Mohammad

Meet Mohammad and his friend, Mohammad.  I traveled to the Saraha Desert and most of the men I met were named Mohammad.   These two boys took us out to the desert where we spent the night.  They introduced us to our cook who was also named Mohammad.

Fox Bats- Australia

FOX BATS

Cairns, Australia
February 2015


I had read about these bats but I didn't think I would see any.  So when the woman on the bus told me to expect to see them at the bus stop, I was hopeful that maybe I would get to see one or two.  When the bus door opened, I could hear them screeching.  They were loud and irritation.  And there were 1000's of them.  They soared through the air. They hung upside down on the low lying branches and the swooped right by me.  I was scared to death.

Safari- Tanzania

Safari

Tanzania
February 2016

I don't know where or how to begin to write about my magnificent safari.  Even though this is my fourth safari and my second time to the Serengeti, the moments were still magical.  As with the other safaris, I was humbled and inspired by these wild animals who captured my full attention and heart.

The All American Rathskeller and Garden

The All American Rathskeller and Garden

AKA: the Rathskeller

AKA:  Skeller

The corner College Avenue and Pugh St.

108 S. Pugh Street

State College PA

This is one of my favorite bars. I love the people and the atmosphere. Its just what a college bar should be. No pretense, just alcohol. The Rathskeller is another one of the famous Penn State bars. It’s dark, damp and dinghy. The ceiling pipes are exposed. Bottle caps cover the floor and everyone carves on the wooden tables. I once noticed that all the tables had a new smooth surface. Here, the owner had just flipped all the tabletops over. By the end of the week, the new surfaces were just as bad as before.

This was the first Penn State bar I snuck into before the age of 21. I was 19 and my sister was 18.  We were walking down the alley and heard music. As we got closer to the bar, we saw that a backdoor was slightly ajar. So we snuck in.  BJ and Sherry were singing on stage and the audience was so enthralled with their talents that no one noticed us.  We stayed until closing and were pretty darn proud of ourselves.

The Skeller used to be the Rolling Rock capital of the world. It was the only bar in State College that sold Rolling Rock by the case. The bar maids actually hauled a case of beer right to the table. It was wonderfully convenient, as we never had to wait to get our next beer.   At one time or another almost every undergraduate student on campus would go to the Rathskeller to do a case study. I can’t verify it but I’ve been told this bar broke the Guinness book of records for cases of beer sold in one day. On the day of the event, my friends and I consumed case #757.

Spaghetti, a local icon, used to sit at the bar, in the corner.  He sat there for years and years and years.  He never seemed to age but he always looked to be about 80 years old. People bought him drinks and food and he never bothered anyone. When he finally died, the local paper ran a story on him and we finally found out his real name. I don’t remember what his real name. But he was a permanent fixture at that bar and I still look for him on the rare occasions when I go back to this bar.

I took my parents to the Rathole once.  My father looked around and said, “For this, you left home.”  He ordered a round of drinks for the 8 of us and the bill came to $7. “Are you sure you have that right,” he asked the waitress.  She assumed he thought she was cheating him.  So she answered in a defensive tone, “This was a buck, fifty, fifty cents for the beers and the coke was free.”  My father couldn’t believe it. He gave her ten bucks and told her to keep the change.  She spent the rest of the night leaping over tables to get to my father to refill his drinks.

I introduced my mother to Spaghetti. She extended her hand to him and he felt a need to be a bit more gentlemanly so he attempted to get off his bar stool. Unfortunately, he fell on her.  I was able to catch him in mid-fall and she was able to push him back a bit so there was no harm done. But the moment was lost.  My mother then proceeded to introduce him to another woman who was with us. That response allowed her to escape to some other spot in the bar.

On many weekends the place is packed.  Usually there’s a line to get in.  The front room has a loud jute box that plays rock and roll. A few televisions are always on but there is never any sound.  The middle room has a few pool tables, dartboards, electronic games and pinball machines. The back room has a small bar and stage. A local band plays most night. There is usually a cover change to get in to the back room but its money well spent, as the bands are good.

Many locals and college students frequent this place. No one ever escapes the magical attraction of this dumpy basement bar. Once a rathole fan, always a rathole fan. In my young days, I spent more time here than did at church, classes and library combines. This bar has been a Penn State tradition for almost 80 years.  All in all, I’d day it is a pretty good bar.


UPDATE: In Feb 2018, someone bought the Rath Skellar and closed it down.  A new bar is moving in. There are plans to upgrade the ambience and make it more upscale and I am never going there ever.

10,0000 Homes Project

After years of travel to very poor countries, I started the 10,000 Homes Project.   It is not as successful as I had hoped but we are moving forward and that is what really counts.  Our mission: to help 10,000 students lead their homeroom classmates in a project  to raise the funds needed to provide clean, safe drinking water to 10,000 homes in improvised villages around the world.

Our goal:  $1,000,000

(10,000 homerooms X $100 donation = $1,000,000)

This project starts with one student.

 A student makes a personal commitment to raise just $100 to provide clean drinking water to a home in an impoverished village.  So the student will:

1-organize a fundraising event in his/her homeroom to raise just $100. 

2-join the Facebook group “10,000 Homes Project” and encourage everyone in the homeroom to do the same.

3-convince two students/friends from other homerooms or other schools to make this same commitment to raise funds for clean water.  

To find out more about this project, visit our Facebook group : 10,000 Homes Project.    

Blaming James Joyce

James Joyce

Made Me Loss My Religion

Long Beach Island, NJ

Summer 1975

I am sitting on the beach on a hot, hot summer afternoon.  I have to be careful because the sun tends to burn my skin quickly. If I am not careful, I will blister and suffer days of heat exhaustion.  The curse of Irish skin.

I am alone and reading James Joyce, Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man. He begins to describe hell and his description is so repulsive, I have to stop reading. Does he believe this to be true?  Is this really what hell is like?  Does a place like this really exist?  And what about the all forgiving part of God.  This doesn’t sound at all forgiving.  Maybe hell is just made up to control us, to scare us into doing the right thing?  How does anyone really know if there is a hell or not?  It’s only a speculation at this point. What is ahead of me in the next life?  I don’t have any of these answers but I do know that this day was the day all of my Catholic education began to erode into skepticism and doubt.

 

“The horror of this strait and dark prison is increased by its awful stench. All the filth of the world, all the offal and scum of the world, we are told, shall run there as to a vast reeking sewer when the terrible conflagration of the last day has purged the world. The brimstone, too, which burns there in such prodigious quantity fills all hell with its intolerable stench; and the bodies of the damned themselves exhale such a pestilential odour that, as saint Bonaventure says, one of them alone would suffice to infect the whole world. The very air of this world, that pure element, becomes foul and unbreathable when it has been long enclosed. Consider then what must be the foulness of the air of hell. Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jelly-like mass of liquid corruption. Imagine such a corpse a prey to flames, devoured by the fire of burning brimstone and giving off dense choking fumes of nauseous loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again from the millions upon millions of fetid carcasses massed together in the reeking darkness, a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this, and you will have some idea of the horror of the stench of hell.”

To read more stories, check out:   bkmemoirs.blogspot.com

 or  bkmemoirs.wordpress.com