My Family

This is my family. Every other summer all of us vacation at the beach together, and this is the picture we took from this past summer's trip. This isn't all of my family. My brother and all of his kids and all of their kids weren't there, which would have added another eight people to this picture. The family photographer is Matt, the guy standing all the way to the left. Great photographer, really slooow sharer of photographs, which explains why I'm just now getting this picture, three months after the fact. 

The first year we did one of these family beach vacations was the year when my son Patrick was about the size of Evelyn, the adorable red-haired baby in this picture. It seems astonishing to me that it was 26 years ago. I had two good shoulders back then. 

Oh yeah, in case you haven't heard, I've been scheduled for surgery on my right shoulder for November 4th. That's a classic good news/bad news thing. The bad news is that I'll have to endure a second shoulder operation and all of the wretchedness that such a procedure visits upon its victims. The good news is that Anthem will be presented with the bill and will not be able to hide behind my deductible as their excuse not to pay, and, I will not be able to rake leaves this fall. That job will fall to my son and his able assistant, my son-in-law when they are here for Thanksgiving. I'll be the one taking pictures and posting them on this blog along with snide comments. If Patrick brings his girlfriend, maybe I'll put her out there too since I wouldn't want to be accused of sexism. What about my daughter Kaitlin, you ask? No, she's a teacher. She'll be grading papers.

The Knife Awaits

The Doctor swaggered into the examining room glancing down at a chart, shutting the door behind him. "How you feeling, partner?" 

"Better, actually." I answered. "The shoulder hasn't been as painful for the past couple of weeks. That's good, right?"

"It's always good when it stops hurting." 

My shoulder surgeon is my kind of doctor, direct and to the point and doesn't seem to like hearing himself talk. "Ok, your MRI shows two small tears in the same tendon, one on top and one under the bottom, and several bone spurs. The good news is that it doesn't look as bad as your left shoulder was two years ago, but the bad news is, at some point you're going to have to have it fixed. I would suggest you getting this done before the end of the year. That way you won't have to have another MRI and since you've probably met your annual deductible by now, your insurance will pay for all of it."

"But, I might could just live with it for a while if it's not hurting, right?"

"You can live with it as long as you like partner, even if it's hurting. I'm just telling you that those tears aren't going to fix themselves, and if unattended will probably become bigger and harder to fix the longer you wait. But, hey...suit yourself."

That's about as high pressure as this guy gets. Another reason why I like him.

Driving home, memories of my last shoulder surgery came back in vivid black and white, since color would have been too optimistic, the pain, the ice packs, but mostly the torturous rehab. By the time I got home, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.

But this morning has brought with it a new perspective. In this I have been aided by this girl, who decided to come downstairs to sit with me while I write this. Perhaps she has sensed that I was troubled by something and couldn't be trusted downstairs all alone!

       "OK, what are you whining about now??"

With Lucy's help I have realized that things could be much worse. It's not like I was given a cancer diagnosis, for goodness sakes. Yes, it's shoulder surgery, my second in three years, but you know why? Because I live an "active lifestyle" which means I'm not a couch potato. I do stuff, physical stuff and that's very good. But sometimes when you work out a lot and do things like swing golf clubs, lift weights and take out the occasional frustrations with a trip to the batting cage, it messes with your joints once you reach a certain age. So what am I going to do...give up having fun? Not a chance. So, if this sort of thing is the price I must pay in order to stay in shape, then so be it. I'm a long way from being ready for a sedentary lifestyle.

So, sometime over the next 90 days or so, I will submit to going under the knife. Being right handed, this one will seem more inconvenient, but hopefully since I fully know what to expect it won't seem as difficult.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

1000 Posts??

My Blogger stats inform me that this is my 1000th post. Somehow, since I started the Tempest nearly five years ago, I have come up with something to write about 1000 times. That's not the same thing as saying I came up with something interesting to write about 1000 times, rather that I wrote...something. The stats also tell me that I have written slightly over 600,000 words, or about 3000 more than can be found in War and Peace, only without all of those miserable Russian peasants. Before the Tempest, I kept handwritten journals, fourteen years worth of them. So, I think it safe to say that I'm obsessive about writing and perhaps a little crazy on the subject of having an opinion and sharing it.

One advantage of writing down every cock-eyed idea that crosses your mind is that there's a record of your idiotic ramblings. To some of you that might sound like a liability, but for me it's more like a history book, a manual that allows you a place to look up your mistakes. It's humbling but very instructive to read something you said four years ago that ended up being very wrong. It reminds me of my limitations. Of course, a journal or a blog also documents your prescience, a more rare phenomenon.

This blog has also served as a place I have come to argue with myself, to flesh out what I think about things and why. Sometimes, I'm sure, that is a source of frustration to the reader, since a writer who contradicts himself isn't always reliable. But, there's nothing I can really do about that. I'm an inconsistent thinker, when I think at all!

But 1000 posts? How did that happen? 

When Do You Stop Worrying About Your Kids?

This past weekend saw Pam and I accomplish something that is the dream of parents everywhere. We have now sent both of our children off to live in a city that has experienced 1000 year floods! First it was the Nashville flood of 2010 when a sudden rain storm inexplicably stalled directly over that city one afternoon dropping a deluge of water that quickly overwhelmed downtown sending guitars and banjos floating into the streets, (not really, but it should have). My son was there, 9 hours away, leaving his parents with nothing to do but worry.

Now, it's my daughter's turn to horrify us with video's of real restaurant chairs bobbing up and down in a raging river barreling down a street just a couple of blocks around the corner from her apartment building. They have no power and a tiny creek close to their building was transformed into the Nile River by the relentless rains that have been coming down for three days. Once again, our job has been to worry and sigh heavily when she doesn't respond to one of our texts within thirty seconds. 

So, here's the deal. The answer to the question,"When do you stop worrying about your kids?" is...never.

The End of Sports?

Watergate whistle-blower, Deep Throat, famously advised, "Follow the money."  Investigators of great business, political or personal failings will agree that Deep Throat was right. Money might not be the root of all evil, but it's certainly in the top three. The Bible refers to the corrupting power of money as the "deceitfulness of riches." The deception part comes with the knowledge that nobody gives the stuff away and if they did, all of us would be standing in line with our hands out.

I have a famous aversion to big things, big business, big government, big box stores, primarily because  I'm suspicious of how they got that way. Generally speaking, the more money any organization swims in, the greater the probability of corruption. Of course, I normally make an exception in my case, since the amount of money I have is always just a few bucks less than what I need. But, hypocrisy aside, as a general rule, huge amounts of cash can and often leads to problems...big problems.

Witness the meteoric rise of the DFS industry in America. In less than five years companies like Fan Duel and Draftkings have gone from meager start-ups to the single biggest spenders on television advertising in the United States. In 45 states, these two daily fantasy sports leaders, are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars from online players. How is this possible when online gambling is mostly illegal in this country? As usual, it comes courtesy of a loophole in the law which carves out an exception for fantasy sports as a game of skill, not luck. By the time our glacially slow government gets around to closing this loophole, it will be too late because the five year old industry is already too powerful and too rich to be outlawed. So, what's the problem? Well, nothing if you subscribe to the belief that billions of dollars of new wagers and tens of millions of new wagerers won't have any negative impact of sports in America. However, if you line up more in the deceitfulness of riches camp, you might worry that eventually with all this new money on the line, somewhere, someday, somehow somebody is going to start fixing games. Some may suspect that games may already have been fixed, we just haven't discovered it yet.

Maybe I worry too much. Maybe all of this betting on games and players is a perfectly harmless form of entertainment with virtually no social downside. Maybe Gamblers Anonymous will experience a decline in the need for their services in the coming years. Maybe lower paid professional athletes won't be tempted to accept duffle bags of cash to fix games. Maybe the introduction of online fantasy gambling will help Major League Baseball attract more and younger fans. I mean what are the odds that a brand new 6 billion dollar sports book business will have any negative impact on sports if America?

I got 20 bucks that says that within two years the New England Patriots will be accused of changing play calls to manipulate the point spread. Wanna bet??

Another Classroom Becomes a Tomb

There's been another mass shooting in America, this one at the Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. At this hour there is still much uncertainty about the facts on the ground, much that we don't know. The shooter is dead, along with ten of his victims. Many others are in the hospital.

The President made a statement soon after the news broke. He looked much the same as he did a few years back when he stood in the same spot after the Newtown shootings, heartbroken and powerless. Sadly, it's after these catastrophic visitations of evil when our President is most compelling. The pain on his face, the exasperation of knowing how very little power he has to prevent the next one, strips him and all politicians of their conceit that they control events. What remains is empathy and simple humanity. Obama was never better than he was in his remarks to the nation at the Gabby Gifford funeral. If you've forgotten, Google it, easily the best speech he has ever made, beautiful and inspiring.

There are stories coming out of Roseburg of great courage, of an ex Army man who was shot seven times trying to protect others. There are reports that the killer demanded to know the religion of his victims before administering their sentences; if they answered Christian they were shot in the head, if they answered anything else, they were shot in the leg. Those reports aren't fully confirmed, so probably the less said the better. For me, it matters not what the killer's motivation was. Anyone willing to do something like this is simply a psychopath and unworthy of explanation. If he had instead asked his victims what their favorite color was before executing them, would that have made the act less reprehensible?

There are calls for tougher gun laws, although at this point we don't know how the killer obtained his guns, whether legally or illegally, consequently it isn't known whether tougher gun laws would have made a difference. There are calls for more and better mental health services, although the killer's mental health history isn't known either. There's nothing wrong with calling for either of these things. It's natural for people to appeal to the law for a remedy when such a tragedy happens. It feels better than throwing your hands up in despair.

There will be much prayer in the coming days. There will be vigils and candles, much talk about spiritual things, even more about the Constitution. Presidential candidates will give us their views. Celebrities will chime in with hashtag campaigns. 

My biggest regret is that the killer is dead. I want to see him face the families of his victims. I want the justice system to rigorously pursue his life and influences, to help all of us come to grips with his motivations. Then I want him to spend the rest of his miserable life paying for his cowardice. Yes, vengeance is the Lord's. I just wish he would share it every now and then.

While the rest of us debate and argue, the families of the dead begin the rest of their lives this rainy morning with a hole in their hearts that nothing will ever fill.

Looks like a Joaquin Weekend.

Hurricane Joaquin has at this hour been upgraded to a category 3 storm with sustained winds of 120 mph as it barrels its way towards the mid-Atlantic coast. If only Donald Trump were President. There's no way he would allow a storm with such a Mexican-sounding name into the country. But we're stuck with Barack Obama who'll let anything in, so we all better batten down the hatches.

Looks like we can expect anywhere from 3-8 inches of rain between now and Saturday night. Depending on where this thing makes landfall, it might even be worse. Regardless, I'm facing three more days of rain soaked dashes into the street so my terrified dog can do her business. With high winds and sideways rain, we can also expect Lucy to spend the next 72 hours with her face buried under Pam's arms.

Most likely, Pam and I will use these next three days to clean the house and binge-watch Longmire.

At some point over the weekend some climate scientist will say that hurricane Joaquin is the result of global warming. No reporters will ask the logical follow up question, "Wait, I thought the eight year absence of hurricanes was the result of global warming?" But, if I've learned one thing over the past decade or so about climate science it's this...my questions are always stupid and the answer is always, "climate change."

On an unrelated note, which of the following things is harder to believe...that some of the most conservative guys I know are now speaking fondly of a Russian head of State, or that the Chicago Cubs will be playing post season baseball?

So, Vladimir Putin takes over the roll of Middle East power broker, drops a few bombs in Syria, and suddenly hard core conservatives are longing for a leader with a spine? Umm...does anyone remember that Putin made his bones as a ruthless KGB dirtbag? Listen, I get it that Putin is playing our guy for a fool and all. I understand that he always seems three moves ahead of our very French-looking Secretary of State. But, take a breath people. Maybe this will prove to be a blessing in disguise. Maybe it's true that God looks after orphans and idiots, and our clueless administration's ham-fistedness will result in Russia getting drawn into the never ending abyss of violence and retribution which is the modern Middle East. I, for one, can't think of a country who deserves it more than the former Soviet Union. How about we let the Russians waste billions upon billions of dollars and sacrifice their blood and treasure trying to keep those barbarians from killing each other for the next fifty years. We've been there and done that, and except for the occasional Nobel Peace Prize, we've got nothing to show for it. Have any of you noticed how beloved we are in the region, how so many people over there really appreciate what we've done for them? Yeah, me neither.