the tee shirts of my life, #1 — the hometown news

I have been going through some drawers, trying to clear things out, and found a bunch of old tee shirts that I hadn't seen in ages. Most were saved by my mom, I think. And did they bring me back. It's amazing how something like an old tee shirt could tell a story. For instance, this shirt, from the mid-70s. I didn't know that any of these had survived.


My dad was a newspaperman, who worked the political beat for New Jersey papers The Newark News and later, The Daily Observer, which operates out of Ocean County. In the '70s he decided he wanted to be his own boss and opened a local weekly paper called The Hometown News. He did everything — wrote the stories, taught my mom and me how to do layout, took and developed the photos in the darkroom (which he taught my brother and me how to do, too), sold advertising (until he could hire someone else to do that), even delivered the papers to stores and to the homes of paper boys and girls. And he had some tee shirts made. This must have been my mom's. She also wrote the entertainment column, mostly about television.

The artwork, which was also part of the paper's banner, was from one of our gigantic clip art collection books.


The Hometown News didn't survive very far into the 1980s, however. But I learned a lot. I wrote the music column, and my dad suggested that I write to major record labels; that I would be willing to review new releases. I did and they sent me free records. Some of them were pretty awful, but because of The Hometown News I also got free records and was introduced to and fell in love with some of my favorite bands like The Police and The Clash. And these days I find myself still writing, and even reviewing. It just takes a tee shirt to connect the dots.

happy veterans day

Thanks to all who have served out country and continue to serve. Here are some photos my dad took of his fellow coast guard buddies during WW2.

That guy in the middle, with the floppy ears, must have been their CO

And here's the photographer, bottom right:

happy birthday dad!

You are missed.

xoxoxo e

Joseph Francis Periale, age 10

In Belmar, N.J. with Bunny (home from college at Kansas State?)

With Elizabeth Anne and John James, on our way to Mystic, CT

happy birthday pop

I love this picture of the old man. He looks so relaxed.


xoxoxo e

jupiter, by jove!

Since we have moved to Florida, the night sky has been so much more visible than in our former city digs. I stayed up late and watched the Perseids last month and have been enjoying getting reacquainted with the night sky.

So I decided that one of my birthday presents to myself would be a telescope from Costco. It came with two lenses, one 25mm and the other 9mm. The past few nights have been a little windy (thanks to Hurricane Igor), almost too windy to keep the telescope steady, but I have been dragging it out onto the porch and catching some great glimpses of the moon.

But spurred on by the news of the proximity of the planet Jupiter to the moon this week, last night was a real treat. Thanks to my iPad Star Walk app I have been keeping track of the very visible Jupiter all month. But Monday night was really extraordinary. I was able to see a line on the planet when I put in the (larger magnification) 9mm lens as well as its four moons, all in a row.


Inspired by my dad, I then took my stargazing to the next level. My amateur astronomer father let us stay up late when we were kids to watch an eclipse or meteor shower on a telescope that he had constructed himself—well, actually my brother and I had already conked out on the couch, so he had to wake us up so we could see them. He also had a camera attachment for his telescope and took some amazing moon photos. i decided to give lunar photography a try myself. Carefully folding back the telescope lens's rubber eyepiece, I held my iPhone up to the lens and voila!

I was actually able to capture the largest planet (and its four moons), albeit tiny, in photos.

But where I was really pleasantly surprised was the quality of photos my iPhone took of the moon. The telescope can capture the ridges and shadows on the moons surface, but I never expected my iPhone to be able to as well.


I think it's safe to say that I'm over the moon at the moment ...

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• Look up in the Sky! The Moon! Jupiter! (wired.com)

happy father's day

A picture of my dad at the beach—he was about ten years old when this photo was taken. He wasn't much of a fan of the water, at least as far as I know, but we always lived near the ocean when I was growing up.

He was born on 14th Street in Manhattan, but his family moved to the Jersey Shore when he was a kid, and he spent most of his life there or at least nearby.

The past ten years is probably the longest I have spent living somewhere (D.C.) that it takes more than ten minutes to drive to a nearby beach, but that is soon about to change.

I miss you dad, and will be thinking about you when I get the sand between my toes once again . . .

dad in central park

A father's day preview . . . my dad at two, on the loose in the big city . . . with a personal photographer close at hand.

pop

As I've said before, I'm eternally grateful he missed April Fool's by one day, but I still miss him, like it was yesterday. The old man loved movies, cats, books and Yankees baseball and was a sucker for Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and Walter Matthau movies. I hope he's hanging out with old friends and family (and kitty cats from days gone by) in that N.J. diner in the sky.

xoxoxo e

on the town

My daughter loves this movie. I have always had the hots for Gene Kelly. This isn't one of my favorites of his films, but it has a joy and exuberance that is infectious. This WWII era Coast Guard photo of my pop, lower right, has the same joie de vivre. Funny, since the times were so uncertain and dangerous. Ah to be seventeen again...(but not during wartime.)

My dad was also from that hell of a town, the up part...

newsprint memories

Boy, did it stink. All that ink and paper, which would always shred at the edges. I remember sitting in the back seat of my dad's car, rolling up the Hometown News, and rubber-banding them, and then tossing them in the front seat. We would cruise the neighborhood developments, him tossing the papers out the car window. We were canvassing, trying to pick up new subscribers. If it was raining, I had to fold the weekly into a plastic bag first. I also had to package up a quantity of 25 or so to drop off at the houses of our local paper boys or girls. Sometimes we dropped off stacks at a local convenience store. By the end of the day my hands would be black from the ink and my hair full of dust. I reeked of newsprint.

I "escaped" this chore when I went to art school, but I hadn't escaped newsprint. My first year I was instructed to buy newsprint pads for life drawing class. I couldn't believe that artists wanted to draw on the horrible stuff. But it was soon clear that the paper, and the drawings on them, were considered disposable by teachers and students alike.

That's why I can't get too choked up by the "death of newsprint." I haven't read a newspaper in its newsprint form in over a decade. As soon as the New York Times headlines went online, so did I. Apart from the sudoku craze of a year or so ago, there seems little reason for anyone to purchase a paper. They are annoying on public transportation. They are handy lining the litter box, I suppose.

Our country's newspapers need a shock to their system. The quality of journalism has been tanking for years, but certainly reached it's nadir with the so-called reporting, or more accurately, reprinting, of press releases from the last administration. If newspapers want to attract readers, online or elsewhere, then they better bring it up a notch. It's time for a little integrity again and a lot of reporting, backed up by some good old-fashioned research. They all need to rent All the President's Men or Deadline U.S.A. And a decent crossword or sudoku wouldn't hurt, either.

fiditty

No, not Puff Daddy or P. Diddy or Puffy or whatever the hell he's calling himself these days. Fiditty was one of my dad's euphemisms for poop. Crap. Numero due. He had a lot of expressions for lots of things. I think he dreamed it up. I've never heard it anywhere else.

One of my brother's early words (learned from Pop) was lollapalooza (he pronounced it yayapayoozah), which was one of my dad's words for something unbelievable. Used in a sentence, "Munson's grand slam was some lollapalooza."

He did a fair share of name calling. I now wonder if it was a reflection of his generation, or alternative cursing. Bad drivers and errant Yankees (New York, that is) could earn the appellation "knucklehead," "dimwit," or "furshlugginer twit." Furshlugginer is of course an adjective.

He also cursed, whenever his Sicilian temper boiled over. I probably didn't learn all the really bad words from him, but I probably heard them first used to their full effect. Being a newspaperman, his most colorful cursing always read like a headline to me, "Shit, piss and corruption." Love that one. Used it myself.

Language is an amazing thing. We learn words, first spoken aloud, as someone speaks or reads to us, and then later, as we learn to read ourselves. Conversation, and not books, however, is where most colorful phrases seem to originate. Hopefully, as we read computer screens more and more, we won't lose the desire to converse, even curse at each other in creative and wonderful ways. No emoticons required.

deathiversary

Sixteen years ago today the old man gave up the ghost. I still miss him and it really stinks that he didn't get to meet his granddaughter. But I have his photo in a few key feng shui father corners in our house, so the kid knows her Grandpa Joe, at least through pictures. And stories, of course.

If the old man was around today, what would he consider a great way to spend the day? It would be optimum if his beloved Yankees were playing today, but the season starts tomorrow - missed it by just a day. Sort of like how he just missed the first of the month for his deathiversary, for which my brother and I are forever grateful, as April was a cruel enough month sixteen years ago, thank you very much. He would probably be debating what "just a bunch of millionaires" chances for the season would be. I'm not sure what he would think of the new Yankee Stadium, but I'm sure he would want to check it out.

He would have his own computer (he might have even built part of it) and be just as enchanted with the internet and its potentials as I am. He would probably not be at all surprised by the slow death of newsprint, but I'm sure it would chill his reporter's soul.

He would definitely want to catch a movie, whether in the movie theater or on TV, preferably one starring Richard Dreyfuss or Walter Matthau (pronounced Muh-towww.)

He would want to spend the day with his family, and if he tried to tell a joke, he would never get to the punchline, as he would be thinking about what was coming and get so excited, he would start to giggle and sputter, and turn red. Always funnier to watch than whatever joke he was attempting.


He would definitely drive me completely crazy at some point during the day. I think about how I am so very different from him in some ways, but so very much like him in others. I get cheered and chilled by this knowledge, but accept it, because that's how humans and families are. Sixteen years later I can still take a moment to think about him and miss him. Love ya, pop.

the old man...

...it's his birthday today. If he was still around he'd probably want to go see a movie. Is there anything with Meryl Streep or Bill Murray playing right now?

He died in 1993. When he was alive he'd sometimes drive me nuts, inspiring me to intone, "My dad, wrong or wrong!" And I unfortunately seem to have inherited his temper. I'm working on that. But I also inherited his sense of humor, movie buff-ness, interest in art, science and history, and a penchant for getting into a particular subject and then wanting to read everything about it. With me right now, it's the world of Eleanor of Aquitaine. My dad, at different times, had Virginia Woolf, Thomas Jefferson, Cripple Creek, Colorado and the poetry of Wallace Stevens as his enthusiasms, to name a few. We all, if we were listening, learned along with him, because along with the temper there comes a genetic tendency to pontificate, or as we call it in our family, breathe.

And did I mention the Yankees? We were indoctrinated an early age, much like my dad must have been by his dad. My dad's favorite Yankee when he was a kid was Joe DiMaggio, natch. I probably did so well in geometry in high school (the only math I did well) because I had been scoring and watching baseball with the old man for years. Think about it.

Another important fact about my dad was that he was a newspaperman. I don't say journalist, because that term has become meaningless. Dad was a political reporter for various Jersey papers including the Newark News and The Daily Observer, until he had his own weekly, The Hometown News. I remember watching a convention on TV with him, and trying to draw caricatures of some of the politicians. I was actually emulating my artist mom, whose caricature of my dad was used for his column in the Observer. He always presented an unbiased opinion in his pieces, which would sometimes drive the local politicians who befriended him crazy, as they weren't sure if he was a Republican or Democrat. He stuck to that principle at least once, by not voting in a primary, so he didn't have to declare his party and just voted in the general election. I realize now that I'm not sure, but I just assumed, that he was a registered Independent.

What would my dad think of the news media today and the imminent death of print (at least newspapers and magazines)? He'd probably be horrified as we all are at the level of competency displayed by today's "journalists." But the scientist in him would be fascinated by the internet and how news and politics have changed with the ever-growing computer culture. He'd be pretty jazzed about the election as well, and Obama, although like me, he might say, maybe now the Italian-Americans will get a chance! I hope he'd be happy to see that his daughter is political and articulate (sometimes) and interested in the world around her.

Happy birthday, pop. xoxoxo e

dad knew a thing or two

My dearly departed Pop used to refer to rock and roll (the Beatles!) as "banshee music." But the same man, who ran his own local newspaper, also encouraged me to write a music column for the paper (I was a teen at the time) titled Turntable Talk. Yes, those were the olden days (the 80s) when folks still bought vinyl, although cassette tapes were rapidly on the rise and Cds had yet to make an impact.

Dad also suggested that I write to the major record companies, telling them that I was a columnist and willing to review their albums. How cool was it when the (free) records started pouring in, and my musical knowledge and tastes expanded to include the Clash, Police, Squeeze, Elvis Costello, and countless other artists and one-hit (or even no-hit) wonders. I think my cousin has most of those records (that I kept). He's the only one I know who still has a turntable.

Somehow I think the old man would be proud that I'm still writing, occasionally, about music, if just on this blog. I hardly consider myself up-to-the-minute or a music expert on any level, but it's still fun to write and share an opinion, which is what Turntable Talk was about, back in the day, and the Internet is all about, these days.