Day One of Moving Week

Day one of our nomadic adventure went quite well, thank you. We left Short Pump at 7:40 in the morning and stopped for the first time at 11:45 at our favorite lunch spot in Abingdon, Va. Then we drove for roughly another 4 hours until a gas/bathroom break near Cookeville,Tn. After another hour we arrived at our east-end hotel near the airport in Nashville, 8 hours and 55 minutes after leaving Short Pump. Upon posting our progress on Facebook, I was met with incredulous accusations of being a relentless slave driver by not allowing more bathroom breaks for Pam. Actually, on our second stop in Cookeville, Pam didn't even get to use the bathroom because it was being monopolized by a desperate women with "kidney issues". So, in fact Pam went over 5 hours without a bathroom break, no surprise to me since, in a family of iron bladders, she is the Queen. My family has made over fifteen 13 hour road trips to Maine. Most of those trips were made through the night, straight through with two stops. So starting at an early age my children learned how to "conquer the trip" in fine fashion. Of course, I'm fully aware that most people hear these stories and recoil in honor at the prospect of having to be in a car for more than 45 minutes without going to the bathroom. When I am part of the Dunnevant family convoy of 7 cars headed to the beach every other year, it is an agonizing experience. My dear extended family have the combined bladder strength of a freshman pledge at Delta Tau Chi. We turn a 3 and a half hour ride into a 7 hour tour of the finest bathroom facilities from Richmond to Nags Head. I feel like we should be filming a public service announcement for the American Urological Association. I've come up with lots of names for these trips to help me deal with the frustrating pace with humor and not hostility....The Bladder Battle...The Wee-Wee Wars...The Trickle-Down Trip....When Will We Get There?...it DEPENDS...

Last night we attended a concert at the First Presbyterian Church of Patrick's choir, the Wedgewood Summer Chorale. This was a choir that he recruited and directed all summer for this one concert..just because he couldn't imagine going 3 months without some sort of musical project to work on. One of the songs they sang was a premiere of one of his works called..In Sorrow. Speaking as a parent with no training in the fine art of choral music, it was a stunningly beautiful piece. After the concert, one of Patrick's favorite professor's at Belmont came up to Pam and I to say of that song.."I hate your son! When I was his age, I couldn't possibly have written something as solemn and intelligent as that. Most kids his age have to work through the anger and bitterness in their lives when they write music, but what comes out of Patrick is beauty and joy." He went on to praise us for fine parenting to produce a man capable of such work. It was all quite dizzying...and uncomfortable. We pointed out to him that we had lots of help along the way. Honestly, although musical talent is evident throughout my extended family, I hesitate to credit his gifts as merely a function of genetics. What Patrick has is closer to a freakish, sixth sense of a thing, a divine gift given out at random by an unpredictable God who blesses whom he wishes to bless, and curses whom he wishes to curse. So endowed, it's up to Patrick to make something of it, to God's glory. He is well on his way.

Just about the time Patrick might be expected to get all puffed up with pride with himself, he gets pulled over on his way back to his apartment for having expired decals and a defective headlight!! Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?

Great Campaign Commercials in History...sorta

Now that Paul Ryan is on the Republican ticket, I'm sure that the Democratic Party will revise that classic commercial they ran back during the 2010 congressional elections featuring a Paul Ryan lookalike literally pushing a wheelchair bound senior citizen over a cliff. Paul Ryan's crime? He had offered a plan to reform Medicare, an actuarially doomed social program that is on a path to destroy itself absent changes. For his efforts, he was made the center piece of the Democratic Party's effort to demonize Republicans as anti-old people...the now famous Mediscare strategy. Watch it for yourself..it's awesome!!

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OGnE83A1Z4U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Classic stuff. But, it has gotten me to thinking. How would modern campaign strategists have handled previous presidential campaigns? If there were television commercials, political consultants and Hollywood production capabilities, along with today's standards of decency back, say, 100 years ago, what kinds of commercials would they have produced? Hmmmm...


Vote for Wendell Willkie!! ...Isn't it about time we had a President who will STAND UP for America?







Seriously? Must we elect the ugliest man in America as our next President?  Vote Breckinridge '60




If he's so smart, how come he has a slave-girlfriend?  John Adams is the only man running for President in 1800 with all white children...John Adams, the pure choice for President.






William Howard Taft...an animal hating, tub of lard! The last thing America needs is another FAT CAT in the white house. Vote William Jennings Bryan in 1908!!

Time For A Little Bragging

So, this morning I was planning on vacuuming the down stairs, as is usually my lot on Saturdays. But while I was sitting at this desk catching up on the overnight news I hear the Dyson roaring. Pam then told me that I am not to do anything that might throw out my back between now and Monday morning when we depart for Nashville. Long car rides followed by moving furniture and boxes has been a toxic mixture for me in the past so, she's probably right. But I hate being told I can't do something because I might get hurt. Even when I was a kid I hated it. Mom would say.."Douglas!! Put some shoes on before you walk through the smoldering embers of the trash fire from last night!!" Of course, hearing that was like a green light challenge for me so I boldly plowed ahead, Tony Robbins-like into the smokey pile, whereupon my bare left foot immediately came down on the jagged edge of a broken coke bottle. The inch long scar is still there as a monument to my foolishness. True story.

Speaking of overnight news, Romney picked Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his VP. I don't like to brag, but to some of us, this is not really news. I now call your attention to these words written by your humble blogger on January 2, 2012 as part of my "Predictions" blog...


8. Mitt Romney will win the Republican party nomination, becoming the first Mormon to be so honored. He names Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. In a bold move designed to prove that he does, in fact, have a sense of humor, they arrive at the Republican convention center in Tampa riding two bicycles, wearing white shirts with skinny black ties.


BAMM!!

Moving My Boy To New Jersey

Next week is going to be a beauty. My son will be moving from Nashville, Tennessee to Princeton, New Jersey to attend grad school. Here's how the itinerary looks on paper.

# Pam and I leave Richmond at 8 AM Monday morning headed for Nashville. It's 600 miles and will take 9 hours. Somewhere around Knoxville we gain an hour, crossing into the central time zone.

# Monday evening, we will attend Patrick's final choral concert in Nashville. This time it's a choir he created from scratch at the beginning of the summer. They have been rehearsing for nearly 3 months just for this one and only performance. It would seem that my son cannot go a single season without hatching some musical project, and spending a fortune on sheet music. ( BLAST you Sherri Matthews!!)

# Tuesday morning I pick up the Budget Rental truck and head over to Patrick's apartment. He is currently sleeping in the dining room of a place he has lived for only 2 months. The guy who is replacing him in this place decided to move in two weeks early, so all of Patrick's worldly possessions are stacked in what was once a dining room. He sleeps somewhere in the pile. When  he Skyped us the other night the only part of this chaos that looked even vaguely organized was the wall that contained his keyboard/computer combo. Oh..and the new guy has a puppy. So, here's hoping the mutt doesn't have flees. We will spend this day sorting through the mountains of stuff, organizing, discarding and boxing it all up. All the while we will be meeting Patrick's girlfriend of these past 4 months who we have heard about but never actually met..Caroline. Tuesday night we will all have dinner at Puckett's Boat House, Patrick's employer since graduation in December.

# Wednesday morning three vehicles will depart Nashville around 8 in the morning. I will be driving the truck, Pam will be driving our car, and Patrick will be driving his car with Caroline and his best friend Matt as passengers. We will all have walkie-talkies just in case Patrick's 14 year old VW Jetta dies on the way. On this leg of the journey, we lose that hour we gained on Monday, arriving back in Richmond hopefully around 7 o'clock in the evening.

# Thursday will be a day of Patrick showing his girlfriend the sights of his home town, while Pam frantically prepares for the last leg of the trip, and I go into the office and try to get some work done.

# Friday morning early, which for me would be 6 but will probably end up being 7:30, the same three vehicle convoy will depart Short Pump and make the most dangerous road trip in America...up 95 thru D.C., around Baltimore, across the Delaware bridge and onto the New Jersey turnpike. Mapquest says 5 and a half hours, but with the traffic, multiple accidents( hopefully not involving US) it could be 7 hours. Once we arrive in Princeton, we get to meet Patrick's new roommates who have already moved in. These are two kids he has never met, since he only knows them from Facebook.  Awesome.

# By mid afternoon Saturday, the move complete, and amidst much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth from my wife we will drop off the rental truck in Lawrenceville, and make the death-drive back to Richmond, arriving sometime before midnight. Total miles driven since Monday...2000. Total cost of truck, gas, meals and hotels..$1800.


Why do we do this as parents? Our son is 23 years old. He works, pays his own bills, he is a fully functioning adult. If left to his own devices he could move himself from Nashville to Princeton. Why spend all this money, blow and entire week of production to oversee the event? He didn't ask us to help. So, why do we do it? Part of me thinks we shouldn't insert ourselves into this thing. But another huge part of me thinks.."What, are you NUTS????" He's our little boy. Sure, maybe 15 years have passed since he has actually been our little boy, but it's hard to see him as a grownup. When we moved Kaitlin into her rental house at Wake Forest when she was starting grad school, I remember thinking to myself.." How is she going to make it here by herself, since she is only 6 years old?" We parents are weird that way. Time may march on, but not in our imaginations. These smart, engaging, ambitious adults staring back at us can't possibly be our children...can they? What happened??

"When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?"

My inbred, free born, suspicion of government comes as no shock to regular readers of this space. I'm sure it annoys those of you on the left who can't understand why I could possibly distrust something as wonderfully benevolent as our government since it is the guarantor of our freedoms. Many of you on the right I'm sure are equally annoyed that I lack sufficient enthusiasm for the Republican party's grand plans for constraining that government. Fair enough. But never before have my feelings of isolation and alienation from the political process been more powerful than they are today. A Presidential election campaign will do that to you. But it's more than that. Consider just this one example from last week.


The Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, goes on the floor of the senate and proclaims to the world that he had gotten a call from an unnamed former Bain Capital investor who claimed that Mitt Romney hadn't paid taxes in ten years. Reid then called on Romney to come forward and prove that this accusation was untrue by releasing his tax returns. Well, there you have it...the new evidentiary standard of our justice system...any anonymous accusation is the truth until you prove that it isn't. This giant step forward in our criminal justice system brought to you by the highest ranking Democrat in Congress, a political party who won 30 years worth of elections demonizing Joe McCarthy.

Lest you think that this "when did you stop beating your wife" style of accusation is strictly a democratic party affair, think again. President Obama has never released his academic records from his time at Columbia University. Right wing political web sites have been ablaze with accusations that this "proves" that his grades were awful and that he probably got in to Columbia via affirmative action,or even worse, because he entered as a foreign exchange student, buttressing the foreign born accusations of past years. "Come clean, Mr. President", these sites demand,"and prove that these accusations aren't true. Release your records!"

Make a charge, with the flimsiest of evidence, then demand that the candidate disprove a negative, and if he doesn't, that's ironclad evidence of his guilt.

You lovers of government, you devotees of the grandness of the political process, answer me this...why would anyone of superior intelligence, great accomplishment, demonstrated leadership skills, knowledge of history, and a patriotic desire to serve this Republic ever subject himself and his family to such an unholy degradation? This system of ours which was founded on the notion that after a long and fruitful life of great accomplishment, our best citizens would then feel compelled to serve the country as it's political leaders, has now morphed into a grubby, cess-pool of professional politicians, effete con-men and shakedown artists, who jockey for position and power at the public trough. How else to explain the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Eric Cantor trodding the ground once occupied by James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay?

Political Adds During The Olympics?

Every four years the Olympics invades my house, dominates my television and captivates my imagination. I find myself mesmerized by the sheer size of the thing, the spectacle. There I sit, night after night, totally consumed by breastless women and gangly men swimmers in their hideous techno head wraps, as they slice and dice through the water. They bob, they whirl, they flail and then they lunge for the wall, where some body's heart gets broken. Then there's the gymnastics, those, steel-spined dynamos with the garish makeup, and hands always encased in tape and flowered with chalk. They bounce across the floor, they swing from ridiculous bars, they fly through the air with murderous intent and stick the landings with their size two velcroed feet. All the while, you know that catastrophe is one slip away. These girls live one inch removed from failure. After a successful routine, they stick out their tiny torsos, thrust their arms wide in the air and a triumphant smile replaces what were the faces of cold-blooded killers. The athleticism, the gracefulness, the jaw-dropping brilliance of their practised skills executed in a crucible of pressure with video cameras capturing their every emotion is edge of your seat entertainment. Then, after being plunged and lifted from the agony to the ecstasy of this ultimate competition, NBC breaks for commercials, and all of America is forced to watch paid political propaganda from Obama and Romney.

Ordinarily, during Presidential campaigns, Americans of all political persuasions grow weary of having our intelligence insulted by these 30 second assaults, but we understand that it's an unavoidable fact of our democratic life. After a month or two we all tune them out, or hit mute, or mostly, we go to the bathroom. But during the Olympics, campaign commercials seem especially galling, especially obscene, and if it were possible, even more shameful. On the one hand the Games show us how high and lofty our aspirations can be, politics shows us how low and despicable. If Olympians were like politicians, they wouldn't be showing us what hard work and dedication can do when applied to sports, they would be giving interviews explaining why they needed to win simply because their opponent was an idiot.....

BOB COSTAS: So, Michael Phelps, you're about to compete in the 200 IM final against your long time foe Ryan Lochte. What are your feelings about the race?

MICHAEL PHELPS: Well Bob, I don't know if you know this, but, Ryan is a real jerk. Not only is he a  notorious womanizer, I have irrefutable evidence that he hasn't paid taxes in five years. Is America really ready for a 200 IM gold medal winner who is a womanizing tax cheat?


Both political parties should do themselves and the rest of us a HUGE favor by agreeing to not run adds during the Olympics. The juxtaposition is just too stark, too embarrassing for them..and us.

Cheating At Badminton? Say It Ain't So.

Just about the time I'm really starting to enjoy the Olympics, a cheating scandal rocks the games. No, I'm not referring to the 16 year old Chinese swimmer, Ye Shiwen, who has raised more than a few eyebrows with her man-beating times in the pool. And, no, I'm not talking about some roided up weightlifter from Kyrgyzstan. No, this cheating scandal  is disturbing on an even more visceral level. I, for one, will always remember where I was when I got the news that eight Olympians were kicked out of London for cheating at....Badminton.

Yes, that lovely game we all grew up playing at picnics in the summer has now arrived at the place where people care enough to cheat at it. And the people doing the cheating aren't your Uncle Ted, with a racket in one hand and an Old Milwaukee in the other. No, these cheaters are the best of the best, and in every article I could find about this story, they are described as "athletes". Apparently, the desire to reach the pinnacle of the Badminton universe so corrupted eight "athletes" from China, South Korea, and Indonesia, that they conspired to throw their matches in order to obtain a more favorable opponent in the elimination rounds to come. As you can imagine, this lackluster effort did not go over well with the thousands who had paid good bribes to get their hands on tickets to see first rate badminton. Kang Young Joong, current President of something called the Badminton World Federation, wasn't happy. "Not giving one's best effort in a match does not reflect well on our sport." So, the eight offending Asians are now ex-Olympians, but clearly, the damage has been done. So what is an Olympics fan to do? What am I to think when I watch the long anticipated Croquet finals between Great Britain and Liechtenstein next week? Will I have to wonder whether that handsome man with the silky mallet is doping? And what about the Horse-Shoe Pitching finals this weekend? Are those guys playing with magnetized shoes?

Now, I'm aware that what I'm about to say isn't politically correct, however, I can't help but notice the preponderance of Asian athletes involved in nefarious conduct at these games. What's the deal with the Chicoms anyway? In the 1990's over 60 athletes from all sports tested positive for banned substances. Of that total, 28 just happened to be Chinese...swimmers. So, pardon me for being just a bit suspicious of Ye Shiwen. And when I see any North Korean athlete winning anything, a red flag ( pardon the pun ) starts to fly in my head. Although I guess I shouldn't be surprised by amazing athletic feats by North Koreans, since their supreme leader carded a 38, including an amazing 11 hole in ones in his very first attempt at golf. Since this otherworldly accomplishment was reported by the Official News Service of the North Korean Communist Party, it had to be true. Even though there is presently no evidence of cheating, I will still keep a sharp eye out for any irregularities in what I'm sure will be an all-Chicom ping pong final later this week.