What Happens Next.

In the summer no one thinks about the snow. Sitting at a feast table no one recalls the famine. In the season of peace no one listens for the drums of war. No one except me. I am always moved on to the next thing. And the next thing is always different. It is tiresome to receive a gift of new shoes and only being able to imagine them with holes. But, my gift has benefits. A run of bad luck or ill health is always about to end. It's always on to the next thing. If life seems bright and grand, it's about to turn wicked and dark. But a sick child is about to recover, the long miserable winter is about to give way to spring, crushing grief is about to melt into tender memory. It's what happens next that matters. Always... what happens next.

Gardening in Suburbia

There's nothing I enjoy quite so much as getting dirty working in a garden. I have my Dad to blame. By the time he lived in a place large enough to accommodate a garden, I was the only male child still living at home, so I became his garden slave at the ripe old age of 10. Even though I whined about my servitude and begged for emancipation, over time I grew to enjoy it. Now, I live in a lovely suburban neighborhood in Short Pump, Virginia...not exactly 40 acres and a mule territory...so I must content myself with faux-gardening. That's when you head over to Strange's, pick out your tomatoe plants, herbs, and other flowering plants, then throw 3 or 4 big bags of garden soil in the back of your Pacifica. What follows is a wonderful day of planting cucumbers, peppers, and squash, digging your hands deep into a bag of soil, crumbling out the clods and inhaling that marvelous moldy aroma of dirt. It was a great day for it, sunny and clear with a refreshing breeze. We did well:

However, as it is with most good things in life, there's a downside to all of this communing with nature business. Inhaling all of that moldy earth, and spending nearly 5 hours sucking in lungfulls of airborne allergens began collecting their fee from me yesterday around 4 o'clock in the afternoon. It started with a few innocent sneezes. Then the corners of my eyes began to itch. I pulled my first tissue from the box of Kleenex around 4:15.

Two Pepto-Bismol pink Benadryl pills were popped around 4:30. This had the unfortunate effect of making me feel drowsy while I sneezed while doing nothing to prevent me from sneezing. The eyes were still running and I was going through tissues faster than a room full of women watching Fried Green Tomatoes. At 9:30 then, for no apparent reason, I popped two more pink pills and headed upstairs. Now I felt drowsy and nervous. My legs started feeling jumpy. But the best part was just getting started.

Those of you out there who suffer from seasonal allergies will understand and perhaps sympathize with what follows. Those of you who do not...might want to skip the rest of this paragraph. As I laid my head on the pillow, my nose began to run. I'm talking Niagra Falls scale running. This wasn't simply post nasal drip, this was Old Faithful putting on a show for a gang of Japanese tourists with Canon's buzzing. So, I began casting about for just how I was to lay my head on the pillow to minimize the flow. I tried laying on my left side. No luck. Laying on my right side was a non-starter...as soon as I did I sneezed so hard it flapped the curtains 6 feet away! I finally settled on an uncomfortable pose that featured laying on my back with the crown of my head making contact with the pillow, my hose and mouth pointing to the sky. If my mouth were opened wide I would have looked like one of those baby birds in the nest when Momma bird flies back to the nest with a worm. As uncomfortable as it was, I benefitted greatly from the gravitational impact. Now all I had to do was fall asleep. That's when the sleepy twitches began...in both legs. There I was, clutching tissues in both hands, my nose thrust skyward like Thurston Howell III, with leg spasms. Of course Lucy thought the twitching movements of my legs from under the covers was a fun new game I had invented whereby whenever I twitched her job was to find my toes and playfully chew on them. I thought about getting up and kicking her out of the bedroom, but I didn't dare move.  I feared that if I did, all of the built up mucus in my nose would be released. God knows what that cleanup would have been like. So, I just lay there, hoping I would at some point wake up and it would all be over. 

I did wake up. But, it's not over. I'm practically typing this one handed, my left hand is occupied with drip-control. If Trump wants to build a wall somewhere, he should build one inside my nostrils!

So, that's been my last 24 hours. At some point today, the waterworks will shut down and things will get back to normal. The good news is...in 70 days we will have a bumper crop of tomatoes!

THIS Is Why I Have This Blog.

A word about my last post entitled, Bryan Adams. Hypocrite Extraordinaire...

Wow! Yesterday, I spent the day in Charlottesville playing golf with three really good guys. As is my custom when playing this stupid game, I turned my cellphone off and placed it in a pouch of my golf bag at 8:00am. I retreived it at roughly 3:00 in the afternoon and saw that it was lit up with messages informing me of a spirited debate occurring on Facebook concerning the above post. I nervously began reading through the thread, nervous because I feared that the discussion might have gotten nasty. To my great relief, it had not. Kudos to each participant. There are things I could post in response to some of the points made, but I will not, primarily because I feel that since my blog reflects my opinion, anyone who goes to the trouble of posting their respectful disagreement should be allowed to do so without my interference. Perhaps the strongest criticism came from my cousin Danny, who informed me that Bryan Adams is not in any way "a washed up rocker." Leave it to the one legit rock and roller in the family to set me straight! 

Some who disagreed with some of my assertions made good points, viewpoints that I had not fully considered. I must now think the issue through again in light of these new arguments. It may change my mind, it may not. But I must consider the possibility that I am wrong, right? If I don't, if I dismiss those who disagree with me out of hand I have become an ideologue. If my mind gets changed every five minutes, I am nothing more than a weather vane. My opinions, therefore, must come from my education, guided by my experience, constantly seasoned by new information. I like to think that I am right more often than I am wrong. This blog has often helped me to discover the difference between truth and dogma, transcendence and my biases, largely from enlightened disagreement. For this, I have all of you to thank.

Bryan Adams. Hypocrite Extraordinaire.

One of the most famous scenes in cinema for men of my generation comes from Cool Hand Luke, possibly the hottest, sweatiest movie in history... when the Captain tells the inmates of his prison, "What we have here is failure to communicate!" No line in all of film describes modern American culture as well as this one.

The great divides in America feature entrenched camps of absolutists who either cannot or will not listen to those on the other side of the barricades. Any negotiation feels impossible and reeks of weakness, any accommodation seems like a betrayal. The biblical exhortation, Come, let us reason together has gone the way of the land line phone. A couple of examples...

Washed up 1980's Canadian rocker, Bryan Adams recently made news for the first time in over a decade by cancelling a show in Biloxi, Mississippi over that state's anti-LGBT law. While, I'm sure the fifteen people who had purchased tickets were devastated, Mr. Adams earned rave reviews for his courage from the social justice warriors of the left. 

“I cannot in good conscience perform in a state where certain people are being denied their civil rights due to their sexual orientation,” Adams wrote on his website.

The luminaries of the social justice warrior class immediately began singing Adams' praises...despite the fact that Mr. Adams' latest gig was a concert in that great bastion of tolerance for all things gay...Egypt. Apparently Mr. Adams' finely tuned "good conscience" had no problem whatsoever performing in a state that has recently taken to rounding up gay people in mass arrests. Pot, meet kettle.

But, it's not just washed up has-beens who have jumped on the boycott bandwagon. The very much not washed up Bruce Springsteen is now in the news for cancelling a sold out concert in Charlotte, North Carolina in protest of that state's new transgender bathroom law. So...Mr. Springsteen is refusing to provide his services to customers in North Carolina based on his sincerely held beliefs about sexuality and human rights. It is my view that The Boss is perfectly within his rights to boycott North Carolina. He is a free man and a businessman and can withhold his services from people willing to pay for them if he sees fit, right? Once again, his refusal has gained him wide praise from all of the beautiful people. 

But, what about the Indiana baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding? She refused to provide her services from a willing customer based on her sincerely held beliefs about sexuality. For doing so, the indignant wrath of the entire progressive movement was rained down upon her, despite the fact that there were plenty of other bakers available to do the job. For concert goers in Charlotte...there's only One Boss!!

I have written in this space of my view of the Indiana case, my opinion being that just because one might not approve of gay marriage should not preclude one from baking a stinking cake. I'm just not a boycott kind of guy. However, the way the Indiana baker was treated by those who disagreed with her amounted to nothing more than bullying. Where on earth has the art of getting along gone? Why can't people agree to disagree in the arena of baked goods and 80's Rock and Roll? Why couldn't the baker have said, "Hey, thanks for choosing us to bake your cake!" Why couldn't Bruce have said, "Hey, I think your governor is a jerk for passing that bathroom law and all, but thanks for making my concert a sell out! Baby, I was born to run!" In other words, why must every encounter between people with different views have to be such a drama-queen s**t show?

Seriously Bruce? A guy from New Jersey wants to lecture the people of North Carolina about their discriminatory laws? New Jersey...home of possibly the most bribed legislature in all of the western 
world, where the number one export is New Jerseyans...you want to lecture North Carolinians about good government and human rights? Please. 

"Come, let us reason together..."

Golf is Stupid

So, a couple of days ago I ventured out onto a public golf course for the first time since last July. I picked Royal Virginia out in Hadensville since I knew nobody would be there. I have my first round scheduled this coming Friday, so I thought I should at least play 9 somewhere first, right? I pulled up into the nearly empty parking lot, rented a cart and headed to the first tee without considering a trip to the practice tee. A more prudent person would have loosened up first, but I have always detested trips to the driving range. There would be no prudence within a country mile of me today.

When I stepped onto the first tee, the wind was blowing a gale in my face. At least it wasn't raining. My first swing produced a rather severe hook. My next attempt was a topped five iron. By the time I arrived at the green I was putting for a double bogey from twenty feet. Of course...I drained it.

The next two holes featured more of the same. Brutal, ugly swings. Giant pieces of rust flying around everywhere. Then, like a scene from a terrible sports movie, I stepped onto the tee of my fourth hole, took a deep, cleansing, what-the-hell breath, and proceeded to stripe a long drive down the middle of the fairway of a very long par four. My four iron approach shot landed neatly on the green after a gorgeous right to left ball flight which I seldom see. Two putts later, I had a par on the hardest hole on the course. 

Walking back to my cart, I scanned the horizon for camera crews. Maybe this was some sort of trick ball that had been placed in my bag, maybe somebody was getting back at me for all my April Fool's tricks. The following four holes were more of the same. Out of nowhere, my hack-attack performance on the first two holes had been replaced by some strange game that featured long, straight drives, beautiful arching iron shots and stellar putting. By the time I walked off the eighth hole I had started to believe that maybe my long layoff from the game had allowed my natural innate abilities to rise through the clutter of horrible golf memories. Maybe this was the real me! Maybe I had to walk away from the game in order to shed the thousand small bad habits that had crept into my game. For a moment I imagined a future on the senior tour.

Then, the last hole of my day presented itself in front of me, a reasonably straight forward par four, which if I could get home in par would give me a nine hole score of 40, quite amazing after a eight month layoff. 

Anyone who has played this game for more than five minutes knows what happened next. I don't even have to write it down for you, right? As quickly as the game had come to me so miraculously five holes ago, it left in a huff. Big duck hook drive, shanked second, fat third, pedestrian fourth, then three putts from twenty feet for a triple bogey.

Still, 43 was about seven shots better than I had expected. Only, which golfer was I? The guy who was hacking the ball all over the place, or that dream-like guy on the middle five holes who could do no wrong? Neither. Golf is too stupid to analyze. 

The Big Wait

Now comes...bad April. The Masters is over, April Fool's a distant memory. Now comes the Big Wait.

Every morning, first thing, I open my iPad and search for...the email. When I get to the office and see the orange light pulsing on my phone, I listen for...the message. At some point over the next four days it will come. No, it's not results from blood work, or an MRI. This message will come from a guy named Carl, and like the last 35 such messages, it will be to inform me of just how much the privilege of my American citizenship will cost me this year.

Carl's a good guy. He's good at what he does. It's just that his annual bad news comes with his bill for professional services, adding salt to the wound. It's what he does. I will open the email when it comes with stoic resignation. My hands used to shake. My palms used to get clammy with sweat. Not anymore. Carl has gotten fancy. There's a password embedded in the email which unlocks my tax return from its cloud-based home. I go there and see the number just to the right of those bitter three words...amount you owe. I sign electronically. Very modern and impressive.

Usually, at some point in the thirty days leading up to April 15, I have one dream where my tax return gets delivered by a gleaming white flying unicorn. When I break the elaborate burgundy wax seal, I read the beautifully calligraphic words...amount overpaid, applied to your 2016 return! Then I bolt upright in bed, and the glorious fantasy evaporates.

While what I owe may not be my fair share, thanks to Carl, it's my legal share. No legitimate deduction will have been missed, no justifiable tax reduction scheme unused. No matter what the number is, it will be paid by the 15th. No extensions, no payment plan. I will stroke a check and be done with it. Because I have used honest numbers, there will be no anger or resentment. April 15th isn't a day for debates about fairness, it's a day when my obligation as a citizen of the greatest Republic on the face of the earth must be fulfilled. Besides, what does fairness have to do with taxes? The only people who think taxes are wonderful are those for whom money is theoretical, or those filthy rich enough to afford $50,000 a plate Hillary Clinton fundraiser dinners. For the rest of us, taxes are a necessary evil. Roads need to be paved, teachers need to be paid, and it takes a lot of expensive jet fuel to keep an F-15 aloft. So, we pay. Then we suffer silently when we hear politicians refer to us as "greedy."

The Box Score

Every April begins sublimely for me because of April Fool's Day. Then two days later, my birthday arrives. Usually the very next day, the blessed trifecta is achieved with the opening day of Major League Baseball. The fact that The Masters starts in the same week is just an embarrassment of riches. All of these happy things conspire to remove every dark cloud from my horizon. It's as if, for ten days in April I live in a world where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton don't exist.

But, the very best part is the return of that most hallowed and glorious literary form in the universe, a form of communication which is part ledger, part story telling device. In my 58 years of life, I have probably read at least 100,000 of them. I'm talking, of course, about...the box score.

Here, in one tightly compressed space, lies literally every possible detail of a game that I didn't watch, and yet a skillful reading can tell you everything that happened in this game because of this information packed record of names, abbreviations and numbers. From this one I see that former National, Drew Storen is having a rough time with his new team, having given up two runs on only five pitches, ballooning his ERA to a grotesque 13.50. Meanwhile David Ortiz, despite being at least 50 years old by now, is uncharacteristically off to a good start for this young season, hitting a robust .385. ( Ortiz' steroid provider must get some sort of shout out when he is enshrined in Cooperstown).  I also learn that 48,000 people were in attendance for the Blue Jays home opener...how the Canadians love their baseball. Also, Jose Bautista went 0 for 4, making me very happy...he's a show-boating, me-first bum. 

Over the next six months I will study over 2,500 of these beauties. They will do for me what other forms of journalism fail to do...tell the truth. There's no spin in a box score. If you went 0 for 5 with 4 strikeouts, and committed an error, the box score will faithfully disclose every gory detail to me. My box scores have no liberal bias, there's no faux fair and balanced hokum to deal with. It's just the facts. Every pitch, every hit, every error, with no editorializing disguised as news. There are no moral victories, no momentum, no winning the expectations game. Just a winner and a loser, clean and clear. There's no escaping your record. You are who the numbers say you are. Excuses don't work as explanations. If a starting pitcher gets raked for 7 runs in 2 and 2/3rds innings, then there's going to be a big L  beside his name, not some dog and pony presentation about how he was distracted by the death of his favorite childhood dog the night before. There's no crying in baseball, and no hiding from the box score either. You are what you do...and what you do is all there in the box score. Deal with it.

There's a life lesson in there somewhere.