My Sister is Retiring

My kid sister is retiring after over thirty years as an Educator in Henrico County. I say “kid sister” when she’s actually two years older than I am, but being the youngest child grants me such prerogatives. In our family there was Donnie and Linda, the older two kids, then a six year gap before Paula and I came along, so it was always “us” and “them.” So when one of “us” retires, I can’t let it pass without comment.

Paula has always been the one I followed in school. My teachers would stare at me after the first week of class each year with a puzzled expression that comes over people when they think that something can’t possibly be true. They would finally manage to ask, “Um, you couldn’t possibly be Paula’s brother, could you?”

So, my entire school life consisted of being a disappointment to a long list of teachers who were hoping for another Paula. What they were hoping for was a student with bright intelligence, a Puritan work ethic, a keen grasp of the concept of decorum and discipline, and at least the ability to stay in their seat. With me they got the anti-Paula.

There was never a question growing up as to what my sister would become. She was teacher material from the beginning. But it also didn’t surprise me that she would end up teaching in the Talented and Gifted program. Her imagination and ability to never be boring made the TAG program a perfect fit. She ran roughshod over boredom. Her take no prisoners mock trials were the stuff of legend at Byrd Middle School. Let’s just say that if the Supreme Court would have allowed Paula’s 7^th graders to argue the case, we never would have been saddled with Roe v. Wade.

I’ll never forget the first time she asked me to come in to speak to her class. I say “never forget” in a purely generalized way since I can’t actually remember what I talked about. The thing I do remember was watching my sister in front of a room full of smarty-pants, over-achieving, West End children of privilege, in complete command. Those kids were eating out of her hand. She was large and in charge, and I was made to feel like a rock star simple because I was Ms. Dunnevant’s brother…whooooa!

After nearly thirty years of educating Henrico County’s finest within an inch of their lives, she was recruited into the fund-raising spider web of the Henrico Education Foundation, proving that she could have done anything she wished with her life. She was just as comfortable bossing around CEO’s in their boardrooms as she was with the kids in the classroom. She was never intimidated, she was the intimidator. No matter where Paula worked her real job title should have been Secretary of Getting Stuff Done. Or maybe, Secretary General of Get Out of My Way, I’m Busy Not Taking Shortcuts.

In short, Henrico will greatly miss her imagination, intelligence, creativity, work ethic, and discipline. Not to mention her world class sitting skills.

Congratulations, Sister!

The Worst Kind of Cruelty

Whenever I am watching television I am always a little bit nervous. You never know when it might happen. I’m always on edge, waiting for it, hoping that it won’t come. Just about the time you’re all wrapped up in whatever it is you’re watching and have let your guard down, it happens. You see one of those ads from the Humane Society.

Watching one of these commercials is about the most horrible experience imaginable. It takes me to such a dark place of the soul. To see innocent, beautiful animals treated in such a way rips a hole in my heart and I can hardly bare to watch. Why is this?

Needless to say, there are actual human beings treated far worse each and every day all around the world. This world has become a Petri dish of cruelty, with new forms of inhumanity mutating practically every day. But when I watch a news report of some mindless terrorist attack or a school shooting I am saddened, but mindful that on some level it is the result of a decision that was made by someone based on some screwed up ideology or pathology. But at least there was a reason. When I see an abused dog in one of these ads I see an animal that didn’t get to make a decision. His tragic circumstance is the result of evil neglect. His fate sealed by a cruel master.

For me it goes back to Genesis. When mankind was given dominion over the animals it came with responsibilities. We were entrusted with their care. They depend on our provision and hope for our mercy and when we offer them neither, a place inside me erupts with righteous indignation of the sort that used to start wars. It’s so strange that I can find it in myself to forgive almost any failing in my fellow man, but I can never bring myself to forgive Michael Vick.

A friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook yesterday of a Golden retriever that appeared on her front porch yesterday morning freezing to death. She looked to be about ten years old, beautiful but in bad shape. I wanted to drive out there myself and take her home with me. I finally had to delete the picture or I would have.

I would be a much better person if I was as moved to righteous indignation at the suffering of my fellow man.

The McDonnell Indictment

Last night I went to bed in Virginia and this morning woke up in Illinois.

Virginians aren’t used to having their top elected officials brought up on corruption charges. We generally don’t elect the Rob Blagojevichs of the world, although the jury is still out on Terry McAuliffe. So, it was quite disturbing this morning to thumb through a 43 page Federal indictment of our former governor, Bob McDonnell and his wife on corruption charges.

This case presents me with quite a conflict of sympathies. On the one hand, I am predisposed to believe politicians capable of practically anything. On the other hand, the only thing more suspicious than a governor driving a Ferrari is a Federal investigation of a governor driving a Ferrari, politically motivated prosecutions being more numerous than flowers in the spring and all.

I met McDonnell once back when he was Attorney General. He had given a speech at some business meeting I attended and I chatted with him afterward. He seemed nice enough. I voted for him when he ran for governor, but reading through the indictment I am again reminded why I have become so cynical about politicians. They just aren’t very…smart.

Are the McDonnells corrupt or merely naive? Was there a quid pro quo relationship between the numerous gifts received from Mr. Williams, or just cluelessness and horrible judgment? Who knows?

Either way, it’s not a happy day for the State of Virginia.

Meteorology means never having to say, "I'm sorry."

Everybody makes mistakes. No one is perfect. All of us have missed the mark from time to time. But Good Lord, what in the world has gotten into the weather forecasters in Richmond, Virginia?

There’s this guy who works out of his basement in Chesterfield who seems to have started a meteorological cat fight amongst the profession of late. As far as I can tell, this guy made his bones from one forecast ten years ago where he called for a huge snowstorm a couple of weeks before it happened and instantly developed something like a cult following. He has a web site and a presence on Facebook from which he routinely trashes all of the local TV weathermen, calling them every name in the book for having the audacity to disagree with his forecasts.

Well now, after his initial prescient call way back when, he has turned into the proverbial stopped clock of forecasting…worthless 99% of the time but right twice a day regardless. Practically every one of his big predictions ends up being a bust, and yet I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anything approaching an apology from him when the local TV guys he constantly rips end up being much more accurate. It has become a fascinating spectacle to watch him make some outlandish outlier forecast, then start calling his competitors names. Ultimately, more often than not he ends up making an unprofessional, boorish fool of himself. And yet, he still remains in the business, meteorology obviously being the kind of business where accuracy is neither required nor expected.

Now that I think about it, the weather forecasting gig is an awful lot like politics. Apparently, being consistently wrong is not a career killer. John Kerry can spend his whole life being wrong about every foreign policy question this country has faced over the last fifty years and what happens? He becomes Secretary of State.

So, if the past is prologue, the mean little dude from Chesterfield will probably end up running NOAA before long.

Football vs. Downton Abbey

To any younger men who read this blog who might be wondering what it’s like to be married, I have an informative anecdote to share. It happened last night and in many ways perfectly illustrates what it means to be married.

My wife and I have a standing date with the Fort family on Sunday nights at 9 o’clock. They come over around 8:45. Sometimes it’s just Leigh Ann, sometimes Katy shows up and on occasion Gordon makes an appearance. Pam makes a huge bowl of parmesan cheese popcorn. We stand around chatting for a few minutes until the clock strikes 9, then hunker down to watch….Downton Abbey. For years it was “24” but that show ended and we needed another excuse to consume large quantities of popcorn slathered in butter and cheese, so thank God for Downton Abbey.

Well, last night presented something of a problem, a conundrum, a sticky wicket as it were. The San Francisco v. Seattle game was only in the late stages of the third quarter, with local kid Russell Wilson and the boys down 17-13 and about to stage an epic comeback about the time when the curtain went up on Downton. What to do?

Being married, one of the options of “what to do” was not telling the ladies that the travails of Anna and Mr. Bates would have to wait. That would have been about as popular as a story line featuring a gay love scene between Tom Barrow and Mr. Carson. No, instead of incurring the wrath of three women, I simply dialed up the ESPN app on the old smart phone and tried to keep up with two of the most incongruent simultaneous story lines imaginable. One minute I’m wondering why if Julian Fellows wanted to introduce a black jazz singer into the show why he didn’t cast one who could actually sing, and the next minute Marshawn Lynch was running over his own teammates on the way to a 40 yard touchdown. Five minutes later I’m about to start crying over poor Anna’s post rape torment at precisely the instant when Russell Wilson hits  Jermaine Kearse with a 35 yard scoring strike. Talk about your cognitive dissonance? You try fighting the urge to fist pump a winning score while Anna is asking Miss Hughes if she can move back into the big house? And poor Bates is left totally confused because he has no clue why his sainted Anna suddenly doesn’t want anything to do with him. How, pray tell am I supposed to celebrate the Seahawk victory with this sort of personal tragedy unfolding on the screen?

So, my young, single guy friends, this is just one of the many balancing acts you must learn to perform if you want to be married. There is a time and place for everything, and when it happens to be the same time, only the seasoned professional husband can hope to succeed

Speechless

My dad doesn’t talk much anymore. He listens and understands, just doesn’t say much. So when my sister Linda sat down with him Friday night for their weekly “Book Club” reading session, she was surprised to hear him say in a very serious voice, “I have a problem and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Linda, the nurse, immediately began to worry that he was about to tell her of some new physical problem. Since she knows every detail of Dad’s condition, she couldn’t imagine what this new ailment could possibly be. Then sadness flashed onto Dad’s face as he explained that he felt that any day now my daughter Kaitlin was going to ask him to perform her wedding ceremony this July, and he knew that he couldn’t possibly do it, but he didn’t want to “let her down.”

Linda’s email was at once the saddest yet most beautiful thing I’d ever read. Here was my 89 year old Father who can barely speak above a whisper, a man grown so unstable on his feet that he requires assistance at every turn, yet he has been fretting for who knows how long about letting my daughter down by not being able to officiate her wedding.

Even though Dad has, in fact, officiated every single wedding in his large and expanding family, the last one was many years ago, long before the unrelenting march of time began to silence his booming voice and sap his strength. We had kicked around the idea of having him record a prayer before hand that could be amplified through a sound system at the ceremony, since he may not be strong enough to even make it to the service. Kaitlin and Jon have already asked a dear friend, Gordon Fort, to officiate. But, I suppose in Dad’s mind he assumed that he would be expected to come through for Kaitlin. The very idea that Dad could possibly think that he was capable of letting any of us down is a crushing thought. But the fact that he has been worrying about all of this silently speaks volumes about his noble and dignified spirit.

None of us needed any further proof of our Father’s innate kindness. None of us have needed any additional reasons to love him. None of us have needed any more evidences of the profound sweetness of his soul.

But now we have them.

A Customer Review of West Broad Village

There’s this development in the middle of Short Pump called “West Broad Village.” It used to be the site of a beautiful meandering farm surrounded by a white fence, with lush green pastures dotted by cattle. When my kids were toddlers they would always point at them, squealing with delight, “COWS!!!” Now I mostly point at the ridiculous traffic pouring out of the place and scream in frustration.

They started building this planned community the very second the old farmer finally agreed to sell the land, unfortunately just before the mortgage crisis broke and dried up all the credit. For awhile only ten percent of the place was out of the ground making it look like the dumbest idea ever. Many of we Short Pumpians were worried that we would be stuck with this still-birthed mountain of debris and hollowed out shells for years. There was worry about colonies of rats breeding in the rubble that would soon branch out into our neatly trimmed communities. There was dark talk of crack houses sprouting up. All of that overwrought suburban angst proved wasted after the financial markets recovered and the money started to flow again. Now it’s nearly completed, and we have a fully functioning, er, eh, well, actually I’m not sure what we have honestly.

The developers seemed to have wanted to build a neighborhood that looked 100 years old. Row houses with tiny little front yards no bigger than a large coffee table would line both sides of the street with fake gas lamps lighting the way. The rear of these houses featured concrete alley ways where the upwardly mobile young couples could park their two Tahoe’s in their big garages. But these alleys don’t have dumpsters or rats so I’m not sure they even count as alleys. To make the place even older looking some genius suggested making all the streets out of brick, which looked great until 6 months of traffic caused them to settle all catawampus-like so now you need a Tahoe to make it through the place.

Mixed in amongst the rows and rows of townhouses are businesses of all descriptions, just like a real town might have, if by “all descriptions” you mean “restaurants.” The website says, “West Broad Village is designed for people who want to live, work, shop and play within the community they call home.” And this community of chain restaurants, health clubs, wine lofts and cigar lounges is all crammed into 115 acres along with the 2000 or so hipsters who live there.

This is called the New Urbanism by it’s proponents. But, it comes with some very Old Urbanism problems, namely…traffic. The problem seems to be that there are a ton of people who would never dream of living there but nonetheless are crazy about Tex-Mex. That was Pam and I last night. We head over to Chuys for dinner and spent literally 10 minutes inside the parking garage sitting still while an overmatched Asian woman tried to make up her mind whether or not she wanted to park. It didn’t help that she was driving an SUV and it also didn’t help that she didn’t know how to drive. The poor thing had no chance. At one point she even got out of her vehicle to plead with the ten of us in line behind her to all back up so she could more easily maneuver her Escalade into the space recently occupied by a Honda Civic. I was smugly proud of myself for maintaining my composure( thanks to the two beers I had had earlier at Mona’s Cigar Lounge!), when suddenly Pam reached across and violently engaged the horn. “Get back in your car and move along woman!” Pam was hungry and not in a mood to be trifled with. Ten minutes later we found a spot on the roof, then had a lovely meal of way too much steak burrito and you’ve got to be kidding “Chuychanga.”

The developers essentially wanted to relocate the Fan into Short Pump while leaving the crime down on the Boulevard. The problem is, they forgot to bring the Fan’s charm during the move.