A Question For a Sunday Morning

This famous line from Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address...

We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.

My question for you all is simple...are we, The United States of America, still...the last best hope of earth? 

Why or why not?

Show your work.

Married Couple Stuff

File this post under...Stuff that married couples love to do.

So, with the arrival of Spring comes a series of home improvement projects that have been gestating all winter long, projects which all began with the phrase...as soon as it gets warmer...For us it has been a whirlwind. First, we finally replaced the old, leaky, mold infested refrigerator in the garage, along with our loud and super slow dishwasher—the same one which flooded our house a mere 18 months ago. Next, I just hired a painting contractor to power wash the house, paint the exterior trim, and stain the deck. Then, I contracted with The Mosquito Authority to rid my back yard of that annoying pestilence. Now that we have reclaimed our backyard, last night, Pam and I did something really fun...went out and bought new deck furniture. This morning, as soon as it gets warmer, I will assemble it and figure out the new layout out there. It will be like adding a brand new room to the house. Once completed, the two of us will insist on spending more time out there, despite it being only 58 and intermittently sunny with pesky wind gusts that make it feel like -15.

Ok, if you are reading this and you have been married for any reasonable length of time, you will have to admit that I’m right...this IS something that married couples love to do. We love this sort of thing...putzing around the house, replacing old worn out stuff with shiny new stuff. I mean, we can’t replace each other, so we replace everything else in a never ending home-revitalizing project. It’s part of the innate human desire to want to make all things new. When we were young and poor, it was spring cleaning, a less expensive, more labor intensive effort, but the same basic human itch got scratched...start fresh. Starting next weekend Pam and I will do the same thing with our marriage...we will escape Short Pump for a week at the beach, just the two of us. New scenery, no schedule, new restaurants and hopefully, warmer weather. In a way, it will be like our 100th honeymoon. We have done these little escapes for years now. Sometimes, it was only long weekends at cheaper destinations, other times it’s been more exotic locales. This one is much more familiar...my partner’s condo in Myrtle Beach, where we have stayed at least a dozen times before. We love it, it is therapeutic, even when the weather doesn’t cooperate.

So, after breakfast, we will begin the rejuvenation of our deck. I will post pictures of the finished product.

Very exciting.

Soup and a Goddess

Last night was very cool. Wednesday night, Pam goes to her Yoga class from 6 to 7:30. She’s been doing it for several years now and we have developed this routine where I prepare dinner on Wednesday night. Back when she started with the Yoga class, she would actually make the entire meal herself and leave me a note telling me when to put it in the oven. But, as time has passed, she has allowed me more responsibility for the meal itself. At this point, I probably should add the very salient point that as a Dunnevant man, I come from a long line of witless cooks. My father couldn’t boil water without a tutorial. My brother, Donnie, recently retired with time on his hands, has taken it up and scored some impressive dishes...if doctored photographs on Facebook can be believed...but this doesn’t change the fact that I can recall a time when Donnie couldn’t identify the working end of a spatula. So, my genetic pedigree in the kitchen is marred by generations of ineptitude.

Luckily for me, Pam is an amazing cook. Since the kids have moved out of the house, I have taken to watching her prepare meals. She is organized and precise, one of those recipe following cooks who take great care in doing things right. She measures things out, none of this pinch of this and dash of that business. Watching her lay out the ingredients, assemble everything expertly, then pull the finished product, hot and gurgling out of the oven is quite therapeutic. So, when she asked me what I wanted to make for last night’s meal, I said that I wanted to attempt her lemon chicken orzo soup...from scratch...a first and quite a step up from the old days. I posted the before and after videos on Facebook last night which chronicled my triumph. It was amazing, if I must say so myself...and, I must.

But, here’s the thing that struck me most about the experience. By the time Pam walked through the door at 7:40, I was throughly whipped. Cooking an entire meal from scratch is like juggling chainsaws for me. I’m constantly setting off timers and watching the clock. Beep beep beep...wait, what is that one for??!! Wait, do I add the garlic before, after, or simultaneously with the other spices? And, when it says “boil for ten minutes, does that include the ten minutes the silly thing took to come up to a boil? Beep beep beep...crap!! What the heck? Oh yeah...add the orzo and half a cup of lemon juice from the two lemons...YOU FORGOT TO JUICE!!!

As the dish began to actually take shape and I glanced at the clock and realized that I was going to pull this off the thought occurred to me...Pam does this every night. But, not only does she prepare a meal every night, she decides what to cook, makes out a list of ingredients, goes to the store and buys the ingredients, then cooks the meal...every stinking night for 35 years. After what I went through last night, that is a staggering thing to comprehend. My wife...is a goddess.

Blame Shifting

...that feeling you get at 5:15am when you open the bank app on your iPad and see a negative number on your business account, then realize that you forgot to press send on that transfer from your personal account last night.

But, we will not let a simple mistake ruin our day. We will not allow a simple oversight cause us to question our mental acuity. We will not succumb to despair over the ravages that time has visited upon our faculties. We will simply accept this unfortunate incident for what it is...a miscue, a mishap, a flub, if you will...something that could happen to anyone. We will place this entire business behind us and not give it a second thought. Why, I imagine even Warren Buffet has forgotten to press send a few times in his life:

Warren: Gee Whiz...I wonder why my Coca Cola stock has dropped 65% this morning? Oh!! What the heck? I pressed the sell a million shares button instead of the buy a million shares button. Dang it...

So, we will move on quickly from this unpleasantness, knowing that what we experienced at 5:15am this morning is not uncommon in the affairs of men, even the best and brightest of men...mistakes will be made. We will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and continue to advance. And we will also continue to employ the plural first person pronoun...we...when referring to our mistakes, since it makes us feel better to include the rest of you as equally at fault. Collective guilt is more palatable than shouldering all of the blame yourself.

So, be careful out there today everyone, and don’t let this happen to you again, alright?

Bracket Dilemma

Yesterday, Bland Weaver, our office bookie, handed me an NCAA bracket to fill out, attach a twenty dollar bill to it, and get it back in his hands in 24 hours. We have done this every year that I can remember and a few years ago I even won the thing. But with each passing year I feel slightly more clueless than the year before. The reason is simple...I have not watched even one college basketball game all year. 

This is a perplexing turn of events. There was once a time when I never missed the ACC game of the week. I used to be able to tell you the names of at least one player on every important team in college basketball. Back in the day, I never would have dreamed of missing even one game of March Madness, in fact, I scheduled an annual Myrtle Beach golf trip around the first weekend of ...The Tournament. It wasn’t just college basketball either, I was well-versed in the statistical minutia of college football, the PGA tour, the NFL, and even NASCAR. Now, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, my only remaining sports obsession is Major League Baseball and Alabama football. The weird thing is I don’t even miss it...except when Bland hands me that bracket. Then, all of a sudden, I feel disconnected...and I begin asking myself, What the heck happened?

Part of my disinterest stems from what has happened to sport in this country. Insane amounts of money have overpowered every organized sport in America, making each unrecognizable to me. College basketball, in particular has become a one and done proposition, whereby juniors and seniors have disappeared from college rosters. Just about the time fans get interested in a player...poof...he declares for the NBA draft. The term Student Athlete should now be erased from the Webster’s Dictionary, since it no longer has any meaning. With the PGA, as soon as Tiger fell from grace...what’s the point? NASCAR? Who are those guys? And why are there so many empty seats in the grandstand? Where the heck are Jeff Gordon and Junior? The NFL? How many players have been arrested for beating up their girlfriends this week? Wake me when it’s over.

So, I will fly through my bracket in a few minutes, picking the likeliest winners, being careful not to overdo it with the upsets, knowing that in reality there are always only 6-8 teams who are capable of winning the thing. Then I will turn it in and hope for the best.

Less than two weeks until first pitch!!=

The Dynamic of The Yard Sale

After several weeks of a packed itinerary of appointments, this week is starting out lighter on the scheduling. This will free me up to get started on that list of projects Pam and I had determined to do in the first quarter of 2019. Yes...I am aware that there are only 14 days left in said quarter...but better late than never. There’s mulch to put down, the outside of the house needs to be power washed and painted, the gutters need to be cleaned out, and the deck stained. Then I’ve got to get the guys from the Mosquito Squad to come and rid my yard of that blood-sucking pestilence. If there’s any time left, I will need to do a deep dive cleaning out of the garage where I will identify items to add to the...ominous music...YARD SALE PILE. Yes, boys and girls, it’s that time again, that glorious Dunnevant family tradition which rears its hideous head every two years with all the warmth and expectation of an un-lanced boil. Long time readers of The Tempest know of my hostile feelings about this particular tradition, so I will not regale you further on the subject, except to say that in less than a month, Mechanicsville will be the site of a ponderous pile of worthless knickknackery being picked through by the oddest collection of bargain hunters, antique sleuths, yard sale junkies, rednecks, and high society women out for a day of incognito slumming ever assembled in eastern Hanover County.

Enough about the Dunnevant yard sale...but what about a few observations about yard sales in general? I have never quite understood the attraction of walking through a collection of someone else's rejected junk, cash in hand, ready to pay money to take it off their hands. Listen, I know that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, but in my twenty years of yard sales I can tell you from personal experience that the definition of treasure has been bastardized beyond all comprehension. I saw a guy pay two bucks for a box of Fram oil filters in odd sizes that fit absolutely no engine that he possessed on the reasoning that for two bucks, they were cheap enough to use as something to throw at his neighbor’s barking dog! I’ve seen a reasonably intelligent looking woman buy literally the tackiest sculpture of an angel dressed in a firefighter uniform, an American flag firmly in her mouth, with the burning Twin Towers in the background, with the burning question...I wonder of my nephew will like this, I think he’s a fireman...I’ve seen a old man pulling his own oxygen tank on wheels around ask me what a box full of strips of metal in random shapes with slots hither and yon cut out of them were...to which I replied, Sir, if I live to be a hundred years old, I will never have an answer to that question. Then I watched him gather up the box and pay my sister 5 bucks.

I have no explanation for the dynamic of the yard sale. All I know is that there is something in the human spirit that loves the illusion of the bargain, the idea that you are getting over on the other guy. That moron just sold me a first edition of To Kill a Mockimngbird for 50 cents!! Everybody likes paying as little as possible for things...see Amazon, Walmart...and I get that, but paying as little as possible is one thing. Paying as little as possible for a Walkman cassette tape player without the headphones is something else entirely. But, it is this type of free exchange that has been the backbone of the Dunnevant Family Yard Sale success. We have averaged over $800 a year in revenue in the fifteen or so times we have staged the affair. That money has paid for the groceries for twenty people at fifteen beach weeks now. So, we keep doing it. And they keep coming...in teaming hordes, they keep coming, with their change purses, bulging wallets stuffed with one dollar bills, the official coin of the yard sale realm. And we keep taking their money and stacking it in our metal cash box until it is full. Then we stumble back home and stand under a hot shower for half an hour trying to clean off the detritus of hundreds of human interactions and regain the feeling in our extremities, secure in the knowledge that we will eat like kings on the Outer Banks yet again.

A Wonderful Saturday

March the 16th was a good day here in Short Pump, Virginia. It was a Saturday, for one thing, and it wasn’t cloudy, windy, wet and cold. It was sunny and 58 degrees, and I almost wore shorts before my wife did that eye-roll thing and reminded me that if it was 58 degrees on the first day of Fall I would be wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Be that as it may, I spent most of the morning working in my yard. It was glorious.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking...what’s so glorious about gathering up sticks, raking up leaves, cutting the grass and gathering three months worth of Lucy’s bowel movements out of the backyard?? I’m glad you asked that question...

During the winter months, the elements conspire to reduce me to the confines of the metaphoric four walls of my palatial estate. It’s not that I never venture into the yard in the winter, it’s more like when I do it’s to either shovel snow or stand like a statue in the foul weather begging Lucy to proceed with her business sometime this century....

Me: Alright Lucy, you’ve gone over that particular piece of ground long enough to determine if it is a suitable place to relieve yourself..get on with it!!

Lucy:  sniff sniff sniff

Me: No, seriously...that was the same spot you used yesterday..what’s changed??

Lucy: sniff sniff...waggle...sniff sniff

Me: For heavens sake, It’s freezing, raining, snowing out here!!

But, yesterday I finally was able to reclaim the entirety of my yard. By the time I was through, the place looked great. Then Pam and I went shopping for a new umbrella for the table on the deck, then Pam broke out the bleach to rinse the mold and mildew off the outdoor seat cushions.

When it was time for dinner, Pam decided to go all-in on our Irish heritage by fixing corn beef, cabbage and Irish soda bread...

When doing my Google search on the origins of my last name, no matter what spelling or derivative of the name I used..Dunnevant, Dunnavant, Donovan...I came up with the same thing...100% Irish, largely from the counties of Kilkenny, and Limerick and the meaning of the name in the original Gaelic is translated as black, brown, or chieftain. So, apparently my family is descended from an ancient tribe of, little known and mostly forgotten by history, tribe of black Irishmen!

The Phone Call

Yesterday morning I received a very special phone call. I had just gotten in to the office. It was around 8 o’clock. The caller ID told me that it was a client of mine who happens to be an old friend. I’ve known him almost all of his life. I will try to recall his words accurately. I want to write this down while it is fresh in my mind...

...I’m on the road, driving around on this beautiful morning, and I got to thinking about your Dad, of what a wonderful man he was, of how much he meant to me and my family when he was alive. You know, your Dad was famous for those long invitations at the end of services where he would sing 13 verses of the invitation hymn. Ha! Well, in my case, if he had limited it to just twelve I might never have become a Christian. Anyway, this morning I was wishing that I could call him up and thank him, but I can’t do that. But, I thought...if I can’t call up Emmett, I guess I should call Doug and pass along the thanks to him, instead. Be sure to pass the thank you along to your brother and sisters too, ok?

When I hung up the phone, I needed a minute to compose myself. I sat there in my quiet and empty office pondering what had just happened. I tried to imagine someone, anyone...five years after my death picking up a phone and calling one of my children to thank them for my life and just couldn’t.

So, thank you, Ray Melton. 

Intelligent Design?

Yesterday was a day for the ages. Every once in a while a day comes along that makes you wonder what’s going on. I mean, how many things can go wrong in one 24 hour period? How many things is it possible to screw up between sunrise and sunset? Listen, every day has its own challenges, I get it...but some days it’s like they are having a clearance sale on challenges...buy one, get two for free.

So, yesterday was going along just fine at first. Everything was on schedule, clicking along in a plodding, predictable way. Then the auditor showed up. A surprise, unannounced auditor...which is fine. We get one of these every few years. No big deal. But, getting audited is unnerving. Someone with authority shows up at your office and starts poking around looking for mistakes, and immediately your blood pressure ticks up. I came out of it largely unscathed, but annoyed by the process and its underlying assumptions. From there, things went downhill in a hurry. One setback after another, one foul up on top of another began raining down on me. It was as if, given an opening by the surprise auditor, the dogs of misfortune got loose from their pen and began rampaging through my office, leaving several odious piles on the carpeting.

But, there’s good news, because of the ingenious design of the the 24 hour day. We wake up with the sun, and as it rises, so do we. By noon, we are fully engaged in our work. When the sun gets lower in the sky, we too start to disengage. When it slips under the horizon, most of us retreat into our homes, the comforts of which begin to do their therapeutic work. Our favorite chair awaits. The dog greets you as a conquering hero. Over dinner you tell your best friend about your miserable day. She listens patiently, nods knowingly. She has heard it all before, but acts like she hasn’t. You then settle into your after dinner routine. You read some, you watch a little Grapefruit League baseball. Before you know it, it’s like the day never even happened. Then you wake up to a brand new day, yesterday’s disasters but a memory, and you think...wouldn’t it be horrible if we lived in a world where the sun never set? An incredibly intelligent design, the rising and setting of the sun, and the perfect rhythm it provides to our lives.

...not to mention the glorious views.

Questions About This Mornings Post

One of my young friends from back in my Grove Avenue youth group days asked me a couple of questions earlier today about this morning’s blog. The first question was about my trip out west after high school which caused me to miss my first Fall semester at U of R. He wanted details! The second question concerned how I managed to pay for the rest of my college experience after my dad forced me to pay my first semesters tuition with my own money. Since he asked, I will attempt an answer to both questions in what promises to be perhaps the most boring blog post in the nearly nine year history of The Tempest. 

After I graduated from Patrick Henry high school in June of 1976, I was not ready for college. I wasn’t ready for anything that looked or felt like being a grown up. So, along with my best friend, Al Thomason, I hatched a plan that would buy me some time. The two of us got jobs working in the warehouse of Lowe’s Hardware on Broad Street. We signed up for every shift they would give us. Our plan was to save every dime we made and blow it all on a cross country back-packing odyssey out west. While the rest of our friends would be moving into freshman dorms, we would be on the mother of all road trips cross country, heading for the Rocky Mountains. We both left Richmond on August 12th with $1,000 of cash each. Seven weeks later we wound up totally broke and almost out of gas near Bluefield, West Virginia. Luckily for us, we knew a freshman at Bluefield College who allowed us to crash in his room. His dorm took up a collection for us so we could make it home. Those seven weeks are mostly a blur now, but some of the highlights involved the Bad Lands in South Dakota, Mt. Rushmore, a rodeo in Gillette, Wyoming, Glacier Park, Montana and a motorcycle mechanic and his very hot gypsy girlfriend, Yellowstone, and a series of cowboy bars in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The hiking was incredible, the life experiences even more so. Needless to say, my parents didn’t think much of my plan, thinking it dangerous and foolhearty. They were right.

Here we were, ten minutes before leaving on our trip. My dad probably was looking at us while Mom took this picture and thinking...What could possibly go wrong??

Now, as far as the second question goes...its a bit harder to piece together. Basically, I was only able to afford to go to U of R if I commuted, and even then, I couldn’t really afford it. My dad was a Baptist preacher and I was the last of his four college attending kids, so A. Dad didn’t make much money and B. By the time I came along he was tapped out. So that meant I had to find a job. Lucky for me, I did...building pallets and assembling shelving in an un-air conditioned, and unheated warehouse in the Hanover Industrial Air Park for a company called Trefz & Steenburgh. In the four and a half years it took me to graduate from college, I worked every single week, 25 hours, from 12:30 to 5:30 every day, Monday thru Friday. During the summers I worked full time there and built decks with my buddy Al on weekends. The money I was able to make over the summers helped keep the amount I would have to borrow in the fall more manageable. The money I made from that job...about $175 a week after taxes paid for about a third of the costs. Everything else was financed through loans that my dad co-signed for me and educational loans from an outfit called the Charles B. Keesee Fund. I graduated with roughly $18,000 in Keesee loans in 1981. It took me ten years to pay them all off.

So, there you have it.

The Latest College Scam

These two pretty women are TV stars. That’s what every headline I read yesterday called them. One is Felicity Huffman, the other Lori Loughlin. The one on the left used to be on Full House, I think. The one on the right has been on a bunch of shows. If I search hard enough I’m sure that I can find footage of both of them lecturing middle America about our manifold failings in the area of either gun control, LBGT rights, abortion or immigration. Chances are very good that they would both qualify as woke. Or maybe not...maybe they are just two apolitical empty suits. Until yesterday neither of these two women had entered my consciousness in over a decade. Now, i can’t get either of them out of there!

So, these two actresses were among over 50 wealthy, well-connected parents, administrators and coaches caught up in an FBI dragnet of illegal college admissions activity, whereby rich people sought to bypass the normal admissions proceedure (which was screwed up to begin with), by falsifying test scores and impersonating athletes for the benefit of their non-athletic, not bright enough children. In other words...what rich, entitled parents have been attempting to do for their worthless pea-brained kids since Christ was a corporal. Talk about your dog-bites-man story...I mean, where’s the fire?

Anyway, this story got me to thinking about how I got in to University of Richmond back in the day. My parents were completely disengaged about my future plans. They were the type of parents who today would be considered negligent, almost to the point of disinterest. My first couple of years in high school were spent adrift from academics...I had decided to become a carpenter who wrote stories on the side. College wasn’t on my radar screen. Suddenly at the dawn of my junior year, I realized that if I wanted to even consider college I had to actually buckle down and open a book once in a while. All of these decisions came about with virtually no input  from Mom or Dad, who were apparently preoccupied with putting food on the table to concern themselves with what Junior was going to be when he grew up. Anyway, my last two years of high school featured straight A’s, which was fine...but only partially fixed my GPA. If I was going to get in to UofR I was going to have to do well on the SAT test. My guidance counselor handed me a test preparation book with two sample tests and a piece of paper with all the exam dates and sites and said...Good Luck, kid.

I took the thing twice, scored quite well on it, then wrote a snappy essay and fired off my application to UofR. When I got my acceptance letter, Dad looked up from his News Leader Green Section to say, Congratulations, Son, and that was that. Later that year when I informed him that I wouldn’t be matriculating until I returned back from my planned two month backpacking trip out west, his answer was typical of my Dad. I paraphrase:

I think that’s a dumb idea. But if that’s what you’re determined to do, here’s the deal. You better get a job when you get back and save up your money, because your spring semester tuition is coming out of YOUR pocket.

That’s exactly what happened too. When I finally ran out of cash out west, I made it home and immediately went to work for a guy named H.G. Lanier installing lockers and shelving in high schools in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. I will never forget how horrible it felt to write a check to the admissions office for $1800 in 1977.

But, back to the two lovely ladies above. The thing about the story that infuriates me is this. To make room for their pampered, privileged spawn, somebody else had to be denied. Chances are, that someone was some incredibly bright, hard working kid who busted his or her butt compiling a 4.0, piled up hours and hours of extra curricular activities over four years, stayed up late studying and practicing for their SAT tests, while their parents worked three jobs saving up to be able to put them through if they were fortunate enough to get accepted. That kid also opened an acceptance letter. But, his or her dreams were crushed...to make room for Constance Elizabeth Huffman with her 1600 SAT score and four year career as a champion pole vaulter, field hockey captain and point guard of the basketball team.

Makes me want to throw up...

April Fools From Afar?

So far in 2019, I have been distracted by the constant demands of my chosen profession. This is by design. After 36 years, my work year has become deliberately front loaded into the first 5 months of the year, and heavily backloaded into October and November, leaving the majority of the summer lightly scheduled, leaving me free to decompress in Maine. One of the highlights of these first five months of hard work is April Fool’s Day. I circle it on my calendar every year. I begin the plotting and scheming in February. By Mid March, my plans are operational and the required props have been purchased. Only somehow this year I have made a major strategic error from which I may not be able to recover. For reasons I cannot possibly imagine, I have scheduled a week in Myrtle Beach with my wife which includes Monday, April 1st. It is not all rest and relaxation...I also have reviews with two clients who both live on Pawleys Island for that day, but still, a major scheduling mistake.

But, just because I will be 5 hours away from Short Pump on the big day does not mean that I cannot visit havoc on my office-mates. It will take extra planning, attention to detail, and a devious imagination, and as luck would have it, I am highly skilled at all three. My plan is already taking shape in the fevered swamps of my mind. Since I will be leaving for the beach sometime on Saturday, I will have to lay the trap either late on Friday night, or in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Then, on Monday morning at roughly 8:30, I will sit back on the deck of the condo drinking my coffee as the texts start pouring in. They will all begin with feigned outrage and accusations of childishness. Something like this...

Blaire: Seriously Doug??!! Cloves of garlic embedded inside the mouthpiece of my phone? Are you like 5 years old??

Allison: Don’t even bother coming back! I’m serious Doug, this is inexcusable. I’m not cleaning any of this up!

Lindsey: How come every key on my keyboard types the letter “M”???

Lynwood: I swear to you that if my truck cab is crammed full of orange ping pong balls again, I’m gonna kill you, man.

This is what they will threaten, but what they are really saying is “How lucky are we to get to experience this every year?!”

You may be saying to yourself, If they all know what’s going to happen every year, why do they even come into the office? That’s an excellent question actually, the answer to which strikes at the very heart of the eternal appeal of the practical joke. See, deep down inside of the human heart there is a longing for mischief. We all desperately try to be all buttoned-up and proper. We try our best to promote a professional exterior facade. But, everyone of us, whether or not we care to admit it, are amused by the pratfall, fascinated by slapstick and amused by juvenile tomfoolery. How else to explain the enduring popularity of Blazing Saddles and Animal House among the male species? How else to explain the decades long popularity of the whoopie cushion? It is one of the basic needs of human beings, right up there with food, clothing and shelter...the innate desire to playfully humiliate your co-worker.

So, I will put my devious plan into motion remotely this year. It’s gonna be great!

Life In My 60’s

Considering the alternative, I am quite fond of being alive three weeks shy of my 61st birthday. I have been blessed with a healthy and happy family, a wealth of good friends and a thriving and prosperous business. However, there is something about life in my 60’s that is annoying, that is...the propensity the body developes towards falling apart. A few examples:

# While many men complain about losing their hair later in life, my experience has been different. I not only maintain a thick head of hair, I am now growing hair in places I wouldn’t think it possible for hair to grow. It’s like all of a sudden somebody has slipped Rogaine in my shower water. I’m like a giant Chia-pet!

# Despite having established and maintaining a workout regime that has had me at the gym every other day for the past 15 years, my body betrays me in new and bizarre ways on nearly a weekly basis. The following are just a few of the discussions I have had to have with Patient First doctors of late...

Doc: So, Mr. Dunnevant, what brings you in today?

Me: I’ve thrown my back out.

Doc: Oh Dear...what were you doing? Lifting something without bending your knees? Trying to do too much yard work in one day? Moving a piano upstairs?

Me: No...I was plugging in the blow dryer.

Me: No...I was brushing my teeth.

Me: No...I was retrieving a coffee mug from the cabinet.

The latest bizarreness occurred yesterday...at church. I was in my customary aisle seat, and had just settled in to listen to a sermon from our new Youth pastor. I should emphasize at this point that I was...sitting in a chair...perhaps the least strenuous activity on the day’s agenda. As is often the case with those of us who have difficulty with the whole sitting down thing, I almost instinctively began to cross my legs by lifting my right leg off the ground and resting it over my left leg, a move that men have been executing flawlessly for roughly 4,000 years of recorded history. Suddenly, an excruciating pain shot up my right leg from my ankle to my knee, complete with heat. At first I actually thought I had severed a tendon, it hurt so bad. I grabbed it with both hands right after the offering plate had passed and pondered what the conservation was going to be like with the Patient First doctor...

Doc: So, Mr. Dunnevant, what brings you in today?

Me: I think I’ve blown out my knee.

Doc: Oh My...how did it happen? You training for a marathon? Were you doing wind sprints at the gym? Trying to do squats with too much weight?

Me: No...I was crossing my legs...at church.

After ten minutes of extreme discomfort, during which time I completely missed the sermon intro, the shooting pain stopped...completely and totally vanished. Twenty minutes later when it was time to stand up for the closing song, I cautiously applied weight to the leg...100% pain free.

It’s this sort of thing that is disconcerting about turning 60. You feel good, even look good (if grading on a curve), but you never know when your body is going to start screwing with you. Out of the blue, you will develope an irritating eye twitch, break out in a 24 hour rash, suddenly not be able to eat pizza after 9 o’clock at night with Pepcid, or all of a sudden, every time you blow your nose, tears start shooting out of your left eye. I mean, seriously? Tears shooting out of your left eye when you blow your nose? In the name of all that is holy, what in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here??(asking for a friend)??

50 Years is Probably Enough

Ever since I was a ten year old sitting on the floor of my grandmother’s trailer watching Bobby Kennedy get assassinated, I have been interested in politics and politicians. That event was so traumatic, it convinced me, even as a kid, that I should be paying attention to the world more. Strange, eventful things were happening and I needed to get in on it. Thus began a lifelong fascination with the political processes of our Republic, born out of a violent tragedy. There, right there on my bio for this blog, politics is listed as one of the things I enjoy blogging about!

But, no more.

Honestly, the past few years have managed to destroy any vestige of interest I have had about politics and politicians. Part of the blame for my condition is the complete capitulation of the Republican Party to Donald Trump, the sacrificing of every core principle they ever claimed to hold dear for the purposes of loyalty to the current occupant of the White House. To witness a great and storied political party transformed into a tribe of sycophants virtually overnight has been a colossal disappointment. But, it’s not just the GOP which has been transformed. Suddenly, as if someone has managed to slip hallucinogens into their communal coffee, the Democratic Party seems hellbent on out-Socializing each other. All of a sudden, practically every prominent leader of the Party commits to some new collectivist scheme or another. The new telegenic freshman from Brooklyn sucks all the oxygen from the room when she calls both Reagan and FDR racists, to the squealing delight of her starstruck sycophants...another great and storied political party transformed into something radically unrecognizable to someone who has been paying close attention from fifty years.

Every other party available to me in this famously restrictive two-party system are worthless whiners, forever complaining about how unfair the world is...Libertarians, The Green Party, The Constitution Party...are they still a thing? So, yeah...I got nothing.

Purists out there will lecture me about pragmatism, about how I should work within one of these two parties to bring about the change I desire. I should either hold my nose and work to pry the Republicans away from their jock-sniffing worship of Donald Trump...or I should endeavor to pull the Democratic Party away from the cliff of Socialism they seemed determined to launch themselves from. My answer to these two suggestions is simple...nope. I’m almost 61. Fifty years of politics is enough. I’ll let the kids figure it out.

Of course, if I decide to more or less withdraw from the scrum, I suppose I should stop writing about it too. Everyone who reads this blog already knows my feelings on the subject. I will never change anyone’s mind. Nobody in politics changes anyone’s mind anymore. We all have everything figured out already. We’re right and the other guy hates America, right? So, I should probably stick to Dad Jokes, sports, family, and fiction. That should be enough to keep me busy.

Healthy Living...Without Doritos?

So, I have lost 10.4 pounds since my wife informed me that the Dunnevant house was going on a diet right after the first of the year. No, it wasn’t my idea, and no, I wasn’t exactly enamored with the news. But, truth be told, I had added several unwanted pounds over the holidays and had inched up to nearly an all time high for poundage, so I went along with the plan. Besides, when it comes to eating here at Chez Dunnevant, my wife does 90% of the cooking, so if she decides to go on a liver and onions kick, then I either have to develope a taste for liver and onions, or go hungry.

The diet is some sort of online thing that I don’t entirely understand. It basically involves eating a lot of fish and chicken, vegetables and fruit, not eating a lot of bread and beef, and substituting salty snacking with carrot sticks dipped into homemade hummus. Oh, and also smaller portion sizes. In other words, like my wife observed last night, We are finally eating the way everyone else we know eats.

In this endeavor, we have been aided greatly by the new Insta-Pot I got Pam for Christmas. She has prepared probably at least a dozen new recipes, many of which were ideally suited for this new age pressure cooker. The very best thing about this diet is the one thing that I never expected...the meals Pam makes are absolutely delicious. 

There is one thing I miss. I’m not a big sweets guy. I mean, I’ll wolf down chocolate if it’s available as quickly as the next guy, and I love ice cream and doughnuts. But, when push comes to shove and it’s 9 o’clock at night, what I want is a bowl of the saltiest, chip-iest thing you got, with a half dozen slices of block cheddar cheese. Well, under this new regime, that ship has sailed. It’s replacement has been either a couple of clementines, or the aforementioned carrot sticks and hummus. The expression, kissing your sister, fairly leaps off the page!

Now, we’re not nuts about this dieting business. We haven’t turned into a couple of walking buzz-kills when we go out with friends. There’s nothing worse than going out to dinner with a couple who spend the entire meal bemoaning how many calories are in the chili-cheese fries, and how they will have to fast for three days afterwards. Nobody cares about your diet. The only thing I do differently when we eat out is I’ve substituted water for beer, and I look for an entree that isn’t a 16 oz T-Bone. Moderation in all things, my friends...moderation in all things.

The net result of all of my wife’s hard work and diligence is that I am now within 4 pounds of what I weighed when I was lucky enough to marry the gorgeous and talented Pamela Jean White 35 years ago.

....but I still would give an appendage for a bag of Doritos.

Finished!!

A couple of days ago, I finished writing my third novel. It’s a story about guilt and grief centered round Jack Rigsby and the brutal and random murder of his wife. Jack blames himself for all of the seemingly inconsequential decisions he made leading up to the murder, and once he discovers that he has a 25 year old connection to the killer, his guilt kicks in to high gear. It’s called Saving Jack, and it is one of the best things I’ve ever written.

But, there’s a problem. It took me eight months to write, including two months when I hit a wall and was unable to type a single word. In all of that time, the characters were never far from my mind. If I wasn’t writing about them, I was thinking about them, trying to imagine what their next move should be. Then I would alternate between cheering them on and being terribly disappointed in their behavior. I know this sounds crazy, since my writing was the source of their bad decisions, but when one of them would make a poor choice, I found myself terribly put out with them for it...a strange mess, I know! So, now that it’s finished...I miss them. It’s like I abandoned all of them, left them in suspended animation, frozen in space and time.

I will now send the manuscript to my whip smart, Master’s Degree in English Literature daughter for a full audit where she will comb over the thing, eliminating balky sentences, correcting clumsy formulations, and searching for plot errors and contradictions. I’m sure that during that process, I will receive several texts which will begin...Dad, on page 87...what the heck? And yes, she will be compensated for this work. It’s a difficult job, and if you want it done right, you have to pay. For those of you who might be wondering whether of not my daughter would be willing to criticize her father’s writing, fear not. Nothing riles my girl up more than bad writing, and sloppy grammar!!

Once she finishes her work, and if I still have a novel left, I will need to decide what to do with it. Since I don’t write for a living, I will not be under any starving writer pressure to get it published. I write for fun, not for profit. But, if it’s as good as I think it is, I may actually try to this time. If that isn’t possible, I may go to the time, trouble and expense of self publishing it as an e-book. Either way, it was a blast writing the thing, incredibly challenging and terrific fun. 

I Miss You, Pop

Recently, for some unknown reason, things my Dad used to say have started popping into my head. Normally, I can go weeks, even months without any Dad-wisdom visitations. But lately they have been coming fast and furious.

Here’s the thing about my Pop. He was not, by any of the tortured definitions of this horribly chunky phrase...woke. No one, living or dead would ever have confused him with the political activists, Neo-marxists who populate so many American pulpits these days. Dad had no political heros of any kind, feeling as he did that too often the goals of the State were at cross purposes with the goals of the Gospel, properly understood. But, this is not to say that he wasn’t critical of the church, or church people. In fact, the general worthlessness of many religious people was one of his life long annoyances. In that regard, two things he used to say have recently come to mind...one an oft repeated phrase, the other an awesome joke...

Dad’s problem with many church people was his perception that they wore their holiness like a crown, and their head in the clouds religiosity rendered them impractical and useless. This sentiment was neatly summed up in the phrase...

Some people are so heavenly minded, they are no earthly good.

It was hard to argue with back then, and doubly so today, don’t ya think?

To illustrate what he meant by this he would tell what amounted to a great joke, which dad wouldn’t have characterized as such. He would have preferred the term...illustration. I’ll let you be the judge...

There was a very Godly and religious man who lived in a lovely house in the country right next door to a very ill-kept house with a back yard overgrown with weeds and abandoned by neglect. One day someone bought the run down place and immediately set about clearing the back yard of the mess. Every weekend the man could be seen hacking at the weeds and hauling away trash. The religious man was particularly irked that he did much of this work on Sunday, and complained to him often about his Sabbath violation over the fence as the man worked. After three years of back breaking toil, the man had produced a lush, beautiful garden filled with fruit trees, flowers and vegetables. One day, the sanctimonious man stood at the fence and observed loudly, Isn’t it a wonderful thing what God has done with his magnificent creation? His neighbor, looked up from his work and answered, Sure is. But you should have seen this place three year ago when God had it by himself!

I miss you, Pop.

A Wedding Weekend

Both of my kids moved away from Richmond years ago. Pam and I have become accustomed to this unfortunate fact and have learned how to live with their absence from our daily lives. We look at our friends whose kids live down the street and we are envious. But, our kids are happy and well adjusted and have many good friends in Columbia and Nashville. Both are gainfully employed, healthy, and as of this moment, neither has a prison record. What do we have to complain about? Nothing!

So, this past weekend was a treat. My son and his wife were in Richmond for a wedding. They arrived, after a 10 hour drive through a rainstorm around eleven o’clock Friday night. We had a wonderful day with them Saturday, attended the brunch wedding with them yesterday from eleven until around three in the afternoon, then watched them drive away in another rainstorm an hour later. 36 hours with our kids...

Two weeks ago, I told you all about a dear friend who had abruptly and shockingly passed away. One week ago today, I described for you the jarring mixture of grief and grace that was her funeral. Today, I will tell you about a wedding.

Patrick has been friends with Sam since they were both in middle school. I’ve always had a soft spot for Sam, an off-beat, loveable goof ball of a kid. Watching him grow up, I always thought that it was going to be vital for him to find the right woman, someone who gets him, someone who can appreciate his idiosyncrasies and deadpan humor. In Stephanie, he has found such a woman.

The wedding was like an old home week for Grovers. We arrived at the venue, some hip, ironic, industrial space down on Clay Street...the kind of place so beloved by millennials, and immediately recognized several couples that we spent a lifetime with at our old church...Hope and Steve Chapel, Rod and Betty Hudson, Jeff and Cheryl Chadwick, and of course, Sam’s parents, Garland and Martha Isaacs. Catching up with all of them felt soothing, like we were hitting the refresh button on our lives.

It was a lovely service which featured Sam’s beloved dog, Ru in a doggy tuxedo as one of the groomsman. Did I mention that Sam is off-beat? Actually, Ru was far more composed and well behaved than the groom throughout the twenty minute service, who was fidgeting worse than Johnny Depp at a prayer meeting. Stephanie was a stunning bride in a classically beautiful dress. The brunch food was delicious, if you can find something to 
complain about when there’s chicken and waffles, shrimp and grits and mimosas around, 
you complain too much.

But, the highlight of the event was the toast delivered by the groom. In typical Sam fashion it started out as an Eyore-like sob story about all the things he had failed at over the years, but then, in a beautiful and profound twist he pointed out that if he had achieved his earlier dreams of being a baseball player, or actor or musician, chances are that he would have missed out on finding the best dream of all...Stephanie. It was a beautiful moment. I was very proud of him.

So, a tumultuous two weeks ends with a wedding. I prefer weddings to funerals. I prefer seeing my son’s car arriving at the curb in front of my house rather than watching its taillights as it leaves. I prefer hello to goodbye. But, I’m thankful for all of it.

Perjurypalooza

I haven’t watched one second of the Michael Cohen Show in real time because...well, because I have a life. But, I have watched highlight clips and have read at least parts of the transcripts. From what I am able to gather, it has been quite an event, about which people are either repulsed or enthralled. A regular perjurypalooza!! What’s my take?

1. If Michael Cohen had been a Democratic Party fixer for the past fifteen years, then suddenly turned against a Democratic Party President, the Republicans on this committee would be hailing him for his willingness to speak truth to power, while the Democrats would be thrashing about in sackcloth and ashes, appalled...appalled that a convicted liar had been called to testify at a Congressional hearing. Since its the other way around, the rolls are predictably reversed.

2. I have noticed that not a single Republican on this committee has actually offered a rigorous defense of the President’s character. Instead of preening, How dare you sir, impugn the integrity of the President of the United States!!...Its been more like, Yeah, well, you’re a convicted liar, liar pants on fire. 

3. But what of the substance? Thats tricky. Michael Cohen has been Donald Trump’s personal attorney for ten years. Neither of them have demonstrated a firm grasp of the concept of truth, even as a laudable goal. The two of them have made their bones by treating truth telling as a transaction-based value. So, its very hard for me to believe anything that comes out of the guy’s mouth. I would, however be willing to say that there is probably a 50/50 chance that half of what Cohen is saying is true, along with a 50/50 chance that he is lying about the other half. Or maybe its the other way around. Whatever.

4. What difference will any of this make? Don’t know. Since the President’s relationship with the truth has always been tenuous, hearing his ex-lawyer accuse him of being a liar doesn’t exactly strike me as breaking news. But, it sure makes for great cable news ratings.

That’s all I got.

Oh, one more thing...If they dont cast Nicolas Cage to play Cohen in the upcoming Netflix movie about this, it will be the worst casting mistake since Ben Afflack as Batman.

I Went To a Funeral Today

I went to a funeral today. The viewing was Sunday afternoon. I went to that too. There was a long, slow moving line, at the end of which was the family and the open casket. As I got closer, I couldn’t bring myself to look at my friend. She was two years younger than me. I had never seen someone in a casket who was younger than me, so I didn’t look. I didn’t want to remember her like that. But I did want to see her husband and the kids, all dear to me and all grieving an unspeakable loss. So I stood in line and struck up conversations with strangers with whom I shared nothing other than our common love for the departed. After we made it through the line, we gathered around a television screen and watched a slide show of photographs, our beautiful friend’s shining face beaming back at us. Here she was holding a grandchild. There she was holding her middle son as an infant, looking tanned in the warm South African sun. It all seemed so unfair.

I had not been looking forward to the funeral. Whenever I hear them called celebrations, I cringe. It’s like we are trying too hard to deny the fact that we have all suffered a crushing loss. As people of faith, we believe in an afterlife, we believe that we will one day be reunited with those we love. But, to call a funeral a celebration lands rudely on my ears, trite and disrespectful. Putting aside the theological ramifications for a moment, here’s what I know...the world I live in was a better place before my friend left it, and now that she is gone, it has been reduced, there is less love, less empathy, and less selflessness. I will not pretend to celebrate that.

We arrived thirty minutes early, and still had to park somewhere in the surrounding neighborhood. The church was packed to overflowing. The service was simulcast on the internet and watched by hundreds of other people in half a dozen countries around the world. My friend was once a missionary in South Africa. The friends she forged throughout Sub-Saharan Africa were the life long kind. They stopped whatever they were doing at whatever time it was over there to listen to the service.

We sat close to the front, very close to the row where the family was seated. To be seated so close to them was to feel the immediacy of their loss. Part of me wished I were in the back, far away from the pain. We watched them cling to one another. We could barely abide watching our friend’s parents, wondering what they must have been feeling as they prepared to bury their second child.

A man at a keyboard asked us all to stand and sing a song. The words were on the screen at the back of the stage. We all sang the words from memory. It was a familiar song, and these people were church people. We could have sung it with our eyes closed. Many people did, including me.

Then I watched my friend’s husband and her three adult children rise from the front row and make their way to the podium. My heart was in my throat. A hush fell over the assembly. The kids were holding on, being resolute and strong for their very brave dad who read aloud from Proverbs 31. The fact that he made it through felt like a miracle of grace. He then looked down at his bereaved in-laws on the front row and thanked each of them for allowing him the privilege of 35 years as their daughter’s husband. When they made it back to their seat, the atmosphere of the building was drenched with sorrow. Then something amazing happened...

Our dear friend, Gordon Fort rose to give the eulogy. For nearly thirty minutes, his words redeemed the day. He spoke with the perfect mixture of compelling biography, humor and the unique insights that can only be provided by intimate friends. He didn’t try to hide the shock of such a loss, even justifiably lamented that she only lived 58 years on this earth. But at the end, he looked at the family, each of them, and called them by name...Did not Kim love you well? Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that Gordon Fort is clutch.

The man at the keyboard again. This time a familiar hymn, the words, powerful and sobering...

When peace, like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll,

What ever my lot, thou hath taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul...

Pam and I mingled within the mass of people slowly making their way out of the church. We saw people we hadn’t seen in months, some in years. All of us united in grief and overcome with love for such an amazing, selfless woman. We drove home in quiet reflection, praying for the family. We thought of how exhausted they all must be, how thoroughly worn out from all the hugging, the tears and condolences which probably all started sounding the same after a while. Now the family must find their way to Atlanta to lay her to rest. More tears, more embraces.

Tonight, we went to dinner with friends. It felt like the kind of night where we needed to be around friends. We ate a meal together at Brio’s, and talked about our friend. We will miss her. In a few weeks, maybe a couple months, we will recall our friend with nothing but smiles and fondness. For now, its mostly sadness and loss. But thats ok, I think. How could we not?

In the meantime, I will say a quick prayer every time D. Ray comes to my mind. I will keep Paul and Trevor and Emily in my thoughts. And I will hold on to Pam and my four adult children ever tighter, and be grateful for every day that I have them.

Fighting Back

It’s 40 degrees and raining in Short Pump for like the 28th day in a row. Practically everyone I know is grieving a dear friend who’s  viewing is coming up tomorrow, with the funeral service on Monday. In other words, this weekend promises to be the low point of 2019. Accordingly, I am forced to fight back with one of the few weapons at my disposal...cringe-inducing Dad Jokes:

1. I started a company selling land mines disguised as prayer mats.

    Prophets are going through the roof.

2. Need an ark?

    I Noah guy.

3. I’m positive I just lost an electron.

    Better keep an ion that.

4. How does an attorney sleep?

    First he lies and on side, then he lies on the other.

5. What do you call a super articulate dinosaur?

     A Thesaurus.

6. What superlative did Robert E. Lee win in high school?

     Most Likely to Secede.

7. How did the Native Americans get to America first?

    They had reservations.

8. I have a phobia about over-engineered buildings.

    It’s called a complex complex complex.

9. Napoleon may not have designed the coat he wore..,

    But he certainly had a hand in it.

10. What do you call children who are born in whorehouses?

      Brothel sprouts.

11. The guy who invented throat lozenges died last week.

      There was no coffin at the funeral.

12. What happened when the semi-colon violated grammar laws?

      He was given two consecutive sentenses.

How Come the Chemistry Program Always Gets a Pass?

It’s 4 am. Its raining. My weather app informs me that it will be raining for the next three days. In a couple more hours Lucy will insist on being preambulated in the muck. There are seven more days left in February. If I were a Frenchman, this would Le suck. But, as it is, I am an American. Therefore, I blame it all on an unholy alliance between systemic racism and global warming. In exchange for this observation, I will earn valuable virtue points, and be hailed in some quarters as woke. Others will conclude that I am a moron. In America in 2019, it is very much a mixed bag to express an opinion. 

While the rest of the country is obsessed with one of two stories right now, I would like to discuss a third. If you watch Fox News the only story that matters at the moment concerns an obscure black, gay actor who conspired to stage a racist/homophobic assault on himself by a couple of MAGA hat-wearing thugs, ostensibly to highlight how hateful that crowd is and also to earn himself even greater levels of fawning adulation than he already enjoys as a black, gay actor. If you watch MSNBC, you are horrified by a 30 year Coast Guard veteran who was arrested with a huge cache of weaponry, a hit list of liberal politicians and journalists, and a computer trail of White Nationalist sympathies. But, neither one of these stories interest me. What concerns me this morning is this...

For those of you who might not know. My alma mater is a small, liberal arts university with less than 1,500 male students. Despite this, we compete on the highest level of college athletics for basketball. Our team has had great success over the past thirty years or so, making it to many NCAA tournaments. Etc. But, we aren’t even the best team in our own city. That title has been held by crosstown rival VCU for the past ten years or so. They not only have the better team and program, but measured by fan enthusiasm and buzz, University of Richmond is like Barry Manilow to VCU’s Drake. Anyway...this billboard has popped up in recent days, giving me a shiny, gleaming new reason to be embarrassed as a Spider fan. Chris Mooney has been the head basketball coach for ten years or so. I’ve never been crazy about him, but he’s fine. But some outfit called the UR Alumni & Spider Fans has decided that the only way to “SAVE” Richmond basketball is to fire the coach. To this end, they thought it wise and worth the considerable expense involved in having this eye sore erected along Interstate 95 so that the 25,000 people who pass everyday can witness our dysfunction. To whoever is responsible for this moronic stunt, a few words...

1. It’s the University of Richmond. We have 1500 male students. We’re lucky we even have a basketball team.

2. You guys need to get a life. I’m thinking that the odds that the guy who came up with this idea has had a date in the last year are about as high as the likelihood that our next home game will be a sellout.

3. This is basketball we’re talking about here. You guys just paid God knows what for a billboard to gin up support for firing a guy who coaches teenagers to play...basketball.

4. How about a billboard that addresses the real problem at UR...Save Richmond Chemistry...Fire Professor Dunnblat.

A Special Memory

So, tonight we will bring dinner to the Davis family. Pam is grateful for the snow day off from school so she can bring all of her energy to the task. I have no idea who took the initiative to set up this meal schedule...since in our circle of friends it’s always Kim who organizes this sort of thing. Nevertheless, we have been honored with the job tonight.

Before my Mother died seven years ago, followed by my Dad two years later, I had been largely unexposed to death. I had made it through over fifty years without losing someone very close to me. I learned a lot about how community works, about just how invaluable friends are. People who you would have least expected would show up big time in the clutch to provide exactly the thing you needed most. It was uncanny, and served as reassurance that you were going to make it through the darkness after all. All of this brings to mind two memories of Kim Davis.

When Mom died in her sleep in June of 2012, all of us were devastated. The first 48 hours were a horrifying maze of funeral home decisions, worrying about and attending to Dad and no sleep. Looking back at it now I can hardly believe we made it through. Right in the middle of all the craziness and grief, Pam got a call from Kim. Kim barely knew my mother, mostly knew her by reputation. So what words or wisdom and advice did Kim share with Pam?...Pam, I know it must be crazy with everything you guys have going on...I was just wondering if I could maybe drop by your house and let Molly out to go to the bathroom.

Every time Pam tells the story it chokes me up. Such a simple, unobtrusive gift of thoughtfulness and care. Kim Davis doing what she did...the basic, behind the scenes essential things that must be done.

A couple of days after the funeral, Kim showed up at our front door with a knockout rose bush in her hand...Sometimes its nice to plant a bush or a tree when someone we love passes away to remind us of them, she said.

One of the many reasons she will be missed.

Mourning With Those Who Mourn

I walked in the door of my home last night at 6:30 after a long and tiring day. There was an odd stillness and quiet, the smell of dinner wasn’t in the air. Pam ran to me with tears in her eyes and told me the awful news about a dear friend who had passed away earlier in the afternoon from a massive heart attack. Life has moved along in slow motion ever since.

She was 58 years old. She was one of the healthiest people I’ve ever known. She leaves behind a husband, three children, and five grandchildren. She also leaves behind a grieving community of people lucky enough to be counted as her friends. One of the reasons we grieve is because Kim Davis taught all of us what being a friend really means. Almost a year ago to the day it was Kim who saved our friend Leigh Ann’s life when she found her collapsed at home. It was her calm, quick action that saved her life. For the next month it was Kim who took charge of all of the details of caring for Leigh Ann and her devastated family. It was Kim who poured out every ounce of strength she possessed to make the intolerable tolerable for her best friend. Now, in an irony that is almost impossible to comprehend, this time...it was Leigh Ann who found Kim.

Life is full of disappointments. Each of us must endure news that stings and shocks the system. When one so dear, so vibrant, healthy and full of life dies so suddenly, it serves as a bitter reminder that we all exist on borrowed time. All of us eventually, in the words of Shakespeare, will shuffle off this mortal coil. We accept this fact intellectually but seldom spent a lot of time preparing ourselves for its truth. Most of us prefer to think of death and dying as the province of old age. But, yesterday it came for one of us...and we are heartbroken. Like the apostle Paul, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed...”

Every group of friends needs someone to whom they can point and say, There is what a good person looks like. We all need to know someone who models for the rest of us what it means to be loyal, generous, and kind. We all need living examples of what real Christianity looks like in person rather than merely in theory. Although she would have been the last person to claim any kind of sainthood for herself...for so many of us, Kim Davis was that person.

Her absence will leave a gaping hole in her family’s life. She will be mourned by the friends she leaves behind. But we don’t grieve like those who have no hope. Yes, we mourn. But we also celebrate a life well lived.

Freeloader

A very rough two weeks of feeling like garbage seems to be mercifully coming to an end. I hesitate to celebrate just yet since I went for a similar head fake from this dreadful cold five days ago only to fall into an even nastier abyss of misery. This time, I confidently tell myself, it will be different. So what better way to get back into the swing of things than writing a blog about...U.S. tax policy??  Clickclickclickclick...(thats the sound of 100 of you bailing on this post). For those of you who remain...

Saw the story over the weekend where Amazon earned 11 billion dollars in 2018 on which they paid an effective tax rate of -1% ( they actually got a 129 million dollar refund). I immediately forwarded the story to my accountant with the admonition...Go Thou and do likewise! Depending on your political philosophy this bit of news either infuriates you or instills great admiration for the savvy of Jeff Bezos. As it happens I am firmly in both camps. 

Do I admire Jeff Bezos and his team of tax lawyers and accountants for figuring out a legal way to use our Byzantine mess of a tax code to their favor? Am I in awe as to how they could figure out a way to combine a series of legal credits, rebates and loopholes to obliterate their tax bill? Sure I am. When I meet with my accountant every year, I have never once said to him, Ok, Carl, listen up...I’ve had a really good year but I’m very concerned about the deficit and debt in Washington, so this year I want you to arrange it so that i fall into the highest tax bracket available. This year, I want to pay more taxes than I’ve ever paid, ok? Actually, my charge to him is to earn the exorbitant fee he charges for his services by doing exactly the opposite. Each year he saves me far more in taxes than he charges for his service, so every year, I play along. However, after all of his accounting jujitsu I still pay lots of tax. He helps me to lower the effective rate, but he never eliminates it. Ending up paying 0% has never and will never be available to me. Actually, if it ever did happen, I would feel like a freeloader. There is, after all, a price to be paid for freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Does the fact that Amazon pays 0% federal taxes infuriate me? You bet it does. Something tells me that every single one of the hundreds of businesses that they have put out of business via the process of creative destruction—-paid plenty in taxes. I hear all of the Amazon apologists argue about the millions and millions of dollars that Amazon invests all over the country, the construction projects that a burgeoning business spins off, the billions of stock options dolled out to their employees etc, etc. All of that is well and good. But, here’s the thing. I am one of those dinosaurs who still considers himself a champion of the free market. When I see the way cities and states all across the fruited plain have prostrated themselves at Amazon’s alter, all undercutting themselves trying to buy a headquarters, I recoil in disgust. Amazon has become an online retailer without equal and has generated an other worldly 29 billion dollars of profit as their reward. Why should taxpayers have to pay for for their headquarters building? This is exactly how I feel when I hear some football team owner threatening to leave the city unless the taxpayers build him a new stadium. WTF??

Of course, there is an easy fix to this problem, but neither side will even consider it...conservatives (are there any of you left?) because the current system empowers the well connected and rewards those with the most diabolical lobbyists...liberals because it isn’t sufficiently progressive (although, how progressive is a 0% tax rate for Amazon?)...and that is a flat tax, no deductions, no write offs, no fancy accountants. So instead of real tax reform, we chip at the edges of our 7000 page tax code every couple of years which only has the effect of making it even more complex and exploitable. Here’s a life lesson for all of you big government types...private sector accountants are always sharper, craftier and more effective than government accountants. Always have been...always will be. To level this playing field, you’re gonna have to put them out of business....flat tax.

“Hold My Big Mac...”

Two weeks ago, in my state of Virginia, we suffered a political earthquake that had all three of our highest ranked elected officials embroiled in career threatening controversies, which had made us the laughing stock of the country. Our Governor and Attorney General were dealing with racist photographs from their college days, our Lt. Governor, credibly accused by two women of sexual harassment. The air was thick with talk of triple impeachment. At that time I wrote the following:

Ralph knows that the people of Virginia, like the rest of America, have an attention span of a toddler. Sure, the fire might be hot for the first 48 hours, but each day after that it cools. Ralph also knows that the Press also has a short attention span. They might be in high drugeon when the story breaks, but after a few days it’s like...squirrel!!!

Two weeks to the day that all this broke, this political earthquake has vanished from the newspapers. Welcome to America in 2019.

One of the most enduring legacies of the Trump Presidency will be the magnificent cover he has provided for all manner of political misbehavior throughout government. Each day’s headlines scream out the latest outrage that would have been enough to doom previous Presidents. But, just about the time that all the players have their talking points ready, Trump has moved on to the next outrage, leaving the commentariat gasping for air and back to scribbling out talking points. I have come to believe that this is the signature genius of Donald Trump. Flood the zone with outlandish, fact-free, anti-constitutional and boorish behavior, then watch with glee your enemies trying to keep up with it all. Its fiendishly clever, and provides lesser political lights valuable cover for what would have been career ending death sentences. So, there’s a governor in Virginia who posed in blackface in his medical school yearbook, you say? Psshht, that’s so two weeks ago, bro.

So, the President has declared a national emergency at the southern border to circumvent the will of Congress, and decided to divert funds earmarked for drug interdiction from the Defense Department to fund his border wall? And this has your knickers in a knot? Somewhere in the White House the President is turning to one of his aides and saying, Here, hold my Big Mac and hand me my cell...