Winners Are Habitual Dreamers

Winners Are Habitual Dreamers

(at least for Cathy & da harv)

"Well, excuse me", sarcastically uttered by a person of great inherited funds was heard to say.

Their names have been changed and placed in the categories of my choice. These are some people I’ve come in contact with during my life as a habitual dreamer.

And for the eight subcategories, depicted above, has become time for them to move on with life. 

If it is your most important desire to grasp and hold onto what tasty juices a dreamer is always ready for, well, then, my friends, you are a dreamer.

My point is: What in God's name are we supposed to make of all this?

Lincoln Terrace Park, Brooklyn New York 1941

I secretly overheard my father telling a friend of his, in a quiet manner, “That’s all the kid thinks about—is playing baseball.” Then, without hesitation, he added: “And right until he falls fast asleep, he’s squeezing the life out of a baseball and dreaming about tomorrow’s game in the park. The kids got talent!”

Almost every night, I was dreaming about something good. I didn’t realize at the time that I was an eight-year-old kid who was destined to remain a dreamer—hopefully forever!

Sooner or later

Out or in favor

New beginnings

Arise to savor

Two finally have become one

It’s still referred to as marriage

Then, like in a moment or two

A pram appears

Dudes and dudesses call it a baby carriage

That’s life, and wouldn’t you know

Some trouble begins

Oh my, out come twins

One and one multiplied

Two had become four

Young no more

But not yet old

These four moved to a larger space

Nothing glamorous, this extra room

And, oh yes, one more than a little thing to contend with

Overnight

Two sparkling little kids had become ten years old

And so they had to move to an even larger place to live

It was a time to be bold

On each and every Friday night

The four clasped hands

To say a prayer

Without another word

The candles, mom would light

Home became a castle

Each and every Friday night

This now is a very short epilog of what became the

Story of two becoming four...

Who worked hard...

Keeping a family together...

Clasping hands...

Relying on faith...

And all together dreaming

All together within a candle-lit castle

A king, his queen, a prince, and a princess

Still beaming and dreaming of much more!

Excuse me now, it’s time for me to move aloft in order to partake as a constant habituate...

Sweet dreams to all

From da harv

Keep the faith (yours)

May your castle beam on forever and a week!

If you need a disclaimer, here it is:

I can probably guarantee that what follows will be almost impossible for you to understand. I, for certain, can’t explain the true meaning or creative effectiveness of my thoughts having been turned into an honest appraisal of their meaning. After all, my old gold stories stem from a dreamer's mindset.

Good luck be had by all of ya…

"Old Gold Stories Told"

Old gold stories told

From within mind’s eyes

Worldwide

Admissive during one’s lifetime

Dismissive, almost never

Pad nor pencils ever a necessity

Public reciprocity never offered

For all people over eighty

Still strong enough

Allowing visions

Of old gold stories recalled

Pleasing insightful memories

Yours forever believably unfold

Past performances

Hot and sweet when first they came

Unannounced

Each a new discovery

For you to claim

Youthful grails to be held, and behold

There within

A method for my madness lies

Often one must be gentle

When preparing to unfold

A pleasant remembrance

May not always be for your taking,

Not always from a happy time

Revisited

A person, place, thing, or happening

Accompanying this dream or that

Often quietly still

Free from reason, rhyme, or formality

When certain memories resist

When generosity begs for the forgettable

Life presents dreamless sobriety

It summons, deflates, challenges,

Perhaps 'tis new, this unabashed paradigm

An inhaled, unencoded, undesired spectacle

Of what life places within our human paths

Will it serve as a final engrossment

Who amongst us will endure

Frets stemming from life’s past

When deceptive age

Chronicles one's present

We gather from the past

Serving as a possible remedy

Presenting new goals

For the present and future

And then, too many years ago

Do you understand,

You are nothing more than a dreamer?

“Perhaps”, he replied, in a free form I had never heard before. He spoke of what and when my mother explained to him on the day I was about to be born. “This one, I can tell you, has a mind of his own”, while her groan was heard as well. And as my dad went on with his story of this new beginning, it became a stream of consciousness he used under his breath explaining to whoever might have been listening: “How did she know it was going to be a son?” She must have dreamed it. My mother might have been a dreamer. Often, dreaming ran rampant within a man or woman’s family. Often, it’s all a dreamer is free to do within their entire span of life.

A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel published in 1859 by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution.

Dickens opens the novel with a sentence that has become famous:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

...And for a few moments at this special moment

A distinct time in one's life, yours to conjure and celebrate

To take and reshare with yourself all you’ve seen and felt, and, yes…

All you can humbly store within a choice of dream-like treasury…

Dream humbly and great magnitudes of life and joyous well-being will become dream-like…

With great humility, joining your dreams in a salute to the very best of times…

With my special thank you to Charles Dickens

Harvey Kalmenson

Source/s: charlesdickensinfo.com

There's Going To Be A Great Day

"Lift up your head and shout:
There's Going To Be A Great Day"

At Dorsey High School, back in those days of the real early fifties, the student body referred to athletes around campus as “the jocks”. Most of us didn’t walk like regular humans. We’d “swagger”. We were a bunch of sixteen-year-old kids who grew up playing baseball as men. Men who within the next two years were to become recognized as the best high school baseball team in the United States. At the time, during eleventh and twelfth grade, our school baseball team established a high school national record; our team won forty-three straight games.

Of the sixteen team members, four of us were constantly receiving glowing writeups, singing the praises of the team’s success story. During the course of our senior year together, a variety of Major League Baseball scouts began showing up in an effort to find out if what the local newspapers were reporting was for real.

Note for those who know little about baseball, our national pastime: Being a winning team in the great city of Los Angeles is a major accomplishment. Winning forty-three straight games is almost an impossibility.

Upon completion of the season, all there was left to accomplish was to celebrate with the family and friends who cheered us on from the start. When you’re in love, it should be a lifetime of continual celebration. It seemed like, during that heady time period, wherever we turned there’d be an individual or organization inviting all of us to attend something or other.

About Coaching

Baseball and the unbelievable similarities with life and the way we play at it each and every day of our lives…

It was at a practice one day when I had completed my daily running and calisthenics workout, and I was loosening up my throwing arm as I prepared to pitch team batting practice. It was a ritual of mine to do two go-arounds. Simply explaining the methodology of pitching batting practice, it was making sure the guys were getting good pitches to swing at.

After giving the batters a full fifteen minutes on the first go-around, I came off the mound and rested for ten minutes, and then came back to pitch between fifteen to twenty minutes as if it was an actual game. The difference was, in this set, I told each batter coming up to the plate exactly what pitch I was intending to throw. Today, many professional baseball pitchers practice the same way when they pitch team batting practice. But not all—depending on who the team pitching coach happens to be.

In my case, it was a lot like life: A relief pitcher, especially as a team closer, that’s who I was. We must learn how to compete under far less-than-ideal conditions.

“That’s life. That’s What It’s All About”

Some happiness

Some pain

Some glory

Some strife

Easy or strain

Maybe too damn hot

Could it be your lucky old sun

Try not to complain

The guy on our team

I loved the most

Was always there to encourage us all

No teammate worked harder toward success

- Harvey Kalmenson -

George (Sparky) Anderson was not only a teammate during our once-in-a-lifetime ride to the top, but also my sincerest high school best friend as well. There was a time many years ago, while I happened to be throwing batting practice, I stopped for a couple of seconds to dry my brow… for whatever reason I glanced away from the guy in the batter's box and caught sight of my dad playing catch with George's father on the sidelines. I smiled from inside out, and I caught sight of my friend, Georgie, admiring the same incident. Two fathers enjoying themselves. It was indeed pride personified. Two dads together celebrating without a word being spoken.

Today and forever, within the confines of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, you’ll find a statue and a story about George "Sparky" Anderson, one of the few managers to win the World Series while managing two different teams, one in each league. I, on the other hand, have a baseball signed by George Anderson a few years ago in 1952. We were teammates and champs.

While my teenage swagger may have been better than his, it fell into disrepair shortly after high school ended due to a freak injury on a baseball field which abruptly evicted me from the dreamland I was living in. It all took place almost exactly as I received my high school diploma upon graduation. I had recently turned down getting a college scholarship. There were no other choices for me.

I became a walk-on baseball player and student at Santa Monica City College. On Saturdays and Sundays, I pitched for a variety of Major League-funded teams that played off-season baseball here in Los Angeles, and as far east as San Bernardino. During the weekdays, I worked for my father in his factory. My heart wasn’t in either my dad's factory nor did I have a love affair with traveling to the furthest reaches of Los Angeles county to pitch baseball for a few bucks. It wasn’t a great day for me. I guess a crossroad in almost anyone’s life can become trying. A decision had to be made, and so I did. The clock was ticking, 1952 was ending. It was definitely time for a new beginning.

And so, Harvey Kalmenson said goodbye to his family, cohorts, and friends. And hello to the United States Army. I volunteered for the draft. In a few days, I was on my way. Hello, Korea. I was about to discover things I had never realized about myself, and what a narrow life I was living. Being able to pitch a baseball is playing a game. True teamwork is synonymous with what you can spiritually make out of it. You’ll hear from me next week, God willing!

da harv
Now pitching for Kalmenson & Kalmenson

A Long Way Back

"A long way back in time...

The date yesteryear was 1770"

Or was it

Known to all

These 13 colonies

The Revolutionary War

Upon them

Taxes too much

Jobs too few

Similar from yesteryear

For me and for you

Infamy in a way

Our American future

Then as now, it seems

People having split dreams

Or baffled by life

With its dissipation

Stagnant and dim

Little joy being celebrated from within

From thirteen colonies

We’ve grown to fifty states

Three hundred sixty million

Somehow we remain strong

And though while still in peril, his voice was heard to say:

"I Regret I Have One Life to Give to My Country"

"Nathan Hale was a young teacher from Connecticut who served as a spy for the American Army. He was captured by the British on September 21, 1776, and executed, being hung from a tree the very next day, without a military trial, or court martial. He never said, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country," which is a paraphrase of a line from Joseph Addison's play, Cato."

"Cato, a Tragedy is a play written by Joseph Addison in 1712 and first performed on 14 April 1713." (Sixty-two years prior to the American Revolution.) Even then many voices were there to say: “Oh, what fools these actors be!”

Note: For those of you who enjoy taking a dip into American history, and specifically the life and times of an American patriot by the name of Nathan Hale: This gentleman graduated from Yale at the age of eighteen, carrying a double major through college—one of which happened to be literature (no surprise).

"According to the diary of Captain Frederick Mackenzie, a British officer who witnessed the execution, Hale's last words were, "It is the duty of every good officer to obey any orders given him by his commander-in-chief." Patriot leaders used stories about his execution to make Americans angry about Britain's unfairness. At the time of Hale's death, the American army was doing poorly, and the patriots needed encouragement. Hale's example helped strengthen support for the cause of independence."

"Hale was born on June 6, 1755, in Coventry, Connecticut, the second son of Richard and Elizabeth Hale. A prominent family, the Hales were devout Puritans and instilled in their children the importance of hard work, religious virtue, and education. At 14, Hale was sent off to Yale University with his older brother, Enoch, where he excelled in literature and debate. He graduated with honors, at age 18, and became a school teacher in East Haddam and later New London, Connecticut."

1775: Approximate population of 2.6 million in the thirteen colonies

2023: Approximate population of 360 million in the U.S.

Back when I was attending grade school at P.S. 233 in the wondrous borough of Brooklyn, New York—not far from where the patriotic hero Nathan Hale was executed by the British military—we kids became involved with the history of our great forty-eight states. We were blessed with a teacher whose specialties were science, and American history, with a touch of geography thrown in as well.

In the fourth grade, Mr. Salovey, a returning veteran naval officer, was a marvelous guy who instantly became a hero for many of us kids. We were with Mr. Salovey for three years during our fourth, fifth, and sixth grades.

Harvey Kalmenson (upper left), Mr. Salovey (second row from bottom, center)

History and geography came to life as he explained things about most of the places he had actually traveled to as both a civilian and while serving in the United States Navy.

On one particular morning, during one of our first days in his class, we noisily entered Mr. Salovey’s classroom at 8:45 am. We found him there waiting for us and ready to “fire at will”, as he put it. We all learned quickly; he wanted us to all take part on that very first day. And that’s exactly what we did from day one with Salovey.

The year was 1945. “Let’s begin today with a discussion of the men who stepped up on our behalf way back in 1775”, he informed us. “We’re going to begin almost the same way they did about 170 years ago. Our first group of folks was part of what they called the thirteen colonies. Today, we call them the forty-eight states.” “The United States of America!” was shouted out by one of the guys in the back. “You got it right!” Mr. Salovey shouted back at him. The class all laughed and clapped together. I guess a person might say it was a proud moment.

Three hours flew by. It was time for lunch. And though I was unaware, it would be in truth, a turning point; a new beginning, stimulated by a returning WWII naval veteran. Likely my best learning day to date. Arguably, my lifetime. The man had a very substantial method for explaining things to very young people. He referred to how he taught as "simplification". “You can’t really teach history without doing geography at the same time”, he would explain. I.e., One day, during an open class question period, a student asked when he was going to begin teaching us about geography. Mr. Salovey answered her with the following list of names:

Ethan Allen

Benedict Arnold

Elijah Clarke

Alexander Hamilton

Paul Revere

Crispus Attucks (Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770)

Benjamin Franklin

King George III

“Do you remember where they lived?” he asked. She answered correctly without hesitation. He then requested, “Can any of you tell me about the place and town they lived in, or what they had to do in order to get there?” No response. “Did they perhaps have to cross a river in order to get there?” What followed was complete class exuberance, hands were raised, and many began shouting their answers. He had made his point. “More often than not, history and geography go together”, he explained. “They can become synonymous.”

With flare, verve, and great pride in our country, Mr. Salovey introduced his patriotically spirited take on the American Revolutionary War along with unmistakable respect for his comrades in harm’s way.

Harvey Kalmenson

Source/s: Google, Yahoo Images, historycentral.com, biography.com

A proud and emotional remembrance...

What follows will be recognized as a coinage by that of this man—now known to a fair chunk of our voiceover world as “da harv”. I refer to my “lead-in”. The term “lead in”, many years ago, was described by a prominent actor as the purest of precious metals known to man, or at least those of prominence in the world of voiceover.

Dedicated to all those whom we attempted to help, did help, and those whom we are currently helping. Voiceover: the past, the present, and our future, together.

If you can find the time, tune in and let me know what you think!

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE

Thanks to all who remain believers.

Harvey Kalmenson
A Sunday in July 2023

Independence Day, 2023

"Independence Day,

Tuesday, July 4, 2023"

It’s come and gone

But this day of togetherness

Will linger on

Not only those who served

We’re all veterans of America

Reaping glory

In what the founders prescribed

Within our country’s Constitution

“Independence Day”

Hip, hip, Hurray!!!

As being lived by da harv

- HK -

There is just nothing like being surrounded by people of the same cloth, who are all on the same patriotic page. American patriotism was the Reagan theme for the day.

It was a wonderful day for all. We were at the Ronald Reagan Library & Museum in Simi Valley.

Harvey Kalmenson

About 70 Years Ago

"July 4th, 1954:

About Seventy Years Ago"

Marilyn Monroe Visiting Troops in South Korea in the Aftermath of the Korean War
"...Visit American troops who had been fighting on the front line. The whirlwind tour saw her perform 10 shows over four days to more than 100,000 soldiers and marines who were celebrating the end of three years of combat."

I thought Miss Monroe was a most appropriate photo of what many nineteen-year-old men appreciate even more than plain old firecrackers. She was age twenty-eight at the time.

While Bob Hope and many others were cut from the same patriotic cloth, in my humble opinion, Marilyn Monroe was a total stand-out. Can you imagine our troops' responsiveness when she said in her own inimitable fashion: “Hi, fellas. I’m here to cheer you up.” To this day, I still enjoy women more than firecrackers.

God Bless Our America

WE ARE BRAVE ENOUGH TO BE FREE!

FOR JUST A MOMENT

LET’S JOIN HANDS

AND SALUTE OUR COUNTRY'S FLAG

Harvey Kalmenson

Image Sources: www.vintag.es, fineartamerica.com, Google Images