Head On

I’m pleased that copies of I am a Road are being snatched up. I want people to read Mark’s writing because it’s worthy of a wider audience. I haven’t been this busy shipping books since my own collection of essays came out in the summer of 2014. Of course, that may as well have been 100 years ago, given the events of the last eight weeks.

Our son, Mark, was a poet. I should add, an “award-winning poet,” as his walk was being partially funded by a poetry fellowship from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. The award likely became a factor, helping him again heed the road’s beck and call.

In 2015, Mark also won the Quarterly West Novella Contest, for Holiday Meat. I enjoyed finding this review by Mary-Kim Arnold, from last summer, and reading her obvious appreciation for the work and Mark’s writing.

Mark was just hitting his stride as a writer and poet. I can’t imagine where his commitment to craft might have taken him if he wasn’t tragically killed January 21, walking along a highway in Florida.

This thought is merely one of many that arrive daily, if not more often. Grief is packed full of questions relative to loved ones lost.

Packing books means that at some point, I need to bring them somewhere and ship them. Since we’re now in Brunswick, I’ve been a frequent visitor to the post office on Pleasant Street.

On Monday morning, I ran across the street after doing my book drop, and grabbed a stack of books about grief at Curtis Memorial Library. Out of six books randomly chosen, two might be rated as moderately helpful. I’m finding that most of the books occupying library self-help sections on the subject don’t offer much in terms of assuaging the pain associated with losing someone, especially a son that Mary and I loved more than life itself.

One book that I grabbed was pretty good, though. It was an older book, published by a small press in New York. It’s title, The Death of an Adult Child: A Book For and About Bereaved Parents. Definitely one that will never be considered an entry for “sexiest book title.” The book, published in 1998, isn’t one of the newer books on the topic, either.

The writer, Jeanne Webster Blank, lost a 39-year-old daughter to breast cancer three weeks after being diagnosed. Naturally, Blank and her husband were devastated.

Books about grief.

Continue reading

Stopping for School Buses

This means stop.

This means stop.

Let’s begin this week’s Friday blogging exercise with a little traffic safety review for you drivers. According to Maine Revised Statutes for Motor Vehicles, under Title 29-A,  §2308: Overtaking and passing school buses, it reads as follows:

  1. Stopping. The operator of a vehicle on a way, in a parking area or on school property, on meeting or overtaking a school bus from either direction when the bus has stopped with its red lights flashing to receive or discharge passengers, shall stop the vehicle before reaching the school bus. The operator may not proceed until the school bus resumes motion or until signaled by the school bus operator to proceed.
  1. Penalty. A violation of this section is a Class E crime which, notwithstanding Title 17-A, section 1301, is punishable by a $250 minimum fine for the first offense and a mandatory 30-day suspension of a driver’s license for a 2nd offense occurring within 3 years of the first offense.

 Most of you are probably wondering, “why is Jim turning the JBE into a blog on traffic safety and rules of the road?” What? Did you not see the WMTW-8 report by Katie Thompson, on idiot drivers passing stopped school buses in Cumberland? I guess those high-end, tony suburbs aren’t attracting civic-minded types any longer. No, just rich schmucks with “get the hell out of my way” attitudes that are always riding up on my ass when I’m simply driving the speed limit on rural backroads like Route 9, coming back from points south and headed back to the compound in Durham. Continue reading

Parenting Skills

Whatever happened to that tried and true, time-tested axiom about children—that they were to be “seen and not heard”? Apparently, it went out the window with many other common sense conventions from yesteryear.

On Saturday, a local restaurant owner basically told two stupid parents unable to control their toddler that it wasn’t acceptable for their kid to scream and carry on for 40 minutes in her restaurant. And of course, social media—whose biggest claim to fame is that it gives a platform to dolts with opinions not warranting the light of day—has been flooded in typical lynch mob-style, with tirades from “internet moms” against her via Facebook.

Screaming kids ruin restaurant dining.

Screaming kids ruin restaurant dining.

Note to parents (yes, you doltish “internet moms”) of young children; your kids aren’t the center of my universe, especially if I’m eating in a restaurant and your kid’s acting like a brat. Address the boorish behavior like an adult, or take the kid out of the restaurant. Don’t leave it up to the owner of a busy diner to deal with your lack of parenting skills. Continue reading