Easter in America

Once again Easter Sunday finds us separated from our kids. Its ok. We will have a houseful later this afternoon for lunch. Our day will begin at the Altria Theatre at 9:30 for our church’s service. There will be 3,000 of us celebrating the resurrection of Christ. It will also be the only Sunday of the year where people actually dress up for church. Some ladies will even wear hats. Men will be wearing ties—that rarest icon of men’s apparel that only shows up at Easter, Christmas and funerals. After the service, we will speed back home and prepare the house for the 4:00 arrival of Pam’s extended family for a (very) late lunch. There will be deviled eggs, ham and all the other Easter food.

This year Easter unfolds against the backdrop of continued bloodshed in Ukraine and Gaza, continued divisions at home and abroad, and the embarrassing spectacle of a former President hawking $60 bibles on the internet. Now is an excellent time to ponder the resurrection and the renewal, restoration and hope that it represents.

Its also an excellent time to post this montage photograph that Pam put together last year when our kids weren’t with us for Easter.

Good Friday Funeral

I started this Good Friday opening the Cafe at my church. Later today I will be attending a funeral of a long time family friend. Its the first funeral of the year for me. For most of my life I never kept track of how many funerals I attended every year because they were so rare. Now they have become a more common occurrence. Its not sad. I never leave funerals depressed. Its part of life, this dying. When an 85 year old woman dies its a celebration of a life well lived, a remembrance of how many other lives were made better by her presence among us. The family will grieve, not for her but for themselves. But she has stepped into eternity and those she left behind will not grieve forever. This woman was a dear friend of my mother years ago. Mom loved her very much. She raised three children. They will all be there, honoring her in death as they each did when she was alive. How can this be a somber, depressing moment?

In just a few days I will celebrate my 66th birthday. Three score and six. I have lived one hell of a life. I was gifted an amazing set of parents who set me up for success by loving me and each other. I’ve been lucky enough to have a large, loud and supportive family. When it was time to marry, I won the lottery. I have for the most part enjoyed my work and it has been financially rewarding. But, let’s be honest, I’m far closer to the end than I am to the beginning. According to the actuarial tables I’ve got 18-19 years left. This doesn’t frighten me. It causes me no great angst. If I get some extra years, great. If 18-19 ends up being optimistic, that’s ok. A pun instantly comes to mind…I’ll just have to live with it. It seems to me that the more important question isn’t how much time I have left but rather what I will do with that time. I have big plans. Next week Pam and I will start some long-delayed home improvement projects. The first week of May my first novel gets published. Pam and I will celebrate 40 years together. The third week of June we will leave for Maine.

But first, I will attend a funeral of a great and good woman who was a blessing to many.

Today is the Day

For nearly 30 years our preferred route to Maine was interstate 95 north. For reasons of safety and sanity we abandoned this route in favor of the “western route” probably 8 or 9 years ago. Although using 81 up through western Pennsylvania is at least an hour and a half longer, it has fewer tolls, much nicer scenery and far fewer risks to life and limb. But in the old days it was always 95. One of the landmarks along the way was the Francis Scott Key bridge near Baltimore. This morning I woke up to learn this…

At 1:30 am this morning a cargo ship ran into one of the bridge’s support pillars sending at least 20 vehicles plunging into the freezing water of the 
Patapsco River. At this moment divers are trying to find survivors, but the ice cold waters are hindering their efforts. 

Whenever something like this happens it reinforces for me the fact that we live in a fragile world. Our existence on this hostile planet is fraught with danger, our safety an illusion. Imagine the guy driving over the Key bridge at the moment of impact, in a daze of thought about what faced him today only to suddenly find himself trapped inside a sinking vehicle. The fates sometimes seem capricious.

So, what’s the takeaway? For me its this…take nothing for granted. Take full advantage of the opportunities each day presents, because tomorrow isn’t promised. Today is the day.

Moving to Maine?

Whenever the subject of retirement comes up in conversation my friends invariably say something like this—I guess when you retire you’ll be moving up to Maine. Almost every time, I hear some version of this statement. Its certainly understandable. Everyone who knows me knows how much I love the place. All of you follow along with me on my yearly trips to Maine. You see the beautiful pictures I post, you read my glowing testimonies of what life is like for us when we’re there. So I suppose its natural that people would assume we would move there when we retire. There are two reasons why we will not be moving to Maine when we retire. The first is the fact that Virginia is our home. I have lived here since I was born and Pam since she was ten years old. Our family is here, our friends are here, our church family. In short, our lives have been crafted in Virginia. We feel an attachment to this place, our roots are firmly established in its soil. Sure, every summer and fall we leave for Maine. It is our home away from home. We love everything about it and our lives would be diminished without the ten weeks a year we spend there.

But there’s this…

Today is March the 24th. These pictures were sent to me this morning from my good friend who lives in Jay, Maine. That big hump in the first photograph is his wife’s Jeep. They got 24 inches of snow yesterday. Again…its almost freaking April!! Add to this outrage, the horrible pounding the coast of Maine has endured this winter and any sane person would come to the conclusion that to voluntarily relocate my home to the State of Maine would be the clinical definition of insanity. No, I am perfectly content to delight in the ten weeks it gives us each year. I’ll leave the rest of it to the locals.

Equalizer…my guilty pleasure.

So last night I took advantage of the fact that my wife was at her bible study to watch something on television that she wouldn’t like. No, not March Madness. I’m referring to the last edition of the Equalizer trilogy starring Denzel Washington. This probably comes as a surprise to many of you, that I would be a fan of a movie with such stylized, gratuitous violence. So an explanation seems in order.

I am generally not a fan of violent films. There are major exceptions such as The Godfather and Saving Private Ryan. I much prefer a well crafted story where any violence is understated or even better, implied. So, why on earth would I be such a fan of the Equalizer films, perhaps the most violent movies I’ve ever seen? There are two answers to this question, The story and Denzel.

First, the story. Robert McCall is a retired black-ops assassin with a secret past that is never really explained. We are told that at some point he lost the love of his life, and ever since has tried to live a quiet life in the shadows minding his own business. At one point he tells someone, “I’ve done some bad things in my life, things I’m not proud of. I promised someone that I love very much that I would never go back to being that person.” The trouble is that no matter how quiet and unassuming he tries to be, he keeps stumbling upon horrible people exploiting innocents. There is something deep inside him that cannot abide powerful men taking advantage of the weak. Robert McCall reluctantly becomes a highly skilled and impossibly lethal vigilante who hides in plain sight. He goes to great links and metes out terrifying justice to right even relatively minor wrongs. When he gets a ride from a kind taxi driver and discovers that the man’s pension he earned as a bricklayer for 30 years was stolen by a hacker somewhere, he travels halfway around the world, kills 50 or so people in the most gruesome way possible just to retrieve the $366,400 stolen from the bricklayer and return it to its proper owner. But Robert McCall is no he-man with fancy weaponry, just an aging guy with deadly skills and a razor sharp moral compass. Watching a man risk his life for total strangers and visit justice on insanely rich and powerful men is one of the most morally satisfying experiences I have ever enjoyed.

Then, there’s Denzel Washington. The truth is I would probably pay money to watch him read the phone book. He has a presence that can’t be taught in drama class. You either have it or you don’t.

He sits a lot. He’s never in a hurry. He explains to a room full of bad men exactly how he intends to kill them all and exactly how long it will take him to do it. Then he explains how their immorality has sealed their fate. The bad guys all look at each other with bemused grins just before McCall springs into action. The men he executes are drug dealers, rapists, child molesters and terrorists. Their guilt is unambiguous as is McCall’s justice. He is a pitiless judge. In a world where so often the guilty skate on technicalities, where money buys off juries, lawyers and judges, Robert McCall functions as the wrath of God. He takes no delight in his job, but neither is he plagued by self doubt. There is right and there is wrong, and no room for equivocation. 

The Equalizer movies all move slowly, contemplatively and even artistically. Then all the contemplative stuff gets interrupted by shocking bursts of bloody violence. Then more artistic stuff, polite and meaningful interactions, then another shocking display of killing. Don’t get too comfortable in your seat. The tenderness can explode into brutality on a dime.

Its That Time of Year Again

Today I was reminded by my intrepid assistant that this is the time of year where I lose my mind. She’s correct. This is the season of the perpetual annual review, client after client walks through the doors, each with their unique needs and interests. My job is to keep up with it all, complete the mountains of paperwork, record it all on the appropriate record keeping app, and try not to bump in to the furniture. Some days are better than others. This year it seems worse since all of the above is happening while I am in the middle of having a novel published. To explain I should probably take a minute to describe what the inside of my head feels like.

This afternoon I came down with a severe skull exploding headache. Luckily for me, this has become a very rare occurrence. Migraines used to be a consistent problem for me back in the day, but no more. This was no migraine, just a regular headache that defied all of my Tylenol taking and cold/hot compresses. It only subsided around 7:00 after a dinner of homemade clam chowder courtesy of my wife. After dinner I set down to make my to-do list for today. There were eleven items on it, all which need to be done by no later than 1:30 tomorrow afternoon. After completing the list I had a light-bulb moment. No wonder my head felt like it was in a vice. There are just too many squirrels running around loose in my head. There are a million things happening all at the same time up there, none of it good.

Although I should point out the fact that I have never been diagnosed with any of the alphabet soup of attention deficit disorders that are out there in the world. When I was a kid they just called it having ants in your pants. My teachers went to great lengths to keep me at my desk all the time I was in school. I had the attention span of a gnat on amphetamines. All the adults in my life back then assured my parents that I would eventually grow out of this condition and they were right…sort of. I have created many coping mechanisms/life hacks for dealing with my still shortish attention span and inability to stay seated for long periods of time. Most of the time, I feel completely normal. But I have days where I get the look from my friends at the office, especially the aforementioned assistant, who will usually say something snarky like, “Gee, if you were actually taking medicine for this condition, this is what you would be like if you skipped a few days!” Or even better, she’ll look at me in the middle of one of my semi-confused moments and say, “Squirrell!!!!!”

But, things will slow down soon. It’s only like this through the middle to late part of May. I’ll be fine. Just a few more weeks and the gray matter will snap back to its old self, where I only forget small, inconsequential things like…like…

Every Day a Challenge

When it comes to having a book published, each day brings a new challenge. Take this past Friday for example…

It was my day to open the Cafe and I was excited to get the chance to talk with Jennifer about maybe booking the Cafe for my Launch Party on or around the 7th of May. Its the perfect venue. Its the perfect size, has a wonderful ambiance, and I am comfortable there. As soon as Jennifer arrived she beat me to the punch, having read my post from last week. She said, “You ARE going to have the launch party here, right?!” Then we started checking the schedule for possible dates. There were a few conflicts with the 7th so Jennifer said she would talk with the facilities manager at Hope to work out the details. After thirty minutes Jennifer came back to inform me that she had forgotten about the rule our church has that would make it impossible to have the event at the Cafe. Hope doesn’t allow anyone to sell things in the church building. It’s essentially the no money changers in the temple rule. Jennifer had simply forgotten about the rule in her excitement and apologized for the oversight.

At this point I should point out the obvious fact that I was really disappointed. But at the same time I totally get it. Actually, it speaks well of our church that the leadership team is sensitive about the reputation of our church to the point where they try to eliminate even the appearance of evil. Imagine what the church would look like if every time you showed up for a service there were vendors hawking stuff in the halls. Since one of the points of a launch party is to offer signed copies of your book for sale, the Cafe can’t be the venue. Bummer.

So now we are back to the drawing board for another venue. It won’t be easy. My neighborhood doesn’t have a clubhouse. My house isn’t nearly large enough. Libraries won’t work either—they have the same no selling rule. For the first and only time in my life I regret not being a member of a Country Club. My opinion of Country Clubs has always been the same as Groucho Marx—“I refuse to be a member of any club that would have me as a member!”

As soon as we find a place and work out the details we will activate the RSVP tab on my Author Page. Would love to see you there!