Music from the 2018 WRFA Great American Picnic I Love the 80s! Fundraiser, Recorded Tuesday, June 26, 2018 at the Southern Tier Brewing Company and featuring 80s music (and poetry) provided by various artists, including:
- Bill Ward
- Rebecca McIlvain
- Cheers for Beers
- John Merino
- Steve Davis & Co.
- Porcelain Bus Drivers
- Feverhawk
- We Speak Canadian
Audio Engineer: Ralph Brooks. Recorded by Ed Tomassini
More Posts for Show: Arts on Fire]]>
John Merino perform set no. 1 at the 2017 WRFA Great American Picnic at the Southern Tier Brewing Co. in Lakewood, NY – a fundraiser for WRFA LP 107.9 FM in Jamestown NY on Tuesday, June 27, 2017. Featuring Music from The Summer of Love.
Sound engineer: Steve Chapel
Recording made possible by Ed Tomassini
John Merino
More Posts for Show: Arts on Fire]]>
LAKEWOOD – WRFA’s biggest fundraiser of the year is happening Tuesday, June 27 in Lakewood!
The sixth annual WRFA Great American Picnic is set to take place at Southern Tier Brewing Co., celebrating the 50th Anniversary of The Summer of Love!
The event will feature over three hours of live music running from 5 to 9 p.m.
Participating acts include:
- Cold Lazarus
- Ken Hardley and the Moose Club
- Bill Ward
- John Merino
- Gary Peters Jr.
- and more!
The performances will also be recorded and broadcast on WRFA in the coming weeks.
The cost to attend is $20 and includes two courtesy beers from Southern Tier. Anyone under 21 is admitted free of charge. All proceeds will benefit WRFA.
Tickets can be purchased ahead of time online, at the Reg Lenna Center for the Arts box office, or at the brewery the day of the event.
]]>John Merino performs set no. 1 at the 2016 WRFA Great American Picnic at the Southern Tier Brewing Co. in Lakewood, NY – a fundraiser for WRFA LP 107.9 FM in Jamestown NY on Sunday, June 5, 2016. Open remarks by Ken Hardley.
Featuring Songs of the American South, hosted by Ken Hardley and WRFA’s Jason Sample.
Sound engineer: Graham Riggle
Recording made possible by Ed Tomassini
Image by Andy Palermo
John Merino at the 2016 WRFA Great American Picnic (Image courtesy of Andy Palermo, Jamestown NY)
More Posts for Show: Arts on Fire]]>
LAKEWOOD – WRFA’s biggest fundraiser of the year is happening this Sunday in Lakewood.
The fifth annual WRFA Great American Picnic is set to take place at Southern Tier Brewing Co. with a theme of Music from the American South. Hosted by Ken Hardley of Rolling Hills Radio, the event will feature three hours of live music running from noon to 3 p.m.
Performers include:
- John Merino (Noon-12:20)
- Bill Ward (12:25-12:45)
- Bumpy Peterson (12:50-1:10)
- The Short Bus (1:15-1:35)
- Elektra Kings (1:40-2:00)
- Bogarts (2:05-2:25)
- Cindy Love and Ken Hardley and the Moose Club (2:30-2:50)
The performances will also be recorded and broadcast on WRFA in the coming weeks.
There is no cost to attend. Instead, a portion of all proceeds collected by Southern Tier Brewing Co. between Noon and 3 p.m. will go directly toward WRFA.
The WRFA advisory board will also be on hand selling hot dogs, WRFA T-Shirts, and 50/50 tickets. Donations will also be accepted. All ages are welcome.
It’s the Great American Picnic: Songs from the American South – happening this Sunday, June 5 from noon to 3 p.m. at the Southern Tier Brewing Co.
]]>AMERICAN CHRONICLES: Impractical Cats
Copyright: John C. Merino 2016
Originally airing March 18, 2016
When I stop to think about it, Miss Dolan was at fault. She was my 5th grade teacher at 17th Street School…a former Army WAC Sergeant in WWII…she managed 10 year olds like a room full of recruits.
She taught the three R’s of course, and once a week made all the boys polish their shoes with paste wax. In the 1950’s, you couldn’t wear sneakers or jeans to school. No T-Shirts either. You had to have a collared shirt.
We practiced Air Raid drills once a week by jumping under our desks when the alarm went off, and looked forward to June because she always gave her class a “Roast Beef on Weck” party to celebrate the close of the school year. She was tough alright, but introduced us to poetry by reading from T.S. Elliott’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”. I still have a copy in my collection.
That, I suppose, is why I’ve mostly chosen cats over dogs during the course of my lifetime. I’ve had a couple dogs that lived long lives (Sebastian & Pudge), both mutts from the SPCA…but there were always cats too.
Midnight was the first. When I found her wandering the street on the way home from the Big Pool one summer, she couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old. I picked her up, held her in one hand and told my mother she followed me the whole way.
I was allowed to keep her and later that summer when my father started the lawn mower, she was jolted from her sleep on the front porch rail and darted in to the street, where a 48 Desoto hit her and that was that.
Several years later, when I returned from my wanderings across the country, I got my first apartment….a cold water three story walk up on the corner of 18th Street and Ontario Avenue….across from the pet store. A handwritten sign in the window said “Free Kittens.”
The one I chose was all grey. I named her Delores Del Streeto. I bought her a red collar, flea powder and food. She was street wise alright, never attempting to cross if there was a car within a block of her. When I’d get home from work she’d be waiting by the door for diner. She talked a lot…always something to say.
She didn’t look any fatter to me, but one morning when I woke; there was a liter of six kittens at the foot of the bed. I never heard a thing. I gave them all away, but for one little tough guy I named Junior Del Streeto. He was black and white…broad shouldered and tall. So now it was me and the Del Streeto’s…Delores and Junior.
A couple years later, we moved out to a cottage on Lake Ontario. It was attached to a green house that hadn’t been in use for decades. Delores and Junior loved the lake. They’d walk the beach together, playing with the dead fish that washed up, chased the squirrels and prowled the greenhouse in search of mice.
Delores got ill. The Vet said she had cat leukemia and when she passed, I buried her in an old tool box, wrapped in a towel, under a fir tree next to the cottage, carving her name in the bark with my pocket knife.
I stopped there several months ago to see if the cottage was still standing. It was and the greenhouse was thriving. Her name is barely visible now. After all, it has been a little over 40 years.
The following winter, the furnace died and the property owner simply told me he couldn’t afford to fix it so I’d have to move. Junior and I headed back to the city. We found an apartment on Main Street in an old Victorian house that had been cut up in to four units.
It was owned by Dr. Walker, whose home and office were next door. He was the anti-war doc. Dozens of draft age boys would get their medical draft deferment letters from him in the early days of Viet Nam. He would find something wrong with you…even if you didn’t know it.
The apartment behind me, facing the alley, was occupied by an Alabama red neck, his wife and daughter. He’d moved to Niagara Falls to work as a laborer on the Power Project and never left.
They were nice enough, but he hated Junior. When he’d get home from work, Junior took to jumping up on the hood of his El Camino. It was warm and a purrrr-fect place for a nap.
When Junior disappeared for a few days, I asked the red neck if he’d seen him. “Nope” he said, but the following afternoon his daughter who was only 8 or 10 told me that her daddy had taken my cat for a ride in the car. He wouldn’t own up to it….said he knew nothing about it….but I heard him yelling at her and she was crying.
I went to the hardware and bought a gallon of oil based navy blue paint. It took him weeks to buff it off, rubbing on a small spot every day when he got home from work.
He knew it was me and I knew it was him.
On the chance Junior had just been dropped off on the other side of town, I went to the SPCA to see if he might be there.
I walked into the cat room and called his name. There were 20 or 30 cats in a long row of cages. In the end cage a paw came out between the bars when I called “Junior”. It looked like him to me, so I sprung him and took him home.
The girl I was dating at the time said it wasn’t Junior.
I was in denial for a week but finally understood. It wasn’t Junior. I called him “GI”…the Great Imposter. When I finally let him out a couple weeks later he never came back, (but as cats will), he left me a dead mouse on the back stoop as a thank you gift for aiding in his escape from the SPCA.
Since then, I’ve had nothing but house cats. Among them was Azalea Mae Von Bulow whose name was later changed to Azalea Mae West after Klaus Von Bulow was arrested in Rhode Island for trying to murder his wife. I didn’t want her to be stigmatized.
Then there was Mitzi who lived 15 years, Lucy who still lives in Niagara County and is 13 and Cleo who wakes me up every morning around 4:00 AM by pawing my face until I scratch her head. I’m up before dawn seven days a week. She’d have it no other way.
There are neighborhood cats that prowl my backyard in the early morning, triggering the motion detector light on the garage and Tink down the street who follows behind her owner when the dogs are being walked. Tink likes to hang out in my yard in the summer, especially when I’m doing my gardening.
Obviously, I like cats…their independence and look, their getting out of the way just in time, the purr and swagger of them.
As T.S. Eliot wrote:
“The naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have three different names”
I’m John Merino and this is American Chronicles.
American Chronicles is a bi-weekly locally produced feature on WRFA written and produced by retired Gebbie Foundation CEO, John C. Merino. Currently, John is an Adjunct Professor of Micro-Economics, Organizational Management, and 20th Century World History at Mercyhurst University. American Chronicles airs twice monthly, Friday mornings at 7:15 and Friday Afternoons at 4:35. American Chronicles features original stories (partly fact and partly fiction), commentary on local, state , national, world conditions and more.
For past episodes and transcripts, visit www.wrfalp.com/tag/american-chronicles/
More Posts for Show: ]]>
AMERICAN CHRONICLES: AT RANDOM
Copyright: John C. Merino 2016
Originally airing Feb. 19, 2016
This may be a long list. I honestly have no idea. I just started thinking about so many different things at once, none of which fit together, that I thought I may as well get it off my chest, so to speak………here goes!
- I’m completely fed up with national politics, politicians, pundits, and those who believe they have something “all knowing” to offer us. You know what they say about opinions
- I’m tired of “Letter’s to the Editor” from ministers of one ilk or another, quoting scripture and somehow managing to equate it with what they believe is a direct correlation to some catastrophic world event, misguided presidential effort or hidden message the rest of us are missing. Enough already. Save it for your pulpit and keep it out of my morning paper.
- I like the mayor. I think he’s done and is doing a good job for this community. Talk about two year terms and that perhaps it’s time for a change is bogus.
- There are way too many pictures in the paper of people patting themselves on the back for doing what their supposed to do….their job.
- Use your signals when you’re going to make a turn, will ya….and the law is you must signal at least 50 feet before your turn. Putting your blinker on when you’re in the process of turning does nothing for other drivers nor does it meet the legal requirements.
- I don’t want our local police department to merge with anybody. I like the responsibility being right where it is…..in town. Having had experience merging two police departments some 25 years ago as Police Commissioner of Lewiston, N.Y. I can tell you it does not save money, if that’s the objective….and if our coverage’s are working, we don’t need city officers directed from the county seat. Stop wasting time and study something else like county wide recycling and electric cars for all government uses. Something that actually can save money.
- Stop showing these heart wrenching animal cruelty commercials in the middle of an otherwise interesting TV program. My cat doesn’t like them any more than I do. OK, I’ll send a check.
- Why is it that the guy in the neighborhood with the smallest driveway and least amount of sidewalk has the largest snow blower?
- How did Jamestown which has much more in common with Buffalo, end up Gerrymandered in a congressional district with Ithaca. Absolutely illogical, except for the fact that conservatives want to forever control the county.
- …and why is it that in New York State citizens cannot offer “Ballot Propositions”. California permits it and they haven’t collapsed yet.
- Did you know that more money is spent every year on pet food then feeding poor children in America? Heard that on the radio the other day.
- Why is it no one ever mentions Sonny Bono….ya know, just in passing?
- Hey Apple……help the FBI gain access to the San Bernardino terrorists’ cell phone. You’re not making friends
- That’s enough…….talk at ya again next week.
I’m John Merino and this is American Chronicles.
American Chronicles is a bi-weekly locally produced feature on WRFA written and produced by retired Gebbie Foundation CEO, John C. Merino. Currently, John is an Adjunct Professor of Micro-Economics, Organizational Management, and 20th Century World History at Mercyhurst University. American Chronicles airs twice monthly, Friday mornings at 7:15 and Friday Afternoons at 4:35. American Chronicles features original stories (partly fact and partly fiction), commentary on local, state , national, world conditions and more.
For past episodes and transcripts, visit www.wrfalp.com/tag/american-chronicles/
More Posts for Show: ]]>
AMERICAN CHRONICLES: RIDE THE FALLS
Copyright: John C. Merino 2016
American Falls at Niagara, circa 1969
There’s been recent talk about “shutting off” Niagara Falls. I was there the first time……..back in 1969 when the Army Corp of Engineers dammed the Niagara River between Goat Island and the main land.
Their objective was to inspect the face of the falls itself. Centuries of erosion had collapsed over 2000 tons of rock to the base of the falls, and the precipice was beginning to look like it would simply erode into a rapids.
Ultimately, the Corp removed the rock at the base of the American Falls, though there was discussion about structurally installing steel and concrete to curtail future erosion.
The public went nuts…………….and after the rock was removed, the dam was exploded and the water flowed again.
We were detained by State Park Police, a friend and I, when we decided to walk to the edge, sit down and look around. It was an incredible sight. We were brought downtown, threatened with arrest…………but ultimately all the cops wanted to know was what the view was like.
Jean Lussier, circa 1929
All of that got me thinking about Jean Lussier. Jean was a “Daredevil.” He went over Niagara Falls on July 4, 1929 in a rubber ball he claimed was designed by old man DuPont himself.
I first met him in the late 1950’s. I was a kid…..maybe 9 or 10……taking the bus downtown to the Saturday matinees at either the Strand or Cataract theater(s). Three Stooges shorts and a feature………..a candy bar, soda and pop corn………all for 35 cents. It was a deal at twice the price.
Jean would stand in front of the shows as they let out. He’d hustle tourists telling them his story, selling them autographed post cards that featured his picture kneeling next to the craft he had trusted. They were charged a dollar, and on the back he’d write…”Over the Falls in a Rubber Ball….that’s me, Jen Lussier”……and he’d recite it as he wrote it, in a thick French Canadian accent.
When the tourist’s thinned out, he’d gather a group of kids and retell the entire story. How he’d met old man DuPont and convinced him to design and build the ball……a sphere of light weight aluminum framing approximately 5 feet in diameter. It was double coated with thick milled rubber sheets, torch fused, and it had a small oxygen tank on the inside, where Jean sat on a swiveling platform, strapped in and in theory, he was always upright because the bottom was weighted with lead bars.
The ball, Jean inside, had been rolled down the bank of the Niagara River on the Canadian side, some 500 yards above the falls. It pitched and bobbed its way to the brink……….and within seconds, he had reached the precipice, plunging over the edge….188 feet to the lower river…..lost momentarily in the foam and crash of water below….popping up a few hundred yards down river where his co-conspirators waited to retrieve him. He’d made it and became history……..all 5 foot 5 inches of him.
On Sundays he would stand in front of the Daredevil Museum. The curators would wheel the remains of the ball out front on a pallet …..and for $2.00 tourists could take his picture standing next to the ball………..and get an autographed post card.
I didn’t see him for over a decade. Beginning in the mid-sixties the urban renewal plague hit Niagara Falls and the museum, old theaters, historic train station, tourist traps and offices were all torn down.
He had nowhere to corral tourists after that.
When I returned home from my wanderlust that found me in Kansas and Mexico, hitching around the mid-west with a guitar and dining at the finest truck stops, I was hired as a maintenance man with the Niagara Falls Housing Authority.
Mainly, I mopped the hallways on each of the 14 stories of the low income senior citizen apartment complex called Spallino Towers. Occasionally, I’d be invited to a birthday luncheon in the rec-room. Someone had reached 75 or 80 and the residents would sup on pot luck and guzzle cheap wine.
It was at one of these soirees, when I looked over to a table in the corner. A slight man sat alone at a table of four………..head down, sipping his wine.
I went over to join him, saying hello and when he raised his head the first thing that crossed my mind was the phrase, “That’s Me.”
It was Jean……worn and old……his smile gone……his clothes, sized for a younger man, must have come from the Goodwill. I told him where I had met him and when. We spoke about old Falls Street and the shops, clubs and tourist traps. He again, told me the story about his feat. I got him to smile.
I went to work early every day after that….and stopped by his apartment on the 11th floor. I’d stick my head in when my shift was over to see if he needed anything from the store……Milk or bread or coffee.
The other old men ignored him. “I’m so damn tired of that story, I don’t even want to talk to him anymore”, Tony said.
For me, it was even more reason to listen when Jean would re-tell his story, recount the lunch he had with Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio at the Como Restaurant when she was filming the movie Niagara in 1951, and show me the letter he’d received from President Eisenhower after, he claimed, he was a guest on What’s My Line.
When Jean died in 1971, it wasn’t like Walter Cronkite reported it on the news. It wasn’t peaceful nor pretty.
I made my usual morning stop and knocked on his door. There was no answer and the tenant next door said she hadn’t seen him for a couple days.
I went down to the maintenance garage and told Tom the mechanic that I was concerned about Jean. He grabbed a pass key and we went back up to the 11th floor and let ourselves in.
Jean’s apartment was barely furnished…..a lawn chair and plastic table that held a small radio. No TV. An army cot with a surplus blanket, a coffee pot on the stove and a toaster I had picked up at a garage sale.
Here he was……the Daredevil……..it seemed worse to me than the ride over the falls, itself.
Tom went in first. He opened the bathroom door and told me to go downstairs to the office and call an ambulance. He didn’t want me to, but I looked through the door and Jean sat, in a tub of red water, clothes on, his head bent to its side.
Jean chose to slit his arms with a razor, rather than live the indignity of it all. He was alive still, but barely.
He was rushed across the street to Memorial Hospital. I visited that night, but couldn’t get in to intensive care. Jean held on for a couple days.
When Walter Cronkite reported his death from natural causes on the news, I cried.
I picked up my guitar that night and wrote the ballad of Jean Lussier. I never play the song anymore….but here’s the opening line:
“Jean Lussier was kind of small, but he rode the Falls in a rubber ball.
Why he came here at all, is still not clear to me.”
I’m John Merino and this is American Chronicles.
American Chronicles is a bi-weekly locally produced feature on WRFA written and produced by retired Gebbie Foundation CEO, John C. Merino. Currently, John is an Adjunct Professor of Micro-Economics, Organizational Management, and 20th Century World History at Mercyhurst University. American Chronicles airs twice monthly, Friday mornings at 7:15 and Friday Afternoons at 4:35. American Chronicles features original stories (partly fact and partly fiction), commentary on local, state , national, world conditions and more.
For past episodes and transcripts, visit www.wrfalp.com/tag/american-chronicles/
More Posts for Show: ]]>
Copyright: John C. Merino 2016
There is no question that the Chautauqua Institution is not only a gift to our county, but so too, deserves the world class reputation it has earned over more than a century as a seat for intellectual discourse and creative artistic presentations.
You’d be hard pressed to find any other center of learning like it, anywhere in the world.
…and the announcement earlier this week of the end of year retirement of its president, Tom Becker, should give us pause to reflect on his accomplishments and say to him as a community, “Thank you”.
I am troubled, however, by the planned demolition of the historic amphitheater in order to replace it with a modern version. I have followed the discussion for the past year, as presented in the media, as proponents of restoration have built….I believe….a strong case for retaining the existing theater and rehabbing it at a much less expensive price tag than the new plan calls for….A reported $42 million.
Here are my thoughts.
One thing that has always challenged me about the Institution is their limited interaction with Jamestown and the missed opportunities to develop “off-season” programming for a population of children largely economically disadvantaged.
Though over the years, they have solicited and received monies from the Jamestown based Foundation community (in the millions I might add) my personal experience some 12 years ago when I first came to our community to serve as CEO of the Gebbie Foundation, troubles me to this day.
I was invited to and attended a luncheon with their senior staff and a few board members. Being new to the position and only having a cursory knowledge of the Institutions value and import, it was suggested by my bosses that I accept the invitation, visit the Institution and ask a simple question.
That question was, “what can we do to have the Institution program more broadly in the Jamestown community, especially in the “off-season?”
The response I received was unanimous….as several persons attending the luncheon spoke to the same basic answer.
“To experience Chautauqua, one needed to be inside the walls of the Institution”
What troubles me about that idea is that “one” would think, that given their reputation and stature around the world, they would look at their local role in broader terms….feel some level of responsibility to help uplift and educate those children who might otherwise go a lifetime without hearing a concert, see a ballet or learning from the lecture series…all of which are unparalleled.
To give them credit, they have partnered with the Reg Lena, the Jackson Center, WRFA and many other local organizations for decades….yet, off season programming designed to nurture and expand the minds of Jamestown’s most vulnerable citizens (our children) has been relatively non-existent.
Is it their job to play a part in such an effort? I believe it is. After all, they are a part of our community, too.
If it was possible to raise some $42 million to replace the historic amphitheater from donors who believe that it is the correct step to take, then how tough would it be to create an “off-season” fund for specially designed programming benefitting the community’s children….in effect playing an important role in building new generations of local residents whose appreciation of the arts and letters presented there, guarantee future supporters…..and wouldn’t it help build better citizens in the long run?
Whenever legacies are discussed….regardless of the individual or organization being touted at the time, those who will stand out are not the ones who confine their efforts to a limited constituency, but rather reach out to those whose need for those gifts is obvious…and well outside a limited definition of who their beneficiaries are.
Experiencing Chautauqua should not be limited to what happens inside the walls of the Institution…especially for children who will never see a play, lecture, dance, concert or any other of the wonderful offerings presented there, unless nurtured to appreciate.
Because so much financial support has been awarded to them by Jamestown based foundations for decades, and in order to play a part in building a stronger local community, choose instead to rehabilitate and restore the existing historic amphitheater and take a few of the millions raised to teach our children during their school year (the institution’s off season).
Open the gates to Chautauqua’s valuable programming…let it out for our children to experience.
Legacy is built and sustained by the gifts that are given to those who otherwise will never know…and without the Chautauqua Institution reaching out in a generous way, many of our children will never know….and ultimately….care even less.
I’m John Merino and this is American Chronicles.
American Chronicles is a bi-weekly locally produced feature on WRFA written and produced by retired Gebbie Foundation CEO, John C. Merino. Currently, John is an Adjunct Professor of Micro-Economics, Organizational Management, and 20th Century World History at Mercyhurst University. American Chronicles airs twice monthly, Friday mornings at 7:15 and Friday Afternoons at 4:35. American Chronicles features original stories (partly fact and partly fiction), commentary on local, state , national, world conditions and more.
Find past episodes at www.wrfalp.com/tag/american-chronicles/
More Posts for Show: ]]>
Copyright: John C. Merino 2015
I don’t know about you, but I find that this time of year brings out the best…….and sometimes the most annoying sides of people’s desire to be “Politically Correct”.
Let’s take a visit to any store or shop, looking for the perfect gift for your loved ones, for example.
When is the last time you actually had a cashier make change without looking to the register screen to see how much you were due? It just doesn’t happen. Most can’t count….and just as we used to learn to write cursive in school, making change is an art that is no longer taught either….therefore it no longer exists….
…..and heaven forbid you reach in to the penny cup at the counter to pay the 3 cents your charge calls for……….well watch what happens. The look of confusion and embarrassment that runs across the cashier’s face……especially if the bill is $6.33 cents…..is just priceless.
You hand them a $20.00 bill, a $1.00 dollar bill and grab 3 pennies from the courtesy cup. Well…..be prepared to wait twenty minutes………and don’t be surprised if they have to call the manager for assistance…….and all of this simply because you’d prefer to have a $10.00 dollar bill and a $5.00 dollar bill as change, because you already have a bill fold packed with ones.
……..and how about the “new” standard seasonal greeting…. “Happy Holidays”…….and what holiday might that be, I thought…. The Fourth of July?
I asked a young woman behind the counter at the mall the other day why she didn’t say “Merry Christmas” especially when the chocolate Santa stocking stuffers were piled 10 deep and 10 high next to the register where she was standing. Ready for the answer………..”We’re not allowed to say that”. “What”, I said…….”why not”
…….”because we might offend someone, I guess” she told me. I couldn’t believe it. We’ve become so worried about political correctness that saying Merry Christmas has become a possible offense…….so retailers have added that to their personnel policies so as not to open the door for a law suit or worse……..someone overreacting to the holiday’s well wishes and storming out of the shop. Go figure.
What I especially don’t like this time of year is having to worry about knowing what greeting to utter……depending of course…..on with what company one might find themselves.
Happy Kwanza for my African American friends who celebrate this holiday, Happy Hanukkah for my Jewish pals, for the Buddhists I know (and yes I know quite a few)…Happy Bodhi Day, Happy Id al-Adha for the two practicing Muslims in my circle of friends, Have a great Winter Solstice I keep in mind for our one Wiccan Friend, how about Happy Festivus for my friend George who hasn’t been able to go a single day in two decades without watching reruns of Seinfeld, and I don’t know any Japanese folks, but just in case……Happy Omisoka.
…….and how about this one………..Merry Krismas……..spelled: K-R-I-S-M-A-S for those Agnostic, Atheist and Deist folks we run into from time to time……..and the Neopagan’s celebrate Saturnalia……you know, a seven day feast worshiping the ancient gods of Rome………these folks are everywhere so be prepared.
It’s all too much. From now on I’m not saying anything remotely connected to a seasonal celebration………..
………I’m going to revert to that old standby……the one we all say…..the phrase which tends to annoy everybody……everywhere……all the time…….and is probably the most spoken phrase in the English language……….”Have a Nice Day”……so sue me!
Damn that Forest Gump anyway.
I’m John Merino and this is American Chronicles.
American Chronicles is a bi-weekly locally produced feature on WRFA written and produced by retired Gebbie Foundation CEO, John C. Merino. Currently, John is an Adjunct Professor of Micro-Economics, Organizational Management, and 20th Century World History at Mercyhurst University. American Chronicles airs twice monthly, Friday mornings at 7:15 and Friday Afternoons at 4:35. American Chronicles features original stories (partly fact and partly fiction), commentary on local, state , national, world conditions and more.
Find past episodes at www.wrfalp.com/tag/american-chronicles/
More Posts for Show: ]]>