New Shoes

After a quick visit to the Employment Office today, which in my head has always been the Unemployment Office, I headed over to the new Goodwill Store.
Employment and goodwill are important concepts, even just psychologically speaking, when you have no job and no idea where your next paycheck will come from.
I bought some shoes for $6.99, size 10. They are black synthetic made-in-China shoes with clunky last-century heels. The toe part is kind of angled like toes, which is not the way shoes normally look.
I am unfashionable enough to not know if they are good shoes or bad shoes.
To me they looked quirky yet sensible.
They were someone else's shoes. I'll never know whose shoes. They haven't traveled far, from the look of the sole.
Philosophical interlude: It's hard to know how far one has traveled based on their soul mileage. If only there were an inner odometer we could access.
Not that the knowing is any indicator of one's soul purpose, or value.
Point being, I'm unemployed and officially walking in someone else's shoes, thanks to the goodwill of some other woman.
It won't take me long to go a mile. After that, we'll see what's changed.

Barefoot farmer traveled the world

By Carol Robidoux
MANCHESTER - One of the last times I visited John Giovagnoli on his farm, he was on the mend, knocked off his bike by a hit-and-run driver a few weeks earlier.

        He leaned forward and parted his thinning hair to show me the stitched-up gash still healing on his head, then pointed in the direction of his bike leaning against the garage, too twisted to ride.

        He shook his head over the whole ordeal -- the sore elbow, the tender scalp wound, the mangled bike, the kind of person who would leave a man crumpled on the side of a road.

        But the deeper wound that day was what someone had done to his corn crop. A few days earlier, someone had driven through the edge of his 60-acre property, crushing a section of sturdy stalks that fronted his annual vegetable garden.

        "It's just like if he took my heart out. That's what it is to me, it's my pride -- and then someone comes by and destroys it, just like that," John had said to me.

        I had a similar feeling yesterday, at the sight of John's old farmhouse being razed. The real damage was already done, though. John Giovagnoli, stubborn and self-reliant, wanted to save his own home from the fire.

        Instead, he lost his life to it.

        I thought back to that hot August afternoon a few months ago when we wandered between the corn rows. He liked to go barefoot as he tended his crops, the only way to really know if the soil is moist enough, he said.

        John led me through a mini maze before settling on a particularly ripe ear. He peeled it from its stalk, pulled back the husk, sunk his teeth into the sweet kernels and winked. "You try it like this and  you'll never eat it any other way. Go ahead. Don't be shy," he said, offering me the other side of the cob.

        I'd learned from previous visits with John that shy doesn't register much with a man who has for years reaped what he's sown in this world and taken his lumps with dignity and grace.

        I'd also learned that, despite having raised a mob of kids on an urban farm and making a name for himself as a humble New England pig farmer, John Giovagnoli was a man of the world.

        His respite every January from his labor of love in the fields was the trips he took -- Vietnam, Africa, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Rome, China, Colombia, Thailand -- traveling with only what fit in a backpack.

        He bunked with villagers and ate whatever was offered.

        "I wanted to know for myself how the world was doing," John told me once. "I have yet to go to a country in the world and sit and eat and drink with these people and not get along. Only the politicians seem to have trouble with that."

        That was his other passion, after farming; the politics of war and peace.

        John told me a story about when he was a fresh-faced Army recruit, shipping out to join in the war in Italy. His commanding officer was giving a pep talk on the mission at hand.

        "They were preparing us to go out and kill people. I raised my hand and said, 'You're asking me to go and kill my blood relatives? If you want peace, let me go break bread with them. That's the only way to settle your differences.' He got so mad at me, he told me I'd never earn my stripes because I couldn't keep my mouth shut," John said, unable to keep from smiling at the thought.

        Years later he said he saw that same commander at a reunion, and wore his old uniform to show off his stripes.

        "If I learned anything in my travels, it's that people are people. All the fighting and problems in the world, we cause them because we don't know how to just sit down and break bread with one another."

        I took his lessons on cultivating friendship to heart.

        A few weeks later, on an impulse, I called him up. A friend of mine was in town with her world-traveling mom, a single lady also in her 80s. Could we come by and break some bread?

        John dusted off some old wine glasses for us and we spent a couple of hours there, swapping colorful stories about couch surfing, life on the road and being students of life.

        I asked him if he had any regrets, and he said no, not really.

        Then he smiled.

        "I always loved to go dancing. I still have my good suit in the closet," he said. "That's something I wish I'd done more of."

        As we left, he thanked us for coming. "Come back soon -- anytime," he said.

        I promised I would -- and I meant to.

        Instead , I will have to remember him as the barefoot farmer who traveled the world -- a restless kid from Jersey who served his country and earned his stripes -- who fell for his Army buddy's sister, a West Side girl, and followed his heart to Manchester, where he raised some kids, some corn and some cows.

        His legacy to us all is a simple lesson: cultivate kindness and reap what you sow, no matter where you hang your hat.

        For all his stubborn simplicity, John Giovagnoli has left the world a better place

Diamond Makes Believers of NH Fans

NH Union Leader, September 23, 2002

By Carol Robidoux

Imagine the biggest karaoke bar in the world and, center stage, a guy in a glittering blue shirt and thinning hair, belting out that song by Neil Diamond everybody loves, “Sweet Caroline.”

Now imagine more than 10,000 people standing, swaying and singing along as if the words to the song actually mean something more than they do.

Right there you have the climax of last night’s show at the Verizon Wireless Arena, only it wasn’t a karaoke bar, and the man with the microphone was THE man himself, Neil Diamond.

It was a first for many New Hampshire fans who’ve waited a lifetime for the seasoned crooner to make his way to the Granite State.

And based on the sell-out crowd that spanned several generations of fans, it’s possible Diamond is even bigger than he was when his string of Top-40 hits began in the 1960s.

The show opened with “Coming to America,” a real crowd pleaser — as if any song about America could be a clunker these days. But Diamond did it right, backed by his 17-piece band that included a four-piece string section, horns, steel drums, guitars, keyboards, and backup singers.

After the first song, Diamond took a moment to playfully editorialize about the quality of the Verizon’s sound system, which has been criticized as too echoey, at times.

“It’s a record crowd here at the Echo Capital of New Hampshire. But don’t worry — the echo is absorbed by your clothing,” said Diamond. “And so I’ve been asked by management to ask that you don’t take your clothes off during the show.”

Of course, the crowd went wild every time Diamond unleashed his subtle sexuality. In particular, as Diamond prepared to sing, “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon.”

That’s when Annette Simard, 70, of Manchester noticed the singer was working up a sweat. So she stepped to the front of the stage, pressed a white tissue to her lips and then held it toward Diamond.

Slowly, Diamond walked over toward Simard, knelt down for the tissue and, before she knew it, was holding her hand. He sang the entire song to her as they shared the spotlight, at times as he sat, or even stretched his body out in front of her on the stage. The swooning Simard covered her face at times and appeared to be weak in the knees, as the crowd erupted in cheers and laughter.

“Has anybody got a cigarette?” asked Diamond at the end of the number. “Thank you, my darling. I’ll take experience over youth any day. I like a woman who comes and gets what she wants,” he said, as Simard stepped back to her front-row seat.

Throughout the rest of the show Diamond proved that there are perks to sustaining a career for more than four decades.

For one thing, your fan base keeps regenerating, evidenced by the age span of the crowd that included plenty of mother-daughter duos, such as Patricia Salois, 51, and her daughter Christine, 26.

“I like the way he moves,” said Christine.

“He seems like an honest, down to earth guy,” said Patricia.

“There’s no such thing,” said Christine.

“He looks just like my father,” said Patricia.

And there you have the essence of what it is about Neil Diamond that makes it possible for him to keep a sold-out arena full of devoted fans swooning for two-and-a-half hours.

Midway through the show Diamond started churning out his hits, including “Solitary Man,” “Holly Holy” and “Cherry, Cherry.”

He even launched into a few of the songs that have made others famous, like “Red, Red Wine,” which was never a hit for Diamond, but that put UB40 on the map, and “I’m a Believer,” which has rounded the charts twice — for the Monkees back in the 1960s and again last summer for Smashmouth as part of the “Shrek” soundtrack.

Just before 10:30 p.m. Diamond finished up with “I Am, I Said,” then rewarded the crowd with an encore that included “Cracklin’ Rosie” and “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show.