I’m Feeling Very Old Testament-ish

Once upon a time in the land north of the James River, east of the mountains of the Blue Ridge, south of Ashland, there lived a humble servant who had just returned from a long journey to the northern kingdom of Maine, when behold, his dishwasher was afflicted with a discharge which visited great devastation on his household. In the course of time, the Lord of hosts, with the assistance of the insurance company, sent legions of workers to repair the damage to the humble servant’s house. Among the workers sent to repair the damage to the humble servant’s house were two men charged with the removal of the humble servant’s piano for safe keeping. 

Suddenly, there was a great earthquake which caused the piano to be shaken to its very foundation. Great was the shaking of it. So much so that it tilted heavily from it’s Dollie and ripped a hole in the wall of the house of the humble servant. The workers were sorely vexed at this calamity which had happened and immediately ripped their garments and covered themselves with sackcloth and ashes. Vowing that as God Lives they would repair this abomination and remove the blot from the humble servant’s library wall...

Verily, my Lord, we will return on the seventh day to repair this hole at the fifth hour.

On the seventh day, on the fifth hour, the workers appeared. But behold the hole was too big to be patched, for the workers had judged poorly the size of the hole and had not brought with them the required pieces of sheet rock to remove the blot from the humble servant’s wall. Much lamenting and ripping of garments ensued and once again the workers swore by their ancestors that this hole would be fixed the very next day at the fifth hour.

The humble servant was greatly troubled in his spirit at the continued existence of the hole, and began to despair at the unfaithfulness of the workers sent by the insurance company, but he held his tongue.

The next day, at the fifth hour, the workers arrived with sheet rock in hand to repair the hole. But behold, the piece of sheet rock brought was too thick and did not match the sheet rock of the existing wall, causing the repaired piece to jut out noticeably.

Why do you workers trouble me in this way? shouted the humble servant...Have you not vowed twice before me that you would remove this blight from the wall of my library and twice you have failed miserably to do so? What sin have I committed that you should deal with me with such incompetence?

The workers immediately prostrated themself on the floor before the humble servant, beseeching him to have mercy on them...We vow here this day to return tomorrow again at the fifth hour to repair this abomination of a hole. We beg your humble servant’s forebearance and ask you to have patience with us because we are weak of mind and our skill level embarrassingly low. But as God is our witness, the third time will be the charm. If not, let your humble servant deal with us ever so severely if we fail on our third attempt.

Then the humble servant went to his bed with a troubled spirit, having had all confidence ripped from him that his hole would ever be repaired. Then he prayed with a loud voice...Oh God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, deliver me from workers who are weak of mind with embarrassingly low skill levels. 

“Stormy” Weather

For the past week or so, there has been a story circulating concerning a certain porn star and her past dalliance with the current occupant of the White House. This ten year old relationship ended as all such relationships end, in acrimony. A six figure settlement was reportedly paid to her by the President’s lawyer just months before the 2016 election in an unsuccessful attempt to silence her story. Despite this payment, the porn star is now all over the place with salacious details of her decade old romp with the future President.

There isn’t a single solitary detail of this story that surprises me. All of us knew what kind of man our President was when we elected him. He made no attempt to hide his sexual conquests, in fact, openly bragged about them. But, there are two things about this story that are interesting to me. First, that this story isn’t really a story. It’s nothing more than a TMZ segment on entertainment television. It doesn’t even qualify as a scandal in the new normal of 2018. What...the President was boinking a porn star while his wife was at home with his newborn son?? That’s a story?? Ppsshhtt!

The second interesting part of this episode for me has been the reaction of prominent evangelicals. News that a sitting President had paid hush money to a porn star with a stage name of Stormy Daniels, whose most famous film was something called Good Will Humping, has been met with a collective evangelical yawn. Tony Perkins, a big shot at the Family Research Council, declared that The President gets a mulligan in this case, partly because evangelicals understand the concepts of mercy and forgiveness.

Ok.

But, ask yourself a question. Suppose that this story was about Barack Obama. Suppose that it had been discovered that Obama had carried on with a porn star while Michelle was at home nursing Malia, and had then instructed his lawyer to fork over a six figure hush money payment to her a month before the 2008 election to keep the public from discovering the truth. Try to imagine the hue and cry that would have exploded out of the evangelical community over such behavior. Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr. would have been apoplectic with rage.William Bennett would have had a coronary at such deviance. There wouldn’t have been any of this, We aren’t electing a Pastor, business. There would have been no temporizing language about the distinction between private virtue and public policy. No, Obama would be the reincarnation of Caligula, and evangelicals would be called out to stand against this fresh outrage of decadence.

I didn’t vote for Obama. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me to a polling place to vote for Hillary. But, the evangelical embrace of the  45th President of the United States has forever destroyed in my mind their credentials as a moral voice. When virtue gets trumped by pragmatism, then you become just another garden variety lobbying organization.

No thanks.

Absalom, Oh Absalom!!

Day 23 finds me in 2 Samuel where I am confronted once more with the sordid tale of Amnon, Tamar and Absalom. I will spare this audience the more graphic details of debauchery found in this narrative except to say that incest is involved. But, what I want to talk about is a verse that I have always missed in previous readings. First, let me set it up...

Ok, Amnon is Absalom’s brother, both are sons of King David. They have a sister, Tamar who is described as beautiful. Amnon commits premeditated rape against her. Absalom takes in his sister after the shameful assault. Then this from 2 Samuel 13:22...

...But Absalom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad, for Absalom hated Amnon because he had violated his sister.

The very next verse descibes a plot that Absalom launches to kill Amnon...a full two years later.

I had never noticed this particular detail of the story before. Here, Absalom goes along for two long years quietly enduring family dinners, and other casual encounters with his rapist/brother, all the while burning with hatred, plotting his revenge. Two years is a long time to carry around such a heavy weight. No wonder Absalom eventually goes off the rails. Hatred, especially private hatred, is a deadly thing. Hatred, so meticulously groomed and nursed, can become perhaps the most lethal force in the universe. In Absalom’s case, the trajectory of his life was altered by his hatred to the point where it costs him his life and provoked the famous cry from his anguished father, Absalom, Oh Absalom!!

Reading the story this morning made me examine my own life. Is there anything or anyone that I hate as much as Absalom hated his brother? Thankfully, the answer is no. I’ve never had cause to hate anyone with anything approaching this sort of passion and intensity. There have been plenty of people who I haven’t cared for, people who I would prefer not to be around, people who get on my nerves. There are famous people who I don’t know personally who I truly can’t abide...mostly politicians and entertainers, but even those people don’t arouse Absalom level hatred. But, honestly, when I read through my Facebook feed some mornings, I wonder about the hatred I encounter there. How much of it is real and how much is just bandwagon jumping or virtue signaling? I remember some of the vile things I used to read about George W. Bush. I remember the endless stream of invective poured out towards Barack and Michelle Obama. And now, it’s Trump’s turn. 

I understand. I get it...politics can be intensely personal. People can get worked up and carried away. Political beliefs run deep, along with the passionate assurance of our own righteousness, our own exclusive possession of the truth. But, the story of Absalom’s burning hatred and it’s deadly result should serve as a wake up call to all of us. This is especially true considering the fact that Absalom had every right to be angry, after all, his brother had raped his sister! But, even when we are right about something, that doesn’t grant us a license to hate. Hatred ultimately leads to bitterness and resentment, and these two burdens can turn us into the very people we claim to stand against.

It’s Not Fair

Sweat is starting to slide down between my eyes as my legs pump furiously on the new elliptical machine at the gym, this one designed to simulate the strides of a speed skater. My thighs and calves are burning and I’m only fifteen minutes in. It is my 4th such workout of the week, the 13th of the year, and most likely the 5000th of my life. Why do I so consistently volunteer myself for such torture? It is a complicated question which has many answers, none of them satisfactory. It is a stress relief. It does prevent me from ballooning to 300 pounds. It is, by all accounts, good for my heart. But mostly I do it because it gives me some sense that I am at least making an attempt to fight off the ravages of time, the slow, inexorable decline of physical and mental dexterity that comes with age. I mean, you can’t just shrug your shoulders and accept the inevitable, right? That would be entirely too logical and pragmatic. I much more prefer the illusion of control, the doomed notion that I, by sheer force of will and commitment, can keep the reaper at bay.

The television screen on the wall above me was broadcasting a football game. The New England Patriots were in trouble at the beginning of the 4th quarter of the AFC title game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. They had been outplayed the entire game by the younger, more athletic looking Jaguars. The closed caption script across the bottom of the screen is telling the viewer what a hard place that Tom Brady has found himself in, down 10 points to the league’s number one pass defense, having lost his best receiver to a concussion. Despite the growing pain in my legs from this brutal machine, I manage a smile. I think to myself...Where have these announcers been for the past 18 years?? Hard place, they say? 

The sweat stream that started as a trickle was a full blown river by the time the 40 year old Brady hit Danny Amendola with a dart in the back of the end zone to win the game for the Patriots. The screen is then filled with the ridiculously handsome Brady surrounded by a bevy of cameras and reporters, all eager for a word from the man who will be making his 10th appearance in the Super Bowl. We have just watched him throw for 138 yards and two touchdowns in the 4th quarter of a championship game, saving his heroics until his back was against the wall for what seemed like the 1,000th time. My workout was over so I headed to the shower. I didn’t need to see the interview. I knew what he would say before he did...all the right things.

It is very easy to hate someone like Tom Brady, he of the matinee idol good looks, the super model wife, all the money in the world and a strangle hold on the title, Greatest of All Time. There’s plenty of nits to pick if you care to look. But, he has had a bullseye on his back in a violent sport for over nearly two decades now...and nobody has even come close to laying a glove on him. The fact that he is doing this at age 40, is perhaps the very easiest reason to hate the guy. 

I sit in the steam room alone with my aching muscles. Every week these workouts get harder. With each passing year, their power to keep my weight under control weakens, my recovery time gets longer. Meanwhile, Tom Brady keeps on playing football at the highest level. Yes, he’s 40 and I’m getting ready for my 60th birthday. But, he plays football...while the most physically demanding part of my occupation involves putting paper in the copier.

I’m no longer a big pro football fan. I prefer college football and, of course, baseball. But, I watch when the playoffs come around. That means that when I’m watching, Tom Brady is most likely playing. I watch him engineer comeback after comeback with a mixture of resentment and admiration...resentment at his hoarding of unrivaled success, and admiration for his tenacious and so far victorious battle against time.

What Does Non Essential Mean?

So, our elected representatives failed to come up with a workable compromise last night, mearning that the government has shut down. Consequently, a relatively small percentage of the federal workforce deemed non essential has been furloughed. My Facebook wall has been peppered with comments about my use of the term non essential, so I’ve decided to clear up any confusion and misunderstanding of this controversial term.

First of all, no one with an ounce of self respect wishes to be thought of as non essential. Everyone likes to think that what they do for a living is vitally important work.( My own occupation is not immune to this calculus.) The problem is, it isn’t true...and it never has been true. But, just because something isn’t essential doesn’t mean that it is worthless either. The guy who drives the school bus in the morning is essential to getting your kid to school. The guy who washes the bus and cleans the bus out every day, not so much. But let that school bus go unwashed for a couple of years and never cleaned out, and before long you’ll have a storm of angry parents screaming at the board of supervisors meeting. In the case of my son-in-law, who happens to be the hardest working, most enthusiastic and able park ranger east of the Mississippi, the classification of his job as non essential by the government bean counters is a source of great frustration. While the job of park ranger might not be as essential as someone making life or death decisions about our nuclear arsenal, try telling that family from Nebraska who scrimped and saved for five years to be able to take the family to the Grand Canyon next week only to discover the gates locked because of a government  shutdown...try telling them that a park ranger’s job isn’t essential. 

Here’s the thing...we all do work that is essential to someone. In addition, all work is noble and honorable. Having said that, when you live in a country with a federal work force of 2 million people and that government spends 4 trillion dollars a year, the notion that all 2 million of those employees and every dime of that 4 trillion is absolutely essential and absolutely none of them can be spared and not a nickel of that money can be done without is a laughable suggestion. Yes, it is true that the last time the government shutdown, for 16 Days, it cost us 24 billion dollars. But, to put that in perspective...24 billion dollars is .006% of 1 percent of what this government spends in a year. By any definition, that is a negligible number.

But, getting back to this essential vs. non essential thing...there is one thing I know, any organization, private businesses included, get more inefficient the larger they become. A friend of mine posted a comment to my last blog suggesting that government was worse in this regard than private enterprises are. He might be right in a broader sense, but not completely. I rather believe that even large, for profit companies, fall victim to bloated payrolls. The following photograph might help illustrate my point:

There is only one essential employee in this photograph...and it sure isn’t the Human Resources manager!

Let it be known that I consider the government shutdown a complete political failure. It is never a desirable outcome to furlough hardworking employees who are supporting families. While I have spent lots of time in this space criticizing government waste and malfeasance and will continue to do so, a shutdown should be an embarrassment to the citizens of this Republic. If any government employees should be furloughed, it should be the 535 members of Congress and the President of the United States. Let a few of them go weeks without a paycheck and see how they like it. 

Government Shutdown?

Today, Friday, the 19th of January, 2018 holds the promise of a government shutdown. If it happens, it will be the 18th or 19th such shutdown since I graduated from high school in 1976, depending how you count such things. The short term impact will be negligible with only a handful of non essential government personnel getting their temporary pink slips. If the shutdown were to drag on for weeks or months, pestilence and devastation would surely sweep across the land. 

Government shutdowns, since the bicentennial year, have occurred when there is a funding gap between what is required to run leviathan and how much actual money the Congress has authorized the government to spend. The government’s fiscal year starts on October 1st of each year. Prior to 1976, that’s when a Budget was passed. But since then lawmakers have instead relied on continuing resolutions, a short term fix that funds operations for shorter periods of time amidst great rancor and namecalling between politicians.

Here’s a fun chart. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 112 continuing resolutions over the last 20 years, 2001 being an especially dysfunctional year. The federal budget is made up of 12 individual appropriation bills. The last time all 12 were passed by October 1st was in 1998, so our federal government hasn’t functioned with a proper budget in over two decades. Not coincidentally, the federal debt has skyrocketed from 5.5 trillion in 1998 to over 20 trillion today. Many acts of treachery, malfeasance and perfidy have contributed to this mind-boggling amount of red ink, but none more than the continuing resolution, which is a code word for incompetence.

So, what’s the cause of this potential shutdown? Depends on which echo chamber you’re stuck in. It’s either the Republican refusal to grant amnesty to the dreamers, or Democratic refusal to fund the CHIP program for six years. Oh..also, somebody hates our troops and wants them to die for lack of funds. I can’t remember who though. The greatest debate among the political class has been, Who will get the Blame? I don’t know what the fuss is about. I’ve lived through 18 of these things, and I can say with complete confidence that the Republican Party will get the blame, not because they don’t deserve it, but because, the Democratic Party has never gotten the blame for a government shutdown in my lifetime and never will. That’s because the people who are charged with assigning blame in these matters are the Press, and with very few exceptions, the Press runs with Democratic Party talking points. This isn’t a scandal, it’s just the way things have always been. I don’t care who gets the blame. Actually, in this 2018 shutdown, it’s hard to argue with the blame landing squarely on the GOP since they control both houses of Congress  and the White House. If they can’t get this done, it’s on them.

Maybe they work something out today, cobble some ridiculous deal together and vote for it late this afternoon so they can all catch their flights home, since there is absolutely nothing that politicians hate worse than working on the weekend. Or maybe the government will shut down. Whichever way it goes, I have to go to work, since I don’t have a printing press in my basement and can’t rely on a continuing resolution to pay my mortgage.

Day Four

Snowing outside, temperatures falling, wind starting to gust a bit. A couple of inches on the ground with a couple more to come. It’s our third snowfall of the winter here in Short Pump, Virginia. Yesterday, my wife headed over to the new Publix mere hours before it was to begin and texted me: Publix is so quiet...either Richmonders have stopped freaking out about the snow, or this store is doomed...

I feel reasonably confident that my fellow Short Pumpians have not stopped freaking out about the snow.

Day Four at Shangri-La, Short Pump finds me getting more antsy by the minute. Our two bedroom, two bath suite seems to have shrunk considerably since Sunday. But, it’s the little things that are starting to annoy me. In case you’re wondering, we still have a blanket-covered stack of luggage in front of the vent to nowhere, having decided that our makeshift solution was preferable to having to pack up and move to a room with a more logical HVAC plan. I’ve moved on from the big things and started to obsess over the smaller annoyances...

- a coil top stove with burners that will not lay flat, leaving every pan deployed on them tilted manically 

- showers and sinks which feature dial turned spigots which go from arctic cold to scalding hot within a millimeter of each other

- trash cans so small, they are filled up halfway through the preparation of one meal

- a sofa which can’t decide if it’s a sofa, futon, or chaise lounge, but regardless of which it is, declares war on the spinal column of anyone sitting on it.

While all of these things are incredibly annoying to someone like me, I must admit that when you write them down and read back over what you’ve written, it practically screams back at you...First World Problems!!!  Here I am, four days into a stay in a hotel suite which is bigger, and more luxurious than the bedrooms of the world’s richest Kings two thousand years ago, and considerably more luxurious than the homes of over half of the world’s present population. I’m agitated about the scalding hot water while 2.5 billion people on this planet would give just about anything for clean running water at any temperature. So, yeah...I’m a spoiled American.

Something else has occurred to me during my stay at the Residence Inn...Network and cable television is doomed. Each night of our stay, we have had three televisions to choose from for the night’s entertainment. The standard cable package along with HBO is available, free of charge. Not once have we chosen to turn them on. Instead, we sit close together, huddled around my wife’s laptop to watch the latest episode of Black Mirror...on Netflix. We do so despite the tiny eleven inch screen and the inadequate speakers which require extreme concentration to hear. Sure, we watch Andrew Freiden in the morning, and we did watch the end of the Vikings / Saints game Sunday night, but that’s about it. I don’t think we’re alone. If I worked for one of the major networks or a cable television company, I would be looking to acquire a new skill set. Their days are numbered...

Day One in the Wilderness

Day one of our week in the wilderness has started well enough. Our suite here at the Residence Inn is at the lower end of the acceptable scale, but acceptable nonetheless. I have found nothing especially complimentary about the complimentary breakfast, except for the fact that it is, um...complimentary. Our quarters are a reasonable attempt to be like Homewood Suites. Of course, the attempt failed last night as we had finally settled in and noticed a cold draft pouring into our living room as if someone had left a door opened. Upon closer inspection we discovered the source of the freezing air...

To the untrained eye, this would appear to be a garden variety intake vent for heating and air. But when we felt frigid air rushing through the vent, we were perplexed. It was only when we removed the filter that we noticed...

...that it wasn’t attached to anything, sorta like a bridge to nowhere! That’s right, some genius decided that they would slap a vent opening on some random door, attach it to nothing, then allow the unheated crawl space to pass along freezing air directly from the great outdoors into our room. This is American mechanical expertise at its finest. Of course, both of us were too exhausted to call the front desk to report this outrage, since the prospect of having to haul all of our stuff to yet another room after so long a day seemed ridiculous. So, my wife brought another example of American expertise to bear...the jack-legged, jerryrigged solution...

Meanwhile, Lucy is adjusting quite well to her new surroundings. There have been a few low growls directed at other patrons walking past our door, an occasional bark that seems to startle her when the sound bounces off the walls, which is enough to make her stop. Having said this, I have to admit that the old girl is sleeping with one eye open...

Yesterday, someone made the observation that these next couple of weeks might give us a better understanding of what it must have been like for the Children of Israel when they were kicking around for forty years in the wilderness. Well, except for all the actual details of the story, this might be true on some warped scale. Yes, the Residence Inn is not our home, and yes, the promised land is so close we can taste it, but after that, everything falls apart. The complimentary breakfast is much tastier than manna, water comes out of the faucet, not a rock, and no animals will be sacrificed during our stay here if I have anything to say about it.

Hawaiian Nightmare

Yesterday, the fine people of Hawaii heard the wail of first alert sirens and for fifteen horrifying minutes, prepared for incoming ballistic missiles from North Korea. It was a false alarm, brought on by a series of inexcusable mistakes that boiled down to some idiot somewhere actually pushing the wrong button. Unfortunately, this hamfisted blunder had the citizens of Hawaii thinking that they had fifteen minutes to live before the fiery death of a nuclear attack. Their responses are/were fascinating.

Stories have filtered out of mothers huddled in closets with their children, of fathers trying to shield their children with their own bodies from the impending flash, of frantic calls and text messages speaking of deep love and affection...along with stories of copious consumption of whiskey, all very human reactions. As I have read these accounts the thought occurs to me...If I suddenly had fifteen minutes left, what would I do? What would you do?

Nobody can say with certainty what they would do under such circumstances. Our reactions are merely hypothetical approximations...what we think or hope we would do in a crisis is often at odds with what we actually would do. All of us would like to think that we would be calm, steadfast and heroic. No one wants to imagine themselves gulping Jack Daniels and cowering in a corner like a child. But, here is what I would probably do...

- Text or call my children to tell them that I love them.

- Hold on tight to Pam while awaiting the end.

- Confess my sins before Almighty God.

Then, if I had any time left....

- Lament the fact that I didn’t take the family on a month long European vacation, since I could have stiffed Capital One with the bill.

- Since it turned out that I shouldn’t have bothered, I would kick myself for putting so much money in my SEP.

- Enjoy a nice laugh realizing that all of those insufferable Bitcoin know-it-alls won’t be able to spend any of their new money.

- Take comfort in the fact that the coming nuclear apocalypse will also destroy Twitter.

- Delight in the realization that despite being, at best, an infrequent flosser, I will die with a full set of teeth.

- I would probably ask Alexa to play something by Sinatra.

- I might consider cooking up the last of the bacon, assuring that my last smell would be the very best smell.

Anyway, my heart goes out to the citizens of Hawaii. What a nightmare to have to endure because of a false alarm. I’m hoping that when they find the guy(or girl) responsible, he or she is punished to the fullest extent of the law. 

A Word About Shitholes

Yesterday, with sudden and mighty force, a new word entered the American vocabulary...shithole. While it might be argued that this isn’t really a new word, or even a word at all, because it came from the mouth of a sitting President, it has been thrust into the limelight by a news media suddenly aghast at foul language coming from the Oval Office. But, with this word, like all others, context is important. Our president used this term to describe a country, or countries, from which he didn’t wish any more immigration. The specific countries in question were, depending on which news account you prefer...Haiti or any country from the African continent. In some quarters the use of the epithet “shithole” to describe countries populated predominantly by black people is clear evidence of racism. Others point out that a healthy immigration policy should begin and end with skills-based requirements, the unlimited entry of unskilled poor people from countries that can be described as shitholes not being the kinds of places where one finds highly skilled professionals. What to make of all this?

First, I think that most reasonable people would be willing to acknowledge that this world does in fact contain many shitholes. Anyone who has ever wandered off the grounds of their luxury hotels in Jamaica would soon be confronted with conditions that closely resemble something fairly described as shithole-like. There are vast regions of this planet where shitholery abounds. Indeed, if some of the journalists who are catawauling the loudest at the moment were dropped in the middle of a Haitian shantytown, the word shithole would fairly leap from their lips. But, does the existence of shitholes mean that we should not allow immigration from such shitholes? This is a different question that deserves greater attention.

The words of the President yesterday ignited a firestorm on Twitter. One particular thread I read was instructive. Someone with a vowel-heavy last name proclaimed...The Mayflower didn’t come from Haiti!!!...to which someone else, who has my undying admiration, replied...It didn’t come from Poland either! 

When the first wave of immigration surged into this country from Ireland after the great potato famine, I feel confident that conditions in Ireland at that time could fairly be described as shitholeish. The conditions in Dickensian London that propelled people across the Atlantic were certainly at least close to shithole territory. The truth is that throughout our history, the people who have fled to this country have all pretty much been fleeing something horrible, whether from European horribleness or Asian horribleness or, yes, African horribleness. During periods of great inflows, our government has passed laws that sought to limit one sort of immigrant over another. I believe that this is perfectly fine. It is the responsibility of any government to control its border. The question becomes, are the rules we propose designed to limit people bases solely on their race, regardless of their qualifications? With regards to Haiti, it appears that our President is neck deep in racist intent, especially when you consider the fact that the average immigrant from Haiti is more educated than the average American. Is it merely a coincidence that our chief executive used the modifier shithole only to refer to African nations? While Jerry Falwell Jr. could probably come up with a way to justify this latest rhetorical bomb, the rest of us, probably not. 

Seems like just yesterday I read an incredible story about some guy who raced into a burning building to rescue five strangers. On his second trip into the inferno he died in the flames. The hero in question was a private in the National Guard, and an immigrant from the African nation of Ghana. When the President famously asks, “Why do we want all these people from shithole countries coming here?” The answer is, because that’s what America is, a place created by people great and small, fleeing shithole countries for a chance at a better life. I don’t object to having rules for entry. I don’t care how oppressed you are, if you have tuberculosis, you ain’t getting in, pal.

But, if our reasons for denying someone entry into this country are based on racist assumptions of your value as a human being because of where you come from, or what color your skin is, then we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Planned Obsolescence

It is 6:12 am and I am sitting at my desk at the office, clean shaven, showered and ready for my day. After a fitful night of half sleep, I finally gave up at 4:15, so here I sit. I blame this all on my empty house. 

Yesterday, the furniture movers arrived and cleared out everything except the refrigerator from downstairs. This morning they come for that. After a late appointment yesterday, I met my wife over at a friends house for dinner, so I didn’t get home until about 9. I can’t tell you how disconcerting it was to walk into a dark and empty house, and hear your voice echoing off the bare walls. By 10:30 or so I was exhausted by a long and rigorous 10 hour business day. I collapsed into bed and was asleep practically before my head hit the pillow. But within a couple of hours I was wide awake. A couple of hours ago I read my twelve pages from Numbers. Now, I’m alone in my office a full two hours before my first appointment is due to arrive. This place is creepy quiet at this hour.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re up super early, every detail of your environment comes into sharper focus? For example, I don’t think I have ever noticed this before, but my desk chair has started to list a bit towards port. How did I never notice this before? It is definitely leaning to the left, irritatingly so. Upon closer examination, the left side of the seat cushion is more worn, reflecting this unequal weight distribution. All of a sudden, my chair is intolerably uncomfortable. This stupid chair can’t be more than five years old and I paid good money for it. Now it’s tilting to one side? 

This is an outrage. Office chairs are only good for half a decade now? The big shots at the chair factory are cooking planned obsolescence into office furniture now? What the heck ever happened to the reliable, comfy chair? A couple of days ago I walk into the office and notice that there was a furniture truck outside and six sleek new conference room chairs were being carried into our office while the old ones were headed out the back door to Goodwill. This, despite the fact that the old chairs didn’t have a mark on them and had given us 8 years of faithful service without a single chair-related fatality. What in the world was going on? My partner informed me that these new ones were more modern and stylish, and would contribute to a more 21st century look. They actually are more modern and stylish looking, I had to admit, while being about as uncomfortable as the old ones. But still...conference room chairs only have an eight year lifespan? When did this happen? When in the world did basic business environment furniture start either falling apart or becoming hopelessly unhip in less than a freaking decade?? 

I need a good night’s sleep...

How Much Is Enough?

How much is enough? This is one of the weightiest questions that this world asks of us. If you gathered all of the world’s bounty into one place and stood on a high place to survey it, how much of it would satisfy you? How much would be your fair share? The arguments that flow out of this central question have been the source of intense, often violent debate over the course of human history, indeed most wars have been fought over variations of the question of who is the rightful owner of what. I bring this up for a couple of reasons, the first being my lifelong quest to discover the answer and second, the news yesterday that the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos’ personal net worth had exceeded 100 billion dollars.

The fact that one human being could possibly be worth that much money is repulsive to a lot of people. I noticed several people on Facebook venting their disgust at Bezos for his hoarding of so much money. Their argument goes something like this: Why, if he weren’t so greedy, he could solve the world’s poverty problem by giving it away to charity! Someone even attempted to do the math and incorrectly declared that he could give every person in the world like a million dollars and still have billions left over!! (Fabulously wrong) Never mind the fact that much of Mr. Bezos’ wealth consists of the value of his shares of Amazon stock, an entirely paper number. It’s not like the man sits, Scrooge-like, in the basement of one of his mansions running his hands through 100 billion dollars of gold coins every night. Still, 100 billion dollars is an unfathomable number. Put it perspective, if Bezos were to decide that he was tired of the rat race and just wanted to retire and live the rest of his life in leisure, he would have to run through about 10 million dollars a day for the rest his actuarial life to spend it all! Surely, he has enough...right? So why is he still so driven?

My own grappling with this question has been a contentious personal battle. In many ways I’m no different than anyone else. I like nice stuff. I enjoy a fine car, a beautiful and comfortable house, and nice clothes. I enjoy taking long and expensive vacations and shorter, more frequent weekend getaways. Nothing gives me more pleasure than being able to spoil my kids. All of these things require money. So, I pursue the acquisition of money with relative gusto. But, is there a point beyond which this pursuit is counter productive? When does the pursuit of wealth become an exercise in vanity? That’s the essential struggle of the thing...how much is enough. 

One of the problems lies with the fact that the answer to this question cannot be found in a vacuum. The reason the answer is elusive is because we aren’t alone in the pursuit. How much I have will always and forever be compared with how much my neighbor has. Wealth is basically how this world keeps score. It’s a store of value, a means of ranking one thing against another. When I walk into someone’s home for the first time, my mind seems to always start comparing the house and everything in it to my own. If the house is larger, the furnishings more ornate and grand, I conclude that the owner is wealthier than I am. As long as this conclusion doesn’t result in me coveting my friends house and stuff, I suppose I’m ok. But, sometimes I have to admit, I succumb to a creeping resentment. Why is this? Why should I begrudge anyone else their stuff?? It makes no sense to me. And yet...there it is. 

I have made much progress over the years in this regard. When I was younger, envy of the prosperity of others was a much more powerful emotion. It served as a great motivator. As I’ve gotten older, envy has faded from me, but for reasons that I don’t entirely understand, envy has never completely disappeared. It’s like it’s hardwired into my soul, this desire for...more. Which brings me back to Bezos.

What would I do if I were worth 100 billion? It’s easy for me to say that I would keep, say, 20 million for myself, and give the rest away to the poor. Frankly, having that much money would be an embarrassment to me. It’s also easy for me to have an opinion about what Jeff Bezos should be doing with his money, since I’m not the one who earned it. Nothing is quite so easy or sublime, after all, than spending somebody else’s money. Maybe if I was worth 100 billion, I would be an entirely different person, in fact, I’m sure of it. That’s because at some point on the scale, wealth changes a person. I’ve seen it in my business a thousand times. Someone inherits a bunch of money from a relative and they go nuts. There is a reason they call it life changing money. But, is the change that comes with wealth a good or bad thing? I don’t know. I guess it depends on the person.

I’ve reached an uneasy agreement with this question over the past couple of years. I know what my number is. It’s not that I would turn down a higher number, but I’m done chasing. I have discovered that the value of something isn’t the same thing as its price. Often in life, enjoying what you have is more valuable than chasing won’t you don’t have. A happier house is more valuable than a bigger one. My number is one that leaves me room to be generous to those who struggle. I think this is the point of that scripture verse that says...to whom much is given, much is required. If I am fortunate enough to have accumulated enough wealth to live a full, unrestricted life, then I’m in a position to help others along the way who might need a break. That has to be the purpose of wealth, right? Otherwise, if all money is for is a bigger car, bigger house and fancier stuff, then it’s meaningless and empty.

Unsettled

Behold the uninspired condition of my library. This is a result of the work of just two highly skilled women, employed by my insurance company, who showed up here a couple of days ago to pack up every thing in the downstairs of our house. Earlier today, two not so highly skilled piano movers arrived to load up our piano for safe keeping during next week’s hardwood floor refurbish job. In the short time the dudes from Richmond Piano were here, we heard a vaguely musical thud which produced this:

No worries, the moving guy said. I have taken a photograph and someone from the company will call you in a couple of weeks to set a time to come fix the hole. Lovely.

This Friday I’m told that yet another crew will arrive and transport all furniture and boxes from the downstairs of our house into our garage. Shortly thereafter, on Sunday, Pam and I along with poor, unsuspecting Lucy will move into a two bedroom suite at a local Hotel for seven days and seven nights,(more reading the Bible in 90 Days humor). All of this is happening during the very busiest month of my business year, leaving me with a very unsettled feeling, made infinitely more so by a series of financial obligations which are all competing for my attention, each making pushy, petulant demands...me first, me first!!!

Once all this house repair work is done and we are moved back into our house, I will be fine. I’m just not very good at dealing with disruptions to my routine. I am a creature of habit, and while I love having those habits rearranged during vacations and what not, when I’m home and at work...not so much. That’s the best thing about home, truth be told...predictability, reliability, and comforting routine. 

So, the theme for these next three weeks or so will have to be...flexibility. My goal will be to deal with one catastrophe at a time, and if something horrible and unplanned happens, I will do my best Ted Kennedy impression and drive off that bridge when I get to it.

Leviticus

Day 8 of reading through the Bible in 90 Days has landed me in Leviticus. Reading Leviticus is kind of like that feeling you get when you show up at a party full of people you don’t like, and you’re terribly overdressed. You think, I don’t belong here. It’s like you’re ten chapters into a Jane Austen novel when all of a sudden you turn the page and Hemingway shows up. It’s like one minute you’re watching figure skating and suddenly a hockey game breaks out. 

It’s not as if Genesis and Exodus were walks in the park, but the first 12 chapters of Leviticus read like a How-to book for starting your own slaughterhouse. There’s more blood and guts than a Tarantino movie. But, it’s not just the grisly details of animal sacrifice, it’s the maddening fastidiousness of it all. Step one: take hold of beast by placing right thumb next to left ear of offering...take special care in this regard, for if you screw it up you shall surely die. It’s like Robert’s Rules of Order for the Old Covenant.

I’m sure there is a much deeper meaning here than meets the eye. All of this will eventually make sense as part of the grander sweep of the story, I’m sure. My pastor, David Dwight has a marvelous gift of being able to make complex and confusing things easier to understand, without dumbing down either the material or his audience . I eagerly await his take on Leviticus. 

He has his work cut out for him!

“You’re not the boss of me!”

This morning, I completed my first week of reading through the Bible in 90 Days, having made it through the end of Exodus. For what it’s worth, I find myself developing an intense dislike for the children of Israel, a brooding swarm of petulant brats who wouldn’t know how to pour piss from a boot if the instructions were written on the heal. If I had been Moses, I would have left the whole lot of them to their own devices and built a retirement home back in Midian. Surely, there has never existed a collection of people more whiny and ungrateful than God’s chosen people...with the possible exception of we Americans.

So, yesterday I had a text conversation with my son. My wife and I, having just finished season 2 of The Crown, find ourselves in a showhole, and I have been hearing much buzz about another Netflix series called Black Mirror. Since this show is billed as a modern, high tech version of the Twilight Zone, I decided to defer to my high tech savvy son to get the scoop. He and Sarah, it turns out, have indeed watched the show, around 8 episodes so far, so he had lots of opinions. He went on and on about the story lines, the intensity and darkness of some of the plots, the way each story is exhausting to watch because your brain is going a million miles an hour by the end, etc...Then, he throws this out...

...Do not watch the first episode of season 1. Just don’t.

Why would my son say such a thing? In this regard, he is not much different than my daughter, both of them seem certain of the kinds of things I would like and those things that I would hate. My children seem to know my tendencies so thoroughly that they can tell me with confidence exactly which episodes of a show I should avoid? (In his defense, he warned me against going to see The Book of Morman.) But here’s the thing...when somebody singles out something as specific as the first episode of season 1 with dire warnings, why does it make me want to watch it all the more? It’s like, I think..Wait, why can’t I watch that particular episode? I’m a grownup. I’m perfectly capable of deciding what episodes of a show I can watch. I’ll watch whatever the heck I want to watch, thank you very much! I was watching television long before either of my children were even born. Where do they get off telling me not to watch episode one of season 1? I’ll show them!!

My reaction was not much different than the reaction of Adam and Eve to God’s warning that they could eat of any tree in the Garden of Eden, except one. My conclusion is that human beings are hard wired for rebellion. We hate nothing quite so much as being told what to do. It’s as if the one unifying cry of all of mankind throughout all of human history is the same cry one hears from their middle school children...You’re not the boss of me!! 

Come to think about it, sounds exactly like the Israelites...

A Stable Genius?

It has been nearly a month since I have made any reference, specific or implied, about the President of the United States. Ignoring him in this space has been mildly therapeutic, since grappling with such a man has proven to be quite a challenge. The audience for this blog is a disparate group which includes some who are ardent supporters, some who are cautiously optimistic, others who are thoroughly confused, and a fourth group who are horrified by the man. I fluctuate wildly between the last three groups. 

For all of my adult life I have been a fascinated observer of politics and politicians, and an admirer of very few of them. My overarching opinion is that politics is a grubby, pedestrian, unfortunate neccesity of our republican form of government. The people normally drawn to it are egomaniacs and narcissists of ordinary intelligence who either arrive in Washington rich, or quickly become rich during their tenure. If this makes me a cynic, so be it. A quick glance at the historical record, in my view, practically demands cynicism, but that’s another story. My general attitude towards government and the people who comprise it has been to give them a wide berth. I have endeavored to go about living my life in such a way as to limit interaction with politicians or at the very least, attempt to insulate myself and my business from their most egregious dictates. In this project I have enjoyed considerable but limited success. I say all this to place into proper context what I am about to say about the President’s latest(I think) tweet.

I follow the President on Twitter. I have never responded to any of his tweets, and never retweeted any of them. I follow him out of a combination of civic duty and my lifelong attraction to all things puerile. It has been a fascinating journey, reading the thousands of short, hastily constructed, emotionally charged outbursts which have gushed from the fingers and thumbs of the 45th President. But, this morning’s beats them all:

Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!

Apparently some Democrats in Congress had been promoting the analysis of some shrink somewhere who had positted a theory that the President had taken leave of his senses and therefore, pursuant to the 25th amendment, a committee needed to be formed to make a determination of his mental fitness, etc... Since this shrink and the suggestion of envoking constitutional remedies came from the Democrats, I dismissed it as nothing more than the usual unhinged partisan rancor that has forever flowed from the party out of power. But, this particular President always feels compelled to crank up his Twitter account, and respond, so respond he did...and what a response!!!

My parents were consistent in their advice to me in only a few memorable things. One of them was in the area of pride. Every body hates a braggart, they would warn. Never toot your own horn. Let others praise you, never take up the job yourself. This was part of their lifelong negative opinion of self-promoting hustlers. Besides, they would insist, if you call yourself a Christian, you should be more concerned about the well being of others than you are about your own well being. Pride goeth before a fall became one of my mother’s favorite axioms, which she trotted out at the first sign of boasting among any of her children. So, what to make of the President’s tweet?

For starters, I don’t know that I have ever heard a really smart person actually say, I’m a really smart person. Most of the super smart people I’ve ever been around, if anything, have tried to hide their brilliance, sensing that it separated them from others. But, now we have a chief executive who is telling us about his two greatest assets being his mental stability and being, like, really smart. Later in the tweet, just in case we missed it, he goes one step further by declaring himself to be not only genius, but a very stable genius.

I, for one, am very grateful for the stability thing since history is full of examples of the perils of unstable genius.

So, this tweet had the effect of producing a President-themed blog post. I probably should have resisted, since now somewhere around 40% of you are pissed. I suppose the reason I gave in to writing this was the fact that sometimes I still manage to be astonished by things. Reading the words of a sitting President bragging about his genius is an entirely higher level of astonishment. Surely, most of our previous Presidents thought themselves geniuses. This one proclaims it from the rafters. 

Pride goeth before a fall......

Can Men Be Replaced?

I’ve been seeing lots of stories in the news recently about the rising popularity of sex robots among Japanese men. With the evolution and refinement of robotic technology, these robots are becoming more accomplished and lifelike with each passing month, and this is presented as a potentially serious threat to women. With regards to the Japanese, this is a particularly vexing question, since that country already suffers from a negative replacement birth rate. If female sex robots are the future for Japanese men, then Japan is literally doomed.

But, I’m thinking that it’s men who better be worried. Speaking as a man, I can say without hesitation that it hasn’t been a great couple of years for my gender, what with all of the sexual harassment allegations flying around everywhere. Can you imagine how it might go for my grandson once robotic technology advances another twenty years or so? What’s a woman to do if in the year 2030 she is presented with a choice between Bot #5678, a dead ringer for Brad Pitt, or Frank in accounting? Sure, Bot #5678 would involve a sizable upfront investment, but he would be covered by a thirty year warranty. Frank, not so much. In addition, Bot #5678 would have other things going for him that poor Frank couldn’t possibly compete with:

Bot #5678 would never forget to take out the garbage.

Bot #5678 would never not ask for directions because his GPS is built in.

Bot #5678 would always listen and respond immediately to spoken demands.

Bot #5678 would come with an empathy add-on which would force him to always share his feelings.

Bot #5678 would never forget birthdays and anniversaries.

Bot #5678 would excel at all household chores, especially if equipped with the vacuum attachment.

Bot #5678 would understand every aspect of the female anatomy.

Bot #5678 would always prefer romantic comedies over anything in the Fast and Furious franchise.

So, fellas, I have seen the future and it’s not very bright. We better get our act together...and fast!

My Love/Hate Relationship With Snow

I have a complicated relationship with snow. It’s very much a love/hate thing. I love how it looks when it’s falling. I love the anticipation that accompanies a weather forecast that calls for snow. I love the feeling that comes over you when you realize that a blizzard is coming and you have a refrigerator full of treats. I love how you feel when you venture out in it for the first time, laying down the first footprints.

But, that’s where the love part ends...abruptly, and is quickly replaced by deep, intense hatred.

I hate the fact that a snowstorm no longer absolves me of all of my worldly obligations. When I was a kid, six inches of snow meant freedom. There would be no school, which meant no homework, which meant spending the day building snowmen and throwing snowballs. Now, a snowstorm means I have to shovel the stuff away from the entrances to my house and drive through the stuff to the office where my worldly obligations await my attention. I hate how this shoveling business gets harder each year, leaving me stiffer and stiffer with each new storm. I hate how the world looks a mere 48 hours after the snow stops falling, a dirty, slushy mess. I hate having to share the road with all of the obnoxious owners of 4-wheel drive trucks who think that by virtue of owning such vehicles they are rendered immune from the laws of physics. I hate how freaking cold it is after a snowstorm. I hate the prospect of a loss of power. But mostly, I hate how a miserable little 3 inch snowfall reminds me of what an insufferable wimp I am compared to my hearty brethren in Maine. Also...note to self: Never, EVER move to a State where this sort of thing happens for five months a year.

On a brighter note, this particular snowfall has a silver lining in that it is a very finely frozen sort of snow, which means it can be removed with my leaf blower. In addition, today was the only day over the next three weeks that was appointment free, so no one will need to be rescheduled, a major win. 

One more thing...when I consider that my brother had to sling mail in this sort of weather for twenty years, my admiration for him goes off the charts, making me very grateful that he is now retired, sipping his morning coffee while reading this blog. Good for you, big brother.

A Brave Woman

How quickly the pace of life changes. From Christmas Eve through New Year’s Day, everything slowed down. There was plenty to do, but the rhythm and structure was gone, each day lacking a fixed schedule. Now, suddenly, I’m back on the treadmill with a vengeance, facing two weeks of back to back to back meetings, with the space in between filled with specific and familiar duties. The strange thing is...I think I prefer the treadmill. It requires greater discipline, and I take an odd comfort in discipline.

So, today Lucy has an appointment. I have shared previously here our need to find a place to board her during our upcoming floor tumult. I wrote about our unnerving experience at a local doggie daycare establishment in Short Pump. Later that day my sister told me that someone had posted a reply on Facebook asking me to send a private message concerning this matter. Intrigued, I looked and, behold, it was true,(a little reading through the Bible in 90 Days humor there). A very sweet and kind woman who has been a faithful reader of this blog and therefore was familiar with the trials and tribulations of Lunatic Lucy, simply could not bear the thought of me boarding her in such a scary place. She miraculously offered her own home, where she lives with her own skittish sheltie, Maggie, as an alternative. Of course, in this world there exist skittish dogs...then there’s Lucy. There’s a very real possibility that she will go bonkers at the meet and greet, forcing this angelic woman to rescind her kind offer. Nevertheless, today at 4:00, I will be sitting on a sofa in a house of someone I have never met to discuss terms. If this thing works out, this lady, (whose name I am withholding because A. I don’t have her permission to use it and B. My desire to protect her identity if things don’t work out), will be my new hero and earn a permanent place on our Christmas card list.

In preparations for this meeting, I have tried to imagine how it might go, and my morbid and warped imagination has conjured up a whole host of off the rails outcomes, including but not limited to, a repeat of Lucy’s imfamous Christmas Eve projectile pooping fiasco. But, my experiences in life have generally taught me that things never turn out quite as badly as we imagine they will. Our feared worst case scenarios seldom materialize. Maybe Lucy will conduct herself with great grace and decorum, in which case my reader might suspect that I have exaggerated her psychotic tendencies. I dearly hope so. On the other hand, if things don’t work out, I will always be grateful for her willingness to help poor Lucy out. Dog lovers sometimes do crazy things because of that love...like volunteering to dog-sit this girl:

The Bible in 90 Days?

Ok, so my church has challenged it’s members to embark on a plan to read the entire Bible in the first 90 Days of 2018. When I first heard of this scheme, I was skeptical of how the membership of Hope would respond to such a thing. Don’t take this the wrong way, but my impression of the congregants at my new church is that they wouldn’t necessarily be a group that would be all that eager for the Word of God. Writing that thought out makes it sound like a gratuitous insult, now that I read it, but it’s not meant to be. It’s just that Hope is a rather affluent, comfortable group of people, not a demographic which I associate with spiritual hunger and discipline. Boy, was I wrong! At last count, Hope had sold over 1400 special read the Bible in 90 Days bibles, the cost of which was subsidized by a couple of members. So, apparently, I have misjudged my new congregation. After two days of this project, I have made it through the first 28 chapters of Genesis. A few observations:

Having been a Christian for most of my adult life, I am quite familiar with the Bible, having read it with various levels of consistency and seriousness over the years, even having read it through once before, years ago, albeit over 12 months instead of 3. However, I must here confess that it has been quite awhile since I’ve spent very much time in the book of Genesis. I know every story. I’ve read them all before. But, going through 28 chapters in two days brings into sharper focus...some truly bizarre stuff.  

So far, it occurs to me that the book of Genesis probably should be banned from the public schools, or at the very least, one should have to provide an ID before being  allowed to read it, much like we must prove our age to consume adult beverages. Holy Cow, every where you look there’s somebody sleeping with somebody else’s wife, or even worse, somebody else’s slave girl! There’s rampant nakedness, mass circumcising, and even deliberate, premeditated incest. There’s drunkenness, lying, stealing and entire cities dedicated to decadence. Let’s just say that God’s chosen people cannot be accused of producing an account that makes them look very noble. The Bible is not a whitewashed, airbrushed, purified account of the Jewish people. So far, they are presented as quite a duplicitous, conniving, cutthroat bunch. But, to tell the truth, this is the thing that has always drawn me to this book. The biggest hero of the Old Testament, King David, is presented to us completely unvarnished. We see him at his admirable best and his scandalous worst. If it was only glorification and propaganda, why would the story of his despicable behavior with regards to Bathsheba be included in the narrative? For someone like me, this full picture of the heroic and the horrific give the Bible it’s credibility, and it also gives me hope. If a man about whom it was said, He was a man after God’s own heart, could suffer such monumental failures, then the fact of my own failures places me in good company.

Anyway, I’m only two days in, so who knows how long I’ll keep up the pace. So far, so good.

On a side note...I’ve enjoyed reading all the punditry over the past couple of days about how far the SEC has fallen in the college football ranks, of how the other conferences have caught up and, wow, how about the Big Ten going undefeated?!! So, the fact that the national title game will feature Georgia vs Alabama is truly hilarious to me. Listen up people...put away the shovels. Apparently, the stories of the death of the SEC were greatly exaggerated!

2018...

It’s New Year’s Eve and as of this hour, I still have no plans for the night. Yesterday began what will be a three week journey through a massive to-do list in preparation for having our downstairs hardwood floors refinished. 2018 will be the year which begins in chaos, our daily routines in tatters due to an October dishwasher malfunction. We made it through three or four items on the list yesterday in what felt like a hollow victory since the list is so long and daunting. Today, I’m thinking, will be consumed with taking down and packing up all of the Christmas decorations along with an extensive grocery shopping trip. My wife has designated 2018 as the year that she will be on a mission to throw stuff away. When she found me stacking up empty boxes from the Christmas present wrapping room for transport up into the attic, she shocked by instructing me to tear apart each box and put it in the recycling. Apparently she is dead serious with this out with the old business, so I’m hoping that I’m not included! 

One of the items on the list for yesterday was to visit a doggie daycare business in Short Pump. In a couple of weeks we will need to retreat from our house into a hotel for five or six days while the floors are being worked on, which means we will have to do something with Lucy during the day, since dogs cannot be left unattended even in dog friendly hotels. Lucy has never been boarded anywhere...for obvious reasons, making finding a suitable place a troublesome prospect. 

So, we walk into this place yesterday afternoon and are greeted by the sound of scared barking coming from behind a set of double doors. Later, we were allowed to observe the inside of the facility where the scared barking was coming from...a series of cages in various sizes, occupied by shivering dogs in various stages of nervous breakdowns. Then, we notice that one of the primary care givers was a rather large African-American man. Great. Two of the top five things that terrify Lucy the most on full display...large containers and a black man. But, it’s only for like seven hours at a time, and then we will come get her...and take her to our hotel room for the night. This is gonna be great!! Of course, I better not count my chickens. Before this establishment will accept Lucy, she must pass muster by enduring a trial run day, whereby I drop her off at 8:00 in the morning one day next week and let her interact with the other dogs and staff to see how she gets along. I’m half expecting to get a call from the large black man by ten o’clock demanding that I come get Lucy immediately, since she has barricaded herself behind several overturned cages and has taken several chihuahuas as hostages. Damn that dishwasher!!!

While all of this is going on, I’ll be starting the 36th year of my business career. When I finished my planning a couple days ago it became apparent to me that 2018 was going to involve more resolve and determined effort than has been required over the past few years. There are lots of extenuating circumstances on the calendar which require...money, so back to work I go. I will still have time for writing in this blog, but will probably write less about politics for the simple reason that when I’m fully engaged in the business of my business, politics gets regulated to the scrap heap. It’s only when I have lots of free time and greater access to leisurely pursuits that I find politics interesting. When I’m busy, politics falls back to its default position of being simply annoying. 

I have no list of resolutions for 2018, not that I can’t find things I need to be resolute about, but rather, the things I need to improve about myself are eternal, always on my list of things to work on. I will forever struggle to be more patient, kind, and understanding. I will for the rest of my natural life battle the accumulation of unwanted weight. Making a list of my personal failings only serves to remind me of their continued existence and my past failures at self improvement. So, instead, I have condensed my goals for 2018 to a workable phrase which I hope to pursue consistently throughout the year...

...Love people, use things, and worship God.

The Great Retooling

Yesterday began a two day process I endure on the last couple of work days of each year. I call it The Great Retooling, whereby I bring a big, empty box into my office and begin throwing things into it. It’s like a spring cleaning, only in December. This year it was made worse by the fact that, for reasons I cannot recall, last year’s Retooling wasn’t done. So, this year I had two year’s worth of business minutiae to dispose of. By the time the shredder guy showed up, he needed one of those fifty gallon trash cans to gather it all. Of course, maybe this year I went a little overboard. I made the snap decision to finally part with my appointment books from 1991-2014, keeping the last three years only. Now, if some auditor from the SEC shows up demanding to know where I was on March 20, 1997 at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, I’m going to be out of luck. I was more sanguine about my bold decision to finally part with all of my tax returns from the last century, and the first decade of this century. Surely the IRS will let those bygones be bygones.

Today will be part two of the Retooling, and the harder part of the two day ordeal. This is the day that I plot and scheme my way to solvency. I start out by taking inventory of assets under management. Then I examine every detail of the previous year’s transactions. I then plot all of this data onto a spreadsheet, comparing it to the same numbers from the previous three, five, and ten year numbers. From this data, I can then make a reasonable projection of what I can expect for 2018. I say reasonable because, I am in the investment business, an enterprise known for laying waste to a whole host of well thought out projections. Still, I will labor on with my planning. I will then make a list of the many special expenses facing me in the coming year. A quick survey reveals many such expenses on the horizon:

# My son’s wedding

# Kitchen remodel

# New carpeting upstairs

# Two three week Maine vacations (self inflicted)

Once tabulated, I then will determine just how much business I will have to produce to meet these obligations, working backward from the amount of money required to the amount of effort necessary. I have a feeling that today’s calculations will be a sobering exercise. However, this year I will be aided in my work by a new partner:

This fine new leather briefcase was a Christmas gift from my wife and smells even better than it looks. It was bought to replace my old briefcase with which I have had a wildly successful 30 year run. But, the thing was starting to show its age, and the high fashion ladies that work in my office have gone to great lengths to shame me for carrying it around. While it is true that it was in bad shape, even getting to the point where it would leave little chunks of itself behind on any surface on which it was thrown down, it was still hard to retire the old girl:

So, I didn’t. I placed it on the floor behind one of my filing cabinets...just in case this new one is cursed or something. Listen, I built this business carrying this old thing around. I’m not about to throw it away just because it’s actually started decomposing. I am nothing if not loyal.

Anyway, I have said all of this to be able to explain the best part of yesterday. While cleaning out a drawer of my credenza, I came upon a photograph that stopped me dead in my tracks:

I found it at a particularly low point in my day. The enormity of the task was beginning to weigh on me when this picture slipped out of a pile of thank-you notes I had kept from clients over the years. I stopped. I sat down. There was no clarifying remarks on the back, so I have no idea where we were or what the occasion was. I just stared at these two strange people, familiar, yet almost strangers. We couldn’t have been more than mid thirties, meaning that this was over 25 years ago, meaning further that we were broke, with two young children. I have that cocky look of a man on his way up who thinks he knows everything, who is trying desperately to make everyone think that he isn’t actually scared to death that he’s going to be a horrible failure. But then I look at my wife...there she is, maybe 30 years old, a stay at home mother of two toddlers, looking radiant, thrilled to be dressed up and out from under the crushing weight of Mom responsibilities, if even just for this one night. That smile. Those eyes. She is ready for whatever setbacks I will encounter. She is ready, willing and able to provide the encouragement I will need when the skies become dark and laden with doubt. Every day when I come back home from my latest triumph or failure, she is going to be there to make things better. She will not allow me to give in to self pity on the bad days, or to pride on the good days. She will remind me that no matter what happened that day at work, I had duties and responsibilities right here at home, speaking of which, would I give the kids their baths? 

I slipped the picture into a special compartment in my new briefcase. It will remain there for the rest of my life.

A Ridiculous Meal

Last night, I took the family out for our only restaurant meal of the week. It was at Maggiano’s, and it was ridiculous.

Our reservation was for 7:30 pm. We arrived five minutes early to discover a large jostling crowd just inside the revolving door. Pam made her way through the throng to announce our arrival only to be told that they were behind in their reservations due to the fact that a man had fallen down the stairs earlier. In literature, this is what is known as foreshadowing. 

We found a spot in the lounge to wait out the promised fifteen minute delay, which turned into thirty. But, it’s Christmas...and who are we to begrudge the proper care of an elderly man fallen down a flight of stairs? We relaxed at our table until our buzzer finally began it’s buzzing. We were escorted to a table by a waitress who was oddly unaware of any man having fallen down the stairs. I let it go. She seemed nice.

There was a special Holiday Menu which extolled the virtues of the family style ordering regime whereby the table picks one salad, one appetizer, two pastas, two meats, and two desserts from a list of possibilities, all for the exploitive price of $44.95...each. But hey, with the pending lawsuit coming from the old man, a restaurant has to do what a restaurant has to do. My family surprised me by reaching consensus quickly. Our table would be served a Caesar salad, zucchini frittes, gnocchi with Italian sausage, ravioli, chicken piccata, beef tenderloin, topped off with a dessert of apple crustada and tiramisu. Of course, my kids being my kids, they ordered a strange assortment of adult beverages featuring copper cups, festive colors and what looked like twigs from the herb garden sticking out of the top of the glass. 

I am a veteran of Maggiano’s, so I know the importance of pacing oneself early in the meal. Although I truly love the zucchini frittes and could put on a gluttony clinic on them alone, I limited my intake to two. I also showed Herculean restraint by completely passing on the bread basket sitting provocatively at my left elbow, it’s heavenly bread smells wafting skyward. No... I knew what was coming, so I resisted.

Then our able waitress brought the main dishes, struggling to find space on the table for the four huge plates. The first taste of gnocchi put an end to my restraint. I began devouring all of the delicious bounty set before me like a man possessed. I warned myself quietly to save room for dessert, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to resist the tiramisu no matter how many slices of tenderloin I inhaled. By the time it was over, we had six takehome boxes of overflow, and a bill for over $400. My wife made the observation that we could have stayed home and ordered pizza instead, to which I observed, Yeah, for a month. As I rose from the table to leave, I was supremely grateful that I was on the ground floor of the establishment, since if I had been asked to negotiate a flight of stairs at that point, I would have suffered the same fate as the future plaintiff in the case of Old Geezer vs Maggiano’s.

After driving around for an hour or so looking at Christmas lights, we finally made it back to the house where we all managed to waddle into the house without incedent. When someone suggested that we all get back into our Christmas jammies, Sarah made her first Dunnevant-esk quip when she deadpanned, Sure...if they still fit.

Now, 12 hours later, Pam is preparing her famous Christmas breakfast. The enthusiasm level for this long awaited meal isn’t as robust as in past years. 

Something tells me we will rally...