Terry

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Posts by Terry

• 
  6

  SOUP HERB (A memory from 1980)

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  (culver city, california 1980).

  the tiny diner was empty - and it was a minute past noon!.

  i walked into the little shop chuckling to myself, that name!

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  Terry

  If you live in interesting places during interesting times - and just engage the most ordinary people ...it is astounding what you find.
• 
  6

  SOUP HERB (A memory from 1980)

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  (culver city, california 1980).

  the tiny diner was empty - and it was a minute past noon!.

  i walked into the little shop chuckling to myself, that name!

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  Terry

  Thanks, under the radar
  
  I've tried making great soup and it seems like the secret is leaving in the boiled fat of whatever meat you add. Sort of semi-disgusting until you remember we are creatures who have a distant history as natural species surviving by hunting feral animals and stalking the wild mushroom :)
• 
  6

  SOUP HERB (A memory from 1980)

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  (culver city, california 1980).

  the tiny diner was empty - and it was a minute past noon!.

  i walked into the little shop chuckling to myself, that name!

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• 

  Terry

  ______SOUP HERB______

  (Culver City, California 1980)
  
  

  The tiny diner was empty - and it was a minute past noon!

  I walked into the little shop chuckling to myself,
  That name! SOUP HERB...hilarious!
  
  

  In the corner at a small table
  a man in a chef's costume sat smoking an unlit cigar, flipping through a daily Racing Form.
  
  

  "Ah, good day to you, Sir" His mustache drooped as his smile beamed.

  "You're my first customer! You eat for Free today - but you must promise to tell all your friends how wonderful we are - (he added with a wink) even if it is lousy- which it never is!"
  ____
  
  AN HOUR LATER

  By the time I walked out of SOUP HERB...
  I had - as Rod Serling might well say, "Witness a man for whom success will never arrive even as his bright dreams slowly die."

  Herbert (last name now unremembered ...too many consonants) had not only served me hot soup with fresh rolls and brisk iced tea, he had dumped a platter filled with autobiographical remembrances on my soul as well.
  
  

  In short, he had come from Serbia - escaping from Kosovar Albanians hellbent on wiping out every living thing from his village. Parents: dead. Friends: dead.

  I confessed I knew nothing about Serbs or Albanians.
  He was unsurprised.
  
  "Nobody knows - or cares." Then he added, "Why should they?"
  
  

  He traveled West, joining a crew of sailors heading to America and landed in New York.
  He discovered a job in a delicatessen as a short order cook.
  Eventually he moved on, learning his trade as a Chef.

  He'd saved all his money for the dream: his own business.

  
  
  He was Catholic. Through his church he made contacts and found a landlord who felt sorry for him and granted one month's free rent. California was paradise - this would be an incredible new life - new beginning for him.
  ___

  The shop I was sitting in was cobbled together with his own two hands from scratch.

  "How'd you come up with the name SOUP HERB", I finally asked - expecting a delicious snippet of genius - a clever story or a shrug of modesty.

  "It's easy to make, it's delicious, there is a good profit margin - and - well, my name is Herb."

  I thought he was testing me. For a minute, anyway.
  
  

  "Are you trying to tell me "SUPERB" never entered your mind?"
  He stared at me ...

  "No - what is that - a word?"
  
  

  ____
  TWO WEEKS LATER
  
  

  I stopped by again and walked in to find the Chef sitting in the same spot in the corner - no customers around - but no smile this time.

  He slowly revealed to me how he had been robbed and the money he was saving for the new month's rent was gone.
  
  

  "I apologized to the little man with the gun. Yes, I did. I told him I knew how desperate life can make you --and how you'll do anything - no matter how awful - just to escape."
  _____

  A MONTH LATER

  The sign was down and Herb had vanished from the chalk board of dreams.
  Chalk dust on fate's eraser.
  
  

  This isn't a happy story but it's a true one.

  Funny thing about it -I can't get rid of it from my memory.
  Herb haunts me in quiet moments.

  He is a man with big dreams, a tragic past, an iron will to survive and when his chance at success comes - a little man with a pistol snatching it away ...
  BUT HE APOLOGIZES to the thief!

  Why?
  I think it is called "empathy".

  So...
  
  A LIFETIME LATER

  Today, every time I see the word "superb" I stop what I'm doing and feel my heart forming the ghost of a prayer for him...and I think - "No, it's SOUP HERB!"
  
  Heartbreaking and hilarious inside my head.
  Why not?
  
  A Serb named Herb? REALLY???

  
  
  A diner called "SOUP HERB" - REALLY?

  I dunno.
  God must have a sense of humor - that's all I can say about it.

  Now he's your problem too.
• 
  8

  (Disturbing) Thought For the Day

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  (disturbing) thought for the day.

  what's happens when you get really sick?.

  a. you get worse and worse, then - better and better till well.. .

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  Terry

  (Disturbing) THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

  
  

  What's happens when you get really sick?

  
  

  A. You get worse and worse, then - better and better till well.

  B. You get worse and worse, then - you die.

  
  

  That's a very Binary set of possibilities, right?

  
  

  Now, prepare to become fascinated!

  
  

  _____

  
  

  We don't know if we will be the person who gets better anyway or if we will die. This compels so many of us to seek treatment...just in case we are B instead of A.

  
  

  Now slow down with me here for a minute.

  Are you ready?

  
  

  If we are B instead of A, no matter what treatment we follow or refuse to follow...WE DIE.

  
  

  If we are A instead of B, no matter what treatment we follow or refuse to follow ---WE GET BETTER.

  
  

  Are you still with me?

  _______

  
  

  Alcoholics who quit Cold Turkey have a recovery rate of 13%

  success.

  But wait!

  Alcoholics who go through A.A. (Alcoholics Anonymous) have a recovery rate of 13% as well.

  
  

  We can't EVER know.

  We can only insert opinions into our conclusions based on how persuadable we are or how obstinate.

  _______

  
  

  Science is measurable and testable, right?

  But MEDICINE is not the same as SCIENCE because it is statistical and follows models based on sampling of groups and the extrapolation to a much larger population is SELDOM ACCURATE.

  
  

  **(How can I state that? Insurance companies pressure hospitals, doctors, and clinicians toward or away from certain ways of framing an illness with $$ rewards and penalties.)

  
  

  Individuals are (duh) individual in how each personally reacts to treatments which
  (see A. above) my be entirely redundant.
  
  

  If you are in the A category - IT DOESN'T MATTER what treatment (unless it is intrusive in a bad way) you receive.

  
  

  An A category person will attribute recovery to (X treatment) and the statistics will be corrupted in conclusion as to effectiveness.

  
  

  Conclusion?

  
  

  Each of us when afraid, is more vulnerable to persuasion.

  Quack medicine exists in that space.

  Quack science exits in that space.

  Quack politics exists in that space.

  
  

  "Faith Healers" are sought (for the A person) when they go from bad to worse.
  Insert the "healing" into the natural cycle of better and better and - Presto! - the Faith Healer gets the credit.

  
  

  WE CAN'T EVER KNOW what 'might' have happened had we NOT done
  (X treatment). Statistically it seems true (or not) but individually, there is no certainty.

  
  

  SPONTANEOUS REMISSION in cancer, for example is said to be recovery without treatment "for no apparent reason."

  That's an argument from ignorance, isn't it?

  
  

  See the problem?

  If you don't - then you've wasted your time reading this :)
  
  ___
  ** Under the head of
  "Absence of Evidence isn't the same thing as Evidence of Absence)

  Q: Are hospitals inflating the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths so they can be paid more?

  A: Recent legislation pays hospitals higher Medicare rates for COVID-19 patients and treatment, but there is no evidence of fraudulent reporting.
  
  Right now Medicare has determined that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital, you’ll get paid $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator, you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.
  
  NOTE: "Medicare says it does not make standard, one-size-fits-all payments to hospitals for patients admitted with COVID-19 diagnoses and placed on ventilators. The $13,000 and $39,000 figures appear to be based on generic industry estimates for admitting and treating patients with similar conditions."
  
  From their lips to God's ears.
  _____
  Re: Medicine and statistical analysis
  Laboratory mice used for testing the effect of drugs on humans (it has been 'discovered' and affirmed) have been inbred into a population of abnormally long-lived (telomeres) mice inadvertently.
  we have been over-approving drugs that cause chronic cell damage (because the mice are able to heal from it and so the effects are missed) while under-approving drugs that might have cancer-causing agents (because mice already have a high base-rate of cancer).
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0531556502000128

  
  
  
• 
  6

  Behold the face of JESUS!

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  eight years ago, i lived in a kind of "retirement" hotel.the palm house.no - it wasn't an old folks home.

  it was an ancient folks home.mostly senior ladies living off of faith and a dead husband's money.. my encounter with jesus came about in that environment.. once a week there would be a coffee and doughnuts get-together to get to know your neighbors.. well .

  .i got invited repeatedly, badgered, coaxed, pestered and i gave up.

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  Terry

  And then...there is the grilled Jeez(us) sandwich...
  https://www.techtimes.com/articles/196432/20170207/harambe-shaped-cheeto-sold-100-000-ebay.htm
• 
  6

  Behold the face of JESUS!

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  eight years ago, i lived in a kind of "retirement" hotel.the palm house.no - it wasn't an old folks home.

  it was an ancient folks home.mostly senior ladies living off of faith and a dead husband's money.. my encounter with jesus came about in that environment.. once a week there would be a coffee and doughnuts get-together to get to know your neighbors.. well .

  .i got invited repeatedly, badgered, coaxed, pestered and i gave up.

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  Terry

  Eight years ago, I lived in a kind of "Retirement" hotel.
  The PALM HOUSE.
  No - it wasn't an old folks home. It was an ancient folks home.
  Mostly senior ladies living off of faith and a dead husband's money.
  
  

  My encounter with JESUS came about in that environment.
  
  

  Once a week there would be a coffee and doughnuts get-together to get to know your neighbors.

  Well . . .I got invited repeatedly, badgered, coaxed, pestered and I gave up.
  "Just once!" I told myself.
  
  

  I went to one and made excuses each week after that until once again compelled to attended yet again.
  Walking in with an enlarged fake smile I greeted the crowd.

  One white-haired deary said to me, "I thought you were the one who died."
  
  

  I assured her I was not.
  
  

  As far as I could tell, there were only two (count em') TWO guys still alive and I was
  (presumably) one of them.

  But then, one day another fellow moved in who had retired with plenty of money (apparently). The gossip among the ladies emphasized his friendly 'generosity.'

  Those ladies just adored him. ($$)
  
  

  Well, one Sunday at the coffee thingy, I say hello to the new guy and he says to me all excitedly, "Have you seen Frankie's clock?"

  I thought that sounded like a straight line if ever I had heard one.
  
  

  "You did say: CLOCK, right?"

  "What'd you think I said?"

  I told him I didn't think a woman with a clock was quite newsworthy enough to warrant his enthusiasm, so I . . . well, never mind!

  (His name was Stan, by the way.)

  Stan didn't miss a beat.
  
  

  "Oh come one, come on--you gotta go with me--Frankie would be happy for you to see her big clock. You've never seen anything like it."

  The other folks were listening to Stan and they suddenly jumped in all at once.

  "Oh, that's right! YOU CAN SEE THE FACE OF JESUS in the wood grain!"

  I laughed.
  Shouldn't have.
  Stern faces of the others told me not to scoff. There were more of them than me, so . . .

  Cut to the chase.

  _______________________

  I end up, along with all the others, standing in Frankie's room.

  We formed a semi-circle around a replica Grandfather's clock.

  We probably look a bit like those ape-like hominids at the beginning of Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey.

  ***

  One by one the lady hominids lurched forward and touched the sacred "face" of phantom Jesus, "oohing and ahhing" and the others were purring like shaggy kittens with blue permed fur.
  
  

  "You see it?"

  "You do SEE it...right?"

  "Do YOU SEE it?"

  Each one of them was cocking their head this way and that like a puppy in a pet shop window.

  "Isn't it amazing?"

  I stared. I blinked. I squinted. I got closer, then farther away.
  
  

  My internal dialogue went like this, " ARE YOU NUTS?"

  _______________

  A few minutes passed and tempers were getting short with me.

  Some were making excuses for me, while others were suggesting I was Atheist.

  "Tell us what you think!" (It was a command.)

  _____________________
  
  

  "I have to tell you, I was really filled with doubt about your sanity - but now - I can say confidently - I NO LONGER DOUBT!"

  For some strange reason - this was taken as an affirmation.

  (Don't judge me too harshly.)

  I went with it. That's on them (Heh heh heh).

  _____________

  One by one the congregants drifted out and into the hallway all aglow and deeply spiritually satisfied.

  It was just Stan and Terry left, alone.

  Frankie had sauntered off to go back to the coffee and doughnut soiree' in the recreation room.

  Stan turned to me and said, "I was hoping you couldn't."

  "Couldn't what?"

  "Couldn't see it--I can't see a damn thing!"

  "WHAT? I can't see anything but rather ugly wood-grain. There is not a trace of the Lord Jesus - unless he looked like a knothole!"

  Stan gave me one of those inscrutable looks for a second and shrugged his shoulders.

  "I wish you had said something. They browbeat me for a solid hour yesterday until I gave in!"

  I smiled.

  "You never know -Maybe, this is exactly how Christianity spread in the first place!"
  ________
• 
  5

  "You Had to Have Been There"

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  from my memoirs ...______.

  .....moments later, thoughts inside my head still reverberated as though i were a bell struck into vibrations beyond control.

  i trembled.

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  Terry

  Thank you.
  
  Yes - Worldly people were the nicest people to me out of my entire life.
• 
  5

  "You Had to Have Been There"

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  from my memoirs ...______.

  .....moments later, thoughts inside my head still reverberated as though i were a bell struck into vibrations beyond control.

  i trembled.

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  Terry

  Not the same California any longer, I'm afraid.
  My son moved out there briefly as an animator and his rent was almost $3,000 per month in a one bedroom apartment!
  Oh, I missed the terrain dearly. I surely do.
  Not a day goes by ...
• 
  5

  "You Had to Have Been There"

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  from my memoirs ...______.

  .....moments later, thoughts inside my head still reverberated as though i were a bell struck into vibrations beyond control.

  i trembled.

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  Terry

  From my Memoirs ...
  ______

  "YOU HAD TO HAVE BEEN THERE ..."

  .....Moments later, thoughts inside my head still reverberated as though I were a bell struck into vibrations beyond control. I trembled. My hands were shaking. I was laughing and nodding my head: first “yes” and then, “no.” It happened. No, it could not have happened.
  And yet—it did!
  ______________

  CALIFORNIA circa 1979
  ______________

  It is mid-day. Lunchtime.

  Southern California sprawls like a lazy beachcomber glowing orange-pink from the dazzling sun.
  Above a trio of gliding seagulls hanging in the air. This is my land of milk and honey. I hoard each golden moment with a greedy smile, having left my bitterness with Texas in the rear-view mirror of my car. This isn’t Fort Worth, Cow town anymore—this is Playa del Rey, California.

  Yes-s-s-s!

  I departed work at the art studio in El Segundo early, enjoying the drive to the beach; savoring a feeling of relaxation stretching to an endless horizon.
  As I often do, I pulled up close to the embankment overlooking the sandy strand, only a brief jog away from the Pacific Ocean's mysterious, restless call.
  
  Dave Grusin’s Sweetwater Nights on the radio,
  as I munch cucumber sandwich squares, sipping ginger ale and steeping in the half-dream of sunlight.
  _________

  Back “home” in Ft. Worth, I was nobody and nothing. Today I’m on my way to being happy for the first time.
  As a Jehovah's Witness I was a janitor, telephone solicitor, day laborer on beer trucks, toiling for pennies in despair.
  Then, I woke up and got the hell out of Texas with a wife and 3 very small children in tow.
  I was working in Art, in an etching studio with new friends.
  Escape from a cult!
  California or Bust. That was 5 years in the past...bursting with satisfaction at this new life.
  
  

  ---Dream bubble popped suddenly ---

  I sat up out of my slouch and blinked through the windshield Something was happening.

  Out of the corner of my peripheral vision, there was motion. A flurry of movement tugged at my eyes. Something was up! My first hint that anything was going on arrived with slamming car doors.

  I surveyed the scene.
  Cars now stopping in the middle of the road as people dressed in business clothes, or shorts and a tank top, or slinky dresses and pearls all apparently lost their wits and abandoned whatever occupied their lives—but for what reason?

  I turned my head to face a wave of mass hysteria - finally reaching my senses, I found myself scrambling from the car seat, springing into the headlong herd dashing toward the ocean.

  "We are creatures in the wild", I thought, " we are spooked."

  A horrible possibility passed through me.

  “Somebody has drowned!” Oh God—do I really want to see that?
  “What if it is a child?” Horror gripped my heart—but the frenzy of the moment impelled me forward with all the others.

  I topped the gentle rise which hid the apron of sand from the surf—sprinting toward voices ringing in awe and wonderment. There it was—at that very moment—stopping me dead cold, beholding the incredible circumstances just up ahead.
  Stock still we all stood...
  I gasped—Oh My God!
  _____________

  HALF DEAD
  I beheld a throng of humanity reaching out, madly pushing their naked hands toward and against the glistening bulk of an enormous beached whale—impossibly marooned—likely half dead.
  
  All of us filled with a spontaneous rush of compassionate madness—instinctively!
  

  We surrounded it. I laid my trembling palms against this miraculous living being, pushing against its damp flesh as all of us summoned strength. Did we actually think it was possible?

  This was the largest living thing I’d ever beheld! Its panicked eye stared imploringly at our feeble efforts. I listened to the uncanny whoosh-whoosh of its labored breathing. We labored electrified and determined in our resolve to achieve this one impossible thing and not doubting it must be done.

  Somebody cried, “Boats are coming! Boats are coming!”

  As we heaved and hefted and grunted against the mammal’s wall of living flesh, more and more of my fellow creatures arrived. We were as a swarm of ants bent to the task of rescuing an elephant.

  I turned my head to behold an extraordinary mixture of old and young, wealthy and down-and-out, ordinary humans stretching out arms—pale or tanned—freckled or porcelain, as though about to seize hold of the secret of life itself balanced on the threshold of eternity.

  How could we know what to do?

  Moments before, hadn’t boundaries and walls and fences blocked our connection with each other? Where exactly were we in the Family of Man, the Eco-system of Mother Earth—the bond of Nature itself?
  Wasn't the answer all around me?

  The natural goodness of humanity suddenly revealed itself as no hollow fable to disbelieve any longer. We had not been summoned, seduced by rhetoric, or cajoled by false promises of reward. Each of us—all of us had been thunderstruck toward a purpose written in our bones: We survive together or die alone. If you save one living thing—you save the world entire.
  
  

  Several boats arrived and towlines were secured to the narrow section of the creature’s tail.
  My conscious mind dissolved into final efforts.
  Hundreds of hands pushed, pulled, and grappled as the taut ropes stretched to the breaking point, and boat engines strained to limits unknown.
  I beheld this staggering crew of humanity welded into a unity of purpose one last time—searching with my artist’s eye for details to be etched into memory for the dark times yet to come.

  Two little girls in party dresses, spattered with mud, squealed at the adults close by.
  “Help him—Mommy—help him!”

  Executives in expensive suits, derelicts reeking of cheap wine, blue-haired grandmothers, housewives, out-of-work starlets, throngs of teens, tattooed body-builders, and every other sampling of our species—were bound in spirit to the task at hand.

  And then—it was over!
  Just -like - that.
  ____________

  Straightaway, the orca flipped front to back, heading out to sea with a gaggle of frantic fishermen cutting at their ropes lest the loosed ocean mariner become tangled or restrained.

  As quickly as it had begun, it ended.
  ________

  All of us stood panting like workhorses at the end of a day of plowing. One by one, we looked up at each other, toward a dawning realization of mystery.
  What had just happened to us?

  We started to cry, one by one—weeping as though the face of God had appeared to us all in a cloud. Then, we paused and laughed hysterically. Children screamed in celebration, jumping up and down in the sand. This was our proud, jubilant exultation celebrating life itself!

  It seemed as though nobody really wanted to leave the scene.
  We somehow knew—this had been our day to share a miracle we’d never know again. Gladdened hearts would slow in exultation and the luster of heightened experience would fade in radiance—eroded in the telling to those who could not possibly understand.

  Only a feeble :"You had to have been there."

  One by one, soaked to the bone, stragglers seem to blink and come to their senses. The so-called real world returned. As we separated, none of us could refrain from taking parting glances toward the horizon.
  What did any of this mean? Why had it happened?
  What greater lesson had been missed?
  ________

  I returned to my car and dug some spare clothes from the trunk; sand was in my nose, eyes, ears and hair. I smelled like the ocean. I smelled like . . . orca.

  I drove back along the Pacific Coast Highway in a euphoric daze of confusion, tears, and exhilaration; there was no place for it to go inside my head. I pulled over on the shoulder of the road and sat in stunned silence. I couldn’t move forward.
  I stared at my watch for the time—it had stopped.
  Was it my watch, or was it time itself?
  
  

  Here I was and everything had changed for me. Was it as simple a lesson as "We're all in this together?" Or, was it, "Don't get trapped?" I felt foolishly naive and incredibly wise all at the same time.
  
  In the cult of Jehovah's Witnesses, in almost twenty years, I had accomplished nothing as wonderful as those few precious moments of exertion with total strangers in rescue of that fabulous sea creature!
  THESE PEOPLE - these WORLDLY people's raw instinct was beautiful!
  I had been taught to see them as things about to be destroyed.
  I had been a fool and fooled into an empty gesture of rescue all that time.
  But today -THIS DAY - I came to understand how very empty my JW life had been.
  
  

  That afternoon I simply could not return to work from what had started as a casual lunch overlooking the beach and ending as this miracle.
  Yet—I returned to work anyway.

  I began excitedly telling my friends what had occurred...
  but all they could see and feel was how bad I smelled and how much sand I was tracking into the art studio.
  I was laughable. Now I can laugh.

  I took the rest of the day off—to the relieved blessings of one and all.
  Back home, it took hours of scrubbing before I was back to ...NORMAL.
  Normal?

  That was the saddest moment of all. My Miracle on the sand can never be
  experienced in the telling of it. It is all mine, a secret feeling centered inside.
  You had to have been there.

  ________________

  From my new book: MEMOIRS OF AN AMNESIAC
• 
  13

  Call Me MacGyver!

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i rode my bicycle to the corner gas station / convenience store.i couldn't find my regular mask - so - i improvised.as i walked up to the young lady clerk, her eyes grewwide wide wider and she said:"that's a um very unique face mask you have there, sir.

  "i grinned invisibly.

  "yep, i actually made it from an old pair of purple boxer shorts.

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  Terry

  Well, ya know - sometimes I think I've just simply lived too long to care about
  common sense anymore.
  Watch the entire world pulled out from under is fascinating to me more than scary.
  I don't know who or what bumped the "reset" button - but it is happening.
  
  The real crazies: Leaders who are so easily living in a Fantasy Bubble; printing more money than has ever existed, pretending we'll go back to 'normal' and worrying about the Stock Market, etc.
  
  Nothing IMHO is ever going to be the same and we may well find it's ALL up for grabs.
  
  So, I have lapsed into a devil-may-care attitude.
  Life is now a kind of madcap TV series I can't stop watching.
  The characters and episodes are beyond belief and nobody knows who's writing the damn thing.
  But the ending? I predict it will be unpredictable.
  
  Schitt's Creek Pt. 2
  
  Just think: all those wack-a-doo Preppers were right all along.
  Makes you go, "Hmmmmmmmm..."