My 2016 Photograph

Here's an interesting challenge for this frigid Friday morning. What one photograph would you pick to summarize the year 2016?

Now that virtually everyone carries smart phones around, we all take a million pictures. I'm old enough to remember being very judicious about picture taking. You would only take pictures of the really important stuff of life. Then you would take the rolls to the drug store to have them developed. Several days later and at considerable expense you would get them back only to discover that half of them were either out of focus or over exposed. It was always a crapshoot. Now, it's all a digital miracle where each picture is instant and photoshopped to make you look ten years younger. But. . . if you had to pick one, just one from your 2016 pile to immortalized your year, which would it be? For me it's easy. . .

No pictures of Trump or Clinton. No photographs of stuff. This is the one for me. It's the moment that I will remember thirty years from now if I am still living. It's the feeling, really. I'm at peace with my world. The day was sunny bright. It was mid-morning. I was fishing. Lucy was fascinated by it all. Up the hill behind me, Pam was probably sitting on the porch drinking her coffee, reading a book, when she glanced up and saw us down on the dock. The fact that she thought to take this picture tells you everything you need to know about her. She knows me, knows what makes me happy, understands the power of the quiet moment and appreciates those moments and the eternal power they possess. So, she took a second to snap this picture, to capture it all.

I didn't see it until much later, after we had returned home. It was an incredible moment. The adjustment back to our real life had not been going well when I first saw it and for one glorious minute, I was transported back to that magical moment from that magical month in Maine. I smiled. I smile every time I look at it. This is the thing I will recall about 2016 when I have grown too old to walk around outside without a shirt. . . the beautiful feeling of peace and contentment in the warm sun on that dock in July, 2016.

What about you? What's your picture? Share it with me. I'd love to see.

How About You?

 I'm holding my loved ones a bit closer this Christmas. How about you?

- I flip through a slideshow of photographs of the victims of Sandy Hook on the fourth anniversary of their murders, see the precious, shining faces upturned and full of mischief and try to imagine the pain and emptiness felt by their parents.

- I watch a video and read the story of the people in Aleppo, the barbaric, wholesale slaughter being inflicted on that ancient city. I try to imagine what the suffering is like. I ponder the despair and simply cannot fathom it from the comfort and ease of my fine library.

- I hear the story from a colleague about one of his clients, 62 years old, suddenly stricken with cancer, dead in six months. The loss changes my friend, rearranges his priorities. Why kill yourself working and saving for some distant retirement when all of this can be taken from us in an instant?

- I think about my friend, about my age, whose beautiful and spirited wife fell ill after their return from a Greek vacation. A doctor's visit revealed cancer, tumors everywhere. I see the pictures of the radiation treatments beginning, with chemo to follow, their lives turned upside down in the blink of an eye. I try to imagine what must be going through my friend's mind and I simply cannot because thus far in life I have not had to endure such a thing.

So, I plan on holding my loved ones a bit closer this Christmas. How about you?

Surviving Trump

Another day, and my Facebook feed is once again filled with the horrified screeds of my liberal friends, predicting all manner of cataclysms about to befall us at the dawn of the Trump administration. It's like reading The Guardian in the days leading up to the Brexit vote, only more unhinged. If my friends are to be believed, my country is about to be plunged into the dystopian abyss. In the terrifying days to come we should expect the four horsemen of the apocalypse to storm into every city, town and hamlet throughout the Republic, bespoiling our drinking water, polluting our air, going house to house dragging illegal immigrants through the streets behind them, all the while forcing every recently married gay couple to return all of their wedding presents. While we're all distracted by this spectacle, Trump will appoint some knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing evangelical to the Supreme Court, force every foreign dignitary visiting Washington to stay at his Hotel, and shutter the offices of The New York Times, CNN and MSNBC. And all of this on day one of his administration, angels and ministers of grace protect us from what he has planned for day two!!

In their defense, most of the folks most worried about Trump are of an age where their only memory of a modern President is Obama, who most of the time, especially between his election and first inauguration, was lavished with unvarnished praise by the press. They've never experienced a truly adversarial press openly hostile to a President, elect or otherwise. Those of us a bit older are used to it, having seen similar treatment of both Ronald Reagan and George Bush. I remember quite well the horror stories from the New York Times about the catastrophies to come after the American people rejected their choice, Jimmy Carter for a mere, B actor. Yep, we were headed straight for hell and whatever happened was our own damned fault for rejecting their advice!! With the election of Obama in 2008 we were congratulated for ushering in a post-racial America. All would be sweetness and light now that we had ushered in the new progressive century!

But now, suddenly, just like that. . .the press has rediscovered it's roll as truth speaker to power. No longer will they cheerlead the new President. Now it's time for war. The Fourth Estate no longer has much of an appetite for long, loving puff pieces about the incoming chief executive. The Atlantic will probably not run any sappy love poems to our new Messiah.

Granted, Trump makes it easy for them. For an angry, rejected press he is a target-rich environment. My personal optimism level for the success of his presidency lies somewhere between skeptical and resigned. As I have written a million times, I am convinced that the man is the most ill-suited for the Presidency by way of temperament and experience of any other in my lifetime. So why am I not as hysterically terrified as my liberal friends? It's simple.

Having lived 58 years in America has its advantages. For one thing, long ago I was disabused of the notion that any single man, any single President had the power to bend this unruly country to his will.  Our founders were, in fact, geniuses in this regard. Presidents are confounded at every turn, much to the frustration of his partisans. There's the Machiavellian quagmire of Congress. There's the stubborn, entrenched bureaucratic engine that powers government at the various departments, agencies and bureaus. Their employees are neither republican or democrat. . .they all belong to the government party and they have never lost an election! They survive every administration, and Trump's will be no different. There are the lifetime appointed judges sprinkled throughout the judiciary who will be hostile to him. Even our most masterful Presidents, like FDR and Reagan, were only able to ram through parts of their agenda. Ours is often an unwieldy beast of a government, unresponsive and plodding. When your guy loses, this is a great and mighty comfort.

So, to my liberal friends, let not your hearts be troubled. We will survive Trump. And when we do, how about we finally give my fellow Virginian, James Madison his due?

So Geeked!!!

Huge day yesterday. Almost finished my Christmas shopping, and booked a cabin for our Maine 2017 adventure. To celebrate, Pam made homemade clam chowder for dinner. While I am getting excited about Christmas, words simply cannot express how geeked out I am about Maine.

Our first extended Maine vacation was last year on Hobbs Pond. Four weeks. We had never stayed more than ten days before. It was fabulous, so much so that we decided that we would go the extended route forevermore. This year it will be only three weeks because 2017 is also the year of the Dunnevant/Roop/Schwartz biennial beach week at the Outer Banks and. . . well, I have to work at some point.

The place we chose is called Loon Landing. It sits at the water's edge of a lake we haven't visited yet called Quantabacook. It's about 20-25 minutes from Camden, so a bit further inland. Since this year we won't be having the kids joining us, we didn't need such a big house. This one has room for six, but is much smaller. The cool thing though is the fact that the main house by the lake (the deck is five steps from the water), is where the master bedroom is, while the guest rooms are in a guest cottage about 100 feet behind. Lucy is going to love this place since it features a ten foot wide sandy beach, a rarity in Maine, which provides easy walk-in access to the water. Although, knowing her, she will probably insist on running down the dock and jumping in since that's way more fun!

Once we picked out Loon Landing, it took us an hour to decide between two options for when! It would have to be either June 9-30 or September 8-29. This is where my wife's amazing eye for detail made an appearance. Somehow she found some site that published the daily temperatures of the area for every single day for the past three years. Immediately, she started spreadsheeted the thing in her head:

Pam: Ok, in 2015 for the three weeks in question, for the June option there were 14 days in the 70's in June and only 13 in September. In 2016, those numbers were flipped. However, the low temperatures for June were a bit lower than for September. As far as rain is concerned....

This went on for quite a while as I stared at her, mouth agape in wonderment. Ultimately, we chose the September option. It won't be as crowded, and if it's been a hot summer and it's a cool September in Maine, maybe we will be tired of the heat and won't mind it so much. On the other hand, there was a day last year in September where the fine folks in Camden, Maine were treated to a rare day in the 90's. So, it's a crapshoot.

I am already anticipating a potential problem. The first week in October at Loon Landing is wide open. . .

The Right Stuff

I was only four years old when he became famous by orbiting the Earth in Friendship 7. I remember nothing about it. But later in elementary school, I would learn about John Glenn courtesy of a Weekly Reader article. Along with millions of my fellow grade schoolers, I became obsessed with this hero and determined that I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. Eventually my desire for a career of space travel waned, but my admiration of John Glenn remained. Yesterday came word that the great man had passed away at age 95.

When I was in college, I was introduced to someone who would become one of my favorite writers, Tom Wolfe, by his great novel, The Right Stuff. I read the thing twice. There he was again, front and center. . .John Glenn, hero. He ran for President in 1984. It didn't work out. Accomplished, gallant, heroic, intelligent John Glenn, Marine Fighter pilot in WWII and Korea with 59 combat missions to his credit, insanely brave test pilot, first American to orbit the planet and only then becoming a U.S. Senator, lost to Walter Mondale, a waxy career politician with a history of accomplishing absolutely nothing, proving that politics doesn't reward virtue.

John Glenn was a throwback to what the founders imagined public servants would be. After a life of accomplishment, uncommon valor, and character proven by the crucible of life, a man(or woman) would then proceed to dedicate the last chapters of their lives to serving the republic by going to Washington to bring their proven talents to bear solving the nation's problems. No longer. Now, the preferred path seems to be, go to law school, get a job working as an aid for some congressman for a couple of years, then maybe take a couple more years hacking for some lobbyist so you can check the private sector box off the old resume, then cash in your chips with the party by running for Congress, all before your 35th birthday. The Wrong Stuff.

A few years ago I read a biography of the greatest hitter who ever lived, Ted Williams.  The Splendid Splinter didn't come off well. Although a gifted athlete, Williams was a classic jerk. Even though I knew this about him, it was still disappointing to have it confirmed. But, in the book I learned that when Williams was flying combat missions in Korea, he served as the wing man for. . . John Glenn.

From the time I was a 5th grader until yesterday, John Glenn has never disappointed.

A President Who Tweets

I haven't had much to say of late about politics in general or Trump in particular. It's not because nothing of interest has happened but rather because I'm not sure what to say. How does one respond to a President-Elect who tweets? The whole scene right now is in many ways incomprehensible to me, there being no precedent for it. Can you imagine what would have happened if Franklin Roosevelt had Twitter??..."I will crush the Imperial Navy of Japan and repay the yellow, shanty-eyed nips for this dastardly attack on Pearl Harbor, this I can promise you. Sad."

Although our soon to be President has done plenty that I disagree with, and even more that baffles me, he has done one thing that I LOVED. When he tweeted out his public shaming of Boeing for the cost overruns on Air Force One, I was jubilant. Let me explain.

Now, I am fully aware that whenever His Orangeness spouts numbers, one always has to take it with a pound of salt, and maybe in this case he didn't have all the facts. Stunned, I know! However, I cannot possible describe for you the visceral joy it brought me to hear somebody, anybody in Washington finally actually LOOK AT A BILL AND QUESTION IT!!!!!! When the government buys anything, it always ends up costing ten times what the projections were. It's like inefficiency and incompetence are baked into the cake. (See: $30,000 toilets, Pentagon). Say what you will about Trump, but the man has a knack for bringing huge complicated projects in on time and under budget, (It helps when your bribe and favor currying budget is large and liquid). Still, if this guy finally puts an end to the bloated, featherbedding, bill padding ripoff that is government contracting, he will have done this republic a huge favor and we will be forever in his debt.

Of course, that assumes we still have a republic by the time he's through. . .but that's a subject for another day. But, for me, the Boeing tweet has been the high water mark of his bizarre first month as President-Elect, with the selection of Mad Dog Mattis as Secretary of Defense a close second. Literally everything else has been a cross between The Twilight Zone and Celebrity Apprentice.

Its a Wonderful Life. . .a review.

Watched It's a Wonderful Life for the fiftieth time last night after a day of tree decorating. Just a few random observations about this classic film:

1. Early on life wasn't so wonderful for twelve year old George Bailey as we see him working for the local pharmacist (hello child labor!), and getting slapped around by his drunk boss (assault and battery).

2. On the bright side, how tough could life have been for a kid growing up in a town that had such an awesome frozen pond to slide around on with a shovel for a sled??

3. How great was Lionel Barrymore as Potter? Best line? After George gives that passionate defense of the Building and Loan and its role as lender of last resort of the lower classes to the board of directors, Barrymore bellows, "Sentimental hogwash!!!"

4. This is the sort of film that all the smart kids in your film studies class hated. I can just hear some patchy bearded guy wearing a beret and sporting a Che Guevara t-shirt opining,"This film was a disaster for the ethos of urban life what with the horrible precedent set by Bailey Park!! Besides, Pottersville was a far more diverse and culturally interesting place!"

5. When Donna Reed, wearing only a bath robe with the moonlight shining on her face is asked by George Bailey how old she is. . .who on earth believes that she is 18??

6. Everytime I watch this movie I wait for it, the epic tight shot of George and Mary sharing the telephone as they talk with Sam Wainright from New York. He's trying to get George in on the ground floor of plastics, but no one can take their eyes off of George and Mary actually falling in love before our eyes. I'm not sure Hollywood has ever produced a sexier, more evocative scene before or since.

7. Favorite line of the film for me comes after the suicide attempt at the bridge when they are drying out around the wood stove. Clarence reminds George that they don't have any need for money in heaven. George deadpans, "Yeah? Well, it comes in pretty handy down here!"

But, as wonderful and enjoyable as this picture is, once again, I wasn't around for the credits. First of all, I know how it ends but mostly, Frank Capra needed a better editor. Way. Too. Long. Pam asked a rhetorical question as we watched, "I wonder why nobody has ever made a remake of this movie?"  The answer is, people from Hollywood today much prefer Pottersville to Bedford Falls. So, if any big shot producers from tinsel town ever happen to stumble onto this blog. . .PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't remake this film!!!!!!