A Raging Success

Yesterday’s little social media experiment was a raging success and confirmed something I have always known about this world. It can be summed up in just two words...sex sells.

Here are the numbers. In a mere 24 hours, you people have clicked on Sex at 60 more than you clicked on my last five posts...combined. The traffic at The Tempest has skyrocketed by 156%. And all I had to do is something I have never done in the previous 1,968 posts going back nine years...include the word sex in the title!! The next time you’re asking yourself why every advertisement you see on television seems to feature scantily clad women (and men)...just remember this experiment. The reason is simple...it works.

Does this mean that I am going to start writing more about sex? Not a snowball’s chance in Hades. Pam didn’t get around to looking at Facebook until five minutes before she had to leave for a dentist appointment. I don’t have to tell you what happened to her blood pressure when she stumbled across that title!! Luckily, I wasn’t around when it happened. But something tells me that a rare expletive may have escaped her lips. Bless her heart....the things she has to endure being married to me...

So, I suppose I should apologize to all of you for such an immature and childish prank. What am I saying? All I did is give you the opportunity to prove what a bunch of voyeurs you all are! I’m thinking that all of you should apologize to me for being so interested in my sex life!!

Sex at 60

This morning I thought I would share with you all how my sex life has been going since I turned 60. Some things have changed, but others have stayed the same, and...

Just Kidding!!!

But, it did make you click on this blog post...which might say a lot more about you than me! Actually, this is a topic that has fascinated me for the past nine years that I have been writing this blog...not my sex life...but rather, what exactly is it that people want to read about? I have written nearly 2,000 posts over these past nine years about every conceivable topic. But it has always baffled me why some posts, no matter how well written and heartfelt, draw scant interest, while others...even those poorly cobbled together...get clicked nearly to death. Looking back over the archives, here’s what I have discovered. When it comes to The Tempest, people are intrigued by certain topics and indifferent to others. Here’s what generally fires you up:

Politics.

Death.

Violence.

Dogs.

You may think you hate politics, and you probably do, but you sure love reading about it. Whenever I offer up some screed about Trump, and before him Obama, I can count on a much larger and invigorated readership. Some read for confirmation, others to get angry at my wrong headed opinions. We might hate politics, but we love...hating it!

If somebody dies or is in danger of dying and I write about it, you guys are all in.

Whenever I have anything to say about some horrible act of violence like a mass shooting, people want to know what I think. That’s not accurate really. What we all really want to know is what to feel and how to feel about these terrible events. Reading my take on it maybe helps people sort out their own ideas and emotions. Regardless, people are drawn to the topic.

If I relay a story about either my dog or anybody’s dog, people want to hear about it. This is easy to explain. Dogs never disappoint us.

Here are the topics that, more or less, you don’t care to read about:

Sports.

Theology.

Vacations.

No matter what the sport is...baseball, football, basketball, golf...not interested. Maybe this speaks to the average age and gender of this audience. Or maybe I’m just a crappy sports writer!

Nobody wants to read about theological debates, whether it be abortion, gay marriage, works v grace, etc. Again, it may just be that I don’t know how to write about those topics well, or maybe people would rather not think deep thoughts over their morning coffee!

People tire quickly reading of someone else’s frolicking great time on vacation. The reasons require no explanation.

So, there you have it, a little behind the curtain look at what you guys like and don’t like about this blog. Of course, the topics I choose to write about take none of this into consideration. I write about what interests me, not what I think interests you. No offense...but it’s my blog!

Can’t wait to see (and hear!) Pam’s reaction when she reads the title of this one!!!

Change

I slid the key into the lock, opened the door and heard the familiar beep of the security system. I punched my code into the pad and flipped on the lights. This routine, performed a thousand times seemed precarious after a month away...would I remember my code? If my buddies had any imagination they would have rigged up some trip wire or something to confuse me, or coated my office door knob with Vaseline. But I work with a group of hopeless adults, a buttoned up bunch of professionals who wouldn’t know a decent gag if it smacked them in the face.

The place had the familiar smell of leather, industrial carpet and copy paper. Somebody should distill it into a cologne. They could call it...White Collar. 

I stopped in the hallway and looked around at the place. Nothing had changed and everything had changed. I saw the fresh vacuum lines. The cleaning people come over the weekend. I saw the coffee mugs in the dish drain, the overflow of documents to be destroyed in a box on top of the full shredder. I stuck my head in the conference room and noticed that the candy jar was full of chocolates. The placemats on the glass top table—a redundancy that I have never understood—were laid out perfectly, the chairs snug against the edge of the table. My office was immaculate, a month’s worth of correspondence stacked neatly on the desk, already culled of junk mail. I had 38 missed calls, but they had already been prioritized for me by my rock star assistant. It was as if I had never left. 

After getting myself acclimated to my surroundings, with the beginnings of a plan for the day taking shape, I distributed the gifts I had purchased, placing them on the desks of their recipients. That’s when I noticed the empty office. I say empty, when it wasn’t really—the desk was still there—but everything else was gone. It startled me, even though I had been informed of his departure while in Maine. A friend and colleague of the past 35 years had decided to move his operation to an office he had built in his home. He, like me, is at the point where his work schedule isn’t as jammed packed as it was twenty years ago. His success has afforded him time to travel and the luxury of a slower pace. Why not save a little on overhead?

Still, I stood at the entrance to his office and felt a tugging of emotion in my heart, the sadness I always feel at the end of a thing. There is a part of me that wishes things didn’t have to change, although without change, life would be a colossal bore. Practically every work day for 35 years I have carried on a trash-talking discourse with my friend about his pathetic Redskins, his misplaced devotion to tar heel basketball. He has given me unending grief about the Red Sox, ribbed me about anything he could think of that might get a rise out of me. But, it hasn’t all been insults and trash talk. We’ve commiserated over family setbacks, health problems, the frustrations and aggravations of our business. 

How many people have I had a 35 year relationship with in this life? Not all that many. Fewer still who I have interacted with on a daily basis. And while it’s not like he has moved to Siberia—his house is right around the corner from mine practically—it will be different. Change. The constant reshuffling of the people and things of our lives, the shifting sands of events and relationships...change is the only constant.

Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

This Fallen World

So, its been almost five weeks since I’ve darkened the door of my office. My expectations for today are minimal and include:

- When I distribute the gifts I bought for the girls in the office, I hope I can remember where their offices are.

- I sincerely hope that I can remember how to work the copier

The one thing I always dread most of all is getting reacquainted with what is going on, not just in the world of finance, but in the world at large. People have a hard time believing me when I tell them that I completely unplug from the news when I’m on vacation...but it’s true. Its a feature of my time away, not a bug. It is purposeful. I figure that if some earth shattering event were to have taken place while I was away, I would eventually hear about it when I returned home anyway, so why stew over it while I am recharging my emotional batteries? In the past four weeks I have not read one single word about Donald Trump. No news of the Democrats in Congress has been able to break through the firewall of my news ban. I have learned about no fresh new debauchery from Hollywood, no soul crushing betrayal of trust from corporate America. The only snippet of news which is allowed access is Major League Baseball.

So, yesterday morning the first thing I read about is the mass killings in El Paso and Dayton. Sigh...

I’m back...and so, apparently, is the fallen world.

Home

There was no tear-filled moment standing on the dock. We didn’t say goodbye to the lake, although we both did stop in our tracks once to notice the group of eleven loons that appeared fifty yards from our dock. But it happened during our last hour at Loon Landing, and we were overcome with packing up, our emotions elsewhere. When we drove away I didn’t even look in the rear view mirror. Just like that it was over.

The drive home took 14 and a half hours. The traffic was manageable. Hardly a drop of rain. Come to think of it, the entire time we were in Maine I think it might have rained twice. The only accident backup we endured happened less than thirty minutes from home. I should have noticed the State Trooper whizzing by, lights flashing ten minutes before. When the GPS offered a quicker route with no mention of a wreck ahead, I thought she was just dispensing helpful information, but the 3.5 minutes the detour was going to save me seemed silly when I had been driving for over 14 hours. I ignored her, then sat in a parking lot for thirty minutes. By the time we passed the accident site, the ambulance had pulled away, leaving a fire crew, a couple of Troopers, and a charred, mangled motorcycle twisted around a guardrail. Welcome home, I thought. 

Home is every bit as much a concept as it is a place. Each year when we drive up into the driveway after being gone for a month, there is an overwhelming feeling of pride that wells up in me. This, despite the fact that the yard is a mess, the grass withered and brown, the hydrangeas drooped over and gangly, my tomatoe plants having been ravaged by the neighborhood squirrels. Dead pine needles have coated my front yard like snow, a rusty red needle snow that gives my yard a southwestern desert look. Exhausted as I am, despite aching hamstrings and a sore back, I instantly know what I will be doing for the next three hours before I’ve even rolled to a stop. This is our home...and it just can’t look like nobody lives here a second longer. 

After unpacking the car and removing the car top carrier and roof rack, I begin. I rake up the pine needles. I clean up the deck, reinvigorate the house plants that have been faithfully watered by the precious kids who live next door, and place them back in their respective places. I then cut the grass, trim the haggard edges, gather up a month’s worth of sticks from the yard and driveway. The sweat is pouring out of me, dripping off the end of my nose. It has been a while since I’ve been in Short Pump humidity. I haven’t missed it.

This was taped to the fence when we arrived home. The kids next door who I had hired to water the plants had made it to welcome us back home. These three pups are about the sweetest things you’ve ever seen. They all three had birthdays while we were gone. I bought them some cool stuff from The Smiling Cow. I have no grandkids of my own yet, so I’ve got to start spoiling somebody’s kids. I hope Stu and Jamie don’t mind.

So, that’s it. The Maine 2019 adventure is in the books. We will both miss Loon Landing. For the next couple of weeks, I will think about the lake when I drink my morning coffee. Pam will try to imagine gliding along on her paddle board at sunset. We will both long for the table on the deck every breakfast, lunch and dinner we eat for the next month. Lucy will miss the lake, mostly being in the lake. But, there are things we are glad to be back to. Air conditioning, high water pressure, a shower stall where you can turn around without hitting the handle and sliding it all the way over to the red H. Lucy is happy to have her back yard back. The first thing she did yesterday afternoon was walk out there and flip over on her back and roll around, making a snow angel in the pine needles.

Leaving Maine will always bring with it a sadness. We love it there. But coming back home will always bring with it a kind of joy. It’s ours, for one thing. But it’s also...Home.

Tour Guide

For the past couple of days Pam and I have had the privilege of introducing these guys to Maine...

Kirt and Jennifer Sederstrom are a couple of the many new friends we have met at Hope Church. They happened to be on a spontaneous vacation driving through New England. When my wife found out they were going to be in Camden, she couldn’t resist offering our guest house to them for a couple of nights. I can think of nothing that we enjoy more than sharing this incredible part of the country with others. They got here Sunday afternoon and are leaving this morning, but we served as tour guide for some sightseeing, and crammed lots of fun into these two short days. We took them to all of our favorite spots in and around Camden, then gave them a crash course in lake living—Maine style—which includes lots of flotation devices, charcuterie plates, and no judgement and guilt-free afternoon napping. They took to the place like old pros.

In other lake news...

Pam found the perfect lake bag.

Lucy has established herself as the MVV of this trip...Most Valuable Vacationer.

Had a fabulous dinner at Barrettstown Farmhouse.

Had another one of these...

The trees and the sunset reflecting off the windows of the cottage, with Lucy keeping a sharp eye on us...

So now the hard part of the trip has arrived, that uncomfortable feeling that rises in the stomach when it occurs to us that we only have three more days of this. Thursday doesn’t count either since we will be preoccupied with packing up. Our month away is drawing to a close. Reality awaits us back in Short Pump. At this point, I’m not sure who will more devastated...us or Lucy.

Never Let Them Take Your Pants

Reading Richard Russo. I love him and I hate him. I love the guy so much I read everything he writes. I hate the guy because in doing so I am reminded just how pathetic my writing is by comparison. I discovered him a few years ago when I found his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Empire Falls, in a bookstore in Camden on the Maine Authors aisle. When I then learned that he used to live a block from the Camden Deli and actually spent time writing the book at his regular table there, I was enchanted. Seven novels later, here I am, diving once again into two of his more recent works...

Great writers have the gift of delivering truth directly into your brain without the distractions of car chases, bad acting, and the pretentious cinematography of film. You’re reading along on the edge of your seat when, out of nowhere, you are presented with a fog clearing sentence like this:

...People cling to folly as if it were their most prized possession, defending it, sometimes with violence, against the possibility of wisdom.

It stops you in your tracts. You find yourself staring out at the lake, deep in thought, sorting through all of the real life examples of this human tendency you have witnessed in your 61 years, how many times we deny evidence of our own errors rather than admit them, learn from them and move on. How many marriages have failed, how many businesses have gone belly up, how much of our own politics has been poisoned by this simple truth?

But then it dawns on me that this isn’t a unique insight by a great writer, I have heard something similar before, but I just can’t place it. Maybe it was from Shakespeare or one of the great works of Dickens, or Jane Austin. Then it hits me...it was actually from the Apostle Paul:

...They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped created things rather than the creator...Romans 1:25

...proving another 2500 year old truth bomb from King Solomon...There is nothing new under the sun.

Lest I give the impression that Russo’s writing is all deadly serious, I should mention that he is perhaps the funniest novelist of this or any age. More often than not, his humor comes on the heels of something deadly serious, which makes it even funnier. When he was describing a character’s deadly diagnosis of cancer and the blow it had been to his young son, he follows it up with the sick man’s opinion of hospitals...

...Never let the bastards take your pants, because bare-assed men don’t get to make decisions.

Truer words have never been spoken.