We are who we are and we know what we know. We all have different points of view and come from different backgrounds. We all wear different shoes. It’s never been more painfully clear. But that’s not a bad thing. It’s only a bad thing if we start to suppress some points of view in favor of others.
So everything is by video now. I was on one of those zoom meetings today and while we were doing business one of the people at the meeting passed a political comment. That’s alright because s/he is entitled to his/her point of view. What caught my attention was the ease with which the comment was passed based upon the assumption that everyone at the meeting agreed with the politics. So you might be guessing the sides when I say that if the comment went the other way, you know, in the other political direction, it would have been received with anger and the person making the comment would have been ostracized.
That’s the part that bothers me. It’s okay to put a Bernie sign on your lawn or a Democrat bumper sticker on your car. But if you put a Trump sign out or a Trump bumper sticker on your car you have to worry about your house being defaced and your car being vandalized.
Makes me wonder if this is America anymore, the America where you are free to state your opinion.
With this virus, we’re in uncharted waters. You would think that the government would be able to be unified and work together for the benefit of the American people. Sadly, at least from one side, that’s not the case. I don’t know if the stimulus bill is a good one or not. Not really. I know that there are varied opinions. I don’t know if we could have done much better in fighting this virus or not. Seems to me that those in charge and up there making the real decisions are doing their very best. Seems to me that their critics are more intent upon tearing them down than helping the crisis get solved.
That said, down in the trenches, the American people are all pulling together. They don’t want to hear the political bullshit. They want to get the facts, not the spin. They want to be able to stay safe and help others to do so too, for the most part. (There are always idiots in the crowd.) They aren’t asking older people they are helping their political opinion, again for the most part.
Seems to me that the divide-and-conquer mentality of our leaders on the left is out of place in this time of crisis. Seems to me that rational leaders who care about those they represent would be sitting together and brainstorming on how to beat this virus with the least overall damage to our population and our economy. Is that what you see from Nancy or Chuck?
So come on people. Come on politicians. Work together for our benefit, not your political power and control. Take your heads out of the swamp and look to the sun.
By Peter Weiss
Bill felt really pleased at the chef’s confidence in him. He also felt really pleased because this seemed to remove any doubt about his job security. He didn’t say anything, but he was thinking he was surely gonna take it.
“It’s about whether or not you want it,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said after a while. He looked at Bill. “We want you to stay in The Falstaff Room because you’re really good at it. What’s been missing there is nothing more than a regular cook who can handle the business and keep it consistent.”
“But you can also be an assistant to the banquet chef,” the chef said. “And me too. We can start to work things out so we can have you where you’re most useful to us. It’s good for us and we’ll make it good for you.”
“Okay with me,” Bill said.
“Good,” the chef said. “I’ll be talking with the F&B director next week. When we get it started, not only will you have more hours and more overtime hours, but we’ll be adjusting your hourly rate too. Handsomely.”
“See,” the banquet chef said, “good for me and good for you too.”
They went to work. It wasn’t hard work in the sense that it was difficult or complicated. But it was hard work in that it was arduous, tedious and non-stop. They had a lot and a lot of chicken breasts to sauté. They had the filet of sole to roll. The fish would be one of the last things to get done.
First task and most arduous was browning the chicken breasts, five hundred of them and a few more. Like the time before, Jimmy Banquet Chef, Victor and Bill each stood over a big roasting pan. They started in the back of the pan and worked across, row after row, the breasts lined up like soldiers. About the time they had the last ones in the pan it was time to start flipping the first ones in.
This was not an exact science. The heat under the pan was not always uniform. Most often it was not uniform and that meant not all of the breasts browned evenly. Herein was where experience and skill entered into the matter. You had to keep track of the ones not ready to turn and make sure to get back to them before they burned.
Then there were the pops and splashes. Always the pops and splashes.
Similar to how the pace went in preparing a banquet start to finish, doing the chicken and beginning the flipping started slowly. You put the breasts into the hot oil somewhat gently, careful not to create your own splash. The flipping started slowly, but then the pace increased until the work was rapid. You flipped one, then the next, then the next, skipped the ones that needed skipping because they weren’t ready and then came back around to them. All the while you hoped that a pop did not occur just where or next to where you were reaching. This was why here they wore long-sleeve chef’s coats. This was to save the cooks’ arms from burns. A grease splash or pop that splashed grease up on your arm meant an immediate burn and most often a second-degree burn which was a blister. If you carelessly wiped the grease off, you took off the skin too.
Bad enough Bill had burn stripes up his arm from the Garland. Working a broiler invariably meant brushing your arm along the top or the bottom, and each touch left a stripe.
Stripes and pops and burns, oh my!
By Peter Weiss
Then the girls. They too were something he’d never anticipated. He went through it again. How many times could you have pussy thrown in your face and say no until you finally gave in? How many times could you be touched, felt up, goosed, fondled, until you fondled back?
That how it happened? He asked himself this. Then he thought about Mary, and he was the one who did that.
“You gonna be standing there all day?” Jimmy Banquet Chef asked him.
“Why?” Bill said a bit defensively. “Have I been here long?”
“I don’t know,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “I just came down. I’m looking for that worthless partner of yours.”
“He’s working today?’
“I asked him to. We have that one for three hundred tonight. We have two others this afternoon, the one for a hundred-fifty and one for six hundred. The six hundred one is some political thing, but it’s a simple and cheap one, chicken breasts and fish, about five hundred chicken. The night one is roast tenderloin. I want my cousin to do the vegetables. You, me and Victor will do most of the cooking. We have a full complement of stewards and pantry help, so we’re all set. I want you to come into the office for a minute before we start.”
Bill finished dressing and just as he and Jimmy Banquet Chef were leaving the locker room Jimmy G showed up. He was late and clearly not embarrassed about it. Seemed as if he didn’t even care. He told his cousin he’d be up in a minute. That minute turned out to be a half hour later.
The chef was already in the office. When Bill and Jimmy Banquet Chef entered, first thing the chef did was tell them that The Falstaff Room set a new weekly volume record.
“Not bad for your first week,” the chef said.
“Kid did real good,” the banquet chef said.
“Really well,” the chef said. “But it was the advertising. And now I’m hoping that handling it the way you did, Bill, will keep the people coming.”
“The waitress outfits help a lot too,” Bill said.
“They sure don’t hurt anything,” the banquet chef said.
“Next week’s a new week,” the chef said. “Cook some extra tenderloins today and we’ll run them as a special tomorrow.”
“Got it,” the banquet chef said. Then they turned to the day’s business.
The chef and banquet chef pulled down the day’s menus. They also pulled down the day’s work schedule. There were two schedules, one for the kitchen, one for the wait staff.
“We don’t do the dining room,” the chef said. “They give us that and I don’t spend any time on it. None. It is what it is. Jimmy and I do the kitchen staff, and as you see it’s all broken down.
Bill looked at it. He saw the breakdown: cooks, kitchen stewards, pantry. Simple enough.
“We don’t do the stewards,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “You met the head steward. He does them and that includes all the cleaning staff, which is his, except for the steam-cleaning crew. They are a private company.”
“We wanted you to start thinking abbot this,” the chef said. “I do talk with the chief steward to make sure he’s got everything covered. We want you to learn the kitchen scheduling.”
“I’ve only been here a week,” Bill said. “I know I’ve said this before, but I was thinking maybe you should make sure I’m the one you want for this stuff.”
“What makes you think we’re not sure?” the chef asked.
By Peter Weiss
I’m getting up there in age, well into the high-risk group for the corona virus and that weighs heavily on my mind. But this isn’t about that. Not really. This is more about thought.
Lately, more often than before I’ve been having thoughts about how events and things have changed my life. I’ve been wondering what I would have been if this or that had happened or if I hadn’t done this or that. It’s not so much in the form of regrets although honestly there are some regrets. It’s more in the form of wonderings. I wonder what I would have been if this hadn’t happened and then that had happened because this happened, etc.
Some things happened. Some things I did. Some things happened and then I did some things because those things happened. Maybe I would have done other things.
Who knows?
So I was out for a good walk today. One of the things I’m doing since I’m working from home and home a lot more now is trying to get back into shape. I was a long distance runner for about twenty years, until my hip started to bother me. That ended up in a hip replacement and the hip replacement kind of meant no running, and I got out of shape. Now my other hip is an issue, but not so bad yet, so I’ve been working little by slowly at getting back into shape.
A couple of minutes out on the road walking and I started into some of those what-if thoughts. And I thought to myself, don’t do that. It was a fair thing to say to myself. Some things, sometimes, are just not worth going into, end up not being productive at all.
And that’s the point of this. It’s a simple point: Don’t do that.
It kind of applies across the board. We should not be playing politics at this point in time. Don’t do that. But I spoke about that last time.
So the next don’t do that is second guessing. No one really knows the truth of what is going on with the covid virus. It’s pretty sure China isn’t telling us the truth about their numbers. Other countries don’t measure as we do and don’t know what we know. And in all fairness, vice versa. Altogether we aren’t that great. Our numbers as they flash on the screen do not project a real picture of what is going on. If you listen to the full reports of the people studying this, you get great variables in the projections and vastly different scenarios.
So don’t cheat. Don’t stockpile medical equipment. Don’t sell equipment out from under our first responders to make a bigger profit.
Don’t second guess what our leaders are doing. Those in charge of states, cities and the country are doing the best they can with what they have. We may not agree with everything and we may not like some things, but they have no reason not to be. So don’t sit in the background and take cheap shots, don’t second guess. We’re in uncharted waters here, so make the least negative assumptions.
We are who we are and we know what we know. We all have different points of view and come from different backgrounds. We all wear different shoes.
Don’t do that: don’t be part of the negativity.
Look to the sun.
By Peter Weiss
So what was a hundred percent? That was a good question. It was always a good question. As his life went on, Bill would discover that there were lots of good questions.
This question and thinking about it did not stop him from keeping her close to him. If anything, wondering if he really loved her, if there was even such a thing as true love, and if there was what it looked like, caused him to keep her closer and to do his best at that moment to make her feel really loved. But he wondered, and he wondered if she could feel what he was thinking. He wondered what she felt.
They didn’t talk much as they lay there. She asked about tomorrow and if he was going to be working a lot of Sundays. He didn’t have an answer for that, not yet, but he told her he’d work as much as he could. He held her really tight when he told her he never wanted to have to borrow money again. When he told her this he was thinking about how her father had turned him down when he’d asked for a loan.
Just how it happened that he was going back there was another question. It was tied to Rosie and Edelgarde, to feeling whatever it was that he was feeling. Maybe, he thought, he should have gotten out of town.
Well, maybe I should have he thought as he stood in front of his locker buttoning up his chef’s coat. Today was all banquets and as per what the banquet chef had said when he first saw him they might get out around nine after the last party was served and things were put away.
Back there wasn’t so far back. They needed a new car, not a new one of course because they couldn’t afford anything near new. Mr. Bowman had offered to loan him the money but Bill hadn’t wanted to borrow from his boss. In the end, he had to do that anyway because her father — and he had the money too — wouldn’t give him a loan.
Bill had borrowed rent money from his brother for several months in a row and while he’d paid it back, it had made him uncomfortable. He’d borrowed his last trimester’s fees from his father as well. When his father had given him the money, he made him promise he’d stay away from the demonstrations. Bill had had every intention of keeping that promise.
The road to hell…
Not so long ago he’d been on that road. It was etched in his memory, the meeting with his professor who was supposed to look at his poetry, the professor wanting to see what was going on at the demonstration. Well, what was happening at the demonstration was that Bill, person that he was, ended up busted and down and out.
The promise was why he couldn’t tell his father he’d been arrested and needed help, why he had to fight through it all on his own with no funds and just the help of a friend who was able to hook him up with the legal defense fund.
“Get out of here you got goddamn hippies.” That’s what the bartender at The Clock said to The Doors. Well, Bill thought, that’s what he was to the plainclothes FBI agents and then the Columbus cops who’d worked in tandem to make the arrest and take him away.
How far away they took him, he thought. He was sure they had no idea. He was sure they didn’t care, had no thoughts about it, never even considered the ramifications of what they were doing. At the time, Bill had no idea how far away he was going either.
But here he was only about a year and a half later in a hotel doing banquets and restaurant work, working all the time in all sorts of places he’d never imagined he’d ever go, in a whole new universe.
By Peter Weiss
It’s pretty strange out there. Really. I did some grocery shopping this morning, early, during the senior hours. People are strange and getting stranger. I saw one man muttering under his breath. Some people were wearing masks and some were wearing masks and gloves. We all need to be careful and we all need to be comfortable in how we feel careful. When I got home, I stood and wiped down everything I bought, piece by piece.
It’s just strange, and the longer we go in this, the more strange it will get, I think. Like everyone else, I don’t know. I can’t say anymore with any certainty what it will be like tomorrow.
Today is my wife’s birthday. I won’t say how old she is. It will be a quiet one, like always, maybe more quiet than most.
So this will be short. I just have one political thing to say and that is that this is no time for politics. Won’t name any names or mention any sides. This is only a time for us as a nation to be coming together and to work together to get through this. Most people are doing the best they can. In general, it takes a long time to build something, but it only takes a moment to tear it down. If you’re one of those tearing it down, it’s a time to stop that and start building.
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
And so it goes.
Just one other thing in this little rant. No one really knows what they’re doing in this. We’re all winging it. If you’re trying, great. If you’re playing your point of view and you’re political agenda, cut it out. Most of us don’t have real information and much of what even the experts have may not be the truth.
Finally gratitude. I woke up this morning. I’m grateful. I went shopping and there was food and other supplies in the stores. I’m grateful. My family is alive and awake and busy now, and I’m grateful. Some people are really trying to get us through this. I’m grateful. I don’t agree with everything, but I live in a country where I don’t have to agree and can state my opinion. I’m grateful.
Gratitude and Positivity. Make the least negative assumptions and look to the sun.
Fun with words and words for fun.
By Peter Weiss
They were in The Clock, that restaurant/bar in downtown Columbus the night before his wedding. He was with his father and his brother, and this was, of all things, his bachelor party. Wasn’t much of a party. They sat at the bar and ate there and then had a few drinks. None of them could possibly know it, but this would be one of the last times the three of them were alone together like this.
So they ate. And they drank. No one got drunk. Bill told the story about Jim Morrison and the Doors, how it was late-night after they’d played at the Civic Center and the bar was locked up because it was getting to after-hours. Only people already inside could be served and last call had already been announced. This was where the bartender jumped over the bar with his shotgun in hand and stood at the door yelling “Get out of here you goddamn hippies.”
It was a story, a true-life story. He told it with no embellishment and only a little extra narrative in which he told about all the girls inside screaming at the bartender, telling him who those hippies standing outside those locked doors were.
“Man, that’s The Doors at the door.”
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
His father, Big Red One in WW II, three and a half years a POW in Stalag IIIB Furstenberg, born into Orthodox Jewry and even if not by choice an Orthodox Jew until he went to the army, wasn’t going to come to this wedding.
Sitting at the bar with his father and brother, getting a bit high on the booze, Bill remembered the phone call. He stood in a phone booth talking on a pay phone telling his father he was getting married and they were doing it Memorial Day weekend. He was calling to invite his father and also to let him know that his wife-to-be wasn’t Jewish so they were having a civil ceremony.
So there it was on the table and his father’s first response was that he wasn’t coming.
“Yeah, okay, but I’m still getting married.”
The shock shouldn’t have been so great. His brother had married a non-Jew and so what?
End result of the call, bottom line, was that his father was invited and Bill hoped he’d come and that was that.
Same shit as forever with his father. Everything was a “no,” an “I forbid,” and then you had to fight him (not literally) to prove it was what you really wanted. That’s what had happened with football, with going away to school which Bill didn’t do at first. Nope. He’d done his first semester at Queens College, CUNY, and only then had he gone away.
Jesus Christ, Bill thought laying there next to his wife, stroking her softly on her arm after having just made love to her after having turned down Rosie and Edelgarde who wanted to take him home with them to shower, yeah, right, he thought, to shower.
Ain’t that a kick in the head?
It was a kick in the head.
At the last minute his father did come, but his step-mother stayed home. Maybe it was because of her that he and his brother went away from home and then went on to marry non-Jewish girls. Wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last time he thought this.
“It’s not too late,” his father said, this out of nowhere. “If you’re not sure, get the hell out of town.”
Say what? Bill didn’t say anything. He looked at his father. Bill was stunned, shocked, flabbergasted. He remembered wondering, thinking, if only momentarily, how is one ever to be sure? Really? Truly? That love at first sight, it’s all a crock of shit.
Get out of town, he thought. The idea wasn’t so bad. He didn’t dismiss the idea off-the-cuff. Right then and there, for a moment, he actually thought about it. He actually considered it. Then he thought that if he was a hundred percent sure he would have simply dismissed the idea.
