Happy September–and autumnal season–from the HORROR REPORT to you and yours..
Tonight’s backyard encounter is Halloween 3.. The flashing strobe light effect is shining bright in the night.
Happy Labor Day Weekend.
Tag: personal
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The creepy last night of summer: Blame the winter of 1994 for the early start
Depending on your school district, this is it..
For us here in Northeastern PA, we are ready. School clothes purchased. Ayden is “eagerly” “anticipating”.. It all begins..
Buses are being primed and shined for another year. Educators are lamenting the speed at which these summer months vanish. Parents are erratically pondering where school shopping should occur.. Kids, oh the kids.. they are suffering the most.
Watching those last minutes of the calendar tick away.. While on TikTok.
x x x
This is it, folks!
The final week of summer in most areas. School seemingly is beginning earlier than normal every year right?
There are old timers who often talk about their school days dazes.. when they went back AFTER Labor Day weekend!!
Now we have a bias on the Northeastern part of the United States. It may very well be different where you are.
We researched this and we found a number of previous news articles from decades past when school really did start after Labor Day.. It wasn’t until the late 90s that things changed–and it appears that the winter of 1994 can be blamed for all of it!
Back in that time frame, there were a LOT of school closings. The blizzard of 93 was one thing, but the winter of 1994 was cold. Snowy..Really really cold. Really really snowy with storm after storm after storm.
I recall it fondly, as Mr. Shappell in 7th grade Immaculate Heart became angered more and more each time another snow storm was predicted.. (winters after became largely warm for the final half of the 90s after the blizzard of 1996) ..
But that winter of 94 really messed with school planning.
An August 30th 1995 editorial in the Pottsville Republican seemed to suggest that the school calendars were completely torn to shreds by the previous winter. As a matter of fact, the fishwrapper reported that the summer of 1995 was hot (I remember this kindly sorta not really fondly.. grass was so dry it crunched like chips) .. The editorial penned, or at that time, typed:
“The pre-Labor Day start of classes is as result of the Winter of 1994, when a seemingly endless series of snow and ice storms wrecked school calendars and forces sessions to continue into late June.”
And so it was written.
Harrisburg also had one of its snowiest winters of all time..
Once schools went pre-Labor Day one time, it seemed like it continued, earlier and earlier each year.
IT WASN’T ALWAYS LIKE THIS
At one time in history, children did NOT have the summers off. Read that again. Yes. No summer vacation… no traveling. No Hershey Park. NO beach. No Mount Rushmore.
The public education system started in the 1800s..
Based on the location you lived in, calendars varied. In cities, schools were open all year–240 days!
In rural America, farming and the land forced schools to open for 5 months, or two sessions, in the winter and the summer.. In the fall, school closed so kids could help harvest.. Spring time they helped plant.
It was not until the early 20th century that urban and rural districts combined their efforts and created the 180-day school year. It started AFTER labor day and ended in June.
It continued that way for decades. By the 1990s, pre-Labor Day schooling began.. It has increased the ability to build in longer vacations for Christmas and Easter, but depending on snow days those days off start getting chipped away at during colder times.
I STILL BLAME THE WINTER OF 1994 FOR ALL OF IT
It seriously is when it all changed.
So let me take you back. . . I was in grade school.. and yes, like all dorky kids like me, watching winter patterns and watching Weather World on PBS at the time. Oh those fond memories of my strange childhood.
I was also loving Rooftop Weather on WYOU with Barry Finn while all the other adults were glued to Tom Clark.
Barry Finn was extraordinary that year, he was rare. He loved winter. He loved the snow. Other forecasters pooh-poohed it while Barry just shivered on the rooftop up at the Scranton studios giving Northeast PA their daily dose of scary blizzard forecast in 1994.
As a matter of fact, Barry Finn warned people in September of 1994–back when kids still started school after the Ashland ABA parade.
The TIMES LEADER wrote this on September 3, 1994:
Coat the East Coast in nasty ice storms.
“Oh, you don’t want to know,” said psychic Peg Verity Barber of
Wilkes-Barre. “It’s going to be a devastating winter, not snow as much as ice.
It’s because of global changes, and the tilting of the earth’s axis.”
Wallop the region with snow.
“Meteorologically speaking, there’s no way to know,” said Barry Finn, chief
meteorologist at WYOU-TV in Scranton. “But I’m going out very soon to buy a
snow blower.”Vince Said it Would Be Like This Sweeney also got an honorable mention with this quote:
Weatherman Vince Sweeney of WBRE-TV dismisses the hoopla. “I’ll tell you
about this winter: it’s coming,” he said. “If you don’t like the weather,
move.”So that is it..
A winter in memory to blame for what we have now? Sure some will surmise it has to do tiwh tourism, jobs.. whatever.
It has to do with weather. Weather changes us culturally and economically. And in 1994, it changed when children’s melodrama of nightmares would begin.
May God bless the students about to journey into a new school year.
And may God forever bless the soul of our dearly departed Barry Finn, who passed away in 2020..
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The horror weekend before school
Saturday night. The final burst of childhood freedom and stress free hours for parents. Sunday shopping better occur if you didn’t already.
Morning bus schedules in full swing Monday.
It is the best of times and the worst of times..
These images from Nightmare on Elm Street part 2 always bring back that nostalgic horror of the final weekend of summer ..
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It was a beautiful day at the Mütter Museum!
Sunday was a mid-summer hot and beautiful day at the Mütter Museum..The location officially boasts that it is “America’s Finest Medical History Museum.” .. And that is very true.
It is highly recommended you go next time you’re in or around Philadelphia.
You will not be sorry, if of course you’re like us an into that macabre and creepy sort of thing.
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The life and times of a beautiful Mother
The past few weeks have been traumatic.. for body and soul.
Apologies from the deepest part of my heart on a lack of material and updates on this site. But other tragic circumstances befell a family..
Covid struck hard .. we were so careful. Vaccinated.. all of the precautions. But it hit hard.. Family even ended up being hospitalized ..
In the midst of this virus induced chaos, my mother was succumbing to her final days on this planet.
After a tremendously difficult long goodbye due to Alzheimer’s, +Sharon reached for the heavens when she peacefully stopped breathing on the morning of November 11 at 4:12 am..
After several weeks of hospitals and ICUs and tear-drenched meetings with doctors who were describing a proverbial brick wall of medical problems, my mother entered hospice and her suffering ended.
Before it did, before her final breath, a bed-side meeting took place. The deepest parts of my soul poured out to this mighty matriarch of the family.. she couldn’t talk at the end but her piercing green eyes told her story. She stared at my while I spoke, she stared at others in the family through my phone as they did, too. Her eyes teared at times, lit up when she heard her husband (perhaps she wanted to throw a few cusses out there at the end but couldn’t) and she listened.. She wanted to get audible at a few times. I hugged her the best I could without causing pain. The emotional pain was annihilating.
By the time I left the room, a hurried flurry of nostalgia rushed back into my brain. Every single Christmas and holiday.. every birthday. That moment she picked me up in Homesville after a significant event.. each and every time bad day needed to be explained and she was the shoulder to cry on.. It all rushed back so hard, so viciously.
When you think there are no tears left to come out, buckets are still waiting to fall.
From those I talk to, those who lost parents already, I am now in the club.
There is something very lonely and immediately different. It’s a palpable loneliness that on one hard seems normal and natural, but on the other just seems unfair.
She is not suffering now. Dementia, my friends, causes suffering.
Her mind and body were strong for my Mom’s entire life.
Alzheimer’s is a long, unfair goodbye. It is just plain awful..
But through it, somehow my mom kept her fiery personality. Her humor was profound. She had the quickest wit of anyone I’ve ever known. I try to emulate it in life but falter in comparison. And even during her final years, when her mind was slipping more and more, she could leave everyone in stitches with sarcastic comments and a belly of laughter. That part of her personality never vanished.
Her friends and family had a good run. But it didn’t happen in spite of her.. it happened because of her. Every day of someone’s life was touched by my Mother since she was born. Her impact was significant.
While from a small town in Pennsylvania and not amounting to fame or fortune, her life was consequential. It affected countless others. She mattered. And the memories of her do, as well, the celebration of life when it occurs will, too.
May +Sharon rest in eternal peace. She died a Christian Catholic.
Right about now she’s cracking jokes at the pearly gates.. she is remaking heaven in her own image! And she even be having her first Pinochle party with a great friend in 40 years..
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A burst of colors during the season of darkness
Another Halloween season is here, and with it comes the traditional photo of my son in front of the Ferris wheel at Knoebels in Elysburg Pennsylvania..
Some other imagery from the October night..
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The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight
As this post is written, there are only 5 days left until Christmas. That is four shopping days. four/five food prep days.. Six stressful days of work, COVID-19 fears, and also wrapping. Santa can’t do it all, after all..
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. The night of Christmas that is…
That is one sentence from the famous Christmas song O little town of Bethlehem. The song was written in 1868 by Phillips Brooks, a rector of Philadelphia, after a trip to the Holy Land and seeing the nighttime Bethlehem from the hills of Palestine. When he returned he had his church organist, Lewis Redner, write the melody for the Sunday school choir.
It’s been a beloved Christmas classic every since.
O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
Hopes and fears are met this Christmas season.. Most states and nations are seeing COVID-19 restrictions, some are decrying government overreach and calling officials grinches who stole Christmas. Others are praising the lockdowns and hoping that Christmas 2021 could be close to “normal” again. The debate is fierce.. there is so much misery throughout the entire planet as the scourge of the pandemic shakes nations and causes hospital surges just before the season’s greeting..
But at the same time vaccines are now becoming available. Hope. But major news networks have reported of reactions, such as one nurse fainting after receiving it, and others experiencing elevated heart rates. Fear.
2020 was like many other year. Tumultuous and divisive. But this one seemed to not only hit us hard but rot us to our cores. It was rancid with toxic drama, each and every day in your morning fishwrapper or your TEE VEE.. All with the expressed purposely of seemingly dividing us even more than we were.. If that is possible.
We knew 2020 would be awful. The election and all that. But we didn’t know we would be faced with a global virus .. that one kind of took us off guard, didn’t it.
Hopes and fears… Through all the years,
Are met with thee tonight.
And after the past 12 months, with fever pitched arguments raging over fevers, not one of us knows the future, has the magic answer, or can predict what the hands of time will share with in 2021. We are spectators in this global game. Faced with fears and hopes, we can choose the mental path we want..
Lockdowns and stress have caused chaos in our personal lives. The religious will look to that star of Bethlehem and see hope. They will see intuition, and they will see promise. Others may see just a natural course of space and time meeting at the right moment. Pure coincidence. Pure luck, and nothing more.
What do you see…
It reminds me of the movie SIGNS, one of M Night Shymalan’s strongest films. There is one important scene where Mel Gibson’s character is explaining what humanity will think as lights in the skies appear globally and aliens make themselves known. Hope? Or fear.. the age old question that the LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM so eloquently captures.
HOPES AND FEARS THROUGH THE YEARS
We have been through change and chaos and rampages before.. 12 months have done us justice..and sometimes harm. Christmas has always felt like that summary of the year, the final period of time is which we could take a brief break and try wrapping out heads around the whirlwind of the past few months prior.
There were other times in history where we were challenged in the hope vs fear department.. The Christmas of 2004 particularly stands out. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami occurred at 07:58:53 in local time on 26 December, with an epicenter off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. It was an undersea megathrust earthquake that registered a magnitude of 9.1–9.3 Mw, reaching a Mercalli intensity up to IX in certain areas.. Back in 2004, we reported that Christmas Day ended in a disaster..
We reported these awful facts:
The wall of water was 30 feet high!
Cars, people, and homes in the sea…
We can turn to local papers to see how other Christmas front pages reported the news of the days, with fears and hopes displayed properly.. We will go local on this one.
50 years ago, the 1960s ended with assassinations and war, malaise and a Hong Kong Flu pandemic.
The POTTSVILLE REPUBLICAN front page talked about how the government was in damage control over a vast civilian spying program being revealed… sound familar?
The dawn if the Reagan era brought a new hope in 1980, forty years ago .. The same paper spoke about hope during the Christmas season. The importance of dinners.. the traditions. Maybe it was those Americana Reagan ads of the 1980 campaign .. With a Charlie Brown comic to help.
1990 brought some fear.. The Gulf War run-up was beginning and the world was on edge about what would occur.. the local paper brought that to the forefront with hopes that troops would come home safety from the Middle East. Little did anyone know it would be 40 years later with troops still there!
In 1999, just days before the Y2K fears would be blown pieces, the local paper went to Sheppton to watch Santa happily sliding. An ad appeared next to the photo talking about following the Y2K issue on the 2000 millennium site at the paper (something I recall working on when I worked there that year):
And finally, just ten years ago, the swine flu was done . . . and stores were still open (but closing).. as evidenced by this front page photo showcasing the Schuylkill Mall shoppers, with a closed store in the background:
And now 2020.. the headlines we now encounter are raging with insanity. Nothing seems normal… nothing.
Hope.
Fear. You decide…After all, you have to ask yourself as to what kind of person are you. Are you the kind of person who signs, who sees miracles. Or do you believe that people just get lucky…
Is it possible that there are no coincidences.
The Christmas light will shine in 2020! First time since the 1200s. Look up! And ponder.. and conjure.. and wonder.
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It has been a while since I posted.. there are a few reasons why..
While I type the post you are about to read, I am listening to an old school song of the disco age.. I recommend it as a background soundtrack while you take in the rest…
This was a really cold Thanksgiving, wasn’t it? … Charlie Brown was just about ready to be grounded for the Macy’s Day Parade until, finally, at the last minute he was set to fly. Without a coat! Just his bare arms out for Al Roker to see!!
This was a Thanksgiving, personally, to forget. But one to equally learn from.
My family and I, on the way to a carb filled dinner of Thanksgiving lure, smacked dead on into a deer. He did not live, and someone most likely had a gruesome surprise at the paper box BLACK FRIDAY morning… Bambi did not make it. Only three days until Deer Season and we already got one with the front bumper of our car…
On Thanksgiving night, my mother ended up in a hospital for a bad fall.. a few days later she is in a higher care unit and having some issues of mental and physical despair ..
I pray to the warriors of time that my Mom will be fine.. that whatever will be, will be.
And whatever will be, will actually be.
After all, we are not in charge.. we are not in the ‘know’ of what will occur..
Tonight, despite the sadness that has encompassed a family, I am thankful for so much that occurred in the past.. the strength my mother had and still does, the beauty inside and outside she had, and the strength she has possessed since I my younger days… back in the time when she would sing me to sleep while a quaint photo of Winnie the Pooh would rest above my bed..
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The life changing moments
I have had a bit of a writer’s block lately. I am going through a little bit of a transition myself.
The news couldn’t be more interesting. Donald Trump tweeting about FBI raids on his lawyer’s office due to a porn star scandal. How salacious can you get! A nude protester interrupting Bill Cosby’s trial! Mark Zuckerberg himself appearing before Congress to testify about giving away our secrets to third party companies and Russians! Disasters in the weather world! Major motion pictures! Winter storms!
And maybe it is just information overload.
I opened this post with a brief note about a friend, Kim, who passed away this week. When I met her my life was in a different place. Just after high school and a whole set of different people in my life than what exists now.
Seven year cycles.
There is a theory and belief among some that every seven years, your Chakra changes.
Seven seems to be the magic number. The time when your cells change. The time when your mind and spirit may as well.
0-7 Years – 7-14 Years – 14-21 Years – 21-28 Years – 28-35 Years – 35-42 Years – 42-49 Years – 49-56 Years – 56-63 Years – 63-70 Years – 70-77 Years – 77-84 YearsThe period I am in now seems accurate:
From the thirty-fifth to the forty-second year, depending upon one’s personality and what one’s circumstances allow, one begins to feel a new restlessness. In some degree a desire to share whatever one has gained through life with others comes to the surface.
Thus we find many successful business men building libraries, or aiding colleges and the arts at this period in their life. What has been developed or realised can be taken to greater subtlety during this period. This is almost like unfolding something, perhaps similar to the way a flower unfolds a bud that has been developing in earlier phases of its growth. This is when we reassess the results of what we are doing externally in our life. Our relationships, careers, habits and the ways we interact are all put under scrutiny and modified or changed. It’s a time of facing up to what does and what doesn’t satisfy us.
You may reach heights or realisation and creativity not touched previously. The profound breakthrough of ones innate genius that emerges around this time will no doubt be expressed in some degree. However, whatever is attained or realised will be enlarged and synthesised in later periods.
Perhaps this is why the writer’s block is coming to fruition. The culmination of a change.. Our relationships, careers, habits and the ways we interact are all put under scrutiny and modified or changed. It’s a time of facing up to what does and what doesn’t satisfy us.
Indeed it exist like that.. a time when, in this seven year cycle, a mall indeed is also being taken away from our very existence……memories written on walls that now crashed down.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhZy_RmgrXk/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=8&wp=1316#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A3680.000000000291%7D
As the seven year cycle evolves…
