Chicago

This is my third trip to Chicago, the first for Pam. Every time I come here I am stunned at how beautiful the place is. Sure, recently they set a record with 100 shootings in one week. Sure, they are on pace to shatter the record for homicides in 2016, with over 600 souls expected to get whacked by year's end. But the killing fields are a long way from Michigan Avenue, and we didn't see a single cop on our walk from the hotel to the dock on the Chicago River yesterday afternoon for our boat tour of the city. Our "Architecture Tour" snaked its way down the green water where the towering buildings of Chicago loomed overhead. Our guide was a native Chicagoan who lived up to its reputation as the "Windy City."

Dude was a living, breathing encyclopedia. Here are some of the sights...

Each magnificent building came with a story, including but not limited to the egos of the architects. It was fascinating and worth every penny....except for one thing, it was 90 degrees out, humid with only rare whispy breezes. We sat on the top deck in the blazing sun. Pam was a trooper. There is nothing on earth more intolerable to my wife than being hot..nothing! Yet, she never complained, and paid rapt attention to our guide throughout. I thought that at any moment she might suddenly scream out and cast herself overboard in a fit of rage, but she held it together like a champ. Of course, I kept disappearing below deck so I could keep her placated with lemonade and diet cokes. I've learned something  in 32 years of marriage!

Life Lesson in a Picture

"Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on winners."

Wegmans!!!!

Pam and I went to the grand opening of Short Pump's new Wegmans today. We should have known better. This may have been the most eagerly anticipated, most over-hyped store opening in the history of Henrico County, and since our county is over 400 years old, that's saying something. We knew it might be a madhouse when we saw this guy at the corner of Broad Street and Wegmans Way...

 He was the first of at least a dozen of Henrico County's finest we saw patrolling the area, some in cars, some on foot and even a couple on bikes. Once we finally found a place to park we entered this monstrosity of a store...

Once inside I was astonished to see this...

If you squint you will see...yes, count them all...27 Checkout lanes, all manned( and womanned )by eager, smiling cashiers. Matter of fact, this store seemed to have an abundance of employees, handing out everything from glossy maps of the place to free beer samples. Speaking of adult beverages, if you're into that sort of thing, an entire wing of the building is dedicated to you...

...and that's only half of it. The rest contains three two story high shelving aisles full of wine from every corner of the globe. As awesome as the place was, it didn't take us long to decide that today probably wasn't the best day to be taking a tour. We only made it through roughly a third of the store, but what we saw can be summed up neatly this way...if you need something, anything really...you will find it at this store. 

"But, how are the prices?" you might ask. I have no idea. Probably not the cheapest in town. If I want the cheapest prices, I can drive down the road five minutes and buy my groceries at Walmart. If that's too embarrassing, I could always drop by Food Lion, the home of the perpetually sticky floor. Or, if I want to have my guilt assuaged for being part of the evil west, be-fouler of the planet, I can go drop truckloads of cash at Whole Foods, the world wide headquarters of self-flagulating white people. The point is, Wegmans is just another choice that a free market gives me.

My children, and many others their age don't have the same image of Socialism that I do. For them, Socialism is gorgeous Danes and Swedes eating ice cream while on one of their 12 weeks of paid vacation, courtesy of the State. For me and many of my age, Socialism looks like this...

This is the line forming outside a grocery store in Venezuela. The lines sometimes take ten hours to get through only to be told that there isn't any more milk.

This one is from Cuba, where the lines are a bit quicker, but the goods are limited. The Venezualians and the Cubans learned all of this from the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union, which featured this sort of scene practically every day...

I can hardly visit Facebook without seeing some article written my some Millenial about the horrors of Capitalism, and honestly...Capitalism does have a few horrors. But whenever I hear this sort of argument, I always come back to the Wegmans of the world. Only a free market can deliver this sort of abundance. Do we have a free market in every segment of our economy? Not even close, and in the places where we don't like cable television, service and quality suffers. But Doug, but Doug...if capitalism is so great at allocating resources, how come we have 17 different brands of deodorant? Isn't that a waste of effort??? Well, I would rather let the marketplace decide the answer to that question. Apparently, there is currently enough profit in the deodorant game to compensate 17 different companies for making the stuff. Turn that decision over to a command economy government committee and we would eventually end up with one brand of deodorant which made us all smell like cat pee and nobody could find anyway since there would always be a shortage!

So, yeah. I'll take my Wegmans huge crowds and all, and be thankful that I live in a country where Wegmans is even possible.

A Scary Dream

I haven't had a decent night's sleep since Maine. I fall asleep alright but after that it's a mess...lots of tossing and turning, waking up at 2 in the morning for no apparent reason, and dreaming like a character in a Dostoyevsky novel.

A couple of nights ago I dreamed that my family was living in the parsonage across from Winn's, not so much of a stretch since I grew up in that house. In my dream, I walked out the front door and noticed that there was a small crack in the foundation of the house where the brick exterior wall had separated from the foundation by maybe a half inch. But, as I stood and watched, the gap began to widen, slowly at first, but with increasing speed until it looked like the entire structure was about to break free from its moorings and fly away! Of course, since this was a dream, there had to be some excruciating frustration associated with it, and for me it was...trying to alert my family to get out of the house. They just couldn't be bothered. There was something far too fascinating on television. I would run in the house screaming out warnings, then back outside to check on the house. Each time I did, the scene became more exotic and terrifying. Soon there was a giant abyss of a gouge in the earth stretching from the corner of the house's foundation all the way into infinity in both directions. Before long, the house was teetering on the precarious edge of this mighty gulf. Panicked, I ran back into the swaying house, desperately trying to rouse them from their collective disinterest. Suddenly, I woke up. Two o'clock.

Dream analysis is a dicey thing, even for the experts. For amateurs like me, it amounts to pure speculation. At this point, I would like to invite you the reader to participate. What, on earth, was the meaning of this dream? I'll start...

Possibility #1

The parsonage represents the efforts I have made to protect myself from the dangers of this world. The earthquake that destroys it represents the schemes of evil aligned against me. My family's preoccupation with television represents the powerfully insidious influence of evil that is so strong, it leaves us defenseless, unable to save ourselves.

Possibility # 2

Since I was a kid when I lived in the Winn's church parsonage, it represents my past. The earthquake represents the lies I tell myself about my past, glossing over the bad times and glorifying the good. The fact that my family doesn't heed my dire warnings is a reminder that nobody really cares about my past except me.

Possibility # 3

Never eat tiramisu after 8 at night...

So, which is it? Does my dream have some deeper meaning it is trying to convey to me through my subconscious....or was it something I ate?

My Olympic Fashion Commentary

I am so psyched. I get to do something today I haven't done in over a month...yard work!! That's right, I love yard work, cutting the grass, trimming the lawn, gathering up sticks and debris, and ridding the back yard of Lucy's bowel movements. Oh...and the fact that it's going to be hot and humid out today makes it even better because it means I will be a smelly, sweating mess after I'm done, virtually guaranteeing that I will have shed at least two pounds. Win, win.

But before I get at it, a word about the opening ceremonies of the 2016 Olympics. I watched maybe fifteen minutes of the thing. Pam, my Olympics-loving wife, sat firmly ensconced on the sofa, fully intending to watch from start to finish. I discovered this morning that she didn't even make it to the D's of the parade of nations before falling into a coma, meaning that she missed this...

Not bad. The guy holding the flag is a dead ringer for Michael Phelps...no wait...

But for 2016 the winner of the sharpest look goes to the Aussies hands down. 

.

...and I don't even like seer sucker that much, but somehow the Austrailians looked awesome in it.

Ok, that's my first and last fashion commentary. 

My Immigrant Encounter

Yesterday it was time for a haircut. Unlike my wife, I'm not very particular who cuts my hair. I usually go to one of those "guys only" places and roll the dice. It's a different girl every month practically, but they all seem capable so what the heck, right? Well, yesterday I got a new stylist...Anna.

Anna shook my hand and introduced herself with a timid, whispering voice. Her smile seemed forced and cautious. She was Hispanic. Her English was fine but she spoke with a thick accent. Making small talk, I observed that she must be new since I had never seen her before. "Yes...I am new. Would you like the MVP?" 

Anna stood out like a sore thumb. Unlike the usual loud, flirtatious banter common at a where guys get their hair cut, her attempts at conversation were whispered, polite and careful. Mostly she went about her business with single-minded concentration. There was an odd sadness about her. Still, she practiced her craft with great gentleness and care. It was a great haircut.

When I went to pay, I entered a more generous than usual tip in the gratuity line of the ticket. When I gave it to her and she saw it, she actually lifted a hand to her mouth in astonishment, looked at me with tears in her eyes and whispered the word...gracias.

The subject of immigration is a lightning rod issue nowadays, although for millions of people like me the issue isn't immigration itself, but rather...illegal immigration, which is no mere distinction without a difference. I have no idea whether Anna is an immigrant or an illegal immigrant. I would assume that since she has a job and speaks English, she is probably here legally. If not, then my first instinct would be to find the owner  and throw the book at him/her! In my opinion, the real villains in the illegal immigration saga are the employers who hire them. As for Anna, well that's where I get mushy. Even if she is here illegally, I have a hard time working up any indignation towards her. When I met her, she was in hour seven of a ten hour shift. She looked exhausted and lost, and yet she smiled and did her job with great care and skill. It's very hard not to root for someone like Anna. 

Of course, the cynical reader might point out that perhaps I would feel differently about the Anna's of the world if they were all trained investment advisors, competing in my business, willing to work for half the fee. True. But, to compete in my line of work, Anna would have to be here legally. There are just too many federal paperwork requirements in the investment world to overcome without proper documentation. Still, it's a valid point. But, as a human being with a beating heart, I suppose I have a gigantic weak spot for anyone willing to leave hearth and home to come to America seeking a better life. I want Anna to make it, and I'm not interested in throwing her on a bus and sending her back where she came from arbitrarily. But, while my heart beats, it doesn't bleed. We are a nation of laws and we must enforce them. Opening the borders to all comers, no questions asked is national suicide...hence the problem.

The solution has to contain elements of both the rule of law and enlightened compassion. Crafting that solution will require people of good will, intelligence and imagination in the halls of power.

Good luck with that.

What to Watch For on Inauguration Day

With every passing day it becomes more clear that on Inauguration Day 2017, Hillary Clinton will be taking the oath of office. I take no delight in pointing out the fact that I have been writing this for over a year now. But, it didn't take superhuman powers of observation to see how this all was going to work out, just a healthy level of skepticism. Still, the most disturbing part of her victory will be the fact that it will, for her, validate a lifetime of lying. When she places her hand on the Bible in John Robert's hand on that cold Janurary morning she will be smiling inside, secure in the knowledge that all of her machinations, all of the deceit, disingenuous maneuvering, and influence peddling was all worth it, that in fact, honesty, transparency and fair dealing are for chumps. She will have ridden a life long wave of lawless narcissism straight to the top of Mt. Olympus and from her perch she will look down upon all of the little people with freshly energized contempt. She will gloat over all of those who questioned her ethics, all of those who warned of her soulless appetite for power, of her complete lack of defining principles other than self preservation. She will think about all of those who made fun of her appearance back in college. She will think about the Lewinski humiliation, the humiliation of having to work for Barack Obama. She will think about those insufferable Benghazi parents, she will picture the faces all of those Bernie Sanders kids with their self righteous anger and contempt. Now where are they, she will think as she says, "I, Hillary Rodham Clinton, do solemnly swear," I'll tell you where they are, she will think, they are back to their miserable pedestrian lives, and I am where I deserve to be...President of the United States. 

Hillary Clinton is about to be exultant over all of her enemies, real and imagined, forever driving a nail in the coffin of the concept of personal integrity.

....and the most horrifying part of it all is, it will probably beat the alternative.