to be a solitary person, I have no problem entertaining myself,  I like people and after a lifetime as a salesperson, I can get along with just about anybody, but I don’t need people. I can spend hours working alone in my shop/studio or working in my garden. I didn’t suffer from lack of human contact like many others during the lockdown. What bugged me was staying in one place because I like to move around. There is a line in the theme from my favorite terrible movie Paint Your Wagon (It features the musical stylings of Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood, need I say more?) that describes my need to keep moving:

When I get to heaven, tie me to a tree,

Or else, I’ll get to wandering and you know where I’ll be!

A few times a week I would travel to the library, museums or just walk around book stores or second hand shops. Of course, this was not an option during lockdown. Just going to the grocery store made me feel like a pilot taking off for a suicide mission. Fortunately, I could still walk in the woods. Hiking is a naturally socially distanced activity and you really can’t beat the ventilation system. During the warm months I walked all the local trails and enjoyed the changing of the seasons. It was a lifesaver. I did start to get a little stir crazy during the winter months, so I occasionally sneaked in a trip to the reopened Goodwill store. I just needed to look at something other than my own four walls to keep the gears in my head in good working order.

Today I did a very odd thing, something that really shook me up. I got up and as is my habit, watched the CBS This Morning. Today the theme of the show was, “The Coronavirus: One year later.” The correspondents spend almost the entire show interviewing people about how their lives changed in the past year. After watching the news, my wife gave me a list for the drug store and another for Giant Eagle. On the way there, I listened to more Covid anniversary coverage on NPR.

When I got to my first stop I jumped out of my car and scurried into the store trying to dodge the raindrops. Rite Aid had their Easter candy on sale and my wife had given me a list of all the goodies she wanted for the family’s Easter baskets. The store was almost empty so I grabbed one of their tiny shopping carts and slowly walked around their holiday display. I easily found the Reese’s peanut butter eggs and the Russell Stover eggs. I carefully checked off all the varieties on my wife’s list as I added them to my cart. After I snagged the Cadbury eggs I had only one more item left on my list. I looked and looked but I could not find the Haribo Gold Gummy Bunnies.

By this point I had been perusing the candy aisle for five to ten minutes, so I decided I needed help. I went off in search of a Rite Aid employee. I saw a young woman in a blue vest and said, “Excuse me.” When she turned around, I saw her face and suddenly realized, “I HAD FORGOTTEN TO WEAR MY MASK.” I was simultaneously embarrassed and horrified. I felt like I was in the middle of one of those nightmares where you discover you’re naked in a public place. Thinking quickly, I raised the copy of the store’s sales flyer I had in my hand up to my face forming a makeshift emergency mask.

I quickly switched into full grovel mode, “I’m sorry… I forgot to put on my mask…I don’t know how I did that…I always wear a mask…I apologize… please let me leave my buggy right here…while I go get my mask.” I doubt that one of Ivan the Terrible’s servants who had just told him he was fat made a more abject apology. It was embarrassing. I ran out into the rain and put on my mask before sheepishly returning to the store to complete my shopping. She quickly located the Gummy Bunnies and rang up my sale. I continued my apologies until I was finally outside the door.

Back in the car, I tried to dissect and analyze my “mask-pas.” After a year of religiously wearing my mask how could I forget to don it today? Why did I forget it on this particular day when the anniversary of the pandemic was all over the news? Maybe, hearing all the news made me think about life after Covid and I was subliminally trying to live out this fantasy.

Why was I so embarrassed? After all it was just a simple mistake, we all make them! Was I afraid of catching the virus? Or giving it to someone else? Was I afraid that she would think I was some anti-mask idiot just picking up a few snacks on my way to kidnap the governor? The whole affair made me feel, in my grandfather’s eloquent phrase, lower than snake piss.

I started thinking about what this last year has done to us. We have all become a little paranoid. We know a minor slip up, like the one I made today could be fatal. For a year we have been living in a combat zone with a deadly sniper hiding behind ever tree and rock. We are never safe, even if we hide in our homes the “rona” might find us slipping through a crack like a microbial ninja assassin. This has been a year that has taken away our sense of security.

We are no longer confident our doctors can protect us or save us if we catch the coronavirus. We are living in a bizzaro world where it’s dangerous rather than polite to shake hands and speak to strangers. A world where a hug might be construed as attempted murder and human touch is strictly forbidden. Even in the dystopian worlds created by H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley people didn’t have to fret over having enough toilet paper.

I can’t wait until this is all over. I can’t wait to eat in a restaurant or go to a store without looking like a transplant surgeon. I hope it won’t be too long before the pandemic is behind us. Things seem to be turning around. I do know one thing for sure, people will have forgotten about the coronavirus before I return to my local Rite Aid store.    

- Jim Busch                                                                                                           

March 10, 2021

America has a new greeting. After saying “Hi” or “Hello,” the first thing out of people’s mouths when greeting someone they haven’t seen in a week or so is, “Get your shot yet?” Vaccinations are on everyone’s mind; words like Pfizer, Moderna, needle, and vial work their way into most conversations. Conversations usually run something like this, “Did you get your vaccination?

The best answer is, “Yep, got the first dose last Saturday.”

“Did you have any reaction to the shot?”

“Nope, my arm was just a little sore.”

“When you getting the second shot?’

“I’ve got an appointment on the 22nd.”

Unfortunately, too many of the conversations go like this, “Did you get your vaccination yet?”

“No, I can’t get a damn appointment. I’m not online and I can’t seem to get through on the phone, I’m about ready to give up.”

I have heard many conversations like this from my peer group. Many of my friends, relatives and neighbors are on the high side of 55 years old. While some are computer literate, others are not. Finding oneself on the wrong side of the information super highway can be life threatening at this point in our history.

We have learned a lot about our country in the last year. We have learned that we should never take toilet paper for granted, many of us have learned that we can work from home and some of us have learned why our homes have a kitchen. We’ve learned that the workers who are most essential to our society are not necessarily those who make the most money.

One of the things that the pandemic has highlighted is just how many things divide the citizens of our country. Being on the wrong side of some of these gaps is always disheartening, but in the midst of a pandemic it can be deadly. Those internet memes that say, We’re all in the same boat are dead wrong. We may all be on the same ocean and riding out the same storm but we all have different types of boats. Some people are riding out the storm in a luxury yacht and others are desperately bailing out their leaky rowboat.

Some people are learning to make artisanal sourdough bread during the lockdown; others are waiting in mile long lines for donated food. Some people are participating in Zoom meetings from the safety of their home office while others are bagging groceries for people who refuse to wear face masks. One’s experience of the pandemic has much to do with one’s level of education and income. Another factor is your chosen career, accountants are having a much easier time than physicians.

One of the widest divides separates white people and people of color. In the past year, we have seen that people of color are far more likely to contract Covid-19 and they are much more likely to succumb to the disease than the general population. This depressing divide has much to do with the fact that people of color tend to work in low level frontline jobs and often lack medical insurance.

The new Covid vaccines are the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. They are our best hope, in fact our only hope, to get our lives back to normal. Just this week, the Center for Disease Control announced that people who have received both doses of the new vaccines can meet with other vaccinated people in small groups without wearing a mask. After a year of social distancing and wearing masks, sitting down with my family gathered around a table sharing a meal seems like a wonderful fantasy. Getting everybody vaccinated is the magic wand to make that dream come true.

The problem is that getting a vaccination is a bit like a quest for the grail. Like King Arthur’s knights, one must go out to seek this prize, sometimes traveling across the land to find the castle where it is found. For my daughter, she had to drive over 100 miles to Hermitage, Pa. to get her vaccination at a “Castle Rite Aid”. In the Arthurian legends one had to be skilled at arms and pure of heart to find the grail. To get a vaccination one must be skilled at using a computer and very persistent.

Many of my older friends are either minimally computer literate or lack access to the internet. This is a double edged problem when it comes to scheduling a vaccination appointment. First, it is difficult to know when and where the shots are being offered without access to hospital and pharmacy websites.

Second, most organizations responsible for delivering the vaccines rely on the internet to book appointments. Most, but not all, have set up phone lines as a backup option to register people who lack access to the web. The problem is that these lines are often busy and it is far more difficult to register over the phone. Many people, particularly older folks, often get so frustrated by this cumbersome process that they simply give up.

In the tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, they took an oath to fight for those who could not defend themselves. They became champions of the weak, fighting dragons and ogres to save damsels in distress. Just like in the old stories of Camelot, a group of champions are riding to the rescue of the digitally weak to defeat the Covid dragon. My wife and I had trouble finding a place to get our Covid shots. We are somewhat familiar with the online world but were unable to schedule appointments though we are eligible. Our son, who is exceptionally skilled with all things digital, stepped in and in short order got us both scheduled to get our shots this weekend.

This is happening all over the U.S., young people are setting up appointments for those who are unable to do so for themselves. Many of these people have taken this on as full time “Vaccine Hunters.” Like my son, many of them started out helping family members and then expanded their mission, first to other relatives, then neighbors and finally to offering their services to perfect strangers. Some spend as much as 12 hours a day to searching for vaccination appointments. One person interviewed about her vaccine hunting activities compared it to the arcade game Whac-A-Mole. She spends her days constantly refreshing her screen to grab an appointment when one pops up.

Like Robin Hood, vaccine hunters sometimes have to break a few rules, impersonating the person to get them registered for the life-saving vaccine. Though some of the vaccine hunters get a plate of home baked cookies or a loaf of banana bread for finding a grateful senior an appointment, they seek no compensation for their time or their efforts.

As I wrote above, the pandemic taught Americans a lot about our country and our people. One of the happier lessons is that just like in pioneer times, Americans are still willing to go out of their way to help someone in need. We still care about our neighbors and don’t think twice about rolling up our sleeves and getting to work when someone needs our help. We learned that we can overcome any problem if we work together. We learned that this is still a great country filled with a lot of great people.     

 - Jim Busch

March 9, 2021

One of the best memories from my childhood is the time my parents took me to the Smithsonian Institution. I remember seeing the Wright brother’s first airplane and a big mechanical printing press. When I grew up and became a parent myself, I took my own children to visit the place some people call “America’s Attic.” The Smithsonian’s collections record the tragedies and triumphs of our country from its earliest days to the current day.

Today, the Smithsonian announced that they had collected the empty vaccine vial from Sandra Lindsay the first American to receive a coronavirus vaccination. Lindsay is a registered nurse who works in the ICU of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York. She received her first injection of the Pfizer vaccine on December 14 and her follow up shot on January 4. In addition to the vaccine vials, the hospital donated the scrubs worn by Lindsay the day she got her first injection plus her identification badge and her vaccination record.

The Smithsonian was quick to recognize the historic nature of the coronavirus pandemic. Even as they were forced to close the doors of their many museums, the institution’s curatorial staff began collecting artifacts and documents related to the pandemic. In April of 2020, the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History quickly set up a Rapid Response Collecting Team to gather materials related to the pandemic. In addition to collecting masks, quarantine orders, and news stories on the disease progress through the United States, the museum has collected unique objects like Dr. Anthony Fauci’s custom printed model of a corona virus. The plastic model was used by Dr. Fauci to describe how the virus injures people in televised news conferences.

To capture the experiences of average Americans during this last year, the Smithsonian has set up a special digital platform. “Stories of 2020” as an oral history site that allows people to record their personal experiences with the coronavirus and the hardships that it caused. The museum will create an online archive of these messages to give future generations a clear picture of how people from all walks of life weathered this national crisis.

Locally the Heinz History Center, an affiliate of the Smithsonian, has been actively collecting stories and artifacts related to the impact of Covid-19 on Western Pennsylvania. The history center’s website now includes a donation portal where residents can download photos and documents as well as videos. Their site also encourages people to donate objects such as medical records, store signage and other materials related to the pandemic and the lockdown.

Even closer to home, the McKeesport History and Heritage Center is collecting materials which depict the impact of the Coronavirus on the Mon Valley and its residents. In the future, they plan to use these materials to mount an exhibition telling the story of the pandemic in McKeesport and the surrounding areas. They have already begun posting stories from local people on the center’s blog.

I have been interested in history since I sat on my grandfather’s knee and listened to his stories about his youth and living on the farm. His stories gave me an appreciation of what life was like at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. These stories never made the history books that my teachers used. Most of what we call history is more of a highlight reel of key events rather than a faithful retelling of what most people actually experienced. It’s like watching the sportscaster on the 11 p.m. news. He shows the video of the grand slam home run or the amazing triple play, but one will never see the outfielders standing in the outfield during three hitless innings.

A good example of this can be found in the WPA slave narratives from the Great Depression. To create jobs for English and journalism majors, the federal government’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) dispatched writers all over the United States to collect the memories of older Americans. During the 1930s, many people who had been enslaved in the antebellum south were still alive. Their stories, diligently recorded by the WPA field workers, paint a much more accurate picture of life as a slave than the sanitized depiction in the history books of the time. The WPA slave narratives are an invaluable resource for modern researchers.

My high school history book only devoted a paragraph or two to the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. The book mentioned that it was a global event and gave some estimates of the number of deaths in various countries. The book went into much more detail about the battles and leaders of the First World War and the diplomats who negotiated the peace treaty that ended the war. My mother’s best friend, Dolores Gordon, is the one who taught me about the impact of this tragic event.

Dolores was much older than my mother. She was careful to never reveal her true age but she was born sometime in the early years of the 20th century. She lost her father in the 1918 epidemic. She remembered him lying in bed delirious from a fever and struggling to breathe. Her most vivid memory was that she wasn’t allowed into the bedroom to see him and then being locked in her nursery as they carried his lifeless body out. Even 50 years later, Dolores felt abandoned by her beloved father. Her father’s death meant that Dolores’s mother had to go to work to support the family leaving her grandmother to raise her and her sister Leona. I was surprised that this seemingly “non-event” had affected her life so much.

Museum curators spend most of their working hours thinking about the past. I am glad that for the last year the staffs at the Smithsonian, the Heinz History center, the McKeesport History and Heritage Center and countless other archives have been concentrating on the future for much of the last year. They are working hard to preserve our memories of the pandemic in all its gritty details. Future historians will have no problem finding the death tolls and the names of the leaders tasked with dealing with the outbreak because they are well documented in official records with details of toilet paper shortages and how Americans broke out their sewing machines and began producing masks in large quantities.

As a confirmed history buff, I have trouble understanding why so many people, particularly high school students, say that they “hate” history. I believe that it’s not history that they hate but they hate the way it is taught. No one, including me, enjoys being bombarded with dusty statistics and the names of long dead generals and politicians. I love history because I see it as telling the stories of people who are just like me and the people I know. Who doesn’t love a well told story? What the dedicated people at the Smithsonian and other institutions are doing is capturing those stories before history leaves them behind.

The Smithsonian didn’t just add a tiny empty glass bottle to their collection. They saved the story of Sandra Lindsay, a tired ICU nurse who after a year locked in battle with a relentless disease, was injected with a ray of hope for her, her patients and the entire world. That is a story worth saving.            

- Jim Busch

March 8, 2021

This afternoon, I decided to use this warm sunny day to clean out the perennial border at my daughter’s house. The flower bed was a wedding gift to my daughter and her wife and since then I have maintained it for them. I looked up in the air as I walked to my car and saw dozens of turkey buzzards circling overhead. One would think that at my age, a bunch of buzzards circling overhead would be disconcerting, but I enjoy watching them.

This is a biannual event for me. I see these flocks traveling through every spring and every fall. The hill I live on is part of a ridge line that these big soaring birds use as a highway during their migrations. The hills produce natural updrafts that help hold them aloft. It seems no one ever told the buzzards that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Buzzards don’t do straight lines; like most of us they spend their lives going round and round in circles. They spend their lives circling at high altitudes looking for a carcass to feed on.

During their migration north or south, the buzzards stick to their habit of flying in big circles. At this time of year, they move the center of their circles slightly further north with each pass. If their path was plotted on a map it would look like one of the old handwriting exercises I learned in grade school; a series of loops moving across the page and looking like a coil spring. I am sure that for each mile north or south the buzzards log maybe 20 air miles.

I enjoy watching our resident buzzards soaring above my property through the seasons. I am absolutely convinced that these birds love their job, they seem to revel in their command of the sky. Two or three of the birds are usually circling above our hill at any time on a summer afternoon. Sometimes, they point their beaks into the wind and just hang there enjoying the view. Today, there were more than two dozen vultures dancing above my head. Because of their pirouetting mode of travel I was able to enjoy the sight of these birds for a good fifteen minutes or so. At one point, one bird dropped down and flew just 30 feet or so above my head allowing me to see his beautiful bronze flight plumage and hooked beak.

Though I’ve seen this migration every spring and fall for the last four decades, I never tire of watching the buzzards circle past my home. My home is also on a flyway for Canadian geese. Geese are much more goal oriented than the buzzards. They don’t like to waste time floating in lazy circles, lollygagging their way north or south. Geese form themselves into a wedge pointing like a compass needle in the direction they want to go. They are the ultra-marathoners of the air.

Soaring birds like buzzards rest on air currents like it was a feather bed; geese beat the air into submission. They beat their wings every inch of the way from Mexico to Canada. Canadian geese can weigh as much as 14 pounds so it takes a lot of work to keep them in the air. They are birds in a hurry, they average 15 miles an hour on their trips from the south to their breeding grounds and back.

The express train pace of migrating geese means that I don’t get much of a look at them as they pass by. Like a flight of aircraft using their radios to maintain their formation, geese constantly broadcast their position. They carry on a steady conversation with their wedge mates and their honking is usually what alerts me to their presence above me. I will be working in my yard and I hear the geese high above me. They don’t keep me from my chores for long as they streak across the sky in an obvious hurry to get where they’re going.

After enjoying the buzzards, I got on with my own work. When I arrived at my daughter’s house, her neighbor, Dan, was working in his backyard. Dan is a good guy, a Marine veteran who now works as a mail carrier. He is passionate about his yard and is constantly working to improve and maintain it. Since I have a lifetime position as my daughter’s landscape contractor I’ve come to know Dan quite well.

Today, Dan had some sad news for me. In one of our previous talks I discovered that his late Aunt Miriam had been married to my old boss, Dante Marraccini. Today, Dan told me that Dante had died from complications of Covid-19 on February 24th.  Dante was 93-years old and living in a local nursing home. He had just received his first dose of the Covid vaccination a few days before his death. Apparently, he had already contracted the coronavirus when he received the vaccination.

Dante was my first real boss. I had worked for my grandfather in his greenhouse and had helped my dad in his landscaping business, but Dante was the first non-relative that I worked for. He was the co-owner of the Marraccini’s grocery chain and managed their White Oak store. When I turned 16, Dante hired me as a stock boy for the lordly sum of $1.40 per hour. I continued working there throughout high school and my college years.

Dante was a good man and a good boss. He took a liking to me because I was a good worker and enjoyed helping customers. He allowed me to schedule my working hours around my class schedules and when he learned I was getting married gave me a raise in pay just because he thought I would need it. He was firm but never raised his voice and was fair in all his dealings. I always admired how he dressed and looked. He wore custom tailored three piece business suits with designer ties. Grocery stores are generally shirt sleeve businesses but Dante was very seldom seen without his jacket. In his appearance and in his demeanor, he struck me as the perfect model of a business professional.    

I hadn’t seen Dante for probably 30 years or more; not since the store had closed. When Dan shared the details of his death, I couldn’t picture him as a very old man. In my mind’s eye, I pictured him standing on the raised platform that served as the store’s office wearing a perfect three piece suit. I could hear his hearty laugh and see his broad smile. Logically, I should have known that he would be an old man, it has been 53 years since he hired me and I first got to know him, but that’s not how the human brain works.

When we are separated from those we know, they become frozen in our memories. They are like the characters in a book, when we close the book the characters are frozen in time. If I am reading a novel and when I stop reading the protagonist is about to go over a waterfall, he will still be there on the brink when I continue reading a few weeks later. Of course things don’t really work like this is real life, but in the absence of new information the picture we have of someone never changes.

I was as shocked by the image of Dante at age 93 as I was to hear that he had died. Perhaps this is for the best, I am glad that in my memory, he is forever young, vibrant at the top of his game and enjoying life. I do not want to picture him wrinkled and old and fighting for life as Covid-19 stole his breath. I will always remember Dante Marraccini as a good man and a great boss.      

 -Jim Busch

March 7, 2021

This weekend marked the first anniversary of the pandemic’s arrival in the U.S.A. and when the first cases of Covid-19 appeared. Somehow it seems like we’ve been dealing with this disease for much longer than a year; so much has happened in the past 12 months.

One of the biggest changes in my life has been my commitment to writing this blog recording my life during the pandemic. This is my 354th consecutive post; in the past eleven and a half months I have written about 425, 000 words detailing my life and my thoughts.  To put this into perspective, this is equivalent to about five paperback books.

To be honest, when I first took on this project I only expected it to last, at most, a few months. Like most Americans, I had great faith that our modern medical system would quickly find a cure for this new disease. We had become accustomed to our scientists producing medical miracles as easily as a magician pulling a rabbit out of their hats. While I realized that the coronavirus was a serious matter, I had no idea that it would either last this long or do as much harm as it has. I am not the only one who underestimated the impact of the pandemic, even well informed physicians and epidemiologists were convinced that they could quickly get the coronavirus under control. When some analysts predicted that the disease could take the lives of 200,000 Americans, most medical experts scoffed. A year later, Covid-19 has killed more than 500,000 of our fellow countrymen and women. The number continues to grow.

We are finally seeing some light at the end of the Covid tunnel. Our scientists have developed not only one, but three vaccines to prevent the disease from doing its deadly work. I am scheduled to get my first injection this week. After a rough start, the United States is now vaccinating an average of 2 million people each and every day. The growing number of people who have been vaccinated, coupled with the declining number of new Covid cases, are reason enough to hope that we are finally coming to the end of this pandemic.

As pharmaceutical companies were working to produce a preventative vaccine for the coronavirus, our hospitals’ frontline staff were struggling to develop more effective treatment protocols for the disease. Even as they struggled to keep up with the ballooning numbers of Covid cases, doctors and nurses worked to reduce the lethality of the disease. In the early days of the pandemic, doctors were projecting a case fatality rate (CFR) as high as 25% meaning that one in four people infected with the disease were likely to die. Within a year that rate is much lower, as of March 21 of this year the CFR in the United States had fallen to just 1.7% across all age groups.  

While medical science seems to be getting the upper hand on the coronavirus there is something they have yet to master. Comedian Ron White’s signature line is, “You can’t fix stupid!” The pandemic has certainly proven the accuracy of this statement. Early on in the pandemic, public health officials realized that the best defense against the virus doesn’t come from a laboratory but from a sewing machine. Despite the proven effectiveness of masks which cover the mouth and nose plus social distancing, many people foolishly refuse to take these simple protective measures. They flaunt masking regulations preferring to risk infecting themselves and others. Wearing a mask is a simple and elegant solution to a complex problem. While wearing a mask may be slightly annoying, it is not uncomfortable, difficult or expensive to do so. Yet, many still refuse to do it.

The pandemic is the greatest threat to the United States since the Second World War. In earlier times in our history, when America was threatened, our leaders laid aside their political differences and worked together to defeat whatever we were facing. The coronavirus pandemic was instantly politicized with some of our leaders denying its severity and minimizing the risk to our citizens. This division slowed our response to the disease and allowed it to spread throughout our country.

Many people seemed to be more concerned with the economic impact of the pandemic than they were with the threat to the health of our people. On one level this is understandable, the pandemic triggered a massive nationwide recession. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, many went hungry, others lost their homes and thousands of businesses were forced to close. These financial difficulties made many people overly anxious to return to “business as usual.” This proved to be shortsighted, whenever restrictions were prematurely lifted the number of Covid cases and resulting deaths spiked. This caused a “roller coaster” effect which only served to increase the hardships on our country. It is foolish to attempt to reopen the country before we have the disease under control.

The phrase, “new normal” has become part of our language in the past year. It is used in discussions of how Covid has changed our culture. Eighteen months ago we couldn’t imagine wearing a mask whenever we left our houses, stay six feet away from other people and fighting over staple items like toilet paper and hand sanitizer. We learned to work from home via Zoom and had to help our kids attend classes remotely. Many people made their first visit to a food bank when they lost their jobs as businesses shut down. We stopped going to restaurants, movies and theaters. Saddest of all, we were unable to be with our friends and our relatives. This was particularly hard on our seniors.

The next question we will have to answer is what our lives will be like after we have conquered the coronavirus. The only thing that is certain is that the world will be forever changed by this historic event. The people we have lost will leave a jagged hole in the fabric of our society. People will be mourning the family members and friends for decades to come. Companies have learned that their employees can work efficiently from home so they may decide to close down their offices to reduce operating costs.

The psychological impact of the pandemic will last as long as those who have experienced it are alive. People who have been scarred by a brush with death, by going without food or who lost their homes will no longer feel secure. Many people will become fearful of new pandemics or other disasters. My parents were just children when the Great Depression struck, they carried a fear of hard times with them well into this century. I wonder how impressionable and sensitive children will be affected by living through this pandemic.

There is a curse, attributed to the Chinese that goes, “May you live in interesting times.” Well, this year has certainly been interesting. I have tried to record what life has been like in my little corner of the Mon Valley over the last year. Writing this diary has helped me to make sense of what the pandemic means to me.

It is my intention to end these entries with number 365 in two weeks. While these diaries are coming to an end, I am sure the pandemic will continue to impact our lives for a long, long, time to come.     

- Jim Busch

March 6, 2021

Growing up, one of my very favorite television shows was Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. Even as a child I had an appreciation of good writing and loved Serling’s eloquent opening and closing narrations. Recently, I introduced my 15-year old grandson to the program and we’ve watched a number of episodes together. I love spending time with Max and watching this show with him allows me to relive the joy I found in the show so many years ago. I almost know every episode word by word but they are new and fresh to Max. The show often had surprise endings and experiencing them for the first time allows Max to get the full benefit out of the clever writing and plot devices.

Very few television shows today are as thought provoking as The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling liked to twist reality around to give his viewers a different perspective on life. Max’s parents are both well-educated and great readers so he has developed into a budding intellectual. We’ve had some very stimulating conversations about the issues brought up by an episode of The Twilight Zone.

Recently, we watched an episode titled A Kind of a Stopwatch. Its plot revolved around a despicable man who comes into possession of a stopwatch which is capable of stopping time for everyone and everything except for the holder of the watch. In the story things don’t end well for the story’s protagonist. Of course, this led Max to conduct a thought experiment about what he would do if he could stop time. He asked me what I would do with such a device, and I told him I already have something that can stop time.

Max is used to my ways and my love of fabulation, the telling of tall tales. He is much more skeptical of what I say than his father or his aunt were at his age. He gave me a quizzical look and asked me to explain.

I told Max, “It’s simple, I can stop time with a pencil.” I could see that this answer didn’t satisfy Max, so I went on.

“When I sit down at my drawing table with a pencil in my hand, time stops for me. The same thing happens when I am working on a painting or working on a carving. Without looking at the clock, I couldn’t tell you if I had been there for an hour or for 12 hours. Just like when you’re concentrating on playing a game.”

With this last statement, my point finally sunk in. I have witnessed how focused he was when playing one of the first person shooter games he loves. I get that same look when I am engaged in making a piece of art. At this point, I feel like I should make a full disclaimer: I am not an artist, I am not worthy of that appellation. At best, I am dabbler, a wannabe artist. I spend a lot of time in museums, galleries and in studying the work of genuine artists. My skills have improved with practice, but I am still never satisfied by my own work.

While I am not an artist, I am a realist. I started playing with art when I was in my mid-50s. Since I couldn’t afford a Corvette and my wife would not have liked me chasing young women, my midlife crisis consisted of taking a drawing course at the Carnegie Museum in Oakland. I loved the class and I learned some basic techniques, mostly how to look at things like an artist. For example, when most people draw a coffee cup, they will start by drawing a circle, this is because we know that is the true shape of a mug. An artist realizes that when looking down at a cup on a table, our eyes see it as an oval. This was one of the things I came to enjoy about art, is that it teaches us to see things as they are.

The biggest regret in my life, along with not buying Apple stock in the 1980s, was not taking up art as a young man. Except for a few savants like Pablo Picasso or Leonardo Da Vinci, it takes a lifetime to become an artist. I started too late, I simply don’t have enough time left on the clock to acquire the skills required to be even a mediocre artist. My skills have improved since I took that first class, but not nearly fast enough to make the grade before the Grim Reaper forces me to put my pencil down and lay my head on the desk like I was taking the Iowa Tests in sixth grade.

Since no one beats the clock, I decided to readjust my goals. I dropped the quest to become an artist and to just have fun pretending to be an artist. I’m like a kid playing fireman, they may never save a burning building, but it’s a lot of fun to squirt the dog with the garden hose. I enjoy the process of trying to make art, I try to do my best but I’m not about to cut off my ear if my work doesn’t turn out like I imagined it in my mind.

My artistic pretensions have been a blessing in the last year. Art is the perfect Covid activity. It is a solitary hobby, sitting at a drawing board or standing at an easel has been a socially distanced activity since the first artist drew the first picture of a buffalo on a cave wall with a burned stick. I was well prepared artistically for the coronavirus lockdown; when I retired I built a stand-alone workshop/art studio and I had hoarded art supplies to last a decade. Most of all, making art draws me into the process, like a character from one of those old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies that gets sucked down into quicksand.

Like I told Max, I stopped time today. I sat down at my drawing table surrounded by my pens, pencils and other drawing equipment. A few weeks ago, while waiting for my wife at Allegheny General Hospital, I had snapped a picture of a flock of grackles roosting in a tree. At the time I thought that would make a great drawing. Today, I felt ready to attempt to capture that moment.

One of the advantages of not caring about producing a great piece of art is that it frees one up to experiment. I often try out different materials and techniques. Today, the surface I decided to draw on was a four by four inch ceramic flooring sample from Home Depot. After staring for a long time at a print of my “bird picture” I picked up a Sharpie and made my first hesitant mark. I took my time and stared at the picture some more before making my second mark. The material I had chosen was unforgiving and would not permit erasure.

I continued to work like this, first completing the trees and then adding in the birds. After a while I got to the hardest part of the process, deciding when a work is complete. I stared at it, adding a branch here and a bird there, stopping to look at my progress between each tiny stroke. Finally I sprayed the entire work with clear acrylic to seal it and give it a glossy surface.

Finally, I stopped to look at my work. I noticed several marks that I regretted making. Remembering how much I enjoyed the process of making this image, I didn’t beat myself up too bad.

Finally, I turned over my phone and looked at the time. When I am working on a piece of art, I set my phone, face down on the table next to my drawing table. I need to keep it nearby because, lost in my work, I may forget to walk down to the house for dinner or another obligation. The phone allows my wife to shake me out of my art induced trance. I noticed that I had spent two and a half hours on this tiny image.

During the entire time I had thought about nothing but what was immediately in front of me. I didn’t think about Covid, or my wife’s cancer or anything else but producing an image. I was as free as the birds that I had attempted to draw. I have a huge clock hanging on the wall right above my drawing table. Some weeks ago, my daughter visited me in my workspace. She noted that my clock was wrong; I had neglected to “fall back” at the end of daylight savings time. I had to admit that I hadn’t noticed the discrepancy because I never look at the clock in the studio. As a counselor, my daughter teaches mindfulness to her clients; she suggested that maybe I should be the one teaching this subject.

When I am working at the drawing board, I don’t get hungry and my aches and pains disappear. Once I had finished my project, I suddenly realized I was starving. I picked up the tile to show my wife and walked down to the house to eat. I handed my work to my wife and of course she thought it was a masterpiece. My wife is very understanding and know how much I enjoy fiddling with art. She never complains when I disappear into my workshop studio, I think she likes the effect that stopping time has on me, I am less stressed and more relaxed.

After five decades together she can tell when I have be drawing, she can see it on my face. Going to the “Twilight Zone” of art is definitely good for me.       

- Jim Busch            

March 5, 2021

There is a story I like about a wise old man who sat outside the gates of an ancient city. One day a young traveler approached the old man and asked him, “Tell me old man, what are the people like in this city?” The old man looked up and asked a question of his own, “I will answer you truly but first tell me, what were the people like in your own city?” The young man sneered and said, “They were a foul lot, mean spirited and stingy, I am glad to have left them behind. Now tell what are the people like here?” The old man shook his head and said, “I regret to tell you that you will find the people here much like the ones in your own city.”

A short time later, another young traveler approached the old man and asked him the same question, “Excuse me, venerable sir, can you please tell me what the people are like in your fair city?” Again the old man asked: “First tell me what were the people like in your home city?” The young man smiled and said, “They are all fine people, always happy, generous and kind. I look forward to the day when I shall go home and tell them of my travels.” The old man returned the young man’s smile and answered his question, “You will feel right at home here, my young friend, for you will find the people here very much like your own folk, generous, happy and kind. Welcome!”

I can’t remember where I first heard this story but I have known and shared it for decades. The old man by the gate was indeed wise because he understood human nature. He understood that the world is a mirror, if we scowl at it the world will reflect anger back at us. If we smile at the world, and in particularly the people in it, we will receive smiles in return.

My wife has always been a woman who smiled at the world. She always is pleasant and kind to everyone she meets. She is generous with her love, she doesn’t reserve it for her family and friends but shares it with anyone and everyone she meets. She is like the Pigpen character in the Peanuts comic strip, except instead of walking around in a cloud of dust, she walks around engulfed in a cloud of what the Dalai Lama calls “loving kindness.”

Glenda is the person who rolls down the car window to give the homeless guy standing at the intersection a few dollars. She is the one who not only drops some change in the cup of a street beggar, but also looks them in the eye and gives them a smile. When shopping, she has a habit of buying a few extra items to donate to the Free Store in Braddock such as school supplies in the fall followed by winter coats and toys before Christmas.

Glenda’s father taught her to respect and to take care of the working people she meets. In those long ago times when we could go to a restaurant and enjoy a meal, she was always a heavy tipper; always in cash because she believed the restaurant owners might skim off some of the tips put on a credit card. When we ate at China Jade, our favorite Chinese restaurant in Olympia Shopping Center, she would double tip. First she would tip the waiter and then she would tip the busboy. China Jade is a family run restaurant and the busboy is the owner’s son. Between clearing tables, he can usually be found in a booth in the back of the dining room doing his homework. He is about the same age as our grandson and Glenda has a special place in her heart for him. She always interrupts his studies to give him a few dollars before we leave.

My wife’s largesse extends to everyone she encounters in life, I have seen her get up early to tip our garbage men if we’ve been cleaning and have put out more than our two cans of trash. In the winter she often gives Bill, our mailman, and other delivery people a Styrofoam cup of hot chocolate to warm them up; in the summers she keeps an assortment of cold drinks on hand for these working people. When I hired a contractor to build my workshop, each morning Glenda greeted them with donuts and a cooler stocked with bottled water and soft drinks. My “Two Day” garage took a week and a half to build; I wonder if they didn’t want to move on to another job because Glenda treated them so well.

Not even cancer could distract Glenda from being kind to those around her. While undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments she was in the habit of taking pastries to the hospital staff for her early morning sessions. Before Christmas she fixed a tray of homemade cookies and candy for each of the nurses and technicians. She took a veritable banquet to these people as a thank you on the morning of her final treatment.

Sometimes my wife’s desire to reward those who were simply doing their jobs elicited some surprised looks. Wait staff and people like bellhops expect to be tipped but garage mechanics and feed store clerks don’t. Not only does Glenda tip people well but she treats them like human beings rather than just another store fixture.  She would give them a big smile and often complimented them on their appearance or on how well they did their job. Many times she would track down the store manager or leave a note praising the person for their good service.

The poet Maya Angelou once said, “People may forget what you say, people may forget what you do, but they will never forget how you make them feel.” This is true, people never forgot how Glenda made them feel. When we would go out to dinner or shopping, I felt like I was with the “owner’s wife.” People gave us special treatment wherever we go. In the last year, I have been doing the family shopping and picking up our food orders. People would often ask me, “Where’s your lovely wife?” When I told them about her cancer, some people teared up and everyone had a strickened look on their faces. 

This morning my wife got a phone call from “Hirk,” our radiator guy. We have been dealing with Hirk since he recharged the air conditioner on our 1975 Chevy Caprice station wagon. We’ve seen him an average of once or twice a year since. Of course Glenda always asked about his family and would give him a gift for his son to mark milestones in his life. Hirk called today not to inquire about our car, but about Glenda’s health. He just wanted to talk to her, to lift her spirits and to tell her that he was praying for her. Hirk is a good business man but his call wasn’t motivated by marketing but by his genuine concern for my wife.

Several days ago, I was shopping at a local home improvement store. I ran into John who has sold us a number of appliances over the years. I told John about Glenda’s cancer and he had the usual reaction. I told him that he might get to see her soon as we might have to buy a new stove. I told him that the oven control on our current stove had broken and we had waited over four months for the parts. I told him how hard this was on my wife as she loved to bake. John went in to action and gave us the manufacturer’s toll free phone number and told me what to say. He also promised to contact them himself. Long story short, the repairman miraculously found the needed part and is coming Monday to install it.

Today, I made a special trip to thank John for his assistance. He was extremely pleased that we had finally gotten some action on fixing our problem. He was also very touched that I had gone out of my way to thank him. I told him, “You know Glenda, she wouldn’t have it any other way.”

John said “Walk with me.” He took me to the store’s garden center and picked out a beautiful orchid. He handed it to me saying, “For your wife on me.” I protested and he added, “She’s a nice lady, she deserves something nice to look at.”

John was absolutely right, my wife is a “nice lady.” Glenda has left a lot of smiling faces behind her as she’s traveled through life. I have always been proud of her and of the way she treats others. I was lucky to marry such a wonderful woman. And I have been blessed to live with her in our “city” full of generous and kind people.             

 - Jim Busch

March 4, 2021

Today’s Corona Diary might be my “Seinfeld” post. The very popular Seinfeld became famous for being “a TV show about nothing.” I am afraid that this post will be about nothing because that’s pretty much what I did today.

My wife has not been feeling well this week. This is a bit of an understatement considering it’s been almost a year since she was first diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Her tumor is wrapped around a major artery making it inoperable; any attempt to remove it would result in her bleeding to death on the operating table. In the past year, she has undergone a regimen of chemotherapy followed by series of radiation treatments. Glenda’s reaction to the chemotherapy put her into the hospital for two weeks and came close to killing her.

I have always been extremely proud of my wife; Glenda is an exceptional woman in every way. She is a woman who has elicited superlatives throughout her life. I have heard her described as the kindest woman people have ever met; as the best cook and as an incredible mother. I would add the most loving wife and best friend a man could ever have. Over the last year, I added one more superlative to the list. Since her diagnosis, I have discovered that my wife is the bravest person I have ever known.

Glenda’s diagnosis is essentially a death sentence. According to the Johns Hopkins Hospital website, the survival rate of pancreatic cancer is only about 1%, most patients last barely a year. During the past year Glenda has never complained about her fate, she has asked the “Why me” questions but she has never sunk into self-pity.  She has tried to stay busy and fully engaged with life.

I get up in the morning, switch on the morning news and Glenda brings me my breakfast just like she did for 40 years before I went off to work. These days I feel a little guilty, perhaps a lot guilty, about this. I should be taking care of her but she insists, saying this is what makes her happy. Glenda has always enjoyed doing things to make others happy, especially her family. Despite increasing levels of pain and discomfort she has continued to bake delicious breads and marvelous desserts for the family. This morning I buttered and ate a muffin out of a paper bag.  

Knowing that this year may be her last chance to celebrate them, Glenda went all out for the holidays. She prepared a Thanksgiving dinner that could grace the cover of any cooking magazine with dozens of side dishes and multiple pies. She took to her bed for three days after Christmas because she had worn herself out cooking decorating and shopping online for gifts. She actually added in an extra Christmas this year, we celebrated “Christmas in July” because she wasn’t sure she would make it to December.

Two things have separated this year from all the years we have spent together. The first is that Glenda has spent a lot of time dealing with her cancer, visiting doctors, having blood drawn and getting scans. Fortunately, Medicare and our supplemental insurance has taken care of most of this but she racked up 1.6 million dollars in medical bills in 2020. I hope some hospital executive names his new boat after Glenda.

The second change in our life is directly related to the coronavirus. Because of her cancer and weakened immune system, Glenda has been mostly housebound for the past year. She used to spend a lot of time behind the wheel running errands, shopping and helping our kids take care of their homes. At least once a month she would drive to Sharon in Mercer County to visit her sister Sally. Glenda loves to drive. When we went out I was usually in the “shotgun” seat. Because of the drugs she’s taking, Glenda hasn’t driven since early last year.

I have become the family “gofer.” I run all the errands, and do all the shopping plus chauffeur Glenda to all of her appointments and tests. I also continued to follow my own peripatetic ways. I spent most of my life traveling for business so I am not inclined to staying in one place for very long. Whenever the second hand stores, the bookstores and museums were open, I couldn’t help myself, I had to wander off to explore. When I was home, I spent a lot of time in my workshop/studio.

The evenings are always our time to spend together. After dinner we would watch Jeopardy, each of us shouting out the answers, or should I say the questions. We would then watch the programs that we both enjoyed or read and talk. Glenda always on her end of the couch and me on mine. This may not be some people’s view of the “good life,” but it suited us. These simple evenings felt like a well-worn and super comfortable pair of slippers.

We have managed to continue this routine until recently. Lately Glenda has become more and more sleepy, exhausted by the battle going on inside her. The drugs she takes to manage the pain make keeping her eyes open a struggle. The last four or five days have been especially bad. She has been knocked out like she had gone five rounds with Muhammad Ali.

Today Glenda was so weak that, other than a quick trip to the pharmacy, I decided to stay in the house. My intention was to spend the day productively sorting through some books and papers in my office. That didn’t happen. I sat down on the couch to read an article in a National Geographic before sending it to a friend. I got about half way through the article before I felt my eyelids getting heavy. I set the magazine down, leaned back and fell asleep. In spite of sleeping well the night before, I felt a strong need to go to sleep.

For my entire life, my two methods of dealing with stress is to eat or to sleep. Sitting there on the couch, watching my wife restlessly sleeping in her recliner made me feel very lonely. She has spent much of the last five days in that chair only getting up to use the bathroom or to eat a few mouthfuls of oatmeal. We haven’t spoken more than a few words to each other in all that time. Her voice is so weak that I had to lean over her to hear what she was saying.

I have known that I am losing the most important person in my life for a year now. I filed this sad fact in a corner of my logical brain. That doesn’t mean that I had to accept it, my foolish optimistic hopeful nature grabbed on to that 1% sliver of a chance like a hungry robin tugging on a worm. In the last year, enough remnants of our pre-diagnosis life remained that I could shove this awful reality into a closet in the back of my brain.

Watching my wife practically unconscious in her chair got to me, I could no longer pretend that everything would be okay or that we could go on with our lives for the foreseeable future. The future I saw before me was bleak and lonely. I couldn’t bear to look into that crystal ball anymore so I went to sleep today, in fact, I slept most of the day away.

I am not very good at being depressed; I don’t have a lot of practice at being sad. Even though I have good reason to be sad, I still feel a little guilty about it. I was raised by parents who believed in the power of positive thinking. My grandfather’s last words as he was dying in the hospital at the age of 86 were, “I’m trying to hold on.” I was also raised to stay busy and be productive, so I am doubly guilty about how I spent my day.

I am afraid that I will get a lot better at these things in the coming year. It is not a skill that I am anxious to learn.       

 - Jim Busch

March 3, 2021

When I retired, many of my friends, particularly my business associates, were concerned that I would have a hard time coping with not working. That is because they only saw my professional side; when I was working I was all business. These days I often wonder how I managed to fit earning a living into my busy schedule. I fill my days with making art, writing, working in my shop, working in the garden and writing. Today I spent a good bit of the day pursuing one of my favorite activities, amateur alchemy.

In medieval times an alchemists was a proto chemist. Alchemy was an odd mix of philosophy, chemistry and wizardry. The goal of alchemy was to convert one material into another, usually a much more valuable, substance. Their ultimate objective was to turn lead into gold.

I don’t spend my days in a dark room in a stone tower trying to turn fishing sinkers into gold doubloons but I do like transforming worthless things into something of value. Today I got a hand from the ultimate alchemist, Mother Nature. Nature has been in the recycling business since long before our species climbed down out of the trees. One of the most beautiful things in nature is that nothing is ever wasted.  

A tree starts as a seed, it grows up toward the sun, produces more seeds, then it grows old and dies. Even in death it becomes a home for many animals and becomes food for insects creating a restaurant for insect eating animals. Finally if falls to the forest floor and returns to the soil where it first took root. I find every step of this process fascinating and beautiful.

Today I handled a lot of crap, quite literally. I took advantage of the fine weather to top dress my roses and perennial beds with cow manure. Manure is the ultimate waste product. When it comes out of the backside of a cow it is smelly and for lack of a better word, gross. Through the alchemy of composting, in just a short amount of time, it is transformed into black gold. Composted manure is one of the best organic fertilizers out there.

The rich black compost I put around the base of my roses today will magically transform itself again over the next few months. The next step in the cycle will transform this black loam into delicate red and yellow roses, snow white hydrangeas and purple coneflowers. If this isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

After top dressing my plants I decided to give my compost piles a stir. It has been frozen like a Popsicle during the cold snap of the last month or so. A compost pile is its own heat source, the chemical reactions that takes place during decomposition generates a good deal of heat. This is yet another of the transformations that takes in place in nature. The sun shines down on plants, the plants absorb this energy and stores it in their cells, this energy is released as the plants decompose. A rotting log actually releases as much heat as it would if it had been burned in a fireplace, it just takes longer. The cold weather slows this transfer of energy, so the pile froze.   

Once when I was a kid, my dad’s compost pile actually exploded from the gases that build up in this process and caught on fire. I thought it was very cool that the fire department had to come and put out my backyard. Our compost pile blew up because my dad was working double shifts and didn’t have time to do what I did today which was stir the compost. I dug into the pile with a spading fork and mixed it like my wife stirs the flour and sugar when she bakes a cake. Air is necessary for decomposition so it is important to aerate the compost. Stirring also spreads the bacteria that digests the plant materials evenly through the pile. This is the least I can do, Ma Nature does the heavy lifting of turning brown leaves and apple peelings into healthy soil.

Though I am not as efficient at it as Mother Nature, I try to do a little alchemy of my own in my workshop/studio. I learned this from my grandfather who had to learn to “make do” during the depression. He used to say, “I have been doing so much with so little for so long, that I am now able to make just about anything out of nothing.” It wasn’t until later that I realized that my grandfather had the eyes of an artist. He could see the possibilities in things that others missed. He was like Picasso, who coming upon a discarded bicycle, didn’t see a pile of junk, but saw a piece of readymade sculpture. He took the seat and the handle bars put them together and transformed them into a bull’s head. 

I am always collecting bits and pieces of wood, metal or wire and squirreling it away in my shop. Whenever I need to make something, I rummage through my stockpile and usually find something I can use. I have made many useful items out of old pallets, wood from broken furniture and metal salvaged from scrap piles. In nature the transformative energy comes from the sun, in the shop it comes from creativity. We understand much about the sun and the source of its energy, we know nothing about the power of creation. It is far more mysterious and mystical.

Here is an example of how the process works. When my son and daughter-in-law came to our house for New Year’s Eve, my daughter in law brought several Growlers of beer from the Hofbrau House on the Southside. These are oversized aluminum cans and when I was cleaning up the next morning I noticed that the metal in them was thicker than most cans, so I took them to the shed. In February, I wanted to make a plaque for my wife celebrating the fiftieth Valentine’s Day we have spent together.

I spied one of the growlers, cut and flattened the metal and placed them on a foam pad taken from a chair cushion. I drew my design on a piece of paper and used an embossing tool for the repousse process, pressing the design into the backside of the metal before texturing it with a small metal hammer. Finally, I colored the metal with alcohol inks and mounted it to a piece of scrap wood.

By exercising my creativity I took a couple of items I had rescued from the garbage to make a gift for my wife. It wasn’t perfect, but it was very personal. One of the things that makes an item valuable is its rarity. I am fairly certain that this was the only Valentine’s Day gift with these precise words crafted from a beer can in the world. You can’t get rarer than that.

Some people hate change but I find it fascinating; everything in nature is in constant flux, either growing or decaying. Nothing is ever lost, the orange peels I throw into my compost rots down and when placed in the soil shows back up on my plate as a homegrown tomato.

As I get older this observation is a source of hope for me. I do not claim to know what happens to us when we die, I don’t believe any one truly know the answer to this age old question. I am fairly certain that we don’t disappear entirely; we are part of nature and in nature nothing goes to waste. I think it is egotistical to believe that our individual personalities survive the dissolution of our bodies, we’re just not that important.

Nature is constantly taking even its most magnificent creations apart and making something entirely different from the component parts. Just as the atoms that make up our bodies will separate and become part of something else, I think this will happen to the energy that animates us. Like the heat of the sun, which is never lost, just transformed, I believe that our spiritual energy will be transformed.

Perhaps like a raindrop that becomes part of a stream, then part of a river and finally a part of a great ocean, we may become part of one great soul. Whatever happens I am sure it will be interesting and beautiful.  

- Jim Busch        

March 2, 2021

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun do, do, do
Here comes the sun
And I say it's all right

- George Harrison, Beatles

Even though it was a still a bit cold today, I found myself singing this song. After a long absence, the sun was out in full force today sharing its warmth and light with anyone who ventured outdoors. In my logical mind, I know that according to the astronomical calendar spring is not scheduled to arrive for another eighteen days.  I also know that we could still see some snowfalls and that the mercury still could easily drop below zero. With the sun on my face and blue skies above my head, I find that it is very easy to lie to myself and to believe that spring decided to surprise me by arriving early this year. Longing easily trumps logic when we are tired of winter and desperately want the spring to come.

In my grandfather’s day, at the first glimmer of spring, farmers would spend the day walking their fields. They would inspect their fences, see if their orchard had survived the weight of the winter snows and generally assess the condition of his acreage. Today, I did the much reduced suburban dweller version of this ritual. I strolled around my yard looking at how my “crops” were doing. The snowdrops I had noticed a few days earlier had progressed nicely; their white buds had swelled to more than double the size they had been just two days ago.  The buds on my forsythia bush had also grown and they had taken on a pale green color. They are just about ready for forcing. I made a mental note of the chores I need to do in the coming weeks, top dress the peony bushes with manure and clean off the perennial beds.  

I am not the only one who is eager for spring to be here. My friendly neighborhood groundhog made his first appearance of the year today. He had decided that his distant cousin Phil had gotten it wrong; it was four weeks not six more weeks of winter. After spending the last three months or so peacefully sleeping in his burrow under my neighbor’s porch. I think he rolled over and stretched, scratched a few itches and thought to himself, “Boy, I could really use a snack.” My wife spotted “Chuck” early this morning sucking up the seed she had put out for the birds like a grey furry Hoover. He seems to have weathered the winter well; after living off his fat in a hole for months he was a bit scruffy and considerably thinner than he was when we saw him last November.

When I wake up hungry I head for the kitchen to see what I can find to munch on; when Chuck woke up he made a bee line for our bird feeding station. Last year Chuck and I found ourselves in a season long battle over whether or not he was a bird. When I told him that the seeds and nuts we placed in our feeders were exclusively reserved for our feathered friends but he was welcome to eat all the grass and clover he wanted from our lawn. Chuck maintained that while he enjoyed a green salad, he really enjoyed the peanuts and sunflower seed we served in our bird feeders. He was absolutely convinced that this made him a bird, a big fur covered bird with four legs and no wings, but a bird nonetheless.

After a winter truce, Chuck renewed hostilities this morning. He was delighted to discover that I had built a new birdfeeder over the winter and that it was packed with all his favorite snacks. I had placed it on a small metal table to keep it off the ground and make the seeds out of the reach of any rats that might be in the neighborhood. Mr. “no really, I’m a bird” didn’t see this as a problem; Chuck rose up in a classic Groundhog pose and gave the table a mighty push with his front paws sending the feeder crashing to the ground. Rightfully proud of his problem solving skills, he enjoyed the first good meal he had had in months.

It was time for me to exercise my problem solving skills. I decided to mount the feeder on a metal pole planted firmly in the ground. I drove to Home Depot to buy a galvanized steel post and the hardware necessary to mount the feeder. On the way home I decided to stop and take a walk at a local spot. It was a little windy and cold but not uncomfortably so if I kept moving at a good pace. The sun felt good on my face and the light lifted my spirits.

During my walk, I realized why our cats fight over a tiny spot of sunlight on the kitchen floor. When I walked in the shadow of a building or a tree, I felt the cold air. When I emerged into the sunlight again, I immediately felt the pleasant warmth of the sun. It is easy to understand why so many cultures worshipped the sun and tracked its progress through the year so carefully.

Returning home after my walk, I was unloading my car when I ran into my neighbor, Anna. Like me, the forsythia buds, my cats and the woodchuck she was out enjoying the sunshine. Like the woodchuck, neither one of us could stand to remain in our “holes” on such a glorious sunny day. I hadn’t seen her in months and it was good to talk. We stood about 20 feet apart and chatted using our outdoor voice.

She inquired about my wife and I filled her in on Glenda’s condition. Last fall my neighbor, Karl, passed away, he had named Anna his executor and I asked her about her progress clearing his estate. We moved on to other subjects and talked for almost an hour standing there in the late afternoon sunshine. Between the cold weather and the coronavirus quarantine I haven’t had many good conversations lately. I think our talk brightened up the day as much as the sunshine.

As in the Beatles song, it certainly has been a long cold and lonely winter, it seems like years since the sun has been here. I was so glad that the sun had come again today. I enjoyed its warmth and its brightness, they made feel like saying, “it’s all right!”

- Jim Busch

March 1, 2021

I had an awkward moment today. I seldom worry about what people think about me. It’s generally not that important to me; I am quite comfortable acting the fool or asking “dumb” questions. When my kids were going through the difficult and very self-conscious teenage years I used to offer them this advice, “People worry about what people are thinking about them. What they don’t realize is that everyone is so busy worrying about what people are thinking about them that they don’t have time to think about others!” Yet today, I was worried about what a store clerk that I will likely never see again would think about me.

My afternoon got off to a great start. I went to the Penn Hills library to pick up some books I had requested. For the last several months, the library has been offering curbside which has allowed me to get my regular fix of reading material. When I arrived at the library I was crestfallen at first. The numbered signs marking the designated curbside pickup spaces were gone. I feared that the library had shut down. My spirits went from the subbasement to the sky when I saw a welcome sign at the end of the sidewalk.

The library had actually reopened their building for limited services. Donning my mask, I practically skipped to the library’s door. Once inside I was warmly greeted, at a safe social distance, by several of the librarians. The library looked empty, I was the only client at the moment and a sign asked patrons to limit their visit to 30 minutes. The comfy reading chairs were stacked in the back of the library and there were no newspapers or magazines on display.

Libraries have always been some of my favorite places in the world. Ever since I have been able to read and my dad took me to the Carnegie Library on the hill in McKeesport, I have seen them as magic portals that made it possible to travel to anywhere in time or space. Of all the things I have missed in the last year, nothing has depressed me more than being unable to hang out in the library.

The “new nonfiction shelf” is my very favorite place in the library. I read very little fiction because I find the real world far more interesting and engaging than any created world. I have always had an endless curiosity about the world, its history, its people and how things work. Abraham Lincoln once said, “My best friend is the person who gives me I book I have not read.” I absolutely agree with old Abe and this makes the new nonfiction shelf my “bestie.” I always seem to find some new book that I hadn’t heard of, but that I absolutely knew I had to read right away. I am very prone to love at first sight when I encounter an intriguing book.

Apparently, the librarians had continued to receive new books and to put them on the shelf during the lockdown where they sat waiting for my return. This meant that the shelves of the new nonfiction section was packed with wonderful new books. I was like a kid in a candy shop and when I left the checkout desk my big canvass library bag was bulging at the seams.

After leaving the library, I stopped at the new Goodwill Store in Penn Hills Plaza. Regular readers of these diaries know that I am a dedicated secondhand shopper. One of the attractions of bargain shopping is that it allows me to be a low rent philanthropist. I often find things that I know friends and family members would enjoy. In business terms, for just a dollar or so, this provides me with an excellent “return on investment”. I get to put a smile on the face of someone I care for. In my book, this is money well spent.

As soon as I entered the store I saw an item that I knew my wife’s sister, Sally, would absolutely love. It was just a few dollars and in pristine condition and even included an official looking “Certificate of Authenticity.” Normally, I would have snapped up an item that met these qualifications in a heartbeat, but I hesitated. My problem was that the item was as politically incorrect as it was lovely.

The item I was considering was a tabletop sculpture titled “Scarlet’s First Love.” It was one of those overpriced collectibles that the Bradford Exchange sells in full page ads in the Parade Magazine in the Sunday newspaper. Mounted on a wooden base was a tiny model of Tara , the plantation house, from the film Gone With The Wind with a portrait of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara behind it.        

Gone With The Wind has been Sally’s favorite movie since she was a little girl. It was a love that she shared with her mother. My mother-in-law, Ellie, was a good woman, she never broke the rules and always did just what she was supposed to do. The one naughty thing that she did was to skip a day of high school in 1939 to catch a matinee of Gone with the Wind at McKeesport’s Memorial Theater. What was even more amazing is that she enjoyed it so much that she didn’t even feel guilty about skipping school. She passed her love of the film to her daughter, Sally.

Sally still watches the film several times a month. She isn’t really interested in the historical setting of the movie in Georgia before, during and after the Civil War. It is the romance between Scarlett and Rhett Butler that touches her heart. Some years ago, I took two of her kids to a presentation of A Visit from a Civil War Solider. While we were waiting for the show to begin, I asked Sally’s daughter what she knew about the Civil War and she told me, “I think it happened around the same time as Gone With The Wind.”  Sally’s nickname for me comes from the movie. She calls me “Ashley” after Leslie Howard’s character Ashley Wilkes. I really don’t see the resemblance, but I will gladly embrace any comparison to the handsome actor Leslie Howard.

In recent years, people have begun to have problems with this film. It’s portrayal of African Americans is blatantly racist. The happy servants at Tara is about as far from the life experienced by African Americans in the 19th century south as can be. They are shown as happy and contented simpletons. Martha Mitchell, author of the book, was raised by her Confederate relatives and was a firm believer in the nobility of the “Southern Lost Cause.”

Sally doesn’t have a racist bone in her body. She has lived in a mixed race neighborhood for decades and has many close Black friends. She simply doesn’t recognize how politically incorrect the film has become in a more enlightened time. To her it is just a tear jerking love story.

I don’t share Sally’s naive view of the film, I know that it is offensive to many people. This, plus the fact that the person operating the cash register was an African American woman made me hesitate about buying the sculpture. I didn’t want the woman to think that I was going to take it home and place it on my mantle below a portrait of Robert E. Lee flanked by crossed Confederate flags. I didn’t want her to think that I was actually buying it because of its racist associations. I don’t mind people thinking that I am ugly or stupid but I do mind them thinking that I could hate someone because of the color of their skin.

I left it on the shelf and poked around the store while I pondered buying it. I pondered the delight it would give Sally versus making myself look like Jefferson Davis. Finally, I justified buying the tiny plantation by telling myself I would be taking it out of circulation. If it was safely ensconced in Sally’s living room it couldn’t fall into the hands of a rebel sympathizer. This was a mental stretch but it got me through my dilemma.

I took it off the shelf and walked sheepishly to the counter. The woman at the register picked it up to check the price and said, “I thought about buying this myself. I love that movie.” I breathed a sigh of relief and learned a lesson; don’t make assumptions about how other people will see an issue. She carefully wrapped my item and thanked me for my purchase.

When I got home my wife sent a picture of the “Scarlett’s First Love” to Sally and as expected she loved it, saying “Did Ashley buy that for me?” That was more than enough reward for my expenditure of a few dollars and risking being pegged as being a member of the Proud Boys. All in all, it was a great day.

- Jim Busch

February 28, 2019

I spent the lion’s share of the afternoon helping my daughter with her ongoing redecorating project. She is reorganizing her study/office to be more pleasant and efficient as it seems she will be working from home for the foreseeable future. She is just about done and my work today consisted of a number of finishing touches such as hanging shelves, hanging pictures and installing new blinds and curtain rods.

Rachael’s best friend, Jess, came to lend a hand and take a break from her family. One of the tasks Rachael took on today was getting rid of some more of the things that she had accumulated over the years. My agenda for tomorrow includes a trip to Half Price Books and the Goodwill store to unload all the stuff we put in my car. I think she has me confused with that 1-800-Junk commercial on television. She points at a pile of junk and it falls to me to make it disappear.

Like her father, Rachael suffers from “Tsundoku.”  Tsundoku is a Japanese word for a person who acquires more books than they can ever read. Both our book shelves are packed with books two layers deep with the overflow lying horizontally on top like hobos catching a ride on top of a boxcar.

Today, Rachael was ruthless getting rid of books and clearing out files. She has one of those Ikea bookshelf units with the square cubicles that look like an upright checkerboard. She went from section to section pulling books and placing most of them into the discard box. As she worked, the look of her bookcase was magically transformed from looking like the photos in a post-earthquake news report to something approximating the look of the Carnegie Library.

Every so often, Rachael would pull a book and put it in a separate pile on her desk. Jess asked her what she was doing with the books in the pile. Her reply was, “They’re my special books. Let me show you.” Rachael picked up a book and, opening the flyleaf, read the inscription on the page, saying, “My grandmother gave me this when I went to college.” And remembering how proud her grandparents were of her, added “I’ll never get rid of this one.”

Picking up another book, Rachael turned to me and read, “Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the cloak of many cares and the slavery of civilization, man feels once more happy.” She then asked me if I remembered the quote. I told her that it was from Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, the 19th century British explorer and translator of the Arabian Nights. Nodding, she then asked me if I remembered when I gave the book to her and I had to say “No.”

“You gave me this when I went to South Africa for a year as an exchange student. It meant a lot to me.”

I laughed and told her, “I bet I didn’t tell you that he had a spear pass through both cheeks as he was yelling to his men during a battle with natives during his expedition to find the source of the Nile.”

She continued to show Jess the stack of books, reading the inscriptions from my wife and I, from her grandparents and even from her brother, explaining, “My family likes to give books as presents on important occasions.” She then opened a file drawer and showed her friend a stack of letters that I had sent her when she was an undergraduate student at Clarion State University.  

These letters were my first exercise in creative writing. Since her mother talked with her on the phone every day, I didn’t need to share any news with her and I couldn’t bring myself to write how much I missed her. Since my default state is “goofball,” I opted to write nonsense letters. I would pick up chintzy souvenirs at the Goodwill store and then write her an account of our trip to that location. A plastic thermometer with an image of a Canadian Mountie was accompanied by a letter describing how her mother had been tied to a railroad track by a dastardly villain and was saved in the nick of time by a brave opera singing Mountie.

I remembered how much fun these were to write; they were a way to stay connected with Rachael who shares my way out of the box sense of humor. I didn’t realize how important they were to her; she saved them like they were a treasured family heirloom.

I didn’t expect any form of compensation for helping my daughter; I see this as part of my job as long as it is in my power to do so. I got not one, but two rewards for my handyman services. First my daughter gave me a package of white chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs, a personal favorite. The second reward was far more valuable and much easier on the waistline. I got the satisfaction that I raised a good woman who appreciates how much her family loves her. I was glad to know that I had something to do with how well she turned out.

Driving home from Rachael’s, I was thinking about the power of a few drops of ink. During my career as a business trainer, I taught the importance of promoting the “Value added” components of your offering; something like free delivery or other intangible service. These scribbles on the flyleaves of these books, on cards or on a blank sheet of paper are a perfect example of value added. There are probably tens of thousands of these books in the world and millions of sheets of typing paper, the law of supply and demand making them virtually worthless. By adding an inscription, it sets them apart for the multitude and makes them special.

To be more accurate, it is not just the ink that enhances their value, it is the magical combination of the ink and the human heart which makes them so very special. During the coronavirus pandemic, human connections are difficult to maintain. I am old school in that I am a firm believer in the power of the handwritten note or letter to touch people at a distance and connect with them. Lately, I have been sending more than my usual quota of cards, letters and packages via snail mail. Based on my experience today in Rachael’s office, I think this is a sound approach.          

 - Jim Busch

February 27, 2021

I got an e-mail this morning that made my day. The e-mail came from Goodwill of Southwestern Pa. but had nothing to do with secondhand blue jeans or an even deeper discount on tiny poodle figurines. The e-mail listed which Goodwill stores would be hosting Girl Scouts selling cookies. The list included the North Huntingdon store which is just five miles from my home.

Girl Scout cookies have a long history in my family. In my opinion, the day that I can score a box of Tagalogs or Trefoils is right up there with my birthday and Christmas. The only thing that is sweeter than these delectable cookies are the little scouts in their uniforms. They bring back my memories of my days as an “honorary Girl Scout.”

When my daughter was six years old, she couldn’t wait to be a Brownie. She came home from school and excitedly gave her mother the flyer announcing the sign-ups for the scouts. My wife, Glenda, and her mom, Eleanor, went with Rachael to the Girl Scout meeting at White Oak Elementary School. My daughter was excited and her grandmother promised to take her to buy her uniform that next Saturday.

Rachael’s hopes were crushed a few minutes after the meeting had started. The official from the Girl Scout office in Pittsburgh welcomed everyone and then said that she had some bad news for parents of the youngest girls in the audience; the leader of the White Oak Brownie troop had quit and they had been unable to find a replacement. There would be no White Oak Brownie Troop that year.

This sad announcement caused an emotional chain reaction. As soon as she grasped what was going on she began welling up in tears. Seeing her granddaughter starting to cry caused my mother-in-law to spring to her feet. She asked the scout official at the head of the room, “If you had someone to lead the troop, is it too late to organize one this year?” The scout official said, “No, if someone is willing to step up and take the training, we could still put a troop together.”

Hearing this, Ellie said, “My daughter will do it. She’ll take the troop and I’ll help her.” As the crowd of moms and daughters offered a polite round of applause Glenda shot her mother a stern look. In response, Ellie silently mouthed, “Rachael is going to be heartbroken.” Facing her determined mother and her hopeful little girl Glenda knew she had been drafted into the Girl Scout army. She just didn’t know that this commitment would last more than a decade.

As promised, Glenda signed up as the Brownie Troop Leader and her mom took on the job as assistant troop leader and of course Rachael signed up as an official Brownie Scout. I think Ellie was just as excited as her granddaughter. I don’t think any woman ever loved kids as much as Ellie. As a mother of three daughters, she especially loved little girls. Until the public school system started offering public kindergarten classes, Ellie had worked for Mary Ellen Smith’s private kindergarten. The pay was terrible and it involved dealing with 20 to 30 five-year olds, but she loved her job.

Glenda had some experience being a scout leader; she had been a den mother to our son’s Cub Scout troop. Fortunately, once our son graduated to being a boy scout, the local troop had an experienced leader. I became the troop president which largely involved doing paperwork and fundraising. The troop leadership felt that I was qualified for this position because I was the only dad who wore a tie to work in our blue collar neighborhood.

Glenda and her mom proved to be the dynamic duo of Girl Scouting. At that time, Glenda did not work outside the home and Ellie was retired. They devoted many hours every week planning meetings, activities and field trips for “their girls.” Ellie was a creative woman and designed clever crafts and projects for the kids; she became the adopted grandmother to many of these girls. Troops tend to grow smaller as girls drop out through the year. Glenda’s troop actually grew as her scouts told their friends about the fun they were having in scouts.

In our family, if one person is involved in something, we all join in to help. I worked just a few blocks away from the Girl Scout’s downtown office. I was tapped to pick up orders of badges and other scouting supplies. I drove rented vans full of singing Brownies to excursions at places like Laurel Caverns and my wife called on my shop skills to make camping gear and other items. My wife might have been the official leader of the troop but I was their “official gofer”.

Glenda’s dad was the family star when it came to selling cookies. He was the building superintendent at the Francis McClure Junior High School. He would take the order form to work.  John loved all of his grandchildren but Rachael was his favorite. He may not have been above telling people to order a few boxes if they wanted to have their classroom waste baskets ever emptied again. More likely, it was the fact that everyone liked John and wanted to help him out.

Rachael loved scouting, she was fanatical about earning badges and sewing them on to her green vest. She attended sleep away camp every year and enjoyed every minute of it. Even when she broke her arm falling out of the saddle at Girl Scout horse camp, she didn’t understand why she couldn’t complete the week there.

Rachael continued in scouts until high school and the Glenda/Ellie team continued to lead her troops until she became a Senior Scout. Most of the girls who started with the three of them as Brownies continued on with them for years. Until the coronavirus quarantine hit, it was not unusual for one of her scouts to see Glenda in the grocery or drug store and rush up to her to deliver a big hug. At one point she got pulled over by a local police car even though she wasn’t speeding. One of her former brownies wanted to show Glenda her new police officer uniform and thank her for all that she had done.

Rachael went on to win her Gold Award, the Girl Scout equivalent of the Boy Scout’s Eagle rank. I had read that the White House would send a congratulatory letter to Gold Award winners upon request. I wrote to the White House giving them the particulars. Some weeks later a letter on rich looking embossed stationary came to our home addressed to Rachael. She was impressed to see the return address was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C. After the family had gathered, Rachael opened the letter and began reading:

Dear Miss Busch,

The president of the United States would like to congratulate you on achieving your one hundredth birthday…

At this point she stopped short and after a few minutes, burst into laughter accompanied by the laugher of the entire family. Apparently some overworked presidential staffer had opened the wrong file on their word processor. I offered to send another request but Rachael said this was far better. 

When I walked into the Goodwill store this afternoon and saw the table full of cookie boxes my head filled with memories of another time. I could see my wife and her mother set up in front of the old Marraccini’s Supermarket in White Oak with their girls selling cookies. Things have changed a bit, the scouts were protected by Plexiglas shields due to the pandemic They took the money through a slot and handed the cookies to their customers by reaching around the end of the barrier. I am sure that because the moms and dads aren’t going to work to hit up their coworkers, this year that sales are down.

It made me happy to see the leaders working with their scouts. The display was well organized and the girls were obviously well rehearsed on the art of selling cookies. They made a clear sales pitch and carefully filled out the order blanks. They carefully made change and politely thanked every customer. The girls were running the show but under the watchful eye of their leader. When the girls turned around to restock their display, their green vests were covered with merit badges carefully sewn in neat rows.

After my transaction was complete, I thanked the young scout who had waited on my and praised her for the job she had done. I also told her that she was lucky to be a scout and have such a good leader. Before leaving, I drew the leader aside and shared my observations.  I told her that she should feel very proud of how she was helping these young girls develop in to mature happy women.

The other thing that has changed is the price of Girl Scout cookies. A box of Trefoils set me back five bucks a box which is about 35 cents per cookie. I could drive across the street to Giant Eagle and by a box of Walker’s Shortbread cookies imported from Scotland for far less. The thing that Giant Eagle doesn’t sell is the smile on those scout’s faces and the good that my money will do in the hands of a great scout leader like my wife Glenda and her mother, Ellie. The cookies are great but my memories are even more delicious.              

 - Jim Busch

February 26, 2021

I had a delightful conversation with a former coworker today. I retired five years ago this past January and haven’t had much contact with the people I worked with in the past. Many people when they leave a job promise to stay in touch with all the people they are leaving behind. This almost never happens. Workplace relationships are usually based on shared experiences; on everyone working together to achieve the same goals and facing the same challenges. Once one leaves the organization, they no longer share these things with their old comrades and the work relationships continue to degrade.

I have seen this happen many times over the years. If a person leaves a company on good terms, particularly in the case of people who have retired they sometimes try to return to their former workplace. This usually results in some awkward moments that look like a scene right out of Death of a Salesman. The returning retiree is usually greeted warmly and enthusiastically but after they answer the big question, “How are you enjoying retirement?” the conversation begins to lag. The current and former employees soon find that they have little to talk about. In most cases the retiree’s visits to their former workplace become less and less frequent until they stop all together.

Some relationships do survive retirement or a job change. I met my best friend at work. The difference with us is that we were both forced into an early retirement at the same time, replacing the shared experience of working together with the shared experience of being downsized. I do keep in touch with one of my former employees and prior to the pandemic would meet regularly for a long lunch and conversation.

This is because when we were both working, we developed what psychologists call a multiplex relationship. This is a relationship where in addition to sharing common workplace interests, the participants share other interests outside the workplace. Over the years, I have been a mentor to him, not only advising him in professional matters but also on relationship issues and on parenting. This is why our relationship has survived going our own separate ways in our careers.

Losing workplace relationships can be painful. The last vestige of my business career is my participation in The Leadership Institute (TLI). TLI is a training initiative created by the free paper industry’s national association. The group brought together sales trainers from all over the U.S. and I was flattered to be asked to join the group. We gathered together on a number of occasions in Tampa, Florida to plan our program. After that, we presented our training programs at conferences all over the country. Being part of this group was, and remains, a great experience for me, it raised awareness of my abilities, offered some great opportunities to travel and allowed me to meet some wonderful people. One of the best part of TLI was the friendships I formed with my fellow trainers.

I grew particularly close with a trainer from the Baltimore Pennysaver. Bill and I were the two oldest members of the training team.  We discovered that in addition to sharing similar business and leadership philosophies, we shared a number of non-business related interests. Bill and I were both students of American history and interested in politics; he was much more conservative than I am but this just led to some stimulating conversations. Like me, Bill is an avid reader so we were constantly exchanging book recommendations. Though we only saw each other two or three times a year, we had long phone conversations monthly; I considered him a good friend for over ten years.

Bill’s company did not survive the contraction of the publishing industry caused by the migration of advertisers to the internet. His company was sold and he was “downsized” in a cost cutting measure. His paper closed for good about a year later. Bill changed careers and took a training position at a community college near his home. We continued to talk on the phone but these calls grew less and less frequent. I tried to maintain our friendship but eventually we grew apart. I chalked this up to Bill being busy with his new position and some health problems in his family, but I think it was the loss of our common business interests. I was quite sorry to lose him as a friend.

One of the ways I keep up with many of my former coworkers is social media. This allows me to keep abreast of their milestones and what is going on with their families which I enjoy. Yesterday, I got a message on Facebook from someone I haven’t spoken to since I left Trib Total Media just over five years ago. I was a bit anxious opening the message, most of the instant messages I get from former coworkers in the last few years has told me about the death of a work friend. Michele’s message was a pleasant surprise, she sent me her phone number and, saying she missed me and asked me to call her. We exchanged a couple of messages and finally set a time to call today.

I worked very closely with Michele for about five years prior to my retirement. I served as a sort of “internal consultant” to our sales people and Michele made good use of my services. I worked with her designing ad campaigns, solving customer problems and doing sales presentation; we made a good team. When she answered the phone she told me that she had reached out simply because she missed talking to me. When she chided me about not staying in touch with my work companions, I told her that I didn’t want to bother them and get in the way of them doing their job. She gave me a one word response, “Nonsense!” This made me feel good that at least one person still remembered me and thought about me even after all this time.

We talked about 35 minutes, catching up on one another’s families and health. I asked about her menagerie because Michele owns dozens of animals ranging from cats and dogs to a burro and Scottish highland cattle. She had heard that my wife had cancer and inquired about her health.

I asked Michele how she enjoyed working from home during the pandemic. Michele lives in Berlin in Somerset County and worked in Greensburg. She told me that the pandemic was actually good for her working life. Every day, working from home was saving her a two hour commute, 20 dollars in gas and five dollars in Turnpike tolls. In addition to saving her both time and money, she is enjoying the quiet, distraction fee environment of her home office. She feels that she is far more productive working from home than she was in a cubicle in a noisy phone room. It was a very pleasant conversation and we both promised not to wait another five years before we speak again.

Talking to Michele made me wonder how the pandemic will alter workplace relationships. For years, companies have discussed the advantage of letting their employees work from home, but only a few companies were bold enough to experiment with actually implementing remote working programs. The pandemic forced them to allow employees to work from home and it proved to be an immense success. I believe that many companies will continue this practice after the pandemic has ended. One of the downsides of remote work is that it is difficult to build team cohesion. When people are crammed into a small office space they are forced to get to know one another and to form work friendships.

Although we have many communications tools at our disposal such as instant messaging, e-mail, FaceTime, Zoom meetings, etc., none of these are as effective as building relationships as sharing a lunch room or a casual conversation waiting in line for the photocopier. These relationships added a richness to our work experiences and made going to the office a lot more fun. These relationships may become a permanent casualty of the Coronavirus pandemic. This is just one more way this disease may change our lives forever.            

- Jim Busch

February 25, 2021

Today, I had to do two things I absolutely hate!

First, I had to get up early, at 6 a.m. I am a natural night owl. Since I have retired, I usually go to bed at 2 or 3 in the morning and get up between 10 and 10:30 a.m. I find that I am far more creative in the wee hours of the morning.

The reason I had to get up so early today was that my wife was scheduled for a scan and a doctor appointment at Allegheny General Hospital. Because of Covid restrictions I am still not permitted to accompany her into the hospital. I hate watching her disappear through the sliding glass doors of the AHN Cancer Center even more than getting up at the crack of dawn.   

As I drove away from the hospital in search of a place to park and wait for her call a Yogism crossed my mind. A “Yogism” is one of the many odd things that the great Yankee catcher, Yogi Berra, was known for saying; things like “Nobody goes to Coney Island anymore because of the crowds.” Yogi was much more gifted as an athlete than he was as an eloquent speaker.

The particular Yogism that came to mind today was, “Its déjà vu all over again.” This was certainly true about abandoning my wife at the hospital which I have done on more occasions than I can count in the last year. “Abandoning” may be a strong word but that’s exactly how I feel each and every time I do this. Just shy of a year ago, I did this for the first time. Her doctor in Monroeville had referred her to a specialist at AGH and I acted as her chauffeur. It was shortly after the first cases of Covid 19 had been discovered in the United States. In an “abundance of caution” the hospital had locked itself down and was allowing only staff and patients into their buildings.

After a lifetime of standing side by side in good times and bad, it was hard not to be with her. She called me to pick her up in a few hours and I knew from her voice that something was wrong. When I saw her walking out of the hospital, my fears were confirmed, the look on her face and her body language told me that she had received bad news. She got in the car, clicked on her seatbelt and said, “It’s cancer… stage four pancreatic cancer.”

I didn’t feel capable of driving at that moment so I pulled over into the first parking space that I could find so we could talk. She filled me in on what the doctor had said. Words that I would have liked to have heard first hand while holding my wife’s hand. She told me that it was bad, real bad. That the scan and biopsy she had done in Monroeville had found a large malignant tumor. The tumor was inoperable because it had grown around a major artery leading to her pancreas. If they tried to remove it, she would likely bleed to death on the operating table. The doctor said that the cancer would likely kill my wife within six months if left untreated.

It has been eleven hellish months since Glenda’s diagnosis. Eleven months of “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Eleven months of scans, blood tests and treatments. We opted to take part in an experimental chemotherapy regimen. This caused her to lose her hair and almost killed her. She filled with fluid and had to spend more than two weeks in the hospital. Again, because of the coronavirus I was not allowed to even visit her for even a few minutes during her entire stay.

After recovering from the chemotherapy, my wife was subjected to an aggressive radiation program. This left her extremely weak and caused her to lose a great deal of weight. A frightening side effect of the two therapies was that they severely compromised Glenda’s immune system, a potentially deadly situation during a global pandemic. I drove Glenda to every treatment and watched her walk into the hospital alone time after time. One would think that I would have become habituated to this routine over the course of a year but each time it seemed to tear out a piece of my heart.

Glenda received her last radiation treatment on January 5 and we have been waiting for that other shoe ever since. She was scheduled for a follow up scan in March to gauge the effects of the treatments on her tumor. In the meantime, I have driven her to have blood drawn every Wednesday. After this week’s blood results came in, she received an urgent call from her doctor.

I’ve greatly expanded my vocabulary in the last year, mostly by adding new medical terms. Some of these I learned from news reports about the coronavirus pandemic, others I learned from my wife’s medical reports. One of these was the word “antigen.” An antigen is a substance in the blood that the body produces as part of its response to cancer. The reason for the doctor’s urgent call was that Glenda’s numbers had quadrupled in the month since her last antigen test.

Glenda’s doctor and both of us feared that her cancer was spreading. We mentally prepared ourselves for more bad news. We tried to enjoy our grandson’s 15th birthday but there was a shadow hanging over us. This past year has felt like one long goodbye and we both feared that we were facing the final farewell. With that in mind, when she walked into the hospital this morning, she took more than a piece of my heart, she took the whole beating broken thing.

I found a place to park in the Mexican War streets and tried to read. I had brought along a very interesting book on the art of Frank Stella, but I couldn’t concentrate. The next couple of hours seemed to drag until my wife texted, “I’m ready.” I was anxious to see her but not anxious to hear what the doctor had said.  I steeled myself for the worst as I drove into the Cancer Center’s valet parking garage.

Knowing how concerned I was, the first words out of my wife’s mouth were, “Good news!” The scan results had surprised both her and her doctor. The tumor hadn’t shrunk but it hadn’t grown in the past year. He couldn’t explain her elevated antigen results but ordered another blood test to confirm the numbers. It may have been the Chemo or the radiation but something had halted the growth of the tumor.

We haven’t won the war. We had hoped that the radiation would destroy the tumor but at least we had fought it to a stalemate. It was still inoperable but it started to strangle my wife from within. That shoe we were waiting to drop was pushed back a little further back on the shelf, we had bought some time. It is strange, but the thing that entered my thought is that if the vaccinations do their job, maybe I will be able to be with Glenda in the hospital if she takes a turn for the worse. Too many people have died alone during this damn pandemic.  

My wife and I have been together for over 50 years and we have been married for 48 and a half years. After today, I have hope that we will be able to celebrate our 49th anniversary. It would be tempting fate to hope that we see our golden anniversary. Glenda has made every signal day of those years very special. The last few years as we have grown older, I have come to recognize that every day is a gift. The last eleven months have taught me just how precious that gift really is.     

- Jim Busch

February 24, 2021

Today, Mother Nature offered us a preview of coming attractions. After weeks of below freezing temperatures, today the mercury soared up to 63 degrees. This brief warmup melted much of the snow and ice piled up in our yards and along the roadsides. Going outside today in my shirt sleeves and feeling the sun on my face felt like a vacation trip to Florida without the hassle of taking our shoes off and being x-rayed by the TSA.

I remember when I thought my grandfather was a bit crazy when he said that he could feel the spring coming. Now that I am a grandfather myself, I understand what he meant. Over the weekend, when the weather was still stuck in arctic mode, I stepped outside and like my grandfather I felt the approach of spring. I can’t say what specifically told me that the seasons were about to change. There was something fresh about the air even though it was still very cold. I wasn’t the only one to notice the change in the season; this was the first time this season I heard the mating call of the Cardinals that hang around my backyard to sponge a meal at my bird feeder. Their distinctive three note call is a sure sign that spring is coming.

As I walked to my workshop at the rear of my property, I lingered by the fence dividing my property from my neighbors. There I saw the green spikes of snowdrop leaves pushing their way through the crusty snow. These are the first flowers to bloom in my yard every spring. Later in the day, I consulted my garden diary and found that they are late this year due to the snow and cold. Last year they sprouted and bloomed more than a week earlier.

As I looked at the snowdrops along the fence, I thought about my neighbor, Karl, who passed away last year. For over a decade every spring around this time, Karl and I would each stand on our side of the wire fence and look at the snowdrops discussing the hardiness of these delicate white flowers. I searched my brain unsuccessfully for the author and text of a quote about this situation. It had something to do with appreciating the spring because there will come a time when the spring arrives without us. This was the first spring that Karl will miss and the first one that I will miss him. The snowdrops didn’t seem to miss him and are going about their urgent business as they do each and every year.

I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and do my winter pruning. I ran a sharpening stone across the blades of my pruning shears and put a drop of oil at their pivot point. Once I was sure that they were razor sharp, I grabbed a utility tub and brutally assaulted my rose bushes. Roses only bloom on “new wood.” To keep them healthy and covered with blooms it is necessary to cut them back “hard” in mid-winter when they are dormant.

No one challenged my decision to prune the roses today but for many years I was accused of being a floral serial killer. My mother-in-law was convinced that cutting back her roses would have the same effect on them that the guillotine had on Marie Antoinette. She was convinced that I was killing them. I would pull out my beat up copy of Rodale’s Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, flip to the “R’s” and let her read the comprehensive section on the care and maintenance of rose bushes. I had even highlighted the paragraphs which described dormant pruning but it was to no avail.

She absolutely refused to let me properly prune her favorite bushes which deformed them and exasperated me. To this day, six years after my mother-in-law’s passing, I have a plant that looks more like a giraffe than a rose bush. It is over five feet tall and only produces blooms on the very top of its gangly stems. After years of neglect, it is beyond recovery but its mutant form is a living memento of a woman who was so gentle that she couldn’t bear to see anything hurt, even a plant.

I like pruning, it is a very Zen like activity. First, I take my time and look at the plant noting its form, studying its branches and where to make my cuts. Today, the bushes are devoid of all their leaves just bare thorny sticks. I try to imagine what the rose will look like when the warm days of spring wake it up and it begins to leaf out. The time of hesitancy is gone, I snap my pruners open and carve a hole in the bush’s branches which will let me reach its center without losing too much blood to its thorns. I cut away little more than half of the previous year’s growth, being careful to make each cut above a bud which will develop into a new branch when the growing season arrives.

After I finished pruning my roses, I drove to my daughter’s to prune her rose bush. Her rose is a gift from me and as her official gardener, I am still responsible for its care. I am exceptionally proud of Rachael’s rose, it could easily grace the cover of a gardening magazine. It is a Knockout rose, a recently developed variety that is disease resistant, hardy and very prolific. It produces hundreds, if not thousands of blooms each season. When I planted it, I amended the soil with lots of compost and topped it off with a thick layer of mulch. It sits in a corner formed by a set of concrete steps and her porch where the masonry holds the heat of the sun creating the ideal habitat for a rose bush.   

On the next warm day, hopefully in the next week, I will top dress these roses with some well-rotted cow manure to provide the nutrition they will need to produce dozens of sweet scented flowers come the summertime. I love flowers but I may like the roses even more at this time of year. They are sculptural and stand tough against the worst that winter can dish out. Doing this pruning, I feel like I am partnering with Mother Nature to bring the spring that much faster.

This year I am very impatient to see the spring come to the world. Perhaps it is because January and February have been harsh and snowy, but I think there is more to it. This has been our “Covid Winter;” the pandemic has spread a grey pall over our lives like the snow clouds that darken our winter skies.

Fortunately, as spring brings the hope of warmer days to come, the vaccines and declining case counts are bringing the hope that we will soon see an end to the pandemic. This year I am anxious to see both the winter and the coronavirus come to an end.

- Jim Busch

February 23, 2021

Today, I was driving along Route 30 in North Huntingdon when I had to pull over suddenly. It was a serious emergency, nothing had happened to my car and I hadn’t seen an accident or had an accident—it was a beauty emergency! The sky was so beautiful that it took my breath away and I had to stop right away and drink it in and properly appreciate this gift.

I have experienced these moments for most of my life but I didn’t have a name for them until recently. Declaring them a Beauty Emergency is an idea I found in poet Maggie Smith’s book Keep Moving. We all know what an emergency is: it is a situation that demands our immediate attention. Typically an emergency has to do with preventing something undesirable from happening. We make an emergency stop so that we don’t hit the car which pulled out right in front of us. We rush to grab the toddler who is reaching for the hot pan on the stove. If we injure ourselves or become suddenly and seriously ill, we go to the emergency room. In all these situations, we drop whatever we are doing and immediately shift all of our attention to the matter at hand. If we try to ignore an emergency something terrible will happen.

A beauty emergency is very much like the more troublesome emergencies we are all familiar with. Both types of emergencies crop up expectantly out of nowhere and in both situations; because we have to move so quickly to respond to an emergency, we don’t have time to think things through, we have to “go with our gut.” Our subconscious, our instincts and our emotions take the controls and guide us through the situation before our brains have started to figure out what’s going on.

When a ball rolls out into the street as we’re driving, we don’t have time to process the information logically. We can’t stop to think, that is a ball, a ball is a child’s toy, children sometimes chase balls, a child might be following this ball, it may be prudent to apply brake pressure and stop my car to possibly prevent a pedestrian accident. If we counted on our brain in these types of situations there would be a whole lot more accidents.  

Failing to respond to an emergency can result in dire circumstances, in the example above ignoring the situation could result in a seriously injured child. In a beauty emergency, we would miss out on a moment that we will never be able to regain. This morning when I was driving down the highway, I happened to glance toward the southwest. An hour or so earlier, grey clouds covered the sky and I had to set my windshield wipers to the intermittent setting to deal with a few rain sprinkles. As the afternoon progressed, a wind came up and started to drive the clouds away. At the moment I happened to look at the sky, the breeze had conquered the overcast and the individual clouds were fleeing before like routed soldiers after a defeat. To celebrate the wind’s victory, the sun was shining through the clouds illuminating their edges and painting the spaces between them with soft pastels.

Seeing this sky made my heart skip a beat, it was indescribably lovely. Such beauty demanded more than a passing glance. I switched on my turn signal and pulled into the parking lot of the Excela Health clinic. There weren’t many cars in the bottom of the parking lot so I parked my Subaru diagonally blocking several parking places. I jumped out of the car and stared up at the sky. A large cloud was covering the sun so I could look directly at the clouds dancing across the sky.

When I was a child one of my favorite toys was a kaleidoscope, I loved turning it and watching the colors and patterns change as I turned it in my hands. I got that same feeling watching the ever changing sky show before me. I was right to declare this a beauty emergency because in just five minutes or so the show was over. The strong wind gusts had blown away the last remnants of the rain clouds and I was looking at a blue sky punctuated with a few fast moving puffy white clouds. The sky was still lovely but not as dramatically beautiful as it had been just a few moments before.

As I said, one of the qualities of an emergency is that if you do not respond to it something terrible will happen. I think my sky gazing more than meets this requirement. Had I not interrupted my journey and pulled into that parking lot, something terrible would have occurred; I would have missed an opportunity to feed my soul. I have friends who are artists and writers. They often invite me to look at their work; imagine what an insult it would be if I told them, “Yes, I know you worked hard to make a beautiful painting, but I am too busy running errands to look at your artwork.”

If my best friends were Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, their work wouldn’t be as beautiful as what I saw in the parking lot in Irwin. (I am sure that both of them would agree with me). Think what an insult it would be to the artist who painted that gorgeous sky canvas. It doesn’t matter if you call that painter, God or Mother Nature, we owe it to ourselves to enjoy everything they place before our mortal eyes.

In the words of that distinguished American philosopher Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Even in my busy working days when I was constantly on the run, every so often during the day I would stop and look around. I would stand in one spot and slowly turn around looking at everything around me in search of beauty. Sometimes it would be an old couple on a bus bench holding hands, other times it would be a little girl holding her mother’s hand and gleefully skipping along. Like today, sometimes it would be a magnificent sky or a sunset. I used to drive the Parkway East heading toward my office on the Northside with the sun rising behind me, the morning light shining on the Golden Triangle made it look like the Emerald City in the Oz books.

If one trains their eyes and their mind properly, beauty can be found everywhere and anywhere. One morning this week, my wife poured me a small glass of cranberry apple juice with my breakfast. The morning sun streaming through the window behind the glass made it glow like a ruby. I hadn’t even got dressed for the day and the great artist gave me something beautiful to ponder. If I had been thinking about all the things I had to do that day. I might have missed the minor beauty emergency.

The “oh, CRAP!” type of emergencies are impossible to ignore, they demand our attention. The “oh, WOW!” type of emergencies are easy to miss. They can be lost in the hustle bustle of everyday life. If we force ourselves to slow down, and occasionally come to a full stop and look around, we will see the beautiful things all around us. If we simply pay attention, we will encounter beauty emergencies on a daily basis, and our lives will be richer for it.     

- Jim Busch

February 22, 2021

Today, the United States passed a sad milestone; the number of people who have died in the United States from the effects of Covid-19 surpassed 500,000. A year ago when health officials announced that the pandemic could take as many as 250,000 lives most people, including many experts, scoffed at this deadly projection. The country passed a quarter million deaths this past November just as the death rate was increasing.

It is difficult to imagine just how big a number 500,000 really is. Tonight in his speech, marking this sad milestone, President Biden used the off quoted statistic that this number is larger than the number of U.S. soldiers killed in World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined. I have always been interested in military history but even to me, this number was a bit abstract. I simply couldn’t picture a half million dead soldiers in my mind.

Trying to wrap my head around just how many people died during the pandemic, I tried to make some comparisons I could fully comprehend.  According to the last U. S. Census about 70,000 people live in the Mon Valley from Brownsville to McKeesport. This means the toll would be equivalent to losing over seven times that number. I tried to imagine our neighborhoods emptied of people with cars abandoned in the streets like a scene from one of those post-apocalyptic science fiction movies of the 1950’s.

Since we live in such a sports loving town, I looked up the combined number of seats in the homes of the Steelers, the Pirates and the Penguins. Heinz Field, PNC Park and PPG Arena combined hold about 187,000 fans; the pandemic has killed just short of three sold out crowds in all of these venues.

In the bible, both the gospels of Luke and Matthew say “even the hairs on your head are numbered.”  These verses are in reference to a number so large that only God could comprehend them. Today we know that the average human head holds about a 100,000 heads. Think about lining up five friends or family members in a row and plucking each and every hair from their heads. At the end of this task, in addition to five angry bald people, you will have an understanding of just how many fellow citizens we have lost.

If you do the math, this is equivalent to losing someone to the coronavirus once every minute of every day of the last year. An analysis of CDC mortality data, Covid-19 is now the leading cause of death in the United States passing heart disease. Last year will go down in the history books as the deadliest year in the history of our country. This dubious distinction was held previously by 1918, a year that included both battlefield casualties from World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic.

Aside from my inability to comprehend the scale of the tragedy which has befallen us in the last year, I have trouble comprehending how people can still deny or minimize the impact of the pandemic. Despite seeing the number of fatalities mount on the news every day, some people still choose to believe the disease is some kind of a hoax. I have known people who question the number of people who have died or that the disease even exists. They believe that “whole pandemic thing” is part of a conspiracy to take away their individual liberty.

I have always had a problem with conspiracy theories. We are just not that good at organizing things or at keeping them secret. To start with, why would anyone expend the time and energy to fake a worldwide pandemic? Is it an international cartel of mask manufacturers? Perhaps an evil genius who cornered the global market of take-out food containers before launching their plan to close all the sit down restaurants? Since every country and region has suffered from the pandemic, it is unlikely one of our rivals intentionally caused this. The only possible answer is a comic book villain, the one that can only be thwarted by Superman or Wonder Woman.

Imagine what a logistical nightmare it would be to organize a conspiracy of the scope and scale of the global pandemic. Imagine the recruiting effort required to fill the quotas of minions required to spread disinformation around the globe. The conspiracy’s human resources department must be huge. I can’t imagine what it would take to organize the company picnic or softball league. The biggest challenge would be finding talented actors to play realistic doctors and Covid victims. Come to think of it, maybe this explains why so many recent TV shows and movies are so bad, Conspiracy Productions has snapped up all the most talented actors.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Three may keep a secret… if two of them are dead.” The “Dr. Evil” behind this pandemic must have one heck of a non-disclosure agreement. As we have seen, convincing people that there is a pandemic would require millions of people. We are a species that loves to gossip. I think the reason we conquered the planet was that the tribe that developed stone tools just had to tell the neighboring tribe about what they had done. If we learned nothing from the pentagon papers, WikiLeaks or the Trump White House, it is that it is very hard to keep a secret. The more people who know about something, the harder it is to keep it under wraps. None of the millions of people in on the hoax have made a single slip of the lip. Impressive.

So far I have fought the urge not to approach some of the people I see who refuse to wear a mask and offer to sell them the Fort Duquesne Bridge. The only thing stopping me is the likelihood of contracting the coronavirus from them. I am starting to formulate a theory about why a certain class of people are incapable of understanding the seriousness of the pandemic. I am talking about the people who wear their mask under their noses. A mask is a relatively old piece of technology. Even illiterate old west bank robbers managed to master proper mask wearing. I have come to believe that people who are unable to master the art of mask wearing will never be able to understand the intricacies of how viruses are spread.

I am hoping that this terrible milestone marks the low point in this pandemic. For the last two weeks or so the numbers have been encouraging. The number of cases and fatalities have been dropping. It seems that the post-holiday surge has finally passed and hospitals once again have beds available in their Covid wards. At the same time, the number of vaccinations have increased. It seems that healthcare professionals are finally ironing out the supply chain issues which were slowing the distribution of the various vaccines. Epidemiologists are cautiously optimistic that we may reach the much desired herd immunity by this coming summer.

Tonight, President Biden addressed the people on national television to remember and mourn those who have died during the pandemic. He made a point of reminding us that these were not “ordinary Americans” but that they were all extraordinary. He noted that they will all be missed and remembered by their families and expressed sympathy for those left behind.

In the end, we don’t need to fully understand the immensity of this disaster, we just need to feel for each and every one touched by the coronavirus in some way.      

- Jim Busch

February 21, 2021

My wife and I welcomed a very special house guest today. Our grandson, Max, came to stay with us for a few days. One might say that his visit was made possible by the Coronavirus. He has school tomorrow, but since he is studying remotely he can just as easily do his work from our house in White Oak as he could from his room in Mt. Lebanon.

Max’s parents agree to this visit because tomorrow is a “technical day” for his school. This means that he will have a light workload and will have plenty of time to visit with us. When I heard the term “technical day” I assumed it had something to do with the technology they use to teach the kids. I imagined the teachers working with the school’s IT department to iron out glitches in the system. It turns out that I was wrong, a technical day was much more about making human connections than broadband connections.

A technical day is a day dedicated to helping students who are struggling to catch up. Fortunately, Max is the kind of student who is flourishing with his online studies. When his father dropped him off this afternoon, he proudly made a point of telling us that Max had made the high honor roll. This is especially impressive as he is taking a number of difficult honors level classes.

Max enjoys doing his schoolwork from home. This evening he told us, “I don’t know why anyone misses going to that school. I don’t care if I ever go back.” He likes rolling out of bed, switching on his laptop and being in school. He usually eats his breakfast while attending his second period class. I asked him if he misses his friends and he told me that they stay in touch by phone and online. He games with many of them over the web and his scout troop still holds socially distanced meetings. He is a bit of a control freak and likes the idea that he no longer has to do group projects. He gets very upset when others don’t pull their weight or are late turning in their part of the projects.   

Admittedly, Max has some advantages that many of his fellow students lack. He is bright, self-motivated and has always enjoyed school. He is well equipped mentally, emotionally and technologically for home schooling. Since his father works from home, their home has the fastest internet connection available in their neighborhood. They are connected to a robust Wi-Fi network and their house is equipped with a commercial printer/scanner/copier unit.

The school provides students with Chromebook computers which have limited memory and processing speed. Max and his father are avid gamers. My son has provided Max with his own laptop which is superior to the school issued units in every way. Max rarely has any trouble staying connected with his teachers or getting his assignments. When connectivity issues do arise, they are usually on the school district’s end.

I imagined remote classes as a sort of an educational Zoom meeting with the teacher’s face on the kid’s screens and the instructor able in turn to see their students. Some classes do take place this way in real time with the teacher able to put lessons on the blackboard and use other educational tools.

Other classes are “asynchronous.” This means that the teacher posts videos or assignments online which the students are expected to complete independently. Mt. Lebanon is an affluent school district and the majority of its residents are computer literate and have access to broadband connections. Even before the pandemic struck, the Mt. Lebanon School District used the internet as their primary means of communicating with their students and their families. Max received his assignments and schedule for the week from his personal school inbox. Physical report cards are a thing of the past with his parents getting his grades online. If teachers have a concern about a student they can reach out to their parents online putting an end to the dreaded note from your teacher.

I never thought I would say this but tonight my grandson did his chemistry lab assignment while sitting in my living room. He downloaded his assignment, it was a YouTube video with his teacher mixing chemicals to demonstrate a chemical reaction. I was surprised by the production quality of the video which looked like it had been filmed by a Hollywood studio, I asked Max how he felt about the online lab versus the real thing. His response, “Watching the video is oaky but it would be a lot more fun to mix the chemicals and see the reaction myself.” I agree with him, not everything can be accomplished over the web.

Because Max is doing well learning remotely all the “technical days” mean to him is an easy day at school. He has only a few assignments and will be largely done with school by lunch time. Technical days allow teachers to schedule time to spend with students who are struggling. The teachers hold one on one discussions with the student to diagnose the student’s problems and determine how to address them. One of the great disadvantages of connecting with students online is that it deprives teachers of the tools humans have used to connect with one another since the dawn of time. Even in a virtual Zoom type class room it is more difficult to read a student’s body language or see the expressions on their faces. This is the classic conflict between “high tech” versus “high touch” solutions to our problems.

I believe that the school should continue technical days even after students return to regular classes. The “one size fits all” approach of the current educational system can be a problem for some students. It is impossible for teachers to provide individual attention to every student in a classroom. Scheduling a day with the students who are having trouble absorbing the material might help them catch up with their classmates. It could also help the teachers better understand how to reach these students.

I am always happy when my grandson comes for a visit. I like to feel that I have things to teach him. On this particular visit, Max taught me what it is like to be a high school student during a pandemic. I can only imagine the stories he will have to tell his grandkids someday, “When I was a boy, we had to watch our teacher on a flat screen, we didn’t have any of them there fancy holographic teachers in my day… no sireee!”         

- Jim Busch

February 20, 2021

One of my very favorite quotes comes from Pablo Picasso. I have a copy of it pinned up above my drawing table in my workshop/studio. It reads, “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” The last year has left my soul more than a little dusty. Between the coronavirus and my wife’s struggle with cancer, my every day experiences have inundated it with a California size mudslide. What’s worse, is that for much of the last year the water has been turned off in the shower as the local museums and galleries were forced to close.

The last thing I did before everything fell apart was to drive to North Carolina to take in a major Van Gogh exhibition. Since that time last January, I have only been to a local museum one or two times all year. In a normal year, I usually go to a museum three or four times a month. I belong to the Carnegie Museum of Art and its sister museum The Andy Warhol Museum. I also regularly visit The Frick Pittsburgh, the Westmoreland Museum of American Art and the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art in Ligonier.

I have even been known to drive to Cleveland to visit their excellent Cleveland Museum of Art. As Senor Picasso said, these trips left me feeling stress free and happy. For most of this year, I’ve been suffering from severe art withdrawal. Adding insult to injury this blockade came at the very moment when I needed it most.  

During the lockdown, I have tried to satisfy my need with art through books and online resources. I have a good collection of art books and spent a good many hours flipping through them. Since the library opened for pick up, I regularly ordered books on specific artists and movements. I feel bad for the librarians tasked with bringing my book orders to my car because art books tend to be big, thick and heavy.  I give them a good workout.

I have also spent a considerable amount of time with Google looking at images and researching artists. Normally every year or so, I head east on the turnpike toward Philadelphia to indulge my interest in art. I enjoy visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art where Rocky Balboa ran up the steps. Each time I visit, it is fun to watch the winded and sweating tourist trying to duplicate Stallone’s workout routine. Personally, I find the museum’s collection of Impressionists painting and their Pennsylvania folk art displays much more interesting.

Other sites in the eastern end of the state include the Rodin Museum with its sculptures and the Brandywine Museum of Art filled with great American illustrations and figural works. My favorite Philadelphia gallery is The Barnes Foundation. Every room in the Barnes was arranged by its founder Dr. Albert Barnes and the museum’s charter does not allow them to be changed. Unlike the typical gallery which space out their works, every wall is covered with a diverse selection of works ranging from ancient Egyptian pieces to Pennsylvania German forged iron barn hinges. The effect of this art overload almost gives me a headache, but I love it.

Like everything else, the Barnes was forced to shut down. To keep their collection in front of the public they began posting Barnes Takeout sessions on YouTube. These short videos were presented by the museum’s staff and focused on one particular artwork at a time. I found these quite enjoyable and I learned a great deal about the museum’s collection but they were far from seeing the real thing. The shades of the colors and the energy of the brushstrokes are lost in even the best pictures in books and the sharpest digital images.

Even when the museums opened on a limited basis, I was hesitant to go. I did venture out to the Carnegie Museum of Art where I spent a very pleasant afternoon. A week after I was there a surge in Covid cases forced them to lock their doors again. Last night I received an email from the Westmoreland describing their latest exhibit. It featured works from the museum’s collection chosen because of the patterns incorporated into their designs.

Like the Barnes Takeout, the Patterns Maker exhibit is a “Covid Silver Linings” event. Had the pandemic never occurred, the Barnes would never have created their educational videos.  The Pattern Makers exhibit was made up of works which never see the light of day in the museum’s basement storage area. A number of years ago when the museum was getting ready to close for remodeling, they invited the members on a “behind the scenes” tour of the building. I had always known that only a small portion of their holdings were put on display at any time, but I never realized just how much art was stored away until I saw it with my own eyes. Had the pandemic not occurred, I would not have had the chance to see most of these works.

I arrived at the Westmoreland at my scheduled time of 1 p.m. in the afternoon. A large welcome sign posted on the windows along the side of the building’s new wing was cleverly designed with a face mask partially covering the letter “O.” Due to Covid restrictions, all visitors are required to follow a prescribed path through the museum. Following the red arrows marking the path through the museum, I first came to a photography exhibit titled, Living in a Time of Distance, by Jason Starr. During the summer of 2020, the artist drove across the United States taking photographs that captured the impact of Covid-19 on the country. The photographs of popular attractions with empty parking lots, closed businesses and masked people told the story of a nation shut down and confused by its new reality.

Walking up the stairs, I arrived at the Pattern Makers exhibit that I came to see. It did not disappoint, it was a large eclectic show with works from a wide range of artists and coming from various periods of time. Many of the works featured came from local artists. One work in particular took my breath away. The Virgins depicted a stand of Hemlock trees which reminded me of a spot I love in the Allegheny National Forest. Heart’s Content is a stand of virgin forest that lives up to its name; it is one of the most peaceful places I ever visited in my life. While standing in awe in front of this large painting, a docent came up to me and struck up a conversation.

We talked about the painting and I discovered it was her favorite piece in the show. We wandered around the gallery, careful to maintain our proper six foot interval discussing the art. She pointed out the works which spoke to her and why; I appreciated her insights. We then moved on to some of the upcoming exhibitions coming to the museum. This led us to a discussion of the work of Douglas Cooper. She wasn’t familiar his work, so I explained why I like his work. I told her that one of his charcoal drawings of Pittsburgh is part of the Westmoreland’s permanent Born of Fire: The Valley of Work collection.

This is one of the things I have missed the most during the lockdown, talking about art with perfect strangers. I truly enjoy swapping ideas with others who love art as much as I do. Seeing the art through the eyes of another broadens my experience and enhances my enjoyment of it. I have found that it is easy to strike up a conversation in an art gallery and I have had some of the most engaging discussions of my life with perfect strangers while looking at paintings or sculptures.

After spending an hour or so in the Pattern Makers exhibit, I wandered the museum’s permanent collection. I sketched some of the items in the folk art collection and talked to one of the other docents. I have been watching a series of instructional videos on painting to improve my understanding of composition. To test what I have learned, I sat down on a bench in front of a painting of a young girl holding her hat and standing next to a mullein plant.

It is one of my favorite paintings in their permanent collection and I have been looking at it for over 30 years. I sat there for 45 minutes, just looking at the painting and studying its composition. My time watching the videos proved to be time well spent; it was like I was looking at this familiar work with new eyes. I noticed that certain shapes and angles repeat throughout the painting. I gained a new admiration for the painter and his skill. It was pleasant to clear my mind of all its concerns and just sit and quietly enjoy a beautiful work of art.

I spent the entire afternoon immersed in the peaceful quiet of the museum looking at old favorites and new additions to their collection. I can’t wait until this pandemic finally comes to an end and I can spend more quiet afternoons surrounded by beautiful artworks. By the time I climbed into my car and headed toward home, I felt like I had just come home from a relaxing two week vacation on a beach somewhere. I guess my soul had accumulated an awful lot of everyday dust and it just needed a good washing.                

- Jim Busch

February 19, 2021

My daughter’s redecorating project is quickly turning into a second career for me. Over the last few weeks, I have been recruited to be her truck driver moving her excess possessions to a storage unit in a rented truck. Her efforts to streamline her possessions has required several donation drop offs to Goodwill, a trip to Half Price Books and two trips to Construction Junction. In between my redecorating related road trips, I have been called upon to move old furniture and assemble new pieces. I have also removed and replaced shelving and helped to program the remotes for their new high tech bed.

Like Willie Nelson, I was On the Road Again today. Today, the mission assigned me by redecoration command was to drive to Ikea in Robinson and pick-up some furniture that my daughter had ordered. Last night, when I told my wife of my plans for the day I was very pleasantly surprised when she said, “Maybe I’ll ride along with you.”

For most of the past year, I have been doing our shopping and running the household errands solo. Around the same time as the pandemic hit, Glenda was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. The disease and the treatments her doctors have used in an attempt to stop its spread has taken a toll on her. For as long as we have been together, Glenda has been a strong and energetic woman. Her battle against the cancer trying to devour her from the inside out has left her listless and weak. Some days it is difficult for her to muster the energy to get out of her chair.

A collateral effect of the cancer, and especially the chemo and radiation treatments, is a compromised immune system. The attacks her doctors launched to kill the cancer cells has also killed off a lot of innocent white blood cells. Glenda’s doctors have told her that she has to be hyper cautious to avoid the coronavirus as in her weakened condition, a case of Covid 19 would likely be fatal. With just a few exceptions in the last year, the only place Glenda has gone has been medical in nature, doctor’s appointments, scans and tests.

When she does go out, she prepares like an astronaut getting ready for an “EVA;” She puts on not one, but two masks uses copious amounts of hand sanitizer and wears a fresh pair of surgical gloves wherever she goes. Upon returning to the car she repeats the hand sanitizer and when we get home she immediately puts all of her clothes in the washer before taking a long hot shower and washing her hair. I doubt that a surgeon takes more precautions before he enters the operating room.

I don’t mind doing the shopping and other running around; after a life spent as a salesman, I am used to being out and about. I am by nature a gadabout and like being on the move. I do miss having Glenda with me as I roam the highways and byways of Western Pennsylvania.

For the last half century, Glenda and I have been partners in every sense of the word. The dictionary offers several definitions of the word “partner,” all of which apply to us. A partner can be “either of a pair of people engaged in the same activity.” We have spent our lives working together to establish a family and build a home. We are an odd match, we we are very different from one another but we share a common goal, we are both focused on helping our children have a good life. This goal has spilled over and we both try to do our best to help our extended family, our friends and our neighbors as well. The family has been our shared project for as long as we can remember.

The second definition reads, “Either member of a married couple or a lover.” We meet this definition, we even have a legal document locked up in our safety deposit box at the bank to prove it. This coming September 15 will be our 49th wedding anniversary. I am hoping that we make it to our 50th, one can never have too many gaudy metal trays or crystal vases emblazoned with the number “50” on them.

Unlike many other old married couples, we can still check off the “lover” box. After all these years, we still enjoy each other’s company. I can count the number of times we have argued on one hand. Somehow in the midst of a busy life we have always managed to find time for each other. I once read that “Romance is play for adults.” Done right, romance is fun and it helps smooth over the bumps and potholes in the road of life. After all the years together, it is hard to determine where one of us ends and the other one begins. Our kids find it amusing how we no longer have to speak to one another in complete sentences. One of us will speak a few words, meaningless to anyone else, and the other will answer.

We even meet the final definition of partner, “a person with an investment or interest in a business or enterprise.” My wife and I owned our own business for almost a decade. Twice Sold Tales was the name of our little used bookstore. Glenda and her mother worked the business during the week and I manned the cash register on Saturdays and handled the advertising. We never got rich selling secondhand books but we had a lot of fun and made some great friends. We finally sold the store when Glenda took up a new career. Glenda decided that being a grandmother would be more rewarding that selling Danielle Steele novels with creased covers.

Today, was just an ordinary day but it was a delightful day with Glenda in the passenger seat. I drove to the library to drop some books in the box and pick up a few more using curbside pickup. I then drove to Robinson where Glenda sat in the car while I paid for my daughter’s order and then drove to their warehouse for another curbside pickup.

After loading two large boxes in the car, I drove to the nearby Rockler Woodworking store. I wanted to get a couple of items I had seen in their ad. Glenda decided to sit in the car and I assured her that I would just be a minute. My wife knows that Rockler is my “toy store.” I love tools and this store along with Blick Artist Supplies are my favorite “toy stores.” She told me to take my time and look around which, unable to stop myself, I did.   

 Next we drove behind the plaza to Duluth Trading where she wanted to pick up a gift card and a gift for our grandson’s birthday. After Glenda put on her full Covid uniform, I held the door for her as she entered the store. Glenda never enjoyed shopping, she prefers to buy from catalogs or online but I could tell she was enjoying her outing. After such a long hiatus she enjoyed sliding the hangers along the shiny metal racks to examine the garments hanging there. I don’t think she could feel the texture of the fabric through her gloves but she could sense the thickness of the cloth. She moved slowly from rack to rack until she found what she considered the perfect gift. She chatted with the clerk as she rang up the hoodies she picked out and processed the gift card.

After enjoying a romantic gourmet dinner at the Chick-fil-A and another quick stop at the Goodwill, we drove to my daughter’s to deliver our cargo. Glenda stayed in the car while we got the two big, and very heavy, boxes into Rachael’s garage. She rolled down the window and visited with Rachael for a while. Glenda apologized that she hasn’t been able to help her with the redecorating project. After decades of being the superintendent on all family projects it pains her not to be in the center of things.

We drove home and after taking her disinfecting shower, Glenda collapsed in her recliner. She was totally exhausted from her outing but she fell asleep with a sweet smile on her face. I was also quite pleased with the day we’d had; it was almost like old times. I have missed having Glenda as my copilot, actually being her copilot. She thinks, in her words, that “I drive like an old lady” so for most of the last 50 years, she was the one behind the wheel.

I have done many wonderful things in my life, I have traveled all over the country, gone whitewater rafting and ridden in a hot air balloon. While these activities were quite enjoyable, my fondest memories are of ordinary days spent with my wife. Doing chores around the house or running errands together just seemed so natural and so right to me. In the last year, the pandemic has robbed me of this simple joy. What has made that loss so hard to bear is that I know that what the virus has taken away from me this last year, the cancer may take away from me forever. I have been one half of a wonderful partnership for so long, that I don’t really know who or what I would be without my wife at my side.     

- Jim Busch     

February 18, 2021

This has been the snowiest February we have had in a long time. According to the TV meteorologist, we have already had more snow so far this year than in a typical winter, and we still have March to get through. It’s been very cold and snowing steadily for a week but at least the snow has been taking its time in trying to bury us. We have been getting a fresh blanket of snow every night, like a maid putting fresh sheets on the beds at the Holiday Inn.

I love seeing a fresh coating of snow on the ground. It smooths out all the imperfection and irregularities in the ground leaving everything looking like a freshly iced wedding cake. I almost hate walking through the fresh fallen snow because I always feel my tracks in the snow are ruining a beautiful work of art. I almost hate to walk through my yard to my workshop/studio at the rear of my property. It’s almost like my ragged foot steps are spoiling the natural harmony of my freshly iced backyard.

Despite my reticence to scar the snow with my steps, I have always enjoyed walking in the snow. There is a Norwegian proverb that says, “There is no such thing as bad weather, there is only bad clothes.” I have a good pair of winter boots, warm socks and a well-insulated coat. Put on a pair of Thinsulate gloves and top off the whole thing with a thick woolen cap and I can stay out all day. When we were dating, my wife and I loved walking in the snow, gloved hand in gloved hand.

Age maybe catching up with me; this is the first year that I haven’t gone on at least one long winter hike. Winter walks have some charms that hikes in milder weather do not. First, is that the winter cold separates the real outdoor people from the summer strollers. Even nearby walking paths, like the Yough River or Braddock’s Trail, are often deserted when the mercury drops into the 20s or below. A winter walker can often commune with nature in solitude at this time of year.

Even familiar spots take on a different aspect in the black and white world of winter. The beauty of the winter woods is an acquired taste. Anyone can appreciate nature in the softer seasons. I’m looking forward to the explosion of color that the spring wildflowers bring to the forest floor and the verdant greenery of summer is a treat for the eyes and for the soul. Of course, it is impossible to ignore Mother Nature’s grand finale as autumn redecorates and turns the green leaves red, and yellow and gold.

If the fall is a Van Gogh painting, the winter is a Rembrandt print. Without a riot of color to distract us, we are able to see the shapes of the trees and the lay of the land. In winter, I notice the individuality of the trees, stripped of their demure leafy apparel it is easy to see the subtle twists and curves of their trunks. After a snow, the windward sides of their trunks and the upper surfaces of their limbs are covered with icy white scarves. These function like the silken drapes that artists use to accentuate the beauty of their models.

With its mantle of leaves lying beneath the snow, winter is the only time that the sun can reach the forest floor. The beams of light streaming through the naked branches creates an abstract jumble of shadows and light on the shiny white canvas of snow. Along the edges of the trail and in the fields, the desiccated stems of weeds like teasel, milkweed and mullein stand like sculptures in a museum. Sometimes, these remnants of the last summer’s abundance dance in the wind carving unique patterns on the surface of the snow.

Other patterns stamped into the snow provides a sort of newsletter for the forest community. Each morning, when I step into my yard, the surface of the snow is a crazy quilt of animal tracks. I live on the edge of a large wooded area which is home for a wide variety of birds and mammals. The inch or so of fresh snow we been getting each night is like Mother Nature shaking her Etch-A-Sketch, erasing all the marks from the previous day. This allows me to get an idea of what went on in my yard while I was sleeping.

This morning, I identified many whitetail deer hoof prints, hand-like raccoon tracks, possum tracks, feral cat prints and small canine paw prints which I believe were left by a wandering fox. There are also tiny tunnels left by mice and voles. One of these ended at a disturbed patch in the snow pack, which looked like it was made with a broom. Curious, I went online and learned that the tiny rodent ended his days as a late night snack for an owl. The broom like marks were made by the predator’s wings as it plunged into the snow where it could hear its dinner below the surface of the snow.

Looking at all these tracks in the snow, I imagine my backyard as looking like a Disney movie after dark, with animals dancing in circles and singing happy songs before banding together to help Snow White. One of my nocturnal visitors is literally a “creature” of habit. Each morning, I find a solitary set of deer tracks traversing the full length of my property. I wish I had paid better attention when my grandfather tried to teach me about tracking. By just looking at a deer’s tracks he could tell its gender; it had something to do with a subtle difference in the shape of the space between the two sides of the hoof.

I am not sure why but I think “my deer” is a solitary buck who walks between my workshop and the neighbor’s fence before walking through my garden with a stop to see if my wife threw out any carrot or apple peelings. He then walks between my greenhouse and my storage shed before traveling down my neighbor’s sidewalk before crossing over to mine. He completes his journey by strolling past my living room window. I assume that he looks both ways before crossing our street and slipping into a thicket. He has followed this precise route, and I am assuming at the exact same time, every night for the last week.

I think my favorite part about a winter walk is the quiet in the snow covered woods. Sometimes, the only sound is the squeaking sound of my boots sinking into the snow or a distant bird call. It just takes a slight breeze to cause the naked trees to sway back and forth causing them to creak like a wooden ship arriving at anchor. At points where branches cross over one another or a storm battered tree leans against its neighbor, the wind taps them together making a sound like the wooden blocks in a kindergarten band.

Years ago, when I lived in the midst of the Allegheny National Forest I experienced the most perfect silence I’ve ever experienced in my life. I worked the night shift in a factory about 35 miles away in Titusville. Since our rutted dirt road was impassible in the winter, I had to park my truck on the state highway and walk home through the woods in the dark. One night, about 2 a.m. I was headed home as the snow began to fall. The flakes were as big as silver dollars and sparkled in the moon light. I stopped to watch a couple of deer browsing on some hemlock branches when I heard a low roar. I was confused at first, thinking the sound might be coming from an animal I didn’t recognize, perhaps a bobcat. Suddenly, I realized what I was hearing, I was listening to the snow falling on to the snow covered ground. The one and only time I have heard this very peaceful sound in my life. It was a beautiful experience that I will remember until the day I die.

The weatherman on the 6 p.m. news just predicted more snow tomorrow but just a dusting. According to his long term forecast, next week will be much warmer with temperatures rising into the 40s. We will have some snow but it will be too warm for the white stuff to stick around. As we get into March, we will see less and less snow and more and more mild days.

I have to admit that I won’t miss the winter as spring takes its place. With all that is going on this year, it seems like this winter has gone on forever. I am anxious to see the snowdrops bloom in my yard and the birds building their nests. Before this winter leaves, I must remember to thank L.L Bean for warm winter clothes and Mother Nature for putting on an enjoyable show.    

 - Jim Busch

February 17, 2021

I am a dedicated journal keeper. I have stacks of notebooks on all sorts of subjects. I keep lists of books I have read and books I would like to read. I have books full of quotations I like and others where I have copied poems that I find interesting. One of my favorite journals is a five year journal.

I started keeping this journal in 2017, after buying a blank five year diary produced by Forbes Magazine at the Goodwill. It had a motivational quote at the top of each page along with a month and a day. Below this are five places to enter the year and write a few lines about the day’s activities. I have been religiously making entries into this booklet since this date five years ago. I highly recommend this exercise to anyone. I have found it offers a unique perspective on how we spend our days and how our lives change from year to year.

Five years ago on this date (2017) I was concerned for my own health, I had a heart catheterization and was waiting for the results. I had just retired the first of that year and was afraid I was going to be “one of those guys who retires and keels over a month later.” It turned out to be a false alarm and the tests found nothing wrong with my ticker. Four years ago (2018) I wrote about my daughter–in-law, Erin’s, battle with breast cancer and three years ago (2019) I spent the day preparing a program I gave on a family writing project that I gave in early March at the Ligonier Library.   

Last year’s entry (2020) made me realize how much the world has changed since the coronavirus pandemic struck. Last February 17th I went to Panera for a leisurely breakfast while waiting for the library to open. Then I went to the Penn Hills Library to do some research for a presentation I planned to give at an advertising conference in Orlando, Florida. I never gave the presentation, the country was in full crisis mode by its scheduled date in April. I remember calling the conference organizer and asking him if he thought “this corona thing” was going to hurt attendance and suggesting we postpone the gathering. He told me that I was being paranoid and that he didn’t anticipate any problems and asked me not to share my concerns with anyone else.

I spent several hours at the library doing research for my presentation and on an idea for an article I wanted to pitch to the Mon Valley Independent. I took my time, talking with the librarian and some of the other “regulars.” Reading this made me realize how much I miss just “hanging out” at the library before everything was locked down. I made a stop at the Goodwill and Home Depot before going home.

The following week, I made a trip to the Heinz History Center to donate a few items and do some research for a magazine article I was thinking of writing. I remember sitting in the center’s fourth floor library reading old documents. I had some trouble with the microfiche machine and the nice archivist who came over and leaned down a few inches next to my head to show me how to find what I wanted. This was before we had to treat all strangers like they were an angry rattlesnake, keeping them at a distance so they can’t hurt us.   

That night, my wife and I had dinner at the Rodos Greek Restaurant in White Oak. Rodos is a small neighborhood restaurant with great gyros and Greek salads. It is quite popular and on most nights before the pandemic hit, the small round tables in their dining room were all filled with happy diners. Rodos’ crowded dining room would be a death trap these days.

Looking at my journal made me realize how often I ate meals sitting in a restaurant. In the last two weeks of February, I went to China Jade twice, once with my wife and once with my friend Ralph for lunch. I had lunch with my sister at the Acapulco Mexican Restaurant and attended a family birthday party for my grandson at the Oya Korean Restaurant in Mt. Lebanon. In the last week of February, we invited our neighbor Karl to dinner and we sat and talked for several hours after dessert. This was a melancholy memory as Karl passed away in the summer.   

Last February was a busy time for my career as a freelance journalist. I attended an opening for the new “5th Avenue Businesses” exhibit at the McKeesport History and Heritage Center where I interviewed dozens of people for the paper. I also covered a crowded gospel music event for Black History month and again spent an hour interviewing people about the program. On February 27th, I attended a lecture and reading by author Colum McCann with other Tube City Writers at the Carnegie Lecture Hall in Oakland. This proved to be the last time I was in a crowded theater before the lockdown took effect.  

I flipped ahead in my journal to discover when I first made reference to the coronavirus. On March 30th, I wrote the following lines:

Went to the library, Half Price Books and Monroeville Goodwill. Lots of stuff closing down over Coronavirus. Loren notified me that the Orlando conference is on hold, will let me know when new date is announced.

The following day’s entry recorded the last time I sat down in a restaurant in the past year. My wife and I spent the day shopping together and ate dinner at Atrias in the South Hills. Going there for their St Patrick’s Day menu is a bit of a tradition for us and I will miss ordering my “Dublin Lawyer” or “Guinness Stew” this year. Later that week, I wrote the following entry:

March 16, 2020—Took a long walk around Indian Lake and then went to the Irwin Goodwill—their last day as they are closing indefinitely tomorrow because of the Coronavirus.

This was the beginning of the lockdown and the beginning of the dying. A few days later on the 19th, I wrote the first entry of these Corona Diaries. I thought that this would be a short term writing project. I had no idea that I would still be writing these entries almost a year later.

Reading back through my five year journal reminded me of how much my life has changed in the past year. In the last year, I learned my wife had cancer, a good friend and neighbor passed away and another friend is seriously ill. While I was enduring these personal problems, the entire world was facing a deadly disease and hundreds of thousands of people were dying. I wish that I could travel back in time as easily as I can go back and read about better days in my journal.   

- Jim Busch

February 16, 2020

Tonight, my wife made me a batch of her famous potato pancake’s for dinner. Aside from being a delicious and filling meal, they are one of the last remnants of my religious upbringing. Today is Shrove Tuesday, the last day before the Lenten season leading up to Easter begins. Traditionally, Lent was a time of fasting and Shrove, or Pancake Tuesday, was the last time to use up all the grease in the pantry and the last time to enjoy a big meal before starting the six weeks of fasting. This is also the idea behind Mardi Gras in New Orleans or the Carnival celebrated by my German ancestors.     

I have always been addicted to carbs so I always looked forward to eating one of my favorite foods, pancakes, for dinner. When I married my wife, she continued and improved upon this tradition by making German potato pancakes.  When our children were young she and my mother-in-law would also make Fastnachts, German donuts made from deep fried bread dough. The German word “Fastnacht” literally translates to “eve of the fast” because this was when they were traditionally served.

In earlier times, devout Catholics ate very sparingly and gave up all meat and desirable foods for the six weeks of Lent. I often wonder if it was coincidence or intention that this long period of fasting coincided with the leanest time of the year. In the days before modern food preservation techniques were developed, most family’s diets were quite limited as winter drew to a close and the food stored from the harvest was almost exhausted.

By the time I came along, the Lenten fast was a mere shadow of what it had been in earlier times. During Lent we refrained from eating meat on Fridays and each member of the family was expected to “give up” something we enjoyed. I usually gave up candy bars or soda. The only member of the family who really seemed to suffer during Lent was my dad who felt that a day without beef was like a day without sunshine. He rejoiced when Vatican II had repealed the year round ban on meat on Fridays.  He enjoyed a good fish sandwich from the Anchor Inn Tavern but it didn’t take the place of a good juicy hamburger.

For the seven weeks of Lent, I had to listen to the personal conspiracy theory that meatless Fridays stemmed from an old time pope, he was never sure which one, who had secret investments in the Italian fishing industry. My dad was a good Catholic but he could never agree with the no meat policy. He once challenged our parish priest to show him where in the bible Jesus told his apostles to skip meat on Fridays. I think he was convinced that the Last Supper consisted of a steak dinner.

I rather enjoyed meatless Fridays, it was the only time that my mother made Kraft macaroni and cheese in the little blue boxes which I greatly enjoyed. I was also fond of cheese sandwiches, toasted golden brown in a cast iron skillet with lots of butter and piled with a layer of crisp sweet pickle chips. Once or twice I got a real treat from the grocery store’s freezer case, a seafood platter in a shiny aluminum tray with fish sticks, shrimp, a crab cake, French fries and a tiny square of cherry cobbler. I thought I was eating like a king when my mother heated one of these for me.

I can’t say that I enjoyed Ash Wednesday very much. Since it was a school day, we got up early and went to mass. Our regular church was Saint Mary German on Olive Street in McKeesport, but on Ash Wednesday we would go to St. Angela’s in White Oak. They had an early mass and it was closer to our home so I could get to school sooner. I never liked having the priest smudging a cross on my forehead with ashes. I was embarrassed to have the big dirty black splotch on my face. My mother gave me strict instructions not to wash it off until my bath that night before bedtime. I can remember going into school late having to take my excuse to the school secretary and then making a fuss walking into the middle of my class with that thing on my forehead. I really shouldn’t have been embarrassed as the majority of my classmates in heavily ethnic McKeesport had cruciform smudges on their foreheads as well.

For the most part, I enjoyed going to church. My love of art and of theater may have its roots in St. Mary’s. Built by McKeesport’s prosperous German community at the turn of the 20th century, it was one of the largest churches in a city filled with churches. Later, I learned that it was considered a masterpiece of Romanesque Church architecture. Its timber framed vaulted ceiling was supported by massive arches held up by thick marble columns. Four foot tall bronze lanterns with stained glass panes hung from chains in a double row from the timbers; as a child I wondered how they changed the bulbs and my dad told me that angels flew up to the ceiling to do the job.

The church was decorated with beautiful sculptures and massive paintings. Niches on the walls of the church were filled with statues depicting the Stations of the Cross. We usually sat in the same pew near the statue showing the scourging of Christ. I can remember ignoring the service and being transfixed by the pained look on Christ’s face. Above the carved marble alter was a large half domed ceiling with a fresco of God on his heavenly throne surrounded with a host of angels painted in bright colors and gold leaf.

The height of the Lenten season was Good Friday, probably my favorite time to be in church. In those days everything in McKeesport, including the schools, closed on Good Friday afternoon. My dad had the day off work and we went to church to take part in the Passion. The Passion was a dramatic reading of events of the original Good Friday. The principal reader was the leader of our church choir. My dad knew him and he worked in the U.S Steel National Tube Works a few blocks down the hill from the church’s front door. He had a booming baritone voice that would have been at home in any opera house in any city in the world. When he read the Passion, the congregation felt like they were in Jerusalem in the time of Christ. We didn’t see many movies, and I had never seen a play at that point of my life so I was taken with the entire ceremony.

Just for old time’s sake, I drove to Olive Street to the site of St Mary’s not long ago. The spot where the church and the old brick parochial school stood is now a big empty lot. The only thing that remains is the second school building built in the 1950’s. This is a monstrosity of a building with a flat roof, smooth white bricks and metal panels in primary colors placed randomly here and there. It is a shame the original school building and church could not have been saved and repurposed as a community center or something like that. I understand the diocese saved a lot of the artworks before the church was demolished.

I am no longer a member of the Catholic Church. My religious beliefs have evolved as I have grown older but my family’s religion is still part of who I am. I have fond memories of how McKeesport used to be and of spending time with my parents in the very uncomfortable dark wood pews.   

 - Jim Busch

February 15, 2021

A few days ago, I wrote about my niece, Marcy’s family. Marcy’s son Brady contracted a case of Covid-19, probably at the high school he attends. Since Marcy’s family lives in a small three bedroom apartment, they feared that the entire family would contract the disease. This past week we learned that these fears were justified.

Marcy arranged for her and her husband Nick to be tested as well as her older son, Andrew. As Marcy feared, they all tested positive for the coronavirus. Within the last few days they have all exhibited symptoms of the disease but nothing that requires hospitalization, so far at least.

Marcy has been running a low grade fever and has no energy. Her muscles are stiff and sore and she feels achy all over. She says that she feels, “like a linebacker the morning after a tough game.” Marcy, who is a nurse working in nursing homes, has been treating Covid patients for the last year. Having the disease herself, has given her a new appreciation for what her mostly elderly patients have gone through. Her experiences at work has also given her an understanding of how serious this disease can be. Though the symptoms she is feeling are much the same as a bad case of the flu, she knows that Covid-19 can take a deadly turn for the worse at any time.

Nick, Marcy’s husband, has all the same symptoms of the disease as she does plus he has been dealing with a lingering cough. In the case of the flu, this would be annoying but not of great concern. With Covid, any indication of respiratory problems is disconcerting; most fatal cases of the disease stem from the patient’s inability to breathe. When the first cases of Covid were discovered, it was described as, “a new form of pneumonia reported in China.” Marcy is well aware that a “slight cough” can quickly escalate requiring hospitalization and putting the patient on a ventilator. Despite her own illness, she is carefully monitoring Nick’s pulse oxygen levels.

Marcy’s sons, Brady and Andrew, are also weak, stiff and sore. They both also have lost their sense of taste and smell, classic symptoms produced by the coronavirus. Brady who is 16 and in relatively good health is likely to recover quickly from the disease. As the first person in his family to contract the disease, he naturally feels guilty for bringing the disease home to his family. He believed his school district’s assurances that the precautions they had taken would keep their students safe while attending classes. Encouraged by his mother, Brady carefully followed all of the anti Covid protocols but to no avail.

Andrew, Marcy’s older son, though only 23-years old is at much greater risk from the coronavirus than the other members of his family. He suffers from asthma and carries an inhaler with him wherever he goes. Asthma patients are much more vulnerable to Covid-19 due to their compromised respiratory system. Andrew also suffers from extreme anxiety and has a great fear of the disease.

A recent honors graduate of Penn State, he chose to self-quarantine himself than to enter the job market. His fear of contracting the disease led him to shelter in place in his bedroom rather than moving on to the next stage of his life. Despite his efforts to protect himself, the disease found its way to him. He is quite distressed by his situation which can exacerbate his asthma and put him at even greater risk.

The impact of the disease that has hit Marcy’s immediate family has also been felt by her extended family. Marcy’s mother and father are both in their seventies and not in the best of health. They are greatly concerned about their daughter and her family. They feel helpless because they can’t go to their child and their grandchildren to help them in their time of need. They are also concerned for their own health. Though their contact with their children and their families has been limited, there is still a chance that they may have transmitted the virus to them. If we have learned anything about the coronavirus in the past year is that it is very hard to defend against. Despite our best efforts, it has worked its way into the White House and into the Pentagon, two of the best defended spots on earth. This is a disease programmed by nature to find any chink in our defenses, no matter how small.

The next few weeks or so will be a tense one for our family. My wife is in constant contact with her sister, Marcy’s mother, to keep updated on their condition. We are anxious for any news about the progress of the disease in Marcy’s household. In truth, there is very little any of us can do to help them get through this, the disease just has to run its course. With any luck, Marcy’s family will start to see signs of improvement in the next week. We are all hoping that their cases will be mild ones and won’t result in long term effects. With the exception of Andrew’s asthma, they do not have any conditions which could put their lives at risk, so the odds are in their favor but this fact doesn’t provide much solace when those you love are ill. All we can do is hope for the best.

Watching Marcy’s family go through this mental and physical ordeal really brought the pandemic into focus for me. We human beings lived in small tribal and family groups for most of our history. Our brains are not sufficiently evolved to fully comprehend huge numbers like 400,000 plus people dying of Covid-19. We need to get up close and personal to really understand something fully. I can understand how Marcy’s family feels and what they are going through. Their experience is no different than what other families are going through all over the world and by extension, I now have a better understanding of the suffering brought about by this terrible disease.

- Jim Busch

February 14, 2021

Today, is a very special Valentine’s Day for me. It is the 50th Valentine’s Day I have celebrated with my wife, we started dating in the fall of 1970 and were seriously smitten by February. For the first time in my life, I went to Johnston the Florist and sent her flowers. She got me the Johnny Cash Show album, I still have it. That day was the first time we used the “L” word with one another, so it was the start of a long and beautiful relationship.

This Valentine’s Day is also very special because it could very well be the last one we share together. Eleven months ago, Glenda was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. The doctor told her that if left untreated she could only expect to live another six months. Through an aggressive round of chemotherapy followed by a series of radiation treatments we have managed to get at least twice that amount of time.

In writing the previous sentence, I suddenly realized that when referring to Glenda’s cancer battle, I consistently use “we” or “our.” After five decades of sharing everything in our lives, this seems to be the natural way to describe what’s going on in our world. We may have joint custody of her tumor but she is the one who is facing death and no matter how close we are to one another, we all die alone.

For obvious reasons, I wanted this year to be special. The pandemic made this a difficult task, we were never much for going out to dinner for Valentine’s Day, my wife prefers to fix a romantic dinner for me to celebrate the holiday. This year was no exception, she made a wonderful surf and turf dinner with steak and coconut shrimp, baked potatoes and brownie sundaes for dessert.

Traditionally, my Valentine’s gift to her was some sort of an experience. For many years when our kids were little, we would leave them with my mother-in-law and go off for a long weekend somewhere, just the two of us. In later years, I would buy us tickets for a show, a concert, the ballet or the opera which my wife loves. This year with Covid running rampant in the U.S. and the theaters all closed, I had to come up with something else.

I have learned that once you reveal your e-mail address to anyone in Pittsburgh’s cultural district, every theater venue and performing group will stalk you like lions on the scent of a crippled gazelle. My inbox is constantly bombarded with e-mails offering me ticket packages or telling me that if I don’t donate to them today, western civilization will once again fall to the barbarians. Normally, my right index finger instinctively reaches for the “delete” key without opening the e-mail when I see them in my preview pane. I was about to do this to a message from the Pittsburgh Opera, when I saw “Special Valentine” in the subject line.

Intrigued, I opened the Opera e-mail and found the answer to my holiday gift problem. For a small donation, a member of the opera company would send my wife a personalized message from me along with a video-gram featuring a member of their company singing an aria for my wife. They would send the video-gram to her at noon on Valentine’s Day. I took out my credit card, made a donation and chose an aria from their list. This was the hardest part of the process. My wife is a big fan of the opera but I am not. She would have left me in a minute, if she had been propositioned by Luciano Pavarotti, trading up to another fat man, but one who could sing. I am neither a big fan of the opera or very knowledgeable about them. I chose an aria whose title contained the word “amor” and clicked submit.       

Since the aria wouldn’t arrive until noon I wanted something to give my wife in the morning. I bought her a selection of scratch-off lottery tickets featuring a Valentine’s Day design theme. My wife’s taste in candy is rather simple. Most of the chocolates in the traditional red heart shaped box are not to her liking. I found a box of her favorite Hershey bars in special Valentine’s wrapping, so I had that part covered. A copy of the latest Psychology Today magazine and I was all set.

In my studio, I worked up a design and made her a Valentine’s card featuring a cut paper design and a quote from Dr. Howard Hendricks saying:

“A good marriage is when you’re married not to someone you can live with, but to someone you really cannot live without.”

This quote resonated with me because I was facing the possibility of losing someone I “really cannot live without.”

I had seen a small plaque with a romantic quote on it in a catalog that gave me the spark of an idea. I collect all sorts of items in my shop/studio that might provide materials for future projects. I had a large oversized aluminum beer can from the Hofbräuhaus on the South Side; my daughter-law had placed it in our recycle bin after our New Year’s dinner. I cut the ends off one of the cans, split it on one side and flattened it out. I then used an embossing tool to draw a heart pressing it into the soft metal. Using the same tool, I wrote the following words in the heart:

“I love sharing my life with you!”   

Using a small hammer, I then textured the back side of the metal to complete the repousse process before highlighting the front of the piece with alcohol based inks that would adhere to the smooth metal. To complete the project I mounted it onto a thin piece of plywood from my scrap box. I wrote a sentiment on the back of the plaque and dated it. I put everything in a paper bag I had decorated with cut out hearts and I was ready for Cupid’s arrival.

This morning, I gave my wife her Valentine’s bag. She was delighted with the card and the plaque, finding it hard to believe that it had started life as a humble beer can. She gave me a vintage book from a series I enjoy and a gift card to my favorite wood working shop. A few minutes after noon, I told her to check her e-mail which she did. After a few minutes she asked me, “Am I looking for something in particular?” I asked if she had received a message from the opera.

She checked again and still nothing. I was frantically searching my e-mail for the confirmation when she refreshed the inbox and it appeared. Apparently, the Opera has trouble with their computers like the rest of us. We held hands while she listened to “her aria,” then she kissed me and gave me a hug. Later, when I overheard her telling her sisters about the aria, I knew I had accomplished my goal of making this Valentine’s Day special for my wife.   

 - Jim Busch

February 13, 2021

Like everyone else, the pandemic has put a cramp in my wife and my travels. We haven’t been more than 25 miles from our home since last January. Fortunately, we can still revisit the places we love in our minds. This evening my wife and I watched an episode of David Rosendo’s Travelscope on WQED’s Create channel. This time, Rosendo was visiting San Antonio, Texas. We paused the program several times to talk about our shared memories of this beautiful Texas town.

We talked about spending time strolling San Antonio’s Riverwalk and taking a barge cruise on the San Antonio River. We recalled visiting the Alamo where Texas Rangers in big white Stetson hats strictly enforce rules about speaking only in whispers and showing reverence for the heroes who fell there. When David Rosendo visited the El Mercado, the city’s historic market square, we were delighted. It was during our first visit to the Mercado that we first tried elote, which is Mexican street corn slathered in mayonnaise and dusted with chili powder and cotija cheese, a treat we now make every summer when trucks loaded with sweet corn start showing up on Western Pennsylvania roadsides.

Rosendo ate dinner at the Mi Tierra restaurant and bakery where Glenda and I had lunch in San Antonio. As we discussed our meal there, I could almost taste the fajitas and burrito we shared. Our discussion of Mexican baked goods caused us to travel a few hundred miles north of Texas as we recalled having breakfast at La Panaderia, a wonderful neighborhood Mexican bakery. Living in Pittsburgh with a small Mexican immigrant community, we had no idea of the delicious diversity of Mexico’s baked goods. Our trip to Madison gave us a yummy lesson in this aspect of Mexico’s cuisine.

Our preferred mode of travel is the road trip. We have driven as far as Florida, New Orleans and Las Vegas. Glenda and I both find the freedom of the open road exhilarating; we like to have control of where we are going and when we want to stop. We are prone to take a detour whenever we see a sign pointing toward an interesting stopping place. We also do this on our trips down memory lane.

Our discussion of the Mexican bakery in Texas took us up north to the bakery in Madison which in turn took us back to the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum. We were lucky enough to be in Wisconsin’s Capitol while the museum was holding their annual Birds in Art exhibition. Prior to our trip, I had never heard of this museum or knew anything about the exhibit. We learned about it at the Chazen Museum of Art, learning that we were from out of town the receptionist at the Chazen told us that we should check out the “bird show at the Woodson.” Her advice led us on another unplanned detour and to a very memorable art show. We learned that the annual Birds in Art exhibit is one of the best shows of avian art in the nation.

My wife remembered a group of drawings of crows done in pen and ink. They were done by a graphic artist as she cared for her dying mother; each day she did a drawing that depicted the birds in the field outside her mother’s window and the sadness in her heart. I recalled a welded metal sculpture of abstract birds in flight. We both remembered a lovely stroll through the museum’s sculpture gardens before heading back to our hotel.

There are no Interstates in our memories, the paths through our minds are strictly winding two-lane Blue highways and a few dirt roads. Discussing the bird art took us back down south to our trip to the Everglades and the Florida Keys. I had a speaking engagement in Miami, so before heading home we took an excursion south. We recalled how we saw a tree on the far side of a lagoon that we believed was covered in white flowers and wondering what type of tree it was. All of a sudden the “flowers” all took off into the sky, we discovered the tree was the roosting place for hundreds of birds. During this trip to the Everglades we saw a Great Blue Heron spear a fish with its beak and an alligator catch and kill a big bass. We’ll never forget how quick the big reptile moved when the careless fish swam past it or the sound of the fish’s spine cracking as the gator closed its jaws.

Of course, this set us off on another journey down memory lane as we talked about the numerous wildlife encounters we have had on our travels. The big horn sheep watering in the Colorado River near its source in the Rockies, the horned toads and armadillos in Utah, the raccoon rummaging in our cooler in New York’s Allegheny State Park and the bobcat peering in our hotel room window in Arizona. Talk of the desert recalled the time when a tumbleweed blew in front of our car when my wife was driving through New Mexico at 80 miles an hour. The brittle ball of wooden branches exploded showering the windshield with fragments. It was scary at the time but now after the rough edges have worn off, the memory made us laugh.

After 50 years of traveling through life together, my wife and I have managed to accumulate a few things; we own our home and have some investments but our most treasured possessions are our memories. We’ve never been on a cruise or been to Europe but we’ve had a lot of fun. Glenda and I have always been blessed with an appreciation of the simple things in life. Making sandwiches on a blanket alongside the road suited us just fine, we didn’t need a gourmet meal in a fancy restaurant to make us happy as long as we were together.

Looking back on my life I have a bit of advice for young couples starting out. Save for retirement, it comes around quicker than you can appreciate. Save a little money away but also bank a good supply of memories. Don’t spend so much time thinking about what you want to do in the “When”; “when” you have more money, “when” you have more time or “when” things are perfect. Don’t wait for “when,” enjoy your “now”.

Squeeze every drop of joy out of every day, even the so called “ordinary” ones. Pay attention and fix every moment in your memory, don’t let a single smile, laugh or a touch fall through your fingers to be lost forever. It is these memories that will sustain you when old age inevitably slows you down and fences you in. I am absolutely certain that happy memories are God’s greatest gift.    

- Jim Busch

February 12, 2021

Today is Lincoln’s birthday. This is no longer a holiday in the United States. Old Abe’s birthday was combined with George Washington’s birthday to become Presidents Day in 1971. Even this “twofer” holiday is not a very big deal. Unlike other holidays, only government offices and banks close and about the only thing that the average person does to celebrate it is to shop for new sheets at a President’s Day white sale.

We American’s treat our holidays as days to celebrate rather than to commemorate. The statute combining the two president’s birthdays was part of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. This law, in addition to creating President’s Day, moved Columbus Day, Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day to ensure that they always fall on a Monday creating a three day weekend. This law was not intended to increase reverence for our past heroes but to facilitate long weekend vacations and partying. I am actually surprised that the Fourth of July wasn’t changed to “Some Random Monday in Early July Day.”

We may lay a few wreaths on Memorial Day or attend a Parade on Labor Day or Veteran’s Day but when most people think about these holidays, the first thing that pops in their mind is hotdogs and picnics. It’s good for people to have time off work and to spend time with their families, but I believe it is also important to remember what the days were originally intended to remind us about.

My children were unfortunate to have a father who considers himself an amateur historian. While I enjoy a picnic as much as the next guy, I wanted my children to understand their country’s history and why we celebrate our heroes on certain days. On Memorial Day, I told them about my dad’s brother Luke who served in the Navy in World War II. He contracted a disease in the Pacific that the VA doctors couldn’t identify or cure.

My uncle Luke died from the mystery disease eight years after the war on my first birthday in 1953. I also told them about my mother’s cousin, Thom, who fell to a sniper’s bullet on the Italian front after surviving the invasion and battles of North Africa. I tried to impress the fact that these long dead relatives were not just black and white faces in fading photographs, but were real live people who suffered and died for their country.

On Independence Day, I insisted on reading the Declaration of Independence and talking about the American Revolution. I even made them watch the musical 1776 with me. The movie was a bit whimsical, but it was accurate in most respects and certainly entertaining in a campy sort of way.  On Labor Day, I sang some of the old labor songs and shared with them some of the stories that were passed down to me. I told them about how their great grandmother had sent a bundle of hand me down clothes to her sister whose husband was a coal miner in Fayette County. Her sister’s children were happy to wear their “new” clothes to school but that night the company police knocked on the door asking where the clothes came from. Their teacher had reported that they were wearing clothes made of cloth that was not available at the company store.

On Veteran’s Day, I told them about their grandfather’s service in the war and showed them the picture of him in his Navy uniform. I told them about their great Uncle Glen who had been an Army engineer and their Grandmother’s cousin, Jack, who was a radioman in the infantry. Thanksgiving involved a discussion of the Pilgrims, the Mayflower Compact and a viewing of Plymouth Adventure starring Spencer Tracy.

When Lincoln’s Birthday rolled around, my kids probably considered running away from home. Since I was a young child, Lincoln has been my hero. I would watch Henry Fonda as Young Mr. Lincoln or Raymond Massey as Abe Lincoln in Illinois. I read every book on Lincoln in the school library. I liked everything about Lincoln, his wit and eloquence, his courage and resolve. I was particularly taken with Lincoln’s passion for learning and the fact that he was a self-taught man. Somewhere along the way, I acquired a plastic statue of Lincoln as a young man wearing work clothes, his sleeves rolled up and walking with a book held in his hand. I always imagined it represented Lincoln walking five miles to return a borrowed book. It was one of my most treasured possessions and still is.

As I got older, my obsession with Abraham Lincoln continued to grow. Every time I come home with a new book on him from the library or a secondhand shop, my wife shakes her head and asks, “What could you possibly learn about old Abe that you don’t already know?” Much to her surprise, I am always learning more about this remarkable man and the more I learn, the more my admiration for him grows. I had always admired his intellect but the more I study his life and his words, I’ve come to admire his fundamental goodness as a man as well as his compassion.

On this particular Lincoln’s Birthday, the United States Senate is trying former President Donald Trump for inciting insurrection. As bad as the January attack on our Capitol was, Lincoln faced far worse. He was faced with a civil war that threatened to tear the country apart. Lincoln has much to teach us about how to navigate these troubling times.

Lincoln was vilified by his opponents in both the north and the south. His policies were attacked and he was personally insulted; his opposition called him “the original gorilla” for his rugged feature and lanky build. They attacked his wife and his family. Especially cruel for a man who dedicated his life to learning and who loved reading Shakespeare and Euclid, they called him an “ignorant Yahoo from the backwoods.”

How did Lincoln respond to the attacks on him? He answered insults and attacks with humor and good will toward others.  When he was accused of being “two-faced,” Lincoln’s self-deprecating response was to say, “If I had another face, would I be using this one?”

One thing he did not do was lash out and trade insults with his opponents. He never spoke harsh words about even the confederate leaders. When news came to Washington of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Lincoln asked the band at the White House to play “Dixie” in honor of his defeated foes. Lincoln’s instruction to his generals was to treat the former confederates with respect and kindness. He saw them as his fellow countrymen and wanted to welcome them back into the fold.

I wish our leaders of both parties would take a page out of Lincoln’s book and learn to work with those who disagree with them and to show civility in their dealings with others. Instead of trying to neutralize his opposition, he invited them into his inner circle as described in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of him, Team of Rivals. His goal was not domination but reconciliation.

I believe that all of our leaders should regularly read Lincoln’s second inaugural, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.” I think this would be a better way of celebrating Lincoln’s birthday than holding a white sale.          

 - Jim Busch

February 11, 2021

When I was a kid, my dad used to bring his work home and I loved it. He was a precision machinist for Westinghouse Electric and was very proud of his skills. Every so often, he’d bring home his Starrett micrometers to demonstrate his skill at measuring things down to the thousandth or even ten thousandth of an inch.

He would pick up a newspaper and twisting the barrel of the micrometer would show me exactly how the thickness of the paper was expressed in a fraction of an inch. He then would pluck a hair off my head and show me that it measured about forty thousandths of an inch. I would then find other impossibly thin things for him to measure, hair from the dog, a leaf from the yard, a piece of grass etc. Sometimes, he would let me use it to measure something which required a very delicate touch.

As much as I enjoyed playing around with the micrometer, I liked looking at the “prints” he brought home to show my mother and me what he was working on. She wasn’t overly impressed but I delighted in looking at the stiff blue paper with the interesting drawings and precise lettering covering them. My dad told me that an engineer would have an idea for a piece of machinery and would have a draftsman draw them on the blue paper.

It was my dad’s job to take that picture and a piece of steel and make the thing the engineer had imagined. He showed me a numbered list on the corner of the blue print that told him all the things he needed to do and the order he had to do them in; this part of the blueprint was called the “Order of operations.” My dad impressed on me the importance of plans, he said without knowing exactly what we want to make out of our life and a good idea of the steps we need to get there, we could wind up in the gutter.

I didn’t pay much attention to this lesson in school. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. I studied the things I liked with no idea of where they were taking me. It wasn’t until I was married and learning to navigate the world of business that my dad’s blueprint lessons started to sink in. I learned the importance of planning and goal setting to achieve success as a salesperson. I became a student of business and made a point of reading several business books a month to expand my knowledge and enhance my skills. Many of these books were full of fluff and nonsense and a waste of time, but others were helpful, and one was life changing.

Very few books have affected me like Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It wasn’t like any other business or self-help book I had read. The thing that impressed me was that Covey’s book didn’t tell its readers how to make a lot of money and become a CEO; it covered all spheres of one’s life, business, relationships, families and even the spiritual. It wasn’t a “one size fits all plan” but rather laid down a framework for discovering your own path and setting personal goals. For the last 30 years, I’ve tried to apply Covey’s seven habits to my life. I have reread this book at least once a year since the mid 90s and always find something worthwhile in each reading.

The second habit is: “Begin with the end in mind.” Covey asks his readers to conduct a thought experiment by asking them to imagine visiting one’s own funeral in the distant future. He asks them to imagine what the mourners, coworkers, neighbors, family members, etc. would say. He then asked them if this is how the reader would want to be remembered. Covey’s lesson is that we need to live our lives so at the end we will not regret what we have done.

Stephen Covey introduced me to the concept of “Mission Statement.” A mission statement is a concise statement of what we want to accomplish with our life. He suggested writing one for every aspect of our lives, what we want to accomplish at work, in our marriage, as a parent and more. He warns his readers to make sure that the goals contained in their mission statements reflect what they truly want to accomplish and not what society expects them to desire.

I worked for a long time on developing a personal mission statement. I thought about the things that truly brought me joy and the things that I was good at doing. I realized that I found joy in learning new things and fitting these bits of knowledge together like puzzle pieces to create a cohesive picture of the world. I also realized that I was so thrilled about what I had learned that I wanted to share it with others. I wanted to share this knowledge to help others on their path through life. I also realized that I had been gifted with a good sense of humor so I wanted to use this to help lift people’s spirits, another way to help others make it through life.

My mission statement became, “My purpose in life is to study and to learn from experience, to process and distill this knowledge into wisdom and share this information with others, not to impress them but rather to help them get through life. Since life is both hard and sad, I will make my mission to amuse the people I encounter and try to leave them with a smile on their face.”

This was an ambitious goal; I essentially wanted to become a court jester. Like King Lear’s fool, I wanted to be both wise and funny. I missed the mark on becoming wise but I have made a lot of people laugh over the years, sometimes intentionally but more often by my bumbling.

This mission statement has affected everything I have done in my life. It is why I became a professional trainer, a public speaker and a writer. It has made me a better husband, father and grandfather. My goal of amusing the world has freed me from the fear most people have of looking like a fool. It makes me less self-conscious and allows me to speak my mind.

The pandemic has made acting on this part of my mission statement difficult. In normal times, I like to make as many people as possible smile. I crack a little joke or compliment them about something. I tell people I like their car, their clothes, their smile, their children, every person has something about them that is praiseworthy. I crack little jokes or laugh at theirs. When I do a training session or give a speech, I inject lots of humor which makes the lessons more memorable as well as more enjoyable.

The pandemic has cramped my style a bit. I simply don’t encounter as many people as I did in 2020 B.C. (Before Covid). Since I can’t let the disease keep me from my self-appointed mission, I have had to find other means to achieve my goals. These diary entries are part of my plan, I have continued writing to share what I’ve learned during quarantine. I have also continued my practice of sharing weekly motivational quotes with many of my friends and associates via e-mail.

Social media has allowed me to put a smile on people’s faces. In fact, this has expanded my reach. I have a number of people who like to follow the adventures of “Hooten, my loyal watch owl.” Hooten is a plaster sculpture of a Great Horned Owl. Hooten lived for several years on a fencepost in our backyard but he was an abject failure at scaring birds and rodents away from our veggies. Since being sacked from his job in our vegetable patch, Hooten has lived on my porch.

To amuse my family, I have been dressing Hooten up for holidays for years. During the pandemic, I have started sharing the details of Hooten’s life on social media. Today, I spent about an hour and a half working on Hooten’s Valentine’s Day attire. Since this is a couple’s holiday, Hooten was joined by Hootina, his girlfriend. She also got to don her holiday finery.

I always write a brief narrative about Hooten’s adventures and over the years he has taken on a personality of his own. When I post his picture and story on social media he invariably gets more likes and shares than anything else that I post. It does my heart good that Hooten gives people a reason to smile, even if it lasts just a minute.        

I don’t have a lot of money, I don’t live in a big house and I drive an eleven year old Subaru, but I am very happy in my life. I have people who love me and I know what I’m trying to accomplish with my life. When I look back over my life, I am satisfied with the way things worked out and at my funeral, people can say he accomplished what he set out to do. That’s enough for me.     

- Jim Busch

February 10, 2021

I was watching the CBS morning news today when a small “filler” story caught my attention. It seems that today is the 50th anniversary of the release of Carole King’s Tapestry album. This record and James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James along with a little Johnny Cash formed the soundtrack of my youth.

I grew up loving music. My mother was addicted to television, but when my dad was off work, he liked to listen to music on our cabinet stereo. He especially liked crooners, Honky-Tonk piano and horns. His record collection included a lot of Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, and New Orleans trumpeter Al Hirt. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana brass was a special favorite of his.

In his younger years, he traveled around the country looking for work and adventure; once, while the Tijuana Brass was playing, he told me about his time living in a boarding house in San Antonio, Texas. He told me about seeing the Alamo, he was surprised by how small it was, and the food. Without much money in his pocket, he subsisted on tamales recalling how one Sunday morning he heard a street vendor below his window. He tossed her a quarter and she threw three big tamales wrapped in corn husks up to him on the second floor; “that Mexican gal had a throwing arm like a quarterback.”

When my sister left home, I inherited her record player. It looked like an ugly maroon suitcase with gold plastic knobs on its side. The first record I remember owning was The Ballad of Davy Crockett on a small yellow plastic record. I literally wore out its grooves by playing it over and over as I sang along. At the National Record Mart by the railroad tracks in McKeesport, I bought a “45” of Johnny Horton’s Ballad of New Orleans followed shortly by his Sink the Bismarck. I enjoyed these historical ballads because of my love of history.

I bought my first album with money I made mowing lawns. It was Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John.” I loved the title song about a heroic miner, but my favorite song on the album was “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette. This song’s lyrics were horribly inappropriate for a nine year old boy,

Tell Saint Peter at the golden gate, that I hate to make him wait,

But I just gotta have another cigarette!

As a young boy, I had very limited funds and this led me to develop rather eclectic musical tastes. I acquired most of my growing music collection from the Sparkle Super Market a block away from my home. They had a bin of LP’s which sold for the princely sum of 77¢ each. Each of these albums had a hole punched in the upper right hand corner of the jacket. Later, I learned that this meant they were “remainders;” records which had been returned from the record stores where they had been placed on consignment. The hole in the jacket prevented them from being sold as new records.

You never knew what you would find in the Sparkle Market record bin. Much to his delight, my dad found, “Won’t you Come Home Bill Bailey and other Honky-Tonk Favorites” there. I wasn’t very fussy about what I bought; with money burning a hole in my pocket, I just wanted something new to listen to. My selections ranged from a collection of Sousa Marches, to Spike Jones. A record of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Eroica, introduced me to classical music.

On one occasion I simply couldn’t decide between two records I really wanted. Since the Sparkle bin never contained the same records from week to week, I couldn’t wait for my next allowance. Fortunately, my mother came through with an advance and I was able to add both “Ed McCurdy Sings Songs of the Old West” and Ed McCurdy’s Sea Shanties and Ballads” to my collection. I recently read that sea shanties have found renewed popularity with groups of people getting together to sing them via Zoom. I have always been a bit ahead of my time.

One of the great disappointments of my life is my complete lack of musical talent. I love to sing but couldn’t carry a tune if my life depended on it. I have no sense of rhythm and the only thing I can play is the radio. Once, as a child, inspired by seeing one on the Roy Roger’s Show, I bought an old fashioned “Jaw Harp” at Lou Oddo’s Hobby shop.  This is the instrument one sees in some Hillbilly bands; it’s held between the lips and plucked to produce a metallic rhythm. Tried as I might, I couldn’t get it to produce a sound but I did manage to chip a tooth in my attempt.

Any hope that I had of ever being a musician was smashed on June 6, 1964 at my sixth grade concert at Lincoln School; I remember the date because I was hoping to watch a Walter Cronkite special on TV commemorating the 20th anniversary of D-Day. After months of practice, Miss Ulster, our music teacher, ripped my “flutophone” out of my hands and said, “Just stand in the back and move your lips, DO NOT make a sound.” She walked away muttering something about “in 30 years of teaching I never had a student who was so hopeless.”   

While Miss Ulster dashed my hopes of becoming a world class flutophonist, she didn’t dull my love of music. Growing up in the golden age of rock music, I, of course, fell in love with country music.  This is long before anyone listened to this type of music north of the Mason- Dixon line. I couldn’t get enough of Porter Wagoner, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and Loretta Lynn. I liked the stories in the country ballads and their creative interpretation of the English language. I think one of the most interesting rhymes in Lynn’s Coal Miner’s Daughter is,

The work we done was hard

We’d go to sleep at night because we was tarred

I recall during a senior assembly at McKeesport Area High School, they polled the students to see which fantasy band they would have play at the prom if money were no object. The Beatles and the Stones got the majority of the votes and some other popular bands did well in the vote. When they announced that there was only one single vote for Buck Owens and the Buckaroos everyone in the auditorium turned and glowered at me.   

I was lucky to fall in love with the one girl in my high school class that had an appreciation of country music. Glenda loved rock music and idolized Janis Joplin but had listened to country with her dad who had been a truck driver. She also shared my love of folk music. While we were dating we went to see Johnny Cash at the old Civic Arena and a young Gordon Lightfoot at the Syria Mosque.

When we got together, James Taylor and Carole King provided the background music for our love story. We would go for long rides in my car with the top down and pop one of their albums in the 8-track player and hold hands. She called me her “Sweet Baby James,” even though I was never anywhere as cool as James Taylor. You’ve got a Friend became “our song” and to this day it provides a perfect description of our relationship. After 50 years, we both stop whatever we are doing when “You’ve Got a Friend” comes on the radio, taking a moment to savor the sweet memories it conjures up for us.

Over the years, music became less important in my life. Working on the road, I got in the habit of listening to audio books and the discussion programs on National Public Radio, music continued to play a central role in Glenda’s life. She stayed current with some of the emerging singers and often liked the same bands as our children. She would often blast Janis Joplin or Pink Floyd while doing her housework. When she turned the TV on during the day, it would be tuned to one of the “Music Choice” channels on our cable system. Several years ago, I bought her a turntable set-up for her birthday. She has dusted off her old records and has taken to flipping through the record bins at Half Price Books and the Goodwill. 

The last year has caused me to revisit my old love of music. The constant political squabbling and the depressing news about the coronavirus has made the news much too toxic to consume on a regular basis. Lately, I’ve found myself moving to the far left of the dial, sidestepping NPR talk radio for classical music on WQED-FM. I have found that I’d rather listen to Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring instead of the ever rising death toll from the Coronavirus. I tried the current crop of country singers but found that this genre has passed me by, I think they lost me when Garth Brooks went into semi-retirement. 

My old folk music station WYEP has gone alternative, and although it makes me sound old and crotchety, leaves me thinking, “These kids today don’t know what music is.” My wife who never became calcified in her musical tastes loves listening to WYEP. There is no shortage of music for me to listen to as I have acquired a cupboard full of music CD’s which suit my arcane tastes.

The great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer once said, “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.” I am lucky that I have an abundance of both of these vital resources and they have offered me refuge during the pandemic and unrest of the last year. 

- Jim Busch

February 9, 2021

We got some very disturbing news today; it seems that the coronavirus struck our family today. This evening, my wife got a call from her sister at the same time that she received a text from her niece, Marcy. Both Marcy and her mother wanted to tell her that Marcy’s 15-year old son had tested positive for Covid-19.

Given the number of new Covid cases it’s not surprising that someone in our extended family would contract the disease. We were surprised that it was Brady and not his mother that brought the virus home. Marcy is a Licensed Practical Nurse who works for an agency that supplies staff to nursing homes. For the last year, she has been the very definition of a front line worker. 

She has been working long hours with multiple coronavirus patients and has lost many of them to the disease. Balancing her work and home life while working weeks on end without a day off has left Marcy exhausted and stressed, two conditions known to weaken the immune system. No one understands how dangerous the coronavirus can be better than Marcy. She is extremely diligent about following all of the Covid safety protocols but given her daily exposure to large numbers of confirmed cases, we thought it would be only a matter of time until she received a positive test result.

Marcy’s son, Brady, is a high school junior. His school district left the decision of whether their children should go to school or attend classes remotely up to the parents. Marcy and her husband, Nick, deferred this decision to their son. Brady opted to attend in person classes. He said that he felt this was the best way for him to absorb the material being taught. I am convinced that the opportunity to see his girlfriend, who also chose to attend in school classes, on a daily basis also influenced his decision.

When Brady returned to school in September, his mother made him promise to always wear a mask, wash his hands frequently and to keep his distance from the teachers and other students.  Brady readily agreed to these conditions and the school administrators assured parents that the district would strictly adhere to all CDC guidelines. This works well in theory, but teenagers are known for not following the rules laid down by their elders; I have even heard stories of kids smoking in school and skipping classes on occasion. As a former teenage boy myself, I am sure that Brady found maintaining a safe six foot distance from his girlfriend very challenging.

In the past weeks, Brady’s school has seen a surge in the number of students who tested possible for Covid-19. No one knows why the number of cases has grown but it might be a result of the national surge following the yearend holidays. A few days ago, Brady wasn’t feeling very well, he was running a fever and felt very tired. When his symptoms didn’t go away in a few days, his mother took him to get a Covid test which came back positive. Since Brady spent 100% of his time either at home or at school and no one in his family had Covid, he obviously had contracted the disease at school.

Marcy’s family lives in a three bedroom apartment. This small space is home to Marcy, her husband Nick, Brady and his brother Andrew. Andrew is a recent Penn State graduate who has kept himself out of the job market because he has asthma and is very afraid of contracting the virus. Because of the difficulty of maintaining a proper social distance in their tight quarters, all of them have spent most of the last year confined to their individual rooms. Now that the coronavirus is an unwanted lodger in their home, this self-imposed solitary confinement is even more important.

When a member of a family is diagnosed with Covid-19 it’s like throwing a pebble into a pond; the ripples spread out in all directions. Obviously, Brady can no longer attend school. Fortunately, he is young and in robust health; it is far too early to tell but chances are that he will recover quickly. He will have to let the disease run its course and once his Covid test comes back negative he will need to remain isolated for several weeks after his symptoms disappear. There is some concern that even young people who appear to recover quickly may suffer from Covid related health problems long after the disease’s overt symptoms have disappeared. Some of these lingering effects are life threatening like blood clots in the circulatory system.

Brady’s brother, Andrew, has also started to manifest symptoms of the disease. He is scheduled to receive a Covid test tomorrow. It is possible that, given Andrew’s extreme dread of the disease, that these symptoms could be psychosomatic, his anxious mind may be making him ill, but because of his underlying health conditions he cannot be too cautious. Because Covid-19 can settle in the lungs, anyone with respiratory problems can succumb rapidly to the coronavirus. Fortunately, Marcy has the training and experience to closely monitor his health. I am sure she will check Andrew’s oxygen levels a hundred times a day.

Thus far neither Marcy nor her husband has shown any Covid-19 symptoms. This doesn’t mean that they have not been impacted by Brady’s diagnosis. Obviously, they are both very concerned about their children and the next few weeks will be tense ones in their little home. Beyond the emotional stress, the coronavirus will have an economic impact on the family. When one member of a household unit is diagnosed with Covid-19, the entire family must go into quarantine to stop the spread of the disease. Even if a member of the family is asymptomatic, there is no way to know that they may be infected and able to spread the disease to others.

Both Marcy and Nick had to report their son’s diagnosis to their employers. Marcy will not be able to work with her patients for several weeks and Nick, who works for UPS, will not be able to report for work. This means that they will have no income at the same time as they are facing additional medical expenses.

Having the entire family locked down creates logistical problems. If no one can leave the apartment, how are they to get groceries or other necessities from the store? Marcy will have to rely on her parents and her siblings to go shopping for them. This will require a process not unlike a “dead drop” in a spy movie. The designated shopper will have to leave the bags outside their apartment door, knock and run away. Maintaining social isolation is vital because Marcy’s parents both have health conditions that put them at an elevated risk from the coronavirus.

On today’s news, I heard that the CDC is recommending that schools reopen with proper precautions. They maintain that the risk is minimal and that providing a quality education to our children is of the utmost importance. I think that Marcy’s experience shows how dangerous reopening the schools are.

I also hear some people trying to minimize the impact of the disease. They point to the number of people who have contracted the disease and fully recovered. They try to make the case that Covid-19 is “just like a bad case of the flu.” Again, Marcy’s experience demonstrates how wrong this is. Her family is a microcosm of what the country has endured. Since the coronavirus crossed her doorstep, her family has been very afraid, they have been increasingly isolated and had their economy completely shut down.  Denying the impact of the disease on our country and on our families is only possible if one completely ignores the facts.

I wish Marcy, Nick, Brady and Andrew well. I hope Brady does indeed have a speedy recovery. I feel a bit helpless because there is virtually nothing I can do to help them through this crisis. What is happening to them should be a lesson to us all; a lesson that teaches you can never be too cautious. I hope that the massive vaccination efforts going on right now is successful. I also hope that this pandemic will soon just be a sad and painful memory.             

- Jim Busch

February 8, 2021

We are now entering our second year of dealing with the coronavirus. We’re all impatient to see this disease and the restrictions we’ve had to put up with to slow its spread. Like homesick soldiers in a World War II movie, people spend their time fantasizing about what they’ll do when “this thing is over.” Like the soldiers in those old black and white movies, a lot of these conversations are about the food they miss “from the old days.”

When I have talked to friends on the phone or via social media, a common topic of conversation is how much they miss going out to a restaurant to eat. I have also seen a lot of interviews with restaurant owners who miss their customers as much as their customers miss them. This situation reminded me of the star crossed lovers, Rick and Ilsa, in the movie Casablanca, they wanted to get together but stayed apart for the greater good; “I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of a hungry person and a restaurant owner doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy Covid infected world. Someday you’ll understand that. Here’s looking at you, shrimp scampi, and remember, we’ll always have take-out.”

I am luckier than most people in that I have been stuck at home with a world class cook. Even before the coronavirus struck, we didn’t eat many meals at restaurants. We enjoyed occasionally grabbing breakfast out or going to our favorite Chinese restaurant China Jade, but most of our meals were eaten at home. My wife has always loved to cook and bake. Glenda got her culinary inclinations and training from her mother. Ellie may have been the only person I have ever met who was a better cook than Glenda. They shared the same kitchen for almost 50 years and together, Glenda and Ellie, produced meals fit for the Gods.

Glenda is a “from scratch” cook and baker. Cooking is her art, the outlet for her creativity. For her to use a mix or one of the increasingly popular “meal kits” would be like Vincent Van Gogh with a box of crayons and a coloring book. Not too long ago, our son was discussing something his wife prepared at home. He said it lacked something and my wife suggested adding Caraway seeds to enhance the taste. He responded with a chuckle saying, “Caraway seeds? We don’t have caraway seeds. Caraway seeds are an ingredient. We don’t use ingredients.” Almost everything they cook comes from a box or the freezer case.

Knowing where my bread is buttered, I make a point of giving my wife positive feedback on her cooking. This is easy because the meals I find on my plate are consistently amazing. I try not to let a meal go by without telling her how delicious the meal is. Her typical reply is, “That’s because it’s made with love.” This is a bit of a joke between us but it is absolutely true. Nothing makes Glenda happier than cooking for people and seeing them enjoy her cooking. For her, cooking is not drudgery or a chore, one can actually taste the time and the love she puts into her meals.

As strange as it seems, my wife also loves to iron clothes. For 40 years, I wore a suit and tie to work and in all that time she never sent a shirt to the cleaners. She washed them at home with the perfect amount of starch. Glenda would put on Janis Joplin or the Rolling Stones, set up her ironing board in the kitchen, plugged in her steam iron and went to work. She aligned the creases in my button down shirts like a Japanese priest raking the pebbles in a Zen garden. At least once a week, someone would ask me where I “got my shirts done.” They were amazed, and a bit envious, when I told them that I was married to a woman who loved to iron.

I read that a Zagat survey found that the average American eats 5.9 meals per week outside the home. This is more than the total number of times my family ate a restaurant in a year when I was growing up. We ate out exactly four times in the course of a year. Once, on the way to Geneva on the Lake, we would eat at Howard Johnsons on the Ohio turnpike. A second time, at a steakhouse my dad liked to visit on vacations. I wasn’t allowed to order steak and had to go with the kid’s meal of chicken in a basket. The third time was back at “HoJo’s” on the return trip. The only non-vacation related visit to a restaurant was on Mother’s Day. My parents only dined out once a year alone, when my dad would take my mother to Ben Gross’s on Route 30 for their anniversary.  My wife’s family dined out even less, her mother packed picnic lunches where ever they went.

The other thing that has changed is the variety of cuisines available to people today. Growing up in a Scotts Irish/German family we ate a strictly meat and potatoes diet. I never ate spaghetti as a child, pasta was something only Italian families like the Ginardis down the street ate. We ate our noodles buttered as a side dish when my mother ran out of potatoes. My mother cooked a lot of beef roasts surrounded by vegetables, chicken and soups. Sometimes, I got a little bored with our meals as she had a limited repertoire of recipes that she cooked in rotation.

My grandson is a fourteen year old “foodie.” He enjoys sushi, is fond of Korean food and loves the Scotch Eggs at Piper’s on the Southside. Once, when Max was just three or four, my wife and I were babysitting him at his house. My wife asked him what he wanted for dinner and he answered “Pho!” My wife didn’t understand and submitted the poor little kid to a battery of questions. Finally, after a check with Google we discovered that our grandson was “Jonesing” for Vietnamese fish stew.

In my version of “walking to school barefoot in the snow uphill both ways” Grandpa story, I told Max about what we had to eat when I was his age. He was amazed to learn that I had never tasted pizza until I was at least 15 years old. My wife chimed in, telling him that the only pizza she had eaten came from a Chef Boyardee box. I recalled the only Mexican food I ever ate, or heard of, as a child was when my sister went to Texas to visit her mother-in-law and brought back the ingredients for enchiladas. It was an amazing and exotic meal that I wouldn’t have again for a decade.  

My wife has a far more extensive recipe box than my mother did. She likes to experiment in the kitchen and is constantly trying new recipes.  She makes excellent Mexican, Hungarian and German food. She makes a great Chop Suey but can never manage to make it taste quite as good as China Jade; the secret is in the spicing. Glenda’s desserts are downright legendary, in addition to traditional pies and cakes she likes to make Mexican fried ice cream and Baked Alaska. Her homemade cinnamon rolls and donuts put Cinnabon and Dunkin Donuts to shame.

Glenda struggled for years trying to make my favorite childhood dessert, Ranch Pudding. This Bisquick, molasses and date concoction is gooey, sweet and delicious. My mother gave her the recipe shortly after we were married, but Glenda could never get it to taste like my mother’s. Years later, my wife bought a 1950’s Bisquick cookbook at a library sale. Flipping through the book she discovered the original Ranch Pudding recipe and learned that my mother had sabotaged the recipe. She had altered the measurements and left out an ingredient to ensure that it would never turn out quite right for my wife.

I have missed a lot of things during the coronavirus quarantine but going out to a restaurant isn’t one of them. In my opinion, I don’t think I could find any better food than what my wife serves me every day. Even though she has been fighting pancreatic cancer and often is too sick to eat, she feeds me like a king. After 49 years I am afraid that I am spoiled; I only want to eat my wife’s cooking. For this reason, I consider every meal she serves me to be a precious gift. The love she stirs into everything she makes is a far more valuable ingredient than a French Truffle or the Russian Beluga caviar. I may not have a discerning palate, I am definitely not much of a gourmet but I have been blessed with excellent taste in choosing a wife.  

 - Jim Busch

February 7, 2021

I spent a good bit of the day in my “happy place.” I spent the day at my workbench. My workbench is one of my favorite possessions. It is a vintage piece that I picked up years ago at a house sale for the remarkably low price of $50.00. To purchase a new bench of a similar design today, if one could be found, would cost $1500 or more.

The previous owner of the bench told me that it came from a pattern maker’s shop in a foundry. Patternmakers were expert woodworkers who made wooden models of items to be cast out of molten steel or cast iron. For example, if the foundry had an order for a large gear, the pattern maker would look at the blueprint and cut and fit pieces of hardwood to form the hub, spokes and outer rim of the gear.

They would cut the teeth of the gears attaching them to the rim; if the gear is to have raised lettering, the pattern maker would carve the letters and apply them to the wooden gear. Once this was done, the wooden gear would be pressed into wet sand to form a mold. Molten metal was carefully poured into the sand mold so that once the metal had cooled, the sand is pushed away and the gear is ready to be sent to the machine shop for finishing.

My bench is large, four by six feet, with a thick maple bread board top which weighs several hundred pounds. The top is mounted on a timber frame base that is made much like an Amish barn. The bench has a trough running down the middle to keep tools handy and prevent them from rolling on to the floor. It has large holes drilled into its top at regular intervals which allow me to insert pins called “bench dogs;” with these pins I can clamp any size or shape of wood to the bench for planing or carving. A large cast iron carpenter’s vice with non-marring wooden jaws provide another way to hold wood to be shaped. The bench’s weight and these clamping devices make it a very stable work surface and its 36-inch height is ergonomically perfect for a man of my height.

During the pandemic, my workbench has become my sanctuary from the infected world outside my shop. Standing at my bench I’ve been able to keep myself occupied in perfect social isolation. It is literally the center of my workshop and of my creative endeavors. I put on the radio or the CD player and lose myself in the work. While I am at the bench or at the drawing table, the only thing that occupies my mind is the work in front of me; there is simply no room for worry or anxiety in my busy mind.

Today’s project was more technical than creative. Yesterday, my wife told me that her vacuum cleaner sounded “like it was dying.” We compared mental notes on her sweeper and came to the conclusion that she had owned this Oreck sweeper for at least 25 years. I have brought this well used machine back from death’s door several times in the past. I didn’t make any promises, but I told my wife I would take it back to my “operating room” and try to eek a few more years out of it.

I took the vacuum to the shop and plugged it in and noticed that it wasn’t running at a steady speed. I took the sweeper apart and found it was completely packed with cat hair. I noticed a crack in the fan housing which I glued and I scraped a lot of carbon out of the motor’s commutator. I greased the motor bearings and once the glue had set, reassembled the sweeper. I left the bottom plate off, so I could watch the motor as it ran.

I switched the old Oreck on and despite the work I had done, it continued to run in fits and starts. The secret of repairing any sort of machinery is observation. This process involves all the senses, I laid a hand on the sweeper so I could feel any abnormal vibrations, I bent down so I could smell if the motor was running hot and I listened to the sounds it made, perhaps the screech of a tight bearing.

Picking up a flashlight, I switched off the lights and ran the motor in the pitch black darkness of my windowless shop. Watching the motor in the dark I could see the flash of one of the brushes arcing against the copper commutator as the motor spun. I noted the lack of spark on the other side of the motor where the other carbon motor brush should also be producing miniature lightning flashes. I turned the lights back on, I had solved the mystery of the dying sweeper. The motor brushes needed replaced.

This meant it was time to go online. I needed a tutorial on how to replace the brushes and to find a place to buy the parts I needed. This would have to wait until tomorrow as I had some other things I needed to do. If the parts are available, I am certain that I can keep our trusty old sweeper running for another five years.

I find great satisfaction in doing this kind of repair work. In this age of throw away everything, repairing your own household appliances is almost a revolutionary act. Most products today have stickers on them warning would be repairmen that there are no “repairable parts” within. They also design products so that they are impossible to take apart gluing them shut and using special tamper proof fasteners. Parts have become increasingly hard to find. Once upon a time, there were several appliance parts dealers in McKeesport, in later years, I had to drive to Pittsburgh or Monroeville but they are now gone as well. Last month, the solar lamp at the end of our walk stopped working. I took it apart and decided that its rechargeable batteries had failed. They were much harder to find than to replace; it took several days of searching the web before I found a supplier.

There are a lot of benefits to doing your own repairs. A new sweeper would cost about $350, the brushes I need will be less than ten dollars and the battery for our lamp cost twelve dollars which made the seventy dollar lamp good as new. In 48 years of marriage my tool box has saved us thousands of dollars. By fixing these items, I kept them from ending up in a landfill somewhere. Growing up our family lived by the code of, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” This frugal philosophy was not only good for the pocketbook but also good for the planet.

I think the best thing about doing your own repairs is that it helps us to understand how things work. When I was a child, my dad would pick up old appliances to take apart, he knew it would keep me occupied and out of trouble but also it would teach me how to use tools. He wanted me to understand the way mechanical things worked. After holding a screwdriver in my hand for over 60 years, I still learn something new every time I take something apart.

For me, taking things apart and making them right again is like solving a puzzle. It is mentally stimulating and productive. Right to repair laws are pending in many states and has been discussed in Congress. These proposed laws would require manufacturers to design their products so they could be repaired and to make parts available to the public.

I strongly support these laws, they are good for consumers, good for the planet and good for us tinkerers. For those of us who enjoy working with our hands, something as simple as bringing a beat up old sweeper back to life is a very rewarding experience.      

 - Jim Busch

February 6, 2021

Today, I had a long conversation with an old friend who is experiencing health problems. He has been going to the hospital regularly for tests and this bothers him because of the increased chance of contracting the coronavirus. This is something that young people don’t understand about getting old; being old is scary.

When you are young and have an ache or a pain, you naturally assume that it will quickly pass and you will be right as rain in a day or so. When you reach a certain age, you pay attention to every little twinge, one never knows what might signal the beginning of the end. We grow careful where we are walking, knowing that any slip or fall could lead to a broken hip or worse. This time of year with its icy patches is particularly worrisome.

While Covid doesn’t care who it attacks, older people have been disproportionately impacted by the disease. It has gone through senior living facilities like a lawnmower cutting down almost everyone in its path. Age weakens our immune system making those over 65 both more likely to contract the disease and to succumb to it when we do get sick. This makes our tenuous grip on life even weaker. Almost everyone I know who is eligible for a senior discount is concerned about catching a fatal case of Covid-19.

Even my friends, who possess an abiding faith in an afterlife, greatly fear the onset of this disease. This is because we don’t just fear death, we fear dying and the incapacity that often precedes our final demise. We fear losing touch with our loved ones. This is one of the cruelest aspects of the coronavirus, the isolation necessary to stop the spread of the disease means most people die alone without their loved ones nearby.

The modern medical strategies and technologies which have extended our lifespans has done little to improve the quality of life at the end of life. People who used to simply slip away in their own beds now die in nursing homes and hospitals with tubes and needles holding them in the land of the barely living like a fly caught in a spider’s web. They linger, half dead and half alive unable to recognize their loved ones.

My father was never concerned about his health. He was a heavy smoker and liked to consume copious quantities of Irish whiskey. His diet consisted of red meat and deep fried food followed by rich desserts. As a machinist for 40 years, he breathed in cast iron and Micarta dust before OSHA was around to recommend workers where respirators. He ignored most doctor’s advice and avoided them whenever possible. Despite having several minor strokes, he skipped his regular check-ups. My dad died at the age of 79 and I have come to envy the way that he died, he went to bed and never woke up. I doubt that he even knew that he was dying.

While my dad’s death was easy on him, it was terrible for my mother. He was usually the first one up and made their coffee. When she woke up and didn’t smell the percolator, she put a pot on and went to wake him up. When she put her hand on his shoulder it was cold and stiff. I am sure my dad didn’t want to do this to her. As we age, we fear being a burden to our families more than we fear death. In our younger years, we are happy to care for our elderly parents, doing whatever it takes to make them comfortable. We consider caring for those who raised us as an honor and a responsibility, but we do not want to bestow this honor on our children.

As we get older, we understand why some terminally ill people end their lives. I had a good work friend who was married to a great guy. Bette’s husband had been an executive for General Motors and he raced Corvettes on the weekends. He was also a pilot and a gun collector who was one of the country’s most respected experts on Colt pistols. In his 50s he was diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease.

He slowly lost control of his body and was confined to a wheelchair. When he started to lose the use of his arms he decided to end his life while he could still manage it. When Bette came home from work she found a note scotch taped to the door of her husband’s den. It told her not to enter the room and to read the note on the table. In the note, he told her he loved her and that he didn’t want to subject her to watching him die slowly in front of her eyes.

Always an organized man, he also left an envelope for the police. In it they found the key to the den, and a statement saying that he was responsible for his own death. He also left them detailed instructions on how to safely unload the pistol he used and an apology for making such a mess. When the police entered the den, they found that he had placed his wheelchair in front of the brick fireplace so that it would stop the bullet eliminating the chance that once it had passed through his head it wouldn’t pass through a wall and hurt a passerby.

I am in such a morbid mood because this evening my wife watched Elizabeth is Missing on PBS’s Masterpiece Theater. This film marked the return of the great Glenda Jackson to the screen. Jackson’s character, Maudie, was going through something that most of us fear worse than death, Alzheimer’s disease. Glenda Jackson’s sensitive portrayal of the terror and fear of a woman losing her personality in the fog of dementia was disturbing; a sort of view of Alzheimer’s from the inside out.

This movie put my fears of losing my storehouse of memories front and center. With my wife fighting cancer and the possibility of losing her, my memories may soon be all I have left in life. I have a good friend who is fond of saying, “You live and learn, then you die and forget it all.” Whenever he says that, I can’t help but think forgetting it all while your body is still living would be even worse.

All through my life, I am a philosopher in the original sense of the word, a lover of knowledge. My personal identity is wrapped up in the ideas and facts stored away in my brain, without this information, I am not sure who I would be.

I have had a good life full of love, friendship and with a minimum of suffering. While I am sorry to see it come to an end, there’s not much I can do about it. Knowing that our lives will someday end adds sweetness to life. All I can do is try to extract as much joy out of every day as possible. I will love my wife and my family. I will enjoy the sun on my face, the wind in my hair and try to laugh as much as possible. I intend to live until I die, and will not let fear take that from me.

 - Jim Busch

February 5, 2021

If one wanted to assign a motto to this past year, you couldn’t find a better one than this old Yiddish proverb. People who had planned weddings, birthday parties, anniversary parties and other celebrations had to be put on the back burner, as we hid from the virus inside our homes. Fairs, festivals, sporting events, concerts and all other public events were cancelled to help curtail the spread of the disease. Vacations became “staycations” as travel was restricted and the CDC ordered us to shelter in place.   

God must have had a hardy belly laugh at the expense of my daughter and her wife’s plans for 2021. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of being together, and their fifth anniversary of being legally married, they had planned to take a Mediterranean cruise this November. They had planned and saved for this trip for several years, then the coronavirus turned the world upside down. The cruise industry was completely shut down after several of their vessels turned into floating super spreader events. Many of their passengers were marooned for weeks on ships alongside infectious Covid patients.

To add insult to injury, Rachael’s wife, Kathy, lost her job selling employment advertising. Kathy had worked for the same firm for almost 20 years and was well liked and very successful. With the collapse of the job market, Kathy’s department lost the bulk of their advertisers and was reduced to operating with a skeleton crew. This greatly reduced their income and forced them to tap into their cruise fund.

Although their dream of an anniversary cruise was wrecked on the Covid reef, they still wanted to mark their anniversary in some way. Being homebound, they decided to go a more practical route and purchase a new bed. They bought a new Craftmatic bed, the kind that allows the person on either side to raise the back or the foot of the bed as it suits them. I have to believe that the pandemic has been good for the Craftmatic Company. People are spending a lot more time at home, so they are spending more time in bed and in front of their televisions. Rachael and Kathy saw the Craftmatic bed demonstrated on a TV infomercial and decided that they had to have one; this was their anniversary gift to one another.

Even though purchasing the bed was their fall back plan, God still had to have a little chuckle at their expense. Due to Covid restrictions, the Craftmatic Company no longer sent a technician to their customer’s home to assemble and demonstrate their products. They would be happy to have it delivered, “over the customer’s threshold” but once the unit was in the home, they were on their own. The Craftmatic sales person assured my daughter that assembling the bed was quite simple to which she replied, “My dad can put it together.”

God looked at my plans for a leisurely retirement like a night at the Improv. My vision of sitting reading or painting in my studio has had him in stitches for over five years. I spent the last two days working on Rachael’s bed project and spending very little time in my own. Rachael and Kathy decided to do some redecorating to make a proper home for their fancy new bed. They decided to turn their office/study/craft room into their bedroom. This required moving an Egyptian pyramid’s worth of stuff.

Last week, I helped them move a truckload of plastic tubs to a storage facility in North Versailles. Today, I hauled two carloads of clothes and other unwanted items to the Goodwill Store. I then disassembled a massive desk so that I could load it into my car along with a large bookcase. Since these items were several feet longer than the back of my Subaru Forester, I had to tie them in and use a bungee to hold the tailgate in place, making me look like an Okie family fleeing the dustbowl. By driving slowly and trying to evade all the potholes, not an easy task in Western Pennsylvania, I managed to deliver my load to Construction Junction in the Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh. 

When I returned from my donation run to Construction Junction, I found four giant cardboard boxes waiting for me in Rachael and Kathy’s living room. These contained one “Do It Yourself electric bed kit.” I cut the plastic straps from the boxes and rummaged through their contents until I found the assembly instructions. I read through the booklet and was delighted to find that;

A)  It was written in plain English with clear illustrations. This was quite refreshing in a time when many products are imported from foreign lands where the instructions are not written by people who speak English as their primary language. I am not faulting them for this, they do a much better job than I would do writing instructions in Mandarin, but it can make assembling a product quite challenging.

B)  The bed was indeed relatively easy to assemble.

The delivery man did precisely as he was instructed and delivered the four boxes just over the threshold. The hardest part of the job was getting the two bed units and the two mattresses to the second floor. Fortunately, Kathy and Rachael’s friend Gabe was there to help with this task. Years ago, I injured my back in a fall that weakened my right leg; I am not very good at carrying things upstairs any more. Once younger legs moved the beds to the second floor, I assembled the legs on to the frames when I discovered that the brackets that held the two bed units together was missing. A quick check of the invoice showed that it was an optional item and had not been included in the order. I am not absolutely sure, but I think that I may have heard a snicker from on high. A call to Craftmatic customer service had one on the way.

Fortunately, the missing part wasn’t critical, the weight of the beds with their heavy metal frames and motors would serve to hold them in place until the brackets arrived. I attached a couple of more parts and it was almost bed time. All that we needed to do was program the remotes which controlled the bed’s functions. This also turned out to be a simple operation. Just as we finished the skies opened and emitted a tiny “tee-hee” as the cat threw up a hairball on the bed to christen it.

As much as I pretend to complain about the time I spend helping my children, I am happy to do it. I like the feeling of still being useful to my family and to others. I feel like I spent a lifetime learning how to do things and it is only right that I share my knowledge with others. At the risk of amusing God a little more, I plan to continue doing this as long as I can.  

 - Jim Busch

February 4, 2021

Covid-19 silenced a great voice today. On the local news this morning, I heard that Anne Feeney had died from the coronavirus. Feeney was a Pittsburgh based singer, songwriter and activist. She spent her entire life trying to make life better for working people. She occupied a special place in my and my daughter’s lives.

I come from a Mon Valley working class and labor family. My mother’s father was a member of the United Steel Workers when it was a risky thing to do. I have his USW member button and another that reads “Labor is for Roosevelt.” He wore these buttons proudly on his work jacket when doing so could get a man fired or hit on the head by a company cop. I am not sure if any family members were involved in the legendary Homestead Strike of 1892 but my grandfather taught me the melodramatic song about that struggle:

A woman with a rifle saw her husband in the crowd.

She handed him the weapon and they cheered her long and loud

He said, Mary, go home until we’re through

She answered, no John if you must fight, my place is here with you.

My grandfather lost part of his hand in a rolling mill and had to take a job as a school janitor which meant he never had much money. He liked to talk about his old boss, Andrew Carnegie saying, “Old Andy had all the money in the world, but he’s dead and I ain’t. I think I came out ahead in the end.”

My dad was a shop steward, a low level union representative, for the IUE, International Union of Electrical Workers. He worked at Westinghouse before it was unionized in 1941. He told me why he supported the union when they tried to organize the East Pittsburgh works. My dad said Westinghouse was a good place to work but he recalled how when some of the company executive’s kids needed a summer job, they would fire a family man to create a job opening. My dad just didn’t think that was fair.

My wife also grew up in a union family. As a lifelong socialist, her grandfather was a “Wobblie,” a member of the International Workers of the World. The IWW philosophy was that all workers were brothers and rather than organizing one company at a time;

One big union, that’s our plan and the IWW is your only friend.

The flames of discontent we’ll fan for the cause that never dies!

They were famous being open to all races and genders and even tried to organize the prostitutes in Seattle, Washington.  His political and labor activism kept him from ever advancing above the shop floor at work.

I never belonged to a union, in fact, I spent most of my career in management positions. I wanted my children to know their family’s story and the struggle people made to make life better for their family. I told them the stories of Joe Magarac, the unions and about the big strikes. They liked the stories but they especially liked the sound track. I combined my interest in history with my love of folk music and taught my kids all the old union songs. Whenever we went for a walk or a long drive, I would sing Union Maid, Joe Hill or some of the other tunes in the IWW’s “Little Red Songbook.”

My son usually rolled his eyes, but my daughter always joined in enthusiastically singing the old songs along with me. When she was only ten, she accompanied me to a labor song seminar at the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library in Oakland. She bragged to all her friends that, “her dad knew more songs than the teacher.” The young college student interning at the library hadn’t done her research so she helped me look good in front of my kid.

Rachael and I first encountered Anne Feeney at the old Smoky City Folk Festival on Flagstaff Hill. Rachael instantly fell in love with Feeney and her songs. Anne Feeney’s enthusiasm and energy was infectious; she was a musical dynamo. Between songs she was an engaging storyteller. She looked and sounded like the natural rebel she was. Rachael has always been a free spirit and a champion of the underdog, so Anne Feeney was the perfect role model for her. She liked Feeney’s Bohemian style of dress though I hoped my daughter didn’t emulate her chain smoking and habit of drinking like a sailor on shore leave.

Rachael became an Anne Feeney groupie with me as her chauffeur, not that I minded, I also liked her music. Any time we heard that Anne was playing a child friendly venue, I would take the family to hear her. If my son and/or wife were not free, just Rachael and I would go. Rachael had all of her CD’s and would join the crowd in singing along with Feeney and her band.

Once during a Labor Day celebration at Northmoreland County Park, a fast moving storm threatened to cancel the concert. Refusing to let a little rain stop her from performing, Anne invited the entire audience to join her on the covered stage. The stage wasn’t very big but everyone had a good time in spite of being packed in like the cigarettes in pack that Anne kept on a stool next to a can of beer. Rachael was in her glory, standing next to her idol and singing the Ballad of Fannie Sellins:

A woman with six children working eighty hours a week

Found time to fight injustice and bring power to the meek.

Rachael bought an Anne Feeney T-shirt at the concert and was delighted to learn that the girl, who was about the same age, selling the “merch” was Feeney’s daughter Amy. When we got home that evening, we were cold, wet and muddy but we had a great time. As a follow up to the concert, I drove Rachael to Tarentum to lay flowers on the grave of the martyred Fannie Sellins.

As Feeney grow more popular, she did fewer and fewer concerts in the Pittsburgh area. Peter, Paul and Mary recorded her anthem, War on the Workers and she was asked to tour Europe. Rachael was quite concerned when in 2010 she learned that Anne Feeney had been diagnosed with lung cancer; this was not a surprise considering Feeney’s nicotine addiction, but it hit her hard. Anne Feeney never performed again, the cigarette, the cancer and the surgery had taken her voice but not her indomitable spirit and she continued to advocate for the disadvantaged.

I learned from her obituary that Feeney had been in declining health for several years. She took a bad fall at the end of last year and was hospitalized for a broken back. It was in the hospital that she contracted Covid-19 which given her history of pulmonary problems was a death sentence. Anne Feeney died with her son and daughter at her side yesterday and I learned about her passing this morning.

This afternoon I went to help my daughter do some redecorating at her home. As soon as I got there I said, “I have some bad news, Anne Feeney died from Covid yesterday.” I saw the sadness wash over her. Anne was more than an entertainer for us. She was the symbol of some of the things that my daughter and I hold dear; of standing up for those who can’t defend themselves and joyfully fighting the good fight. We will never forget her and her beautiful spirit. I am so grateful that we still have her music and the memories she gave us.

The only way to end this piece about someone like Anne Feeney is with a line from her favorite Woody Guthrie song: There once was a union maid, she never was afraid.

Thank you, Anne Feeney, for teaching us all not to be afraid to stand up for others.

- Jim Busch

February 3, 2021

I am a huge believer in books as tools for transforming one’s life. I have relied on books to help me chart my life’s course. I also like to give books to help people get through rough patches in their lives. To make sure that the message contained in a book is appropriate for the person I am trying to help, I never give a book that I am not familiar with myself. This means that I either give a book that I have read and found valuable or if it is a new book, I read and evaluate it before passing it along.

I was looking for a book for a young relative who lacks self-esteem. I wanted something contemporary and in a female voice so I was considering one of the bestselling Badass books by Jen Sincero. I took her Badass Habits out of the library to determine if her message suited my purpose. I was very put off by her writing style; I dislike writers who use solicitously profanity to seem cool.

As a lover of words, I find profanity not only coarse, but ineloquent. I prefer writers who use clever and precise language to make their point rather than cuss words. This was not a deal breaker for me, however, I could overlook her use of profanity if I agreed with her message.

My trouble with Sincero’s “Badass” philosophy is that it is self-centered. She believes that focusing on one’s own needs is not only doing what is right for them but also because in doing so they become a fully realized person, they are doing what is right for the people around them. I see this as a low rent rehashing of Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness with a few F-bombs thrown in for color. This is not a message I choose to share with anyone.

I don’t believe anyone should be a doormat for others. It is important to stick up for yourself but this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make sacrifices to help others. Whenever I run into someone who embraces this selfish philosophy, one of my grandmother’s sayings come to mind, “A person all wrapped up in themselves makes a mighty small package.” I would argue that it also a very unhappy and lonely package.

In every aspect of life, it is important to maintain balance. In nature balance is critical to survival, if the soil is too acidic or too alkaline, the plants will wither and die. To thrive, they must be planted in soil where these two qualities are in balance. Likewise, children fare best when raised in a home that is neither too strict nor too lax in discipline. Children who are raised in a home where they feel loved, but also know they will be held accountable for their actions grow up to become well-adjusted adults.

Author Stephen R. Covey wrote that true adulthood is achieved by striking a balance between selfishness and selflessness. He said a human infant is the perfect model of a selfish person. When a baby wants changed or fed, it cries out demanding attention; they don’t care if mom or dad is asleep or busy, they want attention NOW! The opposite of this is an older child who has been taught to listen and behave. They have been taught to suppress their own desires in deference to what their parents and other adults wanted them to do. The self-esteem of these children was contingent upon their being a good little boy or a good little girl.

While most people grow out of these extremes, I have known people who are completely selfish adults. In the worst cases, these people are sociopaths. Psychologists define a sociopath as one who “exhibits antisocial behavior and a lack of conscience.” They are incapable of thinking of others. I had the misfortune of working for a sociopath, he had inherited a business from his father and showed no concern for his employees, his customers or even his family. I once saw him at a coworker’s wedding reception, he was impatient for a taste of the cake so he took three fingers and dragged them through the icing disfiguring it long before the bride and groom cut the ceremonial first piece.

Most of us have known someone who allows others to walk over them. Think about the women who refuse to leave an abusive relationship. They convince themselves that their needs weren’t as important as their abuser’s needs. Perhaps they even convinced themselves that the abuse was their fault; that they had failed in some way to please the person who was abusing them.

A fully mature adult tries their best to see that their own needs are met but also show concern for the needs of others. I think one of the best expressions of this mature outlook came when Abraham Lincoln was asked what his idea of freedom was. Abe’s answer was, “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” Being an adult requires respecting the value of others and their needs and demanding the same in return.

Psychologists have found that happiness comes from what they call “agency.” Agency simply means that you hold the steering wheel of your life. You make the decisions which determine how your life will be. People who believe they have no control over their lives feel trapped and are unhappy. Those who believe that their lives are controlled by outside forces beyond their control believe happiness is also out of their grasp.

It is possible to “have your cake and eat it too.” One can exercise their agency by choosing to dedicate their life to helping others. I learned this from my grandparents.  My grandfather was the most independent man I ever knew. Unlike most of the men of his generation, he spent only one day working in the mill. He decided that working indoors and being bossed around wasn’t for him. He made his living selling vegetables and eventually built up a greenhouse business. He became reasonably successful selling flowers and vegetables to the people in the new housing plans growing up in the area.

My grandfather gave away almost as many plants as he sold. If he heard of a neighbor that was having a hard time, he would supply them with an entire garden worth of plants; if necessary he would plant them for them. He also gave away pounds of strawberries, tomatoes and other vegetables from our own garden. My grandfather exercised his agency by choosing to help others.

Jen Sincero is not the only writer to espouse this selfish philosophy, it has become quite common in our culture. This explains why so many people do not understand that personal liberty is inextricably tied to personal responsibility. These people believe that their selfish desire to go to a restaurant or to refuse to don a mask trumps another’s right to be protected from a deadly disease.

Many years ago, I chose to use my life to help others, to make their path through this world a little easier. I try to be a good citizen, a good neighbor and especially a good husband and father. This approach made me successful in business, my concern for my customers was much appreciated, as a manager, I took care of my employees and they took care of me. I have tried to make a good life for my wife and children and they have be an endless source of joy to me.

I am not a saint, I am often selfish and I pursue many personal interests but I have found few things make me happier than putting a smile on someone else’s face. When I look at my life and at the lives of those who are truly happy, I have come to a different idea of what it takes to be a real “Badass.” To be a “Badass” one needs to have a “good heart.”      

- Jim Busch

February 2, 2021

The human memory is a tricky thing. It chooses what it wants to recall or not recall. My memory remembers trivial details about the Civil War or Star Trek episodes I haven’t seen in years, but can’t remember what my wife told me to pick up at the store.

One of the things that don’t seem to stick in my head are family birthdays. I often have to stop and think of my children’s birthdays or even the years they were born. It’s not that I don’t care about these things, it’s just that there’s a glitch in my mind’s memory banks. There are two family birthdays I do remember; I remember my wife’s birthday because I have to recite it to the pharmacist every time I pick up a prescription for my wife, which, now that we’re in our late ‘60s is almost a daily occurrence.

The other birthday I never forget is my sister’s birthday. Peggy had the great good sense to be born on Groundhog’s Day. With all the hoopla on the news about Punxsutawney Phil and the events on Gobbler’s Knob it is absolutely impossible for even a dolt like me to forget her birthday. 

Today, was a big birthday for Peggy, she was born on February 2, 1941 so today was her 80th birthday. Perhaps, it’s because we humans have ten fingers and ten toes that we pay special attention to events that end in a zero. This is especially true as we get older. Reaching the age of 80 was really an accomplishment for Peggy. When she was 68-years old, Peggy was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of lung cancer.

As a lifelong smoker, her doctor told her she would be lucky to live another year. Against all the odds, Peggy survived the removal of part of a lung and was able to beat the cancer. During her tenth annual follow up with the doctor who delivered that premature death sentence, he gave her a celebratory bottle of champagne. She was the first of his patients to make the milestone of surviving a full decade. In the interim, she has been hospitalized several times for broken bones.

Though Peggy relies on a walker to get around, she hasn’t let that slow her down. Prior to the pandemic she made regular trips to the casino to play the slots and enjoyed shopping trips with my wife and daughter. She continues to cook every day for herself and her son who lives with her. She still likes to bake and try out new recipes. Like the watches in the old John Cameron Swayze Timex commercials, Peggy “takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

Cancer isn’t the first difficulty that Peggy has had to overcome in her life. She is actually my half-sister as her father contracted leukemia and died when she was just a toddler. Our mother was a bitter person and hard on her daughter, never satisfied with anything she did. Fortunately, our maternal grandmother gave her the affection that our mother failed to provide. When our mother remarried to the man who eventually became my father, nothing much changed for Peggy. My dad wasn’t cruel to her, but he didn’t take much notice of her.

Our mother felt that her children should devote their lives to her. She didn’t like the idea that she would have to share the affections of her children with anyone else; making a normal social life difficult. Peggy was popular in school and a good student. When she graduated, Peggy went to business school to learn how to do “key punch,” an elementary form of coding where she learned to enter data into a machine that punched holes in cards that would be fed into IBM mainframe computers.

Peggy literally fell in love with the boy next door, or at least the son of the people who lived next door. Her husband, Bob, was another person who had a difficult childhood. A child of divorce, long before that was common or acceptable, he was largely raised by his immigrant grandmother. She was strict and stern, and a fanatical Christian. She would make Bob kneel down in the aisle of a streetcar to pray for forgiveness whenever there was a storm. Her fanaticism led Bob to become an outspoken atheist, a stance that didn’t endear him to my Catholic parents.

Bob was extremely intelligent but scarred by his upbringing. He was one of the most mechanically inclined people I have ever met. Bob could fix anything; he could tear down an engine and rebuild it until it ran like a Swiss watch. He loved classical music and jazz, was an excellent photographer and a champion trap shooter. Out of high school, Bob was offered an engineering scholarship to Carnegie Tech but could not handle the stress of college. He chose instead to take a laboring job at the G.C. Murphy warehouse in McKeesport. 

Without a word to anyone, Peggy and Bob eloped to Maryland and got married by a justice of the peace. When they got home the new couple moved into an apartment with Bob’s other grandmother. Peggy has lived there in the same apartment since 1959.  My mother never forgave them for doing this and treated Peggy’s husband with insults and snubs.  My sister had to come home for a few days after she had her only child; she had no money to pay for the extended hospital stay typical in those days so this was her only option. Rather than getting giddy over the birth of her first grandchild, my mother used this occasion to browbeat her daughter. Once Peggy could leave with her son, we didn’t see her again for months.            

My mother never relented. She never had a good word for Bob and was never affectionate to her grandson, Bobbie. My mother continued to be cruel to my sister for the rest of her life. My mother and father retired to Myrtle Beach and this absence didn’t make her heart grow closer to Peggy. For the last two years of her life, my mother didn’t take Peggy’s calls and returned cards and notes sent in the mail.

Bob worked at the Murphy’s warehouse until it closed. He didn’t earn very much until the facility was unionized by the Teamsters a few years before it closed. Though they didn’t have many things and never owned a home, Peggy and Bob had a good marriage. They were good parents to their son Bobbie and when he grew up he remained close to his parents.

After his retirement, Bob’s health began to fail. He suffered from fibromyalgia which kept him in constant pain and made it increasingly difficult for him to move. Peggy noticed that Bob’s once razor sharp mind was starting to slip. She cared for him as he disappeared into the fog of Alzheimer’s disease. She cared for him at home for as long as possible. When Bob finally passed it was more a relief than a tragedy as he suffered terribly at the end.

I am glad that Peggy has a good relationship with my wife and my kids. As the only person beside me that remembers my childhood, she has given my wife some insights into why I am the way I am. Peggy treats my daughter and her wife like the daughters she never had. Before the pandemic struck, they would enjoy a girl’s day out going shopping and out to lunch. Peggy never had any grandchildren so she dotes on my grandson Max. They all love their Aunt Peggy.

Peggy’s 79th birthday celebration was the last big family celebration we had before the Coronavirus lockdown. After my daughter and her wife took Peggy to the Meadows Casino, we all met at the Spoonwood Brewing Comapny near my son’s house. We enjoyed a great meal and we worked with a local bakery to make a birthday cake featuring a three dimensional groundhog sculpted out of icing. We gave Peggy her gifts and sang Happy Birthday with gusto.

After dropping Peggy off at her apartment, I said to my wife, “We have to throw Peggy a big party next year for her 80th.” Apparently, my ability to predict the future is on a par with Punxsutawney Phil’s ability to predict the weather. That “big party” turned into a making sure everyone sent her a card and my daughter masked up and delivered a tiny birthday cake adorned with a miniature groundhog. I called her on the phone and wished her a Happy Birthday, a rather lame way to mark 80 trips around the sun.

I suppose we should count ourselves lucky, we haven’t lost any close family members to Covid-19. Still, I mourn the things we can never get back. When I apologized to Peggy for not being able to throw her a proper party, my ever optimistic sister said, “There’s always next year!”

I hope there is a “next year” for all of us, but if Covid has taught us anything, it is we can’t count on next year or even next week. I do know we won’t get another chance to celebrate Peggy’s 80th birthday or any of the milestones we have missed in the last year.      

- Jim Busch

February 1, 2021

Today I had to go to the bank, the grocery store and to the Penn Hills library for a curbside pickup. When I went to bed last night I was afraid that I would have to put these errands off because of the weather. When I awoke, I found the world coated with a few inches of snow but the roads were clear by the time I set out in the early afternoon. Watching reports of the storm on the national news, I was once again glad that I live in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

As far as I’m concerned, our little corner of Pennsylvania is one of the best places, weather wise, to live in the United States. We get a little bit of every kind of weather, but in moderation. This storm is a good example of this; we received a few inches of snow when Chicago, and New York were buried. Even Philadelphia on the other end of the state got 18 inches of the white stuff and don’t get me started on Erie to our north.

Most of the challenges we face in the wintertime stem more from our topography than from meteorology. Our hills can be hard to navigate when they are icy or snowy, but fortunately we get very few of those days. While our winters are chilly, we don’t get many subzero days. Pittsburgh’s average winter low temperatures are in the 20s while typically our winter highs are in the 30s and 40s. Not shirt sleeve weather but not parka weather either. This explains why the young guys who insist on wearing cargo shorts year round haven’t lost their kneecaps to frostbite. 

Southwest Pennsylvania’s most favored climate status is true in every season. We get the occasional tornado but nothing like the Midwest. Likewise, the tropical hurricanes that decimate Florida, Texas and Louisiana peter out before they arrive here. By the time they reach us, they are just two day rainstorms.  We have some hot days in mid-summer but they are few and far between. We do not get long stretches of 90 degree plus days like cities in the south. Even New York, Washington, Philadelphia and the cities of the Midwest, which are longitudinally on a par with Pittsburgh, are much hotter.

Some would argue that our region’s skies can be a bit dismal. According to the National Center for Environmental Information, Pittsburgh only gets 59 sunny days a year. I see this as a plus, I am sure we Yinzers spend far less than the average American does on sun block because our area has a build in layer of SPF protection.

Western Pennsylvania is also blessed with absolutely gorgeous fall colors. Living just above the Mason Dixon line as we do; our region is where the southern forests meet the north woods. This means that in our woods we may find southern species standing next to trees native to New England. The diversity of our forests enhance fall’s color palette and extend the autumn leaf season.

One of the reasons I loved growing up in the Mon Valley is that the climate allows me to get outside in every season. I delight in watching the spring wildflowers pushing their way up through the leaf litter on the forest floor. I enjoy the lushness of our green summers and, of course, I can get ecstatic in our glorious falls.

Growing up, I especially loved going outside in the winter. I thought snow was one of God’s most magical inventions. It was like the whole neighborhood was covered with Play-Doh; I could mold it into anything from weapons, snow balls, to structures like igloos and snow forts. I loved building snowmen and bringing them to life with twigs, lumps of red dog stones from the street and, when my mother would allow it, a carrot from her pantry.

Western Pennsylvania snow tends to be wet and heavy, which is ideal for sled riding. When I was growing up in the 1950’s and the 1960’s the snow was also a bit grey and the minuscule flecks of metal added to its natural sparkle. The flakes of snow falling through the black mill smoke cleaned the air of these pollutants. This made catching snowflakes on your tongue less than appetizing, but we kids didn’t know any better.

Even as a grown man, I still liked to play in the snow. Having kids provided a wonderful excuse for grown up sled riding. I would take the kids and their sleds out to a big hill so they could have some winter fun. It would have been irresponsible for me to let my children to ride down a hill without demonstrating the proper technique and making sure the hill was safe.

In our younger years, my wife and I enjoyed cross country skiing. One spring I bought us each a set of skis on clearance at the old K-Mart store in North Versailles. We weren’t very skilled, but we had a lot of fun. We would get away for a few hours and ski in White Oak Park or along the abandoned railroad track where the rail trail is today. Once we skied around the Ferncliff Peninsula at Ohiopyle State Park. My wife packed a picnic lunch and a thermos of mulled cider in a backpack and we took off.

We decided to stop for lunch near the tip of the peninsula, we skied about 20 feet off the trail and I unclipped my skis. As soon as I stepped off my skis I sank into the snow up to my armpits. The look of surprise on my face caused my wife to laugh and laugh; we had no idea how deep the snow drifts could be. I dug out a cozy pit in the snow with a ski and we enjoyed a memorable lunch in our “snow cave.”

Today, when I was driving around I noticed something was missing from the landscape, people, especially little people. Much of my journey took me through residential areas; I know there had to be some kids in those homes. From the morning news I knew that many schools were closed because of the weather and by the end of the day, schools would have been done for the day. Nowhere did I see any evidence of kids playing in the snow. I saw no snow forts, no tracks in the snow where an epic battle had been waged with carefully compacted snow balls. I didn’t even see one snow man or woman; Frosty has left the building. I drove past several hills which were perfect for sledding and there was no one on the slope; I didn’t even see any well-worn paths or hand built jumps to add a little thrill to the ride.   

While talking to a friend on the phone, I asked him if he had seen any kids playing in the snow in his neighborhood. He said that he had noticed the same thing. Perhaps, I’m showing my age or just feeling a little nostalgic, but I feel bad for today’s kids. I may be playing into a stereotype, but I am sure that instead of pulling on boots and gloves to go outside, most kids prefer to sit on the couch and play video games.

I have nothing against video games, they are a lot of fun and may even develop problem solving skills but there is an interesting world out there beyond the limits of even the biggest flat screen. If I didn’t think I would get arrested, I would go door to door and ask whoever answered the door if they have kids and if they did, “Could they come out to play?”

It’s far too nice out to stay inside, especially when you are a kid or a kid at heart.      

-Jim Busch

January 31, 2021

I took advantage of today’s inclement weather to get some volunteer work done. For the last 15 years, I have been the curriculum director for The Leadership Institute (TLI). TLI is the training arm of the Association of Community Publishers. This normally involves a great deal of travel to present training programs at national and regional advertising conferences.

Obviously, the pandemic put a halt to this activity. I was scheduled to speak at a conference in Duluth, Minnesota last April but that was canceled as were all other conferences for the rest of the last year. This project temporarily took my mind out of retirement gear back into business gear, at least for a few hours. This made me ponder what it takes to survive in business during a pandemic. 

Today, I worked on my monthly column for the association’s monthly magazine Publish. This month’s edition is focused on virtual training. Given the likelihood of the coronavirus lingering for the foreseeable future, this is the direction we will have to go if we wish to continuing training our managers and salespeople.  Ten years ago I discussed doing a column for the magazine with the association’s director. The idea was that each month I would take a motivational quote and write a brief column on how it related to our industry. This would draw attention to information about upcoming training events published on the same page.

In the past decade, Craig, the director who brainstormed the column with me, was killed in a terrible motorcycle accident and the publishing industry has been buffeted by the growing popularity of the internet and the recession. The pandemic threatens to be the final nail in the free paper industry’s coffin. Our member papers primarily serve local businesses by helping them connect with their customers. With so many mom and pop businesses closed, either temporarily or permanently, this is not a good time to be in the community publishing business. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the thinking of many people in my industry and in the retail businesses they serve.

The quote that I based this month’s column on is an old American folk saying that I heard from my grandmother when I was young, “Bloom where you’re planted!” This quote is not about ignoring the situation we find ourselves in but rather about adapting ourselves to them. The usual business model is that we publish a list of what a business has to offer and then delivering that list to people who are likely to do business with them. The idea is that those people will see the ad, will be motivated to visit the business and spend their money. In this model everyone wins, the paper gets paid for the advertising, the business gets new customers and consumers find the goods and services they want and need.

The problem is that with so many businesses closing, this model doesn’t work.  We are living in different times which require a different mode of thinking. And this is where training can help people get through this. To me, training isn’t about teaching techniques or tricks, it is about teaching people to think differently. Unfortunately, most people find it hard to adapt their thinking to the new situation they find themselves in. 

If an advertising rep tries to sell a traditional ad to a local business they do a disservice to everybody involved. If on the other hand, he presents his customers with new ideas adapted to the realities of doing business during a pandemic everyone will benefit. Offering a coupon for a free dessert with curbside pickup or a discount on delivery will give a business a competitive advantage. I saw one restaurant that provided customers with all the ingredients plus instructions to make their signature dishes. These kits allow a local business to compete with the national meal delivery services.

If a retail business is to survive the pandemic, I believe that they have to rethink how they do things. They need to strip things back to basics. What do they have to offer consumers? What sets their business apart from their competition? What do they want to accomplish? How can they connect with customers? If a restaurant owner thinks, if I can’t allow people into my dining room, my business is doomed; they are indeed doomed. If, on the other hand, they think, if I can’t bring people into my dining room, how else can I deliver a great meal to them; this is the business that will survive the pandemic.

One of the things that stops people and businesses from adapting to the new situation is the illusion that they have already done it. For example, a restaurant’s dine in menu might not travel well, simply putting them in to-go containers won’t help the business to get through the quarantine; the restaurant may need to revise its menu to tap into the remote dining portion of the market.

I have run into this myself in creating virtual training classes for our industry. Many of our publishers simply want to take the training taught in classrooms, film it and make it available online. This, “same thing only different” approach is horribly flawed. The interpersonal dynamic is completely different online than in a class room. In person, the trainer can sense if the class is engaged or bored, absorbing the material or confused. The trainer can adjust the pace of the lesson or ask for feedback. In a classroom, most people are too embarrassed to pull out their phone and check their e-mail during class, but not when they are sitting in front of a computer. Writing effective online lessons are shorter and are designed to be more engaging and make use of strong graphics and animation to hold a student’s attention. They are not simply a filmed version of a live class.

To be quite honest, I am glad I was not in the business world during the last year. This has been the most challenging year for business leaders since at least the Great Depression. Though many businesses have closed, I am surprised that this number is not even higher. In some cases, there is absolutely nothing that could have been done to stave off bankruptcy; the impact of the pandemic is simply too great. Businesses that are not overly burdened with debt and which offer a product that can be delivered within Covid restrictions have a good chance of surviving the coronavirus.

Trying to wait out the pandemic or refusing to adapt to the new reality are not effective strategies. If businesses want to be here when the coronavirus finally goes away, they just have to remember these words from naturalist Charles Darwin, “The most important factor is neither intelligence nor strength, but adaptability.”  

- Jim Busch

January 30, 2021

We have seen more of our son and his family lately than we normally do in spite of the coronavirus pandemic. We don’t expect him to spend a lot of time with us, he is in the prime of his career and fully engaged with his responsibilities to his own family. I would much rather he spend time with our grandson. Our grandson is the future of the family, we are the past. Upon learning that his mother has pancreatic cancer, moved us much higher on his priority list. Knowing that she might not be around for long instilled a sense of urgency in him.

Normally, Jesse comes for a visit on Sunday afternoons but the possibility that the roads could be icy tomorrow made him move up his plans. His wife, Erin, was out with their son, Max, so they arrived first and Jesse arrived a little later. We visited for a while before Erin had to leave for her volunteer position answering phones on a hotline for abused women. Shortly after Erin left, our daughter arrived to see her mother. My wife and I truly enjoy it when our “chicks” all return to the nest.

Nothing makes my wife happier than making a meal for her family. Even a simple visit is an excuse for baking several deserts and making some of the kid’s favorite foods from their childhood. Today, she didn’t feel much like cooking. She apologized to them for only managing to make a batch of Rice Krispie treats and a gingerbread cake. The main course was left to me and since my driving skills far exceed my culinary abilities, I ran out for Detroit style pizza and chicken wings. My dinner offerings were nowhere as delicious as my wife’s chicken and dumplings or her ham and scalloped potatoes, but everyone seemed to enjoy their meal.

I was never one for keeping up with the Joneses. I actually had a good friend who was quite successful in the conventional sense.  He and his wife both had good jobs, they owned a lovely home in a good neighborhood and liked to take exotic vacations. The problem was that he was never satisfied and seldom happy. I remember he was complaining about the expense and the hassle of moving his family into a new home.

When I learned that he was moving just down the block from his current home, I asked him why he was moving. It turned out that the new home had a larger walk-in closet. He and his wife had seen it during an open house and “just had to have it.” Being a devotee of Henry David Thoreau, I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be easier to get rid of some of your clothes?” I was polite enough not to express this thought out loud. This discussion reminded me why I wasn’t interested in keeping up with the Jones or anyone else who has bought into this commercialized interpretation of the American dream.

I have always been able to keep a humble roof over my family’s head and simple food on the table. I have never been to Europe or taken a cruise, but I have enjoyed my time off with my wife and family. By working hard, my wife was able to stay home and make a full time job out of raising our kids. I became very good at my chosen career and earned the respect of my peers. Eventually, I became nationally known as a sales and management trainer, but this is not my accomplishment.

I have to share my greatest accomplishment in life; my wife gets the lion’s share (or lioness’s share?) of the credit for raising two good people. Both of my children are hard-working, responsible, kind and loving people. Like anyone else, they have made mistakes in their lives, but their hearts are in the right place. Knowing that cancer has taken a severe toll on their mother, they are both constantly asking what they can do to help her.

Knowing that my wife and I have been together so long that we function as a unit, our kids are very solicitous of how I am feeling and getting along. It is comforting to know that if something happens to my wife that I will have two strong people to help me hold things together. Today during their visit, my daughter helped us set up a HDTV antenna I bought in a step toward “cutting the cord” and getting rid of our cable TV bill. She also did the dishes and tidied up the house a bit over my wife’s strident protests. Learning that Glenda and I hadn’t scheduled our Covid vaccinations, our son got online and set up appointments for us. Quite honestly, we didn’t know how to do this and were waiting for our next doctor’s appointments to find out what we needed to do.

Today, I felt a shift in my status within the family. Since my father-in-law’s stroke over 25 years ago, I have been the patriarch of the family. I am beginning to think that I should add “emeritus” to that title. For decades, I have been the one family members turned to for advice, assistance and guidance. I was the one with the strength and experience to get things done and solve problems ranging from a dripping faucet to making career decisions. Now, I think that I am slowly being replaced and moving on to the last stage of my life.

I am not bothered by this. It is no different than getting wrinkles or grey hair. I have always found old people who color their hair or otherwise try to conceal their age as rather silly. I consider getting to this age to be a badge of honor, I knew a lot of people who weren’t able to make it his far down life’s road. In many ways, I feel little different than I did when I was 16, but more and more I feel my age.

I have seen this movie before, but from a different seat. I remember when I was a small child, how my day listened to my grandfather, deferring to his years of experience. Gradually, this relationship changed as my grandfather’s strength declined and his experience grew less relative as society changed. After my wife and I were married, her father was the “alpha male” of the family. He was the one who was financially secure and at the height of his power. He became my mentor and I tried to be his apprentice and helper. I became a better person by watching him and listening to him.

Eventually, my position in the family began to rise. At first, I became an equal partner. I had learned much and my opinion mattered. Eventually, my father-in-law’s health began to decline and he slowed down. More and more, I was the one who built the things that needed built and fixed the things that needed fixed and the younger members of the family sought out my advice. I have enjoyed filling that role in our family and I will continue to do these things as long as they are within my power to do so.

One of the subjects I have been asked to teach around the country is leadership. A key lesson that I share with my students is that a leader’s most important task is to develop their people. It is their job to groom the people who will replace them. I feel like my wife and I have done just that. As we prepare to step aside as the leaders of the family, we can be proud that our son and daughter are ready to take up our roles. They are wise enough and even more important, they care enough to take the reins of the family. Of all the things we have done in our five decades together, this is our greatest accomplishment.    

- Jim Busch

January 29, 2021

English is an amazing language but sometimes we have to borrow a word from another language to express what we want to say. I am going to use a Yiddish word to describe how I spent my day today. That word is “schlep.” In fact, “schlepping” has been a major theme of my life. Translated into English, schlep means, “to haul or carry especially something heavy or awkward.” I have been moving or carrying heavy and awkward loads for well over 50 years.

I was in my car early in the afternoon when my phone rang. When I answered it, I heard my daughter’s voice asking, “Hey Dad, what are you doing?”  I knew from the tone of her voice and long experience that Rachael hadn’t suddenly grown curious about my day’s activities. I knew she needed my help with something. In a brief discussion, I learned that she had rented a storage space which included the free use of a rental box truck. She needed me to drive the truck.

Rachael was one of the lucky ones whose job allowed her to work from home during the pandemic. As a professional counsellor, she can no longer meet with her clients face to face, but has been talking to them via the phone and over the internet from her home. She set up a temporary office in her home but it was less than ideal as a long term workspace. In addition, Rachael and her wife had invited a friend to live with them in their home. This meant a major reorganization of their home. Rachael hates to throw anything out that may prove useful in the future, an attitude and habit that she inherited from me. She needed to make room in her house for a new office space and a bedroom for their friend Gabe. This is why she needed the storage space and a truck driver.

I have been around trucks for most of my life. The first truck I owned was a 1951 Ford F1 with a wooden deck on the bed and three speed shift lever sticking up from the floor like a cattail stalk. It was followed by a series of old beat up trucks that served as both personal transportation and as a tool to move tools and materials for projects I was undertaking. I haven’t owned a truck for the last 12 years or so but I still miss the convenience of owning one.

Many of the jobs I took during the early years of our marriage required me to learn to drive bigger and bigger trucks. I learned to drive fork lift to load and unload trucks. I had the opportunity to drive long flatbed and box trucks. While working for a machine shop in Titusville, I had to learn to drive an old tractor trailer. I remember the first time I looked in the mirror mounted on the truck door, the 50-foot trailer seemed to stretch back at least a mile.

My truck driving skills came in handy over the years. When my kids went to college or moved to a new home, I schlepped their stuff. I drove to Clarion, the state of Indiana and to Chicago. I literally moved tons of books and shelving when my wife and I set up our bookstore and moved it on several occasions. I also put my skills to use on numerous occasions to help out friends and my children’s friends.

My father-in-law taught me how to efficiently load trucks. John had been in the Navy during World War II and was responsible for loading Liberty ships with supplies for the war in Europe. He could fit boxes and loose items into the back of a truck like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. He taught me how to make optimum use of the space in the back of a truck and how to tie it all down securely.

The scariest truck related experience I ever had happened in the bed of a truck rather than in the cab. When we lived in Forest County, we attended an auction at an old Victorian mansion in the town of Tionesta. My wife and I bought a few items and loaded them in our truck. At the auction we ran into Marge, a friend and neighbor. Marge was a big burly woman who ran a dairy farm and a small antiques business out of an old barn. She reminded me of the Ma Kettle character played by Marjorie Main in the old Ma and Pa Kettle movies. She was loud and made big movements; when Marge slapped you on the back, it took a few minutes to regain your breath. Marge was nice to us and kept us supplied with creamy raw milk for our infant son.

Marge was one of the biggest buyers at the Tionesta auction. She found a number of furniture pieces that she was sure she could sell to the tourists the folllowing summer. Marge’s truck was the typical farmer’s hauler. It was a tall four wheel drive monster with a step side bed and wooden racks. The auctioneer’s assistants had loaded Marge’s purchases on the truck in a somewhat haphazard manner. By the end of the afternoon, the truck was piled high above the racks with sofas, a brass bed and several dressers and sideboards. Her truck looked like something from an old Laurel and Hardy film. I offered to help Marge tie down her load. She looked behind the seat and discovered that she didn’t have any rope. Apparently, her husband had used it for something else.

The lack of rope presented quite a problem. In those days, the Tionesta Hardware store closed at noon on Saturdays, so there was no way to buy any rope in town. It was obvious that the cumbersome load wouldn’t make it a mile let alone the seven miles to Marge’s farm without sending furniture tumbling on to the highway.

I suggested unloading some of the pieces and making a second trip. Marge vetoed this idea as she was sure the gathering clouds would bring rain before she could get back, like the rope, the tarps that were normally stowed behind the seat was missing. Marge had a better idea, I could climb on top of the load and hold it together until she got it home. Given my fear of heights I told Marge that I wasn’t too excited to do this, a position seconded by my wife.

Marge wasn’t the sort of person one could say no to, she was an unstoppable force of nature, so I soon found myself on top of a truck load of Victorian furniture. I laid on my belly on the top of a table holding the mirror of a dresser with my left hand and the corner of a washstand with my right. I was essentially a human bungee cord stretched to my maximum extension,

With my wife following in our truck, Marge set out for home. Considering how her truck was loaded, a normal person would drive slowly and cautiously, but not Marge. Marge subscribed to a “Get it done” approach to life. She figured that the sooner she got the load home the sooner I could get down, I think she was also thinking about the coming rain. Marge quickly shifted through all the gears and started barreling up the mountain toward home.

In early November, the north woods of Pennsylvania are already in the grip of winter. The cold air rushing across my face and hands turned my skin white and I felt like an Arctic explorer. The rural road was a bit rough and I felt every bump through my entire body. The shaking also caused the load to shift a little bit. Looking back, I noticed the top drawer of one of the dressers had started to edge out over the top of the truck rack. Without moving my hands, I stretched my body back and kept the drawer from coming out with my right foot. In another mile, an armless rocking chair started slipping toward the back of the load so I hooked my left foot through its frame. By the time we reached Marge’s farm lane, I looked like a frozen zombie doing a very bad imitation of Spiderman. Once she stopped, it took a few minutes for me to get my fingers working again and defrost my body until it was working well enough for me to climb down.

Getting my daughter’s possessions to the storage facility was not nearly so harrowing as delivering Marge’s furniture. I was able to pick up the box truck, get it to Rachael’s house, load it up and get her things into storage without any mishaps. With me supervising, we were able to get it all done in one quick trip. It was nice to know I haven’t lost my ability to maneuver a cumbersome vehicle with ease. It was also nice to know that I can still be of use to my family.

I may be old but I can still schlep with the best of them.   

- Jim Busch

 January 28, 2021

Twenty-one years ago today, I saw the beginning of a new millennium and the end of a life. I stood holding hands with my wife who was standing next to her mother as her father took his last breath. I am not a not a very spiritual man, it’s not that I don’t believe, it’s just that I don’t think anyone really knows what happens when we die. That day, standing at John’s bedside, taught me to believe in the human soul. It was the only time I was with a person at the very moment that their life came to an end and it was a moving experience.

John’s death wasn’t like the ones you see on TV or in the old movies. He didn’t say a few meaningful words, and then smile a bittersweet smile for a few seconds before his eyes closed and his head slumped to one side. He had been in a coma for a few days and his breathing became less and less frequent until it stopped all together. He couldn’t move, and hadn’t said a word for a week; the popular euphemism, “passed away” was, in this case, a fitting way to describe his death. John just passed softly from the land of the living to that next unknown stop on his journey.

The thing that struck me was the transformation that occurred at that precise moment. John was there and then he was not. John was a powerful and energetic man but several strokes and cancer had greatly diminished him in the past few years, but he was still John. Even lying there unconscious, he was still the man we knew. The moment he died, he changed. It was like someone had flipped a switch; he became a bag of flesh and bones in the shape of the man we loved.

Religious teachers would say that I had seen his soul, atman or chi leaving his body. I can’t say they were wrong. I also expected to see a ghostly, translucent image of him drifting up to heaven, it was that dramatic. I couldn’t explain it, all the chemicals that made up his flesh and bones was still there on the hospital bed. The only physical change was that the barely noticeable rising and falling of his chest had stopped, but he looked very different. It was as though I had been looking at a lamp when the bulb burned out. The light simply went out.

John died what the Victorians deemed a “good death,” peacefully in his own home surrounded by his family. This is rather surprising, considering the number of times he came close to dying during his life. John was born in 1925, in a town with the less than picturesque name of “Tar Hill #3” in Fayette County. His father, John Bereczky Sr., was a Hungarian immigrant and a coal miner. He was descended from the Magyars, a tribe of fierce mounted warriors. In the old country, John Sr. had been a lancer in the Austro-Hungarian imperial cavalry and a saddle maker. Confident that his wife was carrying a boy, the old cavalryman trained a pony for his boy and made a saddle for him before he was born. Perhaps it was an omen of a stormy life, the night my father-in-law was born, lightning struck the family barn killing the pony and burning up the saddle.

John was born on May 1, 1925 the youngest of ten children. He was born many weeks premature at a time and in a place where many full term babies didn’t survive. He was a tiny baby, his older sisters and brother recalled carrying him on a pillow because he was so delicate. The doctor told his mother that it was unlikely he would survive, this was the first time John eluded death.

Shortly after John’s birth, the family moved to McKeesport and became part of a lively Hungarian community. John recalled Sunday afternoons when after attending the Hungarian church, the men would gather outside while their wives fixed dinner. Some would play the accordion or fiddles while the rest would sing the songs they learned in the old country and dance traditional dances. He remembered them building a fire and eating “kakas fesu.” This means “cocks comb” in English and was a popular food for herdsmen in Hungary. They would take a piece of bacon cutting through the rind with their knives before impaling it on a forked stick. They would roast the bacon over the flames pulling it out every so often to let the grease drop on to a thick piece of homemade bread. As the fat cooked out, the bacon would shrink causing the cuts in the rind to open up until it looked like the comb on a Rooster’s head giving the dish its name. They would then eat the roasted bacon on the greasy bread.

The Hungarian community was very insular and John’s mother never learned to speak English. They went to a Hungarian grocer, a Hungarian butcher and all their neighbors spoke Hungarian. John went to the Hungarian parochial school. When the depression hit, the Church was forced to shut down its school. In the third grade, John was transferred to the public school. He struggled to learn the language and tried to catch up, but it was hopeless. He dropped out in the sixth grade and took a job in the USS Homestead Works.

At the age of 12, he was shoveling slag out of the open hearth furnaces. My children never believed him that he had to wear wooden shoes because the floor was so hot that it would burn through leather ones. They were amazed when he showed them a pair of these shoes on display in the Heinz History Center. John drifted from job to job like truck driving and grave digging.

Tragedy struck when John was 16. He was very close to his mother and older sister Suzanna who had cared for him in his infancy. They both died within days of each other from spinal meningitis. John was close to his mother and sister who both doted on him since his days as a vulnerable infant. Their loss hit him hard and his taciturn and stern father didn’t offer much solace. John wanted to leave McKeesport and put their loss behind him. World War II gave him that chance. Though he was too young to enlist, he altered his birth certificate to make it appear that he was seventeen. The Navy recruiter told him that to enlist under the age of 18 required a parent’s signature.  Knowing his father couldn’t read English, he told him that he needed him to sign the paper or he would have to go to jail. With his father’s signature in hand, John enlisted in the U. S. Navy and shipped out to boot camp without telling anyone he was leaving.

When John entered the service, the Allies were losing the Battle of the Atlantic. With just a few weeks of training under his belt, he boarded a ship and sailed into the war zone. In the next three years, John and his shipmates fought off attacks from German U-boats and Luftwaffe fighters. He lost close friends and three ships to Nazi attacks. On one occasion, he only survived because he was plucked from the Mediterranean by a British warship. It was months before he was able to report back to the American navy. His family received a telegram saying he had been killed and collected his insurance. When John returned home on leave, his father wouldn’t let him in the house believing he was a ghost.

John participated in the D-day landing, taking troops ashore during the battle. He also helped retrieve the bodies of the soldiers and sailors who died trying to get ashore. For years he had nightmares about this experience.

John lived through the war and came home to marry my mother-in-law, Eleanor. Deeply scarred by his wartime experiences, John did not make a good husband at first. He drank heavily, gambled and found it hard to hold down a steady job. Ellie often had to deal with him drinking away his entire paycheck. When Ellie’s father got John a job at the Westinghouse Airbrake, John had a problem with his foreman, he chased him through the plant with a forklift, eventually pinning the poor man to a wall between the forks.

Ellie never knew when John would be home. On one occasion, he went drinking with a buddy who was taking flying lessons at the county airport. The two men woke up the next morning in the cockpit of a biplane sitting in a cow pasture in West Virginia. Neither man had any recollection of how they got there. Only by the grace of God did they survive this episode of “flying under the influence.” Those years were hard on John’s wife and his children until he finally straightened up in the late 1950’s.

John probably never heard the word “Zen,” but he was the most Zen person I ever met. He was totally fearless and lived his life in the present moment. If someone complimented him on something he owned, he was likely to give it to them on the spot. John worked as a custodian for the school district but earned extra money helping with the Menzie Dairy horses. This was an eight horse team of Belgium horses that the local dairy used like Budweiser uses the Clydesdales. John drove the tractor trailer to take them to events and maintained their equipment as well as driving the team. At the Allegheny County Fair, a Menzie Dairy executive got drunk and decided he would drive the horses. He lost control of the horses causing five ton of horses to race toward a bleacher full of fairgoers. Like a scene from a western movie, my wife saw her father vault a fence, run in front of the lead horses, grab the reins and let them drag him until he could stop the team.  

By the time I came along to date his youngest daughter in 1970, John had settled down quite a bit. We hit it off from the first time we met. Because he was ashamed of his own lack of education, he was impressed by academic achievements. I was impressed with his strength, confidence and by the fact that he was a bonafide American hero. We shared a number of interests, nature, shooting and good food. We worked well together and I learned a lot from John who could build anything. The two of us built a 12 by 20 foot building from the foundation to the roof over a three day weekend.

I lived under the same roof with John for the last 25 years of his life. He and Ellie invited us into their home when we were going through some tough times financially. This arrangement was initially one of convenience, but was sustained over the decades by love. John and I grew close, in fact I felt closer to him than I did to my own father.  He was the ideal grandfather to my children and a good friend to me.

It was hard watching John decline; he had always seemed indestructible. What the Nazi Navy and Luftwaffe couldn’t do, Camel cigarettes could. John had been a chain smoker of unfiltered Camels from his navy days forward. This led to him having several strokes, which weakened him and made him almost blind. John had lived much of his life behind the wheel as a long haul trucker, and school bus driver. When he retired, John and Ellie bought a van, turned it into a camper and toured all over the U.S.  John was good about surrendering his license; he told me he didn’t want to risk hitting someone and hurting them. It broke my heart to see John sitting behind the wheel of his van, smoking a Camel and remembering better times.

In 1999, John learned that he had lung cancer that had metastasized into his brain. He didn’t have long to live but showed no fear. He believed that he should have died along with his shipmates some 50 years before, he saw all the years between as a bonus. Late in the year he asked my wife to help him gather his scrap metal and drive him to the junk yard. He summoned his strength for the trip and collected the cash for his aluminum and copper wire. He took the money and pressing it into my wife’s hand saying, “Get your mother something nice for Christmas.”

John willed himself to live through Christmas, he was weak but mentally he was his old self. He started fading after Christmas, but hung on until January 5 for his and Ellie’s 54th wedding anniversary. After that, he quickly slipped into a coma never to wake again. Though it has been over two decades, I still miss John every day. I think of him when I use one of his tools or when I eat one of his favorite dishes. I saw him slip away but I believe a part of John is still here. He continues to live in the hearts and the memories of those who loved him.        

 - Jim Busch

January 27, 2021

I have a confession to make, despite the CDC’s advice to avoid unnecessary trips to the store, I have continued to regularly visit Goodwill and other second hand stores. Every other place I go is essential, the grocery store, the pharmacy or doctor’s appointments. Even when they were open on a limited basis, I didn’t go to the local art museums which is one of my favorite things to do. But I still visit a Goodwill store a couple of times a week - it’s an addiction.

I started second hand shopping when I was first married. I was a poor student working stocking shelves and unloading trucks at a local supermarket. My wife and I rented the second floor of an old house in McKeesport for $85 per month, which was a stretch for our budget at the time. We lived above a professor from Penn State McKeesport who drove a Porsche. He was kind enough to let us know when he was planning to hold his monthly pot party so we could spend the evening with one of our families. When we got home and through the next day our apartment smelled like a Grateful Dead concert from the fumes coming up the stairs.

We owned very little beside a nine year old lime green Plymouth Valiant and the clothes on our backs. Our diet included quite a few hot dogs and Kraft macaroni and cheese in the blue cardboard box. My job helped, as I sometimes could bring home dented cans of soup or a truck driver would give me a loaf of bread for helping him unload; one time I got three watermelons direct from Georgia for staying after work to unload a semitrailer full of them. 

We furnished our new home with mismatched cast off furniture that we collected from family members. Our furnishings included a metal framed Victorian bed to a fabulous ‘50s Formica dinette set. We had some old beat up pots and pans and some pastel colored Melamine dishes which paired nicely with our jelly jar glasses.

We found ourselves needing a lot of things but with no disposable income to buy them. What I lacked in financial resources I had in old fashioned resourcefulness. I was raised on stories of how my family had survived the depression by using their wits and living frugally; I was sure that I was just as clever and as parsimonious as my forebears.

I found a lot of what we needed sitting on the curb on garbage day. I found some end tables I could fix up. My wife’s first vacuum cleaner was an old Hoover that worked good as new when I took it apart, cleaned it and replaced the belt and motor brushes. Our big weekend outing was walking around the flea market at Great Valley Drive In.  Gradually, we filled out our household inventory. My wife would find a potato masher or spatula she could use for ten or fifteen cents; I would find a tool I could use or a picture for our wall for a similar amount.

Although things improved, we struggled financially for the first ten years of our marriage. We continued our weekend expeditions to the flea market. Our kids looked forward to these trips as they could actually come home with some of the toys they wanted. We even set up a table there a couple of times a season to supplement our income and sell some of the things our kids had outgrown.

It was about this time that I discovered the Goodwill and Saint Vincent DePaul stores. I was working on the road selling and servicing cash registers. I would eat a sandwich while driving and use my lunch hours to poke around a secondhand store wherever I found one. I often found things we needed for mere pennies on the dollar. My wife would tell me, “When you’re out, if you see a (fill in the blank) pick one up for me.”

She continues to do this to this day; just last week I filled an “order” for two eight by eight Pyrex baking dishes. They cost me a whopping five bucks for the two of them.  I love the challenge of the hunt. I felt like a successful hunter gatherer bringing home a mastodon to his wife.

My frugal shopping habits provided a low cost upgrade to our lifestyle. It also proved to have other benefits. One Friday evening my wife and I drove to South Park to take in one of the free concerts put on by Allegheny County. We got started late and by the time we got to the park the only parking available was located in a different zip code; we were just about to give up our search when we heard a whistle blow. The County Police officer standing next to our car waved us into the reserved parking lot. I waved to thank him and we pulled into a spot on the edge of the concert grounds.

I turned to my wife and said, “That was nice of him.” My wife laughed and pointing to my jacket said, “Look what you’re wearing.” I glanced down at my chest and remembered I was wearing a jacket embroidered with the county parks logo on one side and the name “Mike” on the other. The officer thought I was a county employee coming to work the concert. He was doing a solid for good old “Mike.”

I was an early fan of eBay. I never buy anything online but I have sold all sorts of things there. Before the rest of the world caught on to this I would buy things for next to nothing at Goodwill and then auction them for much more online. I was especially successful at “flipping” books. I bought a biography of U.S. Grant published in 1869 for 35 cents at “St. Vinnie” in Butler and sold it a week later for $175 on eBay. I still do this occasionally but nowadays hordes of people are looking for things to resell. Timing is everything.

While I am legendarily cheap, secondhand shopping satisfies some of my other psychological needs. I am endlessly curious; the ever changing stock of items on the Goodwill shelves feeds my curiosity. I like the fact that I never know what I will find. Occasionally, I will find something that I don’t even recognize, this kind of shopping is very educational. I often find items or books that I know a friend or a family member would enjoy such as apple items for my sister-in-law, frogs for my sister and art books for my best friend. When I give them these things as gifts, I get to feel like a philanthropist for just a few dollars.

I also love the randomness of secondhand shopping. More and more we exist in a curated world. The algorithms that run the world analyze our purchases and keep offering us other similar items. This is convenient but I find it limiting, I may want to expand my horizons and buy something different. I love the book section at Goodwill. On Amazon or at Barnes and Noble you go to one place and all the books on the shelf are on the same subject. At the Goodwill, you’ll find a 1980’s microwave cookbook next to the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe.

I see books that I never knew existed by authors I never heard of before. This is a grand way to expand one’s interests and knowledge. Even better, if I find a book that I think might be interesting, the low price of the books means it is not much of a gamble to buy it and give it a try. I am currently reading a wonderful book on the art of conversation written by an English philosophy professor. It was completely new to me and very thought provoking. Where else can you get that for $1.99 less my senior discount?

Goodwill shopping also allow me to indulge my love of a good story. As a child, one of the many things I wanted to be when I grew up was an archeologist. I loved the documentaries on TV where a scientist digs up a tiny piece of metal or stone and uses it to tell the story of an entire civilization. I feel that way when I wander the aisles of the Goodwill. Most of the stuff is just unwanted, but others tell a story. The unopened packages of “miracle” products sold on late night infomercials paint a clear picture of how gullible the American public is and the power of impulse buying.

Sometimes the shelves tell a much sadder story. Not all of the things on the shelves are the unwanted detritus of our consumer culture. Many are beloved treasures; keepsakes holding the memories of someone’s life. A collection of souvenir spoons bearing the names of states, a collection of thimbles in all different sizes and decorated in various styles, and bronze baby shoes all took pride of place in some older person’s home. They brought memories of road trips in an old Pontiac, they were gifts from grandchildren or reminded people of when they were young and fresh

Today, I saw a set of shelves filled with a lifetime collection of penguin figurines. There were too many and because some were obviously much older than others. This was not evidence of a passing fancy; this was a collection that took a lifetime to amass. I wondered why they ended up here. It is unlikely their owner suddenly decided they didn’t like the little tuxedoed birds. More likely, they had to downsize, losing both their penguins and their home. Perhaps they are in a nursing home or perhaps they passed away. While penguins are generally seen as cute and funny, these penguins tell a sad story.

I know I shouldn’t be going to these stores during the quarantine. I do wear my mask and disinfect my hands afterward but it is still risky. I quite honestly can’t help myself. My shopping habits have helped me keep my mind active and occupied over the last year. While I no longer needed to go second hand shopping to save money, I do need to do it to save my sanity.

- Jim Busch

January 26, 2021

Back before I became a retired gentleman of leisure, my assistant had a plaque hanging in her office that read, “To err is human…to really screw things up requires a computer!” Truer words have never been uttered; computers are amazing devices that enrich our lives and gives us access to the world’s collective knowledge - WHEN THEY WORK!

Just about anyone you talk to can relate stories where an uncooperative digital device has made them want to tear their hair out in frustration. I took part in one of these hair yanking moments this evening.

Tonight, I took part in the monthly meeting of the Tube City Writers. Obviously because of the pandemic, we couldn’t meet in person putting our group at the mercy of the “Zoom gods.” Like the gods of ancient Greek mythology, the Zoom gods are fickle, sometimes they help us in our quest to connect with others and at sometimes they blow up a storm to smash our hopes onto the digital rocks. Our group ran into problems right from the get go; unlike good little children, some members of our group could be heard but not seen, they couldn’t get their video to work. Other people tried to join us but could not make either a video or voice connection with the meeting.

We finally managed to get most of the group on screen and enjoyed a good discussion of interviewing skills. We planned to put these into use during the second hour of the meeting. We intended to conduct interviews with a few people from the Mon Valley area who had direct experience with Covid-19. We would then use these interviews to write stories for the blog posted on the McKeesport Community Newsroom website. The Zoom gods decided that we had become boastful and needed to be put in our place or perhaps, they just wanted to see us lowly mortals suffer.  At any rate, they cast down their digital lightning bolts and prevented our intended interview subjects from connecting with our group.

Like Odysseus and his intrepid crew, we carried on in the face of insurmountable obstacles. With no subjects to interview we started talking about ourselves. We got back on course when one of our group’s members started talking about her family’s experiences with the coronavirus.

Nya O’Neal is a junior at McKeesport Senior High School. She is a bright, eloquent young woman who has a positive outlook on life. She is fully engaged with social issues and wiser than one would expect in a person so young. It is not surprising that she does well at school and involves herself in church and community activities.

As a high school student, Nya has some insight on the subject of schooling our children during a pandemic. This has been one of the most divisive issues in the country since Covid landed on our shores one year ago. The one thing that everyone agrees on is that in a perfect world having our kids attend classes in person is the best way to teach them what they need to know. Of course we are living in a far from perfect world, a world where a deadly virus is spreading like wildfire and killing tens of thousands of people.

One school of thought is that if proper precautions are taken, it is safe for our children to go back to their school buildings. Proponents of this approach insist that younger people are less likely to catch Covid-19 and if they do contract the disease their symptoms are generally mild. They believe if students wear masks in school, maintain safe social distancing and if the school staff scrupulously clean and disinfect the schools there is no danger that the students will carry the disease home to their families. They maintain that the rewards of ensuring that our children are properly educated, far outweigh the risks involved.

Many educators and parents say that experience has taught us that the coronavirus is far too contagious and far too deadly to ignore. They believe that even after taking every precaution, the risk to our children is just too great. Opponents of reopening our schools say that the disease is just too unpredictable and that there are too many unknowns to gamble on opening our schools. They would prefer to wait until the pandemic is under control.

The people on both sides of this issue stand by their theories; they are confident that they are correct in their beliefs. Nya’s understanding of the issue is not theoretical, it’s practical. She has firsthand experience, she gave our group the “woman on the street” view, or more accurately, the “student in the hallway” view of things.  Nya, has just recovered from a case of Covid-19.

Nya, is certain that she contracted the disease at school; in an abundance of caution, the only place she went outside of her own home during the pandemic was school. Nya’s experience at school was far from the safe sanitized one described by the supporters of opening the schools. She told our group that many students did not take the coronavirus seriously. They did not feel threatened by the virus, so they refused to wear their masks properly and sometimes did not wear them at all. She noted that while some teachers followed Covid protocols assiduously, others did not sanitize the desks in their rooms between classes. Nya, told us that all the surfaces in the high school were not wiped down regularly and the building was only deep cleaned every other weekend or so.

Nya, was constantly afraid that she would catch the virus. When she confronted her fellow students about not wearing masks, they laughed, some humored Nya by pulling their masks up but when she saw them a short while later, their masks were at “half-mast” again. To illustrate her point, Nya modeled one of the masks distributed by the school to the students. It was quite attractive, printed in the school colors red and blue with a proud leaping McKeesport Tiger and totally useless. The ill-fitting school issued mask let air leak out in every direction. It would not offer protection from a medium sized insect let alone a microscopic organism.

As Nya feared, she contracted the disease. It began as a scratchy throat and within a day Nya felt pain throughout her body. She said even her skin hurt, even the weight of her clothes on her body was painful. Describing the disease, Nya said “Covid was designed to kill, if you let it settle in your chest, you’re done.” She was exhausted and though she wanted to just stay in bed, she forced herself to get up and move around. Nya’s mother cared for her for the first few days until she was laid low by the disease. A few days later, Nya’s father contracted the disease. Nya and her family were tested for the disease, a process that she said was extremely unpleasant. Three days later, the results confirmed that they all had Covid-19.

As severe as their cases were, the family doctor recommended that they convalesce at home. With the entire family suffering from the disease, they were in danger of running out of groceries and other essential items. The O’Neal’s tried to make use of the store delivery services but couldn’t make any arrangements. Neighbors and church friends came to the rescue of the family while they were on the mend. Fortunately, Nya and her parents have recovered from the coronavirus. They are still tired but the worst is over. Just a few days ago, Nya completed her 20 days in quarantine.

Nya, understands why people don’t want to comply with the coronavirus restrictions. Even Nya admits, “It hard to not be doing what you usually do.”  She would like to be in school and hanging out with her friends but she is smart enough to understand that is not possible right now. She can’t understand why people won’t take the simple precautions that can keep them healthy. Understandably, after what she has experienced in the last few months, Nya O’Neal is solidly in the “Close the schools until we lick Covid-19” camp.

- Jim Busch

January 25, 2021

Today, I was on the way to the store when my phone dinged letting me know I had a text message. I assumed that it was my wife adding something to my shopping list but I was wrong. The text came from one of my former employees telling me that a mutual friend’s husband had died today from complications of Covid-19.

This is a sad way to learn such bad news. Texting is quick, convenient and lacks any trace of humanity.  The entire message read,

“Kaaren’s husband passed away yesterday from Covid and pneumonia. He is being cremated and they are having a family service at some point.”

It seems a rather mundane way of learning about a tragedy. A text message seems appropriate for adding to a grocery list, but not for marking the death of a good man.

I first met Kaaren in 1995. I had just been hired to reorganize and run the telemarketing department at The Pennysaver. Kaaren was one of the senior salespeople and like the entire staff was a little suspicious of me. In the month before I started, the company had demoted their old manager and fired a number of the less productive employees. Their compensation plan had been changed from a generous salary to a small hourly rate plus commission. The icing on the cake was that upper management had hired someone from outside the company, someone they didn’t know, to run the department. It didn’t help that I was the first man to run the telephone department which was made up entirely of women.

Before I did anything, I walked around the department just talking to people and getting to know them. With most people, I started off by talking to them about how long they had been working for the company. With Kaaren, I had to ask her about the unique spelling of her name. I said, “I like the spelling of your name, is your family Dutch?”

This was one of those phrases that I regret making the instant it leaves my lips. Did I really say “Dutch?”

Kaaren smiled and said, “No, my mother just wanted me to stand out from the crowd.”

“Did it work?” I sometimes start off slow in a conversation, but I occasionally come up with a clever repartee. My question put a smile on Kaaren’s face and she answered, “I think so.” This was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. In many ways I was a terrible manager; I never thought of myself as a boss but as a sort of senior partner. Kaaren and I made a good team, over the next few years she became one of my top salespeople and helped me make a lot of bonuses.

She was eloquent, intelligent and a good listener, a very persuasive combination in a salesperson. As I got to know Kaaren, I learned that she wrote poetry and loved to read. She was proud of her daughter and her young grandchildren. I also learned she had a delightful off the wall sense of humor. We deadlined all of our papers on Friday afternoons. This was a very stressful time for everyone in the department but it was especially hard on Kaaren. She carried a heavy customer load and many of her accounts were very complex. The stress levels peaked at about 3 p.m., so on deadline day I would stop at Kaaren’s desk and tell her a really bad joke. She would bust out laughing and I could see the stress wash off her.

Kaaren was a most valuable employee and a good friend, which is why I risked my life so that I didn’t lose her. Before any ad was published, our credit manager had to approve and release it. Our credit manager was the kind of man who relished in this power, he had been a sales manager and the move to the credit department was a demotion. He was a misogynist who didn’t believe women were capable of being good salespeople.

He and Kaaren got into a dispute over an account that was slightly over the customer’s credit limit. He had planned to make a payment but his truck had broken down on the way to her office. Kaaren asked the credit manager for an extension until Monday, something we routinely did. He flat out refused and he and Kaaren got into a heated argument. She lost her temper, announced that she was quitting and stormed out the door.

Kaaren was already in her car by the time I learned about what was going on. I waved at her to stop but she was so mad that she didn’t see me. Like a scene out of a ‘70s cop show, I leapt on to the hood of Kaaren’s car. With my fingers wrapped around the edge of her hood near the windshield and me shouting “We have to talk!” Kaaren turned on to the busy road in front of the office. Looking at her crazed boss on her hood she slowly turned into the parking lot next door.

She jumped out of the car and asked me, “What the hell are you doing.” I told her I didn’t want to lose her and that I knew that if I let her get away she would never come back. I told her that she didn’t want our crotchety credit manager get the best of her. I promised to do what I could to resolve the problem. By the time we were done, we were both laughing at how I looked hanging on to her car. This story became something of a legend at The Pennysaver though I’ve never seen this management technique mentioned in the Harvard Business Review.

At company picnics and parties I got to know Kaaren’s family. Her husband, Jim, was a great guy. He had been a master carpenter when he took a bad fall from some scaffolding on a building job. He spent months in the hospital and years in rehab. His back was permanently injured forcing him to make a midlife career change. His disability paid for college and he became a respiratory therapist.

Jim’s back began bothering him again forcing him into an early retirement but he stayed active. About 10 years ago, he mysteriously collapsed. He was fully aware of what was going on around him but his body was paralyzed. This passed in a few days but he remained weak and had a poor sense of balance. His doctors ruled out a stroke and could never identify the cause of his health problems. In his compromised condition, he was in the high risk group for contracting Covid-19.

I haven’t seen Kaaren since my retirement. She left the company in the same corporate downsizing that forced me out. We talked a few times and exchanged cards, but our plans to get together for lunch never materialized. Kaaren had her hands full caring for Jim. She lives in the North Hills which complicated logistics but we keep hoping to get together.

In normal times, I would have made a point of going to the viewing and the funeral. I want my friend to know how much I care about her and her loss. I will send a card and will contact her in a few weeks. Perhaps, we will finally be able to get together to catch up on old times.

One of the cruelest things about this pandemic is that it separates people when they most need to get together. It takes our loved ones away and then forces us to grieve alone. I will be very glad when this disease finally goes away. I will be very glad when we can be there for each other.   

- Jim Busch

January 24, 2021

Today, my wife and I had a wonderful surprise. My son and grandson came for a visit this afternoon. We love spending time with them, I particularly like watching how the two of them interact. I was out getting a tire repaired when they arrived and learned about their visit when I called my wife to see if she needed anything.

My wife had planned to serve me leftovers for dinner but this was not elegant enough for our esteemed guests. My wife said if I didn’t mind picking them up, she would order fish sandwiches from Rene’s Bar in East McKeesport. After 48 years of marriage, I know that putting this type of message in question form is really just a bit of politeness. Translated into plain English the message reads, “I’m ordering fish from Rene’s! You will pick it up and bring it back home without dawdling or delay.”

Per my wife’s “request” I picked up dinner for us and our visitors. My wife had ordered four fish sandwich platters one each for her, me, our son and grandson. We hadn’t ordered sandwiches from Rene’s in a while. My wife had forgotten that they serve “Pittsburgh Style” fish sandwiches. In any other city in the United States, a fish sandwich consists of a piece of fish about the size of a generous hamburger placed between the top and bottom sections of a normal sized bun.

In Pittsburgh, a fish sandwich is a much grander construction. It starts with a Pittsburgh sized bun; in other cities this product of the baker’s art is known as a loaf of bread. Just out of curiosity I took out my tape measure and found that our “buns” were a full eight inches long and three and a half inches in diameter. These were serious chunks of bread chewy with a flaky, crusty exterior. Even before the fish was inserted in the bun, no human mouth would be able to encircle it.

While Rene’s buns were huge, they were not nearly large enough to hold their cargo. Each sandwich was loaded with three breaded fish fillets. When laid on the bun these pieces of fish hung over each end of the bun by a good inch and a half. The sandwiches came packed in large Styrofoam take out containers, the type designed to hold an entire dinner. The sandwiches had to be placed in the containers diagonally because they were not wide enough for these man sized constructions.

I cannot conceive of any normal human being capable of consuming one of these in a single sitting. If these were the only foods available to our species, we would have to evolve detachable jaws like those that allow boa constrictors to swallow full grown pigs whole. This would be the only way we could take a proper bite out of one of these monsters.

When my wife saw me walk in our kitchen door with two full sized shopping bags of food, she instantly saw her error. Both my son and grandson have prodigious appetites yet they were barely able to put a dent in their sandwiches. My wife made the natural assumption; one sandwich for each person. Though she has lived here her entire life, she had forgotten that, in Pittsburgh, the equation is more like one sandwich per small family. Since she had also ordered fries, onion rings and fried zucchini, she could have ordered one sandwich and none of us would have gone away hungry.

At least a Pittsburgh style fish sandwich wasn’t topped with French fries, a scoop of coleslaw and dressing. These items are found on another famous local sandwich, or “sammich” in Yinzer speak. The Primanti Brothers’ sandwich is another massive Western Pennsylvania culinary concoction. Like the “Burgh” fish sandwich it starts out with an oversized chunk of bread. The thick slices of Italian bread that encase a Primanti sandwich are the size of snowshoes. The bread is generously buttered and then piled high with the buyer’s choice of meat, corned beef, salami, ham, capicola, etc.  After the meat layer reaches about an inch a like sized layer of cheese is laid on top. And slathered with Italian dressing. The next step distinguishes the Primanti sandwich from the Dagwood sandwich prepared elsewhere.

While sandwich makers in other corners of the U.S. would lay a slice of lettuce on their work and serve it, here in the Steel City we are just getting started. On top of the layers of meat and cheese, we add a full order of hand cut French fries, delightfully greasy and with the skins left on. Made from big Idaho potatoes, the fries hang over the edges of the bread like the fringe on a bed spread. We Pittsburghers believe that any sandwich where the contents don’t extend beyond the bread lacks ambition.

An ice cream scoop of coleslaw is plopped on the stack of fries. A thick slice or two of tomato is the last thing to go on the sandwich before another slice of bread tops it off. Eating a Primanti’s sandwich not only requires a big appetite but also big hands; the sandwich is close to six inches thick when served. They are a complete meal, bread, meat, potatoes, salad and vegetables in each bite.

Pittsburgh is a town known for doing things in a big way. We made the steel that built America and saved the world in World War II. We are proud of our history and our sports teams.  In addition to our fish and Primanti’s sandwiches, we make Battleship and Destroyer hoagies that are as long as a man’s leg or arm. In most places at a wedding you get a thin slice of cake, in Pittsburgh you can eat your cake and feast at a table full of cookies too. This is part of our history as much as Andrew Carnegie and Joe Magarac.

Our regional taste for big sandwiches came from hungry working men who needed something that would give them the energy needed to stand in front of a blast furnace for a 12 hour shift. We were, and still are, a busy people. We don’t have time for fancy foods, we like something we can grab and eat with one hand. Primanti’s sandwiches were originally made so truck drivers could eat a meal while keeping one hand on the wheel. Even though most of our mills are gone, we are just not a lettuce wrap kind of town.

I, for one, am proud of our delicious working class culinary heritage.          

- Jim Busch

January 23, 2021

Today was a banner day for me, I got my second Covid haircut. I actually hate getting my haircut, so the pandemic gave me a grand excuse for avoiding the barber chair. I don’t like people fussing over me, I have never had a massage and never intend to get one.

My decision to get a haircut today was based more on practical considerations than on stylistic ones. It was a matter of public safety, I found that when I was driving, I had to brush a grey screen of hair away from my eyes. My hair had reached the sheepdog stage. I could have cut my “bangs” but I decided that if I was going to take scissors to my head I might as well go all the way.

I got up this morning and took a shower. After blow drying my hair, it took up about twice as much space as my actual head. It stretched down past my collar and my ears were playing a very effective game of hide and seek. I don’t have much of a beard; even when I was working I only shaved every few days. This is a shame because if I had a beard that matched my hair, I would’ve looked a great deal like a biblical prophet. This would have been a golden opportunity to start my own personal cult.

I drove to the Oak Park Mall, and parked near the Great Clips salon. I was careful to park a couple of rows away from the salon’s front door; I was afraid if they saw me coming, they would flip over the open sign, lock the door and switch off the lights. I made it to their door without being detected. I was surprised that the Great Clips staff didn’t bolt for the back door when I arrived; they stood by their chairs with the stalwart dedication of the Titanic band playing Nearer My God to Thee.

I stood behind the piece of duct tape on the floor exactly six feet from the reception desk and waited. The two unoccupied stylists conferred for a moment; I thought they might be flipping a coin or drawing straws to see who would take on the challenge of cutting my hair. Perhaps, they were going to work as a tag team and were deciding who would go first.

Finally, the older of the two approached the podium and said, “Can I help you?” In perhaps the most obvious thing that ever passed my lips, I answered, “I need a haircut.”

Looking at the unruly halo of hair surrounding my face she said, “I can see that!” She then picked up a white pistol gripped thermometer and scanned my forehead. Looking at the digital display on the back of the device, she said, “94.7, you’re a cool customer.”

I have always had a slow metabolism, my temperature runs four or five degrees lower than normal humans and though I am anything but in shape, my heart rate is usually in the low 50s. Setting the thermometer down, she led me to her work station. To maintain social distancing, every other station was closed but this was not a problem on this particular occasion, as there was no one in the waiting area.

Before leaving the reception area, Jaylee, my stylist, punched my phone number into the shop’s computer and it spit out a dossier of my head. Picking up the little slip of white paper she said, “When you were here last September” she put an emphasis on the word “September” to remind me that I had waited too long for a haircut. She then said, “I see we used a number three on top and a number four on the sides. Do you want the same this time?”

I really don’t give a lot of thought to my hair. Other than brushing it out of my eyes, I pay absolutely no attention to my hair, never did, never will. I mumbled, “Sure that’s fine.”  I took off my glasses and asked Jaylee if my mask was in the way; my personal mask choice is a vinyl fabric number intended for use in a paint booth at an auto body shop. I cut off the top straps and it is secured by velcro around my neck. It doesn’t touch my ears and I had shoved it down low on the back of my neck.

I said to Jaylee, “I guess the Covid restrictions make it hard for you to do your job?”

I could see her nod in the mirror. “Yea, its a pain. I’m only working part time so all of the girls can get some hours.”

I answered, “You really can’t do social distancing when you cut hair.”

Jaylee laughed and said, “No, my arms aren’t that long. I thought it was funny that they made us take half the chairs out of the waiting area and move them six feet apart… then I am standing right next to our clients. Just doesn’t make sense to me.”

Rolling up her sleeves, Jaylee steeled herself to the task lying before her and fired up the number fours. As she moved it toward the side of my head I heard a loud electronic squeal in my left ear. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to remove my hearing aids. Fortunately, they let out a loud yelp like a frightened puppy when anything comes close to them. I was surprised I hadn’t remember them when I had removed my glasses.

“Hold on a minute! I forgot to take out my hearing aids.” As I took out my two hearing aids and laid them on the Formica top of Jaylee’s workstation she said, “Sorry, I didn’t see them, I can barely see your ears.”

Crisis averted, Jaylee went at it plowing through my hair like a bulldozer operator making a path for a new interstate highway. I was wondering if she had pulled out the industrial clippers for this job, I was hoping they wouldn’t overheat and set my head on fire. Silver grey white hair fell past my eyes like an avalanche in the Alps. I was impressed with Jaylee’s skill and determination. In a few minutes, she had civilized my hair and I no longer looked like the Wild Man of Borneo in the old Three Stooge’s movies.

She deftly switched over to the number threes and evened out my sideburns studying them like a painter putting the last touches on his masterpiece. A quick trim of my bushy eyebrows and the job was complete. Jaylee held up the mirror for my critique of her work. I responded with one word, “Excellent!” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t particularly care how it looked or that with my glasses still in my pocket all I could see was a grey blur.

After restoring my eyes and ears to full operational status, I looked down at my feet and saw drifts of grey Jim hair. I considered asking Jaylee if she wanted me to help her shovel the piles of hair into a truck. I hoped she had a snow blower in the back. 

I followed Jaylee to the cash register. She punched the flat screen a couple of times, smiled and said, “senior haircut, twelve dollars.”  I wondered why my “senior” hair cost less to cut. Does old grey hair cause less wear and tear on the clippers? I guess we get a deal on the theory that we oldsters have less money to spend so they cut us a break. It’s sort of a “We’d better hurry up and get your dough before your die discount.” Now that I have lived though most of life’s stages, I would be in favor of offering a discount for young fathers getting started in their career discount. That’s when I really could have used a price break.

Twelve dollars showed on the screen in front of me. I showed Jaylee my credit card and asked if I could add a tip. She told me that it would pop up when I inserted my card. When it did, I gave Jaylee a 50 percent tip. I am a cheapskate but I was also a working person most of my life. Jaylee had worked hard to sculpt a human head out of the wilderness of hair on my head. She took obvious pride in her work. I also remembered that she was risking her health and her life to come to work and cut my hair. I wondered if 50 percent was generous enough.

Walking to my car, I felt a strange coldness on my neck. I understood how a sheep feels during shearing season. I got in the car and drove home, hoping my wife would recognize me and let me back into the house.

- Jim Busch

January 22, 2021

Since the pandemic began a year, ago one of the things we hear all the time is, “We’re all in the same boat.” This implies that our experience of Covid-19 is universal, that we are all suffering through a shared experience. I have found this is not true whatsoever.

I consider myself fortunate that I was retired when the pandemic hit. I was working part time as a freelance journalist which came to a stop after the first quarantine was announced. My job involved reporting on community events and interviewing members of the community; both of these came to a screeching halt about a year ago. Fortunately, my writing this did not provide a great deal of my income. The term, a “fixed income,” is usually a profession of one’s tenuous financial state; an admission that one’s income will not grow to keep pace with inflation. In hard times when people are losing their jobs, a “fixed income” takes on another meaning, it means that circumstances can’t pull the financial rug out from under one. My financial situation has changed very little since the pandemic began.

On the other hand, a large number of my former coworkers have lost their positions in the past year. Despite regular unemployment and federally funded Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, most of these people have had to learn to live on a diminished income. This situation is exasperated by the fact that the pandemic makes job hunting extremely difficult. With so many out of work and a large percentage of businesses closed, there aren’t a lot of positions available. In over 50 years of working, I was never unemployed for more than two weeks at a time. I am not so sure I could make that claim today, if I was still in the ranks of the gainfully employed.

Those who are lucky enough to still be working find themselves in all sorts of situations. My son, Jesse, is a lawyer and a senior executive for a pharmaceutical company. Even prior to the pandemic, he did a great deal of his work from home. The only change in his routine was that he no longer went into the city a few days a month to attend meetings.

My daughter, Rachael, is a professional counselor and normally saw her clients in an office in Bridgeville. Of course, this was impracticable, she couldn’t risk talking to clients in a small confined office. Most of Rachael’s patients take public transportation to attend their sessions which would put them at an unnecessary risk to their health. Rachael’s employer, like most concerns, was caught off guard by the crisis. They had to learn to adapt to the new situation. At first, Rachael just kept in touch with her clients by phone, then they started setting up regular phone appointments. Eventually, she was able to start video conferencing with the clients who had the necessary equipment and expertise.

This was not an ideal situation, Rachael helps people by connecting with them. It is far easier to engage people when you are sitting across a desk from them. Initially, she found it difficult to fully engage her clients, they often broke off the calls long before their session was scheduled to conclude. Over time, both Rachael and her clients became accustomed to the new routine. The sessions were not ideal, Rachael was not as effective as she could be in person but she is able to help her clients get through the pandemic and deal with their pre-existing conditions.

Many people do not have the option of working remotely. My wife’s niece, Marcy, is a nurse, while the pandemic has actually improved her financial situation, it has added to her workload and put her in grievous risk. As a frontline healthcare worker, during the pandemic she has worked for weeks on end without a day off. She has worked long days often only getting a few hours to rest between shifts. In addition to being constantly exhausted, the emotional strain on her has been almost unbearable.

She works in nursing homes so she has been in the epicenter of the pandemic. In the past year, Marcy has lost many more patients than in past years. Because of the quarantine, her patient’s families could not visit them; this meant that Marcy often held their hands as they passed so they didn’t have to die alone. She is a medical professional, losing patients is part of her job, but the number of people she’s lost in the past year has taken a toll.

In addition to work related stress, Marcy has to deal with keeping her own family safe. She shares an apartment with her husband and two sons, one in high school and the other in his 20s. Though she rigorously follows all safety protocols at work and immediately changes out of her scrubs and showers when she gets home, she worries about carrying the disease to her family. She particularly worries about her older boy who is asthmatic.

While it is difficult to maintain social distance in an apartment, they do their best, her sons spend a lot of time alone in their rooms. No one knows the importance of social distancing more than Marcy, but that doesn’t make it any easier for her. She is a loving woman who likes to express her emotions physically. Marcy is a hugger. Nothing would delight her more than throwing her arms around her husband and her sons when she gets home from work; particularly in these emotionally trying times.

For several months, I took my wife for treatments each morning at Allegheny General Hospital on the Northside. Our trip home took us across the Roberto Clemente Bridge onto Fort Duquesne Boulevard. Between the road and the river are a row of park benches. I am sure that the architect that designed this parklet envisioned lovers sharing these benches and gazing out at the river and the stadiums on the far bank. The reality is that they’ve becoming camping spots for Pittsburgh’s homeless population. Most of the benches are packed with the bags and bundles of the homeless, some have pop-up tents pitched next to them; other benches serve as beds for bedraggled men and women. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be homeless and I can’t imagine how the coronavirus has made their lives even more precarious.

Continuing our homeward journey from the hospital we turned onto the Boulevard of the Allies heading toward the Stanwix Street on ramp to the Parkway East. To our left was a long line of homeless people lined up at the Catholic Diocese offices. We couldn’t tell what they were waiting for, perhaps a meal or to line up a spot in a shelter. They were tightly packed and few were wearing protective equipment. I doubt that the homeless have much access to masks or gloves. Even if they are aware of the importance to this equipment, acquiring them is probably not as big a priority as obtaining their next meal. Looking at the deserted streets of the Golden Triangle, I wondered how this impacted the homeless. Fewer people means fewer handouts and fewer discarded meals; things that the homeless depend upon.

The pandemic has hit the disadvantaged people in this country harder than anyone else. Poor people and people of color have been disproportionally impacted by the coronavirus. The disease has taken a high toll on these groups, I am sure the homeless have felt its sting as well.

Considering all of these things, I think it is easy to see that we are not all in the same boat. We may be weathering the same storm but the vessels we find ourselves in are very different. Our age, the condition of our health, our economic situation, our race and many other factors determine the type of boat we find ourselves in. Some people are aboard luxury yachts and others find themselves in leaky rowboats. I hope that those of us who find ourselves in somewhat comfortable positions will reach out to those in more difficult positions and throw them a lifeline. This only seems right.          

- Jim Busch      

January 21, 2021

On the CBS This Morning news show today they ran a series of videos telling the stories of people who recently died in the pandemic. This makes for powerful television. The story of a dedicated school receptionist who greeted every child with a, “Good morning, sunshine” is far more compelling to the human psyche than numbers and charts. We cannot comprehend what 400,000 deaths look like. Very few of us have seen 400,000 of anything in our lives, but we have all been blessed to know many wonderful people. Putting a face on this tragedy makes it real to us.

I realize that this is a highly curated list, the news people don’t like to report on the deaths of reprehensible people. We never hear a report that says “so and so was one of the meanest men who ever lived, he was ruthless in business and exceedingly selfish” or “Mary Jones was a litterbug and cheated on her taxes.” I think they are afraid we might feel a little bit of schadenfreude at their passing. The loss of a good person adds drama and pathos to the story. Although journalists primarily report the facts, they use many of the same tools as novelists. They know how to make their stories compelling to the viewers or readers. Nothing hooks a reader like a likable protagonist.

When I watch these stories, I feel bad for the people who suffered and died from the disease, but my heart really goes out to their families and friends. The deceased person’s suffering is over and, who knows, it is possible that they move on to a better world. The people left behind have to carry their loss with them for the rest of their lives. Every memory pours salt in their emotional wounds.

We live in a culture that does not respect mourning. In places like Greece, women in mourning wear black for years after the loss of their husbands. In our country, people are expected to get over their grief and “move on” in a few weeks. I have a friend whose husband of 20 years died suddenly from a heart attack; she told me that within six months of his death her friends were urging here to start dating again. They didn’t understand that she still felt his loss deeply and wanted to keep her late husband in her memory.  

Today, Dr. Fauci was back in front of the camera at the daily pandemic briefings. He finally has some good news to share. It seems that the number of Covid-19 cases peaked last week; we are finally getting past the spike created by the holiday season. He said that the new administration is ramping up the manufacturing and distribution of vaccines for the coronavirus. He also said that the new policy of radical transparency should help build trust and compliance with the protective protocols. Dr. Fauci actually said that it is possible that the United States could be back to almost normal by the fall of this year.

I disagree with Dr. Fauci on this last point. I don’t think our country will ever get back to normal. While the spread of the disease slows down, it is still with us and it is still deadly. Epidemiologists are now predicting that the U.S. death toll will reach half a million people by the middle of February. That is a half a million mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, lovers and friends who will no longer be with us at the breakfast table. We have lost doctors, nurses, mechanics, teachers, firemen, scientists, writers, artists and people from a thousand other professions. The loss of this many people is bound to leave a huge hole in our society.

Think about what these people could have accomplished if the coronavirus hadn’t cut their lives short. The disease was especially deadly for older Americans; many of its victims were retired and had already accomplished most of their life’s goals. Yet even the loss of these people diminishes our nation. Our elders are our society’s living memory bank, many of them are mentors and valued advisors to their families. There is an African proverb that goes, “When an old person dies, it’s like a library burning down.” The coronavirus burned down an awful lot of these living libraries.

It is impossible to know how many good ideas died from the coronavirus. Imagine if a young Thomas A. Edison would have succumbed in one of the cholera epidemics common in his times. How long would it have taken for someone to develop the electric light, phonograph, motion pictures or any one of the thousands of patents he filed in his long life? Steve Jobs was the moving force behind personal computing, digital music, tablet computers, digital animation and smart phones. How different would our world be if he had been lost before he could accomplish these things?

In her teenage years, my daughter was obsessed with the actor James Dean. We even drove her to Dean’s hometown in the state of Indiana. We had to wait in line to view his grave. Listening to the people gathered to pay their respects, the subject of their conversation was, “What tremendous roles would James Dean have done if he hadn’t died so young.” One could ask similar questions about all of the people who have died during the pandemic. Not just the bodies of Covid’s victims lie in their graves; those graves also hold all the art, music, poems, stories and innovations these people would have created if they had lived.

During my walk today, I stopped and watched a father with his kids, a boy who looked about ten and a girl maybe two years younger. They were having a grand time racing their radio controlled truck in a big circle around the ball field at Boston Park. The kids were laughing and the little girl was bouncing up and down like she was a kangaroo from excitement. I have to admit that I envied the dad a little; I miss the time I spent with my kids when they were little.

The dad was just having fun with his kids, and probably giving his wife a much needed break. He wasn’t inventing a new high tech device or creating a work of art, but he was creating something important. He was creating happy memories that his children will carry with them for the rest of their lives. His kids were doubly lucky, they have a good dad who loves them and spends time with them, and they still have him.

Around this country, the pandemic has taken many people who still had many good memories to make with their families and friends. They weren’t able to do nice things for their coworkers and random strangers. They weren’t able to raise someone’s spirits when they were having a really bad day.

I am very happy that there is light at the end of the Covid tunnel; that soon we may no longer have to live our lives in constant fear of contracting the virus. It will be good to go out without a mask, take in a movie and maybe go to a nice restaurant for dinner. In the past year, we have lived much of our lives in a virtual world, online and on camera. The Oxford dictionary defines “virtual” as “almost a particular thing.” 

The world we go back to when our scientists finally beat this virus into submission will be “virtually” the same as it was before the pandemic struck. We will go through the motions of living as we did before Covid, but there will be too many people missing for us to ever go back to normal. We have missed creating too many good memories and we have taken on too many sad ones. We can pretend that things will go back to normal but they never will be.                  

- Jim Busch

January 20, 2021

I spent a good part of the day watching the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Being an old man, everything these days reminds me of something that happened to me long ago.

Today’s events reminded me of watching the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. I was eight years old and perhaps I remember it so fondly because I was allowed to stay home from school to watch television. Actually, I was required to stay home from school; my mother thought that watching the inauguration was far more educational than anything they would teach me at Lincoln School.

My parents were big supporters of the Kennedy campaign. Growing up in the depression, they were absolutely convinced that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the greatest man who ever lived. They would remain strident Democrats for the rest of their lives. They had another reason for supporting JFK, he was the first Catholic to be elected to the oval office.

I thought about this today as Joe Biden put his hand on his massive family Catholic bible. What was notable about this was that no one took note of his religion. Back in 1960, Kennedy’s Catholicism was a big deal. Republican pundits were convinced that with Kennedy in the White House, he would be taking orders from the Vatican. They were sure that, “a vote for Kennedy was really a vote for the Pope.” It was a big issue in the 1960 election, 60 years later in a very vicious election I never heard Biden’s religion mentioned.

I remember two things about that day; the first was Kennedy’s speech. My mother told me to play close attention to the President’s words; she told me the future of the world depended on what he said. My young mind didn’t grasp the talk about “people living in huts and villages” or about “trumpets summoning us again” but I tried. Near the end of the speech the new President said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” my mother said, “You have to remember that, that’s important.”  I could tell from her intensity that she wasn’t fooling around. To this day, I’ve never forgotten that speech.

The second thing I remember was Robert Frost reading his poem, The Gift Outright. The old man with the tousled grey hair and the odd way of speaking caught my attention. He stood out from the polished politicians at the podium that day. My mother told me that he was a great man, a great poet. I didn’t really understand what he was saying but I found his rhythm of his words entrancing.

The land was ours before we were the land's.

To me he sounded like a wizard chanting a magic spell. As I got older, I learned that I wasn’t far off, Frost was one of the writers who taught me that words have magic in them.

After the ceremony was over, my mother took a battered paperback out of the built in bookcase next to our fireplace in our living room. It was a 35¢ Pocketbook edition of The Poems of Robert Frost; I still have it somewhere amongst my books. My mother loved poetry, each night she would read the Edgar A. Guest poem published in the McKeesport Daily News. She told me that Robert Frost was one of America’s greatest poets. I must have had a quizzical look on my face because she went on to explain what a poet was, “Poets are people who are really good with words. They write down things that make the people who read them feel what they’re feeling.” Then she flipped through the book and read, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I think she thought this poem with its horse and sleigh would be easy for me to understand. Not long ago, I sent my great niece, Seneca, a beautifully illustrated edition of this poem, she makes her mother read it to her every night before bedtime. It seems that his words and rhythms still have magic in them.

About ten years ago, I had a training assignment in Vermont, I drove more than 50 miles out of my way to visit Frost’s grave. I found it in a country graveyard near a classic New England church. I stood next to his headstone which read, “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world,” and read a few of his poems. My mother would have been pleased.

I enjoyed today’s speeches. For a person who had a terrible speech impediment as a child, Joe Biden has grown into an excellent speaker. His words laid out the challenges facing America while remaining hopeful and uplifting. He communicated his confidence in the American people. I reread Lincoln’s second inaugural and Kennedy’s first today and found similar themes. Like their work, Biden’s speech seeks to bring the country and the nations of the world together to address our mutual problems.

I also enjoyed the musical portions of the program, you can’t go wrong with Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Garth Brooks, but the highlight of the event for me was another poet. A very different kind of poet, Frost was an 85 year old white man at the end of his career. Amanda Gorman is a 23 year old black woman. Though they looked very different, both poets expressed their love for this country. Both poets shared a hopeful vision for America.

Amanda Gorman’s very presence on the Capitol steps is a testimony to everything that is right about America. Just a few days before she dazzled the world with the power of her words, mobs who hated people who shared her skin color stormed the steps where she stood. All through her life, she has been the victim of systematic racism. She and her siblings were raised by a single mother on a teacher’s salary.

As a child, Gorman was afflicted with an auditory processing disorder that made her hypersensitive to sound. She also suffered from a speech impediment, not unlike the one that President Biden had. She describes herself as a “weird child” who enjoyed reading and writing. Encouraged by her mother, she turned to poetry to overcome her speech problems. She memorized and practiced entire sequences from the Broadway musical Hamilton to polish her speaking skills.

I am not sure what is more inspiring, Amanda Gorman’s life story or her poem, The Hill We Climb. Her words ring true because she has lived them, an oppressed and afflicted child, she rose through hope and hard work to Harvard and the steps of the Capitol. With so many things trying to hold her down, she rose to become a beautiful woman with the power to move the world with her words. If a young girl with so much against her can accomplish that, a rich and a powerful country like ours can overcome any challenge.

Amanda Gorman has given us the roadmap:

So we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another, we seek harm to none and harmony for all.

-Jim Busch

January, 19, 2021

I heard an astonishing fact today. The number of Covid-19 deaths in the United States in the last year has now exceeded the 407,000 American combat deaths in World War II. As of today, 411,486 Americans have died from the coronavirus.

I was born in 1952 which makes me a baby boomer. We boomers are the children of the Greatest Generation. Our dads went to war and our mothers went to work in the factories. They won amazing victories often against overwhelming odds. They endured unimaginable hardships and accomplished great things. In a few months, they converted a peacetime economy into an arsenal capable of warplanes, tanks and ships out in huge quantities. The Mon Valley produced more steel for the war effort than all the mills in all of our enemies’ countries combined. The feats of our GI Joes and Rosie the Riveters impressed the world and made America proud.

We boomers grew up in the shadow of the war. Even though I was born about a year before the end of the Korean War, when anyone mentioned the war in conversation everyone knew they were talking about the Second World War. This continued until the 1960’s, when we got entangled in Vietnam, did that conflict become “the war” for my generation.

Our fathers never shared the details of what they had been through or done, but they were proud to be veterans. My dad didn’t serve because he was deaf in one ear but he was proud of my uncles who served. When he introduced me to his friends, he would wait until they walked away and say, “Mr. McAvoy fought with the Marines at Okinawa” or “Mr. Fauleker flew P-38’s in Europe.”

The war was all around us. When we played army, the bad guys were always the “Krauts” or the “Japs.” We loved movies like Flying Leathernecks, Back to Bataan, or The Sands of Iwo Jima. Of course the Americans were always victorious in these films but the heroes always lost friends and comrades in battle. Films like Victory at Sea and Crusade in Europe repurposed old newsreel films into television documentary specials.

These shows burned grainy black and white images of beaches strewn with lifeless bodies into my young brain. These specials always seemed to end with a shot of graveyards marked with identical white crosses stretching as far as the eye could see. The voice over reminded us of the great sacrifice our servicemen had made so we could be free.

The comparison of the death tolls for the war and the virus got me thinking about our response to these two events. During World War II, the country was unified like never before or since. Political leaders from both sides of the aisle worked together to give our troops everything they needed to win the war. American men lined up to volunteer to serve their country including men from privileged families. John F. Kennedy and George H. W. Bush were not only rich but had political connections that could have secured them a cushy job at the Pentagon; both men volunteered for dangerous combat assignments.

Because U.S. industrial production was dedicated to winning the war, American consumers were asked to make sacrifices. No new cars and very few tires were available for four years. Everything from food to gasoline to shoes was in short supply and rationed. Even sliced bread disappeared from store shelves; the metal used to make the slicer blades was needed for war use.

To support the war effort, housewives saved their kitchen grease for use in making armaments. Kids collected tin cans and junk and helped out in community victory gardens. Movie stars and other celebrities donated their time to keep American morale high and to sell war bonds. People who failed to do their part for the war effort were ostracized by the community.

American industrialists and labor leaders worked together to retool factories almost overnight. Within weeks they were churning out guns, helmets, boots and everything needed to fight a modern war in incredible amounts. They developed new manufacturing techniques and technologies that revolutionized entire industries. No obstacle was too big to overcome; ocean going ships were built in Pittsburgh and floated down the Ohio River on their sides on their way to the Normandy invasion.   

The crisis we are facing today, maybe the greatest our country has faced since World War II. As I learned today, the coronavirus has already cost more lives than the war’s battlefields and there is no end in sight for the dying. During the war, Americans lost their lives thousands of miles from home; today Americans are dying here at home in every city and town in every state. Despite the elevated death toll so close to home, Americans haven’t responded as well to this national emergency.

Our parents and grandparents stood in line with their ration stamps to wait for a half pound of ground meat. They walked to work or took the bus because they didn’t have gas for their worn out cars. They patched their shoes and bought war bonds and kept their homes blacked out at night. Two generations later, their descendants are hoarding toilet paper and fighting over rolls of paper towels. In the early days of the pandemic, some individuals tried to profit by selling essential supplies like face masks and gloves at greatly inflated prices.

Instead of pulling together to fight this existential threat, we have let it pull us apart. Despite the daily reports of new cases and fatalities, some Americans tried to deny the existence of the pandemic. They maintained that the pandemic was a hoax intended to take away their freedom. While hospitals were stacking bodies in refrigerated trucks, they felt set upon because their favorite restaurant was forced to close down.

Men whose grandfathers proudly interrupted their lives to put on a uniform and fight for their country, refused to wear a mask or practice social distancing. In extreme cases, they surrounded state capitols wearing camouflage clothes and carrying weapons to protest restrictions intended to stop the spread of the disease and save their lives. They threatened the lives of their representatives and governors for daring to slightly inconvenience them.

All of this makes one wonder what has happened to America between 1941 and 2021? The news isn’t all bad, our country still produces heroes; the courage of our doctors, nurses and other frontline workers has proven this over and over. The stories of ordinary people going out of their way to work at food banks and care for their neighbors proves that American patriots have not gone extinct. The speed with which our scientists were able to develop vaccines to protect people from the virus is the equal to the accomplishments of our workers during the war.

What is lacking in our response to the pandemic is unity. We no longer have a sense that, “We’re all in this together.” After the Pearl Harbor attack, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed congress and the American people. He didn’t sugarcoat the challenges the country faced. He believed in the fortitude and resilience of the American people. The people could hear his confidence in them in his words and in the resolve in his voice. On one of the darkest days of American history he predicted our ultimate victory.

The Greatest Generation certainly deserves the title but I wouldn’t sell the current generation of Americans too short. The people on the front lines of this war have shown great courage and endurance. The thing we are lacking is a FDR; we need a leader that talks to all Americans. We need a leader that tells us what we are facing and what we need to do to overcome those challenges. We need someone to remind us that every generation can be great if we all pull together. Tomorrow is Inaugurations Day, time will tell if we have chosen the leader we need to get us through these terrible times.                 

 - Jim Busch

January 18, 2021

Today, is Martin Luther King Day so my grandson, Max, has today and tomorrow off school. His parents graciously let him spend his vacation visiting us. Max used to spend a lot of time with us but a number of factors have kept him visiting us much less in the last year. As he has gotten older, he has become increasingly involved in activities at school, at his church and with his boy scout troop.

His grandmother’s health problems left her too weak to enjoy a visit for weeks at a time. Of course, like everyone else, the pandemic has interfered with every aspect of our lives. Glenda’s fight against cancer has severely compromised her immune system which made our kids reluctant to visit with their families.

It’s hard for me to describe how much I enjoy a simple day spent with my grandson. This is something that I’ve fantasized about since I was a young man. I had a picture in my head of being a grandparent even before I was a father, or was even married. This may seem to be an odd way of thinking for a guy in his teens to picture in his head but in my case it makes sense. My own grandparents were a big influence in my young life. My mother and dad were busy people, my sister was 11 years older than me and I didn’t have many friends, so I spent a lot of time with my grandparents.

As a boy, I thought my grandparents were the coolest people in the world. They had all lived a long time and lived through most of the 20th century, a period of rapid change. They were all born before the Wright brother’s first flight and when I came along it was the beginning of the space age. They had seen the coming of the silent movies and lived to see color television sets in their living rooms. All of my grandparents were gifted storytellers and inside their heads they held a treasure trove of stories of a world that had disappeared.  I found these absolutely fascinating. I found them far more entertaining than Leave It to Beaver or Gilligan’s Island. When I got old, I wanted someone to look up to me like I looked up to them.

I also considered my grandparents to the most capable people I would ever know. Like most kids, I thought my parents were pretty dumb. This wasn’t the case, but since I didn’t agree with a lot of their rules, I wasn’t impressed with their decision making. Since my grandparents let me get away with just about anything, our relationship and my opinion of them was considerably better. Since they had lived so long, they had made all the mistakes in life before I came along. They had learned from life and distilled their lives down to a smooth flowing routine.

My grandmother had been baking for 60 years so every batch of cookies and every loaf of bread came out perfect. She would crochet perfect lace tablecloths and never have to redo a stitch. My maternal grandfather was same way in his workshop. His tools seemed to be made for his hands and he could magically turn bits of metal and chunks of wood into beautiful and useful things. My Grandpap Ed grew perfect vegetables and flower beds that were unequalled since the original garden in the Book of Genesis.

In the summer, I almost, but never quite got tired of eating fresh strawberries from his garden. As a clumsy, awkward kid, I longed for this level of mastery. In my young mind, I couldn’t imagine them at my age struggling to learn these skills. I was certain that when one reached a certain age the ability to do things perfectly suddenly appeared; I couldn’t wait for that to happen.

My grandparents were not prone to complaining. They seemed to be fit and healthy to me; just a bit grayer and a little slower. The wrinkles on their leathery faces just added character to their appearance. Now that I am older myself, I realize that they must have been riddled with aches and pains. As a kid, I lacked the bandwidth to understand this; I assumed my grandparents bodies moved with the ease and grace of my own fresh from the factory floor body. This, plus my limited understanding of human mortality, kept me from seeing any of the downsides of being old.

My grandparenting fantasies were reinforced by television. I admired Walter Brennan’s crotchety but wise “Old Luke” on The Real McCoy’s. Will Geer’s “Grampa Zebulon Walton” on the long running The Walton’s television series was the perfect role model of the grandfather I wanted to become in my golden years. He checked all the boxes, he was kind, wise, capable, knowledgeable but also funny, a bit risqué and most of all, full of life. Every word that dropped from his lips was packed with insight and wisdom, one of the advantages of having a team of scriptwriters backing you up. Paired with Ellen Corby’s “Grandma Walton” they were an awesome pair.  

So now that I have a soon to be 15 year old grandson, how accurate were my fantasies? I missed a lot of the details, but for the most part being a grandfather has proved to be one of the few times in life where reality actually exceeds the fantasy. I am absolutely delighted by my relationship with my grandson. In many ways, it reminds me of the one that I had with my grandfathers many years ago. I may have come up short on some of the details as I am not nearly as wise as Will Geer, perhaps I should hire some scriptwriters. Google has really put a dent in the telling of tall tales. I might not have believed my grandfather’s tales of the hoop snake which put its tail in its mouth and rolled downhill to evade enemies if I could have fact checked him with my phone.

Even my recollections of my youth are not nearly so interesting. Tales of life on the farm and seeing one’s first airplane are a lot better than tales of life in the midcentury suburbs. The best hardship tale I could manage was that, “We didn’t have no fancy remote control. In them days if you wanted to change the channel you had to get up from the couch and walk all the way to the TV to turn the knob and it weren’t no easy walk; you had to walk through knee deep orange shag carpet—both ways!”        

I do think Max is impressed with my ability to do things. Part of this is from observation, he has watched me in the workshop and is impressed that I am a published writer. I also may have exaggerated some of my life’s exploits a bit. Like most old men, “The older I get, the better I was.” I am also fortunate that Max is interested in many of the things which have always intrigued me. He enjoys both art and history. Since I have done extensive reading in these area, I have lots of information tucked away in my brain to share with him.

After spending my life trying to find people who were willing to listen to me talk about these interests, I now have a ready audience that doesn’t run away when I mention Marcus Aurelius or Jackson Pollack. As Max has grown older and more knowledgeable, more and more I find myself listening to him talk. I enjoy his fresh perspective on things.

I must say that my wife is a better grandma than I am a grandpa. Her skills in the kitchen give her a decided competitive edge in this field. In addition to the grandma classics like chocolate chip cookies and homemade cinnamon rolls, she has mastered special goodies like corndogs and Mexican food. Today, for breakfast, she made Max, fresh squeezed orange juice, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes with warm maple syrup and cinnamon rolls. How am I supposed to compete with that?

In addition to her culinary skills, Glenda is a wonderful listener. She is much better at talking to Max about personal issues, his concerns and insecurities than I am. As a guy, I am not very good at this sort of conversation, I am better at handling practical problems and reciting proverbs and bits of ancient philosophy. I have chalked this up to the different job descriptions for grandmas and grandpas.

I count myself a lucky man that my life has been bookended by grandparent/grandchild relationships. Looking at this from either end, these have proved to be some of the most satisfying relationships of my life. As a child, my grandparents helped me navigate childhood and grow into a better man. I hope I am helping my grandson to do the same. These days spending time with my grandson helps me answer my old man questions, “What have you accomplished with your life?” “What was it all about?” What, if anything, will you leave behind?”

For me, the answer to all of these questions is “Max!” I am more than satisfied with this answer. Perhaps 50 years or so in the future, Max will pass something along that I told him to his grandchildren. Although I will be dust by then, something of me will continue into the future.

- Jim Busch

January 17, 2021

At the grocery store today, the longest line wasn’t at one of the registers; it was at the lottery counter in the front of the store. People were queued up to get their shot at becoming instant multimillionaires. The prizes for the multi state lotteries are nearing record highs; the Powerball is valued at $730 million and the Mega Millions is up to $850 million. If someone doesn’t pick the right numbers this week, it is conceivable that the prizes may reach a billion dollars.

I’ve never been much of a gambler, I think I am too much of a control freak to risk my hard earned dollars on a randomly generated number. My gambling has largely been limited to raffle tickets purchased to support a friend or relative’s kid’s fundraiser for their team or school trip. Just because of the novelty, I bought a ticket for the first Pennsylvania Lottery drawing in August 1971.

I was working at Marraccini’s Supermarket in White Oak and Jean, one of the cashiers, talked me into it. I gave her two shiny quarters and she gave be a tiny green slip of paper that looked a lot like a bus ticket. I won forty bucks on that first drawing and decided to quit while I was ahead. I didn’t buy another ticket for over a decade, making me one of the few true winners in the entire nation.

My wife is the gambler in the family. One of the reasons that she likes me keeping my hand in sales training is that much of the travel allows her to gamble in different places. I have worked conventions in Las Vegas, New Orleans across the street from a huge casino and Florida. I have done several gigs located in Indian Casinos in Iowa and New York State.

In the days before the machines were switched over from coins to electronic keycards, my job was “cup bearer.” I held a plastic cup full of quarters or nickels holding them within easy reach of my wife. To tell the truth, I think I cramped her gambling style and that she preferred it when I had to work. While I taught advertising and management techniques, she spent her days playing the slots.

I don’t know why, but women seem to enjoy playing slot machines. My mother was generally quite proper and frugal. She sewed all of my school clothes to save a few pennies and spent many hours over the stove to can vegetables for the winter. Her penny pinching was forgotten when she had a chance to play what my dad called “one armed bandits.”

In those days, gambling in any form was illegal, though in most areas, the cops looked the other way, any kind of betting was done under that table. My dad had a bit of a misspent youth so he was quite familiar with all the bars up and down the valley. He knew which taverns had an unmarked door leading to a small smoke filled room full of slot machines. Every now and then he would take my mother to these dives and let her play to her hearts content. She would order a highball, sit down on a barstool, slip off her white gloves and take a roll of nickels out of her purse and she was a happy woman.

My sister is another lover of slot machines, as is my daughter and her wife. Before the coronavirus struck, my wife, sister, daughter and daughter-in-law would go to The Meadows Racetrack & Casino or the Rivers Casino for a “girl’s day out.” Nobody ever won or lost big, but they always had a good time. If anyone did come out ahead, this money was reinvested in a nice lunch at a restaurant.      

They are all big fans of playing the state lottery. Since my wife has been house bound during the quarantine, I have become her “numbers runner,” going to the store to pick up her tickets for the big drawings and assorted scratch offs.

I have tried to broach the subject of why gambling is not a practical way to make one’s fortune. I believe the odds of winning the Powerball is on the order of 291 million to one, slightly worse than the odds of being struck by a meteorite. I point out that if the casinos were paying out a lot of cash to their customers they couldn’t afford to build luxurious pleasure palaces with musical dancing fountains.

It amazes me that people who complain about paying taxes to the government have no problem plunking their dollars down to buy state lottery tickets. For years, I ran a telephone call center for The Pennysaver and the Trib. One of my jobs was to motivate my team to make lots of telephone calls. I favored the carrot over the stick; I never found yelling at people and threatening them to be very productive. For years, I used lottery tickets as my carrots. Each week I gave out “Win a Thousand Dollars a Week for Life” tickets to the people that made or exceeded their call goals. These were a perfect incentive because the perceived value of them far exceeded their cost.

People wouldn’t get very excited over winning a dollar, but they like the idea that they might win a thousand a week. I often thought that it had the potential of coming back to bite me. I wondered how I would feel about giving away a winning ticket plus I was sure I would lose one of my top performers if they won. To hedge my bets, I started buying a couple of the tickets for myself. I really didn’t have to worry; I gave away a couple thousand of these tickets over the years and the most anyone won was forty dollars and even that didn’t happen very often.

I have come to realize that what people are buying when they buy a lotto ticket is hope. The bigger the prize, the greater the hope. I find it interesting that people who don’t usually play the lotto line up when there is an especially big jackpot. This doesn’t make sense to me, even when someone has just won the jackpot, the payout is quite respectable. The average Powerball or Mega Millions prize is still worth several million dollars. It is almost as if the people who only play when the prizes are massive are saying, “Tut, tut, three million dollars is hardly worth my time.” Perhaps our economy is doing better than what I thought.

Well, I stood in the line and spent twelve dollars to buy three “Quick Picks” for both the Powerball and the Mega Millions. I am hoping she’ll share with me if she wins. Even though I’m not a gambler, one game I do like to play is imagining what I would do with the money if I won.

My personal fantasy involves a tour of the world’s greatest museums, the Van Gogh in Amsterdam, the Tate in London and the Guggenheim in Bilbao for a start. I still don’t think it will happen but it is nice to dream. Dreams don’t cost a thing and in them we are always big winners.        

- Jim Busch

January 16, 2021

I started off today with the best of intentions but I ran afoul of Issac Newton’s first law of motion. That’s the one that reads “a body at rest, tends to remain at rest.” My plans for the day was to go to the library for a curbside pickup of some books I had requested, make a quick stop at Half Price Books in Monroeville, and then spend the remainder of the day in my workshop to complete some repair projects.

None of that happened. When I got up this morning, I looked outside and saw that the borough road crew had yet to plow our road. My wife’s nephew, who lives a block down the street from us had ventured out to go to Costco at the Waterfront. As a true son of Western Pennsylvania, he reported that the roads were, “slippy” and that we might want to wait a while before we went out. Using this bit of intelligence, I decided to defer my trip to the library to Tuesday, as they would be closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Day.

Not needing to go out I stayed in my pajamas and bedroom slippers and decided to spend the day in my office. I am a packrat and a scribbler which means my desk was covered with books, ripped out magazine articles and scraps of paper of various sizes, colors and importance. It was time to organize my cluttered workspace.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Thomas Jefferson who said, “The man who is universally interested will be universally interesting.” Since, when I was young, I wanted to be an “interesting” person, I took Jefferson’s advice and like him tried to open up my mind to a wide variety of interests. This plan worked much better for old Tom, than it did for me.

His great intellect led him to founding a country, inventing the swivel chair, becoming President, establishing the University of Virginia, sponsoring the Lewis and Clark expedition while introducing tomatoes to the United States. Generations of Americans, UVA students and pizza lovers are forever in his debt. For me, my varied interests have led to a cluttered desk and an equally cluttered mind.  

My wide ranging interests wouldn’t be so harmful if I didn’t combine them with another of Jefferson’s well-meaning maxims. In a letter of instruction to his daughter, Martha, Jefferson wrote, “It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.” Since this matched up with some of the advice I got from my own father I resolved to live my life in constant motion.

This is the source of much of the clutter in my life. I move on to the next project before squaring away the mess from the last one. If I hit a snag that slows me down, I sometimes move on before the previous project is even completed. At any given time, I have a number of projects in various stages of completion in my shop, office and on my computer. It’s not that I never finish anything, I am actually quite productive, but I always, always bite off more than I can chew.

As large as the number of uncompleted projects cluttering my workspaces may be, this pales in comparison to the number of projects I’m considering taking on. I am an information glutton, “I just can’t get no data satisfaction!” I usually have several dozen books out of the library and constantly cruise the used bookstores for books that I haven’t read. I am addicted to how-to art and craft shows and plough through all sorts of magazines on history, science, nature and any other subject that strikes my fancy.

I am absolutely delighted when I discover a stack of Horizon magazines at a library sale. Horizon was a hardback magazine that covered a wide range of subjects including history, literature, science, design and advertising. The magazine was exceptionally well written and featured outstanding interviews. These books from the 1960’s are treasure troves of information.

Creativity is the art of recombining existing facts and ideas together in new and interesting ways. We just put them in a bag, shake them up and see what comes tumbling out. The more stuff one has packed into their head, the greater the number of possible new combinations one can put together. The more open a person is to putting disparate things together, the more creative they will be. For millions of years people were troubled by cockle burrs. For most people, they were a source of annoyance but for George de Mestral they were a source of inspiration. Instead of complaining about them, he found their tight grip fascinating and his fascination led him to develop Velcro.

The amount of information I absorb means that I get lots of ideas, they’re not necessarily good ideas but what they lack in quality they make up in quantity. Experience has taught me that ideas are fleeting ephemeral things, if you don’t grab onto them quickly they may disappear. To prevent this from happening I have developed a habit of writing down my thoughts or making a quick sketch when something occurs to me. I capture these elusive concepts in a notebook or any scrap of paper at hand and shove them in my pocket throughout the day. In the evening, they get emptied out on to my desk at night. Eventually, they are stacked several inches deep, a sort of conceptual lasagna.

Today, I spent that day going through these scraps plus images and stories torn out of magazines, newspapers or printed off the web. A large number of these scraps contained quotations I wrote down when I heard it or read it somewhere. One of Henry Ward Beecher’s quote I came across in my organizing frenzy today said, “Words are pegs to hang ideas on.” This is why I enjoy them so much, they are neat little packages containing big concepts.

I watched a string of old western movies, Gary Cooper in High Noon, Clint Eastwood in Joe Kidd and John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in Rio Grande while processing the things from my desk. I tossed a lot of them in the trash, some ideas don’t age well. Other ideas I copied into my various notebooks for future consideration. I call these books, my “idea pantry,” like a kitchen pantry this is where I store the ingredients I may need to “spice up” future projects. When I am looking for a new project or the inspiration I need to complete an ongoing one, I just flip through these notebooks where I usually find what I need.

The quotations I wish to keep are recorded in my commonplace book. This is also where I copy sections of books that I particularly enjoyed. I have been told that I have a good memory but leafing through my notebooks, I find things that have completely escaped me. Sometimes, they lead me to track down a forgotten volume to reread; other times they give me an idea for an article or essay to write. As I look back through the older volumes, they make me realize how much I’ve changed in some ways and how little I have in others. Some of the information I thought important enough to record hold little interest to me today; other subjects seem as fresh and as meaningful as they were when I first jotted them down.

From the outside, how I spent my day didn’t look very productive. All I have to show for the day’s activities are a few square feet of clean desk. But I am satisfied with what I got accomplished. It’s like putting my tools away so I know where they will be when I need them in the future.

Today, I put away my most valuable tools, my ideas and the ideas of others, in the places where I will be able to find them when I need them for my next creative project. I count that as an important job well done.          

                                                                                                       - Jim Busch

January 15, 2021

Exactly one year ago today, a man flew to the United States from Wuhan, China. He wasn’t feeling well on the plane and was probably happy to be back home. Less than a week later, he was hospitalized in Seattle and on January 21, 2020 he was diagnosed as the first case of Covid-19 in the United States. In the year since that first case came to the United States, 2,102,429 people have contracted the disease with 401,856 succumbing to it. We have seen our very robust economy grind to a halt and have had the way we see the world turned upside down.

Before the virus hit our shores, I doubt that one American in a thousand had ever heard of a place called Wuhan; I know I hadn’t. We certainly didn’t think that someone shopping for dinner in a market thousands of miles away would threaten every person in every corner of the world, including right here in the Mon Valley.

A year ago, the top story in the news was the death of basketball great Kobe Bryant and his 13-year old daughter in a helicopter crash. Every day, pundits were commenting on the growing tensions between the United States and Iran. The U.S. had killed an Iranian General with a drone strike and Iran had retaliated with a missile strike on a U.S. base in Iraq. In addition to the missile attack, Iranian hackers had compromised U.S. government computer networks, posting an image of a bloodied Donald Trump on some federal websites. It seemed that we were about to get into yet another war in the Middle East.

Here at home the greatest source of concern was the steady stream of mass shootings all over the country. In January 2020, the news reported on five people being shot at a party in Aurora, Colorado, a school shooting in Houston, Texas, a story about a gunman that opened fire in a crowded San Antonio bar and a shooter who targeted Kansas City Chiefs’ fans waiting in line for Super Bowl tickets. With hundreds of people losing their lives every year to random acts of violence, people were wondering if it was safe to leave their homes. Many were reluctant to attend public events like concerts or sporting events for fear of becoming a target for some crazed sniper.  

In the fractious political climate in the U. S. many people were embracing the president’s “America First” policies. We were disengaging from the world by reneging on treaties and turning our backs on our traditional allies. We were even building a wall along our southern border to keep new immigrants from setting foot here. Throughout our history, we have toyed with shutting ourselves off from the rest of our planet. In their time, the anti-immigrant “no-nothing” of the 1850’s and the Ku Klux Klan movement of the early 1900’s both raised the cry, “America for Americans.”

The “America’s First” movement of the 1930’s shared more than a name with the current political movement. They both favored closed borders, in the 1930’s, Anne Frank’s family was denied a visa, her “kind” were not welcome here. Like the Hispanic children on our borders today, Anne Frank was put in a cage to protect the purity of the United States.

One lesson we should take away from this pandemic is that we’re not particularly good at identifying threats. None of the things that concerned us last January, proved to be much of a problem. Though our relations with the Iranians have remained tense, we have not gone to war or even exchanged missiles in the past year; both nations have been far too occupied fighting Covid-19 to launch an attack on one another.

Even the mass shootings that have plagued the armed to the teeth United States in recent years have abated. It seems that it is hard to kill large numbers of people if large numbers of people are unable to gather. The number of people killed by these shooters was terrible and unacceptable but the number of people cut down by snipers bullets pale by comparison to the hundreds of thousands cut down by the coronavirus.

In rereading last year’s headlines, the “new form of pneumonia from China” barely made a ripple. It was a minor line item which warranted far less attention than an accidental spill of jet fuel over a neighborhood in Los Angeles. Even when the first case appeared in America and the disease was spreading through the Chinese province where it originated, the virus didn’t make much of a splash in the national media. Only when the disease started spreading through this country and Americans started dying did the virus become worthy of a spot in the headlines.

The second takeaway from the pandemic is that nationalism is obsolete in an age of jet aircraft and multinational corporations. The incredibly rapid spread of the coronavirus around the globe proved that we are quite literally “all in this together.” A disease that had its genesis in the heart of Asia, spread to every corner of the world in a matter of months.

Covid-19 is found on every continent from big cities to remote villages. In the days of clipper ships, if an infected person tried to sail from China to San Francisco, they would likely die en route. Nowadays, its two bags of peanuts and drink service and they can bring a virus to our shore with their carry on bags. Even on today’s crowded airliners, there is plenty of room for a full load of microscopic organisms.

When most people think about globalization, they think of personal computers and the World Wide Web. Very few people think about the impact of containerized shipping. Those big metal boxes we see on trains and trucks around here and stacked by the hundreds on the decks of ships in our harbor towns. It is in these simple boxes that shipping goods around the world are so cheap that manufacturers could locate anything in the world. A container can be loaded at a factory in Vietnam and the goods won’t be touched again by human hands until they’re unloaded at a Wal-Mart warehouse in Arkansas.

The use of these containers has resulted in a supply chain that in many ways resembles the internet; everything is interconnected and dependent on one another. We learned this when we discovered that the N-95 face masks our doctors and nurses desperately needed were all made in China. Since China was also in the midst of its own health crisis, the supply dried up.

Under normal circumstances, container shipping sped up shipping encouraging businesses to adopt “just in time” inventory management. Rather than keep expensive inventories of goods sitting in local warehouses, business managers would order the goods when they needed them on the shelves. This worked fine until demand became unpredictable. When the demand for toilet paper spiked, suddenly it was impossible to find because there was no stockpile of TP waiting in warehouses to draw upon.

I hope that this pandemic puts the final nail in the coffin of nationalism. Nationalism was the root cause of the wars of the 20th century, it is a major factor in economic inequality around the globe. In an interconnected world, local responses to global problems are doomed to failure. By working together, we have built a strong global economy. There are still many people who linger in poverty but we have improved the lives of more people in the last 50 years than at any time in history. If we work together, we can develop answers to problems like pandemics and global warming.

Once we defeat the coronavirus, we need to stop and think about what it has taught us. We need to realize that it’s not about “us,” it’s about all of us. I know that globalization is a dirty word in many circles, but I think the pandemic has shown us that it is time to tear down artificial borders and barriers and move to a world where we work for the good of all mankind.           

- Jim Busch

January 14, 2021

In addition to my wife, I have shared my Coronavirus quarantine with three very spoiled and pampered cats. They have been particularly needy today and this got me thinking about the role of pets in our lives these days especially during the pandemic.

These days I find myself actually having conversations with kitty cats. We often chat during “Step Petting” sessions. Step petting is a feline invention, they developed it to allow me the opportunity to properly serve them and give them the obeisance they feel they deserve. Step petting takes place on our cellar steps. Sometimes, when I mount these stairs I am greeted by just one cat, sometimes by two or even three. They wait on the third step as I head up to the first floor.

This is the ideal height for me to reach out and stroke their fur and scratch the purr spot under their chins. Our furnace is located at the base of the stairs and if they are lucky it will come on during a step petting session. The cats love the feel of the warm air blowing over their fur. Although they are proud American kitties, their DNA and bodily thermostats still reach back to their species origins in ancient Egypt.

Our three cats are reminders of my mother-in-law’s love of animals. For the last several years of her life, Eleanor fed a feral cat she called Mama. Mama earned her name by birthing and raising several litters of kittens. She came to trust Ellie and would bring her broods to feed on our porch. Mama was a wily cat, a real survivor; the world is not a friendly place for a feral cat with danger lurking around every corner.

Mama managed to not only survive but thrive in this world, hanging on through several winters, finding mates and raising dozens of kittens. Ellie tried to capture Mama but she always managed to elude capture and return to her home in the woods. We were able to capture many of her kittens and find them homes where they didn’t have to survive by their wits like their mother.

Sheldon is our oldest cat. He was Eleanor’s last pet, she decided to keep him after her beloved dog, Annie, died. We found homes for his brothers and sisters but Ellie couldn’t bear to part with him. His full name is Sheldon Leonard because Eleanor was a huge fan of television show Big Bang Theory. When she gave him this name, she said, “He’s just so smart.”

I don’t know how smart Sheldon is but he was certainly spoiled. He spent hours sitting on Eleanor’s lap as she stroked his silky fur with her loving hands and feeding him yogurt from her spoon. Sheldon was a great comfort to Ellie in the last years of her life. At the very end, when she lost consciousness, Sheldon would lie on her bed next to her hand waiting for her to pet him. When Ellie died, we were afraid we would lose Sheldon as well.  He stopped eating and would stand at her door whining and crying. We finally were able to ease his grief and get him eating again by feeding him the yogurt he loved.

Just before her death, Ellie wanted to bring in a couple of kittens from what proved to be Mama’s final litter. There were three kittens, Sheldon’s half-sisters and brother, who survived infancy to feed on our porch. She named them Nutmeg, Tarzan and Jane. My wife simply didn’t have the energy to deal with her infirm mother and three new kittens, so she continued to feed them but not bring them into the house.

When Eleanor passed away, Glenda decided to honor her mother’s wishes and bring in the kittens. Poor Tarzan had disappeared, probably falling victim to a predator or disease. His sisters Nutmeg and Jane were easy to capture as they regularly took their meals on our porch. Their half-brother Sheldon was delighted to have two new playmates to chase and wrestle with.       

Sheldon is a very vain cat, he is constantly grooming his silky grey and white fur. He has long, luxurious whiskers and bright eyes. Sheldon is constantly working out, running up and down the steps and chasing his housemates around our kitchen. Sheldon is a bit of an insomniac, while his sisters are napping he walks around like a tiger pacing its cage at the zoo. He seldom gets more than 16 hours of sleep a day, a terribly short time for a full grown kitty. Despite his hearty appetite this exercise allows him to maintain a slim muscular physique. I always get the sense that he is striking poses in hopes of getting his photo on the cover of Catster Magazine.  

Nutmeg is our cattiest cat, we have to be careful when we go in and out of the house because she is constantly trying to escape. She is her mother’s kitten and would rather live the life of a wild cat than be a pampered house kitty. While her siblings sleep in our kitchen she prefers to take her naps in hidden corners of our basement. Her two tone grey fur makes her practically invisible in the shadows. She spends most of her waking hours sitting in our window watching the birds and squirrels at our feeders, tracking their every move and licking her kitty lips.

Unlike her sister, Jane has fully embraced the lifestyle of a pampered house cat. In the years since she has joined our household, Jane has become seriously overweight. She used to be able to leap up to the top of our tall bookcase, now she has to work up the energy to jump the two feet up to her bed. She looks like a giant sausage with grey fur, flecked with red and four pudgy legs. Each night she sits next to my wife’s chair demanding her ration of Friskies Pate cat food. Jane is addicted to ham and when my wife tries to make a sandwich, she weaves her way in and out of Glenda’s legs crying for her fair share. Jane has no catly pride and isn’t above begging for a snack.

During step petting, the cats and I work our way up the stairs one step at a time, with me patting and scratching them on each level. Each one of our three cats enjoys this attention in their own way. Sheldon is impatient, he enjoys some quick pets and then runs to the top of the stairs to lay his claim to the stairway. He has been “fixed” but we haven’t told him. He spends a lot of time at the top of the steps with his tail in the air thinking he is marking it with his scent. Fortunately, he never turns around to check his work. Perhaps, Sheldon is not as bright as Eleanor thought he was.

I think Nutmeg secretly likes step petting but refuses to admit it. She doesn’t want us to know that any part of being a house pet is acceptable. Sure, she eats our food but that is only because she has no access to the small rodents and birds that she considers her proper food. She allows me to give her a few strokes before walking away. Once she forgot herself and started to purr; she realized what she was doing and ran up the steps to her scratching post. She tore the hell out of the post to prove to herself that she is still a warrior cat, a true wild kitty.

Jane is a furry hedonist, she would let me pet her all day and into the night. She is in full purr mode after the second stroke of her rough coat. From start to finish she sounds like a finely turned Italian Vespa motorbike. I have heard her start to purr when she saw me petting her sister; vicariously imaging her own fur being petted. I have to nudge her to move up a step and generally it takes a good five minutes to reach the top of the steps with Jane. She is a firm believer that too much of a good thing is never enough. Yesterday, I realized that I had forgotten something in the basement, after a full step petting session with Jane, I had to go back downstairs. When I reached the bottom step the second time, Jane was waiting for me to do a repeat performance.

I am not really a pet person. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t own a pet, they tie one down and I find it is hard to say goodbye when they reach the end of their short lives. That said, I will admit that our inherited kitties have helped me get through the quarantine. There is something soothing about stroking their soft fur and listening to their contented purrs.

I know they are selfish little fur balls who consider me their hired help. They could care less about how I’m doing, but they have unintentionally helped me through this mess. The next time I’m talking to them on the steps, I’ll try to remember to thank them for that!

-Jim Busch      

January 13, 2021

Tonight, I walked into my living room and happened to look out the front window of my home. The drape was pulled back to let the sun shine on our houseplants. I happened to look up to see the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen.

This might sound like a bit of hyperbole but I always feel like the sunset I happen to be looking at on any particular day is the “most beautiful” one I’ve ever seen. This is because it means that I have lived to experience another day of life on this delightful planet.

Tonight’s sunset was truly gorgeous. It was a kaleidoscope of colors, reds, yellow pink, grey, burgundy and deep blue. My house sits on top of a tall hill and faces the west so we have an excellent viewing platform for watching the day end. My wife was drying dishes in the kitchen when I called her to look out the window. She looked out the window and said, “This is what it’s all about.” She then gave me a long hug to thank me for sharing this moment with her.

I knew what the “it” she was referring to was. She was talking about life; she was saying that beautiful moments like this was what made life worthwhile. Glenda has a better appreciation of sunsets than most people because she is fighting pancreatic cancer. She doesn't know how many sunsets she has left to see, or how many dishes she has left to dry. This scarcity enhances everything in life, like salt or pepper enhances the taste of one’s food. 

Scarcity isn’t everything. A tiny diamond is worth more than a ton of limestone. Diamonds are rare; limestone is found everywhere, but this isn’t the only reason that we value diamonds so highly. We love their sparkle, the way they catch the light and our eye when we look at them. It’s quite simple, diamonds are beautiful and limestone is drab. Like crows and magpies we like shiny things. Diamonds are so beautiful that we use them to celebrate many of the special moments in our life like engagements and weddings.

Everyone loves diamonds but it takes a special person to appreciate limestone. Limestone lacks sparkle but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t value it. It is useful. Limestone has been used as a building material since ancient times, Roman roads and aqueducts built from it still stand after thousands of years. Limestone literally holds our modern world together, it is the primary component of the concrete we use to pave our highways, build our bridges and lets our buildings reaching toward the sky. The world would be much less romantic without diamonds but it would be unrecognizable without limestone.

My wife is one of the wise few who loves every square inch of her life. Like everyone else she loves the diamond days, family celebrations, the birth of children, vacations and other special days. She also loves the limestone days, cleaning the house, shopping, a fresh tomato from the garden or watching an ordinary sunset with her husband. I believe Glenda even appreciates the mud days, days with flat tires, headaches, arguments with our kids and ingrown toenails. They are all part of life.

Even with cancer and the pain that comes along with it, Glenda is still enjoying her life. If anything, the cancer has intensified her desire to extract every bit of joy out of every aspect of the life that she has left. Today, she made a delicious dinner for our daughter- in-law’s birthday. She laughed and enjoyed several games of scrabble and she watched the sunset with me.

I hope that the coronavirus helps more people appreciate life the way that my wife does. Thousands of our fellow Americans die every day from the disease, this should remind us all that life is short and precious. For the last year, we heard stories of people learning to bake sourdough bread, grow gardens and take up new hobbies. We live in a marketing culture that exposes us to a continuous cradle to the grave sales pitch. Everywhere we look, someone is telling us that we need to buy something to be happy.

The marketers tell us every day needs to be a diamond day. We will only be happy if we live in big houses, drive fancy cars, and take exotic vacations. We can’t even enjoy a kiss without stopping at the jewelry store first because, “every kiss begins with Kay.” They tell us that work is drudgery, we need precooked meals, robot vacuums and dishwashers. My wife has never owned or wanted a dishwasher. She enjoys the feeling of the warm water on her hands and the feeling of satisfaction as she accomplishes a simple task. Like a Zen monk, repetitive tasks like doing dishes provide a time to think about life.

Many terrible things came out of the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of people died and many others have suffered from the disease. People have lost their jobs and businesses were forced to close. The disease has shed light on the weaknesses in our supply chain and our economy. I hope all this grief and misery is set off by some good things.

For decades, our society has been trapped on the hedonic treadmill. Like hamsters on a wheel, we never reach our destination. We work hard to afford the things we want but when we acquire them the treadmill speeds up and we want the next thing that promises to make us happy and satisfied.

If nothing else, the coronavirus has forced us to slow down and jump off the moving belt. Many of us have relearned the pleasure of simple things like spending time with our families. We have discovered that spending a week’s vacation in the backyard can be more relaxing than fighting our way thorough airports and rushing around trying to fill a week with experiences we are too tired to enjoy.

I hope when all of this is over, we won’t all jump back on the hamster wheel and resume our endless quest for diamonds. I hope we remember that limestone days can be very satisfying. I hope like my wife, we all learn to appreciate each day. Most of all, I hope we stop to look at the dandelions in the yard, the birds singing in the trees and especially the most beautiful sunset ever.          

-Jim Busch

January 12, 2021

This is the 300th entry I have written for The Corona Diaries. I had hoped that by this point that Covid-19 would be a fading memory. Unfortunately, not only is the disease still with us, it is spreading faster than ever and evolving into new strains. 

The last seven days have been the deadliest week in Pennsylvania since the pandemic began. During the past week 1,574 Pennsylvanians have succumbed to the disease. This high death toll came in spite of the medical profession’s growing expertise in treating the disease. This spike in deaths follows the corresponding spike in the number of cases that stemmed from people getting together over the holidays.

This explosion in the number of Covid-19 cases comes just as we were hoping to get ahead of the disease. With the development of several new vaccines, the medical profession was hoping to stop the spread of the coronavirus and finally stop the dying. Though the administration of the vaccine has gotten off to a slow start, everyday more and more people are protected from the disease. Once we inoculate enough people to produce “herd immunity” we can start living our lives like we used to; we can return to the theaters, to the restaurants and can start leaving our masks at home.

One of the most perplexing things about Covid-19 is the random nature of who contracts the disease and how severe their symptoms are. Though the disease is hardest on the elderly or those with underlying health conditions, it sometimes hits the young and the healthy. Some people who come in contact with the virus decline rapidly and are dead within a few days. Others hover on the edge of the grave for months while intensive care doctors fight around the clock to save their lives.

Many infected people suffer only minor symptoms. I have a friend who is well over 65 years old, is overweight and has suffered from juvenile diabetes her entire life; these conditions put her right at the top of the high risk group for Covid-19. Surprisingly, when she did contract the coronavirus she experienced only mild symptoms of the disease. She was not hospitalized and treated herself at home. She temporarily lost her sense of taste and smell, had some severe headaches, ran a fever and was extremely fatigued. In a few weeks, she was feeling fine and was back at work.

Many of the people who had survived a case of “Covid light” felt doubly blessed. First, they had had a run in with the dread disease and had only experienced mild symptoms. They were like a person who was in an accident which mangled their car but left them unscathed. Walking away from their totaled car without a scratch, they feel like God is looking out for them.

Second, many of these fortunate folks believe their bout with the disease left them immune to Covid. Like a superhero, their brush with death left them with a super power denied to ordinary humans. They are faster than a speeding Covid and able to leap over major pandemics at a single bound. Spiky little coronavirus cells bounce off their chest like bullets off the man of steel.

From the beginning, I noticed the similarities between the pandemic and a second rate 1950’s sci-fi movie. Like a monster from outer space, no one saw Covid-19 coming. It started in a little out of the way place that no one ever heard of, where the local scientists tried to warn the world but, of course, no one would listen to them. Once it escaped its point of origin, the monster spread all over the globe like wildfire spreading panic wherever it appeared.

Governments mobilized their resources to battle the monster but nothing seemed to be able to stop it from overwhelming the world. Meanwhile, teams of brilliant scientists are working day and night to find a “magic bullet” to slay the creature and save the earth’s people. All we need to complete the plot is a beautiful reporter who is in love with the dedicated scientist who insists on personally going out to do battle with the beast.

Today, I learned that Covid-19 has another plot device in common with the Godzilla movies. In the movies, just as the credits rolled across the screen, we learned that the monster was not defeated only temporarily stunned. In the closing sequence, the noble scientist puts his arm around the beautiful journalist and says something like, “I’m not sure we’ve seen the last of the monster.” For the film’s producers, this was a pathetic bid to make a sequel. It seems that the coronavirus also is planning a part two, “Covid-19 II; its back and it wants you!”

Mary Beth, a close friend and former employee of mine was taken to the hospital in an ambulance today and rushed into the operating room for emergency surgery. Her husband had contracted Covid-19 last November and she got the disease from him. Though they were both sick as a dog over Thanksgiving, neither of them developed life threatening symptoms. Mary Beth and her husband were able to avoid hospitalization and to weather the disease in their North Braddock home. After a few weeks, both seemed to have fully recovered and returned to work.

This morning, Mary Beth felt a pain in her chest and was having trouble catching her breath. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest and believed she was having a heart attack. Mary Beth’s husband called 911 and as soon as the Emergency Medical Technicians arrived they decided to transport her to the hospital. Once at the hospital, the emergency room doctors determined that Mary Beth’s breathing problems were caused by a cluster of blood clots in her lungs. Had any of these clots moved to her heart, she may have experienced a fatal cardiac event. She was rushed to the operating room where surgeons removed the clots.

Mary Beth’s blood clots were not an isolated incident, they are a long term side effect of her case of Covid-19. Doctors are finding that people who have had the disease are prone to blood clots. They theorize that the coronavirus weakens the blood vessels and often leads to leakage. Large clots can lead to pulmonary problems, heart attacks and even strokes, this is what put Mary Beth into the hospital. Smaller clots don’t announce themselves as dramatically as large ones but are just as dangerous. Small clots block tiny capillaries in the heart muscles and other organs. Doctors feel that in the long run these blockages may cause heart attacks or kidney and liver failure. Like in the movies, we have not killed the monster, we have only drove it into hiding.

The good news is that the surgeons got to Mary Beth in time to save her. Had she delayed an hour or so this story might have had a different ending. The lesson here is that though after a year of dealing with the coronavirus, it is in no hurry to go away. Despite our efforts to vaccinate against the disease and mitigate its impact with masks and social distancing, it continues to spread. Patients who believe that they have beaten Covid-19 may not realize that the disease left a deadly ticking time bomb inside their bodies. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic warn that we may not yet recognize all of the long term side effects of the coronavirus.

We’ve been fighting the coronavirus for a year now, and we have made some progress but we are far from the end of the struggle. Our scientists continue to work on new remedies for the disease and on new more effective vaccines. In the end, the best tool we have to fight Covid-19 might be our persistence and our determination not to let down our guard until we have finally defeated this pandemic.       

 -Jim Busch

January 11, 2021

I received some sad news today via Facebook. One of my junior high school teachers died over the weekend. I was surprised to learn that he was still alive, he seemed so old to me when I was in the seventh grade at Francis McClure Junior High School.

He wore a coat and tie and was balding so my thirteen year old self naturally assumed he was ancient. In reading his obituary, I learned that he was only thirteen years older than me. I guess that was a huge difference at the time, he was twice as old as me, but somehow the years narrowed the gap.

The obituary gave his name James R. Shepherd but to his students he will be forever remembered as “Jimmy” Shepherd. Mr. Shepherd taught history and social studies. In comments on Facebook, many of his former students remembered him as a “great teacher.” I’m not sure that this is how I would characterize him, maybe because I was one of the few students who really cared about history and social studies. As a budding nerd, I knew more about some of the subjects he was teaching than he did.

With Viet Nam raging and the U.S. Army struggling to defeat the rag tag Viet Cong our social studies class was discussing guerrilla warfare. Mr. Shepherd said that while the Vietnamese had a long history of fighting against oppressors, Americans did not. His contention was that we wouldn’t know how to fight a guerrilla war. I raised my hand and said, “We could learn how to do it from books.”

Mr. Shepherd said that there were no books that the general public could get their hands on. He was sure such information was censored. I knew this was not the case. When my Dad took me to the gun shows at the White Oak Rod and Gun Club I would buy stacks of past issues of gun magazines bound in white string for a dollar. Sometimes these stacks would include a few Soldier of Fortune magazines. I knew the ads in these magazines sold books on guerrilla warfare. To prove Mr. Shepherd wrong, I sent a $1.25 plus shipping and handling to the address in one of the magazines.

About a week later, I received a plain brown envelope in the mail containing a brand new copy of “150 Questions for a Guerrilla” by General Alberto Bayo, “The man who trained Castro.” Being a smart aleck little kid, I took the book with me to school the next morning and presented it to Mr. Shepherd. I had thoughtfully marked the section that detailed how to blow up a train using improvised explosives. To his credit, Mr. Shepherd looked at the book in amazement and told me, “I would never believe that a book like this existed and that anyone could buy them.” I then showed him the mimeographed list of other titles available from the publisher.

It was one of the best days of my young life when Mr. Shepherd scrapped his lesson plan and told the class about the book I had shown him. He actually told my fellow students that I had been right and that he, a teacher, had been wrong. We then discussed if it was a good idea to make books like this available to the people. It may have been the first serious discussion of the first amendment I ever participated in.

As crazy as it sounds today, Mr. Shepherd not only let me bring a handgun to school, but he gave me extra credit for doing it. When we were studying the American Revolution, I told Mr. Shepherd that I was the proud owner of a reproduction British flintlock horse pistol from the era. I bought the pistol at a gun show for twelve dollars. It had been priced at fifteen dollars but I bargained him down because I had only saved twelve bucks from my allowance and lawn mowing.

The seller was honest about the gun and described it as a “wall hanger” because he couldn’t get the lock to spark. A flintlock works by smashing a piece of flint held in the hammer against a hard piece of steel to create sparks. These sparks fall into the gunpowder and touch off the gun. I still wanted it because I thought it was “cool,”

When we got the gun home my dad looked at it and quickly diagnosed the problem. The “frizzen,” the part that the flint hit when the trigger was pulled, was too soft. He took it off and mailed it to my Uncle Charlie in Michigan. Charlie owned a heat treating company that hardened tools for the car companies. In a couple of weeks, the frizzen was back. My uncle had “case hardened” it and once installed on the gun produced a glorious shower of sparks.

We molded some lead bullets with the mold that came with the pistol and bought some black powder at Ungar’s Hardware and went to the range. We loaded it up and my dad fired it for the first time. When he pulled the trigger, it made a click, the flint striking the frizzen followed by a whoosh, the powder in the “pan” igniting and finally a boom when the powder in the barrel finally exploded. It was a dramatic event which produced a big cloud of acrid smoke that smelled like the Fourth of July. We had great fun taking turns shooting the old fashioned gun.

When I described this to Jimmy Shepherd, he asked me if I could bring it to school and show the class how it worked. I jumped at the chance and that Friday I dropped the pistol off in Mr. Shepherd’s classroom when I got off the bus. When fourth period rolled around, Mr. Shepherd led the class outside to the school’s courtyard where I poured some black powder down the barrel, used the metal ramrod to pack some crumpled newspaper on top, and then filled the pan on the side of the barrel with a few more grains of powder.

I think I pulled the trigger and the powder in the pan went whoosh. No bang followed, I had a misfire. I explained how this often happened during the revolution as I re-primed the pan. The next time I cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger, the pistol fired sending out a cloud of smoke and bits of burning newspaper. I was instantly the coolest kid in school.

Mr. Shepherd had not informed anyone what he had planned that day. Alerted by the teachers whose classrooms surrounded the courtyard, the principal came running. I am not sure he liked the idea of explosives in his school, but Jimmy Shepherd convinced him to stick around for the second round.

Mr. Shepherd was one of the “cool” teachers, it was fun to be in his class. Once when we arrived for our fourth period class he greeted us at the door with his finger pressed to his lips imploring us to be quiet. A kid named Steadman had fallen asleep in his second period class and Mr. Shepherd didn’t want us to wake him. Steadman had slept through the second half of his class and all of the third period. He didn’t wake up until about halfway through our fourth period class.

As instructed by Mr. Shepherd, we all said, “Good morning, Steadman,” in unison. Looking around at the strange faces in the surrounding seats, he hastily gathered his books and asked, “Mr. Shepherd, what period is this?” Without skipping a beat, Mr. Shepherd answered, “Third, it’s the third period, Steadman. You’d better hurry and catch up with your class.”

I’m not sure if Steadman ever found his class that day, but I know that Mr. Shepherd’s object lesson was far more effective than yelling at Steadman. It is doubtful that he ever dared to fall asleep in school again.

Over the years, I ran into Mr. Shepherd now and then at the store or other local businesses. He actually taught both of my kids and our parent teacher conferences usually consisted of reminiscing about when he taught me and my wife. I haven’t seen him in a decade, maybe more. I am sure like all of us he aged and grew a bit infirm, but in my mind he will forever be that cool teacher who loved his job and who made going to school fun for generation of kids.           

 -Jim Busch

January 10, 2021

This morning I woke up not feeling particularly well. There was nothing I could put my finger on, I didn’t have a fever and my stomach felt fine. I was just sort of achy and sore. Fresh out of bed I felt tired, I just didn’t feel like myself.

I have been blessed with a good constitution; I seldom get sick. In five decades of gainful employment, I only missed a few days of work and then only out of concern that I would spread my germs to my coworkers. I usually feel pretty good and generally have a lot of energy. On the rare occasions that I do get sick, I generally just sleep it off; I take a couple of Ibuprofen and hit the sack often for 12 hours or so. When I get up, I’m usually feeling much better and I’m hungry as a bear.

I am anything but a hypochondriac, I don’t think a lot about getting sick and naturally assume I will stay healthy. During the pandemic, I’ve taken all the precautions recommended by the CDC, I wear a mask and try to maintain a safe distance from strangers. For some reason, I have never believed that I would catch the coronavirus. This may be magical thinking on my part, but this is what I believe. I have no logical reason to believe this with thousands of new cases popping up every day but this is not is what I feel in my bones.

This morning I wasn’t so sure about my invulnerability. When I woke up and felt the stiffness in my joints, the first thought that ran through my mind was, “Do I have Covid?” After hearing all the horror stories over the past year, this was a natural thought. I do leave the house on an almost daily basis, I do the shopping and run the family errands, so it was conceivable that I had been exposed.

I ran everything I had read and heard about Covid-19 through my mind. I tried to remember what the symptoms were, did they include sore joints? I thought so. While still in bed, I raised my hand to my forehead and felt for a fever. Can you tell by yourself if you have a fever? I mean if my hand was as warm as my forehead would I be able to tell if I was feverish? I wasn’t sure.

I got up and took my blood pressure and it was just a little elevated. This could either be a symptom of the disease or a natural response to concern about contracting it. I then checked my blood oxygen level. One of the advantages of being old is that we seniors tend to own a lot of medical equipment. My pulse ox level was 97% which was well in the healthy level. This made me feel a lot better, falling levels of oxygen in the blood is one of the surest signs of Covid-19.

I confirmed my negative diagnosis with the help of our cat, Sheldon. Sheldon was concluding some business as I walked past his litter box. One of the effects of Covid-19 is loss of taste and smell. I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet so I didn’t know about my sense of taste, but Sheldon proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that my nose was working properly.

I don’t have much more to report about the remainder of the day. I ate some breakfast and took a nap sitting on the couch. After a few hours I got up and went to bed for a serious nap. Reassured that I didn’t have Covid, I stopped panicking and followed my usual recuperative routine. I finally got up about ten in the evening and was feeling much better.

My experience today made me think about how the pandemic impacts our thinking about our health. My grandmother was a hypochondriac, she was sure that she had every disease she saw in a magazine or on TV. I am sure that the hypochondriacs of the world are sure that they have contracted coronavirus every day for the year. I am sure that they are constantly putting an onion or a clove of garlic to their noses to see how much longer they have to live.

I also wonder how the pandemic will affect the way we look at disease. If we get this thing under control, will a percentage of the population continue to wear masks? How many people will continue to live in fear that the next deadly global pandemic is just around the corner?

I saw the psychological impact of the pandemic, or at least the news coverage of the pandemic, had on me today. I hope that we learn some positive lessons from the last year. I hope that our medical system is better prepared if something like this happens again. It is far too early to know the long term impact of this pandemic, but I am sure it has changed us all. I do know that it has changed me.          

 - Jim Busch

January 9, 2021

I have known many memorable people in my life. For a while, I worked with a human dynamo of a man named John Bertinatti.

John lived his life in fast forward mode; he was like a human hummingbird, he moved so fast that it was hard to see him. He was the classic “Type A” individual and unfortunately died a typical “Type A” death, succumbing to a massive heart attack in his fifties. Though I knew better than to adopt his frenetic lifestyle, I did consider him a mentor and learned some valuable lessons from him.

When I first met John, I found him very hard to understand. This was because of the rapid fire velocity of his speech. John spit out words like a Gatling gun spits out bullets. There was one phrase that I constantly heard John use. To me it sounded like he was saying, “En ya enn u oow, en ya iipe u ot.” Because of how frequent he used it I assumed it was some sort of motto for him.

Finally I asked John, “What the hell are you saying?” He actually stopped, pondered what I had asked for a microsecond and spit our “En ya enn u oow, en ya iipe u ot.” Still perplexed I said, “Slow down John, I want to know if what you’re saying is in English?”

Finally comprehending what I was saying John slowed his words down like he was talking to a young child, “When…you’re… ripe… you… rot…when… you’re green.. you… grow!” It was like pulling teeth but John’s lesson was well worth the effort. I have integrated his message into my life. Though I have reached what many would consider “a ripe old age,” I try to prevent my mind from rotting.

I continue to try to learn new skills and to expand my horizons. Today, was one of those mind stretching days. I took part in a photography event co-sponsored by the Mon Valley Photography Collective and Venture Outdoors.

I first got involved in the photography group through my involvement with the Tube City Writers. Writing is well within my comfort zone. I was an English major in college and had my first piece published in 1970.

Photography is far outside of my wheelhouse. I have been taking pictures for most of my life but mostly with point, shoot and hope Kodak cameras. Of course, like everyone else, I am constantly snapping pictures with my phone.

I take pictures, but I enjoy photographs. There is a big difference between a picture and a photograph. While both capture a moment in time, a photograph turns that moment into a work of art.

Think about Edward Hopper’s famous painting, Nighthawks, which portrays a number of ordinary people in an ordinary corner café. Hopper’s artist’s eye and skill with his tools turned this simple scene into an iconic American painting.

Like Hopper, true photographers transform ordinary moments into extraordinary works of art. Knowing my ambition in this area, my wife bought me a decent Fuji camera a number of years ago before I retired. It was a nice gift and I was excited by the chance to become even a poor photographer. 

When I first received the camera, I read its manual and played with some of its many buttons and settings. I have to admit that I was overwhelmed by the complexity packed into this handheld device.

Most daunting of all was learning the language of photography. I didn’t know what terms like ISO, f-stop or shutter speed meant. I didn’t understand how these things affected my pictures. I was especially perplexed by how these things worked in conjunction with one another.

I have always considered myself an autodidact. Autodidact is a fancy word for a self-taught person. Many of my heroes were autodidacts; Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to name a few.

When the camera manual left me totally confused, I checked out a number of photography books from the library in hopes of turning myself into Ansel Adams.

I loved the photos in the books but I hit the language barrier again. I think I would have got just as much out of a book written in Armenian. At that point in my life, I lacked the time and the patience to devote to learning a complex new skill.

Another factor in my decision was the discovery of my camera’s Auto setting. The auto setting essentially turned my very complex camera into the Kodak Brownie of my youth with a much better lens. This both literally and figuratively became my default setting.

Fast forward a decade or so, and I was invited to join the Tube City Writers. This led to a second invitation to join the photography collective. Looking at the work of the other members of the group, I felt like Phil Hartman’s Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer character from Saturday Night Live, “I am frightened by your modern world.”

I listened carefully to the discussions about how to improve the photos the people in the group shared but didn’t know how to apply them to my own work. I realized that I needed some hands on instruction.

Today, I was, without a doubt, the dumbest person in the room, or more accurately, the parking lot of the Carrie Furnace National Historic site. Everyone had a camera that I am sure they, unlike me, knew how to use.

Being the first to arrive, I received a personal lesson on my camera from a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Martha Rial, director of the McKeesport Community Newsroom, took the time to show me how to change some of the settings on my camera. I learned more in a few moments than I learned in the last decade.

After meeting everyone, we were free to wander the old steel mill and take pictures. Martha challenged us to use the manual setting on our cameras. I followed her instructions and, quite frankly, took some absolutely awful pictures.

I thought of a quote attributed to St. Vincent de Paul, “The only way to be really good at something is to be really bad at it at first.” Well according to that, I am on my way to greatness. I don’t have much to show for the few hours I spent snapping pictures but I feel like I know a little bit more than I knew yesterday.

I have some knowledge to build on to get better. I feel good about that. It was good to spend a day outside of my comfort zone, it’s a good place to protect my brain from rotting.             

- Jim Busch

January 8, 2021

Tonight, my wife and I did something we have done almost every evening for the last four decades, we watched Alex Trebeck host Jeopardy. Tonight was the last time we will ever do that, tonight was Alex Trebeck’s last time hosting the game show.

When Alex strode out on to the stage, my wife remarked, “Alex looks pretty good for a dead man.” The show we were watching had been taped weeks ago and several weeks before Alex’s death on November 8.

My wife wasn’t far off the mark, Alex did indeed looked good for a dying man. His last words on air were, “We’ll see you again next week.” They were very convincing, even though we knew that wouldn’t happen.

Every person’s death tears a hole in the fabric of mankind. These holes come in all sizes depending on how deeply a person weaves themselves into that fabric. The more lives we touch in our lives, the more of a gap we leave behind us. Alex Trebeck tore millions of holes all around the world. This is typical of someone who lived their life in public but Alex Trebeck will be missed more than many other celebrities who have passed away.

Alex Trebeck was unusual in that he “played” the same role for so long. He is actually listed in the Guiness Book of World Records for, “game show hosted for the most episodes by the same presenter.” We got used to seeing him standing at the podium in front of the big board hosting the show. Unlike an actor who gains fame playing a character, Trebeck became famous for being himself.

One of the reasons that Jeopardy lasted so long and that Alex persisted as its host was that his personality was so appealing. I heard one commentator on national news say that Alex Trebeck, “made being smart cool again!’

I can think of no other figure in popular culture who exhibited the intellectual curiosity shown by Alex Trebeck. He didn’t claim to be a genius, he demonstrated it on every episode of the show and in every interview he gave.

One of my favorite parts of the show came at the middle of the first segment; the point where Alex talked with the contestants. He always seemed genuinely interested in these people and in their lives.

Alex Trebeck was the person we all wanted as a friend, the person who, when he walks into a room doesn’t say, “Here I am,” but rather says “Ahh…there you are!”  He was a serious man who didn’t take himself seriously. He was gracious and willing to laugh at himself, rare qualities in a public figure these days.

Alex Trebeck was always himself in real life and on television. He like to spend his free time completing hands on home improvement projects, hardly something that would get his picture on the cover of National Enquirer.

Jeopardy was a show parents could sit down and watch with their children and Alex Trebeck was the kind of man that they hoped their kids would emulate. Alex Trebeck will be missed by a lot of people for a long time.

The death of Alex Trebeck was especially tough on me and my wife. In addition to our love of his work, we can identify with his struggle against pancreatic cancer. My wife has also been diagnosed with this almost always fatal disease.

We have a special appreciation of the amount of courage and determination that Alex showed in his final months of life. He was a living breathing embodiment of Don Quixote. I will think of him whenever I hear someone sing the theme for The Man of La Mancha:

And the world will be better for this
And one man, sore and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To fight the unbeatable foe

It was hard on us when we heard that Alex Trebeck had lost his fight. As long as Alex kept fighting, there was a chance for Glenda. His ability to carry on in the face of cancer gave us hope.

Like Alex Trebeck, my wife has refused to give in to the disease. Though it has given her a great deal of pain and has sapped her energy, Glenda has tried to maintain as much normalcy in her life. She has continued to do the things she enjoys.

Although exhausted, our home was decorated like a Macy’s window for the holidays. From Thanksgiving to New Year’s she produced a series of meals that would have impressed Martha Stewart. She baked many dozens of cookies and made box after box of chocolate for the family and as gifts.

Glenda understands why Alex was so determined to continue working for as long as he could. When Glenda received her diagnosis, she resolved to make the most of every day. She did not want to waste a single moment. With the holidays over, she is now directing her waning energy to redecorating our home and doing some minor improvements.

I was happy to learn that Alex Trebeck had died at home rather than in some hospital room hooked up to all sorts of wires and tubes. Alex died sitting on a porch swing. The last thing his eyes took in before they closed forever was a vision of the blue Pacific stretching out to the horizon and the last thing he felt was the loving hand of his wife holding his hand.

If there is really such a thing as a good death, Alex Trebeck died well. He passed after a gallant fight ending in a beautiful, peaceful moment hand in hand with the woman he loved.

I have been thinking about Alex’s wife. Alex’s death poked millions of holes in the fabric of life wherever anyone mourned his death. I am sure his passing left a huge gaping ragged hole in Alex’s family’s life. At 80 years old, Alex Trebeck had lived a good long life, but the length of a person’s life does not diminish the pain of losing them.

Confronted with my wife’s courage in the face of death, I try not to show my own pain or concern. I try to be strong for her but this gets harder all the time. After Glenda’s last round of treatment, I am impatient for her next scan.

I need to know if we have forced the tumor inside her body into retreat. I still have hope, against all the odds, that my wife will be able to beat this disease or at least buy a few more precious years.  

I am an old man and I am surrounded by endings. Tonight, I saw the end of an era on , Monday’s show will be hosted by champion player Ken Jennings; as the old saying says, “The show must go on.”

Each day, I hear of a restaurant that I liked closing or a business I patronized shutting down. I have lost old friends and I have lost the energy to do many of the things I once enjoyed.

I am getting tired of endings, I hate to see familiar things go away. Most of all, I am afraid that I am coming close to the end of the great love story of my life.    

-Jim Busch

January 7, 2021

Today, I saw a meme that read, “Dear 2021, thank you for the 7 day free trial but I have found your year unsatisfactory so I am canceling my subscription.” If it were only that easy!

The last year was pretty rough with the pandemic and all the political infighting. This year is not starting off much better; in fact one could argue that the first week of 2021 has gone steadily downhill.

We started the year off with a glimmer of hope, the long awaited Covid vaccine was finally ready, all we needed to do was shoot it into everybody’s arm and we could kiss the pandemic goodbye. It seemed like “Operation Warp Speed” had lived up to its much ballyhooed promise until it didn’t.

It seems that when it came to actually injecting people with the vaccine, our progress was more like “Operation Sloth Speed!” The United States set a target of two million vaccinations by the end of December, a target that we missed by a mere ninety percent.

The one thing that did go into “Warp Speed” was the spread of Covid-19. The combination of the end of the year holidays and human stupidity proved to be a deadly combination. After enduring months in the social isolation of quarantine, many people were experiencing “Covid Fatigue.”

Public health professionals repeatedly warned people to stay at home and not travel or gather together during the holidays but millions of people ignored these cautions. A few days after Thanksgiving cases began to surge and hospitals were overwhelmed. This year we should have changed the words of the carol to say:

No one stayed home for the holidays.

From Atlantic to Pacific,

The infection rate was terrific

The disease was there wherever you roamed

We’ll be forced to dig lots of graves, because

People refused to stay in their home sweet home.

Today, one week after New Year’s Eve, the United States hit a record high in Covid deaths for the second day in a row. Today, 3,865 Americans succumbed to Covid 19, we have passed 361,000 deaths and 2021 is on pace to be even deadlier than its predecessor. It does not seem like we will be able to take off our masks and let our guards down for a long, long time.

Things didn’t get much brighter on the political front either. We had hope to be over with the 2020 election almost two months before the end of the year, but things didn’t work out as we hoped.

It took weeks to confirm the vote count and even when this straight forward task was completed, the president refused to accept the results. This led to endless recounts, audits and legal challenges flooding our airwaves with an endless supply of political vitriol.   

Just when we thought America’s political division couldn’t get any worse, a bunch of wannabe revolutionaries invaded our national capitol causing our congress people and senators to scurry into their holes like frightened chipmunks.

The rioters, many of whom were dressed like extras in a badly directed cable parody of Mad Max, occupied both chambers of the capitol before being driven out. For a while, millions of Americans were afraid that a coup might overthrow our government or that blood would run in the streets.

The only thing 2021 needs to make it the worst year in our history is a plague of locusts or perhaps it could start raining rattlesnakes. I keep wondering what the next shortage of a necessity will be. Will we have to start hoarding toothpaste? Cat Food? Underarm deodorant? 

To keep from going completely, absolutely, irretrievably and totally stark raving mad, we’ve all had to develop coping mechanism and distractions. People have adopted all sorts of sanity preserving behaviors during the past year. Some are harmful, drinking, illegal drugs or watching daytime TV. Others are productive, baking sourdough bread, mask making or learning Esperanto.

Being a hopeless nerd, I have tried to distract myself by expanding upon my lifelong interest in art, both the making of art and looking at the work of others. The quarantine has made getting my regular art fix more difficult to get.

To stop the disease, the governor ordered the museums to shut down like every other nonessential public venue. This made me wonder if Governor Wolf had ever been to an art museum. Unless there is a well-advertised special show, visiting a gallery in the best of times is a stellar example of social distancing.

Not a lot of people spend their days looking at art and when they do, they generally like to be left alone to experience the art without being disturbed. I am seldom within 20 feet of another person at the Carnegie Museum of Art when I visit.

During normal times, I make the rounds of the local art museums on a regular basis. I am on a first name basis with the guards and the docents. I also travel to see exhibits in other areas. I am extremely glad I drove to Columbia, North Carolina to see a Van Gogh exhibit last January before the pandemic hit. Right now it’s killing me that I am missing an exhibit of works by folk artist Elijah Pierce at the Barnes Museum in Philadelphia.

While I can’t go to galleries, I can bring the galleries to me, at least in a small way. I have an extensive collection of art books and have been going through them in a systematic way. Instead of leafing through them casually, I have taken the time to closely examine each work of art and study their composition and technique.

Once the libraries opened up for curbside pickup, I started checking out books on my favorite artists and the one’s I would like to know more about. While even the best photograph is a poor substitute for seeing the original work, but beggars, or locked down art lovers, can’t be choosers.

I have also tried to spend time in my studio/workshop playing around with my own work. I say playing because I don’t consider myself a true artist. At best I am a scribbler but I enjoy pretending to know what I’m doing.

Sitting at my drawing table gives me a better understanding of what artists do and deepens my appreciation for their work. I find when I have a pencil, pen or brush in my hand and nothing except the paper or canvass in front of me and making art, Covid, my wife’s cancer and politics are a million miles away.

Today, I spent an hour or so trying to duplicate a Charlie Harper landscape. Harper was a graphic artist whose work in the 1950s and ‘60s was influential. His use of geometric shapes and primary colors to depict nature was quite distinctive. He is one of my favorite artists.

I have a calendar featuring Harper’s work hanging above my art table and today I decided to copy a portion of the January image. It’s hardly a masterpiece and pales in comparison to Harper’s original but making it was like taking a mini vacation away from the problems of the world outside my studio.

Knowing how much I love art, each year my wife buys me a Metropolitan Museum of Art calendar every year for Christmas. Each day it features a photo of a piece of art from the museum. Today’s work was a magnificent painted Egyptian coffin featuring the face of the Singer of Amun Re.

The coffin dates from between 900 and 1000 B.C. Not only is it beautiful to look at, but this work of art gives me some much needed perspective. I imagine the artist sitting in the Nile Valley some 3,000 years ago. I imagine him worrying about the plagues that periodically swept through ancient Egypt. He may have been concerned about the palace intrigues which often resulted in a violent change in the leadership of the country. He knew that trouble in the palace could mean chaos in the streets.

When I look at ancient art, or art from the time of the French Revolution, I remember that the worries and concerns from that time passed away and was soon forgotten. I find this fact reassuring, it reminds me that as bad as things are right now that all of our problems will soon be history and that life will eventually go back to normal.

Art may not offer me a cure for Covid-19, but I know it will help me survive until a cure is found. Making art helps me take a mental break from the doom and gloom and the work of artists from the past reminds me that all of this will soon go away.       

-Jim Busch

January 6, 2021

I will never forget where I was the day JFK was assassinated. I will never forget where I was on the morning of September 11, 2001. I am fairly certain I will never forget where I was this afternoon when the U. S. Capitol was invaded by an angry mob of President Trump’s supporters.

Today, was one of those moments that is transformative, a day that will change everything.  I don’t believe any of us will think about America in the same way again. In 233 years, we have only had one occasion where the transition from one administration to the next was not peaceful and that one resulted in a disastrous civil war.  

Of all the possible places to learn earth shattering news, I heard about the storming of our national capital from a perfect stranger in the parking lot of DeLallo’s Italian Store in Jeanette.

A petite older woman carrying one of DeLallo’s distinct paper shopping bags and wearing a floral mask approached me and said, “Did you hear about what’s going on in D.C.? They’ve attacked the capitol.” The fear in her voice was palpable and I wondered if some foreign terrorist cell had pulled off a new 911 style attack.

I asked her, “Who attacked us?”

“Trump’s MAGA crowd. He told them to attack the capitol and they did. They broke through the fence and are in the building.”

I spoke with her for a while like we were old friends. I assured her that our country had weathered much worse. She apologized to me for confronting me, “I’m so sorry, but I had to tell somebody. Thank you for talking with me.” As she went to her car, I turned around and got back into mine. I had to know what was going on before I did my shopping.

In the car, I turned on NPR and googled “Capitol attack” on my phone. I got the details and called my wife, knowing that she usually listens to the oldies on the cable music channel when I’m not at home. I waited while she changed the channel and I heard an audible gasp.

“You should see this, it’s insane … they’re evacuating congress … you be careful out there.” By “out there” she was referring to Westmoreland County, the heart of MAGA country. I told Glenda not to worry, I didn’t see any crazed Trump supporters storming the olive bar at DeLallo’s so I thought I was safe. I added that, “I’m an old white guy in jeans, a denim shirt and a Dickies work jacket. All I need to say is that Antifa had stolen my red hat and they’d leave me alone.”

I went in to the store to do my shopping and the news began to spread through the people there. There was a lot of “did you hear?” and “rioters have broken into the capitol.” In this very conservative area, I half expected a spontaneous cheer to erupt right there by the bakery counter but that’s not what happened.

Most people looked quite upset and expressed their dismay at the violence and chaos. I saw a man and his wife talking with a neighbor about the news. I could overhear their conversation and from my vantage point I noticed him subtly remove his red MAGA hat from his head, fold the brim and slide it into his back pants pocket. I wondered if he would ever put it on again.

During the day, I learned more about what was going on in Washington. I heard a number of Republican leaders blame the president for the actions of his supporters. I heard President Elect Biden deliver an inspiring speech to the country on this dark day. He used the words, “respect, honor, decency” over and over and it was good to hear these words on the lips of our future president. They have been missing from our national dialogue for far too long.

Lots of people are putting the blame for the division in our country squarely on President Trump. Others blame politicians on both sides of the aisle. I think the problem runs much deeper than that. I am good at fixing things, both mechanical devices and organizational challenges.

During my business career, I earned a reputation as a troubleshooter. I was often called in to turn around failing departments or to cure systemic problems. The reason I was able to resolve problems that baffled others was due to the fact that I dig beneath the surface of things.

I utilize a process that engineers call “Root Call Analysis.” This process is simply asking another of “why” questions. For example, an engine is running poorly and a mechanic discovers the plugs are fouled, the easy answer is to swap out the plugs.

The problem with this approach is that in very short order they will foul again and the problem will reoccur. The mechanic needed to ask “why” they fouled, perhaps the oil seals are bad or maybe the cylinder rings need to be replaced. The engine cannot be made right until the “root cause” of the problem has been determined and corrected.

I believe the president is as much a symptom as he is a cause of what happened today in Washington. I believe that we are a nation that has forgotten to know how to make good choices.

Why?

Because we do not stop to think but tend to make quick decisions based on our emotions.

Why?

Because in the electronic age of information, we are constantly bombarded with information and the speed that the information is steadily increasing. We no longer take the time to think things through.

Why?

There are a number of reasons for this: FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), we don’t want to be embarrassed by not knowing what’s going on. We have a strong desire to be included in a group. We want to know and believe what our chosen group believes.

The second reason was eloquently expressed by Henry Ford, “Thinking is the hardest kind of work, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.” The human brain makes up only two percent of our body mass but consumes over 25% of our body’s energy.

To conserve energy our brains have evolved to minimize the amount of thinking we do. We have developed “heuristics” and biases” to speed the thinking process. This is why we can catch a ball thrown to us before we think about what we are doing.

One of these thinking shortcuts is “confirmation bias.” Confirmation bias means that we tend to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs. This saves us from having to consider new ideas.

Confirmation bias means that candidates tell us what we want to hear rather than what we need to hear, so they can easily gain our support. A candidate that tells us that America is “great” will be more acceptable than one who tells us we need to work hard to improve our country.

We want to be told that what we already believe is true. This is why contrary to all facts, many people believe that the candidate they supported could not have lost the election.

Confirmation bias allows media to manipulate us in to behaving in ways that are not in our interest. They play on our fears of change and of people who are not like us. This is particularly effective on social media. These communication vehicles engage our emotions and use them to distort our thinking.

Finally, we have arrived at the “What” or solution part of the program. “What can be done to overcome our susceptibility to being manipulated?”

The answer, Aristotle and Socrates. The ancient Greeks understood the relationship between the emotions and the thinking brain. They used the image of a man driving a chariot pulled by a number of wild stallions. The driver is the brain and the stallions are the emotions.

The driver is small and weak, while the horses are big and powerful; the Greeks knew how hard it was to control our feelings but they knew it was possible. They realized that only a focused and disciplined mind could prevent those horses from taking our lives on Mr. Toad’s wild ride.

The ancient philosophers urged us to take time and think about what we were going to do. They taught us to question all aspects of what we hear and see; to look at the issue from all sides.

Before making a decision or taking an action, Socrates and Aristotle tested the issue by using thought experiments. They often switched the pieces around on the chessboard to see if the logic worked in both directions. If the two sides were switched would we still make the same decision?

In the final analysis, we don’t need to teach our children “STEM” classes, we need to teach them critical thinking classes. We need to present them with complex problems that present no clear cut answers. We should engage them in discussion about these issues and force the wheels in their heads to turn.

We should teach them that almost no issue is black and white but some shade of gray; they should also learn the value of listening to others and of compromise. Our children must learn to respect learning, appreciate facts and of letting go of long held ideas when something better comes along. If we do this, we will raise a generation of children who will not only be more informed but who are also better citizens.

An informed citizenry would never let what we saw today happen. Our future depends on moving the focus of our decision making process a few feet north from our guts to our brains.

I think we should ask our children the question Ralph Nader’s father asked him every day when he got home from school, “What did you learn in school today, did you learn to think or to believe?”

- Jim Busch

January 5, 2021

Today, I took my wife for her final radiation treatment. She has been through 28 sessions; she has gone religiously Monday through Friday except for the holidays for the last month.

This means we have turned over some new pages and are ready to get on with the next chapter of her journey through cancer. This is the beginning of an intermission in her treatment before she gets a scan sometime early in February and she meets with her doctor to determine what the next step will be, if any.

I have been getting up at 7 a.m. each morning to drive Glenda to Allegheny General Hospital for her treatments for the last month. For a night owl like me getting up so early in the day throws my constitution for a loop. After five years of retirement, I have no idea how I managed to get up early and go to work for over five decades.

Since I no longer have to keep office hours, I’ve gotten in the habit of going to bed at two or three in the morning and rising about 10 or 10:30 a.m. Knowing I had to get up at seven to take my wife to AGH, I tried to go to bed earlier but to no avail.

At the time most people are entering into deep REM sleep, I am wide awake and at my creative best. Try as I might, I am seldom able to fall asleep before 1:30 a.m. I will not miss this enforced early rising one little bit.

Because of Covid restrictions, I couldn’t go into the hospital with Glenda. I dropped her at AGH’s new cancer center and then went and found a parking place somewhere on the Northside. Usually, I could find a spot on Suismon Street facing the Allegheny Commons Park. This was an ideal location, just minutes from the hospital, I could quickly respond to my wife’s text when her treatment was done.

This spot was also the perfect location to engage in one of my favorite pastimes, people watching. Beyond my windshield, I could see the neighborhood waking up. People in medical scrubs hurrying to work, often at a full run, to the hospital. Much more relaxed people waiting at the bus stops, most staring at their phones and not paying to attention to what was going on all around them.

Sometimes, I would walk about to take pictures of the area’s 19th and early 20th century architecture. I discovered several gorgeous stained glass windows and masterful wood and brick work on the old Victorian homes. While I was strolling around the neighborhood, almost everyone I passed greeted me with a masked smile and a pleasant “good morning!” These friendly people are a big part of why Pittsburgh regularly wins the title of America’s “Most Livable City.”

Even more fascinating than the people of Pittsburgh’s Northside are the pooches of the Northside. My morning vigil coincided with the time the city’s pets felt the need to move their bones and move their bowels. I am convinced that there are few places on the planet with more canines per capita than Pittsburgh’s Northside. Sitting in my car, I got to see an almost endless parade of dogs of all breeds, sizes and colors.

Many Northsidians own multiple dogs so the canines may even outnumber their owners. I’ve seen people clutching three or four leashes being pulled along like a southern sheriff hot on the trail of an escaped prisoner with a pack of bloodhounds.

This morning, I saw a middle aged man actually walking two bloodhounds. I also saw a well-dressed older man with an equally well-dressed Yorkshire terrier. The tiny dog was wearing a bright red sweater with a big collar and tiny pink rubber boots.

He stopped to talk to an older neighbor while his dog exchanged sniffs with her two dogs. She had a canine “odd couple” at the end of the two leashes she held in her hand. One was an energetic French bulldog in a black in a white spotted plastic raincoat. He was impatient and pulled her like a sled dog toward every tree and post.

I was afraid he was going to pull her over when he caught sight of the little Yorkie at the corner. Her other dog was a 100% pedigreed “Heinz 57” mutt. He was a medium size dog with wiry orange, brown and black hair in no distinct pattern.

Though he was taller than his leash mate, this all American dog had trouble keeping up with him because he was missing his right hind leg. Despite his handicap, the mutt wagged his tail and enthusiastically took part in the nose to tail sniff session on the street corner.

I was watching a thin woman with a Greyhound pondering the common idea that people start resembling their pets when my phone chimed. My wife was done with her final session. I said a silent goodbye to the people and pooches of the Northside and drove to the hospital.

My wife was glad to be done with the treatments and the “evil” chemo pills associated with them. She was looking forward to a few weeks without exposing her body to deadly radiation or poisonous drugs.

The last round of treatments had caused the skin to peel off her fingers and left her stomach in a constant state of rebellion; she was constantly tired and was always freezing even with our furnace thermostat turned all the way up.

Like me, she is also concerned about what the doctor will have to say at their next meeting. We both know that miracles don’t happen nearly so often in the real world as they do in the movies.

I got her an orange scone for a “Radiation Graduation” celebratory breakfast. When we got home Fed Ex brought us a foam cooler filled with dry ice and two Giordano’s Deep Dish Pizzas directly from Chicago. Our son, Jesse, had ordered these for his mother to celebrate the end of her treatment. It was his way of saying he was hoping that she would soon feel better.

We fell in love with these unbelievably delicious pies when Jesse was doing graduate work in the Windy City many years ago. For those who have never experienced a true Chicago Style pizza, in form they are more like a cherry pie than anything Pizza Hut has to offer. They consist of a thin pastry crust filled to the brim with a yummy filling, in this case cheeses and meat rather than sugary fruit.

We ordered a pizza when we were helping our son move into his apartment. The expense of a large pizza surprised us but we assumed that this was because everything is more expensive in a big city.

When the Giordano’s delivery guy came to his apartment door, I almost dropped the box because I was surprised by how heavy it was. Though we were all starving from a day of carrying boxes and assembling Ikea furniture none of us even attempted a second piece. When Glenda and I headed back to Pittsburgh the next day, Jesse still had a several day supply of pizza in his apartment fridge.

The pizzas were a nice gesture and put a smile on his mother’s face. They brought back a lot of great memories. We don’t know what lies ahead of us.

We don’t know how long we have together but we are going to make sure whatever time we have left is like a Giordano’s pizza, rich, savory and packed with layer upon layer of delicious things.               

- Jim Busch

January 4, 2021

Today, I got to do something I haven’t done since before the very early days of the pandemic. I was able to sit down with my sister, Peggy, and talk.

Peggy just lives in North Versailles, just a couple of miles from my home. With my wife’s health problems and Peggy’s own health problems, it was just too chancy to get together during the pandemic.

Technically, Peggy is my half-sister, we had different fathers.  Peggy’s father was our mother’s childhood sweetheart. They married shortly before World War II and Peggy came along on February 2, Groundhog Day in 1941. They were living the pre-war American dream when Peggy’s dad got sick. Diagnosed with leukemia, he lingered a few years before passing away when Peggy was just a toddler.

After Peggy’s father died, she and our mother moved in with his father. This was a practical arrangement, he had lost his wife in childbirth and he had just lost his only child. He lived alone in a big house and had no one to take care of it. It was an ideal arrangement and Peggy’s grandfather loved her.

After a few years, my parents ran into one another at a local dance. They had known one another since they were children, growing up on neighboring farms. Not knowing my mother had been widowed, my future father’s first question was, “Where’s Clare?” He was a bit embarrassed when he learned that her husband had died. They started talking and after a few dates decided to get married.

My parents were concerned how Peggy’s grandfather would take the news. They were sure that they would need to make new living arrangements but Peggy’s Grandpap Ed asked my dad to move in with them after they got married. He liked having a woman in the house and would have have missed having his granddaughter around.

This unlikely living arrangement worked surprisingly well, my dad tried to be a father to Peggy and he and old Ed became good drinking buddies. Dad had lost his father when he was a young boy and I think he looked up to Ed as a sort of surrogate father. My parents didn’t exactly have a storybook romance but they made a good team and filled an empty place in each other’s lives.

In June 1952, I entered the picture. I became my mother’s second child and my father’s only one. I shared a room with Peggy and at 11 years old, she was a big help to my mother with the new baby.

Peggy’s grandfather unofficially adopted me as his grandson. He loved Peggy and doted on her but, having raised his son alone, he had more experience with boys. I loved him and delighted in listening to his stories of growing up on the farm.

I believe these stories are the source of my lifelong interest in history. I helped him do chores around the house and when I was seven I started working with him in the commercial greenhouse he ran along with his brother. He taught me a lot about gardening, nature and living.

I was an annoying brat to my poor sister. My parents were older when I came along, my dad was 35 and my mother was 33 when I was born. They were anything but “helicopter parents,” they were both a bit self-centered and didn’t pay a lot of attention to me. I spent a lot of time alone and I think I was hungry for attention.

To get that attention, I constantly annoyed Peggy. She was a teenage girl busy with her school, friends and boys but I knew how to get her attention. My mother kept her heavy steel ironing board standing upright between a wall and our refrigerator; I would hide behind it waiting like a spider for Peggy to walk into my trap.

When she reached the right spot I would give the ironing board a shove crashing it into my unsuspecting sister. The only problem with my evil Boris and Natasha plot was that being wedged in between the fridge and the wall made escape impossible.

Another one of my other ploys was to wait until my sister’s date was about to arrive and then hide her purse. This drove her absolutely mad. She threatened me with every imaginable torture but I wouldn’t reveal the location of her bag.

Only when she brought in the big guns, our mother, would I relent and return her property. It is only because Peggy is a good person that I survived my childhood without dying in an only slightly suspicious accident.

Perhaps, my bratty behavior was a contributing factor to my sister’s eloping with the son of our neighbor when she was just 18. My parents were not pleased with her choice and this caused a lot of tension between her and them. All of a sudden at the age of seven, I had a room of my own and a hole in my life where my sister had always been.

Peggy would come to visit a couple of times a month and I always looked forward to seeing her. After a while, she brought along her son and I had a nephew who was just eight years younger than me. As I got older and started to drive, I would sometimes pick up Peggy, who never learned to drive, to take her to the store or to run errands.

Though we didn’t have the same father and had not spent much time together we had much in common. Though neither of us looked much like my mother, we looked a lot alike. We both favored our maternal grandfather in both appearance and attitude.

We were both easy going with a good sense of humor. We both liked to make things with our hands and love to read. For all intents and purposes, we were twins born 11 years apart.

Peggy and I also shared a common enemy, our mother. Our mother was not a happy woman, the problems she suffered in her life made her bitter and controlling. Before she lost the love of her life to illness, she almost lost her father to a steel mill accident. He lost a part of his hand to a rolling mill and lost his job throwing the family into poverty. They lost their small farm to foreclosure and barely survived the depression.

After enduring these incidents, our mother had a strong desire to control everything in her life, including her children. This wasn’t too bad when we were young but this caused friction as we grew older and began to find our own way in the world.

She was particularly hard on Peggy. I was never sure why, perhaps it was because she was a female or maybe because she reminded her of the loss of her first husband, Peggy’s father.

My mother could never accept that Peggy would not live her life exactly as she wanted her to. This rift continued to my mother’s dying day and for the last several years of her life she refused to talk to her only daughter.

My own break with my mother began when I turned 16, learned to drive, bought a car and got a job. She didn’t like the idea that I worked nights leaving her alone at home. She didn’t like the idea that I was becoming interested in girls, she felt that she should be the only woman that mattered in my life.

When I started getting serious about Glenda, who became my wife, she tried everything to break us up. She would develop stomach pains when I was supposed to go out. She told me that she had had anxiety attacks when I was out and my dad was at work.

My mother detested my wife who never did anything but tried to build bridges for my sake. She told Glenda that she had “ruined my life” and that she was only after my money; this was absolutely laughable at that point in my life.

Once, my mother even tried to accuse Glenda of trying to poison her. This continued throughout her life. My parents retired to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. After my dad died, leaving my mother alone, she tried to convince me to leave my job and my family to move south to live with her. She thought that this was my duty as her son.

I have always been happy that my wife and my sister get along well. Glenda cared for Peggy when she was diagnosed with lung cancer; taking her to doctor appointments and visiting her in the hospital.

Peggy is the only person left who remembers me as a small child and Glenda liked hearing about my life before she came along. Peggy and my daughter, Rachael, are extremely close. Peggy only had one child, her son Bob, who lives with her and looks after her.

Rachael is the “daughter she never had.” They like to go shopping together or to the casino and have a great time. Peggy taught Rachael her recipes and kitchen secrets and this year was the first time they didn’t make pizzelles and candy together for the holidays because of the pandemic.

Today, I finally got around to taking Peggy’s Christmas presents to her. We visited for about an hour and a half spaced out in her apartment and properly masked. We caught up on each other’s lives and talked about my wife’s health.

We talked about long gone relatives and neighbors, laughing at some of the old stories. One of the things we do whenever we get together, we fact check our memories. We will ask one another to fill in the blanks, names, dates, etc. of fading memories. Peggy is my last link to an almost forgotten part of my life.

Normally, Peggy joins my family for all of our holiday gatherings, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and New Year’s. Obviously, we couldn’t do this because of the quarantine and her presence was sorely missed.

That is one of the real tragedies of this disease, it has robbed us of time with the people we love; time we can never get back. It takes away the chance to add to our storehouse of life memories.     

- Jim Busch

January 3, 2021

The coming of another January means that I have been officially retired for five full years. I spent the last three decades or so of my career working in print advertising progressing from sales person, to sales management to sales and leadership trainer.

I still keep my hand in the business, taking speaking and training engagements at national conferences. I also write a monthly column for a national advertising magazine, which is what I started working on today. I did some research and put together some ideas for this month’s piece.

Last week, I got a call from my editor telling me that there would be a change in where I submitted my column and asking me to write on the theme of “unity” this month. He explained to me that the organization I had been writing for had merged with another national advertising association.

I had been expecting this for a while, the print advertising industry has been contracting like a rubber balloon poked with a pin for decades.

I think my early retirement might have been the best thing for the American economy since Henry Ford invented the production line. I had planned to work a few more years when I was offered a buyout deal that allowed me to retire at the age of 63. In retrospect, this may have saved the entire United States economy.

I say this because I am the “Commercial Angel of Darkness,” “The Destroyer of Industries!” Whatever enterprise I touch soon crumbles into the dust like the Babylonian Empire. “Look upon me O’ captains of industry and be afraid, I am the sword of economic darkness!” At least, this is how it seems to me and this is what my resume seems to prove.

I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in the summer of 1974 with a highly marketable dual bachelor’s degree in medieval literature and European history. As you can imagine, employers were not exactly breaking down the doors to hire me.

I also had the great good fortune to enter the workforce in the midst of a massive recession brought on by the Arab Oil Boycott of 1973. When I couldn’t find a job, my wife and I moved to a family cabin in Forest County where our expenses were lower (largely because it was off the grid with no plumbing or other modern amenities).

I found an entry level factory job at a small local plastic plant. It wasn’t a great job, but it kept food on the table and gas in my truck. It seemed relatively secure, the plant had been there since the early 1950’s making baby bottles for the Evenflo Company.

I was put in charge of a rotary blow molding machine. One of the highlights of my life is that I produced the first run of the “Wa-Wa Raccoon” figural baby bottle. As long as people were having babies and those babies were thirsty, my job seemed quite secure.

Unfortunately, Asian plastic manufacturers also realized that American babies enjoyed a good bottle of milk now and then. They also realized that these tykes didn’t much care where their bottles came from but that their moms were interested in saving a few pennies if they could when buying them.

The American market was flooded with cheap plastic goods and the domestic industry took a nose dive. Though I didn’t recognize the pattern at that moment, I had destroyed my first industry.

After losing my factory job, my wife and I moved back to Mon Valley and moved in with her mom and dad. The economy wasn’t great but I managed to find a job with a local cash register company. Again, it wasn’t a great job but it offered on the job training.

The owner of the company would teach me how to repair mechanical cash registers. With a machine in every store in the country this was a skill that was in high demand. I even imagined starting my own shop once I learned the trade.

At first, things went well and I learned the basics. I knew how to change ink ribbons, replace motors and adjust the machines. I was learning how to do major repairs when the “Curse of Jim” struck again. Mechanical cash registers were big expensive industrial devices; some of them had 8,000 moving parts.

In the late 1970’s, as I was learning to repair the old dinosaur machines, an electronic meteor struck the cash register world, making the old mechanical registers go virtually extinct overnight.

Merchants could buy a new electronic cash register for less that the cost of repairing their old equipment. The new machines were smaller, easier to use and had many features most of the old registers lacked, like automatically calculating the change.

They were also monkey simple to repair; if something went awry, one only had to unplug a circuit board and put a new one in. The skills I had spent several years learning, were instantly as obsolete as making buggy whips.

I finally broke into the white collar world with my next job. I was able to parlay my mechanical skills and my college degree to land a job as an inside sales person and technical advisor for an industrial valve and fitting company in Pittsburgh.

It was a great job, the money was decent and the company offered extensive training. It allowed me to take tours of our clients operations so I was able to view the insides of railroad repair shops, paper mills and power plants.

Most of all, it was a steady job because our biggest customers were the regions steel mills. What could be better than to tie one’s future to Pittsburgh’s leading industry—what could possibly go wrong? I didn’t care how entrenched or how big an industry was, my curse could bring it to its knees.

As soon as my future became entwined with the steel industry, it began to collapse. Orders for our products began to shrink and then plant after plant began to close. My pay was cut and my workload increased as my coworkers were laid off, it was time to move on, like a plague of locusts to destroy another industry.

A friend from the valve and fitting business had landed a sales position with the Reuben H. Donnelley Company, the publisher of the local Bell Telephone yellow pages. He managed to get me an inside sales position and I felt like I had finally found my niche in life.

I loved the training and excelled as an advertising sales person, earning three promotions in my first year. I was making more money than I ever had and won a trip to Acapulco for my wife and I in a sales contest. When I was promoted to management I really felt the curse had been broken.

I even was tasked with helping move the company into the future. I played a key role in bringing a cutting edge new technology into our product mix. This new tech would put all sorts of information, news headlines, weather, and concert information at a consumer’s fingertips 24/7/365.

That technology was, of course, “Audiotext.” All one had to do is dial an 800 number which was available in our phone books, listen to a short radio type commercial and then they would hear the information they wanted. If they wanted, they could repeat this process over and over, they would have the world at their fingertips. What could be simpler?

Some young fellows in California’s Silicon Valley had a very definitive answer to that question. The coming of the personal computer, the internet and eventually the smart phone not only turned “Audiotext” into a giant boondoggle but also pulled the rug out from under the entire directory industry.

For a century, the yellow pages had been the only data base available to the average person. When they needed to find everything from a plumber to a surgeon all they had to do was “let their fingers do the walking.”

The internet made searching for goods and services easier and more current. Information in the yellow pages could be as much as 18 months old. The handwriting was on the wall and it read, “Doomed, doomed, you are doomed! The curse of Jim has stuck again… Wa… ha…ha... ha!”

Through business contacts, I was introduced to a vice president at the Pennysaver. They were interested in my expertise running inside sales departments. I was brought on as their inside sales manager and I was very successful.

Through training and aggressive leadership I was able to double sales in my department from three million to six million dollars in less than three years. I was given other assignments running an outside sales team and working with our sister newspapers.

The secret of my success was the time I spent training my people so I was made training director for the company, a position I kept when the company was acquired by the Tribune-Review.

I could see the creeping fingers of my curse reaching for the heart of my company. I tried to warn corporate leadership that we needed to embrace the internet before eBay, Amazon, Zillow and online job sites ate our lunch.

They were confident that their readers were loyal to our papers and happy with the services we offered. They made some halting moves to updating our online products but remained dedicated to the idea that print was “King” and would be forever. History has proven this to be very short sighted and it has also proven that one ignores “The Curse of Jim” at their peril.

Five years ago, my boss called me into to say that company was “contracting” and that my “services were no longer needed.” The news hit me like a ton of bricks but in the long run it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.

The last five years have allowed me to get engaged in a number of creative projects, to travel and spend more time with my wife. Given that our time together may be much shorter than either of us had imagined, this is the greatest gift I have ever received.

I have few regrets in my life, I am happy with most of the decisions I have made in my life. Looking back, I’m sorry that I didn’t accept a position with La Cosa Nostra or the John Birch Society, not because I espouse their beliefs.

I just think that joining one of these businesses would be an excellent way to put the “Curse of Jim” to good use and bring them to their knees.

- Jim Busch

January 2, 2021

Today, was the last day of our family’s holiday celebrations.  Officially the 12 days of Christmas doesn’t end until January 5th but we decided to cut things a bit shorter.

We decided to do the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the holiday season; we are celebrating the “nine days” of Christmas. We feel bad that our haste is putting ten lords a leaping, eleven pipers piping and twelve drummers drumming out of work but it is time for everyone to get on with their lives.

Since Thanksgiving Day, my wife has been cooking up a storm, buying and wrapping gifts and decorating every inch of our home. If Martha Stewart would have dropped by in the last few weeks she would have said, “I don’t know how you get all this done?”

If our house was a restaurant, the meals Glenda put on the table would have put us in the running for a “Five Star Michelin” rating. Glenda has always endeavored to make the winter holidays memorable for the family, but her cancer diagnosis led her to make this year extra special.

I don’t know what to call today’s festivities, perhaps, “New Year’s Day - The Sequel,” or maybe, “NYD - 2.0!” All Glenda cared about was the Christmas tree was still up and she had most of her family around the table. Technically, we were not gathered around a “table.”

Because of social distancing requirements, this has been the season where we all sat at individual TV trays enjoying our food. In 2020 we looked more like a story in a 1961 Ladies Home Journal than a Norman Rockwell painting of a traditional gathering.

The dispersion of the family and the masks we were wearing make the holidays even more raucous than is normal, even for my clamorous family. We turned the volume up a notch or two to compensate for the extra distance and the muting effect of our face gear.

Glenda has developed numerous work arounds to make this a, “A Very Merry Covid Christmas and a Happy Pandemic New Year.” The unofficial motto of the United State Marine Corps is “improvise, adapt and overcome.”

Today, my wife proved that she is the equal of the cleverest Leatherneck in this area. My grandson was staying with us for the weekend and Glenda invited my daughter and her wife for a nice dinner. Glenda planned a wonderful seafood meal of shrimp cocktail, steamed shrimp, Maryland style crab cakes, broiled lobster tails and salt baked potatoes.

She prepped all the items and was ready for the grand finale of the holiday dining season when disaster struck - the control knob for Glenda’s oven came off in her hand. She called me to look at the problem to see if I could effect a quick repair.

I examined the stove to see what had happened. This was not a simple case of shoving a knob back on a valve stem as in the old stoves. The knob was attached to a complicated electronic control unit which had completely shattered. We would have to call a qualified repairman to replace the entire unit, something that was not going to happen before dinner.    

After taking a few moments to express a few choice words about the stove, Glenda got to work to rethink the dinner. She decided that the shrimp would have to make room for their submarine cousins, the lobsters, in the steamer. She unwrapped the foil encasing the baking potatoes. Normally my wife considers baking potatoes in the microwave a venial if not a mortal culinary sin. Adopting an “any port in a storm,” attitude my wife popped the spuds into the microwave.

In no time at all, Glenda put a feast worthy of any coastal seafood restaurant on our tiny little tables. Soon, both the hot and cold shrimp were reduced to a pile of translucent tales setting in front of happy smiling faces. Sharing the steamer with the shrimp didn’t seem to bother the lobster one little bit. Once removed from their scaly exoskeleton and dipped in butter they were succulent and delicious.

Glenda kept apologizing for serving microwaved potatoes like she was giving us K-rations left over from the Korean War. The potatoes were delicious, creamy and buttery. In fact, the entire meal was wonderful and there was no evidence of the problem she had encountered in its preparation.

I was not surprised, Glenda has always been a resourceful and creative woman. In the early lean days of our marriage she always managed to put an appetizing meal on the table. I have seen her take a quarter pound of cheap ground meat, a can of generic kidney beans and a little bit of ketchup and turn it into a delicious pot of chili.

I remember enjoying those “Hard Times” meals as much as I enjoyed the marvelous seafood dinner she had just set before the family.

My wife and I like to watch the cooking shows on the PBS “Create” channel. Cooking is not only part of my wife’s “job” but it is her hobby and creative outlet. I also think she has a crush on Nick Stellino, the charismatic host of Cooking with Nick Stellino, who not only shares his recipes but also his memories of his Sicilian boyhood.

Glenda’s favorite cooking shows are “America’s Test Kitchen” and its sister program, “Cooks Country.” Glenda would have made a good scientist, she is very precise and is always looking for a better way to do something. These shows take an experimental approach to cooking, trying the same recipe over and over again, making slight adjustments each time to come up with the absolute best way to prepare a particular dish.

Glenda raves about their pie crust recipe which replaces the water with vodka. They found that the alcohol evaporates quickly so that the crust does not become soggy. Glenda followed with rapt attention Cooks Country’s exploration of the different types of meringue settling on “Italian Meringue” as her personal favorite.

All of the cooking shows and cookbooks my wife reads are always talking about the secret of making the perfect, loaf of bread, cake, pastry or meal. They discuss the importance of using quality ingredients and correct technique.

They show how to use digital thermometers and other culinary tools to ensure consistent success. Glenda claims that she learns a lot from these shows but I don’t think she needs to watch them. She has always been a wonderful cook as evidenced by my ever expanding girth.

Long ago, Glenda discovered a secret ingredient which turns even the most mundane and simple dish into a gourmet masterpiece. My wife seasons everything that comes out of her kitchen with a generous serving of her love for her family.     

- Jim Busch

January 1, 2021

Today, is the first day of the New Year. Since I have been in junior high school, I have usually spent this day making plans and compiling lists of what I want to accomplish in the coming months.

I have always found the coming of a new year exciting. It is like a blank canvas. For decades, I have written a quote from the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke on the January 1 page of my journal, “And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been.”

Not this year, 2020 has taught me to fear the New Year. Twelve months ago, I was planning several projects around my house, several articles I wanted to write, and completing the planning for a conference I was scheduled to speak at in April.

Then came Covid-19 and cancer; the pandemic and then my wife’s cancer diagnosis took precedence over my meager plans. Fate shattered everything on my lists like an expert skeet shooter breaking clay birds.

January is named after Janus, the Roman goddess of doorways. She was always depicted as having two faces, one staring outward and one staring inside the home. She was a symbol of how the human mind works, we seem to have difficulty living in the moment, we are always looking back over our lives or looking forward to how we imagine our lives will be.

We seldom stop to think about where we are actually standing, on the threshold between the past and the future. Perhaps, we miss the moment because it is so fleeting, a millisecond or less while our past drags behind us like the train of a queen’s wedding gown. We imagine a long future for ourselves, refusing to even think of a world where we have ceased to exist.

Lately, I find myself looking in the rearview mirror more and more. I seem to have blindfolded the face of Janus that looks ahead to the future. Perhaps it’s my age, I will turn 69 this year; that puts me just a little under my biblical “sell by” date of three score and ten.

My hair is gray, I wear hearing aids in both ears and I am certainly not as spry as I once was; perhaps this is why I keep looking back. I think my nostalgic tendencies have a lot to do with my wife’s cancer.

I don’t want to think about what the next stage of my life will look like. The dictionary defines “nostalgia” as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.” I have been blessed with a good life largely attributable to having a good wife.

I had no clue what qualities made a woman a good choice as a life partner at the tender age of 18 but I lucked out. I hit the jackpot in the “choose the perfect woman” lottery. After 50 years together, I can’t imagine what my life would be like or even who I would be without her.

Today, I got to spend time with someone who lifted me out of my New Year’s doldrums and who ripped the blindfold off of Janus and let me look again into the future. My grandson, Max, came to spend the weekend with my wife and me.

Normally, we get to spend a great deal more time with Max throughout the year. He lives in Mount Lebanon so he isn’t far away. He usually spends a number of weekends with us and we never missed any of his school, church or scout events.

Since Max has been a toddler, a highlight of our year has been taking him on vacation with us. When he was little we took him to Stroudsburg to ride on the Thomas the Tank train there and to Cincinnati to see the Dinosaurs Alive experience at Kings Island amusement park.

As he got older, we took him to the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Michigan. When I had a speaking engagement in San Diego, we took Max with us and he got to visit the San Diego Zoo. A love of history runs in the family so in recent years we have taken him to Gettysburg and the patriotic sites in Philadelphia.

We haven’t spent much time with Max this past year, the pandemic and the quarantines have kept us apart. His parents didn’t want him staying with us because they were concerned about Glenda’s weakened immune system and the fear of giving her Covid. Max has been going to school remotely since the pandemic began but they didn’t want to take the risk.

Of course, a vacation this year was out of the question. We felt bad for Max because he was scheduled to take a school sponsored trip to Italy and Greece this past summer but obviously it was canceled. He was looking forward to the trip as he has a deep interest in ancient history and mythology.

Max convinced his parents to let him stay Friday and Saturday nights with us. They offered to bring him to our house but I volunteered to pick him up. Over the years, I have often picked him up and driven him home after a visit.

These are some of my most cherished grandfatherly moments. We have shared many wonderful conversations on these 45 minutes, an hour if I drive slow enough, trips. Max is an exceptionally bright boy and since he has been five or six years old, he has been delightful to talk to.

He and I share many interests, history, art and science. He somehow got the impression that I am an old wise man, so he often asks me questions which fall in the realm of philosophy. His questions often get me thinking and challenge me to come up with answers that are both satisfying and simple.

Today’s ride home allowed me to indulge my love of the American Civil War. One of Max’s friends had been gifted a family heirloom for Christmas. It was a Civil War pistol and prompted Max to ask me about the weapons used in the war and the tactics used on the battlefield.

We talked about the war for over 30 minutes when he asked me to tell him more about his great grandfather John. Max told me that he bragged to his friends about this man he never knew. He was proud of his service and how he had survived being torpedoed three times and D-day in 1944.

I couldn’t help but think how proud John would have been of Max. John was very close with Max’s dad and extremely proud of his academic achievements. He would have thought the world of his smart and curious great grandson.

When I got Max home to our house, my wife lit up brighter than our Christmas tree. She briefed him on the rules for the weekend, “There are no rules at Glenda’s house, you can eat whatever you want (as long as you don’t get sick), do whatever you want and stay up as late as you want.” His grandmother fixed him a sumptuous meal and he put a major dent in our remaining supply of Christmas cookies and candy.

Max and I watched several episodes of Forged in Fire plus some old episodes of The Twilight Zone. He is as impressed with the quality of the Rod Serling show as I was when I was young. We had great conversations and I haven’t seen his grandmother so happy in a long time. To us, he is the best house guest we could ever have.

My sister-in-law has a shirt that reads, “If I had known how much fun grandkids are, I would’ve had them first!” I wholeheartedly concur with the sentiment if not the practicality of that statement. Max is my future; he will carry a little bit of me into eternity even after I’ve gone.

The outward looking Janus side of me wishes him a long and happy life. It hopes that he knows the joy of having children and grandchildren. I hope he tells them some of my stories like I tell him my grandfather’s tales.

I also hopes he carries the memories of his grandmother into the time we will never know. I hope he remembers how much she loved him and how proud he made her. I hope sometime he tells them, “Here are the rules at Grandpa Max’s house… ”   

- Jim Busch   

December 31, 2020

Today is the last day of 2020, a year that will be remembered by most as the year of pandemic. I will remember it as the year I learned my wife, Glenda, had stage four pancreatic cancer. This is why I started New Year’s Eve like so many other days in 2020, getting up early to drive my wife to get a treatment at Allegheny General Hospital.

At the risk of sounding like a bad joke, we have good news and bad news to think about today. The good news is that we are almost finished with the treatments; two days into the New Year and we will have completed all 28 radiation treatments the doctor prescribed; no more strapping my wife immobile in a molded plastic sarcophagus so the radiologist can precisely target the tumor deep inside her body.

Even better, Glenda will no longer have to take the evil chemotherapy pills that go along with the radiation. This regimen is designed to deliver a “one-two” punch to the cancer wrapped around her pancreas. We have no idea what it is doing to her tumor but we know what it’s been doing to her tummy. For weeks on end, she has been suffering the stomach churning side effects of this poison pill. She’s not going to miss this daily torture.

The bad news, the horrible, terrible, terrifying bad news, is that we won’t know if going through all of this has accomplished anything. She is not scheduled for another scan of her abdomen until sometime in February. The scan is the only way of knowing if her tumor has grown, stayed the same or shrunken a bit.

Personally, I’m hoping for a biblical scale miracle that it has disappeared but this is very unlikely. Anything short of a miracle is really bad news; there is nothing left unchecked on her oncologist’s “to-do list.” We are completely out of options, there are no more treatment protocols for us to try; there are no magic bullets left in the medical six shooter.

If the doctor’s death ray didn’t beat the tumor into submission, we have nothing to do but wait for the grim reaper and try to minimize the pain. Neither of us like giving up but there is nothing left to do.

I have to admire my Glenda’s courage and resilience. I know that I would be incapable of holding myself together knowing that I had a biological time bomb ticking away inside my body.

I am barely able to keep up a good front, knowing that she is so sick. Throughout her illness, she has endeavored to stay engaged with life, doing all the things that she has always done, enjoying her family and keeping our family traditions alive.

Since she was a little girl, she has always loved fireworks. She is practically a “Zambelli Groupie;” sometimes we would drive for miles to see a community festival or other event that featured fireworks. Occasionally, I was offered tickets to sporting events at work, when I mentioned this to Glenda, she would always ask, “Is it fireworks night?” Glenda was willing to endure a long night of baseball if it included a promise of a fireworks show at its end.

The best birthday I ever gave Glenda was VIP tickets for the Pyrotecnico’s Pyro Fest, the international fireworks competition formerly held at Hartwood Acres. She had a smile on her face all day as we watched competitors from around the world show off their expertise; she especially liked the Spanish pyrotechnic company that in addition to aerial displays strung wires horizontally and attached fireworks along the lines to create beautiful colorful displays.

Normally, Pittsburgh’s First Night celebration is a big part of our fireworks viewing cycle. Coming in the dead of winter, it is usually the last display until the summer holidays. The cold winter air and the dark skies makes the explosions crisper and the colors of the bursts seem that much brighter. Unfortunately, First Night was canceled this year; Covid restrictions put an end to all public gatherings. A huge crowd of onlookers oohing and awing at fire bursts in the sky is the very definition of a super spreader event.

I suppose under normal circumstances, my wife may have just accepted things as they are and just waited for the summer fireworks season to come around. This year that is not an option. Glenda decided to stage her own fireworks display. As she got in the car after her after her treatment, she looked at me and said, “Take me to Phantom Fireworks.”

Though Glenda loves fireworks, we have never been much for the homegrown variety. My brother-in-law used to set off fireworks for hours on the Fourth of July and my wife wouldn’t even let our kids go down the street to watch him.

She was afraid of amateur fireworks and every year told our kids all of the stories of fingerless and eyeless children horribly disfigured by Cherry Bombs and M-80’s. The best my kids cajoling and whining could manage were black smoky snakes, bang snaps and some closely supervised sparklers.

Not only did my wife fear parts of our children being blown off, but she was also a bit of a fireworks snob. She was spoiled by the explosive craftsmanship of the Zambelli family and other fireworks professionals. She could recall every display she’d ever seen and could describe them in detail.

Her best memories were sitting on her father’s lap after a long day at the old Allegheny County Fair. Glenda loved seeing the animals and playing the games but to her the fireworks were the best part of the show. They set off the fair fireworks at the race track near the main fair building. This spot formed a natural amphitheater which caused the “booms” of the fireworks to reverberate. Glenda remembers feeling the explosions vibrate against her chest as she sat on her daddy’s lap over 60 years ago.

When we arrived at Phantom Fireworks, we were like visitors in a foreign land. A nice young woman with electric blue hair directed us to a desk where my wife was asked to sign a release and was issued a frequent shopper card.

The tattooed man in a slouching knit hat offered to be our guide using a tone kindergarten teachers reserve for the first day of school. We were surprised by the size of the store and the expense of the items for sale.

My wife was surprised at the sexualized packaging of many of the items on the shelves. Many of the boxes and tubes had cartoonish images of women with big hair and large breasts. I explained that this was target marketing at its most basic, Phantom’s typical customers were young working class men who would view these images as fine art.

We walked around the store reading the packages and watching videos of them in action. We had discovered that many of the items had QR codes that automatically linked us to YouTube videos of the items on display.

We bought a relatively calm and inexpensive selection of items. We decided that the $1499.00 selection with the interesting title of “Grounds for Divorce” was a bit rich for our blood. We bought some sparklers, a couple packages of bottle rockets and some small Roman candles.

My wife felt a little embarrassed spending money for something so foolish as her love of this that went boom. I insisted that she splurge on a $35 Gingerbread Man ground display. We bought some sparklers that spelled out 2021 off the rack at the register and we were on our way.

Our kids and their families came to spend New Year’s Eve with us. We knew that they wouldn’t stay long after dinner. Given my wife’s condition, she has a hard time staying up late. We ate dinner about 4 p.m. and immediately after dark my wife announced that, “It’s time for fireworks.” I delegated the task of lighting them off to my son, Jesse.

We started off with sparklers, the ones bent in the shape of the date were a great disappointment, the best Jesse could manage was a short lived “0… 2.” Next came a barrage of bottle rockets, some whistlers and some that exploded with a pleasing “bang” as they reached their apogee. Jesse stuck the Roman candles in the ground and set them off in sequence. They sent strings of white phosphorus balls into the air with a pop-pop-pop.

The highlight of the evening and the finale of the show was the round paper mache Gingerbread Man. My son set him in the middle of our street, lit the fuse atop of his head and beat a hasty retreat. He sat there for a few seconds and then white flames started shooting out of the top of his head, before these finished, red flames shot out of both ears and his eyes lit up read.

He looked like a Warner Brothers cartoon character that had just eaten a plate of hot peppers. We thought he was done when two fountains of sparks began shooting out of his thighs. These continued for a long time until he finally finished himself off with a resounding “bang!”

After Mr. Gingerbread finished his show, my wife hugged me and said, “It was totally worth it.” I know she was talking about our mini fireworks display but I think her words carried a larger meaning. Our last fifty years together with all its struggles, hardships and even our current medical issues, “were totally worth it!”      

- Jim Busch

It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that the year is ending. It has been a challenging and frustrating year for everyone I know. Just because you flip a piece of paper over and it says January 1, 2021, I know it does not mean that everything is going to miraculously change as much as we want it to.

It will be the same as when Joe Biden is sworn in; we will still have the same problems as we did in 2020. The same political division, racism, and poverty issues will not magically disappear. As much as I had hoped that I would feel a little better after the election, I didn’t feel anything except relief that President Trump will be gone soon.

Today was a rough day. I woke up already feeling stressed about everything I needed to get done today. I have had so many migraines lately and now the stress is triggering vertigo. I have an aunt who also deals with these ailments. I know I can't live like this any longer. Things are gonna change. Somehow.

I called our specific Highmark health insurance today to see if acupuncture will be covered in 2021. Although the representative was very nice and the new year starts in a mere two days, she does not have access to that information yet. “Call back next week,” she said. 

I used to be so much calmer. I ate so much better. I used to do yoga. I was very interested in Buddhism. I didn’t want to let negative people and the world influence and affect me as much as they do. I am a sensitive and empathetic introvert. I have tried to change, but it’s who I am and now I accept it. 

I stopped watching the news years ago and I try to do as much as possible to just have enough to worry and stress me out. Unfortunately, social media is just as bad or worse than watching the news. Sigh.

I should really stop using it or create another account. It is hard to promote your own business without using social media. This is where I should be focusing my time. Learning more, planning more, and occasionally putting myself first.

I know many people are going through the same things on a daily basis. I sometimes spend the entire day on the phone, when I should be taking photographs or writing… or cleaning my house, or any of the many other things that I am behind on.

Today I called about my daughter’s EBT card most students in Pennsylvania and other states received for their children due to Covid-19. We didn’t receive ours. I filled out the government form six times, but I never heard back. I called and left numerous messages… still no reply. 

I contacted the school and asked them to resubmit her information, yet I never received anything. I called another number and I was finally issued another card.

I tried using it a few days later at Giant Eagle, the funds were expunged (After 20 attempts to use the card, a cashier walked over and asked how she could help). It was now past 180 days since the original issue of the original card and the money has ‘expired’. I’m livid after spending hours making phone calls.

I call customer service and they give me another number to call where you can leave a message. I left three messages in the past three weeks. No response. I called again today and she gave me an email address and basically said if this doesn’t work sorry. That’s all we can do?!? So this isn’t my first ridiculous experience with our government. So, I send an email and move on to my next task. 

My CRNP who specializes in hormone therapy supposedly has to dump 50% of her patients unless we get on a payment plan for each of us at $100 a month. I received a letter in the mail stating this and despite calling six times to clarify this or find out if there are any other options, I still haven’t received a callback. I left messages with the receptionist, my doctor’s nurse, and the person who sent the letter. Still no reply. 

I’m becoming dizzier and angrier because I still haven’t crossed anything off of my to-do list I call my PCP regarding my c-pap script. I should have stopped making calls for the day, but I just wanted to get something done, finished and completed. 

Finally, about three weeks ago I told my PCP that it is imperative I get this prescription, I am here in person for you to examine me. She agreed to write it. I had to make three more calls because she didn’t write the script. The best part was the person that called me back not only to inform me that there still wasn’t a script and she would have to call me back... she told me to get the fax number for my supply company because she was busy and could not be on hold waiting for it. 

I almost screamed in her ear. ‘You’re busy’ I say loudly inside my head it’s been an entire year and you guys can’t get your act together? Stay calm, I tell myself. You need this script and you don’t have time to look for a new doctor. Especially with all this nonsense. Since when can all of these ‘professionals’ take their good old time and be too busy to be on the phone to get a fax number. 

I have to do my job. No excuses. On time. Same for my spouse, he’s been working remotely since March. He has the same meetings and deadlines as before. If something doesn’t get done on time, they work until it gets finished. Overnight, if necessary.

I don’t understand how office staff can make their own rules. Yet, people that work in retail and grocery stores get harassed and screamed at when they ask patrons to wear masks. The people who are getting paid the least are getting the most abuse. These are the people who we rely on for our food.

I hate feeling like this. My blood is boiling. My time is valuable. If I play by their rules, why is it ok to constantly inconvenience me? This year is worse than ever, but this has always been a problem for us. If I do a job, I do it right. If I make a mistake, I apologize and fix it or ask someone to help me. 

It appears that most people just don’t care about doing their job and completing tasks. I know there are worse things happening this year, people are dying of Covid and cancer. There are local businesses that have closed forever and many people have lost jobs. Why can’t businesses and medical staff complete tasks? 

I need them to follow up with me. I should not have to call numerous times for anything! We don’t need additional unnecessary stress on top of the worldly giant ball of stress that is already encompassing us. I think we have been continuously on high alert since March. Our psyche is constantly in fight or flight.

I feel like I’m in a blender. A blender filled with my issues including my health. My family is always at home working or doing remote school work. I need some alone time. I need structure. I worry about my daughter’s health issues, the political unrest, and the pandemic. Billing issues that need to be resolved.

My brain is mush. I’m always stressed and angry. This year made me feel as if negative ingredients are kept repeatedly being added to the blender. They are sloshing out over the top at this point. 

I’m in this blender of everything being mixed up and thrown around all day every day. I’m doing more stress eating and I stopped going on nature hikes. It feels like food, my iPad, or my phone have become my best friends. Despite being an introvert, it’s been a year since I have seen two of my close friends. I want a day long hug to feel better.

Did I mention I miss not having the great Ruth Bader Ginsburg with us? 2020 is the absolute worst! 

I am optimistic that the healthcare industry, our education system, and virtually everything we do needs to be evaluated and retooled after this year. I think that a lot of essential workers need raises, especially grocery clerks and restaurant workers. College tuition needs to be lowered.

Our entire country needs massive change, and I am excited about it. It’s a shame that we needed a pandemic to show us what wasn’t working in the first place.

As I finished writing, I received an automatic reply from the state government regarding the EBT card. It reads, We will respond to you within 30 business days. 

- Jennifer McCalla

December 30, 2020

This evening, I watched one of my very favorite films, It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart. It was somewhat of a flop for the studio when it was produced but it has become a holiday classic.

Like its protagonist, George Bailey, the film’s director Frank Capra was far more interested in doing the right thing than in making a profit. Capra’s desire to make a perfect film led to severe cost overruns; it’s not cheap to reproduce an entire New England town in Southern California and then cover it with artificial snow. Capra’s dedication to his art paid off in the long run and the film is beloved by millions of people.

It’s a Wonderful Life appeals to my sentimental nature. The central theme of the movie is that it is not money that makes a man rich, it’s his friends and his family that constitute real wealth. I like the idea that George Bailey, a thoroughly good man, always bests his nemesis, the mean and greedy Mr. Potter without ever compromising his principals. It is a simple story of good versus evil, with good kicking evil’s butt.

Most people think of “It’s a Wonderful Life” as a Jimmy Stewart movie but I think of it as a Frank Capra film. Capra was one of the great directors of the golden age of American films. He was known for sappy sentimental films like Lost Horizon, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Pocketful of Miracles. Capra was not interested in portraying things as they were, but as they should be. In Capra films, the good guys always come out on top,

In Lost Horizon, a world weary man, memorably played by Ronald Coleman, discovers a land of peace and harmony hidden away in the Himalayas. Mr. Smith is the perfect parable for our fractious times. In the film, Jimmy Stewart plays Jefferson Smith, an idealistic young Senator who takes on corrupt political bosses and wins when the people stand up for him.  

In Pocketful of Miracles a crew of hard boiled mobsters band together to help a homeless woman impress her estranged daughter. In Capra’s world, people stick together and stand up for what is right.

As a child, I spent a lot of time with Capra’s heroes and others who shared his world view. I was a shy child with a big birthmark on my face and limited athletic skills. After school, I spent more time watching the Million Dollar Movie on TV rather than on the playground.

I fell in love with the old black and white movies they played in the late afternoon. These were movies with genuine heroes, people who were willing to sacrifice for others and stand up against overwhelming odds.

Jefferson Smith standing on the floor of the Senate talking about American ideals until he collapsed. Henry Fonda as “Young Abe Lincoln” facing down bullies and defending the underdog in court. Gary Cooper who refused to desert the townspeople who deserted him in High Noon.

These old films instilled in me the quaint notion that a man should stand up for what he believes in, regardless of the personal costs. That one should always tell the truth and take responsibility for their actions. That it was heroic to stand up for those who couldn’t protect themselves. I imagined myself growing up to battle the forces of evil like Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood.

Something happened to movie heroes when I reached my late teens and twenties. They stopped being heroic. It may have been the impact of the Vietnam War or the dirty tricks of Watergate, but we stopped thinking of ourselves as noble beings. Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry shot idealism in the head with his .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world.”

Our heroes became antiheroes; they were surly rule breakers who were disillusioned with the world. We went from the Lone Ranger to Mad Max. These protagonists were self-centered and only did good when they stumbled into it. Supposedly, these heroes and heroines had a heart of gold under their crusty exteriors, but we had to search hard to find it.

I am glad I grew up in the black and white world. I am referring to more than the film stock here, but the world of Frank Capra and other optimistic film makers. The world view I got from their work may be antiquated and not particularly practical but it has given me a great deal of satisfaction in my life.

I have never had occasion to don tights, put a feather in my cap and fight evil like Robin Hood but I have had my moments. I have had moments in my life where I had to choose between personal advancement and doing the right thing. I am proud to say that I always tried to choose the noble path, just like my heroes.

I was a sales manager for a major corporation that proudly displayed a poster declaring that they were an “Equal Opportunity Employer” yet had no African American salespeople. The only people of color in our employment were a few low level data entry clerks who never seemed to advance in the company.

I was approached by Daryl, a bright young black man who asked me what he needed to do to get into sales. I asked him to stop by my office after work. We talked for an hour and a half and I was convinced that he had all the qualities needed to be a successful salesperson.

I told him I would see what I could do. In a few weeks, I had an opening on my team, I knew from round about conversations in sales meetings that the company unofficially frowned on hiring black sales people. I decided that this was wrong and decided to hire Daryl.

I knew I could do this because as a current employee of the company he didn’t need to be vetted by our human resources department. Because I was in Pittsburgh and upper management was in Philadelphia, no one would know what I had done until Daryl showed up for training.

Daryl became one of the company’s most successful sales people in our history though he was passed over numerous times for promotion. My end run around the company’s discriminatory policies, ended my career and resulted in my demotion to sales.

I am still glad I did it, I found another job in management and Daryl was able to better care for his family on his much higher salary.

My new boss at my new company was a hard nosed “number cruncher.” He studied our sales results like a cat watching a birds nest, ready to pounce at the first opportunity to do so. Anyone who fell backwards in their sales results was soon fired.

I had one long term employee on my crew whose results were trailing off. I went to the field with him and he seemed to be distracted and disorganized. I coached him and tried to give him some good leads but he continued to fall back.

In mid-December, Gene, my boss said to call him into the office and let him go the next morning. There was little I could say to change his mind, the numbers didn’t lie but I really didn’t want to fire someone right before Christmas.

Like George Bailey trying to talk his customers from cleaning out their accounts in It’s a Wonderful Life, I begged and pleaded. Finally, I promised to fire Tom right after New Year’s but that I wanted to wait because doing it immediately would hurt my team’s morale and results.

This ploy worked but I’m sure my entreaties left my boss feeling that I was too softhearted and unfit for management.

Tom’s wife called me two days before Christmas; she had found him lying in their carport unconscious. She had called 911 and he was taken to the hospital where the doctors found he had a huge malignant brain tumor.

Although he lingered until just before Easter, Tom never left the hospital again. Because he was still an employee, his family received his disability payments and got his company paid insurance when he died.

Our company medical insurance helped defray Tom’s massive medical expenses. I kept in touch with Tom’s wife and at his funeral she thanked me for all that I had done. She told me that Tom had told her I was the best boss he had ever worked for, which was all the reward I needed.

I know a lot of people think that I am overly optimistic and naive; that I have an unrealistic view of the world. They may be right, I have seen a lot of greedy and cruel people advance in this world and I have seen the good and the kind fail miserably.

Still, like Frank Capra, I choose to believe that people are basically good and that the world is not as bad as it seems sometimes. There are a few lines at the end of a novel by Edward Abbey, another believer in David’s ability to beat Goliath, that perfectly expresses my view of the world.

It is an exchange between two characters, Kemosahbee who is about to go off and battle evil despite being outnumbered, and his old friend, Sam. Here’s how it goes:

Sam: “You know the problem with fighting for truth, justice and such don’t you?

Kemosahbee: “what’s that?”

Sam: “You almost always lose!”

Kemosahbee: “Hellfire Sam, what’s that got to do with anything?” and he rode off.

- Jim Busch

December 29, 2020

For many years, I worked in the advertising industry. I retired five years ago but I still keep my hand in a little bit. I continue to speak and teach at national conferences plus I still write a monthly column for a trade magazine.

The January 2021 edition of Free Paper Ink magazine arrived today and after checking my column for typos, I found an article offering a surefire cure for Covid-19.

Who would have imagined that the cure for such a deadly disease would be found in an advertising industry magazine rather than in a medical journal but there it was, a sure cure for Covid 19, if we had only discovered it before over $300,000 Americans had died. What was even more surprising is that the author of this amazing breakthrough treatment was a close friend of mine.

The article was titled, My personal story: Surviving Covid-19 by Elaine Buckley. Elaine, like me, worked for her local Pennysaver in Southern California. We both started out in sales positions and advanced through sales management to become corporate sales trainers.

I have worked with her on national training initiatives for the past 15 years; we are both charter members of the Leadership Institute which is the training arm of the Association of Free Community Papers. Little did I know that skills we acquired during our careers, and that we teach could be real life savers.

Elaine’s employer shut down several years ago and since that time she has been semi-retired and working as a consultant for a publisher in Palm Beach, Florida. Elaine enjoyed this position as it gave her the opportunity to continue working with sales people and advertisers.

An added bonus is that President Trump’s Mar-a Lago Club was in the area so she got to see her political idol pass by on his way there. Elaine is a strident Trump supporter.

Elaine’s political views were one of the reasons that she didn’t worry about working with the public in a hotbed of the coronavirus or the frequent commutes by air from her home in Las Vegas to southern Florida.

She was sure that the pandemic was largely a creation of “mainstream media” and was overblown. Like her fearless leader, she resisted wearing a mask and felt very set upon when the casinos she loves were forced to close.

Elaine has more reason to worry about catching the coronavirus than most people. She practically has a Covid target painted on her back. Elaine is 65 years old, a bit overweight and suffers from juvenile onset diabetes.

These conditions make her a prime target for getting the disease but despite this, she only exercised minimal caution. Many of Elaine’s friends, including me, warned her to be more cautious but she told us that we were just being, “paranoid.”

Early last summer, the inevitable happened, Elaine wasn’t feeling well and went to her doctor. Despite her preexisting conditions, Elaine’s case was a relatively minor one; she was weak, lacked energy and had a severe headache for ten days.

Fortunately, she did not contract any respiratory or coronary symptoms typical to many sufferers of the disease. Elaine was back on the job commuting back and forth across the country.

Some might attribute Elaine’s recovery to luck. Covid-19 is an unpredictable disease, some people contract it and decline rapidly, ending up in the ICU and on a ventilator for weeks or even months.

Many of these people are permanently disabled or even die from the disease. Many people who test positive for the virus, remain asymptomatic, or have minor symptoms like Elaine. There is no rhyme or reason to how the disease will affect any particular individual.

Elaine has no doubts why she had such a relatively easy time getting over Covid-19. It was her sales training and her faith in God. Elaine and I both spent our entire adult lives in a unique subculture, the world of sales people. In sales culture, nothing is more important than maintaining a positive mental attitude (PMA).

We’re taught that PMA is critical to success not only in sales but in every aspect of life. We’re prone to posting motivational quotations around our desks and spouting out positive affirmations like good Catholics praying the Rosary to ward off evil spirits.

Elaine believed that she was in the deepest danger at the beginning of the disease. She was in mortal danger of succumbing to her fears.

She wrote, “I realized that it was going to be overwhelming fear that I had to overcome,” adding that “I said things out loud like ‘I will survive’ and ‘ this is not going to be a death sentence for me, I’m going back to Florida and my company is going to be more successful than ever.”

Several nights later, she dreamed of people dying in the hospital and woke up in a panic. She soon got control of her wits and shouted out, “No! No! No! That’s not going to be me… I am a seller and I am going to sell myself right into recovery!” 

Elaine pictured what she called the “funny little red cauliflower shaped circle of a coronavirus” and told it to “get out of my body!” She is confident that this set her on the road to a full recovery.

After her miraculous recovery, Elaine talked about the “negative naysayers,” who warned her “to be more careful,” “wear a mask,” “wash your hands,” “practice social distancing,” “stay off of airplanes”, etc. Elaine’s response to these concerned friends, “Well, I say this… I do all that and then some.”

Elaine admits, “Are there some people who weren’t so fortunate and died? Yes. Will there be more in the future? Most likely, but I called upon my positive attitude and outlook, and it worked for me!”

In closing her article, Elaine said, “What is the Bottom Line message? It is not how I personally overcame Covid-19, or even that Covid-19 is nothing to be fearful about. What I am trying to convey is that with a strong mind, analyzing some real statistics and a whole lot of positive thinking, you too have a better chance of surviving! Like those of us in sales typically do, we assume the sale and imagine the outcome. I knew I was going to survive and I did!”

So, there you have it! Call Dr. Fauci with the good news! We don’t need any fancy vaccine stored in a super cold sub-zero freezer, all we need is some PMA and a bucket of affirmations. We need to apply the Tinkerbell cure, all we need to do is believe and clap, loudly and the whole Covid thing will magically disappear.

All of those people who died, didn’t succumb to a virus but from having a lousy attitude. They just neglected their affirmations and failed to stay positive. These people didn’t get well because they didn’t understand that their attitude determined their altitude, and apparently their immune response.

Like Elaine, I am still a big believer in maintaining a positive mental attitude, I just don’t think it is a magic trick that will cure all ills. Staying positive does help us to make our way through life. I believe a good attitude keeps our minds from being clouded by negative thoughts when we need to think clearly to address the problem at hand.

What positive thinking can’t do is change the physical world. Wishing the virus away won’t stop its spread through the community. Many of the people who contracted the disease were absolutely certain it would pass them by and that they would be just fine.

This type of magical thinking is dangerous. It is no substitute for taking steps to protect ourselves from contracting the disease. PMA is no substitute for good luck. I like Elaine, she is a lot of fun to be around, but I’m not so sure that I would take her advice on how to stop a global pandemic.        

- Jim Busch

December 28, 2020

The UPS driver brought another Christmas present for me today. It was a denim shirt from one of my favorite stores, Duluth Trading. It was identical to the one that my wife gave me on Christmas day.

Glenda liked the first one so much when it arrived, that she decided to order another. Sometimes, I can be a little dense, but the arrival of this second shirt tipped me off to one of my wife’s secret goals for the holiday.

I have some good qualities but being a snappy dresser isn’t one of them. I think I misled my wife back in 1970 when we started dating. My desire to make a connection with a member of the opposite sex overrode my natural “slobbishness”.

For a few short years, I actually paid attention to my physical appearance. During high school and college I worked at Marraccini’s Super Market in the Rainbow Village Shopping Center. I didn’t make a lot of money but I lived at home so my expenses were minimal.

After I put some cash into my college savings account and put some gas in my old Ford’s tank, I had a few bucks left over to invest in my wardrobe. During my lunch hour, I would walk down the sidewalk past a few stores and into the White Oak location of Kadar’s Men’s Wear.

Since I didn’t know much about putting an outfit together, and I am also colorblind, I relied on the clerks in the store to help me pick out some duds which would appeal to the young ladies.

I did have a sense of personal style. I really wasn’t into the Haight Asbury hippie look. My hair was longer than it is today but it never hung down my back, I just couldn’t see myself wearing beads and sandals.

My style was more Brett Maverick than Jimi Hendrix. I tended to wear more western style clothing, boots and big belt buckles, but that was okay in those “do your own thing” days.

This is how I liked to dress from head to foot. I have always liked hats, so I bought myself a grey felt Riverboat Gambler hat. It was a sort of a cowboy hat with a narrow upturned brim and a stamped leather head band with brass studs.

Below the hat I wore John Lennon style wire rimmed aviator glasses with huge lenses. My taste in shirts was borrowed from Roy Rogers, colorful western shirts with pearl snaps in place of buttons and embroidered with roses or cacti. I was very fit in those days so the tailored fit of these shirts suited both my physique and the image I wanted to project.

Sometimes, I would switch out the western shirts for the shirt off Arlo Guthrie’s back. I like peasant cut shirts with big puffy sleeves. My future wife’s favorite was a dark blue shirt printed with hundreds of tiny multicolored flowers.

On my bottom half, I liked tight fitting jeans and pants. I could never see the point of the bell bottom jeans that were so popular at the time. I actually was not that fond of blue jeans, preferring black jeans or white ones when I was going out. I chose boot cut pants and wore them with a wide leather belt with a large buckle.

My favorite buckle was an oval shaped gold buckle with a bronze longhorn steer head in the center. I also liked corduroys and patterned slacks; not too long ago my wife was reminiscing about my “snake pants” her name for a pair of gold colored brocade slacks.

Boots were preferred footwear. I had a pair of pointy toed cowboy boots with colorful leather cutouts, a pair of black engineer boots with decorative leather straps and metal rings and a pair of “bull dogger” boots with boxy toes and high leather heels.

My unusual attire must have worked because my wife agreed to go out with me. It also helped me win over her dad. He was used to seeing Woodstock nation guys coming to his house to take Glenda out. He wasn’t fond of their long hair, sandals and love beads.

When I showed up for our first date, he was wearing a western shirt, a big belt buckle emblazoned with a horse head and worn cowboy boots. Just to make sure I wasn’t in costume, he asked me, “You don’t like hunting or fishing do you?” When I told him that I did, we became friends for life.

My investment in clothing paid off and in several years I found myself getting married in a sports coat, a pair of cowboy boots, a big silver belt buckle and a black cowboy hat with a gold band. The first years of our life together were lean, I was working in a warehouse and going to school. We then lived in a cabin in the woods and I worked in a machine shop.

By necessity, my clothes grew more utilitarian. I got in the habit of wearing beat up jeans and worn out shirts. Somewhere, I picked up an old wool suit jacket that I wore day in and day out because it was warm and had plenty of pockets. My wife dubbed this my “derelict coat.”

Eventually, I entered the business world and started wearing suits and ties; I landed a job with an industrial supply company that provided all of its new employees with a copy of John T. Molloy’s Dress for Success.

We were required to adhere to the IBM dress code, dark suits, white or blue long sleeve shirts, red ties and highly polished wingtip shoes. This was basically my work attire for the next several decades except for my choice of ties. The advertising world was much more flexible with its dress code so I went crazy with ties.

I bought my ties at the Goodwill so I could afford to buy as many as I wanted. I had well over 500 ties when I retired including many designer ties. I particularly liked Jerry Garcia ties and they always elicited many complements. I had enough Christmas ties to wear a different one each day between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.

When I was off work and then when I retired, I wore practical working clothes. Jeans and chambray shirts work with beat up work shoes. I didn’t think much of what I wore beyond that they were comfortable.

Many times when my wife and I were preparing to go out, she would look at me and say, “you’re not going to wear that…are you?’ I would look at my attire and knowing I had already lost the impending argument would say, “No, I was just practicing getting dressed.” She would then lay out proper attire and I would get dressed.

My wife is always far more concerned about my apparel than I am. She sees what I’m wearing as a reflection on her wifely skills. She believes that when people look at me they think, “That poor guy must have a terrible wife if she lets him go out dressed like that!”

This Christmas, my wife bought me an inordinate amount of clothing. I didn’t think much about it until today when a duplicate shirt arrived from Duluth. She was generous in all her gift giving this year so I didn’t notice that she had essentially replaced my entire wardrobe.

Today, it dawned on me that my wife had an ulterior motive, she didn’t want me looking like a slob after she’s gone. She didn’t want people thinking, “Look at the poor guy, his wife knew she was dying from cancer and didn’t leave him any decent clothes to wear!”

I have never believed that “clothes make the man.” I don’t think much about what I have on. When I am wearing the new clothes I got for this Christmas, I will think about what I am wearing and the wonderful woman who does care about what I’m wearing.

I won’t just be wearing a nice fitting shirt and jeans, I will be dressed in my wife’s undying love.

 - Jim Busch

December 27, 2020

As a lover of the green world, the cold white months of winter seem to drag on endlessly. I can’t wait for the springtime when the snowdrops and crocuses begin to appear in the yard and the skunk cabbage and coltsfoot to show up in the woods. Today, I took steps to help me survive winter’s dearth of greenery.

Today, I planted my first amaryllis of the season.  In my opinion, amaryllis bulbs are truly magical, they go from ground level to 20 inches in just a week or so and once they reach their full height they explode into three to four huge trumpet shaped flowers.

Most people plant amaryllis bulbs in November so that they will bloom for Christmas; the bulbs take six to eight weeks from being planted to flowering. I prefer to plant them before or after Christmas.

My theory is that there are plenty of things to brighten up the house in December including a big green tree. By planting my bulbs in December, I ensure that I will have flowers to bring color in to the house in the dullest time of the year.

When I was a child, I helped my grandfather prepare bulbs for forcing in his greenhouse. We would plant tulips, hyacinths, and lilies in pots and place them in a cool spot. The cooling was necessary to shock the plants into the dormancy necessary for them to bloom.

Amaryllis didn’t require a cool temperature to get them ready to bloom. They are native to Africa and are sensitive to freezing. As desert plants, they need a long dry period to complete their life cycle.

We didn’t buy amaryllis when I was young, they were far too expensive.  Sometimes, my dad would buy a bulb at Jeffrey’s feed store on Market Street in McKeesport. This was a special treat as they cost 12 to 15 dollars each in those days.

This was a lot of money in the 1950’s and 60’s. Fortunately, amaryllis are much cheaper today; an amaryllis kit with a bulb, a plastic pot and a block of compressed potting soil is available at local home centers for about six dollars.

I like to give these kits as gifts for my family and close friends. There are very few gifts that produce such a big bang for a few bucks.  A box of candy is soon eaten and a gift card is quickly cashed in but an amaryllis gives continuous pleasure for weeks.

For some people, like my sister, I plant the bulb before I give it to her. For others, I give them the kit so that they have the pleasure of planting it themselves. This also gives them a special sense of accomplishment when they see it begin to grow.

I give an amaryllis to my wife’s sister and her husband each year. Glenda’s sister calls us almost daily to report on the plant’s progress. Her husband checks the plant with a yardstick to give us the precise accounting of the growth of the plant’s thick green stock.

My best friend always texts us a picture of each bloom as it opens and announces its color, brilliant red, pinkish white or the red and white trumpets of the apple blossom variety. I can think of no other holiday present which prompts comments such as these for months into the New Year.

When I was a child, we disposed of our amaryllis plant once it had finished blooming. In retrospect, I am not sure why my usually hyper frugal dad put such an expensive plant on our compost pile to rot. I suppose he didn’t know that the bulb could be kept alive and coaxed into blooming over and over.

This is what I have been doing for years; I have read that some amaryllis bulbs have bloomed for as many as 75 years. One of my bulbs has shared its lovely red flowers with my family for over a decade.

Once the bulbs are done blooming, I cut the flower stalk and keep the plants hanging on until spring near a window or under a grow light. Though I feed them regularly, they look pretty straggly by the spring.

After the last frost, I place the pots on a shelf in the garden and keep feeding them and by August they are in robust health. In early September, I set the pots inside and let them dry out, once the leaves turn brown I trim them off. The bulbs look lifeless in their pots, but once they are watered and set back in the sun, the whole cycle begins again.

With regular feedings through the growing season the bulbs grow a little bigger each year. Since bulb size is a predictor of flower size, each year, the flowers become more and more impressive.

After following this practice for years, I have a wealth of amaryllis. By planting a new bulb every few days starting after Christmas, colorful flowers grace my home until their hardier cousins begin blooming in my yard.

These big flowers not only brighten my home but also lighten my heart. They are not only a treat for my eyes, but satisfy my inherent need to nurture and grow things. Keeping these bulbs growing keeps my green thumbs from growing too itchy until it’s time to plant spring onions and lettuce.       

If amaryllis have a fault it is the relatively short length of their blooms. From the opening of the first bud, until the last bloom loses its color and shrivels up, seldom lasts two weeks. They come and go like a shooting star in the sky.

It may seem silly to tend a plant for twelve months just to see it bloom for a few days but I find the beauty of the amaryllis more than enough compensation for my efforts.

To me, amaryllis are a good metaphor for life, we work hard for most of our days and we suffer all sorts of indignities and pains. The drudgery of our lives are brightened by moments of joy. It is these brief moments of joy that make our lives not only worth living but makes it a precious treasure.

As I push my fingers into the soil to tamp it down around the baseball sized bulb, I think about the delightful flowers hidden under its papery skin. 

Like the other joys of this life, the brief bloom time of the amaryllis turns the dreary days of winter into a brief moment of beauty.

- Jim Busch

December 26, 2020

I can easily describe my activities today in two words, “I slept.” I arose late this morning as the hands on the clock were moving toward 11 a.m.

I got up and cleaned the snow off the sidewalk, my most ambitious endeavor of the day. I ate some leftovers and watched the CBS This Morning: Saturday news magazine. About 1:30 p.m. I went back to bed and remained there until after seven that evening.

This was an extremely unusual way for me to spend the day. I generally like to keep active. I fill my days with errands and creative projects. I have always prided myself on my time management skills and tried to live by Rudyard Kipling’s admonition,

“Fill each unforgiving minute with sixty second’s worth of distance run.”

I acquired my work ethic from my father and grandfather and when I’m tempted to goof off, I feel like they would be disappointed with me. I could try to justify my sloth by saving that I have been very busy lately so I deserved a “long winter’s nap.” 

This is quite true, in the run up to Christmas I have been steadily on the go. Every day I was running errands for my wife who has to stay home and can’t drive right now.

I made uncounted trips to the grocery store and ran errands to the card shop, candy making supply store and other specialty shops. I went to the embroidery shop in Monroeville Mall and the engraver in North Huntingdon to have gifts personalized.

I even drove a load of gifts to my wife’s sister’s family in Mercer County. My wife wanted to give her family the perfect Christmas and it was my job to help her accomplish this goal.

I have also been busy in my shop/studio. I’ve made lots of items to help my wife decorate our home. My projects included everything from an ugly Christmas sweater for the owl statue on our porch to a set of elf ears and facial features for the pine tree in our front yard.

I designed and crafted some decorations for my sister-in-law’s family and other miscellaneous projects. I designed and built a Scrabble framed picture frame for my daughter and my annual ornament with a picture of my grandson for his parents. Using a scrap of hard rock maple I carved a wooden spatula for my wife and painted a Christmas card for her.

On top of all this holiday activity, I have had to get up much earlier than I like to for weeks. I am a night owl and typically go to bed at one or two and sometimes three in the morning. To compensate for my late bedtime, I like to sleep in until 9:30 or 10 the next morning.

Recently, I have had to stir out of bed at 7 a.m. on Monday through Friday, to take my wife for her radiation treatments. I have tried to go to bed early, but it’s just not that easy to reset one’s internal clock. I have managed to muddle through this new schedule but I haven’t been quite as alert as I usually am lately.

To tell the truth, it was not physically exhaustion that drove me to my bed today. My slumbers were an attempt to hide from the things that troubled my waking hours.

This has been my practice since I was a child. When my mother would chastise or punish me I would climb into my bed, pull the covers over my head and go soundly asleep. I hoped that my dreams would be much sweeter than my waking reality.

As an adult, I seldom retire to my bed to hide from my woes. Only when I am physically ill, do I spend the day in bed. I am blessed with robust health and when I catch a severe cold or the flu, I lie down, go asleep and wake the next day feeling like my old self.

As I have matured, I have found that the best way to deal with other sorts of problems is to stay awake and work on a practical solution for them.

I’m afraid that the problems I am currently facing are beyond my power to remedy them. My wife’s cancer hangs over me like the mythical sword of Damocles. Her doctors are fighting hard to bring her cancer under control.

They have tried chemotherapy but that did far more damage to my wife than to her cancer. They are currently bombarding her tumor with beams of radiation in an attempt to shrink them down. Despite their efforts, my wife’s prognosis is not good. Less than ten percent of patients who have her type of cancer survive it.

Yesterday, was a wonderful day. My family gathered at our home to share a wonderful meal, exchange gifts and enjoy one another’s company. I found myself reluctant to engage in the merriment, I was social and smiled when I received my gifts but my heart wasn’t in the right place.

I couldn’t help thinking that after all these years, this might be the last time I shared the holiday together. I tried to stay in the moment, but like Scrooge’s ghosts, my mind kept taking me back to the delightful Christmas’s past with my wife and to Christmas future when I will likely be alone without my wife to share it with me.

I tried to put up a good front for my family and especially for my wife. I spent most of the day, sitting quietly in my chair taking in the festivities. Not wishing to put my emotions on display, I was uncharacteristically quiet.

I thought I had successfully concealed my melancholy, when my grandson, asked me if I was, “feeling okay?” For a 14 year old boy, Max is quite sensitive, he sensed my sadness and was concerned. I told him that I was “fine,” the universal code word for “none of your business,” but I know he didn’t buy it.

Today, with no Christmas tasks to complete and to distract me from my thoughts, the weight of the world came crashing down on me. It seems like a lot of that weight landed on top of my eyelids.

Like the eight year old Jim, I retreated to my bed and pulled the covers over my head. I closed my eyes and for a good part of the day, my problems evaporated into my dreams.

My lazy day didn’t solve anything, my problems did not magically disappear, but I did feel a bit better when I woke up. My break from reality gave me the strength to keep up my masquerade, to keep things together and do the things that I have to do.

I am not proud of wasting a day in bed, but I think it might have done me some good.

 - Jim Busch

December 25, 2020

I am writing today’s diary entry at the close of a grand Christmas day. I am sitting next to a perfect Christmas tree with a belly full of Christmas cookies pleasantly tired after spending the Christmas Eve and day with the people I love most in the world.

My exhausted wife is sleeping soundly in her recliner, her angelic face softly lit by the glow of our Christmas tree. Despite being weaken by cancer and months of cancer treatments, she prepared an epic Christmas Eve feast of shrimp, ham, prime rib, baked beams, scalloped potatoes and assorted side dishes.

The buffet was lined with dozens of varieties of Christmas cookies and homemade chocolates and other sweets.  She had me buy a case of plastic restaurant take-out containers at Costco because she made enough for both my son and daughter to take plenty of leftovers home.

When the family returned the next day they found the cookies and candy buffet was enhanced by the addition of a selection of filled Hungarian pastry rolls. These loaf sized rolls included walnut, apricot, cherry nut, pineapple nut, and the “Glenda Special,” a cherry-nut-pineapple rolls.

Once the whole family arrived, Glenda began to prepare the “Monkey Bread.” Monkey Bread has been a family tradition since my mother-in-law read about how it was a favorite of President Reagan when he went home to his ranch. This concoction is made by cutting up refrigerated biscuit dough into small pieces, rolling them in a cinnamon sugar mixture and baking them in a cake pan.

This produces a delicious sugary pull apart sort of coffee cake. It is soft and gooey on the inside and crisp and sugary on the outside and absolutely yummy throughout.

During the decimation of the monkey bread, my–sister-in law, Sue, walked into the house bearing a large wrapped box. Sue lives less than a block from us and as her husband has a number of health problems I handle home repair problems for her and have also made her some things she saw on the web.

Sue likes to crochet and when I was at her home she was often working on afghans featuring Disney characters for her family. This year, she made a series of throws featuring all seven dwarves.

I would often tease her that I wanted one with an image of Chuck Norris as Walker Texas Ranger. She handed me the big box and inside I found a large crocheted throw emblazoned with a large image of a bearded Chuck Norris as the redoubtable ranger wearing a Stetson.  I was left speechless and my family had a great laugh.

After Sue headed home, we proceeded to the next family tradition, the emptying of the Christmas stockings. We don’t have a mantle, so our stockings hang on hooks temporarily screwed into a living room door frame. Tradition dictates and demands that the stockings be taken down one at a time, starting with the youngest person and finishing with the oldest.

Everyone watches each person as they examine the contents of their stocking. This process, from my grandson, Max, to me, the oldest person in the room, took about an hour. We then opened our Christmas gifts in rotation until we had a garbage full of torn wrapping paper and smiles on everyone’s faces.

We spent the balance of the afternoon just talking spread out through my living room and kitchen, wearing masks and properly distanced. We enjoyed reminiscing, telling stories to Max about his dad and aunt when they were young and how Christmas was before and the traditions we always had.

We talked about the family members who are no longer with us and shared memories of Christmas’s past. We told my grandson what his dad and aunt got for Christmas before the days of video games and electronics. We also talked about our hopes and plans for the coming year.

We did not talk about my wife’s cancer or the fact that this could be her last time celebrating Christmas with us. None of us wanted to spoil this special day and this perfect Christmas. This was our collective gift to my wife who had worked so hard to give her family this day.

Everyone packed up their gifts and more leftovers and got ready to hit the road as it was starting to get dark. With the temperatures dropping and the snow still falling, we wanted everyone to get safely home before the roads got any worse. After two days of laughter and pleasant commotion, our house was once again quiet. My wife and I tidied up the house a bit and put some of our new things away.

For a week, Glenda had been pushing herself to give her family a memorable holiday and now, her mission accomplished, she collapsed in her chair. I sat in my chair and looked at our Christmas tree.  Our tree is a living archive of our family; its decorations tell the history of our family over the last five decades and more.  We have vintage ornaments that hung on our family’s trees long before my wife and I were even born.

We still have the ornaments we made for our first tree together; these were gourds we dried and painted red and silver and hung from wires to take the place of the ornaments we could not afford. Ornaments our kids made in grade school or with their grandmother hang next to ones I carved and turned on my lathe.

An ornament reading Boldog Karacsony, Merry Christmas in Hungarian, was a gift to my wife’s Hungarian father who passed away 20 years ago. A yellow felt ornament in the shape of a Girl Scout badge still bears the name “Ellie” honoring the time my late mother-in-law was my daughter’s scout leader.

A handcrafted mouse with its head popping out of a Sun-Maid raisin box remembers a beloved first grade teacher who tragically died too young from cancer decades ago.

Remembrances of family vacations hang all over the tree. A glass ball with an image of Epcot Center recalls our family’s first visit to Disney World in 1984. A hand painted ornament painted with the date 2014 came from a trip to “Bronner’s Christmas Land” in Michigan with our grandson and daughter 30 years later. A Model T Ford car is from a stop at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village on that same trip.

For the last 15 years, my wife has joined me on business trips around the country. I am a professional sales trainer so I have been invited to speak at conventions held from coast to coast, usually in popular tourist destinations. These trips were some of the most enjoyable experiences of our life together.

Our tree features souvenirs from San Francisco, Miami, Florida, San Antonio, Texas and Colorado’s Garden of the Gods. An ornament showing Jackson Square reminds us of a trip to New Orleans and a tiny model of the Palm Springs cable car still puts a chill up my spine when I remember how nervous I was riding this scary vehicle to the top of a mountain because my wife wanted to do it.

While most people’s trees are topped with angels or stars, we have a monkey. Like everything else on our tree, the Christmas chimp is wrapped up in happy family memories. Years ago, my two children were arguing over whose turn it was to put the star on the tree. While they were arguing I picked up a monkey puppet and put him in the place of honor atop the tree.

When the family noticed, everyone had a good laugh and over my wife’s objections we decided to leave him there. He has kept that job for at least 40 years now.

The presence of a monkey on top of our tree causes yuletide visitors to our home to become a bit perplexed. We are a family of natural fabulators and storytellers, so the usual response to inquiries about the monkey is something like this, “It is a reference to the myth of the monkey in the manger,” or “you know the story of the chimpanzee who saved Christmas, don’t you?” On rare occasions, after thoroughly confusing the guest, we will tell the monkey’s actual origin story.

Each year, looking at our tree makes me a little melancholy, I miss some of the people memorialized on its branches. I also miss some of the wonderful times when my family was young and a world of opportunities and adventures lay ahead of us.

This year, with my wife so ill, my emotions are much closer to the sad end of the scale than to the joyful one. Looking at the tree, I wonder if I’m being selfish; should a man who has led such a delightful life be so greedy for more?

I can’t help myself, I know Christmas and the family will go on but I can’t imagine how I will be able to face the end of the year holidays without my wife at my side. 

- Jim Busch

December 24, 2020

Christmas is a Jekyll and Hyde holiday. Like many people, Christmas is my favorite time of the year, but also the most stressful.

The last two months of the year have become a marathon of errands, wrapping, mailing, cleaning and most of all, shopping, shopping and more shopping. This year, the added stress of getting everything done without catching a deadly disease during a pandemic makes this holiday season’s stress levels off the chart. 

I am absolutely convinced that heartwarming and uplifting Christmas stories were invented to prevent us from throwing in the towel and spending the entire month of December in deep hibernation. Writers from Charles Dickens to Charles Schultz have mastered the art of wrapping up the whole package with a pretty ribbon of hope.

I am a sucker for the sappy holiday story and for cheesy Christmas movies complete with elves, angels and magic reindeer. Something deep inside me says that if George Bailey could have A Wonderful Life, there is no reason that I can’t have one as well.

 As a survivor of more than 50 grown-up Christmases, you would think that I would know what to expect, but every year I am sucked into the frenzy. When I think of Christmas, I don’t see myself trudging through knee deep slush trying to find my car in a mall parking lot.

In my hope addled mind, I picture myself sitting by a perfect roaring fire, enjoying a perfect hot chocolate garnished with perfect little marshmallows as I admire my perfect Christmas tree. Although my home lacks a fireplace and I am not all that fond of hot chocolate, the least believable part of this story is that I am sitting down in December.

 Why does my Christmas card vision of the holidays have such a strong hold on me? I continue to believe in Christmas miracles… because I want to believe in Christmas miracles. I need to believe in Christmas miracles! I don’t want Mr. Potter to win. I don’t want Tiny Tim to die. I would even like Santa to find homes for all the misfit toys.

This desire is irrational. For 11 months of the year, my rudimentary understanding of aeronautics tells me that there is no way a reindeer can fly, but in December I’m not so sure. This is the same mental lapse that compels me to buy a lottery ticket.

My chance of being struck by a meteor in the shape of Elvis is slightly higher than my chance of hitting the Powerball. Still, every week, I lay those dollars down on the convenience store counter. This is why I was so surprised to see a genuine holiday miracle happen before my eyes.

 It happened on a Sunday afternoon about 15 years ago. A week before Christmas, I stood in a line of impatient people in the front of the Giant Eagle located at the corner of O’Neil and Eden Park Boulevards. I was in sight of my goal, the express checkout, with a line of shoppers stretching halfway through the store behind me.

Ahead of me stood an anxious young woman juggling an armful of baking supplies while awkwardly holding a cell phone between her crooked neck and hunched shoulder. With all the tact of a Marine Drill Sergeant, she was giving her husband very detailed instructions on completing his holiday assignments in the most efficient manner. Christmas is billed as the season of peace on earth and good will to men, but the faces of my fellow shoppers told another story.

I was silently counting the 14 items laid on the “8 items or less” counter by one of the shoppers ahead of me when disaster struck! The lights in the store flashed off and on, then off and on again. Although the power was quickly restored, the store’s entire battery of cash registers stood dark and silent.

Their operators called out pathetically for the store manager to rescue them. A collective moan rose up from the long line of shoppers clutching buggies packed high with holiday provisions. In loud voices, men who would rather be watching football discussed how much better the world would be if they were in charge. The store’s helpless front end staff had a “defenders of the Alamo” look on their tired faces.

Just when I thought a riot was about to break out, I noticed a man in the next lane pull something out of his coat pocket. He was a tall, lean man and well groomed with close-cropped silver hair. He appeared to be in his late 60’s, perhaps early 70’s.

I assumed, like most of the people in line, he was going to use his cell phone to share his great misfortune with the universe. The object turned out to be a small blue cardboard box with worn corners. He opened the box and removed a silver harmonica.

Without a word to anyone, he pressed the diminutive instrument to his lips and began to play. The soft strain of Silent Night drifted over the gridlocked crowd. The man’s playing had an immediate effect on everyone in the store.

Angry conversations stopped mid-sentence and soft smiles began to appear on stressed faces. Without interruption, the impromptu concert continued with O Tannenbaum and concluded with an energetic rendition of Jingle Bells.

As the registers came back online, the supermarket minstrel put away his instrument and, after acknowledging a round of applause with a subtle bow, placed a large ham on the register belt.

The lines continued inching forward at the same snail’s pace as before, but something was different. The people in line no longer looked like they were queuing up for the guillotine. Shoppers smiled and the store employee’s “Thank You’s” and “Happy Holidays” sounded heartfelt.

I may never see a reindeer fly, but I have seen a true holiday miracle. I am not sure whether the man with the harmonica was an angel, but he knew how to magically touch a crowd of people who had lost sight of the meaning of the holidays and bring them back to their senses.

He taught me that we all have the power to perform miracles, that we all have the power to bring joy into the lives of others.

This is the greatest miracle of all.        

- Jim Busch

December 23, 2020

In a 1954 essay, the great American writer E. B. White, said “To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes harder with every year.”

If White thought that 66 years ago, I wonder what he would think today. Looking at the holiday trappings on display in our stores today, a visitor from another planet might think that Christmas was a celebration of pop culture, perhaps the birth of Charlie Brown or way to pay homage to the marketing department of Pixar.

Not long ago, trying to figure out this yuletide conundrum got me in hot water with my wife.  Though my wife and family love me, they are always somewhat anxious about being associated with me in public.

Their caution and reticence to be seen in my presence is not without cause; it seems that I was born with a bit of a glitch in my mental software. I seem to lack all of the filters which connect a normal human’s brain to their mouth.

The net that snags perplexing questions and offhand remarks before they are broadcast to the world is completely lacking in my personal CPU. This problem is aggravated by the fact that my brain functions in very bizarre ways which would benefit from a great deal of filtration. I have a brain which seems to question things which the normal human brain accepts without reservation.

The holidays bring this phenomenon into razor sharp focus. Recently, I accompanied my wife to the local Hallmark Store. Our visit there provides a perfect example of how I am out of sync with the world of normal people. Before I can relate this sad tale, I must explain what the Hallmark store means to my wife.

If the Hallmark Store were a casino, my wife would be considered a “high roller.” She is a charter member of Hallmark’s Gold Crown club entitling her to special discounts and invitations to special member only events.

I am sure they meet in the dark of the moon to ritually chant the verses featured on the best-selling cards and to practice the secret Gold Crown handshake. If more Americans shared my wife’s love of sending Hallmark cards to her family, the United States Postal Service would not be in the dire financial straits they find themselves in today.

My wife is generally quite frugal, she is the queen of couponing and buys most of her clothing at resale shops, but she checks her parsimony at Hallmark’s door when she goes card shopping. She has bought into their advertising message “when you care enough to send the very best.”

She pictures her family members acting out their own little Hallmark commercials flipping the card over and smiling and sighing thoughtfully when they see the gold crown logo. For my wife, sending an American Greetings or, GOD FORBID, a dollar store card is tantamount to telling a loved one that they have been written out of the will.

My wife has elevated choosing a greeting card to a fine art. She is fanatically dedicated to finding the perfect card for its designated recipient. Surgeons looking for suitable organs for transplantation are somewhat less rigorous in their selection process.

First, she must decide between humorous or sentimental, then contemporary or traditional design. Once this has narrowed the selection to 17 X 1036, she can begin to read the verses on the front and interiors of the cards. She weighs each word like Shakespeare writing a sonnet.

During the course of a year she reads more words in the Hallmark store than a graduate student working on his doctoral dissertation on the Russian novel. To my wife, the Hallmark store is a sacred place. A place of decorum where one speaks in the hushed tones one would use when visiting the Sistine Chapel.

Even I am not foolish enough to challenge her card buying obsession. I am not sure that even Ebenezer Scrooge could challenge her natural inclination to share her love with her family, especially if he was one of the primary recipients of this impulse.

I have learned to quash my desire to postulate on the economics of the Hallmark card. As a writer and aspiring artist, I should be impressed with their leveraging of artistic creativity to give their products added value.

Hallmark’s marketing alchemists magically transform a few cents worth of paper and a few drops of printer’s ink into a product that sells for outrageous prices. Throw in a tiny microchip music box and the price goes through the roof.

Unlike most products, the price of a Hallmark Card is imprinted directly on their product. The buyer cannot remove the price without defacing the back of the card. Hallmark understands that the price is part of their appeal. “This person must really love me because they spent eight bucks for 14.5 cents worth of paper and ink.”

I am sure that Hallmark will never sell a musical card featuring the Beatle’s song Can’t buy me love.

Once Hallmark has a person hooked, they provide their customers with more and more ways to feed their addictions. Once, creating a holiday required a miracle directly from on high. The oil burned for eight days, a virgin birth, etc. At the very least, a new holiday required an act of congress, which in this day of political infighting may be the greatest miracle of all.

Nowadays, new holidays are decreed by the high exalted elders of Hallmark. “In those days, it came to pass that the elders decreed go thee forth and buy cards for grandparent’s day, for bosses day and for fourth cousins twice removed day. The people saw that it was good and verily Hallmark’s cash registers rang in jubilation throughout the land.”    

Because of my filter malfunction and my cynical nature, on those rare occasions when I accompany my wife to the temple of the gold crown, she banishes me from the card aisle to wander the nether regions of the store.

The modern Hallmark store is much more than a card shop. They are purveyors of all things kitschy and sentimental. The have stuffed animals, plaques with cute sayings and figurines. Hallmark is the La Cosa Nostra of the collectibles racket.

They tie into every conceivable interest and memory known to man. They create a figurine of a cartoon character, an antique toy fire truck or Elvis and then run off a limited quantity of them, say four or five billion, box them up with a Certificate of Authenticity and ala kazaam, presto chango, nine cents of plastic becomes a “Must have collectible heirloom and an investment in the future.”

Inserting a small eye screw in the top of one of these figurines and declaring it an official Hallmark Christmas Tree Ornament” enhances the value of this bit of molded polymer even further.

On this occasion, as my wife shopped for her weekly supply of cards, I wandered to the ornament display along the far wall of the Hallmark store. I was examining an ornament representing a scene from an episode of the original Star Trek television show from the 1960’s. I was a child of the 60’s and Star Trek was one of my favorite shows.

I am a minor “Trekkie,” I have seen all the series and the movies, but I don’t have a set of pointy ears in my sock drawer or a size 4X star fleet uniform in my closet. I knew enough to recognize the episode portrayed by the ornament.

 It was one of my favorites, City on the Edge of Forever, about Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy and Spock go back in time to 1930’s New York City. It was well written and thought provoking but had nothing to do with Christmas.

How did Spock end up hanging on a Christmas tree? My mind was trying to put all the pieces together when a very nice lady with silver hair and wearing a blue Hallmark smock with a magnetic badge reading “Betty” approached me.

Responding to the perplexed look on my face, she asked a fateful question, “Can I help you?”

Deep in thought and caught off guard by Betty’s question, I responded, “Why yes, can you please tell me what an alien character featured on a television series set in the 23rd century that aired over 50 years ago has to do with decorating conifers for a holiday celebrating the birth of the Christian Savior?”

My perplexed look migrated to Betty’s kind face. She seemed to be frozen in place. She was as motionless as the figurines and ornaments surrounding us. 

After a long pause she managed a half smile and in a halting voice said, “Let me get the manager.” She slowly backed away from me and headed toward the store’s backroom.

In a few minutes, a young man in a Hallmark polo shirt approached and introduced himself as Brad, the manager. Betty peeked around a card rack to see how Brad would handle the situation and possibly to call for back up.

Brad asked how he could help me and I repeated my question causing him to freeze like Betty had a few moments before. I assume that Hallmark employees are taught this technique much like mother rabbits teach their babies to freeze and blend in with their surroundings when danger is near.

Finally he opened his mouth and said “I’m not sure what you mean?”

I tried to explain myself, “I thought that the thing we celebrate on December 25th was the birth of the Christian Savior. A long time ago Martin Luther cut down a pine tree in Germany and brought it inside to celebrate the holiday.

His idea was that since the pine tree stays green all year long that it was a good symbol for the Savior. People started decorating these trees, angels for the angels, stars for the star the wise men followed and candles for the light of the world and so forth. I get all that. What I’m having trouble understanding is where Star Trek comes in?

Brad seemed to be stuck in “Frightened bunny mode.” I was about to suggest calling Hallmark Headquarters in Kansas City when my wife arrived to rescue Brad.

She assured him that is was “all her fault” and that she should have “known better” and promising that “it won’t happen again.” I received a look that made Mr. Spock’s phaser look like a pop gun. Her eyes were set several notches above stun.

My only defense was “I thought it was a fair question.” Needless to say, it was a very quiet ride home and my conversation with Brad was the last Hallmark moment I can expect to have in a long, long time.  

 - Jim Busch

December 22, 2020

I have done a lot of things in my life, I have worked in a machine shop, worked in retail, been an advertising executive and a journalist. One of my favorite positions was my time as “The Mayor of Plasticville.”

I thought about this today when my wife and I put up our tree and strung our lights on it. It looks absolutely magical as all Christmas trees do, but in my book it is missing something. We no longer have a train running around the base of our tree.

I have always loved trains. My first train was a beat up American Flyer that had been well loved by some relative in the 1930’s. It was scratched and rusty but it ran like a champ. I loved it, but I lusted for more.

I would often drag my dad to Oddo’s Hobby Shop in downtown McKeesport to show him the sparkling new Lionel train sets on display. I was especially fond of the U.S. Army set that included a car that fired missiles, a searchlight car and an exploding boxcar. Mr. Oddo gave me a Lionel catalog and I almost wore the ink of the pages looking at the train sets and all of the incredible accessories they offered.

My dad was a frugal man, he hated paying full price for anything. When he wanted something, he’d either “bum it,” which involved convincing someone to give it to him.

He was a master at this, sometimes he actually got some people to pay him for hauling stuff away in a truck he bummed off Mr. Wunderly, an old friend. I had a massive 12-foot tall sliding board from the 1940’s that my dad convinced one of his landscaping customers to pay him to haul away.

When my dad wasn’t able to bum something, he would either swap for it, often trading something he got for free, or found it secondhand. Before eBay and Amazon, my dad looked for what he wanted at “eBar.” He would talk to his drinking buddies at the American Legion hall or Hendry’s bar.

He was careful not to sound too anxious less he drive up the price. It was amazingly effective, this was why he could usually find what he wanted in short order. My dad was a working guy, but I always thought that given his skill at networking, he could have been a great businessman.

This is how my dad found my train set. He talked to Mr. Donaldson who said his son, Cliff, still had his train set. Cliff was 18 and needed gas for his car, so my dad convinced him to not only sell his train set and all of his accessories for twenty bucks; he even threw in his train platform in the deal. 

I went with my dad to pick it up and I was thrilled. It didn’t fire rubber tipped missiles, but it was a real Lionel and came with lots of track and a big powerful transformer. At home I spread all of my new train stuff on my mother’s dining room table.

I was the proud owner of a Santa Fe diesel passenger train and a freight train pulled by a steam engine. Along with the trains, there was a lot of track including some cross over pieces and trestles.

My only disappointment was the setup didn’t come with any switches that would let me set up sidings where I could park my extra cars. There were enough buildings to assemble a respectable town for my train to serve.

The train platform was huge, four feet high, four feet wide and twelve feet long. Its size meant that I could only put it up over Christmas. My mother only allowed it in the house if we also put our Christmas tree on the platform as well. During the rest of the year, my platform hung upside down in my dad’s garage with its legs removed.

A week or so after Thanksgiving, my dad lowered it down and he and my grandfather dusted it off and carried it into the house. My mother’s buffet was moved into the hallway and the platform was assembled in the dining room.

Every day after school and on weekends, I worked setting up my train layout. I stapled down the green grass paper to the platform’s plywood top then I started assembling the track, sliding the three pins on one end into the matching hole on the other end of the next piece.

I experimented with various track layouts until I found one I liked and then I hooked up the transformer and watched the trains go round and round.

Once I had the trains running properly, it was time to build the town. The buildings were kept dissembled in individual boxes. The front of the boxes had a lithographed picture of the building and the brand name, Plasticville. The buildings were easily assembled and quite detailed.

In an hour or so, I had a complete town with a residential district, a farm with a barn, a factory, stores, a church, a movie theater and two train stations, one for freight and the other for passengers. Once the buildings were in place, I cut streets out of black construction paper to connect the town together. 

I loved being master of this little community, I think it was the start of my writing career as I imagined elaborate stories of what was going on in the town. The town was peopled with tiny O27” scale Plasticville people. I gave each of them a name and knew their backstory. I knew where they worked and where they lived in my town.

Over the years, I added to my town, I added a crane to the freight station and a bowling alley. As my skills grew, I added some more technical improvements. I taught myself to solder from an article in Popular Mechanics and fastened wires on to tiny light bulbs, I drilled holes in the platform and shoved the bulb up through them to light my buildings.

In the last years of my setup, I added a magical touch. A neighbor threw out an automatic washer and I took out the control switch that controlled the machine’s cycles, wash, rinse spin etc. I adapted this to change the lights in sequence.

I was so proud to show people that my set up could turn the lights on and off in the morning and evening just like the one at the Buhl Planetarium.

Thinking back, I realize that playing with the trains was not nearly as much fun as building my setup. It was completely my project. Once my dad set up the platform, I did everything else. As the psychologists like to say, I was in control and could exercise my creativity to create an entire town populated with happy citizens.

Eventually, I grew out of playing with trains. I moved on to cars and girls. When my dad told me about a guy he knew whose kid wanted a train that his parents couldn’t afford, I sold my setup to them for the same $20 we had paid for it.

I came to regret this later when I learned my trains were valuable collectibles and even more when my grandson turned out to be a train fanatic. All in all, I’m glad that it went to a kid that loved them as much as I did.

Though I don’t have the trains anymore, I’ll never forget the fun I had as the mayor of Plasticville.  

- Jim Busch

December 21, 2020

I was walking through the living room late this afternoon when I saw a familiar site on the news. It was the old Daily News building on Lysle Boulevard in McKeesport.

The “Breaking News“ told the story of a McKeesport Police  officer who was assaulted by a prisoner he was taking into the police station next door. The officer was shot several times but fortunately did not die from his wounds. He was even able to return fire as his assailant fled the scene.

According to the GPS function on my telephone, the Police Station is exactly 2.4 miles from my home; a nine minute drive. Despite my physical proximity to the scene of today’s crime, I feel like it is a world away from my quiet life.

I feel for both the injured officer and for the young man who attacked him. Neither of them woke up this morning anticipating this terrible confrontation, the trajectory of their lives brought them together in this very violent juncture.

I first learned about trajectory when I was just nine years old and received a single shot Remington Model 514 twenty-two caliber rifle for my birthday. It was the best birthday present I had ever received in my short life. It was a gift that came with a whole lot of responsibility.

My dad sat me down and told me in a very emphatic voice, “This rifle is NOT a toy! It can kill people!” He promised to take me to the White Oak Rod and Gun Club to show me how to use my new gun safely.

We went to the gun club later that week. We took my dad’s old 22, a heavy old target rifle from the 1920’s handed down from his late brother. My rifle was puny next to my dad’s 16 shot repeater. He told my how his brother Luke used the rifle to feed the family with squirrels, rabbits and groundhogs during the depression.

My dad taught me about the “Golden Rule” of handling any gun; you always need to be aware of where you are pointing the muzzle, what he called the “business end.” He then shared another rule that, “I was never to forget;” he told me that there is “no such thing as an unloaded gun.”

He told me I was treat every gun like it was cocked and loaded. I was never to get in front of the barrel or point it anywhere it could do harm if it went off. I clearly remember him saying, “There’s a hell of a lot of people who were shot with an unloaded gun.” 

We then moved on to a practical lesson on the power he was putting in my young hands. From the trunk of the car, he took out an old fashioned blue Maxwell House coffee can. Its metal lid was sealed with masking tape. My dad walked it about 25-feet down range and set it on a short piece of railroad tie. He then loaded a shiny brass 22 shell in my rifle and took aim.

The short stock of the rifle was designed for young boys, forcing my dad into an awkward position but he lined up the sights and hit the can with his first shot. To my amazement, the back of the can exploded leaving a gaping hole much larger than the small lead bullet less than a quarter inch in diameter.

To drive his lesson on the lethality of my new rifle, he had filled the can to the brim with water so that hydraulic pressure would amplify the bullet’s force. Showing me the jagged hole, he said, “This is why you have to be careful where you point a gun.”

Dad then asked me how far I thought one of my bullets would travel. I wasn’t sure, so I pointed to the target stands which was a 150 yards away. The back of the range was dug into the hillside to form a natural backstop and the targets just in front of the steep dirt wall were there for hunters sighting in their high powered rifles.

“Will my gun shoot that far?” I asked. My dad laughed and said, “Your gun will shoot much farther than that, even a 22 will travel over two miles. This is why you are not only shooting at the target, but you’re also shooting at what’s behind it.”

Only after my dad was sure he had permanently embossed the safety rules on my brain, did he teach me how to hold the rifle steady and line up the front and back sights; to hit where I aimed. I became an avid shooter and learned everything I could about the science of ballistics.

I learned that a bullet never travels in a perfectly straight line it curves as gravity pulls it toward the ground. I was fascinated to learn that a bullet simply dropped next to the muzzle and a bullet fired from the gun at the same moment, both will strike the ground at the same time but hundreds of yard apart.

I often think about the trajectory of a bullet as a metaphor for human life. We are all fired into the world in pretty much the same way. The difference in our trajectory is dependent on a number of factors, it just takes a little touch of the trigger to get us started.

Some of us are carefully aimed at a target by our parents, others go wild, quick hip shots with no thought about where it will land. Some of us have more force, more gunpowder pushing us straight toward our target.

We have the advantages of growing up in more affluent homes and better education. The trajectory of a bullet and a life is influenced by the forces they encounter on their way. The sights on a rifle can be adjusted for “windage,” a high wind can blow a bullet off course.

Hunters know that shooting in brush is difficult because hitting a branch or even a twig can change where their bullet lands. The things we experience in our lives also change where we end up in life.

Today, I thought about how the trajectories of the shooter and the officer took them to that alley behind the police station and about how their histories, their birth, their parents and where they grew up led them toward this confrontation.

I thought about their decisions and how they unwittingly led to an exchange of gunfire. These go much farther back in time than the morning of the shooting when Koby Francis reacted to the PFA requested by the mother of his child.

Why did Officer Athans choose a career in law enforcement? How did Mr. Francis get involved with the mother of his child and how did they fall apart? A million and one things impacted their lives and led them to this one critical point.

There is a lesson here for all of us. We cannot see with absolute certainty where the trajectory of our lives is taking us. We never know how one chance encounter will change our path and point us toward our destiny.

For me, it was an encounter with a young blonde girl in a hallway when we were college freshmen that completely altered the direction of my life. I did not know it then, it seemed like a normal day but it led to my marriage, my children and everything good in my life.

The lesson here is simple, “Pay attention,” you never know when the trajectory of our lives are about to take an unexpected change of direction.”    

  - Jim Busch

December 20, 2020

Today, our niece, Stacey, FaceTimed my wife with tears in her eyes. She held up a piece of paper to the screen, but Glenda couldn’t read the lettering in pencil on the yellow tablet paper.

Stacey choked back a sob and read what turned out to be her seven year old daughter’s letter to Santa. This is what she wrote in her second grade print, “Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is for my Aunt Glenda to get better, Love, Seneca.”

Hearing this, Glenda had a few tears of her own flowing down her cheeks. It takes a lot to get her to cry, even hearing that she had inoperable pancreatic cancer didn’t turn on the waterworks, but this dear little girl’s compassion and concern affected her deeply. This is just another wrinkle in a very weird Christmas at the end of a very weird year for us.

While the rest of the world has been consumed by the coronavirus pandemic and politics, in our house neither of these failed to reach the top spot of our list of things to worry about.

Since last spring when my wife was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, this has been our main concern. We see Covid-19 as a secondary issue. We think about the pandemic in relationship to Glenda’s cancer. The quarantine was a problem because it prevented me from accompanying my wife to see her doctor and being involved in discussions of her treatment.

The pandemic has forced my wife to remain housebound, the disease, the chemotherapy and the radiation haves severely compromised her immune system. I have been very strict about wearing my mask and maintaining social distancing.

I am, of course, afraid of contracting the disease, I am 68 years old, overweight and have some health problems; I suck in one tiny microbe and I’m on my way to the ICU. In spite of the risk to my own health, my prime concern, the thing that dominates my thinking, is, “I don’t want to bring this bug home to Glenda.”

The end of the year holidays, Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day, naturally inspired a lot of introspection and counting of blessings. This year when I count my blessings, the fact that I have my wife still with me to celebrate the holidays is at the very top of the list.

This was not guaranteed to us this year; back in the spring when she received her diagnosis, the doctor told Glenda she might have as little as six months to live. With this in mind, my wife orchestrated a “Christmas in July” celebration for the family complete with lots of good food and presents, everything but the tree which is hard to find in the middle of summer.

Even though we celebrated Christmas just six months ago, that proximity hasn’t diminished the sparkle of the genuine article one little bit. If anything, this Christmas is more Christmassy than some of our more recent holidays. As we have grown older and our kids have moved out, we cut back a bit on the festivities. We simplified our meals and our decorating. We even cut back a bit on the gift giving.

This year we are celebrating Cancer Christmas. After celebrating 50 Christmases together, we both know that there is a very good chance that this may be our last one. Everybody in the family has decided to make this the best Christmas ever.

We are living out our own personal Hallmark Movie. Our decorations in the yard are not quite at the Clark Griswold level but we are getting close. For the first time we’ve actually gone with a theme, our entire yard is done up in blue lights, my wife’s favorites.

We had discussed getting a small tree this year, but as I type this I am sitting next to a tree that has swallowed up just over 25 percent of our tiny living room and is brushing our ceiling tiles. It is the perfect size tree for two old empty nesters.

To tell the truth, we need a massive tree to hold five decades of memories. We aren’t the type of people who decorate our tree to look like the ones in Martha Stewart magazine with color coordinated garlands and ornaments tastefully arranged.

We are a family of sentimental fools. We decorate our tree with memories and stories. Our mishmash of ornaments are souvenirs from family vacations and gifts from long lost friends and relatives.

Many of them are handcrafted, the gourds my wife and I painted for our first tree, our kids school projects and ornaments my wife’s deceased parents loved. We are going to decorate the tree tomorrow, this is always an emotional activity; this year it is going to be intense.

Though no one would say anything if my wife served cold cuts and Oreos for Christmas dinner this year, my wife is going all out this year. Quite frankly, I don’t know how she does it. The combination of the cancer wrapped around her pancreas and the treatments trying to hold it at bay, has sapped her energy and left her weak. She is in constant pain yet, she carries on.

In the last few weeks, she has been packing our chest freezer with everyone’s favorite Christmas cookies. She is making my son’s Russian Tea cakes, plain with no nuts or cherries, my daughter’s sugar cookies and my pecan pie bars.

The list keeps growing, today her niece asked if she was going to make date and nut bars; Glenda added Medjool dates to the shopping list. Today, she stood over a double boiler on the stove melting chocolate. She made several kinds of chocolate covered nuts, pretzels, graham crackers, raisins and a couple of kinds of bark.

This would be a hard day for a young healthy woman but her desire to give her family the perfect Christmas keeps her stirring and melting chocolate when she should be in bed dreaming of sugar plums instead of making them.

Though our children offered to make the holiday meal, Glenda wouldn’t hear of it. I am a confirmed carnivore and there is nothing I enjoy more than a beef roast. Today, Glenda told me I need to go to Lamperts to pick up a prime rib for Christmas.

This is like telling an eight year old that they’re going to Disney World… to live there! This is my favorite meal and I especially like the way my wife prepares it. I have eaten prime rib in some very fine restaurants and enjoyed it, but none of them come close to Glenda’s.

We seldom make it, buying a prime rib is a big purchase requiring an investment that could cover the cost of a major appliance. It is also a big piece of meat, I’m looking forward to a week of yummy cow based leftovers. I know why this special dish is on the menu this year, and it breaks my heart.

There is a picture on the book shelf in our living room. It was a gift from our daughter several Christmases ago. She found an old slide in one of our boxes that showed Glenda and me, holding hands in front of our Christmas tree. I have lots of brown hair and a much slimmer waist, Glenda has the long blonde hair down to her waist that drew me to her like a moth to a flame.

We are wearing matching embroidered chambray shirts like the good wannabe hippies we were back then. Our daughter had the words, “Remember When” printed on the matting of the picture. Glenda and I do remember that time and all the times since.

I always tried to count my blessings and appreciate what life has given me. The bad news we’ve received this year has made me savor every moment and every act of kindness.

I don’t wish what we are going through on anyone, but I do wish everyone would learn to appreciate their holiday and their loved ones like I’m appreciating mine this year.

- Jim Busch

December 19, 2020

My mother-in-law, Eleanor Bereczky, was one of the most impressive women I have ever known. She was the matriarch of her clan in every sense of the word.

She was an inexhaustible source of wisdom, of support and of recipes for her three daughters, and her grandchildren. The fact that she is still overseeing the family’s Christmas preparations six years after her death is proof of what an impressive person Ellie was.

I lived in the same house with Eleanor for over 39 years. Based on the image of mother-in-laws in our popular culture, this would be a horrible way to live. This was not my experience. Ellie was nothing like the “battle-axes” described in sitcoms from the Honeymooners to today, she was a kind, compassionate and intelligent woman with a delightful sense of humor.

We got along splendidly, only arguing occasionally when she thought I was being too hard on my children. Eleanor and I shared many interests, particularly books. I was her “library scout,” bringing home books I thought she would enjoy.

We spent many hours discussing what we were reading and our opinions of the content. Though she only had a high school business diploma, I believe she could have held her own in any discussion with university professors due to her wide ranging of reading.

The family was everything to Ellie. She grew up near the family homestead around her aunts, uncles and cousins. She took an active role in her daughter’s families. She and her husband John shared their home with my wife and I and our kids.

My wife’s sister Sue lives just down the street with her family and her kids were always at our house. Ellie’s daughter, Sally, lived with her family near Sharon in Mercer County about a 100 miles away. John and Eleanor visited Sally’s family often when her three children were growing up.

John and Eleanor took their daughters and their kids on vacation almost every year when they were young. In the summers when the grandkids were out of school, Eleanor would keep them for a month or more at the family cabin in Forest County. To this day, when the cousins get together they share fond memories of playing in the creek or taking their baths outside in an old wheelbarrow.

Everyone in the family has delicious memories of the meals that Ellie prepared for the family. She was an amazing cook and could prepare a meal worthy of a five star restaurant on a Coleman stove placed on the tailgate of John’s pickup.

She had a storehouse of favorite recipes locked inside her head which she could whip up on a moment’s notice without consulting a recipe. Many of these she had learned from her mother in the kitchen that became Eleanor’s and is now my wife’s culinary domain. Ellie was an incredible cook and nothing gave her more pleasure in life than making a big meal for her family.

Eleanor was an endlessly curious woman so she didn’t limit herself to the old tried and true family favorites, she was always experimenting with new dishes. She loved Julia Child and the other PBS cooking shows and always had a new cookbook checked out of the library.

She was always trying new recipes and combinations from the programs and books. She was adventurous and sometimes things didn’t go over too well; we still laugh about her experimentation with chocolate dipped dill pickles. It was not one of her best moments.

As Ellie grew older and less mobile, she would hold court from the easy chair in her bedroom staying in touch with the family over the telephone. She became the “Kitchen 411” number for her granddaughters as they grew older and moved into homes of their own.

They would call “Grandma Ellie” for advice on what to make and how to make it. Many of the calls were requests on how to make family favorites that they remembered from their childhood.

As Ellie’s health problems mounted she began to worry about how the family would manage after she was gone. I think she had nightmares about her descendants eating frozen pizzas and boxed Kraft macaroni and cheese for dinner with Twinkies for dessert. She called me into her room to solicit my help on creating a cookbook as a Christmas present for the family.

I was chosen to be her helper on this project for two reasons, one, I was handy, living in the same house and, two, I worked in the publishing industry. I told her I had never created a book before but she told me, “You’re smart, you’ll figure it out,” and that’s exactly what we did.

The first step was to collect the recipes to be included. Ellie started a list on a big yellow legal pad. I got her a divided portfolio with the sections labeled with different classes of food, meats, breads, side dishes, desserts etc. She put cards from her recipe box into these; for the recipes she made from memory, she wrote out the recipes in her beautiful flowing longhand script.

The labels on the dividers gave Eleanor an idea. She was a good artist and used to do oil paintings. She drew cartoons for each chapter heading portraying food items or utensils. When she got all the recipes collected and all the artwork done, she turned the whole file over to me. 

I took them to work and spent several evenings scanning all of the images into a digital file.  Eventually, I had the entire book burned on to a disk. The next step was to do the “cover shoot.”  I went to a restaurant supply store and bought a chef’s hat and a white apron.

We borrowed my daughter’s photography lights and set them up around Ellie’s stove. She donned the hat, held a pot of her potato soup and struck a culinary pose. The look on her face was precious and I knew we had our cover.

I called around and selected the print department at Staples Office Supply as our publisher. I worked with them to design a hardcover book with Ellie’s picture on the front cover along with the title, “Ellie’s Cookbook—From Me to You.” In just over a week, we had our books. We were almost ready for Christmas. Ellie wanted to add a special twist to each book.

As I have said, Ellie’s cooking was beloved by her family. Some liked her chicken and dumplings, others liked her Texas sheet cake, but everybody’s favorite was her legendary peanut butter fudge. Included in the title, “Ellie’s Famous Peanut Butter Fudge,” was a note in large capital block letters reading, “YOU REALLY DIDN’T THINK I WAS GOING TO GIVE OUT MY SECRET RECIPE DID YOU? NOT A CHANCE, I’M TAKING IT WITH ME.”

In the back of each book she pasted a large white envelope. In this she put a copy of her fudge recipe and a personal note to the person this particular book was intended for. She told each of them that they were her favorite so she was leaving them the fudge recipe. We then sealed each envelope with a piece of red security tape reading “Personal and Confidential.”

The fudge recipe was a good example of Ellie’s sense of humor and her love for her family. She knew that none of her daughters or grandchildren could resist bragging about having the recipe and soon everyone would be in on the joke. It was also her way of telling everyone that they were all special to her.

Today, my wife was baking “Aunt Ethel’s Sugar Cookies,” an old family recipe. She had her mother’s cookbook propped up on the table with Ellie’s smiling face watching her work. I know that Ellie’s cookbook has a place of honor in her family’s kitchens and will be frequently referenced during the holiday season.

I can’t think of a better legacy for Ellie to leave her family and I can think of no better way for us to honor a great woman.                    

 - Jim Busch

December 18, 2020

I was working in my shop today when I got a very disturbing call from my best friend Ralph.

As soon as he said, “Hello,” I knew something was wrong. Ralph is usually an energetic and engaging speaker. There was a quiver in his voice and the pace of his speech was must slower than normal.

Without offering any greeting I said, “Ralph, what’s wrong? You sound like you’re really upset.”

I couldn’t catch his response. His voice was low and broken with soft sobs. I was in my workshop and running machinery so I had the radio volume cranked up high. I rushed over to my desk and switched off NPR and said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you. I had to turn off the radio.”

I started running terrible scenarios through my head. I thought maybe he had received a bad report from his doctor, he has had some health problems lately. Ralph’s wife travels for her job, and with today’s snowfall I thought she might have been in an accident. All I knew at this point was that something had really upset my friend.

Ralph finally composed himself enough to blurt out, “I just heard, Joe died.” And then to clarify, “Joe Gold is dead.” Speaking these words stirred up his emotions again and he began to sob again.

This hit me hard, one of the reasons I enjoy spending time with Ralph is that he is fun to be around. He always looks on the sunny side of things and seldom goes ten words without letting out a laugh. I didn’t know quite what to say.

I had known Joe Gold for about 10 years, I had done business with him on numerous occasions but he was just an acquaintance. Ours was a purely professional relationship. Ralph was much closers with Joe.

Ralph told me he had known Joe since 1974 when Joe was a sales manager at the old Dardanell Newspapers. They had hit it off and they worked together on and off for over 40 years. They also got together outside of work. They raised their children together and shared many dinners with their wives.

They had begun to lose touch a few years ago when Joe and his wife moved to New England to be near his daughter. Joe’s wife had contracted leukemia and wanted to be close to family.

Joe Gold was a force of nature. He was like a character out of central casting at a Hollywood studio; the wheeler dealer business man always ready to slap you on the back and make a deal. He was a big man, with a big smile and big ideas.

He wore Brooks Brother’s suits and $100 Italian shoes. His ties were bright and colorful, intended to stand out and make a statement. Joe always drove a big Cadillac and liked smoking cigars.

Joe was a brilliant advertising man, an idea man who understood how to connect advertisers with their customers. Over the years, he had worked for newspapers, radio stations and cable providers. He had started several publications and owned his own advertising agency for years.

Joe was a risk taker who made and lost a number of fortunes. When he was on top, Joe was generous to his employees and his friends; he was quick to pick up a check and lavished gifts on his friends. When Joe was broke, he never lost heart or complained, he was focused on his next scheme or business venture.

He was a man with a great ego but was never self-centered, when you were with Joe, he always made you feel like you were the most important person in his world.

Ralph was home alone when he got the news in an e-mail from Joe’s daughter. It hit him hard and he needed to talk to someone about Joe’s passing. After he told me the bad news, Ralph apologized for interrupting me, he is a gracious man who tries never to be a bother to anyone.

“I’m sorry, Jimmy (Ralph is the only person who has called me “Jimmy” since I was in grade school) but I didn’t know who else to call. I just had to talk to someone.” 

I always feel awkward in these kind of situations. After a lifetime spent as a salesman, public speaker and writer I am seldom at a loss for words, but emotional situations leave me speechless.

After saying, “I’m so sorry, I liked Joe, he was a good guy,” I shut up. I realized Ralph wasn’t looking for me to say anything, he needed me to listen. He told me about his history with Joe and about all the good times they had shared together.”

After talking for a while, Ralph started to get choked up again. He apologized for getting so emotional. Guys aren’t supposed to shed tears when they lose a friend. John Wayne movies have taught us how to be tough, we’re supposed to face tragedy with a stony grimace.

Ralph is passionate about life, I have seen him get excited over a great meal at a restaurant or a painting hanging on the wall in a museum. I told Ralph that he had nothing to apologize for, “You knew Joe for almost 50 years and you were good friends, you’ve got every reason to be upset. I understand how you feel.”

Ralph then asked about what I was doing. He is a true gentleman and always asks about others, this is why I have never met anyone who didn’t like him. On this occasion, I think he was looking for a distraction, something to take his mind off of the loss of a close friend.

We talked for a few minutes about the project I was working on and when thoughts of Joe flooded back into his mind. He began to get choked up and again and said, “Well, you’re busy so I won’t keep you any longer. I’ll let you go. Thanks for listening.”

After Ralph hung up I sat in my desk chair at my drawing board and wished there was something I could do for him. I felt bad for Joe, but I felt worse for Ralph. Joe is beyond pain, but Ralph was hurting.

Old men like us are all too familiar with this feeling. Before the pandemic stopped public gatherings, Ralph and I would attend several funerals of mutual friends together. After you pass the age of 60, your friends start dropping like leaves from the trees in the fall.

I understood what Ralph was feeling. We’re sad for the loss of a friend but we are also sad for ourselves, we know that one day our friends will be grieving us.

We don’t talk about it because we are afraid, even if we believe that there is something beyond this life, we are afraid of the unknown.

For the past nine months, I have known that my wife has a tumor on her pancreas. There is a good chance that I will lose her.

I hope someone will tell me that is okay to shed some tears. 

- Jim Busch

December 17, 2020

Today, the Mon Valley was buried in a thick layer of snow. In a few hours, we had more snow than we received in all of 2019.

I had to drive my wife to Allegheny General Hospital for a radiation treatment and then to have blood work done at Quest Diagnostics. Fortunately, both appointments were early in the morning so the snow was just starting as we got home.

Once the snow arrived, it came down fast, I shoveled our front sidewalk and the bricks were coated with snow by the time I turned around to go back into the house.

Today, I was actually a little thankful for the pandemic. I am happily retired, I don’t have to get up and battle the snow to get to work. I don’t miss getting up early to dig out the car, scrape off the windows and then sliding sideways down my hill before the snowplows reached my neighborhood.

Though I don’t have to brave the Arctic conditions, I still worry about my kids and their families being out on the roads. For example, in normal times, my daughter had to drive all the way to Bridgeville to see her clients. She works ten hour shifts Monday through Thursday which means, in the winter, she has to drive in the dark to work and drive home in the dark.

Her wife had to drive to Greensburg, my son, who lives in Mt. Lebanon, drove to the Northside and his wife to Point Breeze. My grandson walked over a large hill to high school.

These days it’s not the snow that is keeping them at home, it is Covid. Since the spring they have all been “confined to quarters” so that they can maintain social distance and avoid spreading the virus.

They are all set up to work remotely from home. They have mastered all the intricacies of accomplishing everything they need to do without leaving the house.

This “new normal” mode of working is not ideal, it’s stressful to be stuck at home all the time with your family and trying to concentrate on work. Sometimes, the technology doesn’t want to cooperate and shuts down at the most inconvenient time possible.

With all the problems that come with working remotely, today it was a whole lot better and a whole lot safer, than jumping in the car and trying to cross the tundra to reach the office.

We tend to think of things in black and white; this thing is bad, that thing is good, but the world seldom works like that. Things are usually much more complex than that. The good guys don’t all wear white hats and the bad guys don’t wear all black ones; the hats come in various shades of grey.

Nothing is all good or all bad, including the coronavirus. The pandemic is a terrible thing but even it has its good points.

My family being able to stay home today because of the coronavirus quarantine got me thinking about the “Yin-Yang” of the coronavirus. The yin-yang is an important symbol found in a number of oriental philosophies and I think it represents a more nuanced, and more accurate, view of how things work in the real world.

The yin-yang is a circle divided into two equal parts, one part white and the other black. It is not divided by a straight line down the center, the dividing line is curved allowing each section to flow into the other. Each section looks a bit like a comma. Both sections have a spot of the other color within its bounds; a bit of black in the white and a bit of white in the black.

This arrangement is meant to show that things aren’t black and white and the definition between the two is not clear cut. This arrangement is meant to show that there is good in the worst of us and some bad in the best of us.

This is also true of every situation, nothing is a 100% bad or 100% good. The coronavirus is terrible but it has produced a few small benefits. Though these tiny shreds of good don’t come close anywhere to offsetting the 300,000 deaths and all the pain and suffering Covid-19 has left in its wake.

This time last year, mass shootings were all too common in the news. Deranged people and those with radical political or religious agendas opened fire with military style weapons on crowds of innocent people all too often.

The frequency of these assaults had been increasing for several years until the pandemic struck. Virtually every large gathering for the last nine months or so has been cancelled, while this is an inconvenience to thousands of people, fortunately it has put the mass shooters out of business. 

No mass gatherings means no mass shootings. It is sad that this is our reality, but maybe when we have solved the problem of Covid, we will find a way to solve the problem of mass shootings.

For years, we have had the technology to work remotely but we have continued to gather in large groups in tall buildings in city centers. We continued to work in hives, just like we did when the cutting edge communications technology involved tapping Morse code on to a telegraph key.

For at least 20 years, the business press has touted the advantages of working from home, lower costs, ease of recruiting new employees and better work life balance.

Everyone agreed that working remotely was better for everyone, companies, employees and customers, yet no one was ready to try it. The reason for this reticence was simple, no one wanted to stick out their neck. No one wanted to take the blame if this went wrong, if people decided to spend the afternoon watching Dr. Phil instead of working.

There is an old proverb that says, “It is the nail that sticks up that gets hammered down.” Very few managers are willing to take a chance on being hammered down. The potential benefits weren’t worth the career risks of trying something new. This is why most innovation comes from small companies and startups, people in large companies are far too risk adverse. 

When the coronavirus hit, companies had two choices, figure out how to operate remotely or shut down. Since few companies had the cash reserves needed to sit out the pandemic, it was go remote or go home.  Remote working got off to a rough start, we had to correct some computer glitches, and learn to deal with interruptions from needy toddlers and cats on the keyboard.

Once we got used to Zoom meetings an amazing thing happened, we proved the business school professors right; working from home really is better. After a few months, companies that feared their employees would goof off if not supervised, discovered that productivity actually increased.

When we finally lick this pandemic it is unlikely that businesses will go back to the old way of doing business. Companies like the idea of holding on to the money they have been spending on expensive office space and employees like saving the time and money they used to spend on commuting.

This means that people will be able to spend time with their families instead of staring at rows of tail lights on the highway. With all of those cars staying at home in the garage, traffic will flow smoother and pollution will decrease. As we become acclimated to this new normal, people will be able to work from anywhere they want. This will reduce urban sprawl and put less strain on city infrastructure. 

The coronavirus pandemic is probably the biggest global crisis since the end of World War II. Every crisis brings about change, the bigger the crisis the more impact it has on the society. During quarantine people have had a lot of time to think about their lives and what they want to do with it.

They have started baking sourdough bread and taking up new hobbies. They have been reconsidering their values and their priorities. I hope that long after the disease has been banished from our planet, that those of us who have survived it will be better people.

I hope that we will live more intentionally and mindfully. The disease has burned our world down killing many of us, closing down many of our businesses and disrupted our institutions.

There is nothing we can do to change this, what is past is past. The best we can do is sift through the ashes and find whatever good things we can take with us to build a better future.      

 - Jim Busch

December 16, 2020

Today, I had to go to Premier Photos in Monroeville Mall to pick up some prints. I parked my car and was walking to the store when I stopped to help a harried mother with a toddler in tow and a baby in a three wheeled jogging stroller maneuver her way through the double sets of glass doors to get into the mall.

She was wearing a mask, but her eyes and her posture had the look of a person who had just been informed that the pilot had a heart attack and it was up to her to land the jet plane. She thanked me effusively as she hurried off to do her shopping.

I felt bad for her, I had seen that same look on my wife’s face a long time ago. Like most parents, we survived our children’s youth without suffering a nervous breakdown. Several decades after both of our chicks left the nest, we can look back and agree that those crazy, busy, sleep deprived years were some of the best of our lives.

I was tempted to look that stressed out mom in the eyes and share this bit of wisdom with her but I knew she wouldn’t believe it. One of my dad’s favorite sayings describes her situation perfectly: “When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember your objective is to drain the swamp.”

She doesn’t realize that struggling with these kids is, in the long run, the most rewarding thing she will do in her life. I don’t know anything else about her life, but this statement still holds true even if she’s medaled in the Olympic decathlon, won a Pulitzer Prize in physics and/or a Nobel Prize, or nothing.

Even though she may wonder why she didn’t raise pedigree poodles instead of kids at this point in her life, nothing beats the feeling that comes from bringing new life into the world and watching it grow into a brand new and amazing person.

She simply doesn’t have the perspective to recognize this yet; there’s simply too many gators snapping at her backside for her to focus on the magic of watching a child learn about life.

While their mom was on the verge of a mental and physical collapse, her two little ones were having a grand old time. The little girl at her side in the pink mask and tossle cap was doing a skipping dance step that would impress the Radio City Rockettes.

The fact that with every jump step, she came closer and closer to dislocating her mother’s shoulder. Holding the hand of a toddler does more damage to one’s arms than a long career as a pitcher for a major league baseball team. The little girl didn’t want to hurt her mom, she was just enjoying the movement of her body and embracing life.

The little guy in the stroller let out a squeal of delight when he spied the lit Christmas tree just inside the mall doors. He bounced his little diapered butt up and down in his seat as he kicked his legs and waved his arms like a breakdancer. To him, that tree was the most beautiful and amazing thing he had ever seen. Given his limited experience in life, he may have been right.

I doubt that his stroller driver even noticed the lighted tree, or the other decorations, or the other shoppers. She had her head down and was completely invested in checking off all the tasks on her long holiday to do list.

Like a cat burglar, her goal was to get in, grab the stuff she wanted and get out. She had no time to dilly dally. She had no time to smell the roses when a very different aroma was starting to waft from her son’s diaper.

One of the great rewards of being a parent is that our children teach us to look at things in new ways. They give us the opportunity to see the world afresh.

When my daughter was first learning to write her letters she tore a piece of yellow paper with wide spaced lines out of a tablet and looked around the table. Pointing to a fat pencil she said, “Give me the… the… name writer.”

As she concentrated on scratching out an “R” with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, I thought about what she had just said. When she couldn’t think of the word “pencil,” she created her own.

It was perfect, I knew exactly what she wanted. It was also creative, it was a name worthy of E. E. Cummings or some other clever poet. I would never have used this wonderful name, my vocabulary didn’t admit new members unless they were endorsed by the dictionary.

My words were frozen inside my head, in Rachael’s mind, syllables and pieces of words swirled and mixed into delightful combinations.

Another one of the great pleasures of being a dad was taking my kids for walks. I consider myself fairly observant and a bit of an amateur naturalist but I always saw new things that I would have missed, when I was out with my children.

My gaze was fixed on the trail ahead, their eyes looked at things like they were peering through a kaleidoscope, ever changing and shifting. They saw shapes in the trees, they picked up stones, examined them closely and shoved them into their pockets like precious treasures.

Colorful bugs and tiny flowers caught their attention, while I only saw the big picture. I was trying to see the forest through the trees, they noticed the intricate patterns on the back of a single sycamore.

Once, I took my son on a walk in Cook Forest State Park. Jesse was about eight years old at the time. I wanted him to see the view from Seneca Point, a rocky overlook that afforded a splendid view of the meandering Clarion River.

It is one of my favorite spots in the park, I’ve been there many times and wanted to share it with him. Like any young boy, Jesse outfitted himself for the hike like we were going on safari. He wore a backpack with a compass, a poncho, snacks and a flashlight. As we walked along the well-worn trail, he added a few rocks to his load and had acquired a crooked walking stick.

When we got to the point I showed him the view. I lifted him up so he could have an unobstructed view of the valley without having to see through the chain link fence that kept tourists from taking the fast way down. He tired of the view quickly and wanted to look at patterns in the rocks at our feet.

We followed the unofficial path around the point and he was excited to discover a “cave.”  What he called a cave was really an overhang where the soil had eroded from below the big rock. It was about twelve feet wide and was five feet high at the outer edge tapering down to nothing in eight or ten feet deep.

Of course, entering the cave, meant that Jesse had to break out his flashlight. I thought this was rather silly since sunshine filled the space at that time of day. It shone on a discarded Coke can and some other trash left behind by the enemies of Woodsy Owl. They decided to pollute instead of giving a hoot.     

Deep in the bowels of this micro cave, Jesse shone the light on the bottom of the rocks. I had explored this space many times before but had never noticed all the fossils illuminated by the beam of his flashlight. There were seashells, trilobites and other creatures from a long dead ocean.

They had been there for millions of years and would have escaped my notice for another million years if Jesse hadn’t shown them to me. I was always watching where I was walking and never looked up. Jesse was right, we were on an expedition of discovery.

As I grow older, I try to keep this childlike perspective. I try to look around me and try to remember how fascinating everything in the world around us really is. This is a difficult thing to do, it is too easy to get jaded and take things for granted.

Being an amateur artist and writer has helped. Creating a drawing or writing a description of something forced me to really look at things, drinking in every detail. I have found this makes living far more interesting and enjoyable. 

I try to follow the advice of the poet Mary Oliver:

Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

- Jim Busch

December 15, 2020

I am a victim of Pinterest. When members of my family see something they like on the photo sharing site, their first thought is, “That’s cool;” quickly followed by, “I bet Jim could make that!”

They grab their phone or click their mouse and within seconds, I get copied on the photo. They usually don’t come right out and ask me to make them one. They sort of slide into the request, the photo of the item is generally captioned with something like, “What do you think of this?” or “How hard would it be to make one of these?”

When I respond, the follow-up includes variations of these phrases, “if you have time,” “I’d really like to have one,” “no hurry,” “I’d really appreciate it,’ etc. etc.

In the past couple of years, these requests have included a curio stand made from an old steel runner sled, a tiny picnic table to feed squirrels, a tabletop fairy garden, a four foot tall free standing Frankenstein and a Leprechaun trap for a school project.

To tell the truth, I kind of enjoy these requests. I am retired, so I have lots of time on my hands. These projects often provide interesting creative challenges which I enjoy solving. People like me used to be called handymen or hobbyists but these days, the term “maker” is in vogue.

Like they say, “If the shop apron fits, wear it,” so I guess I am a maker. I take a lot of pride in the fact that my friends and family honestly believe, “Jim can make anything!” This is far from the truth, but I’d hate for them to find that out.

I am also proud that people think of me as a person who would help them out if I can. I like to think of myself as generous and it makes me smile to think that others share this opinion.

My latest request came from my wife’s nephew. He sent a text to Glenda with a picture of a tiny Christmas fireplace and the message, “Do you think Uncle Jim could make one of these for me?” My wife knew the answer but went through the formality of asking me and forwarded the text. I said yes, even though I had several other projects in progress and Christmas is my busy time of the year.

I was glad that the person who took the original photograph of the fireplace included a ruler in the image. This gave me an idea of the scale of the original piece. Using this information, I was able to draw a set of plans for the tiny fireplace.

I have always enjoyed this kind of work. Growing up I loved to build scale models. A lot of my allowance and lawn mowing money went to the Revell and to Lindbergh Line companies for their model kits.

When my family went to McKeesport to do the family shopping and run errands, I would make a beeline to Oddo’s Hobby Shop. On a Saturday afternoon, the narrow aisles of the shop was packed with kids and adult hobbyists perusing the store’s massive selection.

In addition to the plastic models I loved, the store sold gasoline powered flying airplane models and supplies for model train enthusiasts.  Mr. Oddo was an incredibly nice man, who realized that if he took good care of his pint sized customers, they would keep coming back when they and the amount of money they had to spend grew up.

He always asked if I had the glue I needed, sometimes throwing in a free catalog. He always said, “Have fun building your model,” as he handed me the bag.

If I had had unlimited funds, I would have bought out the entire store. Since my funds were quite limited, I had to be a frugal shopper. It was a hard decision, first I had to decide what I wanted to make. I built a few car models but they were far from my favorites, I liked building airplanes, particularly WWII fighters and I was especially interested in military vehicles.

The shelves in my bedroom had an array of American and German tanks, jeeps, trucks and halftracks. I even invested my hard earned money in making tiny soldiers built to the scale of 1/24th in order to man my collection.

Unusual for kids of my age, I loved making models of historic sailing ships. I built replicas of Old Ironsides, Francis Drakes’ Golden Hind, the Mayflower and Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria.

Since it was the centennial of the Civil War, I delved into modern war ships by assembling the Monitor and the Merrimac. I lusted after the big, super detailed, ship models intended for adult builders. These were far too rich for my child sized budget and though my youthful confidence refused to admit it, far beyond my skill level.

I liked to look at the towboats on the river when my dad drove down the River Road on our way to the big Sears store in West Mifflin. This made me want to buy Revell’s big model of the 19th century river steamer, the Robert E. Lee. This was Lou Oddo’s biggest, most expensive and most complex models.

It’s good that I couldn’t afford it because trying to assemble all the fancy woodwork lining its decks and gluing together 50 plus pieces to build the delicate paddle wheel may have made me the first twelve year old to have a nervous breakdown.

I mentioned this kit to my wife several years ago and she found one online for my birthday. I have yet to assemble it, for now, it is sitting on a shelf in my workshop. I keep telling myself I am waiting for a big block of free time to open up before tackling such an involved project. I think that I may actually be a little afraid of taking on the Robert E. Lee, but this is going to be my first project of the New Year.

I quit buying model kits from Lou Oddo and from Sadowsky Brothers in Eastland Mall sometime in high school. My money started going into my car and on other grownup pleasures and working and going to school took up my time.

The urge to craft miniature worlds stuck with me. I made miniature items for my daughter’s dolls and for my son’s GI Joe action figures. I made birdhouses that looked like actual buildings. When my wife’s sister bought her house, I made an exact replica of her home, down to carving in bricks and shingles. I set it up as a birdhouse, but it has never left its place of honor in her living room.

I’m not sure why I like model making so much. It might be the influence of my maternal grandfather. His last gift to me was a three foot long model of the Borax 20 mule team wagons. He got the kit for a dollar and three Boraxo box tops but it is precious to me.

Even though he was quite ill, he took the time to glue together twenty mules plus two wagons and a water tank. He hand painted each piece and mounted them on a long base before meticulously recreating the long reins out of my grandmother’s black sewing thread.

It might also be that by shrinking things down to size, I gain an illusion of control. The real world has been a bit tough to face this year. When I’m carving tiny bricks into a toy chimney, I don’t have the bandwidth to worry about pandemics or cancer.

I can make everything look perfect. Everything is in order, the tiny logs illuminated by a Christmas tree bulb will never burn away. I find this all very therapeutic and it makes me feel better, at least in a small way.                 

- Jim Busch

December 14, 2020

My daughter and I went Christmas shopping today. We’ve done this every year for the last six or seven years. She is my official gift shopping consultant. My wife does most of the shopping for the family so I only have to buy for her.

My daughter is invaluable to me as I am shopping challenged. I am completely baffled by women’s sizes and one should never trust a color blind guy with bad taste in clothes to choose anything you intend to wear out in public.

In the best of years, shopping for my wife is a challenging task, she is one of the few people who, when they say, “I really don’t want anything for Christmas,” actually means it. If even a small percentage of the public was as opposed to good old fashioned American materialism as she is, our economy would collapse.

She is not fond of fancy clothes, she is a blue jeans and t-shirt 24/7 type of person. She doesn’t wear jewelry and seldom uses any makeup. She does like music so my “go to” items used to be albums and later music CD’s.

In the age of downloadable music, these have gone by the way. This year, our son got her an Audible subscription so books have been scratched from the list of easy gifts.

Buying gifts for my wife involves careful listening. I always have my ears open, listening for any subtle hint of something she would like to have, for some mention of some material thing that she might consider to be useful.

This year my reindeer antenna detected a wish for something I could actually buy in a store. She never comes out and says something as direct as, “I‘d like to have one of those.” That would be too easy. I have to look and listen for clues; I am the protagonist in Sherlock Holmes and the mystery of what to get Glenda for Christmas.

This year the case was solved when I heard Glenda comment on a television show. While watching a cooking show on PBS, she watched the host prepping some vegetables for a recipe. They were using a large food processor and she said, “Those machines are real timesavers.” Feigning interest, I asked a few follow up questions, “That looks really big,” which gave me the last piece of the puzzle. I learned that the only food processor worth owning is a 16-cup model with a pulse button.   

I bought the much desired food processor at Costco, but blew my chance to be a hero on Christmas morning. I knew she had a lot of “food to process” for Thanksgiving, so I gave her the gift a full month early. She was absolutely delighted and put it to good use getting ready for the holiday.

The machine has already seen good service preparing items for Christmas cookies and other holiday goodies. The problem is that even though I identified it as an “Early Christmas Present,” its impact as a gift on Christmas morning is diminished.

This means I have to step it up on the secondary gifts if I am to maintain my reputation as a Santa. I have the jolly old fat man part licked, but I need to get the gift giving part down right if I am going to be a good Santa.

In addition to the usual challenges of Christmas shopping, this year I am faced with this question, “What do you get the person who might not be here to enjoy it?” I don’t want to flub this year’s gifts because they might be the last Christmas presents I ever get to give her.

She is fighting cancer and her prognosis is not very good. The cancer has robbed her of much of her energy and she no longer does many of the things she enjoys. The cancer means that her stomach is perpetually queasy so I can’t even buy her the candy that I usually get her.

I wish I could wrap up a new pancreas or the gift of a few more years but a search on Amazon generated a “Sorry, but no items match your search.”

My daughter and I talked about this as we roamed from store to store. We decided that the best we can give her mother is a good Christmas. We want to make Christmas as “normal” as possible. We want a holiday that is filled with good cheer and laughter.

This will be difficult with “two 800 hundred pound Gorillas fighting in the room,” Covid-19 and Cancer. We must try to push those things into the background and focus on the festivities.

Every culture has a holiday around this time of year. They started out as solstice celebrations. The early Christians knew that the nativity actually took place in the summer but decided to celebrate in the winter to steal some of the thunder from Pagan Rome’s celebration of Saturnalia.

All of these ancient holidays celebrate the return of the sun. They noticed that the days grew shorter and shorter through the fall and early winter. They feared that the light was dying, until at the solstice the sun began to return.

These holidays celebrate the return of the light and the return of life. In every corner of the globe solstice celebrations are joyous and optimistic.

For the first time in my life I can’t see the light returning to my world. I see the light fading from my life and there is nothing I can do to keep it from going out.

The best I can do is try to make the best of the light that is left and celebrate life as long as it lasts.       

- Jim Busch

December 13, 2020

In the old Get Smart television show, one of the taglines used by the star, Don Adams, was “Missed it by that much!’ This is how my family felt today. For several weeks, we were looking forward to a family holiday event we had to cancel at the last minute.

We had reserved one of the theaters at the Cinemark multiplex in the Monroeville Mall for a private showing of the movie Scrooged. We were to arrive at the theater at 1 p.m. which, as it turned out, was exactly 13 hours after Governor Wolf shut down all the movie houses in the state.

Obviously, this is not much of a tragedy. In a year, where almost 300,000 Americans have lost their lives, this cancellation didn’t even move the needle on the hardship meter. Still, I felt bad for my family, I know everyone was looking forward to getting together for a good time; something we haven’t been able to do in a long time.

When I saw Cinemark’s ad on Facebook, I thought this would be an ideal way to celebrate a Pandemic friendly Christmas. For just $99.00 they were offering the rental of a theater for up to 20 people including the screening of a classic film. 

I felt this was an incredible deal that reflected the desperation of the entertainment industry as the virus kept moviegoers at home watching Netflix. We discussed this over Thanksgiving, checked everyone’s schedule and came to a consensus on what film to request. We went online and booked the theater for today.   

My wife and I have always loved the movies. When we were dating, we saw most of the latest releases and enjoyed discussing them over a piece of pie at a diner afterwards. Glenda and I spent a lot of Saturday evenings in the dingy old Guild Theater on Squirrel Hill’s Murray Avenue.

The Guild had a musty smell and the stuffing was coming out of many of the seats but for just $2 we could watch a double feature of classic films. We watched the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, Bette Davis in Dark Victory and Errol Flynn in They Died with Their Boots On.

At the Guild, I got an appreciation of the “tear jerkers” my wife enjoyed and I shared my love of swashbuckling films. We found common ground in our mutual love of old screwball comedies.

We passed our love of movies along to our children. When they were little, we never missed the release of an animated film. Even when they were tiny, we never had any trouble with them in a theater. Even as toddlers, they would sit quietly totally engrossed in the movies running on the big screen.

My son was completely overwhelmed by the original Star Wars. His grandmother made him a Luke Skywalker costume that he wore constantly. My daughter loved music and delighted in movies like Grease and Olivia Newton John’s Xanadu.

One of the stars of Xanadu was the great Gene Kelly in his last original role. I used this as an excuse to introduce her to his classic films like An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain.

As our son and daughter entered their teen years, it became harder and harder to find movies that pleased the whole family. My wife and daughter would go to female oriented films like Steel Magnolias and Beaches, while my son and I preferred more macho movies such as the Highlander and Commando. I still miss going to these movies with my son, we are still close but he has a life of his own these days.

When my wife and I could slip away, we would leave our kids with their grandparents and go to the movies. We have great memories of the first time we saw some of our favorite films like Flashdance and Bette Midler’s The Rose. In recent years, we become reacquainted with children’s movies by taking our grandson, Max to the movies.

Last year, I took Max to see Ant-man and the Wasp at the North Versailles Theater. I looked over at him holding a bucket of buttered popcorn, a Coke in his cup holder and completely absorbed in the action on the screen and flashed back 20 years to when his dad sat beside me.

Of course, the Christmas holidays are an important time for movie buffs. Until the pandemic turned the entertainment upside down, the studios released all their best movies around this time of year. We always took in a number of movies in the last weeks of the year.

This is why my wife was especially disappointed by the cancellation of our family movie date. Her doctors have told her that there is a good chance this may be her last Christmas. They are not confident that they can bring her cancer under control.

This is why my wife has been working so hard to make this our best Christmas ever. Even though the disease saps her energy and she is in pain, she has been working hard to keep up our family traditions, including taking in a Christmas film with the family.

Like so many things in 2020, Covid-19 threw a monkey wrench in our plans. The governor shut down the theaters literally on the eve of our event. It is unlikely that we will be able to reschedule it. My son’s wife, Erin, tried to come up with a work around.

Erin upgraded her Zoom account and set up a meeting with her family, with my wife and I and my daughter and her wife and friend Gabe. The plan was to link us all together and stream Scrooged so that we could all watch it.

This worked surprisingly well, after getting off to a late start and having some trouble getting the movie to play properly, within a few minutes we were all watching Bill Murray’s version of the Dicken’s tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghosts.

My wife put some popcorn in the microwave and opened a bag of Chex Mix. We could watch the film and talk with our family without having to worry about disturbing any other movie patrons.

Watching the movie in this way was an odd experience. We enjoyed the movie, I hadn’t seen it in a while, so I had forgotten much of the story. It was nice talking to everyone about what we were watching, but it was not the same as seeing it on the big screen and sharing a row of seats with the family.

We watched the film simultaneously but not together. We shared screens but not the experience. This is the story of our lives in the time of Covid, everything is a compromise. I have learned to curtail my activities, I have adapted to wearing a mask where ever I go, but I didn’t want to compromise on this one.

I wanted to give my wife her holiday movie. I wanted her to have her perfect holiday. I wanted everything to be Hallmark Channel Christmas Movie perfect.

This is important to me, especially this year because I don’t know if I will get another chance to give her a merry Christmas and that’s the saddest thing of all.  

 - Jim Busch

December 12, 2020

I was a very busy elf today. After taking my wife to her radiation early this morning, we spent the rest of the day getting ready for Christmas.

Glenda has always loved Christmas but her cancer diagnosis has shifted this impulse into high gear. We spent a good bit of the day stringing lights on our house and around our yard.

Glenda had to take several breaks from the process, so we didn’t finish until it was close to 5 p.m. After we finished, I drove to Monroeville to pick up some supplies from Michael’s for some holiday projects of my own.

In response to the rising numbers of Covid-19 cases, Governor Wolf just announced a new round of strict quarantine measures. All entertainment venues and restaurants will be closed from tonight at midnight until January 4th of next year.

This order was met with much protest from the businesses impacted and many of their patrons. I am sure the governor took this unpopular step reluctantly. The large number of new cases stemming from the Thanksgiving Day holiday forced his hand.

The public’s refusal to comply with voluntary measures to try to halt the spread of the disease made taking more draconian steps absolutely necessary. If people insisted on holding large Christmas gatherings and attending holiday entertainments, Wolf was afraid that the pandemic would spin out of control.

The governor’s concerns are well founded. On my shopping trip to Monroeville, I saw evidence of the problem at every restaurant along the highway. The first dining spot I passed was Olive Garden, their parking lot was absolutely filled and there were people waiting in line at the door.

The same was true at the Mexican restaurant across the street and at the Bob Evans and the Red Lobster along Route 22. On my way home, I noticed the Plaza Azteca, and the Twin Oaks bar and restaurant in White Oak, were also overflowing with hungry people.

The crowds at these restaurants and bars were far greater than the crowds they attract on a normal Friday night, even on a pre-Covid Friday. I am sure all of the people packing the tables were trying to enjoy a night out before the “Killjoy Governor’s” restrictions go into effect; sort of a pandemic last call.

I can’t understand this “the pandemic be damned, I want a burrito” attitude. These people remind me of Prince Prospero’s guests in Edgar Allan Poe’s story, The Masque of the Read Death.

In the Poe story, a terrible plague was raging through the land so Prince Prospero locked himself along with a “thousand hale and lighthearted” friends in his castle. In Poe’s words, these people bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself.

In the meantime, it was folly to grieve or to think.” Prospero’s guests were surrounded by tall stone walls and iron gates which were permanently welded shut.

The guests at the Olive Garden were walled in by their belief that the pandemic is a hoax and their false confidence in their own invincibility. In the face of massive numbers of deaths and incredible suffering, both groups felt it was “folly to grieve, or to think.”

Poe didn’t set the Masque of the Red Death in any particular time. It could be set in any period, from the middle ages to the 19th century. It was certainly set in a time far less connected or as informed as our own; a time before we understood how disease was spread.

We may not yet have a cure for Covid-19 but we do know how to limit its spread. Simple steps, like wearing masks and keeping our distance from one another is something we can all do to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

I recently saw a cartoon of two people talking, the caption read, “I wish we could go back to ‘precedented’ times.” This is so true because in the last week we have experienced unprecedented levels of Covid-19.

More than 3,000 Americans have died on a single day from the disease; more than who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor, the Normandy landings or in the 9/11 attacks. Our hospitals are filled to capacity and our medical staffs have been pushed to the limits of human endurance.

Despite this terrible news, there are many people who find having to eat their meals at home to be an unbearable hardship. When the leader of our state told them that going to a restaurant put our entire society at risk, they responded by rushing en masse to dine out.

This is akin to rushing into a building immediately after being told it is on fire. These are the people who believe it is folly to “grieve or to think.”

In the end of the Poe tale, all of Prince Prospero’s precautions were for naught. The specter of the red death interrupted Prospero’s revels and carried him and his guests off.

The specter that appeared in Prince Prospero’s ballroom was described as, “tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave.”  The Red Death had the face of a “stiffened corpse;” he was a figure right out of a Wes Craven horror film.

The coronavirus is very scary, it has killed more people than anything we have faced in living memory. Perhaps, if it looked more like Poe’s specter, a tall, hooded zombielike figure we would all show it more respect. The virus is invisible and microscopic, not likely to inspire fear in the hearts of men.

In our society, even the devastation wrought from the virus is kept hidden from us. People die inside our hospitals in isolation wards. Unless the disease has struck our immediate family, we can’t truly understand the pain it has spread around the globe. We see the statistics but the numbers are too large for us to comprehend.

We see a few interviews with surviving family members and hear a few stories of gallant struggles against the disease but we can’t differentiate these from a story on Grey’s Anatomy. They tug at our heart strings but are soon forgotten.

I am afraid that even with the vaccine coming, that we will not be able to overcome Covid-19. I think our society is too self-centered and chauvinistic to take the steps necessary to defeat it.

I wonder how many of the people who rushed to restaurants because they were deemed too dangerous to keep open will roll up their sleeves for the vaccine.

I’m afraid that we have a very small number of very smart people working hard to stop this disease and a very large number of not so smart people who will continue to spread it.   

  - Jim Busch

December 11, 2020

Of the seven deadly sins, I am guilty of the one that is the least fun. I maybe on God’s most wanted list for the sin of pride. If pride really does “goest before the fall,” I’m way over do for a serious plummet.

I would mend my prideful ways but my oversized ego won’t let me accept the fact that pride is really all that bad. I keep thinking about what my dad used to say, “It ain’t bragging, if you can back it up.”

I have a lot to be proud of. I did well in school, was successful in my career winning a number of national awards. I am skilled with my hands and can talk intelligently on a wide range of subjects.

I have won a number of writing contests and been published in newspapers, websites and magazines. Other people must think I know a thing or two because I have been invited to speak about business, leadership and creativity in over 20 states.

Most of all, I am proud of my family. I have been married to a woman who is both beautiful and kind for over 48 years. We have two successful children, my son, Jesse, is a respected attorney for the pharmaceutical industry and our daughter, Rachael, is a professional counselor who has made a big impact on her clients.

They both have exceeded me in their educational and career achievements. Max, our grandson, is 14 and developing into a fine young man, a good scholar with a good personality and great emotional intelligence.

I can’t really take credit for the thing that I am most proud of in my life. I am exceedingly proud of playing a small part in raising two children who grew up to be kind and considerate people.

We live in very selfish times and many people have been conditioned to only think of themselves. They are impolite, rude and self-absorbed. They are like small children in the body of a faux adult.

My children are mature, emotionally as well as chronological. Writer Stephen R. Covey defined maturity as striking a balance between standing up for one’s own needs and showing consideration for the needs of others. If one doesn’t assert themselves they become an unhappy tool for others, a human doormat.

Likewise, if one always puts their needs before the needs of others, they will be unpopular and lonely. They will lack the qualities that they need to form healthy mature relationships with the people around them.

I am proud that both of my children have been able to find this balance. As I’ve said, I really can’t take much credit for the way my kids turned out. My wife truly deserved that “World’s Greatest Mom!” coffee mug that she got for Mother’s Day so long ago.

When the kids were in their formative years, I spent most of my time trying to keep them fed with a roof over their head. I missed out on a lot but it was probably for the best because my wife was a much better role model than I have ever been.

Today, each of my children did something to justify our pride and to demonstrate the great job their mother did raising them. The first came in one of the many smiley faced Amazon boxes that land on our porch every day.

This one puzzled my wife because she couldn’t match it with one of the items she had ordered. I pulled out my pocket knife and opened it up to find it filled with four strings of blue LED cascading icicle lights. The packing slip indicated that our son had ordered them for her.

My wife is a lover of lights. In the summer, its fireworks, in the winter its Christmas lights. One of her favorite holiday activities is jumping in the car and riding around to see how people have decorated their homes.

We’ve done this as a family since our kids, who are now well into their 40s, were in car seats. We did this last Saturday night with our daughter and her wife in the backseat. In North Huntingdon, we saw a home decorated with LED cascade lights.

Glenda told Rachael how we had first seen these at Kennywood’s Holiday Lights several years ago. “I’d love to have some of them but their just too expensive,” said Glenda.

After we dropped Rachael back at her home, she sent a text to her brother about this conversation. He, in turn, went to Amazon and immediately ordered them for his mother.

I wish my son could have been in our kitchen when I showed his mother what was in the Amazon box. She was not only happy to finally have some of the lights she loves, but her smile showed how proud she was of her son and, since she had figured out the conspiracy, of our daughter too.

We were decorating our Japanese maple tree with the new strings of lights when our daughter pulled up in front of our house. She wanted to show us her birthday present. For her birthday back in October, Rachael only asked for one thing from us. She wanted a new tattoo.

For Rachael, tattoos are not mere body decorations, they are talismans and symbols. She has a number of tattoos that serve to remind her to stay positive and have meaning to people who are fighting against mental disease.

This time she had a very special tattoo in mind. She asked her mother to write out a phrase in long hand to be tattooed on her arm. She wanted her mother to choose a phrase that would symbolize the bond between them. My wife thought about it for few days and wrote out,

Baby Girl,

It’s you and me against the world,

Love, Mama Duck

This is a line from an old Helen Reddy song that they used to sing when Rachael was young. This line has become a line they use to show their support for one another.

Glenda has called Rachael “Baby Girl” since the day she was born and somewhere along the line Rachael started calling her mother, “Mama Duck.” The only custom ringtone on Glenda’s phone is a quacking duck that tells her Rachael is calling.

Rachael called her tattoo artist who told her that she was booked well into 2021. Apparently, tattoo parlors are one of the businesses impacted by the pandemic, they have been overwhelmed by people who want to commemorate this miserable year.

When Rachael asked if she could duplicate her mother’s handwriting and explained what she wanted on her arm, capping off the discussion by telling the artist about Glenda’s cancer diagnosis.

Intrigued by the idea and moved by Rachael’s love for her Mom, she managed to find time to do her tattoo. Rachael took a vacation day today and drove to Lawrenceville for her new tat.

When Glenda saw the new tattoo, she got the same smile on her face that she had when I showed her the lights. She was proud of her daughter’s creativity (Did I mention that I am very proud of my children’s creativity) and of the relationship they share.

The kindness of her children showed her that “she done good!” raising them. She is facing an uncertain future, the odds are against her so it is important that her life has meant something.

I can’t think of a better legacy to leave than bringing two wonderful people into the world. It may be a sin, but she is rightfully proud of that accomplishment …as I am as well.

 - Jim Busch

December 10, 2020

I am surprised that the borough hasn’t installed a traffic light on our dead end street or assigned a police officer to direct traffic here. Our usually quiet street has been choked with delivery trucks since a few weeks before Thanksgiving.

Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and of course the USPS have been delivering box after box of Christmas related merchandise every day. Last week, I had to add an extra recycle bin to hold the overflow of cardboard boxes.

My wife loves the holiday season. This time of year resonates with her natural giving nature. She is the walking, talking, and gift-wrapping embodiment of the concept of, “Tis better to give than to receive.”

She is the most selfless and giving person I know. She always puts others before herself and hates to impose on anyone else. In the past 50 years, I have seen her work herself to the point of collapse to make the perfect holiday for her family.    

This year, there is a Grinch trying to steal her Christmas from her. This particular Grinch doesn’t live in the mountains above Whoville, he lives inside her and is wrapped around her pancreas in the form of a malignant tumor.

When we first learned of her cancer, the doctors told us that Glenda might not live to see another Christmas. She was determined to share one more Christmas with her family. This year, we actually get to celebrate Christmas twice. Back on July 25th, Glenda orchestrated a surprise “Christmas in July” party for the family.

We put up our Christmas decorations, my wife bought and wrapped gifts for everyone and made a big holiday meal. We even hung the family Christmas stockings with glee.

She invited our kids and their families to our home for a wonderful celebration. The event went off perfectly, except that it was not a surprise, everyone arrived in Christmas attire because they know their mother and how she thinks very well.

Fortunately, while we have not beat the cancer, through chemotherapy and radiation therapy we have fought it to a stalemate. Glenda is still here and ready to celebrate “Christmas 2020, Santa’s Back in Town - The Sequel.”

Jokingly I said, “Well, since we celebrated “Christmas in July,” I guess we can skip this one.” My wife wanted no part of that, even in jest and glowered at even the suggestion of skipping the holiday.

In fact, we both want to make this the best Christmas ever. We are both too old to waste time in denial or magical thinking since we know this could be Glenda’s last Christmas. She’s determined to go out with a thunderous jingle!

I worry that Glenda’s desire to go all out for Christmas may overtax her weakened system. She prepared a world class Thanksgiving dinner which included every member of the family’s favorite dishes. Her holiday spread made the one in the famous Norman Rockwell painting look like a light snack. She paid a price for the joy of putting that meal on the table; it took more than a week for her to recover.

Five days a week, we get up early and drive to the Northside so Glenda can get a dose of radiation. Each morning and evening, she takes three chemotherapy pills. These pills are so powerful that the instructions say they should only be handled with gloves.

She puts on her gloves, carefully takes one from the bottle and then pops this deadly dangerous little pill into her mouth and swallows it down. This doesn’t quite make sense to me, but as they say, “doctor’s orders!” After several weeks of this routine, Glenda’s energy has begun to flag.

She has adapted her holiday operations to reflect both her diminished health and the restrictions required to keep the pandemic in check. Starting back in the days of the Sears Wish Book, Glenda has always been a power user of mail order catalogs.

Bill, our mailman, recently told me that she gets more catalogs than anyone else on his route. This year she has done 100% of her shopping from the comfort of her recliner. She studies her catalogs and searched Amazon like a general studying a map before a battle.

This year she wants every gift to be perfect and memorable. To conserve energy, she bought a case of Mylar gift bags to simplify gift wrapping - “Bag’em, Tie’em and Give’em.”  

Glenda, was always a blur of activity from late October to the first week of January. I once woke up in the middle of the night to find her with a double boiler on the stove dipping chocolates at four in the morning. This year she can’t maintain her normal yuletide pace. I see her taking breaks in her chair or catching short naps.

Today, she realized that she simply doesn’t have the energy to get everything she wants to accomplish done before Santa takes to the air. This left her with two options: she could cut back on her plans or ask for help.

Everyone in the family would understand if she wanted to tune back the festivities a notch or two. I suggested that we do Chinese food for our holiday meal like Ralphie and his family in A Christmas Story.  This Christmas is far too important for her to cut corners, so this was out of the question.

Glenda and I are both self-reliant types, neither of us like to ask for help. This year, circumstances have compelled her to rely on me to take over some of the tasks she considers, “her job.”

I have taken over the shopping and errands. At a low point in her condition, I even took over the laundry.  I have been helping her with the decorating and I have become quite good at toting boxes here and there.

Unfortunately, I’m not much good in the kitchen. The sight of me anywhere near her stove makes her shudder. She had to seek culinary help elsewhere. She did call for some back up with Thanksgiving.

My daughter’s wife, Kathy, spent the day with her and they had a lot of fun working on side dishes and desserts. Kathy truly enjoyed the day and said she had learned some of Glenda’s well-kept kitchen secrets.    

Tonight, my daughter stopped by to drop off some items she had picked up for us. She was accompanied by Gabe, a close friend who lives with them. Rachael has a busy work schedule but Glenda asked her if Kathy, who lost her job to the pandemic, could help her get ready for Christmas.

Rachael said Kathy would love to help. I was really surprised when my wife reached out to Gabe and asked him if he would like to help her make chocolates. Gabe is a good cook and baker and he enjoys spending time in the kitchen.

He was thrilled that Glenda asked him for help. He has never made candy and is thrilled to learn a new skill from my wife who is a world class chocolatier.

Christmas is about giving, giving gifts, but even more important, giving of ourselves. No one knows the joy of giving more than Glenda, she has been giving to the people she loves for her entire live.

This year, Glenda is taking her giving to a new level. By asking for help, she is not only giving others a chance to learn from her, but she is also giving them great joy. It is a gift to give back to someone who has given so much to you.

Everyone in the family gets a warm feeling from easing her burden. There is nothing anyone of us can do to beat cancer, this leaves us feeling helpless. Helping Glenda, even with the simplest task, allows us to at least do something.

It allows us to pay Glenda back for all she has done for us over the years. By asking for help, Glenda has given us a great gift that we will treasure and remember for as long as we live.

- Jim Busch

December 9, 2020

While I was out today, someone commented on my mask. I wear a serious industrial mask designed for spray painting cars and makes me look a little bit like a Storm Trooper from Star Wars.

I thanked them and then instinctively said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This is the result of growing up around elderly grandparents that I thought were the wisest people that ever lived.

They had an amazing stockpile of proverbial wisdom and no matter what the situation was, they had a folksy saying that addressed it.

Proverbs were the memes of my grandparent’s generation and probably for every generation going back through time. In our time, much of this proverbial wisdom has been replaced by advertising slogans and lines from popular entertainment.

Phrases like “It’s Miller Time” and “Show me the money,” spice up our modern conversations. I think this is a loss to our society.

The dictionary defines proverb as “a short pithy saying in general use, stating a general truth or piece of advice.” They were created to teach children the best way to navigate their way through life.

They also served as a reminder to wayward grownups. They were short and pithy by design, this made them easy for even the youngest children to remember. Many of them rhymed which made them even more memorable.

The elders of the community repeated them over and over until they were burned in the brains of their children and grandchildren like a brand on the rump of a Texas Longhorn steer.

I sometimes feel like I’m one of the last purveyors of the traditional proverb. When I throw one out in conversation, it is often met with quizzical half smiles and eye rolls. I feel like I just said, “Prithee sirrah, but couldst I trouble thee for a beef patty upon a bun.”

I guess the problem is that our culture is so obsessed with the new and the fresh. We have fallen in love with the quick comeback and the witty repartee. To be cliché is the ultimate sin in our modern world. We cut and paste and share web pages constantly, but our language has to be clever and original.

Personally, I like to use clichés when they fit my needs. Going back to the dictionary, a cliché is a phrase that has been overused and betrays a lack of originality. I think this begs the question, what causes a phrase to become overused?

Think about an old well-worn pair of shoes or a beat up old recliner we can’t bear to throw out. We gravitate toward these items because they fulfill their purpose so well.

That old pair of shoes have shaped themselves to conform to the shape of our feet, making them a thousand times more comfortable than a new pair of stiff shoes. That old recliner embraces us like a hug from our grandmother at the end of a stressful day.

Clichés are over used for the same reason. They simply serve their purpose so well that we reach for them again and again. Try to think of a phrase that describes a garment cut to perfect dimensions better than “Fits like a glove.”

I didn’t inherit much from my grandparents; I have an old pocketknife, a seashell that my grandmother treasured and a horribly racist bank that I keep hidden away in a box but can’t bear to throw away.

I also inherited a memory full of proverbs and folksy sayings that have served me well over the years. One of my favorites is “Form ever follows function.” I later learned that this was the motto of Louis B. Sullivan, the mentor of Frank Lloyd Wright.

This is a very succinct way of saying how useful something is outweighs how it looks. This is why I keep using these shop worn, tired and old phrases, they may make me sound old fashioned but I appreciate how effectively they communicate their lessons.

The beauty of proverbs is that they are timeless. They are so simple that they can be adapted to changing circumstances. A good example of this universality can be found in “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

This old chestnut is probably hundreds of years old but I can’t think of better advice to give someone during a global pandemic. “Wear your mask and wash your hands because, wait for it … “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!”

We have people all over this country who think the coronavirus is a hoax, that masks are for sissies and that the vaccine is a government plot to turn us into leftist vegan zombies. I think the problem is a critical shortage of proverbs. We have an entire population cut off from the wisdom of the ages.

I have come to realize that it is up to me to save America, to bring back the ancient wisdom like Indiana Jones finding a buried scroll. Here is a primer of proverbs for the pandemic, “Coverbs?”

I am tired of sitting around the house with nothing to do but watch thousands of movies on Netflix, play video games or chat with my friends on Zoom or Skype and work from home in my pajamas.”

This one calls for one of my grandmother’s top ten: “Bloom where you’re planted.” If you can’t get out of a situation or change your circumstances, make the best of it. Don’t only endure, flourish. Rather than simply existing, bloom.

“I’m down to my last roll of toilet paper!” If I wasn’t prepared for a school assignment or ran out of something I needed for a project I knew exactly what my dad would tell me, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

When a crisis happens, it’s too late to do anything about it. This is also a good opportunity to roll out “Expect the unexpected” and/or “Dig your well before you’re thirsty.”

“I’m young and healthy. I never get sick so I can go out and have a good time and I’ll be fine.” This is a good one for “Pride goeth before the fall.” I also like a recent proverb that came from the entertainment industry, “You can’t fix stupid.”

“I wish we could go back to the way things were before.” This one calls for a proverb that my mother- in- law was very fond of repeating, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

This is a poetic way of saying, “Deal with it!” You can wish all day long and nothing’s going to change. Once you get your head back down out of the clouds, see, “Bloom where you’re planted.”

“I’ve been cooped up for months. I’m bored. I want to go to a restaurant. I want to hang out with my friends etc. etc. etc.” Two proverbs come to mind for this one, first a fancy one, “Patience is the mother of all virtues,” or the more down to earth, “Good things come to those who wait.”

The good thing we’ve been waiting for, a Covid-19 vaccine, is almost here. This very well could be the beginning of the end of this crisis. We will need to continue to wear our masks and maintain a safe distance from one another for a little while.

It’s not like we’re being asked to do anything painful or difficult, at worse we need to put up with some minor inconvenience. We just need to be patient.

“I’m not afraid, I don’t need to wear a mask. If I get it, I get it!”  This one calls for the ultimate proverb, fortunately one that never gets old, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” This is, of course, the Golden Rule. It appears in virtually all religions and cultures in some form. It is a simple message, be nice to one another.

We do not wear a mask to protect ourselves, though it does, we wear a mask to protect those around us. It is a way to show respect to the other people we encounter in our travels.

The pandemic has a lot of people reviving old skills and concepts. People are cooking at home, growing vegetables and baking sourdough bread. Perhaps it’s time to dust off our old proverbs and pay heed to the wisdom they contain.

They can help us survive this difficult time and come out on the other side of the pandemic as wiser people. It’s up to us, like they say, “God helps those who help themselves.”      

- Jim Busch

December 8, 2020

Today is Pearl Harbor Day, the 79th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

On the news tonight the anchor called it, “A day we shall never forget.” I am not so sure that this is an accurate statement, everything is eventually forgotten. Pearl Harbor and World War II are quickly fading away as those who fought in it fade away.

Pearl Harbor was never forgotten by my parent’s generation. They all remember precisely where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of the attack. My dad just came back from a weekend fishing trip. My mother was caring for her first husband, who was dying from leukemia and tending to my sister who was just ten months old at the time.

They knew people who were in the service and wondered if they were in Hawaii. They remembered the confusion and the fear of what was to come next. They remember FDR’s Day of Infamy speech and the months of terrible news stories that followed the initial attack.

For my father-in-law, John Bereczky, Pearl Harbor was a turning point in his life. Before the attack, he was living day to day with no purpose or direction in his life. He had just lost his mother and his closest sister to spinal meningitis and he wasn’t close to his father. Within weeks of the December 7th attack, John enlisted in the Navy and was soon fighting for his country and his life in the battle of the Atlantic.

The history books say that World War II ended on August 15, 1945; for my father- in-law, the war ended in January 2000 when he died from brain cancer. He carried World War II with him from the age of 16, when he lied about his age to enlist, until he died at the age of 74.

As a young man, nightmares of burning seas and screaming shipmates would wake him from a restless sleep in the middle of the night. In his mind, he went back to the deck of a sinking ship or the blood stained beaches of Normandy.

He tried to deaden the sound of gunfire with alcohol but it failed to do the job. As he grew older, the pain eased a bit, but the war and what he had seen were always with him as long as he breathed.

My mother-in-law, Eleanor, had much better memories of the war. She was a Rosie the Riveter, a woman who served her country by taking a man’s place in a factory. This was a wonderful opportunity for a young girl right out of high school, before the war she would have been limited to clerking in a store or secretarial work.

She got a good paying job doing war work for the Westinghouse Airbrake Company. Her job was inserting twenty six pins in a Bakelite disc. Years later, I was watching an episode of PBS’s NOVA about World War II code machines. In the description of the top secret “Ultra” machine, they showed the heart of the machine, a Bakelite disc with 26 pins in it.

I turned on the TV in Ellie’s room and she said, “Yes, that’s what I made.” My mother- in-law had worked on one of the most secret devices of the war. She smiled and said, “I guess that’s why all those hot young naval officers in their dress whites were watching us work.”

For her, the war was a romantic experience right up to the moment she met and married a handsome young sailor. For her, the worst part of the war was the shortage of nylon stockings.

She delighted in telling her daughters and granddaughters how she had to paint her legs with gravy master to look like she was wearing stockings. She and her girlfriends would then paint on the back seams with mascara. This worked well unless it rained or the day was hot and their legs began to sweat.

My mother had few memories of the war. Her fight was with her husband’s cancer. She was not one that liked to look back, I think she had too many bad memories. The one story she told me of the war was how Mr. Swanson, who owned the local corner market, would find ways to get her more meat than her ration stamps allowed her to buy. The doctor had told her that meat would keep her husband’s strength up.

My dad’s memories of the war were tinged with shame. He had barely survived a bout of scarlet fever as a toddler which damaged both ear drums. He was always slightly hard of hearing from the disease but he never let this stop him from doing anything, until he tried to enlist.

The military doctors classified him “4F” because of his bad eardrums, they told him one explosion or cannon blast would pop them like over inflated balloons. He probably could have gotten a deferment because his job was critical to the war effort.

He was a master machinist at Westinghouse, which had many government contracts but he wanted to serve like his friends. He lost a number of buddies in the war while he made lots of money working overtime in the shop. The local recruiters got to know him by name because he would get drunk on payday and try to enlist again and again.

Growing up, all of my friends and I were fascinated by World War II. We read books, watched the movies and tried to get our fathers and their friends to tell us what it was like. But we could never really understand what it was like to be in the war.

For us, the attack on Pearl Harbor was like the battle of Gettysburg, we were familiar with the stories but it was never real to us. We received our information second hand, third hand or even further removed. The old men and women who are now in their 90s will never forget Pearl Harbor, the best the rest of us can do is remember the stories we have heard about the attack and there is a big difference between the two.

Today, while my wife was getting a treatment at Allegheny General Hospital, I took a walk in North Park. Not far from the Aviary is a tall granite statue of a stately looking man in an old fashioned suit and vest.

The name on the pedestal read Thomas A. Armstrong and the legend read, “Advocate for Labor Rights.” I consider myself well read in local history and I have a particular interest in labor history, but I have never heard of Thomas A. Armstrong.

I am sure that back in 1889 when this statue was dedicated, there were a lot of speeches praising “good old Tom Armstrong.” I am sure that some of the speakers said that by erecting this statue that “this great man will not be forgotten by future generations.”

I doubt that any of the runners, or dog walkers in the park this morning stopped to think about Thomas Armstrong. Even though he has a statue, Armstrong’s story has been lost to history.

I am always suspect when I hear someone say, “We will never forget.” I have seen too many things fade away to believe this. A friend of mine is fond of saying, “You live and learn and then you die and forget it all.”  

This idea can seem a little sad, it’s tough to imagine that we will disappear not only from the world but eventually from the memories of those we leave behind us.

I look at this in a different light. I think it is good to think that all our troubles, our heartbreaks and even this pandemic will also disappear from memory as time rolls into the future.

- Jim Busch 

December 7, 2020

Yesterday’s mail brought a notice from our cable TV company informing us that once again our monthly bill was going up.

My wife and I have absorbed these increases over the years but we’ve decided this one is the straw that will break the camel’s back. Tomorrow, we will call the cable company and either cancel our cable service or seriously curtail it. It is time.

People are often surprised to learn that I am a big fan of television. I don’t think the television was ever turned off while I was growing up. My mother turned on the TV in the late 1940’s and didn’t turn it off until she died in 2004.

She loved listening to game shows while she did her housework and everything stopped when the soap operas, she called them “her stories,” were on.  Every week, she would read the TV Guide Magazine and plan the family’s TV viewing for the week.

Certain TV shows were family events; we always watched Ed Sullivan together and the entire family used to Sing Along With Mitch. My dad didn’t watch much TV but he liked The Jackie Gleason Show and Gunsmoke.

I was the envy of a lot of my friends because I had a TV in my bedroom. I can still see it today in my head, it was a small black and white TV with a grey and white plastic case that sat on a roll around television stand made of tubular steel.

I was a solitary kid and I was often bullied because of my birthmark. After a stressful day at school I loved to come home and watch the Million Dollar Movie. I could lose myself in westerns starring Randolph Scott and Audie Murphy and took to the air with John Wayne and the Flying Leathernecks.

My absolute favorite was Errol Flynn, I was drawn to his bold and rebellious characters. I could never hope to be like Flynn’s heroes but I could see myself standing beside him in the Sea Hawks, Captain Blood, or The Master of Ballantrae.

Flynn’s best film, in my opinion, was The Adventures of Robin Hood. My favorite line from any film is Flynn’s answer to Maid Marion when he boasts about poaching the king’s deer and she says to him, “Sir, you speak treason!” to which he replies, “Fluently!” As a shy and quiet child, I admired how Flynn stood up to oppressors.

 My next hero was Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. My mother was kind and let me watch Star Trek on the big color television set in the living room. I have to admit that later when I became a manager, I modeled some of my management techniques on Captain Kirk. I never had to trade photon torpedoes with the Klingons, but I did have to deal with a diverse crew of people with differing personalities.

During college, I didn’t have much time to watch television. I was going to class and working full time. Later, as my wife and I started a family, our kids took command of the television. Our son, Jesse, was drawn to reruns of the original Mickey Mouse Club. When it wasn’t on we had to play an LP of the show’s music over and over.

Our daughter, Rachael, was enamored with a show she called the “doot-doots.” This was the Muppet show, her name for the show comes from the opening notes of the show’s theme song.

At this time of year, our family enjoyed sitting around the TV and watching holiday specials together. We’d watch Frosty the Snowman, A Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

The family favorite was Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Being a folk music fan, I liked Burl Ives as the Snowman narrating the show. My kids loved Yukon Cornelius and the island of unloved toys. In those days, before video recorders, this required planning, when we learned one of our favorites was on, we would make sure everyone was home and the homework was done.

My wife would make snacks like Christmas cookies or Rice Krispie treats. My wife and I, plus our kids, would line up on the couch and their grandparents in their chairs. We would eat our treats, watch the show, sing along with the songs and make wonderful family memories.

These days, our television viewing is more of an individual rather than a group activity. My wife and I do have some programs we both like and watch them together. She likes English dramas, particularly murder mysteries so I got her a subscription to the Acorn TV streaming service.

I like how to programs and documentaries; what my wife calls “Nerd TV.” Each week I “curate” my TV viewing. I scan through the TV listings for programs that I would enjoy. I set a recording for each of these, my wife and I almost never watch any program in real time. We “time shift” all of our programming so that we can fast forward through the commercials.

I rather enjoy having all the premium channels and the convenience of a cable box with a built in DVR. This setup gives me a remarkable choice of programming to choose from, but it is time to let it go.

I’ve decided that this choice and convenience is simply not worth the price we have to pay for it. Tomorrow, I will make some calls that simplify our television viewing.

I find myself doing this sort of thing more and more as I grow older. I find myself evaluating what I am doing and asking myself if this item or this activity still fits with the life I want to live.

My wife’s cancer and the pandemic have added an urgency to this process. I keep asking myself, “Am I paying too much for the whistle?” This is a reference to a story in the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

When he was a boy, Franklin bought a tin whistle from a merchant in the marketplace. He found it delightful and tooted it all the way home. When he showed his new treasure to his older brothers and told him how much he had paid, they laughed at him.

He had paid several times what the whistle was worth. Then and there, Franklin vowed to himself that he would, “never again pay too much for the whistle;” that he would always consider the value of something before he invested his time or money in it.

I don’t see the simplifying of my life as giving anything up. I am not getting ready to die. I see this process as enriching my life and making things better for the next stage. This is simply a clearing of the decks to make way for the things that are truly valuable to me.        

- Jim Busch

December 6, 2020

Today, my wife and I went out and bought our forty- eighth Christmas tree. As the central attraction of our holiday celebrations, the choosing of a proper “Tannenbaum” is an important event. Over the years, it has gone from an activity for the two of us to a family activity and then back to the two of us again.

Like most things around Christmas, choosing a Christmas tree has evolved its own rituals. Each year is the obligatory consideration of an artificial tree. This, of course, involves the reciting of all the reasons in favor of buying a tree that was manufactured in Taiwan rather than grown on a Pennsylvania hillside. There are economic considerations, you buy an artificial tree once and you never had to spend another nickel for a Christmas tree as long as you live. There are practical considerations, an artificial tree is less mess and hassle than a real one. If we are lucky, we vacuum up the last of the needles from the Christmas tree sometime between the Fourth of July and Labor Day. We can’t forget how easy the new model trees are to set up and take down. They are pre-lit and fold up like a big green umbrella.

After we discuss all the reasons why we should buy an artificial Christmas tree, we say what we’ve known all along, “We will never have a FAKE TREE in our house.” We have our reasons for this firm stance. We like the pine smell of a real tree, we like its natural irregularities and the idea that it once sheltered living creatures in its branches. Admittedly, these reasons are not very practical, they’re purely emotional and aesthetic but that’s okay with me. How logical or practical is it to bring a tree into our homes in the dead of winter and adorn it with all sorts of baubles. We claim to do this because a rebellious German monk thought this would be a cool way to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Christmas trees were never intended to be practical or logical. We do have one practical reason for buying a real tree, each year I save a piece of the trunk to carve or turn on my lathe to make and ornament for next year’s tree.

The next portion of the tree choosing ritual involves the type of tree we invite into our home. Our home is very small and crowded with our furniture and possessions. Each year we discuss the shape and size of tree we should purchase.

Given the compact nature of our home it makes sense to choose a compact Christmas tree. Each year as we leave the house my wife insists that this year we are going to buy a little tree, a skinny tree. Her determination lasts until we get to the Christmas tree lot. Theoretically, choosing a Christmas tree is a collective decision. In past years, my wife solicited input from our kids. She still asks my opinion but in reality she is the CEO of Christmas tree selection.

She wanders the lot, looking at their entire selection. She stops and looks at the nice little, skinny trees, but then frowns and shakes her head. After several circuits of the lot, my wife invariably settles on a tall chubby tree that will take up a huge portion of our living room. Skinny trees are great in theory but she can’t bring herself to buy one. Fortunately, for me, my wife loves rotund things.

For the past several years, we have purchased our tree from a nursery in Murrysville. My wife likes them because they grow their own trees in Indiana County and how they display their trees. Their nursery has a grid used in the summer to display hanging baskets; they suspend the trees from this grid allowing shoppers to turn them and examine them from all sides.

I think my wife also likes the resident lot dog. He is a big, black, fuzzy standard poodle who greets every customer with a nuzzle and a wag of his tail. I’m sure he is the envy of all his dog buddies, he has a job where he gets hundreds of pets every day and he has his choice of trees.

My wife has kept a log of all the Christmas trees we had over the years. She’s even kept a clipping of each tree we set up each stored in separate brown paper lunch bag. Each bag is labeled with the date and price of purchase as well as where we got it.

The tree we bought today cost us $36.00, our first tree cost us nothing in 1972. I actually got paid to cut down a relative’s big pine tree and then used it as our first Christmas tree. It was so large that I had to winch it up to the front porch roof of our second floor apartment to get it inside.

For many years, we cut down our own Christmas trees. When we lived in the mountains in the northern part of the state, we bought our trees from a local tree farm and only paid two dollars on average for our trees.

Of course, my wife’s quest for the perfect Christmas tree required us to examine every tree on a four or five acre lot. I would follow my wife around the farm with my Swede saw in one hand pulling our kids on a sled with the other. In particularly cold weather, it sometimes felt like a reenactment of the doomed Ernest Shackleton expedition to the Arctic Circle.

When we moved back to the Mon Valley, we continued to cut our own trees which required a trip to the Laurel Highlands. We got wiser as we got older, our last trip to a tree farm in Mt. Pleasant was so cold, that my wife chose a tree in five minutes so we could get back in the warm car before we lost any fingers to frostbite. After that, we began purchasing our trees from local lots, though my wife remained highly selective about choosing a tree.

As I drove home with our tree, a big fat one, tied to the roof racks of our Subaru, I thought about all of the trees we had over the years. As always, we had a lot of fun and we both are looking forward to decorating it with all the ornaments we collected over the years.

Buying our tree has always been a special event for me but this year I tried to appreciate every moment and every memory. With my wife’s pancreatic cancer, I know this may be the last time we get to do this.

There is a good chance that my wife may not be with me next Christmas. I can’t imagine buying a tree alone, I will celebrate Christmas with my family but this year’s tree may be my last.

At least, I will have a forest of Christmas trees living in my memory and every one of them is absolutely perfect in every way.               

- Jim Busch

December 5, 2020

I am naturally a night owl, usually going to bed around 1:30 or 2 in the morning. My wife on the other hand is an early to bed early to rise person, but last night she had trouble getting to sleep.

I was surprised to hear her talking on the phone a little after 1 a.m. last night. Glenda had received a text from her niece, Marcy, and when she responded, Marcy called her.

I wrote about Marcy a few days ago, she is a Licensed Practical Nurse who works at a nursing home in Mercer County. Recently, her workplace experienced a major surge in cases of Covid-19, going from nine to 42 cases in one weekend.

My wife is the defacto matriarch of the family. All of her nieces have looked to her for guidance, advice and solace when they are troubled. Glenda took on this role after the passing of her mother, their grandmother.

Marcy called so late because she was at the end of her rope. She had just put in a ten hour day because another nurse had walked off the job that day. She simply said, “I’ve had enough!” gathered her things and walked out the door.

At a time when their Covid cases are growing, they now have 44 residents who have tested positive, the nursing staff at the facility is shrinking. To most people “Covid Fatigue” means that they are weary of wearing a mask or wish that they could enjoy a meal at their favorite restaurant.

For front line caregivers, it means actual physical fatigue. She is usually bone tired from working 10 to 15 days of 10 or 12 hour shifts without a day off. It means constantly worrying about carrying the disease home to her family, to her two sons and her husband.

Marcy has good reason to be worried. In addition to the 44 residents of the home who have tested positive for Covid, at least ten staff members have as well. Because of staff shortages, the nurses and other staff members have been allowed, and in fact encouraged to continue working.

To prevent the further spread of the disease the infected employees are limited to working with the Covid patients. This practice actually increases the risk to other nurses like Marcy who also work with the Covid patients. They not only have to fear contracting the coronavirus from the residents of the nursing home but also from their coworkers.

The situation at the home where Marcy works is so dire that a team of nurses from Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Health Network has been assigned to support the nursing home staff. In addition to the AHN nurses, a National Guard Medical unit has also been assigned to support the staff. 

Hopefully, once these extra resources become oriented to the situation in the home, Marcy and her coworkers may be able to take some days off and get some well-deserved rest.

While lightening her workload will help Marcy and all the other healthcare workers like her, it is far from enough to relieve all of the stress she is under. Any nurse who works with the elderly and the infirm has to expect that some of the people in their care will pass away.

This is just part of their job. Covid-19 has greatly increased the number of fatalities that nurses have to face. This leaves them little time to recover mentally and emotionally from losing a patient. The suddenness of Covid’s onset also adds to the emotional impact of the pandemic.

Patients who are in generally good health go into rapid decline and can go from being ambulatory and lucid to bedfast and unconscious in just a day or so. This is almost like being in a frontline military unit under heavy attack.

Marcy’s husband works at a nearby UPS terminal. Nine of his coworkers have also tested positive for Covid-19. She not only has to worry about contracting the virus at work, but she also has to be concerned that her husband may bring it home from work.

When she is on duty, Marcy wears scrubs, a hospital gown, two masks and a face shield to protect her from the coronavirus. Marcy lives in a three bedroom apartment with her two sons, one is a junior high school student and the other is a college graduate, and her husband.

Their small home makes social distancing difficult and even though Marcy takes every possible precaution, it is impossible to be absolutely safe from spreading viruses from one family member to another.

Marcy has firsthand experience with the spread of coronavirus within a family. Marcy’ former husband and the father of her oldest son is also a nurse, as is his wife. Both of them, as well as their two sons have all tested positive for Covid-19.

Ironically, the source of the infection didn’t come from either parent’s workplace. Their oldest son infected his family. He had spent time with some of his friends without wearing a mask or practicing social distancing.

His adolescent irresponsibility put his entire family at risk.  They are all symptomatic and concerned that the disease could flare up at any time to infect their daughter.

Marcy’s brother in law works in a local factory where a number of his coworkers have contracted Covid-19. One has died from the disease. Marcy worries about him and her sister’s family.

She is also concerned for her parents who both have underlying health problems. Her professional experience has taught her just how devastating this disease can be. For her, the disease is not an abstract concept, she has seen the suffering that it can cause.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the media and many of our leaders have been ebullient in their praise of our healthcare professionals. They have been called heroes and frontline workers like they were soldiers going to battle.

As touching as the stories on the television are, they cannot begin to describe the suffering and heartbreak these people are facing. From talking to Marcy and hearing her experiences brings the hardships faced by her and thousands of others like her close to home.

We should all be thankful for the courage and selfless dedication of these hardworking people. What they are saying on TV is absolutely correct, our doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers are truly heroes and heroines.  

 - Jim Busch

December 4, 2020

Five days a week, I take my wife to Allegheny General Hospital for radiation treatments. Today’s session was number seven and the staff in the Cancer Center gathered round to check out her mask.

Of course, everyone else in the facility was wearing a mask, but Glenda’s mask always draws attention; this is because every day she wears a different mask, each one cuter than the next.

It’s not that my wife is a fashionista or America’s leading mask collector; the masks are a gift from our daughter Rachael. To support her mother in her fight against cancer, Rachael made her 28 unique masks for her to wear to her treatments. She also made matching masks for the entire family to wear at our Thanksgiving gathering.

Rachael and her wife, Kathy, have turned their dining room table into a mini mask factory. In addition to making masks for the family, Rachael and Kathy have produced hundreds of them for their friends.

Rachael has also provided masks for her coworkers and clients. She has experimented with different designs and even made some with clear plastic windows so that a hearing impaired friend could read her lips.

Early on in the pandemic, her old sewing machine broke down and she had to replace it. She makes regular pilgrimages to Joanne Fabrics to replenish her supply of fabric and elastic.

Making masks is one of the ways Rachael copes with the pandemic and with her mother’s cancer. If she is concentrating on cutting a piece of fabric or getting a seam straight, she doesn’t have the “band width” to worry about what’s going on in her life.

She’s always been “crafty.” Even as a little girl, she was making friendship bracelets and making her own cards. During junior high school, she asked for a business for her birthday. We ordered a startup kit out of a magazine that provided everything needed to make custom beaded necklaces bearing the buyer’s name.

We would go to craft shows and fairs making bracelets and other pieces of jewelry while the customer waited. “Busch’s Baubles and Beads” proved to be surprisingly profitable and Rachael had a lot of fun selling them.

Rachael was named after her great great aunt which explains the archaic spelling of her name. She could never find anything with her name printed on it like pencils or bicycle license plates etc. She identified with the little girls with unique names who were thrilled that we could make a bracelet just for them. I think Rachael liked making these kids and their moms happy.

As scientists learn more about the human genome, they’ve discovered that much of human behavior is rooted in our genetic makeup. I think this is true in Rachael’s case; she comes from a long line of crafty women and I do mean that in every sense of the word.

My grandmother, Rachael’s great grandmother, was expert with her crochet needles. The daughter of potato famine refugees, she produced traditional Irish lace. Every flat surface in her house was covered with intricate lace doilies as were the backs and arms of all her upholstered furniture.

Every Christmas, she would make lace stars and snowflakes. Dipped in a solution of sugar water to stiffen them, they made beautiful ornaments for the tree. Though I never knew her, my wife tells me that her grandmother also made these for their tree.

My mother’s crafting was not nearly as traditional as my grandmother’s. She was famous for her whiskey bottle poodles. My mother would crochet cozies for liquor and wine bottles in the shape of her favorite dog.

The poodle’s body was made so that it was stretchy enough that it would slip over the bottle but not slide down. The head was made as a separate piece that would slip over the neck of the bottle. Handmade pompoms served as the tacky little dog’s tail and top knot and rhinestone buttons became the eyes.

My parents used these as wrappings for the whiskey they gave as hostess gifts or holiday gifts for friends. I’m not sure if it was the poodle or the contents, but this gift was always appreciated. My mother also made miniature “booze” poodles.

My dad and I would drive to Uniontown where we would pick up Route 40 to go to Western Maryland. In those days, Pennsylvania liquor stores didn’t sell the miniature single serving bottles but they were available in Maryland. My dad would stock up on a selection of tiny bottles and we would turn around and take them home to my mother.

Sometimes, one or two of them would “evaporate” on the way home which is how my dad explained the empties in the box.

Rachael’s maternal grandmother also enjoyed making things. After her kids were grown, she took up oil painting and with the help of Bob Ross became quite proficient. My wife and I still have the “nail art rooster” she and her husband made for us when we were first married.

John cut out pieces of wood in the shape of a rooster. The guys at the hardware store must have found it interesting when they bought a wide variety of nails based on the color and shape of their heads. These they drove into the wood to form the features of the rooster. The roosters turned out remarkably well and I suppose these days our plaque would be considered a piece of American folk art.

I guess the crafting gene skipped a generation because Glenda hates crafting. Sometimes, she’ll accompany me to Michaels Craft Store and a clerk will walk up to her to ask if they can help her find anything.

Glenda’s response to this is to point to me. I am the crafty one in our marriage, Glenda prefers to express her creativity in the kitchen making incredible meals and baked goods. I tend to enjoy masculine crafts like woodworking, woodcarving and even a little blacksmithing.

I also dabble in the fine arts of drawing, printmaking, painting and sculpture. Rachael always loved getting handcrafted gifts from my shop, so I hope some of her creative impulses come from me.

Creating things has been one of the true joys of my life and I’m glad that my daughter enjoys creating things as well. We enjoy going to the art supply stores in the city and discussing projects we are considering. We consult with one another and sometimes work on a project together.

I am proud of her skills and of how she uses them to bring a smile to the faces of the people she loves. Like all of us, the coronavirus pandemic has left her feeling a little helpless. Making masks for people makes her feel like she is doing something to help.

I know her gift to her mother gave Glenda a much needed boost. Rachael, like generations of women before her, is using her sewing machine not just to create practical and attractive face masks.

She is sewing happiness and hope.

- Jim Busch

December 3, 2020

With the pandemic surrounding us like Indians attacking a wagon train in an old movie, we need to do things to keep ourselves upbeat and positive.

For me, it is a set of daily readings that refresh my mind and take my mind off my problems. Every evening, sometime before bed, I sit down and read a series of short pieces that enrich my mind with beautiful images and new ideas to challenge my thinking. It is like having a group of wise mentors living on a shelf next to my reading chair.

Each night, I read a brief section from each of these books and look at a new page from a group of calendars I keep on another shelf. I have done this for decades. I think I am a better man for it.

I have lived almost all of my life in the Mon Valley, one of the bluest of blue collar areas in the country. Other than my teachers, our family doctor and the pharmacist, no one I knew went to college when I was growing up.

Like my dad, many of our neighbors didn’t even have a high school diploma. This didn’t mean they didn’t value an education, it just meant that they never got the chance to continue their education. Many of them were avid readers like our next door neighbor who had 30 years’ worth of National Geographic magazines stacked in his garage that he let us kids borrow and read.

He knew all sorts of things about cultures all around the world from these magazines. Along with the western and detective novels in men’s coat pockets and lunch buckets, there were books on history, literature and science.

As a child, I was encouraged to read and to go to the library. My parents would ask about what I was reading and would take great pride that I showed promise as a scholar. I don’t think I ever heard “no” when I asked for a book.

I think that my love of learning came from my natural desire to please my parents. It also put me in good stead with my teachers. By the time I was in the fifth or sixth grade, I was hooked and went down the rabbit hole of nerdom.

In college, I encountered a quote from the German poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, it had a big impact on me. He wrote, “Every day one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, see one fine painting and -- if at all possible -- speak a few sensible words.” 

I doubted my ability to speak a “few sensible words,” but I thought exposing myself to art and ideas every day was doable. Starting as a young man, I tried to read some uplifting materials every day. I started keeping journals of the things that I found particularly interesting.

In my quest, I found that there are many books written in a “Thought a day” format that suited my needs. There is nothing I enjoy more than shopping at used book stores or library sales and I often find these books for a dollar or less.

For years, I would arrive early at the office each morning and start my day with a reading or two. On my desk was The Daily Drucker, a compilation of writing by management guru, Peter Drucker. I would read a chapter from Harvey McKay’s books on sales.

I also had a set of books of daily wisdom taken from Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. These books gave me great ideas and things to talk about in meetings. I am sure they helped me be successful in my career.

I had a couple of books on my desk that covered subjects that I was interested in such as readings from David Thoreau or spiritual teachings from many cultures. Over the years, this collection grew and I started including page a day calendars into the mix. Each year I stockpile books for the next year so that I don’t have to go “cold turkey” on January 1st.       

My current daily reading file includes a copy of 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die. This particular book will take me almost three years to complete. It is a big thick book with a color reproduction and a brief description on each page. It is arranged chronologically and I am up to the mid nineteenth century.

This book exposed me to some artists that I didn’t know and motivated me to do some more research. This is a collateral benefit of my daily readings, it introduces me to new opportunities for learning.

I read from the The Daily Stoic which offers a daily quote from a Roman philosopher and then explains it in contemporary language. This is good for someone like me who is not a trained intellectual. If I sat down and read a volume by Seneca, I probably wouldn’t be able to absorb his message. By getting his teachings in bite sized chunks, it sinks into my thick skull.

Next on my list is, Inspiration 365 Days a Year by Zig Ziglar. This is a book of short motivational quotations, I have heard most of these but it helps to be reminded to follow them. Ziglar was a great sales trainer and one of my idols when I started in business.

I am also reading a book of Aesop’s Fables. We all know some of these like the Tortoise and the Hare but there are hundreds of teaching stories attributed to him. I find these fables to be cleverly constructed and their messages as valuable today as they were in ancient Greece.

The Artist’s Way Every Day by Julia Cameron is a book of motivation for artists. I have read her books like the Artist’s Way but this daily essay keeps her ideas top of mind and helps keep me moving forward when my inner critic attacks my writing or other art work.

Perhaps, the most unusual book in my stack is the 1989 edition of The Friendship Book of Francis Gay. A few years back, I came across a 1974 edition at a used book sale. It is a collection of quotes, stories, bible verses and poetry for each day of the year. It is a bit cheesy, but always pleasant and positive.

I did some research and found that these were published in England from at least the late 1930’s to the 1990’s. I really enjoy these books and will probably order another year from Amazon for next year.

The last book on my shelf is Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry edited by Bill Collins. I love poetry, it helps me to see the world in new and different ways. I tend to read the poetry I studied in college decades ago.

This book exposes me to contemporary poets that I might otherwise overlook.  I think reading a poem every day also helps me to improve my writing and speaking.

I also go a bit overboard with calendars. I tear a page off six calendars every day. A Metropolitan Art Museum calendar featuring works from their collection. My wife gets me a new one every year for Christmas and it is one of my favorite gifts.

I also read the Daily Zen calendar which offers quotes from oriental sages and other mystics. On a lighter note, I have The New Yorker magazine Cartoon Calendar. I enjoy their sense of humor and copying their artwork has helped me improve my drawing skills.

I also do this with two other cartoon calendars, Non Sequitur and The Argyle Sweater. My final calendar is simply a “Daily quote” calendar. My selection of calendars varies from year to year because I buy most of them on clearance around the middle of January.

I have been busy most of my life. The responsibilities of raising a family and earning a living have consumed most of my time, energy and attention. Doing my daily readings only takes about twenty minutes to half an hour but leaving me feeling like I’ve been on vacation.

Reading a poem, looking at a piece of fine art or even chuckling at a silly cartoon reminds me that there is more to life than work and bills to pay.

This is especially important during this pandemic. When I’m reading one of Aesop’s fables, I’m not thinking about increasing case numbers and vaccines.

I don’t know if doing this every night makes me any wiser, but I am absolutely sure they make me a happier man.    

   - Jim Busch