Snow and our Doofus Dog

The view outside the window of my library was beautiful this morning. There was four inches of snow on the ground and it was still falling gracefully and unhurried and at seven in the morning, in stone cold silence. There was no wind. Each flake made its way to the ground at its own pace, in a hypnotic rhythm. At this hour no one on my street had stirred. The kids and the dogs hadn't yet disturbed the landscape. This is the part of snow that I love, the beauty and serenity it brings to the world. Everything stops for a day or so when it snows here. We aren't like people from places like Atlanta who lose their minds in the stuff. We get enough snow every year that we more or less keep our cool. But neither are we like people from Maine or Montana for whom a six inch snowfall wouldn't change a thing. In Virginia, we are still able to marvel at the beauty for a while.

Of course, like everything else in life, there's a down side. Removing all of this snow from drive ways and decks gets harder every year. Driving around in it tomorrow after it drops down to 3 degrees tonight will be a challenge, not for my car necessarily, but from the hazard of avoiding any encounter with those first time four-wheel drive morons who are under the false impression that their rugged all-terrain vehicles render them immune to accidents. I always take way too much pleasure from the sight of some 30 year old suburbanite with his Dodge Durango, ass over tea kettles in a ditch, back wheels spinning like a whirligig! Yes, I'm aware that this isn't a very Christian attitude, but nobody's perfect!

Probably the best and worst part of snow is having a Golden Retriever. Lucy, as you know, is our skittish girl, afraid of almost everything. Everything that is, except snow. I took her for a leash-free romp this morning and she had the time of her life, running, jumping, dancing and rolling around with abandon. Thirty minutes later, she was covered head to toe with what I can only describe as snow burrs, small balls of snow that have gotten tangled up in her fur in all the wrong places. Removing them is a laborious project that is never completely successful so after she goes inside, she leaves a trail of melted snow burrs all over the house. But, it really is worth it to watch the unrestrained glee with which she attacks her time in the snow. It's as if there is nothing in the whole wide world more thrilling than running at full speed in grand circles all over the yard, her enormous tongue wagging stupidly out of the side of her grinning mouth. What a doofus. What an adorable, heart warming fuzzball of a doofus dog we have!

Now, the house smells incredible because there's been a roast in the crockpot for several hours. It's some recipe that some woman posted on Pinterest a while back and it ended up making her a millionaire, or something. It's called the Mississippi Roast, I'm told. It's what's for dinner at the Dunnevant estate tonight. I'll be watching football and eating meat.

Feeling very masculine at the moment!

An Entrepreneurial Failure

As many of you know, exactly a year ago I monetized The Tempest by allowing Google to place ads on my blog. Consequently, I was cajoled by Google Adsense to allow them to run analytics on my first year to determine "strengths and weaknesses" of the advertisement program. Result? The Tempest sucks as a money maker!

To explain just how awful it is will require a combination of literary precision and the ability to explain mathematics, so I'm sorta doomed. But nevertheless, let's plow through this, shall we? Trust me, it's hysterical.

Ok, so in 2016, The Tempest was blessed with right at 60,000 pageviews, in other words 60,000 times somebody saw one of my blog posts and thought, "Hmmm...that sounds interesting," dropped what they were doing and read the post. Cool. Exactly 180 times someone felt so moved to actually click on one of the advertisements running down the side of the post. That means that my click rate is a staggeringly abysmal 333:1. Apparently, that rate is breaking new ground for futility, so bad that even as we speak teams of cyber-analysts are combing over these numbers in amazement seaking to discover the cause of such ineptitude. I'm like two floors beneath mediocre. I've got to aspire to pathetic! To illustrate how stunningly inept the Tempest has been as a profit generator, consider this factoid. The numbers say that I have roughly 180 hardcore readers, that is, those who read practically everything that I post. If these 180 people clicked on one ad per month, my click rate would be 26:1.

There are several explanations for this. First, the ads are terribly unconvincing, unimaginative and boring. Second, my readers are so sophisticated they have evolved past crass materialism. Third, my writing is so captivating, readers simply can't divert their eyes, even for an instant, to glance at mere advertisements. I'm going with number three!

Moving on to more interesting topics. . .it appears that the enfant terrible of meteorology has won the day with his snow forecast. This morning brings predictions of 4-8 inches of the white stuff from most of the TV weather people. DT will no doubt now have a field day with his vitriol-filled I told you so rants. My favorite one from last night was his post that some meteorologist from Norfolk should "be arrested for impersonating a moron." Great stuff!

About that horrible video from Chicago showing four black teenagers abusing a disabled white guy. I didn't watch it. Neither should you. What possible reason would anyone have for watching such a thing? What purpose does it serve? Doesn't reading the story make you sad and furious enough? I get it...people can be cruel and barbaric. But, I'm done with wallowing in human depravity by giving it an audience. Enough already!

Weather Wars

The first snow of the winter is in the forecast here in beautiful downtown Short Pump. I know this because word of it has spread like wildfire on my Facebook feed. It's the lead item on the local news, and local weather badboy Dave Tolleris (DT) has started up his shtick again, calling all of the TV weather folks morons and idiots for disagreeing with him. It's all great fun and a source of fine entertainment all through the winter here. It's works like this. . .

DT alerts his faithful followers of a potential blizzard brewing up in Canada someplace. He warns that although it's early, this one might be off the charts. He warns that it's still two weeks away but not to worry, he's keeping a sharp eye out and all of the TV people aren't saying anything about it because they are either A. idiots or B. gutless weasels. A week out his warnings become even more unhinged and shrill. "We might be looking at 20 inches here people!!" By this time, poor old Andrew Freiden over at WWBT is forced to talk about what looks like a chance at 2-3 inches of snow a week or so away but adds that there are a lot of factors that might diminish the accumulation numbers so he wouldn't lose any sleep over it just yet. DT immediately goes on the attack. Freiden is a hack, even worse, an incompetent hack. Hell, he can't even get hackery right!!

Then suddenly, 48 hours out, a confluence of upper level winds, El Niño, solar storms, and that handiest of all excuses, global warming all mysteriously combine in ways that no one could possibly have predicted to shockingly reduce the forecasted nor'easter to anywhere from a dusting to 2-3 inches. Andrew Freiden always refuses to gloat or even make mention of his deranged freelance tormentor. Meanwhile, DT fans rush to his defense, claiming that even though he missed this one, at least he, like, works hard and stuff. It's must-see internet!! If DT didn't exist, the local weather people would have had to invent him. He makes them look so reasonable and professional by contrast.

So, the Dunnevant house is bracing for what might be. . .nothing or 5-7 inches of snow Friday night into Saturday morning. Actually I hope DT is right on this one. That will just encourage him to go nuts for the rest of the winter. I'm getting the popcorn ready!

...Up The Country

Something weird has been going on with me lately, well, I mean, more than the usual garden variety weirdness that I deal with on a daily basis. Suddenly, it seems, I have become obsessed with the goings on of my cousins who live up the country. These are all people who were a big part of my life . . . when I was ten, but since then not so much. Like all large families, ours spread out and drifted apart so I lost touch with most of them for the longest time. But then three things happened. My parents both passed away,  I went to a family reunion, and. . . Facebook.

When you lose your parents you become more introspective, I suppose. You begin to think about your past, where you came from. Both of mine came from Buckingham County, Virginia. When I was a kid I spent lots of time there and it was a wonderful experience. In my memory, my grand parents were giants. The farm was big and green and full of animals and open spaces. It was also a little scary what with it's oddly painted rooms and dim lighting. Little things stood out. There was always Dr. Pepper in the fridge. My grandmother seemed forever in the kitchen cooking something, wearing an apron and patting me on the head.

Then there were my cousins. There seemed to be a million of them. There was Bootsie, Bubby, Peggy and Joanne, Brenda, Donna and Bertha Sue, Derrick, Michael and Caroline. My Uncle Harry had a couple of boys too but I didn't see them much so I forget their names. One of them was Kent, maybe?  It was a large and impressive brood. For a five year old boy, they were all great fun to be around.

But as life progressed I lost touch with most of them. We moved to Richmond. They stayed up the country. There were family reunions and I went to a couple of them over the years, but reunions were for people like Mom and Dad who never seemed to tire of them. I tried to avoid them most years and honestly can't tell you why, I just did.

But, this past October there was another one and this time, I went. It was amazing. I wrote about it at the time so I won't go through it all again but suffice it to say that seeing them all sparked something in me. When I got back to Richmond, I friended many of them on Facebook so now I feel more connected to their lives. Second and even third cousins now routinely pop up in my newsfeed. I look at the things they care about and the things they are involved in and I feel very proud of them. It's as if when Mom and Dad passed, something in me has longed to find a new link to them. That link is the James River State Park where my mother's homeplace used to be.

Now, Peggy, Joanne and Bubby all have kids with kids of their own. I'm getting to know them on Facebook, which is weird, but better late than never.

Let's Get Started

For the second day in a row, I have taken Lucy out for her morning constitutional in a driving rainstorm. Thus begins 2017. I can either take this as a warning of the gloom to come, or as evidence of God's continually faithful provision. Or, I can reject both of these views and adopt the fatalistic preferences of my atheist friends and simply shrug my shoulders at the rain, realizing that it signifies nothing since we are all abandoned to our own devices on this planet trying to survive this meaningless existence. Nah....I'm going with God's provision.

So, today the new year begins in earnest. The banks are open, the stock markets will be buzzing. I will begin my 35th year in the investment business. That's two years longer than I've been married, seven years longer than my youngest child has been alive. It doesn't seem possible. When I got started, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, Pluto was still a planet, and my friend Al Thomason had the first mobile phone I had ever seen. It sat next to him on the front seat of his truck and was bigger than a bread box. Now, my phone slides neatly into my pants pocket, I can FaceTime my kids with it, and track the movements of all those stocks and bonds up in New York in real time. My wife has now trained our new Alexa device to pay her a compliment every morning. Progress doesn't suck.

But, despite all of the technological advancement, the rain still falls, the sun will still eventually shine, and when the grass grows, you still have to mow it. So, off to work I go. When that sun finally does come out, there will be nothing truly new under it. We may have cooler gadgets, but people are still people, full of incredible good and indescribable bad.

Let's all try to be good this year.

My To-do List

Once every seven years, Christmas and New Year's Day both fall on a Sunday. So, once every seven years, everyone's celebratory clock gets screwed with. Take today for example. Since New Year's Day  was yesterday, a Sunday, today. . .a Monday, everything is closed. Here I was all geeked to get my business year off to a rousing start and I realize that nobody's at work. The banks are closed, the mail doesn't run, the stock market is shut down, even my broker-dealer is closed. To make matters worse, it's pouring down rain and 40 degrees outside. And, to make matters even more worse, my wife just left for work. Apparently, the public schools have had quite enough of all of this time off. So, here I am alone in my house wondering what I will do with myself today. Actually, there are quite a few things competing for my attention...

1. I could take down all of the outside Christmas decorations. But, it's raining and 40 degrees. Not gonna happen.

2. I could give Lucy a bath. Chances of this happening are better than 50/50.

3. I could head over to American Family for a workout, but I would have to fight the resolution rabble, what with their brand new fluorescent spandex outfits, wristband gizmos, constantly checking their pulse rate every couple of minutes. The place will be a madhouse. No thanks.

4. I could spend a couple of hours trying to figure out why our new A.I. device, Alexa, is so much dumber than Siri. I mean seriously, this machine has to be taught everything. If you want her to do anything, or even know anything, you have to download a bunch of what they refer to as skills. Siri already came with skills! Alexa's favorite response to any question seems to be, "I don't understand the question you asked." She does play Jeopardy with you though, so that's pretty cool. Still, in a battle of wits, Siri would wipe the floor with her.

5. I could get on Facebook and troll all of my friends who are Redskins fans, but that would be a mean spirited way to start the year. The 2016 election season sort of sucked all of the mean-spiritedness out of me. I've got nothing left.

6. I could load my Amazon gift card into my iPad and start downloading some books. First on my list will be Hillbilly Elergy by JD Vance.

7. I could use this dreary day to go over to Golfsmith and get fitted for some new clubs.

8. I could see if there's a movie theatre anywhere still playing Hacksaw Ridge and go see it, since Pam would never agree to go with me.

9. I could turn my undivided attention to gutting, then rearranging our dreaded Tupperware cabinet. I bet I'm not the only who has one. You know what I'm talking about...that place where you store all of your rubber/plastic containers in the kitchen. You start out with everything neatly stacked in an organized fashion and within a week every time you open the doors to the thing stuff falls out. Pretty soon it is a crapshow of cups and lids haphazardly stacked together cattywampus style, mocking you. Of course, it never fails that the one you need is always on the top shelf at the very bottom of a tower of two quart casserole dishes and when you finally pry the thing loose, the lid is God knows where.

10. If I were a real man, I would do all of the above. I mean, I've got all day.

I'll get back with you all tonight to let you know how I did.

Paying Better Attention

Everywhere I look around me I see people positively thrilled that 2016 is now behind us. Everyone was so eager for it to be over. Whatever. I didn't think it was that bad, actually. I spent an entire month in Maine on a lake in a beautiful house. How bad could it have been? I made it through the year without any life threatening illnesses or debilitating financial loss. No dear friend or family member passed away. The Cubs finally won a World Series. Not bad as years go, I'd say.

Of course, there was an election. But, the day that an election result ruins my entire year is the day that I need to find some decent hobbies. As Shakespeare once said, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies." or something like that. Substitute politics for philosophies in that line and you will be introduced to a much more rich and meaningful exsistence, I think. Speaking of which, what follows are a list of objectives for the coming year. Notice that I do not use that horrible word, resolutions, it being so larded over with the baggage of failure. No, objectives sounds much more confident and possible.

1. So far, there are two vacation trips on the calendar. There's the biannual Dunnevant/Roop/Schwartz family beach trip to the Outer Banks, and a three week trip to Quantabacook Lake in Maine. To this I want to add a third trip, something unusual and adventurous. Maybe one of those adventure vacations I keep hearing about. White water rafting, or mountain climbing, or swimming with dolphins maybe. Of course, I could opt for real adventure and stay in an airbnb in south side Chicago.

2. This year will be the year that Pam and I get plugged in at Hope church. We've been attending for several months, but at some point you've got to do something besides window shop. We need to get involved, plugged in. Thus will end a thirty year run at Grove Avenue Baptist. We will part as friends, owing each other nothing.

3. This will be the year that I will go on my first ever diet. 2016 added ten pounds to the scales that I cannot seem to shed with exercise alone. I guess my metabolism has finally changed and I can no longer eat six rolls at dinner without suffering the consequences.

4. I will attempt to break a bad habit I have recently fallen into of reading nothing but news and information journals. I used to have a voracious appetite for literature, novels, history etc. but have largely given it up for functional reading, the least rewarding kind. This year will mark a return to pleasure reading. My mental and intellectual health demands it.

5. A conspiracy of events over the past three years has seen me largely give up competitive golf. Two shoulder surgeries will do that. I have missed it. Golf is more than just a five hour walk, it's a five hour walk...with friends. Maybe it's time to retire my old clubs, which are older than my children, and a constant source of embarrassment to my buddies. Maybe I'll take a lesson to help me transition back into the game. I used to carry about a 14-15 handicap. Who knows what it would be now?

6. Above all else, I intend to pay better attention in 2017. It's so easy to drift through life on it's repetitive currents, so easy to miss the beauty that exists in the details. I need to pay better attention to my friends, all the better to notice when they need help. Paying better attention to my wife and kids would allow me the benefit of being able to detect problems before they grow too large and unmanageable, but also help me to appreciate their little triumphs, their ordinary goodness that is so easy to overlook. But, paying better attention to total strangers would be nice too. Are there people headed my way who will need me in 2017, people who I will encounter serendipitously along the way, who will blow right past me if I'm not careful? Maybe it's God's plan for me to meet them and be a blessing. I would hate to foil his plans by my selfish indifference.

Ok, that's about it. Not a grand list, but utterly achievable. I better get to it!

Let's talk about Christmas Loot

Here's what I got for Christmas:

1. Very weird, spider-like device  which holds my iPad at the perfect angle for reading, even and especially when I am enjoying my recliner. This present was purchased by my wife specifically to prevent me from hurting my neck since she is tired of hearing me whine and moan about it. So, this was a selfish gift. . .meant to make her life easier, not mine!

2. The only weakness in my palatial new library is the fact that my desk sits in the middle of the room and therefore I have no way to employ a lamp since to do so would require an electric chord running across the carpet to the plug in the wall, not only an aesthetic disaster, but a safety hazard. So, I got this beautifully sleek black lacquer battery operated lamp which responds to my touch with not one but three intensity levels of soft white light.

3. In keeping with the theme of my continually decrepit and declining body, this amazing massage machine from Brookstone is the perfect gift for any fifty something man in your life. Although it has been universally panned by both dogs in the house because of its jerky motions and low whining sound, I love the thing. I can choose not only intensity level but what type of massage I desire...tapping or shiatsu.

4. Every year I ask for a cool hat and every year I get nothin'. But this year, I got two!!

5. No Christmas would be complete without. . .toys. I prefer those that I can use to annoy the girls at work. This handy rubber band gun, (with ammo clip) and remote controlled rat will do nicely.


Remember, that Christmas isn't about stuff. And just because I got clearly cooler stuff than you did does not change that fact!

Human Nature in the Real World

It's remarkable how territorial are living things. Having two large dogs in the house this past week has been a case study in this phenomenon. When Lucy is on our bed and Jackson tries to join her up there, Lucy is transformed into this very unfamiliar snarling beast. Apparently, our bed is her space, and woe be unto the dog, no matter how lovable and well-intentioned, who dares invade it. Jackson, on the other hand, can be sitting serenely on the sofa between Jon and Kaitlin perfectly chilled and content, but if Lucy shows the slightest interest in joining them up there, Jackson perks upright and will have none of it, as if to say, "These are my people, my sofa!"

On a strangely related note, I have grown weary of the French having invaded and overrun my blog. At first it was interesting, and a little flattering, suddenly thousands of readers from a foreign country inflating my pageview numbers. But after a month and with a new record for pageviews (over 10,000 and counting in December), I have started to resent it. Who are these Frenchmen suddenly interested in the ramblings of low level American blogger who doesn't even like croissants? Are they really people or some computer hacking algorithm run amok?

The point is, dogs and people have a powerful sense of personal space and a strong, innate desire to maintain its integrity. So do nations. This is the reason why I am a strict non-interventionist when it comes to foreign policy. Every time something horrible happens anywhere in the world, there's a constituency in this country for an active, robust response. This response usually involves the use of the American military. Some photojournalist takes a picture of a dying child in Aleppo and suddenly there's a hashtag movement on Facebook demanding we do something. Some African tribal genocide breaks out in the Congo somewhere and people start clamoring for us to stop it.

But, how would we feel if the Russians or the French felt so moved to send a contingent of special forces parachuting into Chicago to put an end to the death and destruction that has plagued that beleaguered city for the last four years. I mean, enough is enough, right? How long can the civilized world stand by and watch a once great city destroy itself? The fact is, we would be enraged at such a presumptuous provocation and rightly so.

Listen, I'm no pacifist. If a country attacks us, the US, I'd be the first to demand our military defend us without mercy. But short of that, short of a direct threat to my country, I'm for staying the heck out of the rest of the world's business. Let the Syrians take care of Syria. Let the Europeans be responsible for Europe. Let the Russians mind Russia. We've got our own problems.

But Doug, but Doug, you say. The Syrian government is murdering its own people!! Yes, they are, and it's a crying shame. There's a boatload of evil in the world. The Venezuelans will soon be starving, many in Bangladesh are impossibly poor, tribal wars featuring unimaginable brutality are raging all over the continent of Africa. Should we go rescue them too? And if we do, are you prepared to obligate the United States government to the twenty year commitment of men, money and material it will take to keep the peace in each of these places? And who will bear the cost of such an opperation? The American taxpayer. You onboard for an across the board tax increase of say 25% to cover all this do-goodery? Yeah, I didn't think so.

So, my advice for His Orangeness on his first day on the job? Resist the siren call of the Empire Hawks. Let's mind our own business for a change.

Christmas 2016 or "It's 2016, What Did You Expect?"

Christmas is a big deal in my house, primarily because it's one of two times each year where both of our kids come home at the same time. For Pam, having our kids home is her Christmas. So, what happened over the last three days will enter into the official record as reason number 2,345,631 why life isn't fair.

Late last week my wife started having cold symptoms. She immediately started taking over the counter medicines and calling on her vast resources of internal fortitude to fight the thing off before the kids got here. I've seen her do this before, steel herself against an approaching illness until some big important event had passed, then collapse in a heap after the last guest leaves. But this time, it wasn't to be. On Christmas morning, she was as sick as I have ever seen her in our nearly 35 years together. She literally could not get out of the bed. It was at this point when my daughter and her husband flipped a switch and turned into the reincarnation of Ozzie and Harriet.

There was much left to do to prepare for the big day. I still had to pick up Patrick at the airport, there was a ham to cook, a giant Greek salad to prepare, and some fancy frosting to make and spread on a gingerbread cake that Pam had prepared for the dessert table at Linda's. Meanwhile, I was upstairs trying to help Pam out of the bed so I could take her to Patient First. She was white as a ghost, weak, queasy and bitterly disappointed. I had briefed the kids on what needed to be done, relaying Pam's suggestion to forget about making the frosting since it was complicated and difficult to get right. At this point Jon pops into the room to inform us that he had looked at the recipe and not to worry...I've got this. By the time I got Pam downstairs and into the car, Kaitlin was slicing up the vegetables for the salad like it was her job. I had followed the directions for cooking the ham with my usual only passing relationship with the facts, thrown the thing in the oven and hoped for the best.

Patient First wasn't very crowded, thankfully so they took Pam straight back. Immediately, the dopey doctor diagnosed her with that catch-all, go-to diagnosis for anyone who comes in with cold symptoms in the winter...bronchitis. Z-Pak was passed out along with a cough suppressant. When we got back to the house, Jon had made good on his frosting boast. . .the cake looked beautiful. The Greek salad would have made Zeus proud, and they were in the process of cleaning the kitchen.

Then, I got Pam back in bed and rushed over to the airport to pick up my son. By the time I returned, the ham was out of the oven, all the presents and food had been packed into the car and we were all ready to head over to Linda's. . . without Pam. Yes, my wife spent all of Christmas Day in bed feeling like the ghost of Christmas past.

The next day, our story takes a positive turn. We had planned for December 26 to be our Christmas Day. Pam woke up feeling much better. She was able to get out of bed, move around like a normal person, and enjoy most of the day. She still felt like someone with a cold, but not like a person with the flu from hell. We had our day together and it was fabulous. I was starting to believe we were past the worst of it. Incorrect.

Yesterday, Pam was back to looking like an extra in Revenge of the Zombie Apocalypse. By 9:30 the two of us were at the WestCreek ER. The doctor there, a real doctor, could not have been nicer or more thorough. He very much doubted the bronchitis diagnosis of our doc-in-a-box quack, calling it a virus instead. What had made her symptoms so much worse on the alternating days might have been the cough medicine she had taken on those days. She might have been having a reaction to the medicine, who knows?  Regardless, Pam's last day with her kids was spent at a hospital.

By yesterday evening, Jon and Kaitlin had left for Maryland to visit his family, and I had taken Patrick to the airport and put him on a plane to Nashville. So, Pam got one day with the kids and two days sick as a dog in bed. Nice.

So, Christmas 2016 won't be making many appearances in any future Christmas highlight reels. On
the other hand, we had one really nice day and it's not like anyone has cancer or anything. Pam will eventually recover, and we will find a way to laugh about all of this one day.

2016. Psshhtt!!!!

Silent Night, Bloody Night

"48 shot, 11 killed over the Christmas weekend in Chicago."

"Fights break out at malls across United States."

"Massive brawls, food-court fights played out at over a dozen malls from New Jersey to Colorado."

It would appear that there isn't much Peace on Earth, and very little Good Will Toward Men out there this year. This isn't Trump. This has nothing to do with Obama or Clinton. This isn't politics. This is a people who have lost our way. To read these stories, to watch the jumpy videos, to hear the unhinged madness is to be profoundly embarrassed for my country. It's as if the emptiness that follows materialism produces the very worst in us. After the presents, after the pile of gifts has been opened, there's a giant "is this all there is?" moment released throughout the land. And this is the result. . .violence, rage, and ultimately. . .death. Silent Night, bloody night. 

ZICAM, baby!!

Yesterday morning about this time I felt as if I had swallowed a box of razor blades. I drank coffee, and popped three Advil and hoped for the best. After a full house cleaning, I started feeling the first wave of achiness that usually accompanies the worst colds. At that point I was resigned to my fate. . .  a Christmas cold.

But then, just like in all of those horrible Hallmark Channel Christmas movies, I received my Christmas miracle! No, I did not suddenly meet and fall in love with a beautiful single mother and her adorably precocious child just in time to rescue her from being evicted by her evil Scrooge of an absentee landlord who actually turned out to be her long lost father. Nope. On the advice of my wife and sister, I went to the store and bought some ZICAM.  Beginning at noon, I placed a dissolvable cherry flavored pill on my tongue every three hours until bedtime. Actually, although the bottle assured me that the pills were cherry flavored, in reality this could be true only if the cherries in question had first been soaked in sour milk and three week old cabbage in a giant pot with the old dirty sneakers of the Harlem Globetrotters. . . but that's not important now. . . what's important is the fact that my throat feels perfectly normal, I no longer ache, and I am ready for Christmas!!

On a completely unrelated note, my blog just set an all time record for page views in a single month (7291), even though there are eight more days left. Vive la France!!

Car Trouble. Merry Christmas to me!

Nothing quite gets you in the mood to celebrate the birth of our Lord like car trouble. Pam walks in the door yesterday after a trip out to see her mother with news of a whining noise coming from her car, the volume of which increased with the speed of the vehicle. Driving around Short Pump it was hardly noticeable, she explained, but when she got up to cruising speed on 295 the offending noise became loud and troubling. Maybe I should look into it, she suggested. So today, I'll be driving it into Axselle's and hoping for the best.

Her car is a 2006(?) Chrysler Pacifica with a mere 122,000 miles on the odometer. It's been a great ride and has given us very little trouble. We aren't big car people. I drive a 2008 Cadillac CTS with 85,000 miles on it. Before that, I drove a Chrysler Sebring convertible until it literally blew up in the parking lot of my office after 190,000 miles of service. I only bought Pam her Pacifica after her previous car bit the dust on a trip to Nashville eight years ago. Yeah, we kinda drive 'em till they drop around here. Hopefully the Pacifica will survive whatever is wrong with her. I really hate to buy cars. Worst. Investment. Ever.

On a side note, my wife put up a beautiful Christmas tree in my library. She decorated it in gold and silver, with ornaments that accent the room. It's gorgeous and I love it. But, there's a problem. She's got the thing hooked up to one of those automatic timer things. It cuts on at exactly 7 am, and shuts down at midnight or something. The thing is. . . every single time the thing switches itself on it scares the crap out of me. I'm sitting at my desk reading and all of a sudden I hear a buzzy snap and light jumps out of the corner. It startles me every time!! You'de think I would get used to it by now. I'm not sure what this has to do with car trouble, but, it's my blog and I can write about anything I choose.

They held the Electoral College vote yesterday and Hillary lost AGAIN!!!! That poor woman. This is getting embarrassing.

See what I mean? My blog. Any topic I want!

Battle Stations, Everybody!

Ok ladies and gentlemen, the week of Christmas is finally here. It's time to brace yourself, brew some strong coffee and gird those loins. There's some major work left to do at the Dunnevant house and only a few days left to do it. A short list:

1. Wrap presents. Our dining room looks like an Amazon warehouse after a conveyor belt malfunction. Boxes strewn about everywhere with piles of large plastic shopping bags littering the floor. Pam assures me that the piles are not haphazard. There is a plan, a method to the chaos. I will not question my wife on this matter. It is December the 19th and I only look like an idiot.

2. Christmas baking. I'm not talking about the romanticized Hollywood version where grandma makes sugar cookies while the grandkids look on with enraptured fascination. No, no. . .at the Dunnevant house its more like a shift change at the Little Debbie plant where management has just announced a production contest whereby whichever crew pumps out 50,000 Christmas Tree Cakes in the next hour gets to keep their jobs. Pumpkin bread and molasses crinkles have to made people and woe be unto anyone who gets in my wife's way. My job? Grab dirty pots and pans and wash them without being asked for once!

3. Set up the Christmas village. Ok, what's wrong with this picture?



I'll tell you what's wrong. Everything. That's what! Three houses have no one home since the lights are out. There's no snow, no Christmas lights, no kids frolicking in the front yards having a snowball fight. There are even Fall leaves in the trees for crying out loud!! If I didn't know better, I would swear this was a Jewish neighborhood where everyone had left town to winter in Miami! This will not do. The Christmasification of the fireplace insert community must begin at once! This will involve several trips to the garage and attic to fetch the winter improvements from their hiding places, and my wife standing on a kitchen chair assembling it all with a perfectionist architect's eye for detail. Her suburban renewal project will be complete roughly 8 hours later.

4. Jackson-proofing the house. In a couple of days my daughter, her husband and their awesome dog, Jackson will arrive. This means that the kid wing of our house must be properly prepared. Every square inch must be cleaned, vacuumed, and fluffed. Barricades must be erected throughout the house to better accommodate pet traffic flow. All dog feces must be gathered from the back yard to make room for the deluge to come. All knickknackery at swinging tail level must be raised to higher ground. Then, and only then then will our house be ready for this guy.





5. Social calendar event planning schedule syncing. It's not easy getting everyone in our large and rambling family on the same page during the Christmas season. But Pam will get it done. All of us will get Google-doc invitations to the various engagements for the week. There's the Christmas Eve-Eve service at Hope, the Christmas Eve service at Grove, the dinner reservation at a restaurant to be named later at some time between 7:15 and 9:00 on one of those nights. We have to pick up Patrick at the airport at noon on Christmas Day and be at Linda's by 2:00 for lunch and presents, then at Russ and VI's by 7:00 in the evening for dessert and more presents.

Feliz Navidad.

How Many Frenchmen Does It Take To. . ?

The Tempest has been overrun by...the French. 

About a month ago I started noticing an odd spike in visitor traffic from France. This happens from time to time, for reasons that escape me, suddenly I'll get 25 pageviews from Norway or someplace. Sometimes it can be traced back to some crack I made in a past blog about, oh, I don't know. . .how ugly the Norwegian Olympic uniforms look and some defensive guy in Oslo does a Google search and bam!! But this French thing is different. For the past week I've had more pageviews from France than any country including the United States. So, I have started going back through recent posts trying to figure out what has attracted all of this Gallic attention.

As my kids will tell you, I'm not above throwing shade on other countries by rolling out the occasional xenophobic joke. Of course, the French are a target rich environment for such humor what with their perfumes, cheeses, and taste for. . . how shall I say. . .the effeminate. Maybe I had used that great old joke about the advertisement which appeared in a NRA magazine describing a French infantry rifle from WWII for sale.."In mint condition. Never been fired. Only thrown down twice!" Or maybe I had made some crack about their lack of athletic prowess..."What do you call a Frenchman in the knockout stages of the World Cup? A referee." Or maybe I had cast aspirations on the French character with that old classic, "Why wasn't Jesus born in France? Couldn't find three wise men or a virgin" But no, I have searched my recent blogs in vain for anti-French references. So, why in the name of Joan of Ark has my blog been viewed over 3000 times by Frenchmen in the last month?

It's probably some robo-phishing scammy sort of thing. The Tempest was quite popular with the Russians a while back, but after a few months it faded. Nothing like this French thing though. It's kinda creepy and I'm not sure why. I mean, I've got nothing against the French. They loaned us Lafayette, after all. . . and there's the whole Statue of Liberty thing. And, who doesn't like French Fries? Still, when I see all of these French pageviews of any blog I write that has anything to do with Trump, it gives me pause.

Ok, ok...one more. What happens when a Frenchmen jumps off a bridge in Paris? He is declared in Seine.

My 2016 Photograph

Here's an interesting challenge for this frigid Friday morning. What one photograph would you pick to summarize the year 2016?

Now that virtually everyone carries smart phones around, we all take a million pictures. I'm old enough to remember being very judicious about picture taking. You would only take pictures of the really important stuff of life. Then you would take the rolls to the drug store to have them developed. Several days later and at considerable expense you would get them back only to discover that half of them were either out of focus or over exposed. It was always a crapshoot. Now, it's all a digital miracle where each picture is instant and photoshopped to make you look ten years younger. But. . . if you had to pick one, just one from your 2016 pile to immortalized your year, which would it be? For me it's easy. . .

No pictures of Trump or Clinton. No photographs of stuff. This is the one for me. It's the moment that I will remember thirty years from now if I am still living. It's the feeling, really. I'm at peace with my world. The day was sunny bright. It was mid-morning. I was fishing. Lucy was fascinated by it all. Up the hill behind me, Pam was probably sitting on the porch drinking her coffee, reading a book, when she glanced up and saw us down on the dock. The fact that she thought to take this picture tells you everything you need to know about her. She knows me, knows what makes me happy, understands the power of the quiet moment and appreciates those moments and the eternal power they possess. So, she took a second to snap this picture, to capture it all.

I didn't see it until much later, after we had returned home. It was an incredible moment. The adjustment back to our real life had not been going well when I first saw it and for one glorious minute, I was transported back to that magical moment from that magical month in Maine. I smiled. I smile every time I look at it. This is the thing I will recall about 2016 when I have grown too old to walk around outside without a shirt. . . the beautiful feeling of peace and contentment in the warm sun on that dock in July, 2016.

What about you? What's your picture? Share it with me. I'd love to see.

How About You?

 I'm holding my loved ones a bit closer this Christmas. How about you?

- I flip through a slideshow of photographs of the victims of Sandy Hook on the fourth anniversary of their murders, see the precious, shining faces upturned and full of mischief and try to imagine the pain and emptiness felt by their parents.

- I watch a video and read the story of the people in Aleppo, the barbaric, wholesale slaughter being inflicted on that ancient city. I try to imagine what the suffering is like. I ponder the despair and simply cannot fathom it from the comfort and ease of my fine library.

- I hear the story from a colleague about one of his clients, 62 years old, suddenly stricken with cancer, dead in six months. The loss changes my friend, rearranges his priorities. Why kill yourself working and saving for some distant retirement when all of this can be taken from us in an instant?

- I think about my friend, about my age, whose beautiful and spirited wife fell ill after their return from a Greek vacation. A doctor's visit revealed cancer, tumors everywhere. I see the pictures of the radiation treatments beginning, with chemo to follow, their lives turned upside down in the blink of an eye. I try to imagine what must be going through my friend's mind and I simply cannot because thus far in life I have not had to endure such a thing.

So, I plan on holding my loved ones a bit closer this Christmas. How about you?

Surviving Trump

Another day, and my Facebook feed is once again filled with the horrified screeds of my liberal friends, predicting all manner of cataclysms about to befall us at the dawn of the Trump administration. It's like reading The Guardian in the days leading up to the Brexit vote, only more unhinged. If my friends are to be believed, my country is about to be plunged into the dystopian abyss. In the terrifying days to come we should expect the four horsemen of the apocalypse to storm into every city, town and hamlet throughout the Republic, bespoiling our drinking water, polluting our air, going house to house dragging illegal immigrants through the streets behind them, all the while forcing every recently married gay couple to return all of their wedding presents. While we're all distracted by this spectacle, Trump will appoint some knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing evangelical to the Supreme Court, force every foreign dignitary visiting Washington to stay at his Hotel, and shutter the offices of The New York Times, CNN and MSNBC. And all of this on day one of his administration, angels and ministers of grace protect us from what he has planned for day two!!

In their defense, most of the folks most worried about Trump are of an age where their only memory of a modern President is Obama, who most of the time, especially between his election and first inauguration, was lavished with unvarnished praise by the press. They've never experienced a truly adversarial press openly hostile to a President, elect or otherwise. Those of us a bit older are used to it, having seen similar treatment of both Ronald Reagan and George Bush. I remember quite well the horror stories from the New York Times about the catastrophies to come after the American people rejected their choice, Jimmy Carter for a mere, B actor. Yep, we were headed straight for hell and whatever happened was our own damned fault for rejecting their advice!! With the election of Obama in 2008 we were congratulated for ushering in a post-racial America. All would be sweetness and light now that we had ushered in the new progressive century!

But now, suddenly, just like that. . .the press has rediscovered it's roll as truth speaker to power. No longer will they cheerlead the new President. Now it's time for war. The Fourth Estate no longer has much of an appetite for long, loving puff pieces about the incoming chief executive. The Atlantic will probably not run any sappy love poems to our new Messiah.

Granted, Trump makes it easy for them. For an angry, rejected press he is a target-rich environment. My personal optimism level for the success of his presidency lies somewhere between skeptical and resigned. As I have written a million times, I am convinced that the man is the most ill-suited for the Presidency by way of temperament and experience of any other in my lifetime. So why am I not as hysterically terrified as my liberal friends? It's simple.

Having lived 58 years in America has its advantages. For one thing, long ago I was disabused of the notion that any single man, any single President had the power to bend this unruly country to his will.  Our founders were, in fact, geniuses in this regard. Presidents are confounded at every turn, much to the frustration of his partisans. There's the Machiavellian quagmire of Congress. There's the stubborn, entrenched bureaucratic engine that powers government at the various departments, agencies and bureaus. Their employees are neither republican or democrat. . .they all belong to the government party and they have never lost an election! They survive every administration, and Trump's will be no different. There are the lifetime appointed judges sprinkled throughout the judiciary who will be hostile to him. Even our most masterful Presidents, like FDR and Reagan, were only able to ram through parts of their agenda. Ours is often an unwieldy beast of a government, unresponsive and plodding. When your guy loses, this is a great and mighty comfort.

So, to my liberal friends, let not your hearts be troubled. We will survive Trump. And when we do, how about we finally give my fellow Virginian, James Madison his due?

So Geeked!!!

Huge day yesterday. Almost finished my Christmas shopping, and booked a cabin for our Maine 2017 adventure. To celebrate, Pam made homemade clam chowder for dinner. While I am getting excited about Christmas, words simply cannot express how geeked out I am about Maine.

Our first extended Maine vacation was last year on Hobbs Pond. Four weeks. We had never stayed more than ten days before. It was fabulous, so much so that we decided that we would go the extended route forevermore. This year it will be only three weeks because 2017 is also the year of the Dunnevant/Roop/Schwartz biennial beach week at the Outer Banks and. . . well, I have to work at some point.

The place we chose is called Loon Landing. It sits at the water's edge of a lake we haven't visited yet called Quantabacook. It's about 20-25 minutes from Camden, so a bit further inland. Since this year we won't be having the kids joining us, we didn't need such a big house. This one has room for six, but is much smaller. The cool thing though is the fact that the main house by the lake (the deck is five steps from the water), is where the master bedroom is, while the guest rooms are in a guest cottage about 100 feet behind. Lucy is going to love this place since it features a ten foot wide sandy beach, a rarity in Maine, which provides easy walk-in access to the water. Although, knowing her, she will probably insist on running down the dock and jumping in since that's way more fun!

Once we picked out Loon Landing, it took us an hour to decide between two options for when! It would have to be either June 9-30 or September 8-29. This is where my wife's amazing eye for detail made an appearance. Somehow she found some site that published the daily temperatures of the area for every single day for the past three years. Immediately, she started spreadsheeted the thing in her head:

Pam: Ok, in 2015 for the three weeks in question, for the June option there were 14 days in the 70's in June and only 13 in September. In 2016, those numbers were flipped. However, the low temperatures for June were a bit lower than for September. As far as rain is concerned....

This went on for quite a while as I stared at her, mouth agape in wonderment. Ultimately, we chose the September option. It won't be as crowded, and if it's been a hot summer and it's a cool September in Maine, maybe we will be tired of the heat and won't mind it so much. On the other hand, there was a day last year in September where the fine folks in Camden, Maine were treated to a rare day in the 90's. So, it's a crapshoot.

I am already anticipating a potential problem. The first week in October at Loon Landing is wide open. . .

The Right Stuff

I was only four years old when he became famous by orbiting the Earth in Friendship 7. I remember nothing about it. But later in elementary school, I would learn about John Glenn courtesy of a Weekly Reader article. Along with millions of my fellow grade schoolers, I became obsessed with this hero and determined that I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. Eventually my desire for a career of space travel waned, but my admiration of John Glenn remained. Yesterday came word that the great man had passed away at age 95.

When I was in college, I was introduced to someone who would become one of my favorite writers, Tom Wolfe, by his great novel, The Right Stuff. I read the thing twice. There he was again, front and center. . .John Glenn, hero. He ran for President in 1984. It didn't work out. Accomplished, gallant, heroic, intelligent John Glenn, Marine Fighter pilot in WWII and Korea with 59 combat missions to his credit, insanely brave test pilot, first American to orbit the planet and only then becoming a U.S. Senator, lost to Walter Mondale, a waxy career politician with a history of accomplishing absolutely nothing, proving that politics doesn't reward virtue.

John Glenn was a throwback to what the founders imagined public servants would be. After a life of accomplishment, uncommon valor, and character proven by the crucible of life, a man(or woman) would then proceed to dedicate the last chapters of their lives to serving the republic by going to Washington to bring their proven talents to bear solving the nation's problems. No longer. Now, the preferred path seems to be, go to law school, get a job working as an aid for some congressman for a couple of years, then maybe take a couple more years hacking for some lobbyist so you can check the private sector box off the old resume, then cash in your chips with the party by running for Congress, all before your 35th birthday. The Wrong Stuff.

A few years ago I read a biography of the greatest hitter who ever lived, Ted Williams.  The Splendid Splinter didn't come off well. Although a gifted athlete, Williams was a classic jerk. Even though I knew this about him, it was still disappointing to have it confirmed. But, in the book I learned that when Williams was flying combat missions in Korea, he served as the wing man for. . . John Glenn.

From the time I was a 5th grader until yesterday, John Glenn has never disappointed.

A President Who Tweets

I haven't had much to say of late about politics in general or Trump in particular. It's not because nothing of interest has happened but rather because I'm not sure what to say. How does one respond to a President-Elect who tweets? The whole scene right now is in many ways incomprehensible to me, there being no precedent for it. Can you imagine what would have happened if Franklin Roosevelt had Twitter??..."I will crush the Imperial Navy of Japan and repay the yellow, shanty-eyed nips for this dastardly attack on Pearl Harbor, this I can promise you. Sad."

Although our soon to be President has done plenty that I disagree with, and even more that baffles me, he has done one thing that I LOVED. When he tweeted out his public shaming of Boeing for the cost overruns on Air Force One, I was jubilant. Let me explain.

Now, I am fully aware that whenever His Orangeness spouts numbers, one always has to take it with a pound of salt, and maybe in this case he didn't have all the facts. Stunned, I know! However, I cannot possible describe for you the visceral joy it brought me to hear somebody, anybody in Washington finally actually LOOK AT A BILL AND QUESTION IT!!!!!! When the government buys anything, it always ends up costing ten times what the projections were. It's like inefficiency and incompetence are baked into the cake. (See: $30,000 toilets, Pentagon). Say what you will about Trump, but the man has a knack for bringing huge complicated projects in on time and under budget, (It helps when your bribe and favor currying budget is large and liquid). Still, if this guy finally puts an end to the bloated, featherbedding, bill padding ripoff that is government contracting, he will have done this republic a huge favor and we will be forever in his debt.

Of course, that assumes we still have a republic by the time he's through. . .but that's a subject for another day. But, for me, the Boeing tweet has been the high water mark of his bizarre first month as President-Elect, with the selection of Mad Dog Mattis as Secretary of Defense a close second. Literally everything else has been a cross between The Twilight Zone and Celebrity Apprentice.

Its a Wonderful Life. . .a review.

Watched It's a Wonderful Life for the fiftieth time last night after a day of tree decorating. Just a few random observations about this classic film:

1. Early on life wasn't so wonderful for twelve year old George Bailey as we see him working for the local pharmacist (hello child labor!), and getting slapped around by his drunk boss (assault and battery).

2. On the bright side, how tough could life have been for a kid growing up in a town that had such an awesome frozen pond to slide around on with a shovel for a sled??

3. How great was Lionel Barrymore as Potter? Best line? After George gives that passionate defense of the Building and Loan and its role as lender of last resort of the lower classes to the board of directors, Barrymore bellows, "Sentimental hogwash!!!"

4. This is the sort of film that all the smart kids in your film studies class hated. I can just hear some patchy bearded guy wearing a beret and sporting a Che Guevara t-shirt opining,"This film was a disaster for the ethos of urban life what with the horrible precedent set by Bailey Park!! Besides, Pottersville was a far more diverse and culturally interesting place!"

5. When Donna Reed, wearing only a bath robe with the moonlight shining on her face is asked by George Bailey how old she is. . .who on earth believes that she is 18??

6. Everytime I watch this movie I wait for it, the epic tight shot of George and Mary sharing the telephone as they talk with Sam Wainright from New York. He's trying to get George in on the ground floor of plastics, but no one can take their eyes off of George and Mary actually falling in love before our eyes. I'm not sure Hollywood has ever produced a sexier, more evocative scene before or since.

7. Favorite line of the film for me comes after the suicide attempt at the bridge when they are drying out around the wood stove. Clarence reminds George that they don't have any need for money in heaven. George deadpans, "Yeah? Well, it comes in pretty handy down here!"

But, as wonderful and enjoyable as this picture is, once again, I wasn't around for the credits. First of all, I know how it ends but mostly, Frank Capra needed a better editor. Way. Too. Long. Pam asked a rhetorical question as we watched, "I wonder why nobody has ever made a remake of this movie?"  The answer is, people from Hollywood today much prefer Pottersville to Bedford Falls. So, if any big shot producers from tinsel town ever happen to stumble onto this blog. . .PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't remake this film!!!!!!

My Assistant

Long time readers know of my unfortunate past history of making people cry over the telephone. As I have matured over the years I have shown great improvement in this area. It's actually been years since some home office service flunky has provoked me into a sharp-tongued, sarcasm filled rage, I'm proud to say. With age has come some measure of restraint. Not so with my highly skilled, no nonsense administrative assistant, whose name I will withhold, (but her initials are Kristin Reihl).

Yesterday it was time to place my yearly order with Harry and David. I send out thank you gifts to my best and most loyal clients, and also a few family members. I turned over this always frustrating job to Kristin because that's essentially what I do...anything unpleasant winds up on her desk. Why she continues to stay in my employ is a mystery. Anyway, I walked into her office while she was thirty minutes in to this task and she had already dispatched two female incompetents, and was now mixing it up with a male manager. He was getting both barrels:

Kristin: You're not giving me an answer, I need an answer! Why, if It says free freaking shipping are you charging me $10.34 for shipping? What about my problem do you not understand??

I slowly backed out of her office supremely grateful that I don't work at Harry and David. Thirty minutes later I cautiously returned when I saw that she was no longer on the phone. Her back was to me but she somehow sensed that I had entered:

Kristin: Do not say anything to me right now or I will say something mean to you!

Once again, I backed away. Kristin is a redhead. You know what they say about redheads. . .when they warn you that they might be mean to you, they're not messing around. I scampered back to my office. Ultimately, the order was placed sans the offending shipping charges. No doubt, several service employees with barely understandable accents were in tears at Harry and David headquarters. Kristin had still not calmed down completely..."It was like talking to complete idiots!!"

So, a few minutes after she left, I also headed to the parking lot to leave. She always parks right beside my car. This is what I found:

Yep. This is her briefcase containing her laptop computer and other valuables sitting innocently on the pavement. I took a picture and texted it to her with this carefully worded comment: " Hey sunshine, forget something?" Luckily, she hadn't driven all the way home but had stopped at Trader 

Joe's. Of course, all was well. . . But now I had a very valuable photograph and an embarrassing story to tell at her expense. I then told her a bald face lie: " I promise not to put this picture on Facebook and I probably won't write a blog about it."

The Carrier Deal

Let me begin this blogpost with an apology to any of you who hate economics. I do too, actually. But, every once in a while something happens which forces me, kicking and screaming, to examine the murky world of tax and spending policy, subjects about which I am certainly no expert. So, much of what follows may sound contradictory. Welcome to the counter intuitive Fun House ride at the Washington DC fair!

The big story yesterday was Trump "saving 1000 jobs" at an Indiana Carrier factory, jobs that had been slated for outsourcing to Mexico. There was the President-Elect standing in front of jubilant Carrier employees, already making good on campaign promises, fifty full days before taking office. Details of the deal he made with Carrier were not released, but tax relief of some kind was offered to the company as an inducement to keep the jobs stateside, no doubt. Thus began a firestorm of thoughts and feelings inside my head. First, it's almost impossible not to be happy for the men and women whose jobs got saved. Imagine how terrible it would be to be entering the Christmas season knowing that you were headed for the unemployment line in January? So, lots of happy thoughts. But then I start thinking about...the deal. Reports were that tax incentives worth nearly $800 per job were given to Carrier. Here's where the murky starts.

Our nation has both a unbalanced budget problem and a national debt problem. That means that the $800 in taxes per saved job not paid by Carrier will either have to be paid for by someone else or will simply make both of the aforementioned problems worse. The someone else in my last sentence might end up being Carrier's competitors like Trane, York, or Bryant. I wonder how those three companies felt hearing the news that their number one competitor just got wheelbarrow's full of cash from the government? I suppose the lost revenue from this deal could be made up by simply cutting spending by the exact amount of the lost revenue...but who am I kidding? That conservatives would be hailing this as some sort of victory for America is odd since what it looks like to me is government putting its awkward thumb on the scales, the very definition of crony capitalism. Many of the same conservatives gleeful over this deal were furious when Obama did the same thing for Solyndra. Granted, Carrier is a profitable company which makes stuff people actually want to buy, whereas Solyndra did neither, but the principle is the same.

Soon another head scratcher will come to pass. When Trump announces his infrastructure stimulus plan, I assume that conservative Republicans will approve the plan no matter how much new debt it piles on top of the 20 trillion we already have. Suddenly, government spending money it first has to borrow will be ok again. My son will once again ask me why the national debt is such an awful thing since, "nobody on either side is talking about it." And I will be left with nothing to say except, at some point 20 trillion dollars in debt has to be serviced and you keep adding to it and one day it's going to wipe you out. To which, big government types counter with, "Oh yeah???" as they crank up the money printing machine at Treasury.

It's not that I want jobs to go to Mexico or anyplace else for that matter. But how is it a good thing to bribe someone to do something with money you don't have? And where does the bribing stop? If you decide as a country to erect barriers to the free flow of capital, you ultimately wind up with...Cuba, right?

But, what do I know?

I Hate Banks

I hate banks. I haven't always hated banks. They used to be almost exciting places to visit. When I was a kid, I remember how awesome it felt to take my very first paycheck to the F&M bank in Ashland to make a deposit. I felt like such a big shot. I think the teller even gave me a lollipop. But now, although they still hand out lollipops, it's just not the same.

I am part of the problem since I am every banker's dream. . .the ultimate loyal customer who takes whatever they decide to dish out because the prospect of switching banks is so daunting, I don't dare even consider the prospect. When I first got married, I opened up my first grown-up account at Central Fidelity Bank, largely because they had a branch right down the street, and I didn't live in Ashland any longer. For ten years or so, Central Fidelity was perfectly fine. Then suddenly, for no discernible reason, my perfectly fine bank was purchased by a high roller outfit out of Charlotte, Wachovia. The transition was annoying but uneventful, and the new boss was promising the very, very best in modern banking technology. Before too long I discovered what this meant...monthly service fees. When I protested, they offered me a chance to do away with annoying fees forever if I signed up for a bank issued credit card. I did. For several years this worked well, then I discovered that in banking the word forever has a highly ambiguous, nuanced meaning. You see, my checking account fees got replaced by a raft of mysteriously appearing credit card fees. About the time I had had quite enough of this shell game, Wachovia started settling a series of Federal investigations into their activities. . . everything from cashing a ton of unsigned checks to serving as the number one launderer of Mexican drug cartel money! Then the financial crisis of 2008 brought them to the edge of insolvency. One minute my bank is the fourth largest in the country, the next minute they get bought/bailed out by Wells Fargo. Not the sort of thing that inspires confidence.

So, that's how I wound up with the stagecoach guys. At first, all was well. The employees at my branch of choice were friendly and helpful. I eventually refinanced my mortgage with them, and opened a line of credit. My kids opened their accounts with them. My business checking account is with them. Sure, I read the papers, I'm aware of the recent controversies regarding shady dealings and the huge settlement with the government. But hey, if I bailed every time my bank got into trouble, I would be on my twentieth bank by now. No, no. . .I'm loyal.

How do they repay me? A while back I noticed a service fee pop up on my business account. This account serves as a holding company basically, a place where I have random paychecks directly deposited so I can pay business related bills via bill pay, their automatic service. It's the most boring account I have. Not much happens there. I might actually write three or four checks a month. The average balance usually hangs in the low four figures. So, why on earth were they hitting me up for $14???? The friendly and helpful banker explained to me that there wasn't enough activity in the account. Incredulous, I looked her in the eye and with as much restraint as I could summon replied, "So, wouldn't that lack of activity mean that your bank had less to do to service the account? Why is this a bad thing?"

I know what you are all thinking. Why don't you close all of your accounts and find a better bank? Simple, when I add up all the automatic deposits, the fixed bill paying strategies I have employed at my bank, to unwind all of that financial architecture would be a headache which would require a name more menacing than migraine. My bank knows this full well. So, they exact their $14 pound of flesh from me every month. The bastards.

Maybe one day I'll snap. Some dim bulb at the home office will come up with a new fee for, I don't know, walking inside and using a teller, and I will flip out and in a fit of rage rip every dime from their greedy grasp. Then the problem will be finding a fair dealing bank to do business with, one that I don't have to drive halfway across town to.

Grrrrrrrrr......

The Christmas Marker

Thanksgiving is over with. Christmas is coming. Soon there will be snow. Days are getting shorter and the weariness of winter awaits. I struggle with Winter. The holiday season is very much a mixed bag for me. The weeks in between Thanksgiving and Christmas bring an unsettling melancholy. Always has. I can't explain it because I've never understood it myself. Of course, this year Castro is in hell, so that should help a little!

I don't know very many people who have been blessed with good fortune like I have been. I own a successful business, I married an amazing woman, have two wonderful children and enjoy the benefits of a large and loving extended family. For the most part, my health is good and nobody I love is suffering. In other words, I have absolutely no good reason or room for melancholy in my life. And yet...along with the Christmas greenery, it comes.

The odd thing is. . .I love giving gifts, look forward to Christmas morning much like I did when I was younger. Only now the excitement comes with the giving, not the getting. But always just above the din of activity and the sound of laughter hovers a gnawing sadness. Why?

Perhaps it's because Christmas serves as a marker, a milestone. It's the end of something, the curtain closing on another year, the sense that you have fewer Christmas celebrations left than you already have enjoyed. The new year brings with it another birthday, yet another marker on the road of your life. The question festers in my mind. . .Am I using the time wisely? Am I taking advantage of all of this good fortune or am I simply marking time. What has been the result of all of my consumption? To what end do I work? What is the purpose of my spending?

Reading through this, it strikes me that I sound like the writer of Ecclesiastes. It's not that bad! I guess it goes back to something my Dad used to say..."have you been a blessing to someone today?" Maybe during the holidays when we focus so much on all that we have to be thankful for, I start to notice all the people who don't. The panhandlers on Broad Street weigh more heavily on me when it starts to get cold outside. The injustices of life seem somehow more unjust when I'm buying expensive gifts. The more delicious and abundant the feast, the more the hungry creep into my consciousness.

I'm 58. Using my parents as examples, I've got roughly 30 more years left on this Earth, 20 at full physical capacity. Every Christmas I spend much of my resting moments pondering how I will finish the race. What will I accomplish over the last third of my life? I desperately want it to be in a flourish. But more importantly, I want to be a blessing. I want to have earned my place, to have been worthy of the blessings I have been showered with. Maybe the melancholy comes with the realization  that I'm falling short and running out of time.

Thanksgiving 2016. Perfect.

The reviews are in and by all accounts, Thanksgiving 2016 was a raging success. The ministrations of my wife carried the day to sublime heights, earning her a record setting 16th consecutive Martha Stewart award. From a table decoration display that rivaled anything ever seen in Southern Living to a meal planning and space utilization scheme that was not only flawless but had NASA engineers scratching their heads in fascination.

Twenty souls sat down to eat around 2 o'clock. I stood to read George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation. Those two hundred year old words resonated with all of us, at the same time charming and transcendently true. Then, Pam had placed a verse of scripture at everyone's place setting with the theme of thankfulness. Each of us took a turn reading them aloud. Beautiful. Then Grandad said the blessing. These pre-meal readings took all of five minutes, but added immeasurably to the day. It calmed all of us, prepared us to be properly thankful. It was a comforting moment, a time for reflecting on our amazing good fortune as a family.

The meal was a triumph. Turkey, ham, an array of casseroles featuring cranberries, sweet potatoes, and green beans. There was stuffing, corn pudding and mashed potatoes. The dessert table was heaped with pies of every description. There was hot coffee and cider. If you fully participated from appetizer table to dessert tray, the caloric intake per person would have surpassed the weekly consumption of many of our fellow human beings from Sub-Saharan Africa. But, this was no day for Western guilt. There was a football game to play.

This year's tilt ended up being a battle between age and youth. Yours truly, my son and son-in-law, vs. my brother in law, and two of my high school aged nephews. Mixed in each lineup were our two family dogs, Lucy and Jackson. On the first play from scrimmage, Jackson was flagged for multiple penalties when he took the legs our from under his master, sending him sprawling. Not only clear pass interference, but unnecessary roughness as well. He was sidelined for the remainder of the contest. But Lucy never left the field for even one play. While it was unclear which team she was actually playing for, she was always in on the action, and particularly fond of being in the middle of any huddle that happened to form! The rugged game came down to an overtime Hail Mary which deflected off of a tree limb into the waiting arms of Mick, sending the "home team" to a crushing defeat.

After everyone left we all got in our pajamas and waddled around trying to summon the requisite energy to rouse ourselves from lounging on the sofa. For a couple of hours we had no success in this effort. Eventually Patrick and Sarah coaxed me into playing one of those New Age board games whereby no one plays to beat any other player, but rather, everyone works together to accomplish some grand project or public good( in this case, saving the world from rampaging diseases ). Clearly, this game has the ulterior motive of dulling the competitive instincts of Americans in favor of coorperative behavior. Sadly, perhaps because of my strategy of saving America first, we failed and the world was overrun with four plagues. Bummer.

By this time we were ready for turkey sandwiches and a movie. Lucy and Jackson were ready for the deep, peaceful sleep of the righteous. It was a perfect day.

A Safe Place?

I've been using the term parallel universe a lot lately, mostly because I'm half convinced that we are living in one. Somewhere out there is the actual universe where America is going about its business like it always has, where say, Jeb Bush has just won the election and is busy assembling his new cabinet to the collective yawns of the press. His Vice-President. . .Nikki Haley goes to see Hamilton and nothing happens. That sort of thing.

Just a few days ago there was another PU moment when Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel called a press conference to announce his intention to defy any attempt by Trump to alter his town's status as a sanctuary city. Without an ounce of irony and with an amazingly straight face, The Godfather actually said that his city would always and forevermore be a safe place for immigrants. Let the ballsiness of that statement sink in for a few minutes, then continue reading. I'll wait.

It is astonishing that a mayor of a city which has experienced over 600 murders in 2016 alone and a full 3000 shootings would choose to describe his city as safe for anybody!! Consider this. . .there have been more Americans killed in Chicago during the five years of Mr. Emanuel's mayorship than have perished in freaking Afghanistan...a lot more. Oh, and American soldiers have been slugging it out in that hell hole for 14 years!!! And yet, we send National Guard units to Iraq and Afghanistan but never to Chicago.

I understand that there is a Chicago company doing Hamilton. You know what I would love to see? I would love for Rahm and his wife to go to see that terrific play one night. After the thrilling performance, when the gifted cast comes out for their curtain call, I would love to see one of the actors step up, acknowledge his presence, then read him a prepared lecture with the line, "Mr. Mayor, we are the diversity of this great city and we are afraid that you are not willing to protect us!!" Just once, wouldn't it be grand to hear a liberal politician get lectured by some show folk?

But, enough with the politics. Thanksgiving is upon us and I am feeling magnanimous. There will be twenty of us around my table. In a PU where it is no more difficult to host a hundred than twenty, I would love to have one of those infinity tables filled with all of the people who I am so thankful for. There would be my extended family, the Dunnevants, the Dixons. There would be good friends from church and the office. There would also be the random souls I drive past at intersections in Short Pump panhandling. Maybe the cast of Hamilton. Barack and Michelle would sit right across from George and Laura Bush. I'd even have Donald and Melania here, although they would probably be at the kids table. After the meal, Frank Sinatra would drop by for an impromptu concert. How cool would that be?

The Great Poop Bag Scandal

This falls into the catagory of "Life's Little Annoyances." It may seem trivial what with all of the political upheaval running rampant throughout the land, but often, it's the little things. Am I right?

Ok, so. . .if you have a dog, you go through these things faster than Donald Trump through the Miss Universe dressing room.

Because I have yet to successfully teach a dog how to mount a toilet, the poop bag is a staple of any dog owner's life. With Lucy, sometimes when so moved, she can go through three of these babies in one day. The things work like a charm. You just drape it around your hand, reach down and pick up the offending deposit, then reverse the process, twist the bag a few turns and tie a knot in it and you're done! But, there's a problem.

Each roll is held together by an insidious piece of clear tape. If you look closely, you can see the shine above. This is no ordinary tape, no. . .this tape could hold the space shuttle together. First of all, it never fails to take me at least three minutes to find the leading edge of this tape so I can begin the arduous task of peeling it back. Once found, it's another couple of minutes of slow, painstaking progress before the first bag is freed from its cellophane prison. Then it happens. The newly freed poop bag unwinds itself revealing a giant rip right down the middle. Every. Freaking. Time.

We can put a man on the moon, but we can't figure a way to package poop bags in a manner that doesn't sacrifice the first bag of each roll! Come to think of it, Pam bought the giant package which advertised clearly...BONUS! 20 Free Bags. Well, not exactly. It's more like 8 free bags, since the first of each of the 12 rolls will be worthless. It reminds me of the famous hot dog bun scene in Father of the Bride. I'm thinking that the big shots in the poop bag industry know exactly what they are doing.

So, sure, in the grand scheme of things this poop bag scandal might not seem as important as Hillary's server, but in the real world where real people live, this is just one of many annoying, indignant straws which when combined with thousands of others eventually break the camel's back. Who knows? Someone fixes this poop bag snafu, maybe people chill out a little, and we don't end up with Trump.

Christmas List 2016

Lately the pressure has been mounting on me to come up with a Christmas list. For my family this means going to our Christmas Central Google Doc page thing and broadcasting my selfish desires for  the entire clan to inspect. To help me in this task, my Christmas lists from the past ten years or so can be pulled up from the archives. It has made for very interesting reading.

First of all, I never get the hat. Seems like every year I ask for a cool hat, but I never get one. What does this say about me and my family?? Do they not feel comfortable in their ability to determine what cool is? Perhaps. So this year I added the modifier, "befitting someone of my age and station in life." We'll see.

I did notice that this year's underwear request specified a waist size slightly larger than previous years. The reason for this remains a profound mystery.

I also keep asking for a Bacon-of-the-Month Club membership, to no avail. I understand that they are quite expensive. Perhaps so, but considering the ridiculously luxurious gifts I have bestowed upon my children, one would think that they would step up to the plate in this area. Besides, the more bacon I eat, the sooner they might enjoy their inheritance.

Something new was added to my list this year...a remote controlled rodent for pranking purposes. (I have somehow lost my old one.) After a while you get tired of fart machines, pocket sized air horns after grace at family meals, fake dog poop and vomit on the floors. It's time for something new.

So, there you have it. My Christmas list for 2016 is up a full six days before Thanksgiving. Now, get out there and do your best!