Knuckle Dragging Work

Here’s my day yesterday captured in one photograph...

No, I didn’t stuff 62 thirty-nine gallon bags with leaves in one day. This is actually two months of bagging leaves. Yesterday I gathered them from their various locations and dragged them to the curb where the Henrico Department of Leaf Removal has promised to take them off my hands. Actually, I dragged 40 of them to the curb, then added another 22 that I stuffed full yesterday. Although I am paying the price this morning, doing this type of knuckle dragging work is about as satisfying as anything in my life. Why? It’s complicated.

I handle money for a living, a decidedly non-knuckle dragging occupation. When I come home from work and Pam asks me about my day sometimes its hard to give her a direct answer—“Well, I had an annual review with the Blogdonovich’s who informed me that their retirement date has changed, so I’m going to have to rework their portfolio, blah, blah, blah...”  But, when I work in my yard, I don’t have to wonder whether or not I’ve done any good at the end of the day. I don’t even have to say anything, all I have to do is point to that giant pile of bags...That’s what I did today! There is concrete, undeniable evidence of my labor. 

It all started when I was a kid. Dad gave me the job of cutting the grass and getting up leaves and everything else that had anything to do with the yard when I was eleven years old. He made a big dramatic deal of it..Son, this is a big job, a big and important responsibility I’m giving you. Don’t let me down! I complained at first, pointing out the salient point that I knew not one single other eleven year old who was so employed. Dad’s response was something along the lines of, And isn’t that a shame? There was no arguing with the man. But I soon discovered that I actually liked the job. In a weird way it was...fun. Still is.

One key difference between then and now is the level of my physical decrepitude. I can still do the work, still enjoy doing the work. But, I have to pace myself, and even then I wake up the morning after a day like yesterday feeling as if I have been the loser in a prize fight. 

...but just look at those bags. Is that not the most beautiful sight?

The Fall

Daniel Sebastian Fitzgerald’s life had been an unqualified success right up to the day he took a drink from an unopened bottle of water he found while jogging in a park less than a mile from his house. At least that was the initial conclusion which most of the family had settled upon after every other explanation for his implosion had failed to withstand logical scrutiny. So bizarre were the circumstances surrounding his metamorphosis that a family of educated people had been reduced to believing an unproven and unprovable theory involving a random bottle of water that had never been found or tested for toxins that might have explained how an otherwise circumspect 56 year old man could have so suddenly and spectacularly gone off the rails. The Fitzgerald family, being as unaccustomed to and unprepared for scandal as any tribe in North America had not handled the drama well. Accusations began to fly within the family, blaming everyone from his wife of 30 years, to his impossible to please father, to his meddling mother, all the way down to his disrespectful children. But, the writer has gotten ahead of himself. The reader by now is naturally wondering about the nature of Daniel Sebastian Fitzgerald’s metamorphosis, and not nearly as concerned with the infighting of his extended family. I will attempt to tell the tale honestly without bias or judgement, for in the day and age in which we live, this story needs to be told.

1. Family History

William and Margaret Fitzgerald carefully considered the name they would bequeath to their first born in the fall of 1963. The Fitzgeralds were second generation wealthy, William having inherited a small fortune from his self-made father and having married into the Sebastian fortune which had flowed to Margaret upon the untimely death of both of her parents, who had tragically perished when the catamaran they were sailing capsized during light winds in the Chesapeake Bay less than two years after Daniel Sebastian Fitzgerald’s birth. A manufacturing failure discovered within the workmanship of the mast ultimately added to the Fitzgerald fortune in the form of a settlement check from lawyers representing the boat company. William...it was William, never Bill, or worse...Billy, had for years been embarrassed at his wealth for the old fashioned reason that he had done nothing to deserve it other than being fortuitously conceived. His own career as a lawyer served only to provide him a place to go every day and a respectable answer to the oft-asked cocktail party question, “So William, what do you do?” The answer that he was an attorney quickly led into a pleasant ramble about his time at Princeton, and the early years of clerking for this judge and that. But as a matter of profitability, his law practice netted him barely enough money to cover his ample overhead. He had enough skill and connections to make an honest go of it but found the lack of urgency too much to overcome. Being independently rich, he discovered, had sapped him of any work ethic he may have inherited from his father. Eventually, William and Margaret had made peace with the happy accident of their births and stopped feeling guilt about their wealth. They had come to see their good fortune as, in fact, the very embodiment of the American Dream. They had come into their money the truly old fashioned way...by inheritance and summary judgments.

So, the choice of a name for what was surely to be the third generation of prominent and successful Fitzgeralds was crucial. Consideration must be given to tradition, the family tree and proper nobility. For William this meant a name that did not lend itself to truncation, or the degradation of a nickname. Daniel Sebastian checked off all the boxes, Daniel, after the Old Testament hero of the lion’s den, and Sebastian, the surname of his wife, the family name that provided 60% of the Fitzgerald net worth. However, William would ultimately regret the choice. It took virtually no time for little Daniel’s school friends, even those well bred enough to attend St. Paul’s, to twist Daniel into a hundred ugly iterations. Dan the Man, Danny-Boy, and the especially infantile Book-em Danno had all taken turns as the nickname of choice during Daniel’s middle and high school years, bringing his parents untold grief. When, over the course of time, it became obvious that nothing was to be done about the fact that their son would forever be known as Danny, William and Margaret accepted it as the price they would have to pay for raising such a popular and winsome boy. For Danny had turned out to be everything that his parents weren’t, optimistic, fun loving, adventurous, gregarious, empathetic and magnanimous, all traits that hadn’t appeared over several generations of either branch of the family tree. The Fitzgerald’s had largely been known as a stoic lot, full of industry and toughness to be sure, but not known for the warmer gifts associated with the human condition. Grandfather Fitzgerald, builder of a thousand brick ranchers and split levels throughout central Virginia, was an efficient and meticulous businessman known for being a fair boss, excellent craftsman, and ruthless negotiator, but in all of his life no one could recall him donated a single dime of his considerable fortune to a single charity beyond his church. His personality, such as it was, could best be described as distant. William had inherited all of the distance, none of the industry and all of the money. Although Margaret had been blessed with respectable warmth and charm along with a passable sense of humor, she had inherited the Sebastian family pride, the imperious kind that served as a stiff arm to the lower classes who were unlucky enough to stumble onto her path. Her single purpose as a mother to her son had been to protect him from bad influence which she narrowly defined as those outside his rank and station. To her eternal consternation, every such effort had failed. Danny counted among his friends an endless succession of misfits and ne’er do wells who brought with them their course language and sloppy manners. There was simply nothing to be done. Their son had developed a tendency of attracting friends everywhere he went, for good or for ill. His parents had been reduced to glorified overseers, doing their best to influence their son towards the right friends and away from the wrong. Despite this troubling tendency, Danny had given them not one minute’s trouble. He was respectful of their authority, dutiful and obedient, an excellent student and well liked by everyone.

Then he met Kate.

Kate, (not Katherine, the birth certificate actually said Kate), Buchanan had crashed into the Fitzgerald family like a runaway freight train in the summer of 1982 when Danny announced to his parents that he had met the love of his life and that she would be spending a week with them at the river house over July the fourth. Kate Buchanan had been exactly what Margaret Fitzgerald had warned her husband would happen if he permitted their son to attend Virginia Commonwealth University instead of Princeton. It should never have been allowed in the first place, their son matriculating at a state school known for nothing other than a basketball team and a campus life littered with drugs and bohemian habits. Princeton would have delivered the world to his doorstep. With VCU they would be lucky if he graduated without a stint in rehab. But here was Margaret, looking on in wordless horror as Kate Buchanan exploded out of the passenger seat of Danny’s BMW, dressed like a gypsy, radiant smile beaming out from under that ridiculous Panama hat, running up to engulf her boyfriend’s mother in an inappropriately familiar embrace. It had been the beginning of the most awkward week of Margaret’s life, filled as it was with the realization that her son was irretrievably ass-over-tea-kettles in love. Meanwhile, William had been struck mute by the presence of the girl, barely contributing a word to the conversation for the first hour or so, overwhelmed as he was by the pure novelty of someone who combined outrageous fashion and personality with such astonishing beauty. As the week wore on, Margaret and William were united in their belief that the girl would be an unmitigated disaster for their son, but equally convinced that the relationship would never last. Danny would soon tire of this whirling dervish. How could he not? The child babbled on all week about every conceivable topic that people like Margaret and William couldn’t possibly have cared any less about, while Danny sat there bewitched, hanging on every word. 

He had met her in an introduction to sculpture class, the sort of class he never would have taken had he gone to Princeton, when fate had placed him next to her on the back row. She had arrived to class carrying nothing with her that might have identified her as a student. No back pack, no books, no purse. Just a loose fitting tie-dyed T-shirt, no bra, and her angelic face. For Danny it had been love at first sight, or at least lust, which at 18 years of age amounts to the same thing. At the end of class during which not a single word of conversation had passed between them, she had extended her hand to him and said, “My name’s Kate. You’re cute.” Thus had began the manic affair that now had belched itself upon the banks of the Rappahannock River. Margaret and William smiled knowingly at each other. He would tire of her in time. All was well.

But like millions of parents before them, Margaret and William had underestimated the enduring power of both passion and love. By the time Danny had graduated with a worthless Bachelor of Science in Advertising degree, they were still in love and announced their intention to marry at the earliest possible date. When Margaret and William had objected to the match, Danny and Kate had responded by eloping, then sending his parents a postcard from Key West, officially beginning a 30 year strained relationship between Kate Fitzgerald and her in-laws. Although the arrival of grandchildren, a girl, Caroline, and a boy, Teddy (not Theodore), had softened the general frostiness of their discourse and injected a touch of warmth on both sides, animosity still hung heavily in the air whenever they occupied the same space. Despite the animosity, Margaret and William always managed to cover over their disappointment with the pleasant veneer of manners, never revealing too much, never letting slip any openly hostile words, always preferring the veiled insult, the soft contours of the pulled rhetorical punch. It infuriated Kate to be on the receiving end of their passive aggression, to the point where she had begun to take great delight in offering translations in real time to anyone who might be within earshot.

Margaret: Kate, my dear, you look healthier every time I see you.

Kate: What Grandma means kids is that Mommy’s getting fat!

Ever since the children had arrived it had become one of Kate’s joys in life to refer to her Mother in law as “Grandma.” Margaret hated nothing in the universe more than the ghastly title, always answering with, “Grandmother.” Of course, the children picked up “grandma” and used it gleefully as soon as they learned to talk, a delicious victory for Kate and a thorn in the side to Margaret who visibly winced at the sound of the word. Such pettiness was unlike Kate, a fact that her husband often reminded her after each family visit. Kate could only admit the truth.

“Yes,” she would reply. “When it comes to your mother I can be a real bitch. I should just ignore her, but I can’t help it. I do so love watching the way her bottom lip quivers right before it stiffens up and pushes out whenever one of the kids says ‘Grandma!!’ You’ve got to admit, honey. It’s pretty funny.”

“It’s hysterical,” Danny would always respond. “But what’s the point? It only makes things worse between you two.”

“Actually, it makes no difference whatsoever. Your mother will be your mother for as long as she lives. And as long as I remain your wife she will hate me, and never in a million years will she ever admit to hating me. Am I right?”

“Yes. You are right.”

Thirty years of the battle between wife and mother in law had raged without any meaningful cease fires. Even once Margaret became an octogenarian she still delivered her patented silk-covered verbal bricks in nearly every conversation. After watching Kate remove an over-cooked roast out of the oven, the silver-haired, face-lifted matron hadn’t missed a beat, “It is quite remarkable how unspoiled by failure you continue to be.” But on the fateful morning when Danny had stumbled back home from his Saturday morning run, white as a ghost with a nasty abrasion on his forehead, Kate’s skirmishes with her in-laws would intensify into a full blown war.

Wearing a Mask

You know what the worst topic for a blog is right now? Anything having to do with COVID. I’m so fed up with this pandemic I can hardly bring myself to type out the word...COVID. But, here I am writing about it because, just like those annoying AMWAY people from the 1970’s, it just won’t go away.

After a summer of relative progress, cases are skyrocketing again. Yesterday we set a death record of over 3000 in a single day. Hospitals are filling up and various jurisdictions around the country are attempting to institute lockdowns with varying degrees of success. Ordering Americans to do anything in unison is much like herding cats. Apart from the official numbers published by the agencies and departments of government keeping tract of the pandemic, there are  personal experiences to consider. For months and months when this all first started, Pam and I didn’t know a single soul who had COVID. All that has changed in a big way over the past couple of months. Suddenly, people all around us have come down with it, close friends, neighbors, members of our own family. It has become more real to us, less theoretical. 

But, there is also good news. There always is if you take the time to look. There is a very low mortality rate associated with this thing. The people we know who have tested positive have all recovered or are recovering...a very good thing. However, when I see what it has done to my dear neighbor, who has been sick as a dog for over a week now, I want no part of this thing, and neither do you. Also, a vaccine is on its way, a ray of hope that at some point next year we might actually get beyond this miserable nightmare.

In the meantime, it seems to be spreading like wildfire, prompting government officials to issue new edicts to battle the spread. Here in Virginia, our Governor plans a 2:00 news conference this afternoon to announce the latest measures. Close to half of my state’s population will reject whatever words come out of his mouth instantly, regardless of what he says. The reasons are complicated. Part of it is...he’s a jackass. Ralph Northam gives people lots of reasons to dislike him. In many ways he is the quintessential do as I say not as I do political hypocrite. Old blackface is a slippery one. But, as much as I dislike him and his Alfred E. Newman face with its condescending uplifted nose, I actually think that his handling of the COVID spread in Virginia has been exemplary. Our numbers have compared favorably with most other states and that is in no small part to the proactive steps his office has taken over these past 8 months. But for  many Virginians, the fact that he is a liberal Democrat means that everything he says is suspect. Like literally everything else in America in 2020, COVID has  somehow turned into a partisan issue. Indeed the simple, basic task of wearing a mask has become a type of Rorschach Test for politics. To some, wearing a mask in public is just a basic preventative measure, the very least that one can do to protect themselves and others. Its an easy ask. To others not wearing a mask has become a badge of honor, a stick it to the man statement of independence, a proclamation that they will not bow or bend to anyone attempting to take away their freedom. So, no matter what the Governor proposes this afternoon, expect more of the same, polarization and division.

My view is pretty simple. Since I have no idea whether or not I have COVID, I would rather not take the chance of spreading it to total strangers at the grocery store or at the bank, or at my church. So, while I am inside those places, I’ll be wearing a mask. No matter how unlikely it might be, if I discovered that my not wearing a mask ended up spreading COVID to someone else, I would feel terrible. A secondary reason for wearing a mask is my desire to lower my chances of catching it from someone else. 

Something I have read a lot over the past few weeks is some version of this...I’m just going to live my life without fear. After all, God is in control. Many, though not all, of those who are of this mind are also against wearing masks. Setting aside the theological aspects of free will and the sovereignty of God for a moment...the one thing I would like to ask those who fall into this category is, “Would you leave for a long car trip without a spare tire in the back?” I mean, why bother taking precautions if God is in control? Look, if its God’s will for you to have a flat, why fight it, right?

As an imperfect and highly flawed Christian, I believe I have a responsibility to others to model humility and grace in my dealings with them. This includes, for me, wearing a mask during a pandemic. Because I am told in scripture to consider others concerns more than my own, I feel compelled to set aside my own feelings about wearing a mask—the discomfort and annoyance—for the greater good it can do of halting or slowing the spread of this viral pandemic. It has nothing to do with politics or my notions of freedom or individual rights. It’s more about common decency and respect for the human beings around me.

Of course if you believe that COVID is a fake news media creation designed to usher in totalitarian governance and make money for pharmaceutical companies and nobody is dying from COVID, its all a hoax and masks are worthless in the fight because there is no pandemic...then none of what I wrote will matter to you. But...for everyone else? Wear a mask.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes To...

Seventeen months ago I introduced all of you to my friend Pam Cole, who had just been given a cancer diagnosis. Since that time I have informed you of her progress from time to time in this space. There is no finish line when it comes to cancer, I’ve learned. Although she is done with all the treatments, she will still be going back periodically for scans and blood work for the rest of her life. Each clean scan she gets will be an excuse for a party. She has one last procedure coming up on December 29...unless COVID postpones it yet again! But, what a battle it has been. A year ago, she was about as sick as a human being could be without actually being dead. Now, she’s baking goodies for a sick friend, and just got back from her first weekend away outing with some girl friends to Williamsburg. Amazing.

We chatted this morning about what its been like for her, this past year and a half. Of course, she gave all the credit to God and her doctors, which is probably technically appropriate. But I hastened to point out another theory as to her successful battle with cancer...my jokes. I’ve actually done some tabulating and have been shocked to discover that since Pam got sick, the poor woman has endured over 1,000 of the lamest, most juvenile, moronic, and occasionally inappropriate Dad Jokes ever assembled in one place for the treatment of a cancer patient. Considering her miraculous recovery, I’m thinking that I should at least get Honorable Mention status by the Nobel Committee when they hand out the prize for Medicine this year. This morning’s offering was fairly typical of the genre:

A friend of mine makes Christmas Wreaths for a living. He recently decided to make one out of fresh $100 bills.

He calls it...a wreath of Franklin.

She awarded it with a face-palm emoji...for the thousandth time. Every once in a while she would reply, “You’re just not right”, which in all honesty is a fair observation to make after someone sends you this at 5:30 in the morning...

Have you heard about the new branch of Hip Hop where all the songs are about relationship attachment issues?

Its called Cling Rap.

Her finest moment in all this time was back in one of her darkest periods. She was sick as a dog and hanging on by a thread. I had just sent her three truly horrible Dad Jokes. She paused for quite a while and then sent this awesome text...Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough?

Merry Christmas, Mrs. Cole!!

Christmas Town...a Beautiful but Bizarre Little Town

A new personal record for waking up early in the books this morning, as I rolled out of the rack wide awake at 3:20. After emptying the dish washer, brewing some coffee, and making sure the world hadn’t completely gone to hell while I slept, it was only 4:00. Needless to say, I had some time on my hands. I took the time to post a video of Main Street in Christmas Town on Facebook. The townspeople arrived yesterday, and immediately, downtown was bustling. But, Christmas Town is more than just downtown. So I thought I’d let you guys see some of the neighborhoods in this fascinating place.

This is the home of  Fred and Millicent Stanwick who live in the fashionable Brevers Village Subdivision, so exclusive it has its own newspaper. The kid on the left is Tommy Snodgrass, who has been waiting all morning for his chance to throw that piece of firewood at the paperboy, Billy Dunlop. Tommy and Billy have been feuding ever since Kindergarten.

Nobody can figure out how George and Gladys Glotzbach get their kids to shovel the snow, but there they are every year slaving away while Mom and Dad do God knows what inside where it’s nice and warm. I mean, is there no child protective services in Christmas Town?

Ahh yes, the Leibovitz family. Malcontents. Always trying to sell the place and move out of Christmas Town. They think they are too good for the local rubes.

Snow angels, indeed!! The Wilson kids are the two biggest hellions in town. Constantly starting trouble, getting in fights. It is rumored that the boy, Butch, is into drugs.

There’s a skating pond on the edge of town. Butch, taking advantage of no adult supervision, just knocked little Billy Dunlop on his ass then skated off with his girlfriends. Kid’s nothing but trouble!

Just outside the city limits there’s the old Dixon cabin. No electricity, no plumbing—note the outhouse out back—and once again old man Dixon sends his kids out to chop wood for the stove. I think this town has a problem with child labor laws. It’s rumored that those two bears hanging out on the porch are domesticated. Nobody is quite sure what a giant battery case is doing propped up on the roof, but the Dixons are hicks so nobody asks too many questions...

Quiet street. Really smart zoning, putting the library and the hospital side by side.

But then, there’s this. The church, a daycare place and the dang high school jammed together like sardines. So weird. Also notice that yet again the adults of Christmas Town are nowhere to be found, even in the front yard of a day care center where kids are out playing in the freezing cold!

Much has been made of the lack of ethnic diversity in Christmas Town, so it was with great excitement that the local Chamber of Commerce announced a new exotic Chinese restaurant was coming to town. Unfortunately, 2020 was a bad time to introduce Asian cuisine to the citizens of Christmas Town during a pandemic with roots in Wuhon, China. But it did celebrate its first customer the other day...but the couple had to drive all the way from New York City.

Maybe the fact that the local doughnut shop is literally attached to the police station explains why you never see cops anywhere in town.

So, there you have it, a quick tour of Christmas Town where kids do all the work, there is always snow on the ground and literally nothing is to scale.

Every Flourish...

Yesterday was a day devoted to Christmas decorating at the Dunnevant house. Actually, its been going on for over a week now, room by room. Pam is something of a maniacal genius in this regard. When it is all finished there will be seven Christmas trees. There will be Department 56 Christmas villages all over the place. The people who will soon populate these villages know nothing of COVID, refusing as they do to socially distance, and not a mask to be seen. Today is the day devoted to bringing these mythical residents of Christmas Town out of exile. By the end of the day they will all be out there in the snow covered streets doing wintery things. I envy them.

In past years, I must confess, this decorating obsession of my wife’s has been a little annoying. Not that I don’t love the end result, but it has seemed a bit excessive. When I hear her complain about never having enough time to get crucial things done I silently mumble to myself, “Here’s an idea...maybe don’t spend ten days decorating the house!” But this year...I’m loving every excessive flourish. This year it seems perfect. This year, I celebrate every twinkling light, every ornament, every wreath. This year it feels like striking a blow against everything that 2020 has been. We may have endured a horrifying political season, a miserable election, endless social upheaval and this interminable and infuriating pandemic, but Christmas is coming. We may not be able to hold everyone in the family close, but our lights will shine like a million stars if we have anything to say about it. And, it isn’t just us. Our culdesac looks like a cross between the North Pole and Vegas...and I’m loving it. Makes me want to gather my neighbors in a circle out in the street, hold hands and sing that weird ending song from the Grinch... Fah who foraze! Dah who doraze!

Everyone knows that Christmas trees tell the story of a family. Ours is no different. Every weekend trip away to someplace nice has an ornament. Every vacation, every life event is represented. When we hung the ornaments last night it was like an episode of This Is Your Life. The soundtrack featured Harry Connick Jr, James Taylor, Nat King Cole, and The Carpenters. Then Pam opened up the kid’s hand made ornaments that used to go on the “kid’s tree” years ago. They have been in a box for the past few, but not this year. No, this year they need to be on the tree...

Cat Plague

Anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time will be aware of my love for dogs. What you may not be aware of is my loathing of cats. I have for the most part tried to keep this loathing under wraps, knowing as I do the odd attachment many of my readers have to felines. Indeed, my own family is full of cat lovers, (mostly women I might add), so I try to tread lightly. Especially since perhaps the biggest cat lover of them all is my beloved niece Christina Garland. Now, anyone who knows Chrissy is aware that there isn’t a sweeter person in the world. She is a wonderful mother, wife, etc etc...but this glaring weakness in her character, perhaps, dare I say, her only weakness has always troubled me. I try to drop little hints to her about her cat problem, but it is quite true what they say that the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Unfortunately, Chrissy remains stubbornly unaware. I suppose I can’t really blame her. Her own mother, my sister, is an unrepentant cat person who recently indulged her life long addiction with yet another kitten. Now, every fifteen minutes she sends a Marco Polo of the little tyrant doing something “cute”, the mere image of which sends me into a sneezing fit. But, what can I say? You don’t get to pick your family!

The year of COVID has granted all of us extra time for self reflection. One thing that has become clear to me is that my attempts to rescue the cat lovers in my family from their dangerous obsession have been woefully lacking. To that end, this blog post is intended to be the opening salvo of a new, more robust anti-cat initiative. From time to time I will produce more and more public service anti-cat information in this space. Education is always the key to a better life. I can think of no other tool for the task of ridding Chrissy of her feline fever than...Gary Larson. 

The House of Flying Pictures!

This is my firstborn GrandPup, Jackson, aka Jack, Jacko, Jackie-Jack. He had a very bad day yesterday which I will explain shortly. But first, a little background on this beloved dog.

Of the three Golden Retrievers in the family, Jack is the only English Creme. He is also known for not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, although his comparative lack of basic intelligence is more than made up for by a generous helping of lovability. You will never meet a snugglier dog. Then there’s the matter of his most striking characteristic... epic clumsiness. If the three Goldens in the family were athletes, Lucy would be the fleet and agile wide receiver on a football team, Frisco would be the graceful center fielder on a baseball team. Jack would be the second string offensive tackle on the practice squad. Watching Jacko run is like watching some kind of dog cartoon, all four paws flying out at odd angles, tongue flopping around all over the place. It’s nothing short of adorable, actually.

So, anyway, Jack had a bad day yesterday at the new house in Columbia. It was his first day alone in his new home. Pam and I had been with him last week, and Jon had Monday and Tuesday off. Yesterday was his first solo and, let’s just say...it didn’t go well. First off, a delivery of lumber was dumped in the side yard for the completion of a fence Jon is finishing in the back yard. The sound of crashing 2x4’s hitting the ground was I’m sure disconcerting. Then, at some point during the day, a very large painting that was hung in the kitchen inexplicably came unhooked and crashed to the floor. When Kaitlin returned from work she found a spot of pee on her bedroom carpet and both vomit and poop on the floor in the study.

In Jack’s defense, I’m thinking that if I were him, alone in a new house for the first time, and suddenly pictures started flying off the walls, I’m pretty sure I would have lost control of most of my bodily functions too! Jack must have been thinking, “My humans have left me alone in house of flying pictures! What I do to deserve this??” Poor boy. Tomorrow will be a better day. He will adjust. But until he does I have advised Kaitlin to close the door to any carpeted rooms!

Jack...in happier times.

I’ve looked for books that might help him make the adjustment but so far haven’t had any luck...

The Bible and The Far Side

Just a few examples of twisted humor that I find hilarious and most other people find stupid...

Also, this...just read a headline that an investigation has been launched into alleged use of LSD by marines at Camp Lejeune. Seriously?? Can you imagine anything more terrifying than fully armed Marines on acid??

So, when times get tough my morning routine features a little Bible reading and a browse through The Far Side...both for much needed doses of eternal truth.

A Bad Back and My Dad

Many years ago I attended a picnic at my sister’s house. I don’t remember the occasion or the year, only that suddenly I found myself flat on the floor in her living room, gripped by excruciating pain while everyone else was outside in the yard. I had come inside to go to the bathroom and when I took the first step after exiting the bathroom, my back seized up in a tight and painful ball dropping me like a rock, face down onto the carpet. I could not move and could barely scream out for help. I can’t remember how long I was on the floor but eventually my sister Linda came inside and found me there. At first she laughed, figuring I was trying to play some trick on her. Where would she have gotten such an idea? Finally she realized I was in great distress. And since my big sister has always been the type of person who knows exactly what to do in the clutch, she ran into another room to fetch her nurse’s bag. Back then she was a public health nurse who made house calls in Gilpin Court, tough woman—my sister. Anyway, I remember her pulling a giant needle out of her bag and giving me a painful shot in the buttocks, one that she seemed to take just a bit too much delight in administering. Later she told me it was Demerol. Within ten minutes or so I was able to sit up. The subsequent trip to the doctor revealed that I had damaged a muscle in my back the previous day when I had helped a friend of mine move a spinet piano up a flight of stairs in his new house. Although I didn’t recall being in any pain while moving the piano, the doctor assured me that it had done some kind of damage which had resulted in the severe spasm that had thrown me to the floor the following afternoon. A couple of days later I was totally fine and feeling cocky when I saw my Dad who asked me about how my back was feeling. When I answered, “Great! No problems at all....” he looked me square in the eye and said, “Listen son, I don’t care what that doctor told you, I’m here to tell you that you’re going to have trouble with your back for the rest of your life so you better get used to it.” My Dad, Mister Encouragement.

He was right. Of course he was.

Although I haven’t been thrown to the ground since that day at Linda’s, my back has always been like a temperamental child for nearly 30 years now. I can go months with no problems whatsoever despite lots of strenuous activity, then throw it out brushing my teeth. The list of benign activities that have managed to throw out my back are truly laughable. My back has been sent into violent spasms over...

-teeth brushing

-plugging in a lamp

-picking up my car keys from off the floor

-filling my car up with gas

The past few days, after all the lifting at Kaitlin and Jon’s new house, the back has been quivering between good and evil. Every move I make, I am aware of it. I can feel the muscles tighten and loosen back there and every thing I feel makes me suspicious of its intentions. It will probably work its way out on its own. It usually does. But I did resort to taking a muscle relaxer last night to be on the safe side. May do it again tonight.

So yeah...Dad had it right 30 years ago. He hurt his back when he was in the Navy during WWII on a ship somewhere near Guadalcanal, and it gave him fits for the rest of his life. But, I take great comfort in the fact that when my Dad was 80 he was still putting in a garden every year...by himself! But it was so like my father to give it to me straight, no sugarcoating—“Your back is going to give you trouble for the rest of your life!” That’s just the way he was. Mom, too. They parented us with very little regard for our tender feelings. They were in the truth telling business. If I wanted a feel-good story I could watch Mr. Rogers. None of this, “Everything is gonna be alright” nonsense. Nope, tough luck about your back there, Son! By today’s standards I suppose it sounds a little harsh, and maybe it was. But I would give almost anything to have them both back. I don’t know about you but I need someone who I can always count on to tell me the truth. Don’t you?

2020 Ennui

2020 has now managed to slog its way into December. COVID is not only still with us, it appears to be ascendant. There is a vaccine on its way, but public confidence in it, along with everything else coming from government officials, seems at an all-time low. We are witnessing a poisonous and petulant transition of power never before seen in American politics. Our new President looks more frail with each passing day, and the old President seems hellbent on blowing everything up on his way out. I returned to the office yesterday to a death claim and more bad COVID news. It is fair to say that I find myself fighting against a rising tide of depression.

That probably sounds more dramatic than I intended. The fact that I feel a bit depressed is no bombshell. Life is full of highs and lows. Not every season is filled with triumphs. There are times in life when events conspire against you. That’s just the way life works. You grind through the dark times and eventually the sun breaks through the clouds. It has always been this way for me and I think for most people. This just happens to be one of the dark moments. When you’re essentially an optimist, having a pessimistic outlook is disconcerting. It catches you off guard, feels foreign, as if your mind has been invaded by an enemy. 

But, I will power through this at some point. I always have in the past. Good COVID news would help. A couple of good productive weeks at work would help. Good things happening to people I love would help the most. I have much to be thankful for. The blessings I have experienced in my life make a very long list. So, you can’t fairly complain when you experience a few setbacks, especially when those setbacks are beyond your control. This is the last I will speak of this in this space. Nobody wants to read about someone else's problems. All of you have plenty of your own problems, right?

Why do mermaids wear seashells?

Because she outgrew her b shells.

Wonder Woman

Spending an entire week helping your daughter move in to a new home is unlike a Maine vacation in one significant way...I actually lost weight. Apparently, packing and unpacking boxes, cleaning and moving furniture, burns more calories than fishing, sitting around a camp fire, and drinking beer. Who knew?

We are back after a week in Columbia, delighted to have slept in our king size bed last night, and so thoroughly proud of Jon and Kaitlin we can hardly stand it. Their new house is beautiful and, for the moment, clean. There’s only one room that remains unfinished—the study— and even that is coming along nicely. We even put up the tree before we left...

At this point I should probably stop using the term we, since although we all put in our fair share of labor, this entire enterprise would have been an unmitigated disaster without...Pam Dunnevant. It is almost impossible to overemphasize just how indispensable she was to the successful completion of this mission. Everyone has their own work style. Some people require supervision to stay on track, others work best when given a list, etc...but my wife thrives in chaos, and this skill is a dramatic thing to behold in action. From the time we pulled into their old driveway on Sunday afternoon until we crawled out of their new one Saturday morning, she was like a cross between the Energizer Bunny and a Teamster foreman. Whether it was her down on her hands and knees scrubbing a stubborn spot on the bathroom floor, or packing up an entire kitchen by herself, or throwing together delicious meals for everyone every night, she was the queen bee around which the rest of us merely buzzed. It was an amazing performance that had all of us glancing at each other asking, Who is this woman, and when is she gonna crash? But, she never did. She would be forgiven for sleeping until noon this morning...but she won’t.

I had my moments. Friday, I was given a list of five objectives for the day. I love having a list. I finished everything by 2 o’clock in the afternoon, but my best moment of the week came later that afternoon when the internet guy showed up to hook the house up to the World Wide Web. This guy was very tall, wore his mask on his chin and was a dead ringer for Snoop Dog. We all understood roughly 25% of what he said, which made it difficult to determine how to proceed with his directives. Eventually we were able to make out the fact that unless he could gain access to the walk-in crawl space under the house he could not continue. The door was locked and Jon, who was at work, had the only key. Snoop was about to pack up and leave when a skill I learned during my misspent youth came back to me at the perfect time. I ran into the back yard, retrieved an old expired credit card from my wallet I keep for just this purpose, and slid it between the lock and the door knob and DING, I was in! We retrieved Snoop before he was able to make his escape, he was able to hook up the internet and everyone lived happily ever after.

But, my wife was the thing this week. Amazing. 

Moving Day

Today is the big day. The moving van guys show up at 9:00. Over the last two days we have packed up tons of boxes, and filled my car up with five loads of them. We have mopped floors, cleaned bathrooms, vacuumed carpets...and have the sore hamstrings and tight backs to prove it. I have endured the soul-crushing traffic on the aptly named, Hardscrabble Road, ten times in two days. In the four years that Jon and Kaitlin have lived in this rental house, the aforementioned city street has been under construction, and in those four years I have yet to determine to what end. Honestly, there are several traffic cones that have spider webs on them. Still, after 48 months of pointless destruction and the eternal meanderings of menacing earth moving equipment, the road still gets reduced to one lane during the peak traffic hours of each day. The guy who holds the sign that says STOP on one side and SLOW on the other was a teenager when we first met. Now he has a receding hairline and a beer gut. But...I digress.

First item of business this morning will feature me taking Jackson across town to a friend’s house for a play date with a husky puppy. These friends are the same ones who will be bringing us our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, just two of the amazing people that make up Jon and Kaitlin’s life group from Midtown Church. If Jackson makes it over there without throwing up all over the inside of my Cadillac I will consider it a major victory and a giant middle finger to 2020. 

Two jokes:

Hear about the Pharmaceutical company that has combined a laxative with alphabet soup?

They call it....Letter Rip.

What do you call a long line of men waiting for a haircut?

A barberque.

Oh...and then there’s this:

So great. The perfect photograph for 2020, right here. Taken somewhere in London, I think. This brave women, with a crude handmade sign, sums up what’s really going on out there. You might be asking, Yes, but the cop’s hat is blocking out some crucial information. Really? I don’t think so. Do you honestly need any other information besides Electr and Microwave to know that this woman has hit the proverbial nail on the head? Just when we were getting close to stumbling on the truth about the...microwave thing...along comes COVID. How convenient. Coincidence? This woman doesn’t think so. And she took the time to make a really cool sign to let the rest of us in on the truth that the big shots at the power companies and the big shots at the microwave companies don’t want us to know. There’s biological damage, for the love of God! 

Nostalgia and the Big Move

In the Beginning . . .

After much badgering from my family and with crucial technological help from them I am launching this Blog.  It is my intention to record my observations about life as they come to me and as I am  inspired to write. The subjects will cover a broad range of topics from minor daily frustrations to the more profound issues of government, politics and religion. I claim no special wisdom or educational credentials. I am simply a college educated business owner with a wife, kids and a mortgage who happens to have a large library. With all that reading comes the conceit that I might be smarter than the average bear and maybe the world could benefit from my insights. However, having just written that sentence it occurs to me just how vain it sounds so ...I take it back. The world will do perfectly fine without my brilliance. 

  I feel it only fair to declare my biases at the beginning of this adventure.  I am 52, an unapologetic baseball fan, suspicious of anything "big" such as BIG business, BIG government, BIG deals...all are inherently dangerous, a lover of family and being a father, passionate about dogs, especially golden retrievers like Molly.  I also love music that is well written and well performed as it is one of the few things that has the power to bring me to tears.  My personal tastes range from classical through earlier country through the blues and rock and roll and then abruptly end at disco and rap.  Its as if music died with the Beatles..although Ben Folds is clever and there are random contemporary artists that I enjoy. I also much prefer the company of younger people to older ones. On subjects political I lean Libertarian..on matters religious I am Christian.  

So that about covers the biases.  Keep these in mind as you read the many opinionated rants to come.

Above is the very first post in The Tempest, published ten years ago. Amazing and quite encouraging that so much of it is still true, with the glaring exception of the fact that I am no longer 52. Alert readers will notice the smaller font size. My eyes worked better then!

On this Lord’s day Pam and I are leaving for Columbia, South Carolina to spend the week moving Kaitlin and Jon into their first house! Thanksgiving will be a working vacation. But we are indeed thankful for them both and excited to be able to help. Pictures to follow!

The Desire to be Heard

I have been at this for ten years now. 2,300 times I have typed out my thoughts and published them in this space. The Tempest has served as a platform to share my thoughts and opinions with anyone willing to read them. It has been part creative outlet, part opinion column and part confessional. It has also been a sometimes unfortunate public record of the many occasions where I have been wrong about things, sometimes spectacularly. Prior to The Tempest I produced 14 leather bound journals, 19 years of such thoughts which were private, for my own consumption. I’m not sure what to make of it all, what it says about me that I feel compelled to write things down. Part of it is my belief that history is important, the proper understanding of which can be the world’s best teacher. Part of it is the notion that when I am gone perhaps my children and grandchildren will find my recollections instructive, or at the least interesting. I wonder what Dad thought about Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, gay marriage, the designated hitter rule? It’s all in there. Did Pops ever doubt himself? Was he ever afraid? Yes and yes. You can look it up.

But the real reason for The Tempest has become clear to me recently. Human beings all come with various desires baked in to their DNA, a survival instinct, sexual attraction, flight or fight etc. One of the strongest instinctive desires is often overlooked, the the desire to be heard. Look around  and you will see this desire being played out all around you, the quest to be heard and understood. I recognize it in every street protest, every Facebook argument, every long line at the voting booth. I even see it in places of great violence, where all self discipline has been lost. Riots are at their essence a misshapen scream to be heard gone horribly wrong, producing the polar opposite effect in the listener. All we see is the destruction, everything else gets downed out.

I see this desire to be heard and understood in every single divorce I have ever encountered. Although there may have been other reasons, practically every person I have ever talked to about their divorce says something like... He just never listened to me. She never heard me, never tried to understand.

So, I continue to write. For me it’s always been great fun, almost a habit, but always therapeutic. The best part about a blog is that nobody is forced to indulge me. If you aren’t interested in what I have to say, you are free to ignore the post. Also, if you disagree with what I write you are free to register your disagreement in the Comments section. That way, you get to be heard too. The popularity of The Tempest has waxed and waned over the past ten years. There have been times when everything I have posted gets devoured by lots of people, but then there are also times when most of what I write gets totally ignored. You can’t take it personally and I never do. It’s an odd fact that after ten years I still can’t predict with any reliable accuracy which it will be...which is just as well since writing to maximize clicks would be the death knell of this blog. The rule here has always been that I write about things I care about, never what I think the reader might care about. Hence, all my baseball rants.

But, to all of you who have taken the time to read for the past ten years, especially you devoted few who read everything, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Theatre of the Absurd

It’s currently 5:45 AM and my mind is all over the place, even more so than usual. Normally this hour of the day is a time for the sorting out of things, since I always awaken with dozens of competing ideas jockeying with each other for my attention. Surely I am not the only one this happens to, right? Doesn’t everyone wake up to a subconscious run on sentence with sixteen subjects, eleven verbs, and more semi-colons than you can count? Coffee helps, oddly enough. Then, by the time I step out of the shower, things have settled down. For now, its like a monkey juggling chainsaws up there. So, I’m just going to go with it...

My daughter and her husband closed on their first house yesterday. Right after they were handed the keys Kaitlin sent me a text:

So, we wired $**,*** to our attorney today.

I read the line several times and then remarked, “That sentence is quite a thing to hear from the mouth of one’s child.”

Yesterday Pam and I secured a rental on Quantabacook for three weeks next July, giving us five weeks in a row on our favorite lake from July 3 thru August 7. When we shared the news with our kids, the most enthusiastic response came from my daughter-in-law, a girl who had never traveled north of Tennessee before marrying my son. It is a beautiful thing when you discover that both your daughter-in-law and son-in-law have fallen head over heels for Maine just like the rest of us. How dreadful would it be if they hated lake living?

We all love Fall, the colors, the cooler temperatures that arrive after the blistering heat of summer. But eventually the colors fade to brown and everything withers away, leaving homeowners the ridiculous task of gathering the dead. My yard has lots of trees, and for about a six week period which begins the first of November, they all shed their leaves in great annoying waves. As they do you find yourself on the horns of a dilemma. You could ignore it. Why gather up leaves until all of them have died? What’s the point of slaving away out there when as soon as you have finished, you wake up the next morning to a fresh coating of death and decay? Well, your brain suggests to you, if you wait six weeks to get them up they will be a foot deep and it will take you forever! Besides, your neighbors will become annoyed with you every time they walk by your house and see the mess! So, I trudge out there every four or five days and rake them up, stuff them in giant black plastic bags, waiting for the great collection day, when my County comes around and throws all my stuffed bags in a giant truck and speeds them away to the landfill. Henrico County has decreed that my neighborhood has to wait until December the 14th for this blessed event. By that time I will have at least 50 bags. Beautiful.

Ran across this Far Side the other day...

This is a perfect summary of 2020. Certainly, this entire comic opera of a year has all been a fantastic misunderstanding. 

How great is this? Every speaker’s nightmare.

Then there’s this from the Worksgiving celebration at my office yesterday...

Just a little something I like to call the COVID CAFE.

Oh, and Pam made this last night...

One last thing, our church has a new Sacraments protocol in place for the remainder of the year...

So, there you have it. Just a brief glimpse into the theater of the absurd  that is my brain at 5:30 in the morning.

P.S.

Somebody Feed Phil

Yesterday morning I passed through the kitchen on my way out the door. The television was on in the den. As I glanced at it I was greeted with video footage of sucker punches being thrown by combatants at a political demonstration in Washington. I didn’t know who was sucker punching who, just that people were clobbering each other in the most cowardly way possible. It seemed to me the perfect encapsulation of life in 2020 America...the sucker punch. Anger, resentment, and suspicion are a toxic brew leading us to terrible behavior on a larger and larger scale with each passing month. Part of it is our ghastly political climate, but most of it I lay at the feet of COVID. Life with a pandemic hanging in the background of every scene of our lives has had the cumulative effect of bringing out the absolute worst in us.

Pam and I have settled in to a routine first started when we became empty nesters several years ago. When our children lived here we insisted on dinner as a family around the table where no communication devices were allowed. Once they left however, Pam and I became discombobulated by the silence of a dinner table without kids. It only served to remind us how much we missed them. So we improvised. It started when we bought this really super cool coffee table that had a top that raised up to become either a desk or an improvised dinner table. I’m typing this blog at it now...

We started taking our dinners at this coffee table where we would watch something on television together. For the two of us this is a big deal since I would never watch television otherwise. Indeed after dinner is over and I have cleaned the kitchen, Pam stays downstairs with it on in the background and I head upstairs to read. It’s our thing. So this one hour a night we watch stuff on television. In this regard, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, etc. have been a Godsend.

Several weeks ago we found ourselves in a serious show hole. We could find nothing satisfactory to watch. I honestly can’t remember how we found it or who might have recommended it to us, but we have discovered an hour long antidote to 2020....Somebody Feed Phil.

The premise of this show sounds exactly like the sort of thing I would hate. It’s a show about a guy who travels all around the world and eats local food for our edification and enlightenment. Are you kidding me? Sounds painfully boring. The twist is this...the guy isn’t some pompous, nose in the air food critic. He’s not some social commentator who uses food as an excuse to lecture us about our ideological failures. No, the guy is possibly the biggest dork in the history of television who knows literally nothing about food other than the fact that he loves everything. He also happens to be Phil Rosenthal, the executive producer of perhaps the greatest sitcom of all time...Everybody Loves Raymond. Although the show is indeed about truly fabulous and fascinating food from all over the world, what Somebody Feed Phil is really about is...decency, friends, and love. It’s about the mystical power found in a shared meal, how dining together is the great facilitator. Its terribly hard to be angry, resentful and suspicious of somebody who you are eating delicious food with. And boy does this man know how to eat.

So far we have watched Phil eating cuisine from Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Marrakesh, Tel Aviv, Mexico City, New Orleans, Bangkok, Saigon, Venice and Buenos Aires. In each place he travels he finds people who are doing wonderful things. Its as if he is trying to catch people in the act of being good human beings. Along the way Phil gets roped into doing local things that place him in awkward and often hilarious situations made more so by his awkward goofiness and self deprecating humor. But perhaps the best segment of each show is towards the end when he FaceTimes his elderly Jewish parents back in Brooklyn. He tells them where he is and they ask him questions. One or both of his parents end up saying something embarrassingly charming. When Phil calls them from Venice, his Dad cracks...”You hear about the street walker from Venice? She drowned!”

We watch this show to have our faith in humanity renewed. It is heartwarming. It’s lighthearted. Phil Rosenthal doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s just a guy who loves food and loves people. It’s a beautiful thing to see a middle aged Jewish man sitting on a balcony with a Muslim family on the outskirts of Marrakesh laughing and eating together like they have known each other all of their lives.

So, the next time you happen to see someone get sucker punched on television and you need to wash your brain out with something, I suggest taking in an episode of Somebody Feed Phil. Currently, there are 17 of them on Netflix. Pick one. You won’t be disappointed.