Happy Easter Weekend!

Welcome to Easter weekend!

My imitation of this scene from Tim Burton's
The Nightmare Before Christmas earned me
the nickname, "The Bunn", from one of my exes.

I was raised in a good Christian (Lutheran) household.  As a youngster, I was brought up with the traditional stories of Christ dying for our sins on Good Friday and rising again on Easter Sunday.  We celebrated Holy Week and ate fish on Fridays throughout Lent.  I can't recall ever actually giving anything up for Lent, but I think I may have tried a couple of times.

We went to church every Sunday (year-round), but especially during Holy Week.  Palm Sunday brought a collection of palm leaves folded into crosses.  Ash Wednesday found us displaying the ashes of the burned palms on our foreheads throughout the day.  Maundy Thursday and Good Friday found us in church again (I was getting tired of church services at this point).  There was a break on Saturday while we awaited the joyous return of Christ on Sunday.  I also can't forget to include Fasnacht Day - Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras for those outside of the Pennsylvania Dutch area - with the tradition of using the last of the lard to make fasnachts, or doughnuts.

I know my Evangelical calendar is off a bit, but mixed up as it is, it brings back many good memories.

My favorite part of the season was the music and celebrations of Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.  Our organist was one of the best I've ever known.  The pipe organ we had was a powerful instrument with many stops which belted out the Glory of God to the Heavens.  It was a true celebration when the zymbelstern (a rotating star with bells attached) was engaged and the tinkling bells rang out above the pipes.

As I got into high school, I drew away from the church.  I did go to a Catholic high school, but being one of only a few Protestant students, I was not required to participate in the Catholic traditions.  At one point, curiosity won out and I wandered around the chapel looking at the stations while fellow students followed the Stations of the Cross, but that was he extent of my high school religious career.

Work slowly became more important.  I slowly became a "Holiday Christian".  When our organist passed on, my hometown church was no longer the same and I stopped attending altogether.  I have since sampled several different churches and beliefs and have since formed my own.

I will, however, always hold my childhood memories of the Easter season close.

Several experiences stand out.

My parents stood strong in childhood beliefs, but especially with Santa and the Easter Bunny.

Every Christmas, we would put out eggnog and cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.  For many years, I couldn't wait to see if  Santa took a bite or if the carrots were gone.  The cookies were always mostly eaten, the eggnog mostly gone and a couple carrot tops would remain on the back porch.

One very special Christmas, I woke to an icy snow cover.  My mother told me that if we were lucky, we might see where Santa and his sleigh landed - our roof was much too steep for him to park and come down the chimney.  Also, we lived in the country, so leaving the back door open for him didn't draw any fear of burglars sneaking in during the night.

Sure enough, when I checked the porch for discarded carrot tops, I found large boot prints leading to and from the back porch.  These led to the back driveway.  There, preserved in the icy crust of the snow, were hoof and sleigh tracks.

I may never remember the gifts I received that year, but the happy memory of those tracks will remain with me for life.

Speaking of tracks, we'll jump to one special springtime memory.

One Easter weekend, a very good friend of my mother came to visit.  She told us that she knew a trick to find out if the Easter Bunny really came to visit.  All we had to do was spread flour across the doorway and the Bunny would track it through the house.  So we tried it.

Sure enough, I came down the next morning to find Bunny tracks from the back door, up the hallway into the dining room.  We always set up our Easter baskets on the dining room table.  I could follow the trail of footprints up a chair, onto the table and around each basket.  The tracks finally hopped off the table, back through the kitchen and out the back door again.

I can't believe they make a pattern for these now!
Back in my day, we used our middle three fingers
for the toes and our thumbs for the back pad.
From tidbitsandtwine.com

While my rational adult mind knows the truth, I will always treasure the evidence I had of Santa and the Easter Bunny.  I believe my parents still have pictures lingering around the house.  That is my proof of a very special childhood.

I'll finish with a tradition that may not be known quite as well.  The tossing of the Maundy Thursday egg.

Easter egg tosses may be better known.  You take an egg and toss it to the ground in front of you.  If it lands on the ground unbroken, you will have good luck.  This comes from a Germanic tradition of throwing a Maundy Thursday egg - it must be laid that day - over your house.  As the tradition goes, the unbroken egg (yes it is raw and NOT hard-boiled) gets buried where it lands.  This special egg will grant good luck to the household for the next year.

My family would follow this tradition for years throughout my childhood.  My brother had a much better pitching arm than I and would always be the one to throw the egg over the house.  He had it down to a science, avoiding trees and clotheslines and the gravel of the back driveway.

The tradition grew every year as friends and neighbors heard of the bizarre practice and asked us to throw over their own houses.  It gradually became an all day affair and even made the newspaper a couple of times.  When I did a Google search for "maundy thursday egg toss", the first two sites that came up were two articles one of our neighbors wrote for the local paper, one for 1983 and one for 1988.

Whether the egg gave good luck or not, I'll never really know, but enough people believed in to keep it going for as long as we could provide the service.

I'll never forget any of these treasured memories.

As an adult, I don't celebrate Easter as I used to.  Occasionally, we'll decorate.  Usually we'll trade cards and chocolate.  One time, probably 15 years ago at this point, I even dressed as the Easter Bunny for the kids at the Capital City mall in Camp Hill, PA.  It was a hot suit - like wrapping myself in a rug - and I remember hanging a bag of ice from the inside top of the head as a form of "air conditioning".  I stank after just a few hours.  It was all worth it though.  No one knew who I was other than my handler and a handful of people at my real job.  I was just another guy in a rabbit costume in another mall, but I was able to provide Easter memories for maybe a hundred children and their families that year, complete with a photo.

My costume was very similar to this one.

This year I celebrate with you.  I give you my memories as a reminder to create your own and start making them with your children and loved ones so they have something to hold onto in the future.

Whether you are celebrating the death and rebirth of Christ or your beliefs go further back to the celebration of new life and the coming of the green season after the death brought on by winter, Happy Easter to you all!

Six Degrees of... Jason Voorhees?

I love how life's web is so entangled.

As the popular game, "Six Degrees of Separation", proves, two people can (usually) tied to one another in six steps or degrees.  This can also work for two objects, subjects or anything else.  Those not familiar with it may recognize it as "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", in which you can tie Kevin Bacon to any other actor in one way or another.

One of my favorite recurring articles in the magazine, Mental Floss, was written by Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame.  He would challenge readers to give him any two objects, people or places and he would link them within six steps.  Some of the links might be a stretch, but they worked.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon from maxdemarzi.com

This game came to mind as I was re-watching the original Friday the 13th last night.

Toward the beginning of the movie, one of the girls needs to get a ride from town to Camp Crystal Lake.  The man that give her a ride says he'll take her halfway and someone will pick her up.  The halfway point happens to be the Moravian Cemetery in Hope, NJ.

Now, I've watched this movie a few times.  I like to retain a healthy respect for some of the classic slasher flicks.  This time, however, something clicked in my mind as familiar.

How do I know this place?  Cue Google maps.

First off, I brought up the cemetery.  You can tell from the movie that it had to be a real location and it is.

I didn't see anything immediately around the cemetery that struck a bell, so I brought up Hope, NJ.

That's when I recognized the area.  Just outside the town limits is a spooky stretch of road called Shades of Death Road.  No joke.  That's the name.  It borders Jenny Jump State Forest on the east side.  Both of these areas were covered by Jack Osbourne in one of his episodes of Haunted Highways a couple years ago.

Reportedly, apparitions can be seen while driving the road at night.  One of these was thought to be caught on film during the episode that aired.  Jack and the gang also cover nearby Ghost Lake on which spirits of the local Native Americans can be seen rising like mist from the surface.

I think it is so cool that such a classic slasher flick was filmed near such a cool haunted area!

Camp Crystal Lake is nearby, north of Hope.  As a side note, Moravian Cemetery is not halfway between the town and the camp.  The cemetery is, in fact, just south of the town.

Camp Crystal Lake is an actual camp by name of Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, a boy scout camp in Hardwick NJ.  Like any campground, No-Be-Bo-Sco has it's ghost stories and legends.

In the early '40's, a plane crashed into a local mountain killing six.  Supposedly, anyone staying at the camp that hiked through the crash site would be affected.  If they had any possessions from that time or earlier, those items would disappear overnight, only to be found at the crash site the next day.

Another legend says there was a man who killed kids by bashing their heads with rocks.  While I've found several documentations of the plane crash, I've only found one mention of this murderer.  However, every camp needs a good story to keep the campers in their cabins at night.  I know the church camps I stayed at as a kid had them!

So, if you need a haunted road trip, go check out this area near Hope, NJ.  If you'd rather see what others have supposedly seen, check out YouTube.  There's a few videos there to take a look at.  My favorite is the episode of Haunted Highways.  If you can't find it On Demand, it is available on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.  It also includes a great story about a deadly train crash.

Oh! And my six degrees of separation?

I enjoy paranormal investigation television shows, including (1)Haunted Highways, whose team leader, Jack Osbourne, investigated (2)Shades of Death Road, which is just south of the real life (3)Camp Crystal Lake, the setting of the first (4)Friday the 13th movie, in which (5)Jason Voorhees' mother killed a character played by (6)Kevin Bacon.

On Writing

It's been a while since I've written anything.  I can't say it's because I don't want to or can't.  I just haven't.

I've think part of it is because I've periodically been experiencing bouts of depression.  While the winter has been nice, it has been affecting me in more of a negative aspect.  I'm still discovering how my condition(s) affect me - apparently the cold and gray weather are no longer my friends.

It is my understanding that there are those out there that do miss my writings and ramblings.  I've heard from friends that they have family members that read this blog and wonder why I stopped.  I didn't even know they read it!  My own father-in-law has asked why I stopped.  Truthfully, it is hard to believe there are people reading this.  Yes, I look at the stats of the blog and can see there are a few people who take a look at it - some from around the world!  I rarely see any comments on the writing.

I know it is not essential or even required to leave a comment about reading an article or ramble.  I'm guilty myself.  I only leave comments on things I've seen that have really struck me in some strong way.  I don't mean to sound like I'm begging for a comment.  That is by no means my intention, but it is nice to know when my words have meant something to someone.

ANYWAY, that's not why I'm writing today.  That's just to let everyone know I am still alive and okay.

As I sit hear with lazy Jack snoring beside me, I'm impelled to discuss my views on some writing I've seen recently.  I say views, but it is really more of a selection of pet peeves.

I've recently read some short horror stories by an author published on Smashwords.com.  I am sure he's a cool guy and has some great ideas.  In fact, some of his stories are creative, but...

While I will not sit here and say that my writing is the best in the world and English was my best subject in school, but his writing skills are atrocious.  I really had to check out his website to understand this guy is an adult.  The stories he has written seem to be written by a kid in elementary school; I'm sure there are some kids that would write - and talk - with some of the language he uses.

Please understand that I am in no way offended by a sailor's mouth.  The language is not a problem for me.  The grammar, on the other hand, is a big issue.  First off, many people understandably use spell check.  Spell check is our friend!  Unfortunately, many forget about homophones!  In the stories I've read, I don't think I've found many correct usages of any of the derivatives of the word "there".  You know - there, their or they're.  It would be nice if there were a spell check that would catch homophonic mistakes.

Of course, those are not the only mistakes that have driven my mental editor crazy.  Completely misspelling a word as another word that is spelled correctly is a mistake that is very hard to accomplish.  It has been done, though.  One story I read had a part in which the character was imagining something.  The problem was that the character was "imaging" it instead of "imagining" it.

I also don't know how many more times I can tolerate one of his characters saying they seen something.  Come on people, you either saw it or you have seen it.  There's nothing in between.

Now, let's talk about sentence structure.  I don't mean the fact that there should be a noun and verb, etc.  I'm talking about run-on sentences.  We've all seen them.  I know several people that seem to only write in run-ons!  I've read posts on Facebook that drive me nuts!

i went out today and i cant believe what happened that stupid person ran me off the road on theyre way to work i dont know what im supposed to do it made me so mad

Wow! I almost didn't make it through writing that sentence!

At least, the author I'm referring to uses capitals.  He also uses punctuation... Much, too much, punctuation.  This guy bleeds commas.

That's what has been driving me insane for the last couple of days.  The worst part is that, for some reason, I keep reading his stories.  It's as if I am convinced I can find one - JUST ONE - that has no issues.  I'm not losing anything from it, except maybe a few brain cells.  His short stories are free and many are based on urban legends, which are somewhat entertaining.

If you want to check out some of these stories and see for yourself what they are like, look for Drac Von Stoller on Nook, Kindle, Smashwords or any other e-book outlet.  You can also see his website at http://dracvonstoller.wix.com/drac.

Will you be scared more by his words or his style of writing?