Angry Bird

This is the sort of thing that always happens a day or so before we're planning on going out of town. Here we are all excited about spending 3 days at some swanky resort in San Diego,  when a critter decides to take up residence in our attic.

My wife missed her calling.  She should have been one of the Super Friends. Pam has super-sonic powers of hearing. The two of us will be sitting in the family room with the television blaring when she will turn to me and say,  "Are you going to get that?" I look at her, bewildered, knowing that her turbo-ears have picked up some faint sound. I turn my ears upward hoping against hope that I will hear it too, but after a while I answer,  "Get what?"  She looks at me like I am some pitiful creature with a profound disability.  "You can't hear that??!! The kids toilet is running!! Geeze!"  Then she storms upstairs to jiggle the handle. Sometimes we will be in bed and she will say.." Listen to that squirrel."  I will perk my ears up and conjure up all of my powers of concentration to no avail. "What squirrel?"  She will look over at me and incredulously answer, "The one in Lilly's back yard with the heart murmur! You can't hear that??"

Well, for the past two or three days Pam has been pestering me to do something about the critter in the attic, which until this morning had gone totally undetected by my merely human powers of hearing. But at 7:30 I heard something shuffling around up there, so I grabbed my trusty Daisy Powerline 35 pump-action, duel ammo BB gun purchased a while back to rid us of the great squirrel infestation of 2010, and carefully opened the door to the attic and made my way silently up the stairs. The lighting up there isn't great and it was quite cold, but my blood was running hot with the thrill of the hunt. At the top of the stairs I heard a flutter in the back left corner and thought I saw movement. This squirrel was going down!! I tip-toed closer and saw that whatever it was was actually in the overhanging eave. I sent a slug towards the offending sound and suddenly a loud flutter came roaring out of the darkness, black and angry, flying way too close to my head. My heart began beating the doors off of my chest as I spun around to follow the flight. It was some sort of black bird and he was mightily pissed.  He flew in disoriented circles from one end of the space to the other. Since I had already fired a shot, I couldn't fire another until I had re-pumped the gun 20 times, a major design flaw I might add, so I ran back down the stairs to close the door so this angry bird couldn't fly into the house. After pumping like a wild man, I was ready for the kill if only the bird would light somewhere. Providentially, he came to rest on a rafter about 10 feet above my head. I fired and  knocked him off of his perch. In a flurry of feathers he fell down to the floor out of sight and as I gave chase I could hear him flapping and squawking wildly. By the time I reached the landing at the top of the stairs he was nowhere to be found, which meant that now I had a dying bird hidden somewhere in my attic. After an exhausting search failed to locate the now silent menace, I shut the door securely and headed to work. Now on my lunch hour, I went back up to try again. This time I hear the bird in the eave all the way on the opposite side of the attic from whence he came, clearly in duress and unable to fly. I can't see him but every couple of minutes I hear his wounded shuffle. Who knows how long its going to take before he finally goes to that big bird-feeder in the sky? But at least now he's in the eave that overhangs Patrick's room. Maybe if I shut the door to his room and line the door frame with blankets and pillows, Pam won't be able to hear the death throws.  Who am I kidding? She can probably hear me typing this all the way from her room at Rivers Edge. Stupid bird!

For All of You who have ever crashed at MisterD's house

Its Saturday morning. I feel it my duty to inform you all that the furniture has been purchased.  Yes, after years of false starts, indecision, trauma and tears, it is finished....and that was all over deciding what outfit to wear WHILE shopping for furniture. No, seriously, Pam has made her choice and we have bought a bunch of furniture from Bassett. I must say that it gives me great satisfaction to know that I bought furniture manufactured entirely in the state of Virginia, USA. This company is the oldest such firm in the state, having survived for over 102 years. I could have saved some money by going with furniture made in Asia, where 69% of all furniture purchased here comes from, but I chose Bassett. As a free-trader, I am agnostic about the fact that Americans buy so much stuff from China. I want as many options as possible when I spend money, and I particularly love the ability to make my own decisions rather than having my decisions made for me by a government who restricts my access to foreign goods. In this case I chose not only an American product, but a Virginia product. Good for me!



This post goes out to all of the hundreds of teenagers who over the past 13 years have done their part to make this purchase necessary. You all know who you are. Patrick's friends.  Kaitlin's friends. Strange kids who would wander in who we didn't know. Youth group kids over for bible studies. Then, hordes of college kids who would come for the weekend.  Belmont kids. Cedarville kids. Liberty kids. All would bring their insatiable appetites for popcorn and freezie-pops and chocolate. There they would gather, flopped down in a mass of arms, legs and feet all over the sofa, love seat and chair, sprawled out wildly on the floor, Molly sniffing around for dropped treats. After they would leave we would go into damage control in the early years when the furniture was young.  But after a while we just let it go, realizing the utter futility trying to protect furniture from swarms of barbarians. There were memorable offenders. Giles Fort overflowing the toilet upstairs. Matt Watson and Tyler Pegues wrestling with Molly and knocking knick-knacks off of end tables. The new years eve party that featured Mr.'s Watson, Pegues, Burton, and Edworthy actually shifting the foundation of the house by jumping up and down in tandem as the clock struck twelve. But, lest you think that all the offenders were male, think again. Most of the food stains were female in origin. From the freezie pop drippings of Amanda Carter and Lauren Pegues, to the chocolate stains courtesy of Arika Aker and Meghan Kees, the girls did their part. Well, in a couple of weeks all the old stuff will be hauled off and replaced with new, and a small part of me...actually a very small part of me will be a bit sad to see it go. The fact is that Pam and I wouldn't trade anything for the times we spent overrun with teenagers. Sure, they cost us a small fortune in groceries alone, and they were a colossal mess at times, but they brought something with them to our home.... fun. The energy and promise of a house full of kids on a Friday night is an amazing gift. To see so many of them all grown up and accomplishing great things is one of the most rewarding thrills of my life.  I saw a picture on facebook the other day that stopped me in my tracks. There were three of my all time favorite "kids" sitting on somebody elses' sofa each holding a toddler in their laps...THEIR toddler. All grown up. What a blessing to see that they didn't end up in jail.


Truth be told, we miss the mess. We miss the drama, the angst of raging testosterone, the honor of comforting a crying kid. But life comes at us in waves, one washes over us and then is gone. So we get rid of the old furniture and get ready for the new and wonder what the next wave will bring.

The Power of Music

I didn't sleep well last night, tossed and turned, woke up several times, a stormy night of dreams.  At 6 or so I finally gave up.  The coffee brewed as I stared at the heavy, wet snow clinging to the branches of every tree in my back yard. Snow at 53 isn't the stuff of playful imagination. Snow is wet, cold and messy, a nuisance. As I trudged up the stairs to my office a darkness began to enter into my day. It was Monday, the snow had thrown a white, lifeless pall over what had begun to resemble spring. Something new and young had overnight become tired and bleak. I turned on my computer and read through my normal business lineup.  The Wall Street Journal proclaimed the latest contradiction in monetary policy out of Washington. Drudge reliably chronichled the contined cultural decline that is my country in 2012. I closed my eyes and took a sip of coffee. I reached for my iPhone and switched on Pandora.


There was a blues tune playing, something by B.B. King. His woman had left him and he was terribly distraut. His crying, mournful riff did nothing at all to raise my spirits.  When you're trying to snap out of a funk, clear the fog from around your thinking, trying to raise your mood, the blues are not your friend. I stared out of the window and waited for B.B.to finish. It would have been rude and disrespectful to click to the next song, no matter how tired I may have been of hearing about this unfaithful winch of a woman. So I waited, mourning along with him and watching little clumps of snow slide off the curved front of my gas grill.

Then suddenly, there was George Gershwin and his Rhapsody in Blue. There was a piano, then an orchestra. I sat down slowly and took another sip of coffee, holding the mug tightly in both hands to keep them warm.  I closed the laptop and listened. The sounds coming from my cell phone transported me to another place. I felt as if I was in the concert hall.  Where was it? Who was it? I grabbed the phone and scrolled through and saw that it was the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Berstein. The pianist was anonymous and should not have been for he was masterful. The soaring beauty of the melody and the playfulness of the jazz theme began to sweep away the dross. I became aware of the beating of my heart. A tightness came to my throat, an emotion from some hidden place. All of my life it has been this way. Music is one of the few things that has consistently had the power to stir in me powerful emotions that come from some strange place, I know not where. But there I was listening,in my pajamas, spellbound, to this beautiful work, with a lump in my throat. Whenever I try to explain this phenominon to other people, they take a small step back, turn their head to one side and smile nervously. The only people who have ever really understood what I was talking about have been my brother Donnie, my son Patrick and Patrick's high school choral director, Sherrie Matthews. Each of these three are all music people, each supremely talented, and each had a flicker of recognition on their faces when I tried to explain the otherworldly power of music to transform the mind. None of them could explain it either, but each knew it to be true. Towards the end of the piece there is this particularly powerful, soaring melody that brought to mind a United Airlines commercial from years ago. When I first though of it, I felt a bit disgusted that anyone would use such a work to sell anything, let alone airline tickets.  But then I thought, why not? It transformed my day from dreary to something lighter than neutral,  no small feat. A lot cheaper than therapy. Rhapsody in Blue makes you want to do something good, to be good. I wonder how many men were inspired to get on a plane and reunite with their wives after hearing it? How many long lost friends were reunited after someone heard the soaring notes, got inspired and flew across the country to reconnect?


And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we insist on teaching music in school. Someone may hear the notes and be transported to a better place.  Someone may hear the melody and be stirred in a magical way and realize that there is something better, something higher to aspire to. Today, for me, it simply jump-started my day. For some kid somewhere, it just might save their life.

Jeremy Lin, Tiger Woods, and Shopping for Furniture

What a crazy week. Business is brisk and a bit chaotic, as it always is this time of year for me, so I have to wait until Saturday to access the damage. Many things to comment upon. Here goes…

Our fearless Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner was testifying on capitol hill the other day, and when I say fearless, I’m not kidding. If you had to defend the budget that Obama just sent to Congress, you’d better be fearless. There was an incredible exchange with Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Ryan had just put up on a screen a graph found on page 58 of said budget where the administration shows deficits and debt skyrocketing exponentially for as far as the eye can see into the future. Ryan then asks Geithner why his boss is offering no plan to correct this dangerous trend line. After a few minutes of economic jargon and back and forth nit-picking, the Secretary admits that the future economic condition of the Republic is in peril unless the trend is corrected, but then cut loose with the most honest words to ever come out of his mouth….” We don’t have a solution, but we don’t like yours.” Now, THAT, my friends, is pure unadulterated leadership. We are in charge of the government, I am the Treasury Secretary and I am admitting that the country is headed over an economic cliff, and I’m also admitting that I have come to you with NO PLAN TO FIX ANY OF THIS!!! But your plan sucks. So there. Epic!!!

Over the last 15 years or so I’ve spent maybe an hour of my life thinking about the NBA. I mean, after Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson retired, why bother? I freely admit that I haven’t watched an NBA game probably since the 90’s. I only see snippets of the NBA on “shots of the day” segments on ESPN while I’m waiting for spring training news. But in the last two weeks I’ve actually been paying attention to one basketball story, Jeremy Lin. I’ve only seen highlights and read stories about the kid. But, without question, he’s the best thing to happen to basketball since the shot clock. What an amazing story. Player of the year in California and can’t get a D-1 offer?? Goes to Harvard and gets them to the tournament? Shuffles around with several teams but never gets a chance to play, then because of injuries gets thrown into a game almost as an afterthought. Then, all he does is ignite a 7 game win streak in which he scores more points than anyone in NBA history over their first 7 games in the league. The kid is an amazing talent who until two weeks ago nobody knew existed. Then I find out he’s an outspoken born again Christian? This story just keeps getting better. He’s got faith, brains, and game. He keeps this up, I may actually tune in. Maybe one day he will agree to be Treasury Secretary.

Poor Tiger Woods. Watching him get schooled by Phil last weekend was a guilty pleasure. Tiger still has the physical brilliance, but his mental toughness is gone. He no longer has the power of intimidation. And when Phil walked off the 18th at Pebble into the arms of his beautiful wife, the contrast with Tiger slinking away, shoulders slumped, and head down could not have been more stark. He had it all, and now he seems lost. There was Phil, with his breast cancer surviving wife in a knowing embrace that testified to the joy that comes when a tough road is travelled together. Tiger slipped away, probably to the driving range and then, into the arms of the bimbo-du-jour. Painful to watch, or it should be at least. There is a bad place in me that takes comfort in justice even when its application is painful. I need to work on that.

Pam is in full home decoration mode. Basset furniture is coming here this morning to case out the joint. Our kids are grown and all of the furniture that they and their multitudinous friends destroyed has become a source of irritation. We need new stuff, but what kind, color and style? Is it time for real grown up furniture? Are we allowed to buy something without scotchguard? How do we know if we’ll like it 5 years from now? Will it be suitable once grandkids arrive bringing the second plague of locusts upon our house? Will Molly’s paws scratch leather? To recline or not to recline, THAT is the question. And what about paint color and rugs and what used to be called “curtains” but now are referred to as “window treatments”? How will the new stuff look with Christmas decorations? If the sofa only has two seat cushions instead of three will the crack in the middle make people hesitant to sit?( no kidding). I’m with Tim Geithner on this one…”We have no plan, but yours sucks.”

Whitney Houston, Pandora, and Valentines Day

# Whitney Houston dead at 48. Sad. It had been a question of when rather than if. Her steady descent into narcissism had been difficult to watch, the wasted talent, almost a cliché. All I know about her was that when that adorable girl bounced behind the microphone to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl in 1991, nobody had ever performed it better before or since. The joy and abandon on her face, the graceful ease with which she glided through the song, the radiance, the beauty, the art…it was all too much. I’ve never forgotten it, and it is always the way I will recall her memory.

# I have recently discovered Pandora radio. Very cool. I have established four “stations”. I suppose the four say a lot about me. It tags me as to age, gender, and level of hipness. So I present them here and welcome your judgment:
#1 Beatles Radio
#2 Frank Sinatra Radio
#3 Blues Rock Radio
#4 Classical Radio

I’m sure that at some point I will add others, but right now, these about cover it. Every mood I might happen upon, there are songs in this universe to cover it. As I write these words I’m listening to Sergey Rachmaninov’s piano concerto No. 2 with the London Symphony Orchestra and I might add that if you can’t write to such music, you simply cannot write. But, what a remarkable thing is this Pandora?

# This Tuesday I celebrate Valentines Day number 30 with Pam. After so many years it becomes harder and harder to come up with fresh material. How many unique ways are there to say “I Love You”? We’ve done everything from overnight stays at fancy hotels, to laying on blankets at the patio doors with the lights off watching the snow fall. I’ve done roses, chocolates, pajamas, and lingerie. We’ve had Italian food, Chinese, steaks, chicken and fish. I’ve gone Hallmark, and homemade. This year I’ve got a new idea. It might be a hit but also has a chance to be an epic fail. I will let you know how it turns out.

A Proud Parent

I do my fair share of bragging about my kids. Over the past year there have been numerous entries testifying to their many triumphs. This is, after all, my blog and I can write whatever I wish. I have, however, tried to not pile it on too thick. They both have significant flaws, most of which clearly inherited from their distant relatives. Parents who lavishly praise the most benign accomplishments of their children as if they had just discovered cold fusion have always irritated me. I actually saw a bumper sticker the other day that proudly proclaimed, “ My Kid Got A Hole-in-One At Putt-Putt Golf! “ Really? By all means, let’s immortalize dumb, blind, luck on the back of our automobiles. What’s next?...”Proud Parent of a Potty-Trained Toddler”. Nevertheless, it’s time for another tribute to the development of my children into adults, no small feat when everywhere I look I see twenty-somethings living out their interminable adolescence.

Kaitlin is in grad school at Wake Forest. She is surrounded by students and faculty who daily mock not only religion, but the religious. It would seem that the famously tolerant Ivory Tower set can’t quite bring themselves to tolerate the Christian faith that created the very institution that grants them tenured protection and the freedom to openly ridicule their benefactors. In the midst of this hostility, my daughter is quietly gaining a reputation as the rarest of scholars, one who has the ability to communicate complex ideas in a clear and understandable way. She has made several oral presentations in her time at Wake and each of them have been praised by fellow students as well as professors. Many of these students and professors know that she is a believing Christian and therefore treat her with bemused fascination, much as how an anthropologist might observe a newly discovered race in New Guinea. But through it all, she has gained the respect of her fellow students who see something special in her intelligence and grace. They see what her parents have always seen, a powerfully inquisitive mind combined with a tender heart that abounds with sensitivity to the needs of others over her own. She has overcome initial doubts about her intellectual fitness for such a program, and now is excelling and winning admirers along the way, fulfilling the charge of the Apostle Paul to ..” become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.”

Patrick graduated from college two months ago. Instead of coming home, getting a job and saving some money for grad school to come in 9 months time,(my advice), he asked if he could stay in Nashville. I was skeptical. It seemed a foolish waste of time and money. I warned him that my financial support of his college career ended with receipt of his diploma. My hopes for him finding dependable gainful employment were not high. But he informed me the other day that he in fact had gotten a job as a waiter in a high end burger joint/ coffee bar and bakery. “ Huh?”, I said. To my amazement, he is learning the waiter thing on the fly and doing quite well with tips, to the point that he established a savings account for himself. The kid is working a lot of hours and paying his own way in the world. In the meantime he is also thriving in the city that he loves, surrounded by tons of friends and creative people that make him a better musician. As I write this he is stuffed in a car with a bunch of friends driving to Atlanta where the a cappella group that he founded three years ago , the Belmont Beltones, hopes to win a regional competition. Even though he isn’t in the group any longer, there he will be, cheering them on like a proud parent. I know many of the kids in that group, and if one can be judged by the company one keeps, then Patrick has become a wonderful young man. He’s where he wants to be, working on his music, and busting his hump to pay the bills by doing honest work day and night. Awesome.

Too bad I can’t fit any of this on a bumper sticker.

War Stories From an AmFam Veteran

I’ve been a member of American Family Fitness for almost 8 years now, ever since my surprise open- heart surgery in 2003, amazing how getting cut open focuses the mind on fitness. On the whole, AmFam and I have gotten along well. I have a flexible work schedule that allows me to work out in the mid afternoon so I never have to fight the crowds. The Short Pump gym is a brand new facility and has everything I need with the added bonus of being minutes from my house. However, after 8 years of any relationship, there inevitably arise…how shall I say??...challenges.

At AmFam there is a policy against cell phone usage. There are charming little signs posted throughout spelling out the prohibition in all areas except the lobby. In addition, a public service announcement randomly runs on the ubiquitous television screens that loom about the place reminding us all of the reasons for the rule, to wit, courtesy towards other members and a concern for personal safety. I must admit to an appalling lack of Christian charity in this business of personal safety, since it would be awesome to see some self-absorbed, hot-shot walk face first into the fist of some guy doing a chest fly because he just HAD to talk to his BFF in the middle of a workout! OMG that would be worth three months of dues right there. Courtesy, on the other hand, is a different matter. The kind of people who can’t go an hour without being connected to their cell phones, constitute the lowest of the low of human development. These guys and girls are the type whose lives are of such grand importance, whose existence so complex and fragile, that they simply cannot run the risk of being off the grid for even thirty minutes. Just yesterday, I was running my 3.5 miles on the treadmill when I was joined by a portly young woman three machines down. In the 35 minutes that followed, this unfortunate woman spent 30 of them engaged in trivial conversation with what seemed to be three different people. Since she came equipped with Bose headphones and a hands-free Blackberry, she couldn’t hear any of my suggestions that she was in clear violation of the Gym cell phone policy. Which brings me to my first complaint, in 8 years, I have suffered through an endless stream of cell phone knuckleheads but not once have I ever seen any member of management ask anyone to stop using their cell phone. I guess it’s going to take a tragic accident before management gets serious about enforcement. A tragic accident maybe like some annoying woman in the midst of a crucial discussion with her BFF about something of earth shattering importance tripping over a barbell and then getting impaled by the bench press bar, the ultimate dropped call!

Complaint number two. There’s this guy at my gym who I have never actually seen working out. But I do know that he is an ex-marine. I know this because of his military haircut, and the loads of ex-marine gear he wears, cap, jacket etc.. The problem with this guy is that he spends 90% of his time at AmFam standing buck naked in front of the sink in the men’s locker room removing his nose hairs with tweezers. Now, when I say ex-marine I mean that in every possible way. This gentleman is very large and in an advanced stage of physical decrepitude. So when he bends over to inspect his nose at close range his back-side poses a real and present danger to any small children that might wander by. They could get lost and never be found again. So…Marine guy, your uh,.. rear echelon needs some covering fire in the worst way man. Semper Fi.

Complaint number three. Whenever I chose to run on the indoor track instead of the treadmill, I invariably run into the group of women who take up all four lanes talking about Paula Deen recipes walking along at the brisk pace of 1 mph. So each lap I have to yell out ..”coming through”, which takes them forever to do causing me to slow down. It’s like the feeling men get when they realize that the tee-time just ahead of them at the golf course consists of four silver-haired women all dressed in pastels, two of whom turn out to be left handed. Ughhhh….

What follows are not complaints, simply observations that one encounters at AmFam on any given day:

@ the skinny- armed guy who wears the biggest, baddest leather support belt known to exist in the free world. He also carries his drinking water in a gallon jug. Hardcore!

@ the mid-twenties guy with perfect hair who works out in extremely tight spandex and literally can’t take a step without checking himself in the mirror.

@ the New Years Resolution crowd that always annoys everyone else for a few weeks in Janurary then disappears.

@ the alarming number of people on staff at AmFam who could stand to back away from the dessert bar every once in awhile themselves!