Scandalous Photographs From MY Past

Ralph Northam and I are almost the same age. We attended college at about the same time. His fate...being brought low by a damaging photograph from 35 years ago...has gotten me to wondering and worrying myself. Are there possibly scandalous photographs lurking out there of me doing something foolish? From ages 17-22, I wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue myself. If my mother were alive she would refer to that five year time period as the years that the locust ate, or some other Old Testament formulation designed to make back-sliding sound far more sinister. Well...I have come down with a cold over the past couple of days which has left me with some down time on my hands. I have used this down time to try to get out in front of any damaging photos that might be revealed by my enemies. In my research, alas...I have much to answer for...

I do not believe that this is, in fact, me. I can’t imagine any circumstance where I would have voluntarily agreed to wear this shirt with that sweater vest, especially on picture day, 1974...my sophomore year in high school. Certainly, this does not represent the man I have become. I am willing to open a dialogue about middle 70’s fashion choices and learn from this ghastly example of poor judgement.

When I graduated from high school, my best friend and I celebrated our passage into adulthood by doing something very un-adult. Instead of entering college like the rest of our friends, we decided to load up the car with backpacking equipment and travel across the country visiting as many national parks, states, and bars as we could before our life savings of $1,000 each ran out. This would have been the summer of 1976. It was an election year. Alert readers will notice that the car in question was festooned with a brand new, hot off the press Jimmy Carter ‘76 bumper sticker. Yes...my very first Presidential vote was cast for Mr. Peanut. 

When I was a little boy, my siblings all agree that I was an out of control ADHD maniac who spent his days and nights getting away with murder and terrorizing them with world class obnoxiousness. This unfortunate photograph lends great credence to their claims. That’s me, surrounded by my two sisters and a bevy of cousins, held firmly in place by my big sister Linda. Perhaps I was just having a bad day. Maybe I was the one being terrorized by this all-female entourage. Nevertheless, this was not my best look.

This photograph deserves answers. First of all, yes...that hair is real, and yes...its a perm. And no, I have no idea what I was thinking at the time. The t-shirt, however, was quite well thought out and sadly does not speak well of my state of mind with regards to women... It’s a picture of the Quaker Oats man. Underneath is written his famous tag line...Nothing Is Better For Thee Than Me....my misogynistic mindset on full display. The fact that it was a babe-magnet just adds to my sense of shame.

Last, but certainly not least was the disastrous three months where I went all in on the Pimp Look. I look like Don Cornelious’s brother from another mother. It was a dark time in my life...

It is my sincere, heartfelt wish that everyone will forgive me these youthful indiscretions and allow me to learn from them. I ask you all to honor my privacy at this time.

Let’s Just Enjoy the Ducks

The Super Bowl is over and done with, finally ushering football off the national stage and not a minute too soon. In a mere 59 days baseball will begin and all will be right with the world. As far as the game goes, it was another example of that old adage about how nothing is guaranteed in life except death, taxes, and Patriots win.

A funny story...after the game was over I started scanning through social media and saw a hilarious post from a friend of mine. When it comes to politics, this particular friend  makes Bernie Sanders look like a Rotarian. I paraphrase his post below:

The Patriots are white privilege personified. You think the playing field is equal, but somehow they always end up on top. Most people suspect the system is rigged in their favor, but they insist that they merely play the game better than everyone else.

My immediate reaction...after spewing my Sam Adams across the room laughing...was to comment, Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the winning pickup line heard last night at Fidel’s Woke Sports Bar and Grill!!

I see this sort of thing all the time on social media. Everything, and I do mean everything gets reduced down to politics. The personal is political. If someone is a huge Trump guy, every single thing that happens in life becomes about him. If you’re all about social justice, even your dentist appointment becomes a metaphor about the evils of capitalism. 

Sure, sometimes I imagine that a duck could possible be emblematic of how the patriarchy has poisoned the bourgeois ethos...but my trick knee tells me that the vast majority of the time, a duck is just a duck. But, as my Dad told me years ago...When you’re a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.

So, this morning my advice to all of you is simple. Today, lets all take off our ideological glasses and just enjoy the ducks.

Tough Week To Be a Virginian

One of my mother’s most frequent and reliable warnings to us kids was...Be sure your sins will find you out. We all knew exactly what she meant...that no matter how airtight your alibi, no matter how slick and calculated your story, no matter how completely you may have covered your tracks...the truth had a way of muscling itself into the light of day eventually. In Mom’s telling, this was a result of the hand of God. She took seriously the words of the Apostle Paul...God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. 

It’s been a tough week to be a Virginian. Our governor has been splashed all over television and computer screens across the fruited plain, first for his cavalier endorsement of infantacide followed quickly by his racist medical school yearbook photos. In just a few short days, Ralph Northam went from an obscure southern governor who nobody had ever heard of to the most notorious politician in the country...and when that country includes Donald Trump in the Oval Office...thats saying something.

Of course, in politics often the coverup is worse than the crime. With Northam, his tortured response to the photos has been a disaster. First, he apologized but couldn’t or wouldn’t reveal which racist character he was dressed as, the guy in blackface or the dude in the Klan getup. Then, upon further review and no doubt on the advice of his PR team, he denied either one was him with the ludicrous formulation...I vividly don’t remember. At this hour, he still clings to power, hoping that the infinitesimally short attention span of the American people will wipe this whole kerfuffle from everyone’s consciousness by the middle of next week at the latest.

Let me attempt a defense of our embattled liberal democrat governor.

First, with regard to the now distant memory of his infantacide radio interview. In its immediate aftermath, my Facebook wall exploded with outraged pro-life memes. Several people tried to make the case that the governor supported delivering completely healthy babies onto a table, then allowing the mother one last chance to back out of motherhood via a three minute discussion, after which the healthy infant would be murdered in cold blood. This wasn’t at all what he was saying. If, like me, you cling to the notion that all life is sacred, even disabled life, his actual comments were objectionable enough without this unfair twisting of his words.

With regards to the yearbook pictures...This is a full stop horrible thing. To discover that the man who hurled accusations of racism at his opponent just over a year ago would be caught dead as either one of these men in the sickening photograph is a grave disappointment, not to mention an example of staggering hypocrisy. Yes, it was a long time ago. But, I went to college a long time ago too, and I saw my share of bad things at parties. Although I was no choir boy then or now, my parents did a good enough job of filling my head with the idea that racism was an indefensible evil, that the sight of anyone in a Klan robe or blackface would have been an automatic order to leave said party, let alone participate in such a thing.

But...do I think that Ralph Northam is a racist? That’s an entirely different question. Looking at the evidence of his life over the past thirty years, I would say, no. Is it fair then to punish him with exile from his duly elected position in government because of such an old transgression? I would hate to be judged by practically anything I did and said 40 years ago. On many subjects, 21 year old Doug Dunnevant was an intemperate moron. But, Doug Dunnevant isn’t governor of the Commonmwealth of Virginia. If you live by identity politics, if your political rise was helped along by being a merchant of the grievance industry, eventually you die by identity politics. I don’t believe that Ralph Northam is the same man he was in 1984. I believe that like all of us, he has progressed in his thinking and in his character since then. But honestly, his humiliating performance since this yearbook story broke has damaged him more than his yearbook decisions from 35 years ago. His stubborn attempt to cling to power, his willingness to demean himself and his office with these ridiculous and tortured explanations of the unexplainable have revealed him to be the personification of everything we all hate about politicians, their inability to just tell the freaking truth. 

...on second thought

I sat out this morning to write a blog post about how our political discourse has become dominated with bad faith arguments. I was going to suggest that this technique is designed to enrage us rather than advance an argument. One side takes the most extreme position of the other side, then presents it as representative of main stream thought, insuring that both sides will end up at each other’s throats and more divided than ever. In the heat of the moment, I’ve done it a time or two myself. But, half way through my thought process on the subject, I realized that it was futile. In the world we live in, my chances of changing anyone’s mind about anything involving politics is less than zero. So, screw it.

On a much brighter note, we have all survived January. Our new year is now fully up to speed. We are one month closer to better things, more moderate temperatures, and the beginning of spring training. My health is good. Business is prosperous. I love my church, and I just made down payments on two summer vacations. My wife has been on a culinary roll all month with a series of new recipes she has found. I’ve dropped a few pounds. My grown children are both happily married and contributing to their communities. I’m writing a very cool story in my spare time, and although I haven’t given any money away so far this week, the search for the right person has been fun. This week ends this afternoon with a cigar date with good buddies at Mona’s...which is much better than a sharp stick in the eye. 

Carry on...

A Harbinger of Things to Come

Despite the fact that my calendar clearly says that it is January 31, 2019...for some demonic reason, a multitude of Presidential hopefuls from the Democratic Party have started making way too much noise, way too early. It has been a sobering reminder of what life will soon look like in these United States...

First it was Elizabeth Warren, offering herself as a candidate with the aw-shucks, I’m just a regular Jane who is gonna go get me a beer video, which no doubt gave her Ivory League colleagues the vapors, but certainly convinced me that she is authentic! Then, Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York and full time billionaire started making noise. Kamala Harris, the African American female senator from California became the automatic front runner when she threw her hat into the ring. Being both female and black is basically the Holy Grail of democrat politics these days, easily trumping Warren’s Native American schtick. If Ms. Harris would only declare herself transgendered, she could wrap up the nomination before the kickoff to the Super Bowl! Of course, then word came that Howard Schultz, he of the Starbucks fortune, would be a candidate of the Independant Party. Democratic Party big wigs are having a fit at the prospect of an untested Jewish billionaire gumming up the 2020 works, imagining the possibility of Schultz dividing the progressive vote to the point that Trump could win a second term. If that were to happen, Starbucks would become the first major corporation to be hated by both republicans and democrats.

From what I have been able to gather, at least among the declared candidates so far, the 2020 contest will be to see which candidate proposes the most free stuff. So far, I’ve heard about free college for all, a guaranteed minimum income for all, Medicare for all, and free ice cream on Friday night. All of these new freebies will be financed by some sort of income tax hike or a wealth tax on billionaires. But it won’t cost regular people like us a dime...however, the working definition of regular people remains nebulous, at best.

The Republican Party has been quiet. The presumptive nominee is the current occupant of the White House.

As I begin contemplating what the 2020 campaign is going to be like, I die a little bit inside. A a voter, I begin the contest completely opposed to Donald Trump’s re-election. And yet, my ability to support his competition is at present 0%. So, once again, I trudge along in the political wilderness, resigning myself to a two year, scorched earth campaign which will produce a disappointing result. Somewhere, somehow, I need to get my hands on this bumper sticker...

Kicking and Screaming

What I am about to tell you is a confession of sorts, and I will have to work hard not to bore you to tears while telling it, since it involves the single most boring subject in all of the universe...computers. More precisely it’s a story about modern office technology vs. tried and true old-school methods of organization. You can probably guess which side I’m on. But, yesterday, my efficiently tactless assistant put her foot down...and now I am launched into the modern technological age kicking and screaming. Here’s how it happened.

Many years ago, back before cell phones were invented, my assistant was my wife. When I hired her, she was instantly traumatized by the haphazard condition of my files. You know...random things filed under K for ...kids, that sort of thing. She determined to tear the whole confused mess down and start from scratch. It took her six months before she was satisfied with her work. I couldn’t believe how much easier it was to find stuff once Pam’s organizational zeal had been unleashed. The linchpin of her system was this chart she had designed and stapled on the inside cover of each hanging file, containing every single fact you could ever want to know about the specific client in question. It was a beautiful thing that transformed my business life. Eventually, Pam tired of her Uber-frustrating boss and quit. Her last words were something along the lines of...Well, I’ve done all I can do, dear.

A series of assistants would follow with varying degrees of success. Then, six years ago, I hired Kristin. The thing that makes her unique is the fact that I never have to wonder what she’s thinking, and she can talk smack every bit as well as I can...no small feat.

So, yesterday, I had the idea that I needed to update Pam’s summary sheet thing. It had been abandoned at some point after her exit and replaced by a Rube Goldberg system of post-it notes, and scraps of paper stuffed into overstuffed files, yours truly being the only human being on Earth capable of understanding where anything was. I broach the subject with Kristin, suggesting that she design a new summary sheet to staple to the inside cover of each hanging file. She nodded her head that she would make an attempt, then disappeared into her office. Thirty minutes later she was back in my office with that expression she gets when she’s about to call me an idiot, but is struggling to find words that aren’t too harsh. As I recall, it went something like this...

Ok, this thing you have asked me to do is...dumb. I will do it if you insist, but its stupid. It’s pre-historic thinking. You do realize that almost everyone else on the planet, including everybody in this office is using computerized client management systems, right? There’s 
this thing called RedTail which can do everything you want and tons more automatically. So, sure, I can do this very dumb thing you’ve asked me to do, or you can bring your business into the 21st century. Your call.

At this point, I put up a reasonably spirited defense of my system, pointing out that it had served me quite well over the past 36 years, and that I had already heard the RedTail pitch years earlier and considered it an overpriced and far too geeked out and complex for my style. Each argument was met with an eye roll and a snappy rejoinder. Finally she threw out this line...This system would make it infinitely easier for you to spend more time in Maine. Before the end of the day, she had my credit card and had signed me up.

I will hate every minute of the transition. My eyes will glaze over at every confusing glitch of the implementation. But, I suppose I will eventually wonder how I ever got along without it. That’s how the technology game works. You fight and claw against it’s encroachment, you vow to never let it’s tentacles ensnare you. Then one day you wake up and hear your wife asking Alexa to put coffee on her grocery list and realize that you have lost not only the battle but the entire war. Kicking and screaming, indeed.

A Challenge to my Readers

Sometimes its easy when observing the world to come to the conclusion that we are doomed. Reading the news is an invitation to nihilism. The reason this is so is because the news is almost always bad. Good news doesn’t attract eyeballs, so only the worst examples of human behavior make the cut. This isn’t anything new, of course. It has always been so. Human beings have, since the dawn of time been drawn to bad news like moths to flame. Still, we all know of good decent people. They are everywhere, all around us. Each of us could rattle off a list of a dozen people we personally know who are beautiful, generous, caring people. Hardly any of us actually know a rapist, murderer, or thief. But, when we are constantly informed of their exploits, they seem omnipresent, lurking behind every bush. We become fearful and guarded, withdrawing a bit from our fellow man. How can we fight this withdrawing? Is it possible to reclaim optimism?

Yes. Here’s how...

This is something I started doing many years ago at the urging of my Mom. I don’t do it every day certainly, but whenever I start feeling a bit too big for my britches,(one of my mother’s frequent accusations about her youngest child) it always comes back to me. It starts with the basic understanding that we humans are essentially selfish at our core. On the subject of total depravity, my mother was Calvinist to the core! To overcome our innate selfishness, we had to develop strategies to fight it. Her’s was simple...give money away. At first, I thought she was crazy. She had no business giving money away, I reasoned, since she never had enough of it to start with. But, Mom would always counter with...if generosity depended on wealth, only rich people could do it. Why let them have all the fun!?

So, here’s how it works. You go to the bank and withdraw an amount of money to give away. The amount isn’t as important as actually withdrawing it. It will vary widely from person to person. To some, giving $10 away would be a sacrifice, to others, $100 would be chump change. I always pick a number that at least makes me careful about just who I decide to give it to. Anyway, for argument’s sake, let’s say you withdraw a $100 bill. Now, the task before you comes with a deadline...you have a week or maybe two to find someone who needs a break, someone who you encounter in the normal course of your life for whom your $100 might make an enormous impact. But, who? That’s the most difficult part of this exercise. 

We human beings, even the best of us, have a tendency to plod through life with blinders on, head down, resolutely striving from one task to the next. Now with our cell phones, we are even less aware of those around us. The hard part of this is looking up...paying better attention to the people around us. In the past I’ve given this money to a harried mom in line at the grocery store, a hunched over elderly man in line at the pharmacy. Other people I know who have done this have paid for people’s meals at fast food restaurants. One guy paid for the next 25 cars in line behind him at a toll booth! There’s no right way or wrong way to do this...although I prefer not giving money to the professional pan handlers on Broad Street!

Here’s the payoff. It’s not only the recipient who benefits. It’s...you. When you let loose just a little to your grip on what’s yours, you discover the joy of generosity. You become more grateful for what you’ve been blessed with, and you discover the thrill of being a blessing to others. There’s no feeling in the world like knowing that you just might have made someone’s day by being their answer to prayer. 

Pro Tip....bonus points if you can manage doing your giving anonymously.

So, to anyone reading this, I make the challenge to you...give some money away this week. Keep your heart and your eyes open for someone who needs a blessing. Then come back here...anonymously...and share your story with the rest of us. That will be good news worth reading.