Be Better

As we stand on the threshold of a new year, the human mind naturally inclines itself towards schemes of self improvement. To that end, that hardy perennial, New Years Resolutions, rears its head. I am not immune from this annual excursion into wishful thinking.

Some of us have elevated the politely bemused, cynical retort to an art form of sorts, but that’s a subject for another day. With regards to the resolutions thing, I have never been able to improve on something I wrote on this day in 2012. Whenever I read it I am reminded of just how very flawed I am. But I am also encouraged by the fact I have made some progress since this was written. My project of self improvement moves slowly but it does move. I share it below in the hope that it might be an encouragement to someone, and as another memo to myself entitled...Be Better...

I could use less cynicism. It might be nice to look on the bright side every once in a while. It might help to be less critical, more empathetic, less of a smart-ass. My contentment level would probably rise if I was less obsessed with the future and more invested in the present. I should attempt to be a better listener, offer my opinions less frequently, and not hold those opinions in such high regard. I should pursue friendships with more vigor, hold grudges less tightly. I should spend more time in prayer. I should read the Bible more and the Drudge Report less. I should recommit myself to my hobbies, more golf and fishing, fewer excuses. Greater enthusiasm for my profession, more thankfulness, less fatalism. I need to escape the treadmill of politics since it only breeds frustration and resentment, and give the guys on the other side of the aisle the gift of my indifference

48 Hours of Christmas

Christmas is over at the Dunnevant house. For us it was the 27th of December and it lasted all day. We all gathered in the family room to open presents around 8:30. Five hours and two meals later, we opened the last stocking stuffer...

Meal number one featured scrambled eggs, fruit, copious amounts of bacon, and homemade cinnamon rolls. And yes...those are matching Christmas pajamas.

Despite my best efforts to contain the mess, at the halfway point it looked like an explosion at an Amazon warehouse.

When it was all over we had celebratory mimosas.

Just in case any of you are wondering what my favorite present was...this year, the winner was clear...

This gift had me at Cajun bacon...

Actually, the gifts for me had a decidedly meatish theme. You can see my beef jerky haul in the background. In addition, I received four bacon wrapped filets from Omaha Steaks...with a congratulatory atta boy from Ron Swanson!

Today is our second and final day together as a family. My son is busy making homemade bread for our lunch. Later we are heading out to Ashland to see Mary Poppins at the newly rejuvenated Ashland Theatre, then a lavish dinner at The Ironhorse. What a marvelous 48 hours this has been.

Manny, Moe and Jack...their story.

These guys deserve their own story. I posted this photograph online this morning just for the pure joy of it, hoping that some frantic parent running around in mad preparations for Christmas might see it and take a breath. But the more I look at it I realize that it’s true what they say about photographs telling stories, that whole 1000 word thing. I named them Manny, Moe and Jack but that’s just the beginning. Here’s their real story...

Manny, on the far left, has a mind of his own. Sure, he’s all about fun, frolic and mayhem and can chase his tail with the best of them, but Manny marches to the beat of a different drummer. Notice that he isn’t looking where Moe and Jack are looking. Something, or someone else has caught his eye. This tendency for distraction will not serve him well in obedience school one day. Manny will be the type of dog who will do his most extensive sniff job before peeing when it’s pouring down rain outside. Manny will be the dog voted most likely to chase squirrels and least likely to catch them because he noticed a weird looking stick mid-chase. 

Moe, on the other hand, is a piece of work. Clearly, the alpha male of this group. Notice that he’s a bit taller...and proud of it. His pink tongue is just a bit larger, his mouth just a bit more agape. There’s a reason for this...Moe is ready for action! Moe will always be the instigator during his long and turbulent life. He will be the destroyer of furniture, the bespoiler of trashcans, the devourer of socks. Even now, in this photograph, he is clearly hatching some scheme to make a break from the photo session and get back to terrorizing the cat.

And then there’s Jack. Poor Jack. I recognize my Lucy in his eyes. Yes, he’s happy, like his exuberant brothers...but take a closer look. There’s a hint of trepidation. His eyes are a bit more cautious. His tongue a bit more subdued. Jack doesn’t want to get in any trouble. He wants so bad to be a good boy, but not so much that he is willing to drop his guard. Something could go wrong at any moment! Someone might drop something in the next room, making a loud scary sound. What’s that over there, by the way...is that a box? What might be inside that box. Let’s be careful, guys! Jack will be full of plenty of fun, but will always give the rest of the world the side eye.

So, there you have it. Three beautiful Golden Puppers, three unique personalities. 

I would take either one...wouldn’t you?

The Feeling of Christmas

Last night I heard those magical words from my wife that I long to hear this time of year...I think I’m finished buying presents! It’s true. We are done. With four days to spare. That’s not to say that we have nothing else Christmas related to do. Yesterday’s big job was giving Lucy her all important Christmas bath. Today’s will be cleaning the house from top to bottom, while Pam tends to all of the Christmas baking that she hasn’t had time to do. At some point this weekend we will need to wrap all of the stocking stuffers.

Up until now Christmas has been a hassle for me. Long time readers of this space know all about my antipathy for what Christmas has become in America, so there’s no need to rehash that. But, once it gets close, and I can pry myself out of its consumerist grip, my heart melts....a lot. Something comes over me when the big day nears, a deep appreciation for and awareness of the wonderful people in my life.

It starts with my family. I begin thinking about each of them, and how fortunate I have been to live nearly 35 years with my wife. I marvel at my two grown children and am overcome with pride at what they have become. I consider the kind of people they chose to marry and it occurs to me how profoundly lucky I am.

But, it’s not just family. In the days leading up to Christmas I think about the many friends that populate my world, some life long, others new. They are the people who add substance and richness to my life. They are people I work with, people I go to church with, neighbors and even Facebook friends. How empty would my life be without them? 

When Christmas Day nears I find myself filled with more grace, more forebearance, quicker to forgive, less likely to take offense, more willing to grant the benefit of the doubt. It is this time of year when I wonder why I find it so much easier to be a better man? What is it about February and August that drains away the warmth? What is it that hardens the soft heart of Christmas? I don’t have the answer and over the next few days I won’t spend much time trying to find the answer. I will simply stay in the moment and enjoy the better angels of my nature that the Savior’s birth uncovers. 

Maybe the feeling of Christmas is God’s way of reminding us of the kind of people we could be if we could just get over ourselves...if we could stop pursuing our mansions long enough to consider the child born in a stable.

Of Shutdowns and Quagmires

It wasn’t my plan to write about politics four days before the day of our savior’s birth, but...that’s 2018 for you. In a year marked by an unending series of baffling ineptitude in high places, the last few days have brought the chaos to a fever pitched crescendo. In less than 36 hours we have witnessed the President declare the fight against ISIS won, followed by the resignation of his Defense Secretary in protest, and a government shutdown hanging by a thread in the United States Senate over a 5 billion dollar appropriation for the border wall...or roughly the amount of wealth wiped out by the stock market’s reaction to this shit show during the first five minutes of the President’s explanation of the mess during his press conference. Yesterday afternoon was a dizzying example of what the world becomes when you decide to elect a television show as president.

I don’t care about the wall one way or the other. It’s a football, and a meaningless one. Every President, from both parties, over the past twenty five years has voiced support for a wall. The amount of money requested by the President doesn’t even qualify as a rounding error in a trillion dollar budget. This is about politics, not border security. It’s posturing, not policy. Given the meaningless impact it will have either way, the fact that it can shut down the government is an open, mocking rebuke of logic and reason.

As far as Gen. Mattis’s resignation goes...I do care, but not all that much. When Trump was first elected, one of the things that I hung my hat on was the idea that he would surround himself with competent, professional patriots who would discourage him from his most loony tendencies. The lynchpin of this strategy was...General Mattis, the adult’s adult. Now that he has finally had enough, I count exactly zero adults left in the administration. Maybe you can count Pence? It’s hard to tell about him though...sometimes when he’s sitting there in the Oval Office listening to Trump prattle on about some cockamamie idea in the full hearing of a dignified foreign leader and the press corps, he has the look of a man gazing upon a chimpanzee in a suit juggling a bottle of nitroglycerin, a ticking bomb and the nuclear codes while blindfolded...struck dumb by the spectacle, and powerless to do a single thing about it!

What I do care about is the President’s decision to withdraw the 5,000 American troops from Syria. Word on the street is that this edict will be soon followed by a similar edict for Afghanistan. I have spent the last 36 hours reading all the Washington DC beltway crowd along with all the smart internationalists among us decrying this betrayal of our allies. I have listened to all the pearl clutching pundits declaring this withdrawal as a dark day for American leadership in the world. In response, I have the following to say:

# How does the presence of a mere 5000 troops guarantee anything but an eternal presence in a war zone? If the threat of ISIS is so potentially catastrophic to the survival of civilization, why have we committed so few to the fight? And...where the hell are the troops representing the rest of civilization?? Where are France’s divisions? Great Britain’s? Where are the legions of blue helmeted United Nations troops rushing to fill in the gaps in the line? The foreign policy gurus at the State Department who have set this open ended, unending, and unwinnable war on terror before us have never had a plan for victory. Their plan has always been a permanent presence on foreign soil of the American military as some sort of mythical deterrent. What I see as the result of this is permanent hostility towards America in that part of the world. What I would like to ask each of these pearl clutching pundits is this...Why do you insist on asking American men and women to continue to die trying to save the lives of people who hate us?

Every week, news trickles in about some marine who stepped on an IED in some backwater village somewhere a million miles from here. Nobody cares except the kid’s parents. Why? Why did we ask him to make such a sacrifice? Oh..we are there to protect the defenseless innocents, the Kurds, peaceful Afghanis who don’t want to be governed by the Taliban. There are plenty of defenseless innocents in the world, millions of them in Africa. What of them? Are we to place 5,000 troops in every hot spot on the planet to protect innocents? What about the innocents on the south side of Chicago? Who is protecting them? And what of the cost of these adventures? Will the other nations supposedly made safe by our vigilance in the Middle Easy quagmire pony up some Euros to compensate us for our trouble? If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Brussels I’d like to sell you. No, all we will get from our famous European allies is criticism and contempt, while they enjoy having the American taxpayer subsidize their own national defense. Let those stupid Americans police the world while we take potshots at them from the safety of our summer villas. Everybody hates the cops, right?

If nothing else, much like a broken clock that is right twice a day, if Trump follows through on getting us the hell out of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, I will actually be grateful to him. So grateful, in fact, I will remember to send him a Christmas card every year when he’s serving his prison sentence.

“Y’all Leave Douglas Alone!”

A couple of days ago I was minding my own business, having all my personal data shared with several multinational corporations on Facebook, when I stumbled upon a video which my big brother had posted. I should at this point, by way of possible explanation, say that he is now retired with lots of time on his hands and has in his post-workaday life discovered many new passions. Nevertheless, there he was hosting his own meal preparation video! All of the ingredients had been laid out in meticulous order on the counter, as he was extolling the virtue of the meal he was getting ready to create before our very eyes. However, in sharp contrast to..cough cough...other cooking videos shared by other Dunnevant men, Donnie had received no help from his wife. No no...my big brother has suddenly morphed into a regular Bobby Flay. My brother...who at one time couldn’t boil water without consulting a three page tutorial...is now showing off his cooking skills on Facebook.

Of course, the first thing that popped into my mind upon viewing this slickly produced video was...he’s copying me!! As many of you know, I have a running Wednesday evening cooking video gag that I’ve done for a year or so now featuring me in various attempts at cooking a meal for which 90% of the work and planning has already been done for me by Pam. So, big brother decides to get one over on me by cooking from scratch....a blatant rip-off. He is so copying me.

Now, in the old days, back when I was a kid, this is the sort of thing that would have prompted me to plead my case to the ultimate judge, jury and executioner in the Dunnevant household...my mother. I would have run into the kitchen and informed her that my brother was copying me. Then, she would have responded with her favorite judgement with the oft repeated injunction...Now y’all Leave Douglas alone!!

My siblings would immediately begin moaning, groaning and catawauling about what they all considered to be a clear example of judicial misconduct. When it came to me, they all thought that Mom should have recused herself since they considered her to have a conflict of interest. They would accuse her of a blatant disregard for any mitigating evidence that might change her decision...like the fact that I was a brat, for example. In their minds, I was the spoiled youngest child who always got away with murder.

Balderdash.

The truth was that our sainted mother had a Solomon-esk sense of justice and a finely tuned sympathy for the underdog. She knew that I was the youngest, and most vulnerable to bullying by my exploitive and malicious siblings. So, the catch all...y’all leave Douglas alone...served as remedial justice that did not require a special prosecutor or extensive investigation. She rightly deduced that the odds that one of the three— or perhaps all three— of my siblings had been up to no good were greater than the odds that I might have been exaggerating their crimes. Washington DC could learn a thing or two from the judicial temperament of Betty Dunnevant. Her rulings were fair and swift!!

But, now that she isn’t here to redress my grievances, I am once again left at the mercy of my big brother’s blatant theft of my cooking video idea. Oh well, it was good while it lasted. Mom and I had a good run. Now, I’ll have to learn to deal with getting picked on by my older brother and sisters. You know...mob justice!

Party Pictures

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the fifty or so letters I found from many years back when Pam and I had hosted New Years Eve parties for kids from Grove Avenue. Yesterday, I mailed them out.

Finding all of their addresses wasn’t as hard as I imagined it would be. Most of them are friends of mine on Facebook, even though I haven’t heard a peep from many of them in years. I simply sent out a private message to each of them explaining why I needed their current addresses. Literally within a couple of hours, almost everyone of them responded.

Last night, Pam searched through her computer files for some of the pictures she took of the ball drop moment each year, when as many of them as would fit would cram into our family room and throw confetti and scream and holler. She found pictures from five of the years. I post them below to give you an idea of how much fun it all was. As I scanned through each picture I thought of each one of these kids. Some of them I have kept up with and know how they have turned out. Some of these crazy, silly girls are now mothers, some have gone on to earn advanced degrees, one of them is a doctor now. A couple of these knuckleheaded guys are actually missionaries and pastors. It truly boggles the mind! But others have dropped off my radar. I have no idea what has become of them, where they are, what they are doing. These pictures are a freeze frame of an instant from a crazy, loud and raucous night from over a decade ago. Depending on who is looking, these pictures could conjure up fond and fun memories...or a melancholy longing for a simpler time before life got hard and confusing. That’s the thing with photographs, they communicate different things to different people. 

For me, these images recall a time of great purpose. I never felt more needed and more valuable then those years when I was hip deep in teenagers. But now it also looks so exhausting! You guys should have seen our house the next morning after one of these parties...Good Lord, what a mess!

So, now fifty two letters are on their way. I wonder what stories, if any will come back to me?

2005

2006

2007

2008

2010