Jack the Ripper’s Riff

Working the counter at the Screening Room can be an athletic event in the last minutes before a show’s scheduled start.

Many patrons arrive just ahead of starting time, some deliberately a few minutes late to avoid the coming attractions. Thank this art cinema’s founders as well as the new owners that there are no ads for car dealerships, fast food joints, or anything else to prolong the delay, although that might take a bit of pressure off one person ripping tickets while also slinging popcorn into bags, pouring butter into it, grabbing candy out of the glass-enclosed case and soft drinks out of the fridge, all while totalling prices and making change.

If that’s not enough of a juggling act, we also have a popcorn popper decidedly designed for a left-handed concessionaire, which I am not. And so it is with a lobby full of eyes on me that I shakily raise cups of oil proportioned with kernels to the rotating cooker while my right hand hangs idly by, contemplating an anti-discrimination lawsuit.

More than once, I’ve given folks in the lobby a play-by-play as I slowly fill the cooker. They laugh, and after banging the cups downward to get every kernel into it, I can’t resist: “Few people know this, but Shakespeare titled his play Measure for Measure as a tribute to concessionaires in the lobby of the Globe Theater.” When laughter turns into oohs and aahs, I wonder if they believe it.

Time for ridiculous jokes that pass for literary history is also provided by the tedious process of credit cards. I swear, if I could go back in time and erase three people from the history of the world, someone would need to remind me of dictators and warmongers before I got my hands on the inventors of the credit card, the cell phone, and the car alarm.

Then again, I might also be re-directed by catching sight of the idiot who first declared, “There’s no such thing as a stupid question,” or the equally imbecilic, “The customer is always right.”

Another handicap is the reputation that I apparently have for being able to tell how old people are just by looking at them. I suppose I should be flattered and should fake having such a power by assuming that this one is a senior while that one is not. Instead, I have a vivid memory of two occasions about 20 years ago when ticket takers charged a senior rate for women who were not. Never again! I don’t care if Methuselah walks in there wearing a name tag; if he doesn’t say “senior” or something recognizably synonymous, I’m charging full price.

Many seniors wait until the transaction is made before saying it. Most all of them get a laugh out of it, as it implies they look younger. Nor is it difficult for me to hand over the two dollar difference. So far, so good. Customers are happy, laughing, and they got the discount.

On my side of the counter, it’s like being behind a driver who waits until making the turn before putting on the directional. A ticket is already ripped, but I need to replace it and/or make a notation. Simple, right? Try doing it in those last ten minutes when you have a line of customers facing you, the ones in front holding out their credit cards, someone in the middle asking when the movie gets out, another in back asking about parking on State Street, yet another off to your side asking for napkins, and one more from the back of the hall asking where the restrooms are.

May not qualify as an athletic event, but it sure feels like one. And there is that four-step hop up into the projection booth to start the show on time while patrons are still coming through the door.

For all that, I don’t waste time complaining, and I maintain a smile, or at least a straight face. Except for the woman who, after paying admission and with the coming attractions already on, picked up a $1.25 chocolate, handed me a credit card, waited for the transaction to go through, then asked for a San Pellegrino, and handed the card back to me.

She may have detected a murderous undertone when I asked if she wanted a receipt, but she made no complaint. With few exceptions I’ve started the films on time, and I can’t recall anyone going without popcorn, though at times the butter can’t melt fast enough. Screening Room patrons have been patient when I’ve needed it, supportive overall, and on one count–and I do mean count–they give me way too much credit.

With tickets and concessions all at one counter, we add them all together. With the numbers all small–$12 or $10 for tix, $5 or less for concessions–this is little more than counting. With combinations always the same–$5 for popcorn and $2 for sodas make for a lot of $7s–it’s easy to be rapid which, in those last ten minutes, is necessary.

No matter. To hear patrons remark on my mathematical skills, you’d think I was moonlighting from a day-job as an accountant for the International Monetary Fund or as an engineer calculating interplanetary missions for NASA. Seems like nothing to me, but the truth is that I did enter Salem State as a math major 55 years ago after taking straight As in math all through elementary and high school, including algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics, and an intro to calculus.

But 1968 had a way of changing people. By the start of second semester, I was an English major writing for the student paper. Strange to think that I wrote just one film review in four years for The Log. Stranger to think that it was Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.

Just as well. Who needs advanced calculus to be a nimble Jack the Ripper or a quick Jack in the Booth at a theater near you?

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Taken in March, 2020, days after we were, as the sign on the door said, “shuttered for the duration of the plague.” Courtesy of the Newburyport Daily News.

Not a lot of room back there. You can see the side of the popcorn machine off to the left, and those chairs on the right have been replaced by the refrigerator. Photo from https://www.msonewsports.com/

View from the booth before the show goes on. Off to the left is one of the old 35m projectors rendered obsolete by the transition to digital in 2014. The former owner thought to display it. If you’ve ever been to Cleveland, you know that the Rock Hall’s for name is “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.” I’m lobbying the new owners to re-name the place “Screening Room and Museum.” Photo: http://cinematreasures.org/photos/329179

A Welcome Counter-Fit

Maine Diner, Wells, Maine

If you’re touring Maine’s southern coast between Portland and the New Hampshire border looking for breakfast, you can hardly go wrong. Indecisive types might even complain that there are too many excellent choices.

Before the pandemic, I was dispatched north once a week, enough to visit them all depending on my craving that morning. For eggs Benedict it was Mike’s All Day Breakfast on the road connecting US1 to Kennebunkport; for an omelet, The Egg & I on US1 between Ogunquit and Wells; for an oversized blueberry scone, Backyard in Ogunquit center; and for biscuits and gravy never easy to find on New England menus, The Maine Diner in Wells.

Also on its menu is the “El Tiante,” named for the legendary, colorful Red Sox pitcher and Hall-of-Famer, Louis Tiant, whose kaleidoscopic wind-up all little league pitchers tried to imitate much to the dismay of our coaches back in the 60s: poached eggs over corned beef hash with a small bowl of fruit in lieu of homefries. There’s another entre named for a celebrity patron, former WEEI jock Eddie Andleman, but any memory of that windbag threatens my appetite.

The restaurants I name are just the first four that come to mind, all within a four-mile radius suited to the timing of my deliveries any given Friday. Last Friday, the timing and my craving combined to steer me into Mike’s for an Irish Benny. Unfortunately, it was quite busy, with way too few staff to handle it–a common story for restaurants since the pandemic.* Since I was on the clock, I got back behind the wheel and reluctantly stopped at the Maine Diner.

Reluctant? Only because my last time there, back in December, I was horrified to learn that I barely fit at the counter when my stomach pressed against it as I squished in, ordered, and had the biscuits and gravy. To leave, I could barely turn the chair. If only in my own eyes, I was thoroughly humiliated, and once back on the road, I resolved to join a gym after a couple years of ignoring recommendations of a few friends to do just that.

But I knew the Maine Diner made very good Bennies, and it was worth the embarrassment. When I spotted the last chair empty at the end of the counter, I was grateful that my self-humilation would be slightly less.

When I took the seat, instant euphoria! Not even my sweatshirt, thick as it is, touched the counter! I fit!

So a few months in the gym have paid off, and with weather improving, most of my walking is now on the marsh side of Plum Island. When it gets hot, I’ll be barefoot on the surf at low tide.

For the sake of an occasional change of scenery, a friend in Portland and I converge for hikes in places such as Ogunquit’s Marginal Way, with the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Reserve and the Wells Estuary, both on our horizon and both within two miles of the Maine Diner.

Nice to know we have a base of operations where I can make myself comfortable.

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*Of several restaurants, pubs, cafes, coffeeshops, and diners that have folded due to an inability to find enough staff, the loss of Lindsay’s last November, a family-owned-and-operated for 74 years seafood place on what we in Massachusetts call “the upper Cape” has been most tragic. I am among many fans of its best-ever-best-anywhere crab cakes who still has hopes for its return. Notice its resemblance to the Maine Diner:

https://www.boston.com/community/community/lindseys-family-restaurant-in-east-wareham-has-permanently-closed/

Over the Love of Ease

“Is our convenience worth the destruction?” asks one of the three young women in Remember, winner of the “Best Young Filmmaker Award” at this year’s Earth Port Film Festival screened at the Firehouse Sunday.

Struck me as a question to be asked–and pressed–on any and all candidates running for any office as we now realize the consequences of not just ignoring climate change, but of continuing our reliance on fossil fuels and plastics that worsen it. All for the sake of convenience.

The women in the film are too young to recall it, as are most if not all of the good folks at PortMedia which, along with Transition Newburyport, staged the event, but the question is a searing echo of Robert Kennedy in the presidential campaign of 1968:

Our answer is the world’s hope. It is to rely on youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.

After a three-year hiatus due to Covid, the otherwise annual Festival, born in 2012, resumed with founder Elizabeth Marcus and PortMedia’s Sarah Hayden as co-hosts for eleven films ranging from three to 18 minutes, as well as from soberingly serious to whimsically entertaining–while still making environmental points.

Winners of the festival’s other two awards cover that range. A Fistful of Rubbish, “Best Short Film,” is a documentary styled as a western in which the bad guy is rusted metal, slimey slop, crunched plastic, stained fabric, worn-out tires, and all kinds of other junk tossed into a desert with characters modeled on Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, and an uncanny Henry Fonda look-alike. But the most fascinating character is the chaplain at the “brown” town’s church. While Fistful drew more than a fistful of laughs for its satire and slapstick, the chaplain left us with the most provocative line of the night:

True worship starts when we leave the church.

Other lines came close, and others in the audience may pick some that I missed. In Step Outside, which tells the story of a 34-mile march and sit-in to protest Wells Fargo’s investment in fossil fuels in 2019, no-one is deluded to think that the act itself will stop anything. But they know it can trigger something, like the proverbial snowball into avalanche. As one woman puts it:

It feels better to take the first step–even if you don’t know what the next step is.

Another woman notes the number of auto-body shops, car dealerships, gas stations, and parking lots they pass by. When it’s over, I tell people in the lobby that the April issue of Harper’s has an essay, “Lots to Lose,” on “parking psychosis” and the consequences of convenient parking spaces not just on the environment, but on the lives of communities large and small. One fellow recalled Joni Mitchell’s most catchy lyric, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Today, I check the magazine for the exact title and notice that it’s an excerpt from a book to be published next month: Paved Paradise.

Another film needed no dialogue at all. Choker shows a man awaiting a call that comes when a woman, bleeding from nose and mouth lands on a beach. Adults sun themselves and children play as she suffers, and the man races in his Jeep in an attempt at a rescue. Seems surreal until a change in the closing seconds that makes it all too real.

Transforming Lives and Landscapes serves as deep breaths of optimism by telling us of the Inga trees capable of restoring rich soil and crops in tropical climes where increasingly despoiled land is in need of it. Traces, the only feature (as opposed to documentary) of the evening, brings tears to the eye as it illustrates the freedom and joy of pre-industrial occupations.

All eleven films offer some hope, although the richly documented Butterflies & Borders about the rarely considered impact on wildlife and the environment made by walls built along the Rio Grande is a five-alarm from start to finish. As one environmentalist points out:

One mile of wall equals twenty acres paved out of production.

The woman in charge of the butterfly sanctuary is more blunt, comparing the disruption of migratory patterns to the privileges afforded the rich over the penalties charged to the poor. She also cited the nation’s disregard for science and “the dumbing down of America” as “self-sabotage” made possible in southern Texas and Arizona due to who lives there. The walls, the film later points out, only keeps them wandering in the desert longer, and the result is that more die–over 7,000 in five years, and that’s just a count of remains that were found.

My guess is that Butterflies won the audience favorite award because it was the most surprisingly informative, and perhaps the most urgent of an ever-urgent cast. As in the past, the audience receives a ballot with the printed program, and when it’s over, we vote for our favorite, and gather in the lobby where we are treated to snacks and treats supplied by Port City Sandwich. Judging from conversations while awaiting the result, I was far from alone having at least four films vying for my vote, though not often the same four, as each of the eleven took a fair share.

The screenings ended with the winner of the Festival’s third award, “Best Very Short Film,” Nature Now. In it, environmentalists Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot echo the call for first steps that we heard on the march to San Francisco, for a continued action even “when we leave the church,” and to vote for candidates who commit themselves to environmental sanity.

Intended or not, it served as a logical summary for the other ten films, while Thunberg’s presence re-echoed RFK’s call when I was barely her age to “rely on youth.” It was three young women not much older who posed a question that should be put to every candidate in every election for the foreseeable future. And the press must treat it as a yes-or-no question, interrupting anyone who begins with any other word, and insisting on an answer that begins with either yes or no:

Is our convenience worth the destruction?

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Postscript: Some, if not all, of the films screened at the Festival will be available on the soon. I’ll add links when I have them, or you can check day to day at:

2023 official selections

As of now, the site has brief descriptions of all eleven films.

Sarah Hayden of PortMedia introducing the Earth Port Film Festival.

An Errant Knight’s Errand

She wore the same expression that most others showed while leaving the theater:

“Whoa! I came here expecting it’d be entertaining, but what a whallop!”

My guess is that the trailers, seen often and for weeks on cable stations, are responsible for the surprise. Chevalier is a period piece, set in Marie Antoinette’s let-them-eat-cake France, and a 30-second promo is bound to impress you with swordplay, horse-drawn carriages, liveried servants, royal robes, and music–in this case Parisian opera with an orchestra that would have served Mozart as well as it did Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

And with architecture that often serves as transitions to connect scenes, at times with time-lapse photography, making Chevalier a cinematic treat in addition to all else. Anyone looking for pure, rich entertainment will be more than satisfied.

The surprise is how relevant the story of Joseph Bologne is to what writer Eddie Glaude called a new country “trying to be born” from a dying nation “clinging to life.” Glaude, of course, said that of America today in his recent book, Begin Again, about James Baldwin. Chevalier poses the conflict in an early scene when Bologne is challenged to a dual by a guardian of France’s ethnic purity. That scene’s dialogue could be the intro to Glaude’s book.

Must say that the film reminds me of that book more than it does any other film, though last year’s Cyrano comes close. No idea what a governor of a state can do about a movie, but Begin Again is a book that would get a teacher fired rather quickly from a Florida school.

Chevalier is a true story that has surfaced in recent years–and is still surfacing. Bologne was born on a plantation on one of France’s Caribbean colonies, the son of the aristocratic owner and an enslaved woman. When the owner notices musical talent, he sends the boy to Paris, knowing full well the resistance he will endure if not the beatings he’ll survive.

Bologne is as bold as he is talented, a virtuouso who challenges powers that be with his violin rather than a sword, though he excels at that as well. Boldness and talent quickly make him the toast of the town. Queen Marie A bestows the title, chevalier (or knight), and women swoon while men grumble–except for one devoted friend who draws him into the simmering movement for liberte, egalite, fraternite which will come to a boil just before the credits roll.

Yes, there’s a love story and hints of seduction, even licentiousness, but the most fascinating character–of several–is Bologne’s mother who is sent to Paris after the plantation owner dies, and who is able to stabilize and rally her son with some choice words (which I here paraphrase):

The worst evil is not what they’ve done to our bodies, but what they’ve done to our minds. Their greatest trick is to make us think we have no choice. But we always have the choice to fight. The choice to fight is yours.

His choice ends the film, a benefit concert to aid the rabble about to storm the Bastille, his final composition opening with a Caribbean melody his mother often sang to him. Sound the drums, enter the soldiers, hear the chant, fade to black.

Before the credits, text appears to tell us what would become of Joseph Bologne, how and why he was erased from history, his compositions lost for two centuries. We have no way of knowing how many there were, but most of the selections in the film are his.

Other selections are from Mozart and Domenico Scarlatti, and I wouldn’t bet on anyone’s ability to tell which is which. As the patron leaving the Screening Room today might put it, Bologne’s music matches their whallop.

For that, let’s hope more are found.

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Before the Bell Clangs

Welcome to the Coffice!

Chococoa Baking Company, Newburyport, Mass.

Every Tuesday morning I meet with three friends in a coffeeshop and bakery in The Tannery, a small marketplace just a block from downtown.

We talk about all kinds of things, mostly music since we all play something, one of just two things we all have in common. However, while my friends are all guitarists fond of exchanging notes, sharp and flat as well as natural, on chords–major or minor, diminished or suspended, fourths or fifths, progressive or whatever isn’t–I, a flautist, often sit there as if I’m Harpo Marx.

Also in common is our age which we’d rather not talk about–although it is noticeable how often we talk about music from the 50s and 60s, ranging from Louis Armstrong and The Beatles to commercial jingles for Winston and Chevrolet. One friend sang the Bosco song, and the rest of us were too amazed to ask that he keep his voice down.

Spacious and comfortable, Chococoa Baking Company offers 40 seats, twelve of which are just inside the front doors and windows, evenly divided between two large tables on either side of four steps down that take you to the display case and counter with the remaining seats spread among small tables meant for one or two, although they can be combined.

Chococoa (cho-CO-co) is known for its whoopie pies and its own innovation, The Whoopie, a bite-size that comes with a variety of fillings from which you can choose. Admittedly, we tend to think of the whoopie pie as a generic thing, a New England filler, but Chococoa has turned it into a surprising gourmet treat that has gained national attention thanks to rave reviews by satisfied customers as diverse as Yankee Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, O (Oprah’s mag) and CNN.

Eye-opening as much as a tastebud-pleasing, they remind me of the first time I tasted coleslaw in a Baton Rouge restaurant and the remaining week that I spent in the deep South. In New England, coleslaw is but filler with not much taste, a sidedish to offset fish, baked or fried, with something cool. In Texas and Louisiana, it is something to be savored, worthy of being an entre on its own.

So, too, Chococoa’s whoopie pies.

For all that, I prefer the lemon-ginger scones, although I’m half-hoping that on some Tuesday they’ll be out of lemon-ginger so I might try a raspberry-ginger or apricot scone without risking diner’s remorse if the replacement doesn’t match my usual fare.

On most Tuesdays, I’m washing the scone down with some rich dark roast, always black, at one of those large tables where the four of us sit and chat–five on one occasion–but this week both tables were claimed. That has happened before, but we never endured a small table on the lower level for long before a group has vacated one of the two.

This week, however, both were taken. So was every table on the lower level, including one with two of my friends already hunched over it. I saw from above that I could barely cram in, and then what would we do with our fourth? Perhaps because of that, I took note of the one woman seated at one of the tables for six, earphones on, paperwork spread out on both sides of a laptop, a plate with nothing but crumbs on it, and a cup that raneth empty.

I walked past, ordered my scone and coffee, and made my case to the barista who sympathized but shrugged. And so I sat and simmered.

But not for long. When our fourth arrived, I made the mistake of trying to point out the obvious to the oblivious. To be fair to myself as well as the young woman, I made sure to smile and speak calmly:

“Hello?” She looked up with an expression of surprise. I made sure to glance at the empty cup and the crumby plate before I continued: “I’d just like to point out that there’s a group of four of us here sitting at a table for two while you are sitting here at a table for six.”

She shrugged, saying nothing.

“Okay,” I exhaled before I turned and went back to my friends. Soon, a nearby table seating four was vacated, and we had a table where we were able to place four cups at one time. As usual, the talk was immediately engaging, although I couldn’t help but notice two elderly couples come in the back door only to look around, see no seats, and walk back out. How many entered the front door and did that, I did not see.

A half hour, maybe more, passed before one of the owners came over to say hello. She knows us by first name, and when she turned to me, she said with a smile, “Bad Jack.”

I thought it was a reference to my newspaper columns, the only occupation I know which measures success as much by damnation as by praise: “I’ve been called worse.”

“Oh, I bet you have!”

Dawned on me that the barista may have said something to her about my objection, so I went first: “Say, you let people turn this place into their own office?”

“Yes! We call that upper level ‘the coffice,’ and welcome people who need a place to get their work done.”

“She could do that on any table in here.”

Technically, I was way out of line, but the woman was not at all angry. She was amused. I tried again: “You don’t mind that four people just walked in and out of here because there was no place to sit while one woman takes a table with six seats?”

No matter. She was content that such loss is minimal compared to the gain of promoting “the coffice” as an away-from-home office with fine pastries, coffees, and teas in easy reach.

I tried to find common ground: “Oh, I like the coffice concept. I’ve done it myself, in many places. Wish I coined the word myself, but I’d never monopolize more than my own seat in a place this busy. I don’t care what the policy is, that’s a degree of disregard for others that verges on contempt.”

Mercifully, the co-owner was called away before I got to mention the plate without pastry and the cup empty of anything at all.

Just as well. I’ll be back next Tuesday for another scone and dark roast. Good chance that, for the first time this year, the four of us will be sitting at one of several fair-sized tables that Chococoa has already set outside.

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Neither Yes Nor No

Every Wednesday, and whenever the new owners want a family day, I run a cinema so small that I alone sell both tickets and concessions in the lobby before bouncing up into the booth to dim the lights and start the show.

Before the pandemic shut it down for 18 months, I was doing it four or five days a week, but just one at a time since we had separate counters. Back then, it was all cash or check; no plastic could be accepted by the former owners who were getting on in years and didn’t want the burden of another way of doing things.

Not so the new boss. Seems hilarious now, but it took me five weeks to learn how to use the credit card swiper. To be fair, if you work just one day per week, then five weeks are but one. With a weekend free! But why be fair when you can get a laugh out of it?

So thankful I still am to more patrons than I want to admit who, seeing my handicap, found cash in their wallets instead. And I’m especially grateful to the woman who stopped in to pay $10 weeks later when she saw a charge of ten cents on her VISA statement. She even refused to take the dime I fished out of my pocket to keep things square.

All that happened in the fall of 2021. Since then, I have noticed something that may sound trivial to anyone who doesn’t work retail, and perhaps to many who do, but the recurrence of it, and the virtual lack of exceptions to it, suggests that it’s a symptom of something in need of attention.

Some retailers will process a credit card and hand you a receipt, but I’m among those who ask if you want a receipt. It’s a simple yes-or-no question, but you’d never know that from the answers I get:

Um, ah, maybe, I don’t need one.

A receipt? Will I need it?

My wife thinks we should collect them, but I’d rather not.

I probably should take one, but they just clutter my bag.

I don’t know.

Um, like, I’m not sure. Does it, like, matter? Like, why are you looking at me like that?

Oh, well, if it’s not too much trouble.

I’m good.

I guess so. Oh, I don’t need it. I don’t want to bother you.

To that last, I want to say, “No, you aren’t bothering me, but you are sure as hell confusing me.” Instead, I abide by the big lie disguised as the cardinal rule of business, the customer is always right: “You say you don’t need it?”

With that, they’ll offer something easily translatable such as, “I’m good.”

I tried guessing “No?” or “Yes?” but soon found I couldn’t tell if the “No” or “Yes” coming back at me was confirming or contradicting my guess. This brought the term “double negative” to a the level of an intro to a Laurel and Hardy skit:

No?

Yes.

Um, you mean yes, you do want it?

No, I mean yes, I don’t want one.

So the answer is no.

Yes.

Despite the confusion, I’m not claiming that this is a serious problem. Many of these are easy to translate, and when the question remains, I can answer with “I’ll take that for a no” 19 times out of 20, as very few people want them. However, there are times when I have to repeat the question. You’d be amazed at how many will do it a second time, in which case I threepeat the question with an emphasis on the word receipt that enunciates the letter P.

One woman responded with a word salad so incomprehensible that I had to cut her off to say: “I need to hear the word yes or no.” One man launched into a diatribe against paperwork, with which I sincerely sympathized, but which called for an as-terse-as-possible re-phrasing of the question: “Receipt, yes or no?”

But the Oscar goes to the woman who, when I asked if she wanted a small piece of paper with her ticket and popcorn, started talking about her friend parking a car across the street. Somehow I kept a straight face, let the receipt print, and when she left without asking for it, simply threw it away.

Maybe I made “Do you want a receipt?” sound like “Where did you park?” or “Did you come here on your pogo stick?” so I’ll rule her out of this theory I now have to explain why we are so reluctant to clearly and directly answer this particular yes-or-no question. And why, instead, we mince the answer in uncertain terms.

Asked if we want some things–cream in coffee, a song to hear, a visit to or from family, a burger at a pub, fries with that–we usually offer a yes or no right away, whether or not we then add details or reasons, with or without emphasis.

Receipts, however, form the intersection of something we all want to have, money, and something we despise, paperwork. A direct no would betray a casualness about finances that few care to admit, while an immediate yes paints us as penny-pinchers–even as the receipt records pennies already spent.

Though not as emphatically, other common questions regarding other common subjects–from Do you want a ride? to Can I get it for you?–often draw similar responses–If that’s what you want… Do you think so? Oh, I’m okay without it… Are you sure? Case in point:

“Would you like to sit outside?” “What would **you** like?” “It’s not too chilly.” “These chairs look comfortable.” “I’ll sit wherever you want…” A view of Perkins Cove out the windows of Barnacle Bill’s, Ogunquit, Maine. “Should we split a plate of fried clams?” “If *you* want.”
Photo by Carla Valentine.

Add to that our tendency to please or accomodate present company, to appear deferential rather than assertive, to “let things slide,” and it’s a wonder anybody ever begins with Yes or No.

As I said up top, this by itself is not a problem. But it does deserve attention. How often do we hear politicians–on all levels and of both parties–dodge yes-or-no questions? How often does anyone–from the press or the public–press the question until we hear a yes or a no?

The answers to those questions are often and rarely. All because the American public is conditioned to accept the dodge by always letting it slide regarding seemingly trivial things.

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To be honest, the expression here is undoubtedly more on my face than on those of customers, not just when I’m trying to decipher what they mean but as I sit here trying to decipher what the tendency means. This pic is taken from the site of a consulting firm offering tips on selling to indecisive clients: https://amywalkerconsulting.com/persuasive-sales-techniques/

Cry Wolf, Hi-Tech Style

At the risk of disturbing every friend I have, I now oppose any ban on automatic assault weapons.

Admittedly, this contradicts over a dozen newspaper columns I’ve had in print over the past 40 years, but today I finally heard the blight: Every time I hear a car alarm, I wish I had an AR-15.

Or maybe an AK-47. Whichever can more completely turn an SUV into a pile of scrap metal, plastic, and leather soaked in gas and oil, preferably up in flames until the owner returned.

If I heard them only as most people do, an annoyance to be endured for a minute or two, usually at a distance, I might grin and bear it. But I hear them outside the doors of a small, downtown cinema with back seats no further from State Street than they are from the screen.

Since I’m the one who collects patrons’ admission, sells them concessions, and shows the film, I am responsible for their ability to see and hear what’s on the screen. Someone in the audience starts yakking on a cellphone, it’s my job to stop them. If snoring, I must wake them. If drunk and blabbing, I must coax them out. If we have people gathering in loud conversation outside our door, it’s on me to ask them to move. Ditto if it’s just one person having a cigarette in our recessed doorway. Anything less would be derelict.

To be sure, no one expects me to silence a car alarm, and the swinging doors separating the lobby from those back seats absorb more sound than you would think. Still, it nags me to think that anyone might have to withstand a dull, rythmic blare while watching The Banshees of Inisherin or Chevalier.

Worse than any intrusion on the Screening Room was a car alarm that sounded non-stop for nearly a half hour in the parking lot just outside the front gate of King Richard’s Faire one day last fall. I often work the gate, bantering with patrons as they come and go, but as a strolling minstrel, I can come and go as I please. The ticket takers and the villagers assigned to the gate have no such option. When I returned after a twenty minute break, they were craving full bottles of Excedrin III. The alarm was still going.

Most all of this is carelessness, but I’ve encountered one that was arrogant. After a friend visited the faire in midday, I walked her to her car at the rear of the vast lot. On my return, I was walking between cars when I heard an odd voice: “Step away from the vehicle!”

Stopped and looked around to see no one before I heard it again, automated and directed at me. At faire, most of us wear either very tight or very loose clothing. I’m in the latter category for reasons I’m working on, but I rather like pirate shirts with their billowy sleeves. On that day, I deduced that the mirror of a pickup truck had grazed my sleeve like a baseball grazing a batter’s uniform without his realizing it. I glared at the driver’s door and yelled two words, the second of which was “you.”

I resisted an urge to kick it and another to urinate on it. Pretty sure that either of those would violate my contract, but there’s no contract on the planet that prevents me from saying how satisfying it would be to write my initials on that door with a few rounds of ammo. Of course, Renaissance faires are loud, rowdy events, so my encounter with the talking car can be laughed off now that I’ve vented my initial outrage.

Can’t say that about today’s epiphany.

In a wildlife reserve–a national park, a bird sanctuary, a place set aside for peace and serenity–the SUV was 200 feet from where I sat on a bench overlooking the marsh. The driver was standing with a large camera mounted on a tripod just outside it. Apparently, he took his time with his focus and framing before tending to his blaring horn. Did he notice a blue heron lifting out of his sights? Was the alarm set deliberately so that the heron would take off?

Whether deliberate or accidental, we could avoid this by simply de-activating an alarm when it is clearly not necessary, much like considerate people silence a mobile device while in public. Standing within five feet of your car fits that description. I would argue that so does being in a wildlife reserve or downtown in daylight and early evening hours. They can be de-activated, right? If not, we need to change that, and we need to insist on it.

Truth is, they should be banned. Considering that at least 99.9% of these alarms are false, the car alarm is the high-tech version of “Cry Wolf.”

On a warm day about a year ago, I spotted Newburyport’s parking cop strolling by the cinema, glancing at license plates and taking notes while an alarm was sounding a block away. I jumped out and urged him to ticket it for “disturbing the peace.” Outdoor diners next door seconded my motion. He laughed. I did not:

“If a person were to stand there and repeatedly blow an airhorn, he or she would be arrested and charged with disturbing the peace.”

He shrugged, but the diners got a rise and started cheering. Reminded me of that day at the faire when I urged our security officers to break into the car and disconnect the alarm. As did the Newburyport cop, and very likely the approving diners, they thought I was kidding.

Maybe I am, though I think of it more as exaggeration to make a point. Then again, if a machine with a defective part has more rights than a person with an all-to-effective airhorn, then why shouldn’t machines that work all-too-well have more rights that innocent, underage people?

With a simple and honest application of laws against disturbing the peace, I’ll let my many calls for bans on assault rifles stand. And on that subject, I will no longer disturb you.

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https://ufvcascade.ca/more-annoying-than-alarming/

No Place Like 10-01

Before I had a chance to see A Thousand and One, the new film set in 1990s Harlem, I showed it to an audience of 30 people, many of them murmuring to each other as they left, asking what their companions thought would happen next.

In my 25 years as a projectionist, I’ve found that many viewers have little patience for inconclusive endings, and I can still hear the woman demanding that I tell her if actor Mads Mikkelsen and the injured woman in the sled survived long enough to be rescued by the helicopter that lands at the end of 2018’s Arctic. Does she think that projectionists see sequels withheld from the audience?

A Thousand and One is different, at least for those who left the cinema more appreciative of what Inez, played by singer and actor Teyana Taylor, had accomplished rather than skeptical of how she did it. In the latter category was one woman who left complaining, “Another depressing movie!” Those in the former category appeared glad to have the option of speculating what Inez might do next, including two women who were aglow, one saying, “Whoa, that was exhausting, but it was sooooo worth it!”

Expressions on most faces, and the “thanks” offered to me as they passed, suggested that theirs was the consensus view. That night it became my view as well when I was able to watch from start to finish.

Exhausting? Well, it’s certainly not light entertainment. It’s emotionally charged, and the setting is as crowded as it is chaotic. It begins with Inez’s release from Riker’s Island, and moves immediately into her attempts to reclaim her boy from foster care and establish a new life for them.

Obstacles abound. Their backstory is mysterious (and offers a plot twist when least expected), but the present is so fraught with obstacles and strained relationships, that we keep looking to their next steps. Arguments erupt; payphones take such a beating they may be lucky they no longer exist; reconciliation is not so much sought as necessitated. As Inez at one point exhales:

Damaged people do not know how to love.

While director A.V. Rockwell keeps the focus on Inez and Terry–played by three actors aged 6, 13, and 17, which makes for a relevant comparison to 2016’s Moonlight–the frame of 1990s New York City is a tight fit. Midway in the film, we see Mayor Giuliani’s “Stop & Frisk” policy in action as police push Terry and his friends up against graffitied walls. Before the credits roll, a new landlord buys in to “urban renewal,” which African-American leaders called–and still call–a euphemism for “Negro removal.”

The neighborhood is all apartment buildings several stories high with no space between them, targeted for demolition. Inez and Terry make a home in apt. 10-01, which vies with “one thousand and one obstacles” as the title’s reference. Not only does she afford it, she keeps him in school where he proves to high school teachers and a guidance councillor that he is Ivy League material.

She marries an old boyfriend; he woos a cashier at a fast food place. There’s also a small support group that completes a neighborhood cast that shows us what industrious, conscientious people can accomplish in the most pressing environment, defying all stereotypes without bothering to say the term “systemic racism.”

A Thousand and One is realism at its finest. The language is often rough and the street scenes are always gritty, but Ida B. Wells, Steven Crane, Richard Wright and others comitted to telling the truth of American urban life would agree with the two women who saw it before I did:

“Soooooo worth it!”

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https://www.npr.org/2023/03/29/1166700626/a-thousand-and-one-review-teyana-taylor

Lighting up Downtown

As I trudge up State Street, a fellow half my age hops out of the library, waves his hand in front of my face, catches my eye to make sure I stop and listen, and says something about one of the few subjects I never consider:

“No pot shops in downtown Newburyport!”

He doesn’t yell. In fact, he appears cheerful as if rallying me to a cause he assumes I approve, but his jabbing motion, thrusting an index finger down at the sidewalk, emphasizing every phrase, earns at least one exclamation point.

No, I don’t know him, nor does he know me except for my thumbnail picture every few weeks on the local paper’s editorial page. He’s far from the first stranger to suggest I write about something important to them, but this is by far the most in-your-face, animated appeal ever made for my attention.

Must confess that as soon as he says “pot,” I’m no longer paying attention so much as waiting for him to pause for breath. Takes awhile, but when he does, I say:

“Sorry, but marijuana is not a subject for me. I haven’t followed it, so it’s best left to others, and others have plenty to say. If it’s any consolation, I can assure you that I’ll never write in favor of pot shops downtown.”

What he says next he probably already said while I was waiting him out, but this time it registers:

“State law prohibits pot shops within 500 feet of schools and day care centers. Some councillors want a waiver that will reduce that to 200 feet.”

Is it mere coincidence that school children are walking past us on their way downtown on that Wednesday mid-afternoon? We pause as a loud gaggle blows by. I must look like I’m impressed by his luck while making a point, so he presses another:

“I’m not against pot shops, just having them downtown. They can go to the industrial park, or to the malls.”

Now I’m listening. Recalling that the case for having them anywhere at all in Newburyport was that the city was losing revenue to other towns, I have to agree with him. Not just regarding other locations, but, as I tell him:

“The very idea of a waiver to cut a buffer zone in less than half invites suspicion. That the buffer is for the sake of schools compounds it.”

“Suspicion? What’s to suspect about the referendum?” he asks, referring to a 53-47% city-wide vote that went against retail sales anywhere in the city just over three years ago.

Still, I don’t want to commit: “Well, if I did oppose it, it’d be just the waiver for a downtown location, not the sale or use of it.”

“Yes, that’s all that matters.” He looks like he just reeled in a yellowfin tuna.

“I would have the advantage of identifying myself as a former pot head, so I couldn’t be accused of not knowing what I’m talking about–as I am on everything else.”

My new friend chimes in, “I smoke pot. I get high. I just don’t want kids exposed to it.”

“Well, if we had this conversation twenty years ago, I’d probably have some on me, and we could get good and stoned right now–just not here.”

“What happened?”

“About 15 years ago, it started making me paranoid. One hit, and I could no longer function. Even when alone, and oh, the worst hell is trying to hide from yourself.”

“Must be tough when your picture keeps getting in the paper.”

“Old age. You’ll find out for yourself someday. Hey, thanks for stopping me, I’ll see what I can do.”

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State Street viewed from Market Square where it begins, facing south. The Newburyport Public Library where this conversation took place is about where the street leaves this picture. As you can see, the city welcomes plant life downtown. https://www.visitingnewengland.com/scenesofnewengland22.html

A stand-alone pot shop, as most of them are, on the outskirts, also as most are, of a city–in this case, Bellingham. Washington. https://www.starbud.com/star-buds-recreational-marijuana-dispensary-bellingham/

From the Newburyport Daily News, March 15:

Councilor proposes reducing pot shop buffer zone

Addiction at First Bite

Market Square Bakehouse, Amesbury, Mass.

Years ago when I was still dispatched up the Maine coast every Friday morning, I made a habit of stopping at the Market Square Bakehouse in the center of Amesbury, just across the Merrimack, for an almond croissant to go.

It’s one of those items that makes all others impossible to enjoy. Since tasting it, I’ve tried them in countless bakeries as far as my routes take me, and by comparison most taste like nothing at all. Only one coming close is White Bakery & Cafe down in Mansfield where I no longer go.

Bakehouse’s almond croissant is addiction at first bite. Lately I enjoy them once a month or so when I rendezvous with a high school friend who lives in the Carriage City. Back when I had the Maine route, I’d eat them while on I-95 right out of the bag so that shaved almonds and bits of dark crust would be caught, and I could eat a couple of handfuls as if it was trail-mix. I’d savor those last bites all the way to Portland.

Wasn’t often that I’d be back in Massachusetts by lunch, and anyway I’ve lost count of the places in Maine that serve tasty clam chowder. But I will vouch for the turkey panini that I had at Bakehouse on one odd, zigzag of a day.

Last Friday was another odd zigzag that had me driving from Wilmington to Salisbury at lunchtime with an unusual hankering for roast beef. I aimed for Bakehouse only to be told they were out of it. Before I could say “turkey panini,” the woman behind the counter started listing the options, ending with grilled cheese.

Readers of this blog may recall that just last month I was amazed by a grilled cheese sandwich that I ordered in Turners Falls out there on the Connecticut only because it was the only sandwich listed on a breakfast menu. The name of the place, Upper Bend Brucheonette, should have warned me, but I was glad I ignored the warning. Thick, dark, crunchy, by far the most satisfying grilled cheese sandwich I ever had.

At Bakehouse I ordered it as soon as I heard the two words just to see how close it might come. Before long I was relishing it, wondering if the cook at Upper Bend had left the Connecticut for the Merrimack. Just as thick, just as dark, just as crunchy, just as satisfying.

Market Square Bakehouse is now on a short-list of places I can count on for both breakfast-to-go or for lunch. And as I keep telling my high school friend, before too long we’ll enjoy the outdoor seating.

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