Progress, and Beauty

Progress is great. It is the essence of what life is about. Improving. Getting better. I type this out on a thin, light weight miracle device unimaginable a generation ago. Soon, My wife will drive to work in an automobile with more computer power than the one that powered the first moon landing. Of course, not everything that marches under the banner of progress is, necessarily. But, for the most part, given a choice between a world of innovation and a world without it, I'm good with progress.

What got me to thinking about this was the oddest thing. A couple of days ago, I developed what has turned out to be a gigantic zit...on my middle finger, of all places. Stay with me now. Don't worry, there will be no pictures. This thing is huge and menacing, with the power to escalate the act of flipping someone the bird to the level of assault with a deadly weapon. I don't know what leprosy looks like, but it can't be any uglier than this baby. All of this has brought back memories of my acne-scarred youth...which got me to thinking about progress.

When I was growing up in the 60's, my parents didn't have much money. But we were no different than most of my friends. They didn't seem to have a lot either. As a result, there wasn't much money lying around for spending on stuff like orthodontia or dermatology. If you were born with crooked teeth or acne, well, that was just your lot in life. The recommended remedies were, "wash your face more", and "floss harder!"  The entire time I was growing up, I don't remember a single friend of mine getting braces. I had world class acne back in the day. It was brutal and left me with a pock marked face which my wife insists rendered me ruggedly handsome. But to those not blinded by love, a few have actually asked me why I don't have the scars worked on. Same goes with crooked teeth. "You know, they make these clear braces now...for adults!"

When my kids came along, at the first sign of acne or crooked teeth, an appointment was made with a wildly overpriced dermatologist, a session was scheduled with the orthodontist with the colorful mural in the gigantic waiting room. A second thought was not even entertained about the cost. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret doing this, and I'm sure my kids are grateful. But it leaves me with a few nagging questions.

Yesterday at church the pastor made a statement about how over the last fifty years or so people have become much less concerned about their souls than their bodies. It's hard to deny. Just look at the amount of money we spend on doing away with even the smallest flaw in our appearance. We spend billions annually on tummy tucks, face lifts, butt lifts, breast implants, hair implants, braces, eye jobs, nose jobs, gym memberships, steroid regimens, diets, makeovers of every description. We all are chasing that perfect look...for a body that is in the process of dying and ultimately will return to the dust. Is this progress? Does becoming prettier make us better? Well, if statistics are to be believed, it may make us more hireable, and more likely to advance at work, such is the shallowness to which we have descended. But, does it make us better people?

I don't begrudge anyone trying to be their best. But, I would rather live in a world with compassionate, generous, and big-hearted people who might be a bit overweight, acne-scarred, with a few extra lines on their faces, than a world with perfectly sculpted Barbee and Ken dolls constantly checking themselves out in the mirror.

The old saying goes...beauty is only skin deep. Discarding that truth isn't progress. 

Hacksaw Ridge and Fences...a two movie weekend

I generally try to watch the Oscar nominated movies every year. Not all of them, but most. Don't intend to see La La Land, for example and think I'll pass on Moonlight. But the past couple of nights I've seen Hacksaw Ridge and Fences.

Pam sat on the sofa next to me, prepared to read an e-book while Hacksaw Ridge played. She cannot abide blood and gore, especially the brutal variety that comes with war movies. Since Mel Gibson was directing, she was probably expecting a cross between Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. But, to her great surprise, she found herself caught up in the story of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor. Sure, she covered her eyes during the battle scenes with her blanket, but she was blown away by the other-worldly heroism, the transformative power of conviction and its ability to enfuse a man with supernatural endurance and bravery. What Desmond Doss accomplished at Okinawa, surviving the hellish landscape of total war savagery, without a weapon, while rescuing 75 men to safety is the sort of thing one still can't quite believe, even after watching him do it. While Gipson's obsession with exploding body parts and blood-squirting arteries was a little over the top, this film wasn't about patriotism, or the glory of war, or any of that. This story was about a conviction and courage that survived the worst that mankind is capable of.

I love Denzel Washington. Always have. I think he's probably the best American actor around today. I'm often disappointed in his choices, however. He's capable of so much more than Flight, The Equalizer, and the laughable Equalizer II. So when I heard all the buzz about Fences, I couldn't resist. Unfortunately, this was one of those pictures that had no business being a movie in the first place. It was written for the stage, and didn't transfer well. If you like nearly two and half hours of boisterous, shouted dialogue and lengthy speechifying, 80% of which takes place in the dump of a back yard of a row house in Pittsburg...then you're gonna LOVE this movie. Although Denzel and Viola Davis were fine in the lead roles, their performances seemed overwrought, overacted, over the top. Does everything have to be shouted? Do stories about the African-American experience contain no subtlety? Does every raw emotion have to be vomited up before us? Can nothing be suggested? As I watched this movie, I kept feeling like the playwrite was channeling Shakespeare, what with Troy's incessant conversations with death, and his King Lear-like estrangement from his children. But, in the end, I just couldn't conjure up any sympathy for Troy. He seemed nothing more than a bitter old tyrant. Maybe if I were African-American myself, it would have resonated more. Or maybe, Fences should have stayed a play...

Trump's State of the Union Speech

Although I mentioned the President's State of the Union speech in passing the other day when I broke my political silence, I didn't give an opinion on it. So, since it's the weekend and I am recovering from a persistent headache, I find myself in the perfect mood to do so.

Most people gave the President good marks for his speech. I was braced for boorish buffoonery, tortured logic and syntax, with a dash of demogoguery. So, when he actually gave a reasonably decent speech, I was relieved. The only line I can remember was the best line of the speech: "My job is not to represent the world, my job is to represent the United States of America." Its about dang time an American President had the stones to say this. Take your Globalist one-world government and stick it...in a safe place.

But, just because he gave a perfectly presidential speech doesn't mean I liked it on the substance. The primary takeaway for me was this simple truth...the Era of Limited Government (which hasn't actually been a thing in nearly a hundred years) is clearly over, and now with Trump, even lip service to it is over. This speech could have been given by any big-spending Democrat in America over the past fifty years. You want an infrastructure spending program? Check. You want your brand new entitlement program of child care? Check. You want a protectionist trade policy? Check.

Somebody once described the American Man as the European Man left alone. No longer true. We are now as completely ruled and regulated as any man from Finland to France. And it will only get worse. Especially now that the party of small government has been taken over by a world class Statist like Donald Trump. Yes, I'm aware of his promises to reduce the regulatory burdens in America, and I am aware that he promises a wave of tax cuts. But, it's very hard for me to believe that he can or even wants to deliver on either of these promises. My gut instinct is that for every regulation he dismantles, a new one will appear. I also fail to see how you can cut taxes while at the same time creating new entitlements and presiding over a trillion dollars of infrastructure spending. And yes, he did mention his desire to actually cut some government budgets, real cuts, not some voodoo baseline budgeting gimmickry sleight of hand. But, then he admits that the goal of these cuts is to free up 54 trillion for increased military spending. That's where he lost me...sigh....

I realize that I am a weirdo on this subject, and my views on government and it's proper function died out over a hundred years ago, but, if you're serious about debt and the financial health of this nation, everything needs to be cut, including the military. If you're the type of person who believes that spending  nearly $600 billion on the military in 2015 was woefully inadequate...then, there's nothing I can say to help you.

So, I watched the speech for a while at least. After thirty minutes it became boiler plate and I tuned out with a heavy sigh. Activist, intrusive, ever-expanding, liberty-encroaching, centralized planning, power-grabbing government is here to stay and more robust than ever. We all better get used to it.

The Sultan of Suck

The Dunnevant family in Short Pump has done its part to boost the economy, what with our recent  automobile purchase. Well, now we have added another big ticket item, and this one was for me!

Yes, sports fans, you are looking live at the brand new Dyson Ball Animal. This baby is the Lamborghini of vacuum cleaners, the cutting edge of floor cleaning technology, the Sultan of Suck. Our old Dyson finally bit the dust, so naturally, I had to have the best. This new model is over the top, billing itself as the "most powerful" sucking machine since the 1962 Mets. I've only used it in one room so far, just a quick test drive around the den. Good Lord Almighty!! What a machine!

Ok, I'm the official vacuumer around here, and truth be told...I've always kind of enjoyed it. It's hard to explain really. I just like the feel of it, the clean lines it makes on the carpet, the sound of the thing. When you've owned a Golden Retriever for nearly thirty years it's a big deal, vacuuming. It has to be done all the time. And, it turns out, I'm pretty good at it. In a house our size it's also a workout.

So today, after work I'm going to put this thing through it's paces, a whole house tour. Lucy has taken an intense dislike to The Animal, sensing menace. In fairness, she never was a big fan of our old Dyson, always retreating into another room whenever it was deployed. But, when I took this thing out of the box, she actually let out a small growl from her perch on the sofa in the next room. "What new , fresh terror is this monstrosity my human has brought into my home??" I could feel the animosity from thirty feet away. I reassured her..."Don't worry Lucy, it's just a vacuum cleaner. If you didn't shead so much we wouldn't need this beast!" Once again she sniffed the air and let out an aggrieved sigh..."Sure, blame the dog. Perfect!"

Winning the Lottery

Yesterday, a client of mine came to my office to review her accounts. In her hands, I noticed, she carried a very dog-eared copy of the book I wrote about my parents a few years back, Finishing Well.  She made no statement about it initially. We just went about the business of the day. But then, towards the end of the visit she placed the book on my desk in front of me and began talking.

"Do you remember two years ago when you gave me this book? When I was in your office, you had just gotten your first shipment of them and there were a bunch of them in a box. You gave me this one. Well, I need to tell you that not only have I read it, but I've given it to all the other women in my study group at church and they've all read it too! That's why it's so beat up. I just wanted to let you know that this book has been such an incouragement to me and all of us that there still are families out there who love each other and come together to take care of their parents when they get old and sick without it making all of them fight with each other."

Honestly, and this is a bit embarrassing, the very first thought that went through my head was, "See, this is why you can't make any money as a writer...you give away your product!"

But, thankfully, that inappropriate thought soon was replaced with a far nobler one...How cool is it that my parents are still being a blessing to strangers years after their deaths!

After she left, I picked up the book and flipped through it for a couple of minutes, the memories that inspired it still fresh and powerful in my mind. It's easily the best thing that has ever happened to me, having the family I have. I didn't choose them, I didn't get to pick my parents, nobody does. I didn't get to pick my brother and sisters. I simply won the lottery.

                                                                               

A TRUMP Post!!!

I made it. I managed to go the last 35 days without writing about politics and especially...Trump. It wasn't always easy, but a deal is a deal. Now that the self-imposed ban is over, I honestly don't have a lot to say. I mean, there was a speech last night and all, but I can't think of anything necessarily smart or even snarky to say about anything political. Maybe it's because, Donald Trump remains exactly who I thought he was, and so do his enemies.

In the first five or six weeks of his Presidency, he has done literally nothing that has changed my mind about him. He has been no worse and no better than I expected him to be. So far, everything he has done or attempted to do has been straight out of his campaign stump speeches. People who are acting all shocked by any of this were obviously not paying attention during the campaign. Sure, many of his cabinet choices were heavy on generals and billionaires, but what did you expect, professors from Yale and Harvard?  And yes, his first several weeks have been full of ill-conceived initiatives from which he has had to back track. Sort of what one would expect from someone who constantly reminded voters that he was "not a politician." Well, it turns out that if you're not a professional politician in DC, it shows.

Funny story. On the day of the Inauguration, I had a busy schedule at work. After two morning appointments I stopped by the house to have some soup for lunch. As I warmed the soup up on the stove I asked our new digital assistant, Alexa, to play WRVA. The very first words I heard were Trump saying, "So help me God." I had forgotten about the speech! So, I listened. By the time I finished my soup, it was over, a sixteen minute Inaugural speech with no poetry. But, around half way through, I ran into the library and found a piece of paper and wrote down four numbers...the Dow Jones Industrial average, last year's GDP growth rate, the inflation rate, and the unemployment rate. Then I dated it and stuffed it back into the top drawer of my desk.

Bill Clinton famously ran a campaign with the unofficial theme of "It's the economy, stupid." He was right and he won. While much of it was not his fault, the fact is that Barack Obama was the first president to serve eight years who never once presided over a nation with a GDP growth of at least 3%. As superficial and simplistic as this might sound, unfortunately, I believe it to be true...if his Orangeness can get this economy back to the 4-5% growth rates that we had become accustomed to for most of our history, he will be reelected in a real landslide as opposed to the one living rent free in Trump's brain. However, if he doesn't, the American people will soon tire of him and will drop him like a bad habit in 2020. One advantage(or disadvantage, depending on your politics) of such a short, direct, non-poetic inauguration speech is the fact that it will be easy to judge how well,(or poorly), he has done come 2020. When you don't cloud your objectives with soaring, flowered rhetoric, it's easy to find the promises. When 2020 rolls round, if we're still slumbering around with a growth rate of 1.9%  Trump will be history. If he succeeds, all the Hollywood preening, all the street demonstrations in the world won't be able to prevent his reelection.

But, honestly, hasn't it been an exhausting five weeks? It's the little things, really. When I saw the picture of Kelly Anne Conway sitting crosslegged on a sofa in the Oval Office, her heels digging in to the fabric, I thought, what fresh hell is this??  I wanted to slap her. I always hated seeing pictures of Obama with his feet all over the furniture like he was kicked back watching Caddy Shack or something, but this Conway dame takes the cake. There will be four years of this sort of thing. Four years of Trump's temperamental Tweets.

I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

Finally Got The Car

Finally pulled the trigger. By the time we got out of the dealership it was dark and we were hungry so we drove over to Q barbecue for dinner. This is the only picture I've got. I'm sure Pam will have more today. It's a 2017 Hyundai Sante Fe Sport demonstrator with 2100 miles on it along with that sweet depreciation discount. It's got every bell and whistle and her coveted third row seat. Met a really good guy along the way...Scott, our sales guy who went above and beyond for us.

And that's about all I want to say about this ever again.