I thought I would do an update on what's happening for the rest of the people who live in this park. The mayor has been surprisingly helpful to all people here. I'm impressed. I find it unusual that he has stepped up as much as he has because he's never struck me as anyone who would care what happens to these people. Unfortunately I have to say that some of my neighbors are taking advantage of the situation in a way that might come back and bite them. I understand why they're doing it, but not paying the rent for the remainder of the time they live here isn't going to help them get situated elsewhere comfortably.

One woman isn't paying her rent because the park owner lied to her and because of that lie she had some expensive work done. She owns one of the two newer homes here in this park. His father was still alive when she bought her 90x16 home back in 1995. He thought nothing of spending the money to upgrade a lot to accomodate it, even going so far as to move the home on it to another lot here at his own expense. The move gave that tenant the ability to move her home to a spot closer to her mother and father here so everyone was quite content. I have no idea what these bigger homes cost now but Anna paid $40,000 for hers in 1995.

This summer she decided she needed new doors on it and she wanted a deck. She had heard from the city bus drivers that this park was in danger of closing so she went and asked. She saw the owner and park manager outside working so she stopped and asked him if the rumors were true. She told him that she had decided on an expensive upgrade, but if she had to sell the home she wouldn't do it. She was afraid that she wouldn't get out of it enough to pay the lending company off if she had to sell it. He told her that it was just a rumor and he had no intentions of closing. She went ahead and had new doors put on and spent the money for a 10'x10' roofed deck. Two days after the work was complete she received her notice that the park was closing and she had to move.

When she approached the mortgage comapny they gave her a song and dance about not getting back what she owed on it and she would have to pay the balance. It's the usual scare tactic that they employ. The mayor helped her negotiate a price from the company that actually sold the home to her in the beginning and they will pay off the mortgage plus the price of the doors. If she had a time frame longer than 6 months she might have found a buyer that she could have made a little bit of profit on. Unfortunately, like many long standing tenants here she didn't have a lease that would have allowed her to stay until the end of July in 2008. She will be out by the end of this month so she didn't pay her lot rent this month. She figures that none of us are going to get our security deposits back so he's all ready been paid.

Now, all tenants have until the end of July in 2008 to move. There is a lack of empty lots at other parks in this area, plus there is a grant in the works to request monies from the states displaced mobile home owners fund. The existing park owner can not force the tenants to move until the grant has been approved or disapproved. The park owners ability to make money by charging the tenants who have to leave their home and then selling the steel has been interfered with as well. The mayor got the county waste management facility to waive their tipping fee and anyone who does have to leave their homes behind are to call him and he will arrange the demolition. The "Management" charges $2000 plus keeps the security deposit because to leave it to him to do it violates his rule that the tenant is responsible for cleaning the lot when they move. Estimated cost of demolition will be $250. Which can be paid WHEN the tenant gets his or her security deposit back. Not if they get it back, when they get it back. The problem is they won't get it back unless they pay their rent, and too many are not doing so. If Anna had only waited until the mayor could do his research she would have been in better shape. She didn't know there would be a change in the date we had to move and went ahead in order to be out by winter because some of us only had until January 31, 2008, or so we thought.

In one park owned by the family that owns this one, there is room to accomodate almost half of the tenants here. The problem is he has to spend money to create lots out of empty land. Which means septic systems have to be installed and pads must be put in. Along with electric and telephone. That particular park is in a town that has no codes governing the age of the mobile homes allowed in. He may have to bite the bullet and spend the money to upgrade for more of the tenants here than he really wanted to move to his other park. He also tried to decree that only one mobile home mover could be used to move our homes out of his park. That guy charges $1500 to $2000 to move trailers. The mayor found 2 movers that are much cheaper, and the names and phone numbers are in the packets we all received. I'm hiring the same guy that moved the trailer that twisted. He charges $500 to $750 depending on what we need him to do. Big difference there, and the other one is in the same price range so the prices are legitimate.

With the help of the mayor, all but 2 of the remaining tenants stand a much better chance of finding a place to move their homes to. Only 2 of the 37 remaining homes here can't be moved. They are 1960's homes with aluminum wiring which doesn't comply with codes. Those will have to be demolished. Five of my neighbors have left all ready. Of those remaining it's rumored that only 4 of us paid our rent and none of us will be here in October. If the rest of the remaining tenants don't pay rent, I don't think the owner has to provide them with trash pickup or snowplowing if they aren't out by winter. They believe they have the right to not pay rent because they've been evicted through no fault of their own. I'm not sure how that works, but I hope they don't find that they're getting into more trouble than they can handle. Time will tell.

Nothing in our lives is set in concrete. I said that to someone recently and they responded by telling me you have to die and you have to pay taxes. Both are constant and yet both are changeable. Our life expectancy increases yearly, yet there is no guarantee that we will fulfill our expectation. Paying taxes can change. The amount changes, and there is no guarantee that we will pay them on time. Most of us do, but there are those who don't. Having defended my statement and having convinced the other person that my statement is true I now must admit that it is false. There is one thing that is set in concrete and that is....everything changes.

The only constant in life is that nothing ever stays the same. Everything changes, in one manner or other. I've made 97 cent purchases, paid for them with a dollar bill and gotten back a nickle rather than the 3 cents I'm owed. I've frequented restaurants that have closed, shopped in stores that have changed their names and lived in houses that no longer exist. I was born with blue eyes and had strawberry blonde hair. Now my eyes are brown and my hair is mostly brown with some grey. You would think that we could keep the attributes with which we were born, yet we don't.

We view some changes as positive, pay raises, for instance. The birth of additional family members is usually considered a positive change. Making a decision to live a healthy lifestyle by exercising and eating healthier is also a positive change. Making new friends and in some cases replacing old ones can also be a positive change. Yet we resist change as if it were always something negative. We expect everything to be the same all the time and when something changes we rue the day. We sigh, we groan, we complain. Never helps, but we still complain. We don't like this or that anymore because it's not the same. Somehow we never seem to think that we need to give something a fair trial before we make our decision. Most of us just do not like change.

I'm guilty. Very guilty. Take this move for instance, I sit sometimes and stare out the window thinking that this view will not be available to me in another month. Yet what I'm looking at is nothing more than trees and grass and if I move over to another window I can look at the remnants of another tenants possessions that the park management didn't clean up when they demolished the trailer. There's a childs Adirondack chair with blistered and peeling paint. There's an old and broken bureau that hasn't weathered very well in the last year. There was a poorly built storage shed that blew over a few weeks ago in that terrible Friday night storm. All left to rot in the elements and looking pretty ugly if I do say so myself. None of that will go with me, and in the new place I will have trees and grass to admire from my windows. Yet, I was not happy when I found out I had to move. Aha! A lightbulb moment. Attitude adjustment ahead.

We cheat ourselves out of new experiences when we resist change. I grant that a lot of work is necessary, but nothing is worth having unless it's something we're willing to work at. Everything we deal with on a day to day basis has a positive and a negative side. We can choose to focus on the negative and cheat ourselves out of the positive, or we can take a deep breath and wade in. The Forrest Gump "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get" phrase just popped into my mind. Not everything I experience is going to be to my liking. Some of it will be less and some of it will be more. All of it, every last bit of it, will be different from what I'm used to, and I have no intention of wasting my time regretting what I've lost. I'd rather spend my time wisely exploring the possibility of what I might gain.

I just took this picture down off my wall to pack. It hung, until a few moments ago, on the dining room wall to the left of my computer. It's painted on a roofing slate that was removed from a building that was constructed in the early 1900's which would make it 100 years old, or very close to it. The contractor who redid the roof gave me a stack of 50 of these things, but only one of them was a workable piece. All the rest had nail holes far too large to keep the lacing knots on the front side of the piece so that it can be hung, or had more than two holes in it.

I thought of affixing some sort of hanger to the back of them with something like liquid nails, however experience tells me that the weight of each slate would eventually break away from the join and crash to the floor. With only one salvagable blank I decided to paint something for me on it. What you are seeing is not the complete piece, just the main event, so to speak because I scanned the piece itself rather than a photo, and it's larger than the flatbed of my scanner. After the move and getting everything back in place I'll try to remember to take a photo so that you can see the shape of the slate. It has a slightly arched top, one side of it is missing. Somehow, it added to the finished piece for me. For me, perfection is not necessarily synonymous with beautiful.

When I do something, I always try my best at it. This does not mean that I don't make mistakes, I'm human after all, but it does mean that I am giving what I have to give to the situation. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, it might be something simple like doing the dishes, or more complicated, like when I'm sharing the troubles of a friend. At that moment the task at hand is important and deserves my undivided attention. I would love to be able to say that I never had to rewash a dish, or that I've never had to ask a friend to hold on for a minute while I answer the phone. In a perfect world we would have it all right the first time. We wouldn't need to redo anything because we would have gotten it...perfect.

In a perfect world there would be no room for flaws. Erasers on pencils wouldn't be needed, white out wouldn't be needed. What would the people who work for those companies do for a living? No city or town would need a police force. Everyone would be making the right choices which means there would be no crime. Voting would be more than the difficulty it is now because every candidate would be just as flawless as the next, or the last for that matter. Perfection is not always beautiful. It can be plastic and boring.

The beauty of life, and nature, and people is that it isn't perfect. It has highs, it has lows. There is always room for growth, for improvement. No matter what we do, it can be a challenge or a burden depending on our frame of mind. No matter what our neighbors or friends do, we can choose our own paths. We don't need to march in lockstep to the music of the masses, we can dance to the beat of our own drum. We don't have to match our colors, we can wear white shoes after Labor Day. We each have our own sense of style. We each can choose our likes, our dislikes and who we want for friends. You know? I think I'll choose to hang my painting back on my wall and take it down to pack another day. I think it's beautiful, and it makes me smile.

From 1957 to 1963 American Bandstand was the afterschool program that most American households with both TV and Teenagers were tuned to. Hosted by "America's Favorite Teenager" Dick Clark, the show featured the latest in Rock and Roll acts, contests and local Philadelphia kids dancing to the music. I learned to Jitterbug watching that show. Of course it was a pretty tame version. Mr. Clark wouldn't allow the lifts, bumps and wild swings that dance was famous for. Big boxy TV cameras, cables and lack of space on the concrete dance floor would have made for a pretty dangerous situation, if the kids had been allowed freedom of dance expression.

Popular or new acts of the day were invited to lip sync their latest releases. B.B. King and Jerry Lee Lewis were the only performers ever to do their songs live on the show. The most memorable contest was called Rate-A-Record. It involved listening to the latest release by someone and Dick would interview 3 of the teens that appeared regularly on the show. They would be asked to rate the tune numerically and then give a brief reason why. If it was something they liked, we heard "it's got a good beat, you can dance to it." No one that I remember ever mentioned the words. It was a dance program, the kids were there to dance. And dance they did. The Jitterbug, the Twist, the Pony, Mashed Potatoes, Locomotion, Hully Gully, and the Stroll all were popular, and you got to see them all at some point during the week.

In 1963 American Bandstand switched from a weekday program to Saturday afternoon. The following year it left Philadelphia for Los Angeles. In 1965 the format changed and the program became the New American Bandstand. I missed the old version with it's bobby sox and saddle shoes. New primetime releases like Shindig and Hullabaloo drew the same teen audiences that had grown to love R & R. The slick production values of those shows eventually made their way to the Bandstand set and by the late 60's the high school kids were dancing on platforms and in cages on Bandstand Los Angeles. It wasn't the same anymore. Still good, just not the same.

The show lasted on ABC until 1987. It went into syndication and lasted on the airwaves until 1989. I had the pleasure of watching Leslie Gore sing "It's My Party", Chubby Checkers with his "Twist" and "Let's Twist Again". I saw Freddie Cannon sing "Tallahassee Lassie" and "Palisades Park" and remember thinking that he looked so much older than I expected. I think it was the suit, plus the fact that he is 9 years older than I am. For the teenager, 9 years is a lifetime of...well...old. Now I don't notice how old he looks, I look just as old to a teenager.

The last time I actually watched the show regularly was sometime in 1967. That was the year I graduated from high school and went to work. Once in a great while I was at home when it was on, sadly I don't remember what acts I got to see during those years with the exception of Madonna sometime during the 80's. Close to 1000 acts performed on that show in the 33 years it was on TV. Not bad for a half hour program that was the first program on television that featured nothing but Rock and Roll.



1. Bobby Rydell...Wild One
2. Brenda Lee...Sweet Nothins'
3. Brian Hyland...Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini
4. Buddy Holly...Peggy Sue
5. Chubby Checkers...The Twist
6. Chuck Berry...Maybellene
7. Connie Francis...Lipstick On Your Collar
8. Dell Shannon...Runaway
9. Dion...Runaround Sue
10. Elvis Presley...Jailhouse Rock
11. Frankie Avalon...Venus
12. Freddie Cannon...Tallahassee Lassie
13. Gene Chandler...Dule of Earl
14. Gene Pitney...(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance
15. Jay and The Americans...Come A Little Bit Closer
16. Jerry Lee Lewis...Great Balls of Fire
17. Johnny Mathis...Chances Are
18. Leslie Gore...It's My Party
19. Little Eva...The Locomotion
20. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas...Dancin' In The Streets
21. Mary Wells...My Guy
22. Neil Sedaka...Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
23. Paul Anka...Diana
24. Peter Paul and Mary...I Dig Rock and Roll Music
25. Petula Clark...Downtown
26. Ahab the Arab
27. Ricky Nelson...Traveling Man
28. Ritchie Valens...La Bamba
29. Roy Orbison...Dream Baby
30. Simon and Garfunkle...I Am A Rock
31. Sonny and Cher...I Got You Babe
32. The Big Bopper...Chantilly Lace
33. The Chiffons...He's So Fine
35. The Coasters...Poison Ivy
36. The Crystals...Da Do Ron Ron
37. The Dave Clark 5...Glad All Over
38. The Dixie Cups...Chapel of Love
39. The Dovells...Bristol Stomp
40. The Everly Brothers...Bye Bye Love
41. The Marvelettes...Please Mr. Postman
42. The Righteous Brothers...You've Lost That Loving Feeling
43. The Ronettes...Be My Baby
44. The Shangri-Las...Leader of the Pack
45. The Supreme's...Stop! In The Name Of Love
46. The Tokens...The Lion Sleeps Tonight
47. Tommy Roe...Dizzy

I was driving along this afternoon when I heard this song for the first time. I had never heard it before and decided to research it online. I found 2 different versions of it but this is the one I heard while driving.


Dick Cheney's Got A Gun - The top video clips of the week are here

It's old news, but sometimes we need a reminder of how things really were.