These People...

We had a professional photographer come out to the house over Christmas while we had the whole family here. We had never done anything like this before, although I see this sort of thing on Facebook all the time. Anyway, of all the hundreds of pictures he took, this was my favorite...

The session took place on our deck and we had left all three of the dogs inside. We hadn’t heard a peep from them, then someone noticed that all three of them had lined up at the back door for a closer look. They are, from left to right, Lucy, Jackson, and Frisco. Adorable.

Our photographer, Mr. Josh Hill, did manage to take some nice pictures of humans as well...

As I was sorting through these pictures it occurred to me that if I were asked to summarize my accomplishments on this earth over the past 62 years, this is what I would show people as proof that I was here. The people, and dogs, in these photographs are what truly matter to me. Everything else is secondary. The house, the cars, the bank accounts serve a purpose, but this is the purpose. My business and the material things it has afforded me are merely tools that have helped me fashion this life, but they aren’t life itself. Certainly there are other things dear to me that aren’t in these photographs, my extended family, my friends, my church family, etc..but its these people who matter the most.

This last picture is good of all of us. But the best part of it is in the background. Look closer and you will see Lucy standing at the back door, keeping watch over her people. She doesn’t sense danger, but she’s not going to relax until all six of us are back inside. Those of you who have dogs know exactly what I’m talking about. But in a way, I feel the same way Lucy does. 

Where’s My Money

Over the past 24 hours, vandals have struck the houses of both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Mitch McConnell. As of this hour, authorities have not identified the guilty party, so for now at least they serve only as a symbolic protest against the failure of Congress to pass a more generous stimulus package...I guess.

You’ve got to hand it to whoever did this. I haven’t seen anything this honest in our political conversation in years! Aside from the fake blood and severed pig head at Pelosi’s place, this guy’s message is bold and unequivocal...Dude wants everything! I mean, why the heck not? As a negotiating position, it makes perfect sense. You shoot for the moon, and even if you don’t hit it, you’ll land among the stars, right?

Politician: So, how can we help you through this difficult season of life?

Protester: Give me everything.

Politician: I’ll have to get back to you on that...

Whoever spray-painted McConnell’s door chose an interesting possessive pronoun, the word my in his message is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Through the first 10 months of fiscal year 2020, the government of the United States collected $2.83 trillion dollars in taxes and fees. Over that same period of time it borrowed another $2.81 trillion. That’s a lot of money. But, to our protester’s point...how much of that can fairly be described as...his? But, something tells me that the graffiti artist in question here is not pondering the complexities of finance, he is just pissed that his stimulus check will be inadequate to his needs, and he blames Mr. McConnell for the shortfall. I can think of no politician, living or dead, who cares less about what this protester might think of his stimulus check than Mitch McConnell. Having said that, the protester’s decision to paint Where’s My Money, without a question mark, on the Majority Leader’s front door works well as political theatre. Where, indeed? 

A new administration will soon take power that is more favorably disposed to give this protester what he wants...at least in theory. Their ranks are filled with people who have given at least lip service to the idea of universal income guarantees, the cancelling of college debt, free college educations for all and scores of other wealth transfer programs. So maybe the answer to our vandal’s questions are, “It’s on the way. Be patient.” Much depends, I’m told, on the outcome of the two senate races in Georgia. If the Democrats sweep, they will take control of the Senate, finally ridding themselves of the heartless penny-pincher, McConnell. If not, Mister McConnell will have to worry about a lot more than graffiti on his front door the next time he blocks President Biden’s first stimulus check package.

A GREAT Christmas Present

I’ve got a buddy down in Nashville, Deen Entsminger, who gave me one of the best Christmas presents ever...The Complete Far Side...

This is Volume One. There are three such volumes. We will be sending each other coded messages ( page 54, 8/9/80 ) for the rest of our lives, I imagine. Gary Larson’s work is endlessly entertaining, but the best part is that everyone comes away from one of his strips with a different take on what it actually means. Or does it even mean anything? Sometimes, he’s just being silly. My favorites always seem to be the ones with no caption. These are usually the ones that stir up the most controversy, since it is up to the individual reader to decide what’s going on. Of course, individual readers are free to project their own problems onto such strips, turning them inside out, endowing each with all sorts of nefarious intent. Page 54, 8/9/80 is one such strip...

I love this. Two diametrically opposed groups about to confront each other, when just around the corner sits an ice cream truck playing some scratchy childhood tune. Any number of outcomes are possible. Both sides could ignore the ice cream truck. The protesters are the aggressors here since they are the ones marching. Since one of the guys in the front row is carrying a club, it can fairly be assumed that they intend physical violence. But the troops on the other side have far superior firepower and will quickly gain the upper hand in any such confrontation. We don’t know what the issue is here, the protest signs give us no hint. We don’t know if the protesters are fighting for something noble or they’re just a bunch of anarchists. What we do know is there is about to be trouble. Big trouble. Enter, the ice cream truck and its oblivious driver. Is it possible that the song is loud enough to be heard over the screaming and yelling? Is it possible that if enough of them hear it, that they will pause and look? If so, might one of the protesters and one or two of the troops walk over and ask the driver, “Do you have dreamcicles?” It’s awfully hard to beat someone up while enjoying a dreamcicle. I look at this strip and think it perfect for the first day of 2021. As the divided states of America enters a new year, will we choose to continue fighting each other, or will we pause long enough to grab a Nutty Buddy?

So, that’s my take on Page 54, 8/9/80. As I write this, Deen is preparing his take. This is going to be great fun!

Five Things I Learned in 2020

A year ago today none of us could have imagined what 2020 would bring, how it would dramatically alter our lives, how it would change us. I entered 2020 with a list of goals, some of them quite ambitious. By the end of March they were in tatters. The stock market had cratered over 30% in four weeks, all face to face appointments had been cancelled, and Fauci and Birx had become must-see TV. There was a twilight zone quality to it all. When people started hoarding toilet paper, that’s when I knew that the world was entering something newly irrational. Of course, conducting a Presidential election in the midst of a pandemic is a recipe for a special kind of madness, and although the election is over, its most rabid partisans are still quite mad. A sizable number of them still insist that Donald Trump won the election and that some eleventh hour miracle will overturn its results. After witnessing the preceding twelve months, it’s difficult to dismiss any contingency, no matter how bizarre. Among many other things, 2020 has taught me never to underestimate the stupidity of large groups of people energized by politics.

So, what else has this year taught me? Life is, after all, a school. Every day is a lesson if we are paying attention. 2020 in this regard has been a master class in damage control and crisis management. If nothing else 2020 has revealed the quality of all of our plan B’s. With the arrival of lockdowns and quarantines we have discovered the things that really matter to each of us, and what things we can actually do without. Here are just a few from my perspective.

1. Being forced to spend so much time at home, I have become much more thankful for my home. It’s not a mansion. It makes no “statement” to anyone when they see it. But it’s ours, every room filled with memories, every piece of furniture tells our story. If I were to lose my sight, I could make my away around inside these walls from memory. That is a comfort to me.

2. 2020 has made me much more thankful for and solicitous of my neighbors. We have the good fortune of living in a neighborhood filled with good people. When you are asked to hunker down at home, you begin to wonder how those neighbors are getting along. Early on, a college Freshman across the culdesac came down with COVID. Her mother is a nurse and works with COVID patients. Another neighbor across the street lost his wife to a non-COVID-related illness. Then, our next door neighbor caught COVID at her gym. Suddenly, the pandemic became personal. There wasn’t much we could do, but we did whatever small favors that came to mind, a sort of circling of the wagons around our little corner of the world. The experience has made me thankful that I live in this place with these people.

3. I have discovered that I have a love/hate relationship with Zoom, Facetime, and Marco Polo. On the one hand, they have been a Godsend for not only my business, but also for my personal life. In the early days of the pandemic, having the ability to get all four of my children on a computer screen for a conversation felt like a miracle. Seeing their faces was like medicine. It was proof to me that they were well. It made me feel at least the illusion that we were together. The hate part is the fact that having to use this technology only serves to remind me of its limitations. You can’t hug a digital image. You can’t read the eyes of a reflection. My dependence on Zoom reminds me that my life has changed, and until the day when Zoom is no longer needed, that’s a reminder of my limits.

4. Maine is not a luxury. Maine is an absolute necessity for my well being. The seven weeks I spent there this year served as the closing argument in the great Rent vs. Buy trial that has been argued in my mind over the past thirty years. Being in Maine brings me more happiness and joy than being practically anywhere else in the world. It calms me. It wakes me up. It is the great recalibration. I arrive there tied up in knots, often overwhelmed by the complexities of life. I leave there a new man, calmer, happier, and counting the days until my return. I will buy a place. There will be no turning back.

5. I married the right woman. After nearly 37 years together, one might think that being quarantined together would bring out the worst in us. Actually, it has taught me that there isn’t another human being on the planet who I would rather be locked down with. Pam has been one of the few people I know who has thrived during 2020. She has gotten even more creative, more inventive than she has ever been. It’s almost as if she’s gotten smarter as all the world around her has gotten dumber. It’s hard to explain. It’s something you have to experience, but trust me, she has been killing it.

I Think We Pulled it Off

Family Fest 2020, the first and hopefully last virtual Christmas celebration in Dunnevant family history, is in the books and by all accounts was a raging success. Due to my wife’s initiative and creativity, we were able to administer a virtual rebuke to the pandemic, a digital middle finger of defiance, if you will. A few highlights:

There were a total of 63 videos uploaded to the Marco Polo app and they covered the gambit...

- Pam read The Night Before Christmas from a gorgeous book given to Kaitlin and Patrick 31 years ago.

- Russ read the Christmas story in Luke 2 from the King James Version of the Bible, the only translation that sounds right to us.

- Jon read the Longfellow poem, I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day.

Thus ended the highbrow part of the program.

There was music. Lots of music...

Kaitlin sang an advent song, Sarah sang Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Patrick performed the British version of In The Bleak Midwinter. I played Silent Night. There was a piano recital by Ezra. My brother sang several original compositions. Cameron and Ava gave us a bizarre version of The Twelve Days of Christmas which featured singing Guinea Pigs. My sister Linda played the piano while Bill showed us his train display racing entirely too fast through the idyllic village that looks an awful lot like Bedford Falls.

There were several cooking segments. My sister Paula gave us a step by step tutorial of how she makes her ridiculous cinnamon rolls. Baby teased us with pumpkin bread. Becky showed us a Scottish dessert she had made which featured raspberries and pastry. Sarah showed us the frame of her gingerbread house, complete with stained glass windows made out of melted Jolly Ranchers.

We all got to see Ezra and Evelyn come down the stairs on Christmas Morning. We got to see Lauren and Cat sipping their Starbucks in short sleeves from sunny California. I detected just a touch of superiority in their expressions, what little I could make out of them, what with all the blazing sunshine!

We were all treated to my daughter Kaitlin, wrapping up her 16th consecutive Least Valuable Vacationer award, as she was caught sprawled out on the living room floor while Patrick, Sarah and Pam slaved away in the kitchen making breakfast.

Linda and Bill offered a fascinating video of what it looks like to open and close their 100 year old table, starting with it in round four seater form, expanding all the way to its full seven leaves, a massive table that seats 14 people.

There were videos of our three dogs. There was one of Linda’s new cat, Stella...as well as the aforementioned Guinean pigs.

There was Bernadette and Isaac, their faces giving away the fear and thrill of being three months away from their wedding day.

There was a video tour of Pam’s Snow Village...the sanitized version, a deliberate refutation of my earlier Tempest edition which told the grittier tale of the darker side of the town.

Of course, there was also a play. No Dunnevant Holiday celebration can be had without one. This one featured Kaitlin in a riveting performance as Nanny, confronted with Marco Polo technology.

So, if you are thinking that this sounds dreadfully boring, I can certainly understand. Like many family endeavors, it’s charms can only be fully appreciated by insiders. But to us, this project helped save Christmas. Although we were far apart, this brought us together. It took some work, but it was worth every minute. 

I hope that Nanny and Papa, looking down on us from heaven, are proud of us.

Christmas Cards

I just heard over the police scanner that a midget fortune teller just robbed a bank

The dispatcher said there was a small medium at large...

What’s the difference between a Harley and a Hoover?

The position of the dirt bag...

What's the definition of Baroque?

That’s when you run out of Monet...

You would think that my elegant and festive surroundings this morning would inspire better writing. But, you would be wrong. Instead, the pictures above serve as evidence of how busy Pam and I have been over the past couple of days. Patrick and Sarah and their gorgeous pup, Frisco, are on the road from Nashville today. Tomorrow, Kaitlin and Jon and their lovable doofus, Jackson, will hit the interstates toward Short Pump. This morning, I am taking Lucy over to Petsmart for her Christmas grooming appointment. She insists on looking her absolute best for guests. Just in case anyone wonders if we are the sort of family who lavishes Christmas gifts on their dogs...

What a ridiculous question. Of course!! Each of them have their own stocking. What are we supposed to do? All three of them have been so very good this year!

I love what Pam does with the Christmas cards we get every year. Normally, this is a metal decoration that spells out the word welcome. She takes each card and slides it into the iron work. I don’t know about you all, but this year these cards have meant more somehow. We have looked at each one more closely. These are all from people we love, many of whom we haven’t seen in person for quite a while thanks to this insufferable pandemic. There are family photographs from recent weddings. We smile when we see their faces. When Pam opens these cards its always the same reaction, “Aww, what a beautiful family! I love this so much!!” She then hands them to me and I smile too. We are thankful for each family represented on our wall, and more grateful this year than ever for receiving each and every one.

The Great Molasses Shortage or, How I Saved Christmas

Here we go. Monday, December the 21st, which means it’s almost go-time. Time to put up or shut up. The house is starting to take shape for the arrival of four kids and three dogs. It has been thoroughly vacuumed and dusted. The beds have been made. Today, feeling magnanimous, I have volunteered to clean all three bathrooms. Why? Well, so I don’t look so totally worthless in comparison to my wife who has been flying around here like a whirling dervish for weeks. Today, I’m thinking she will be baking all day or something equally labor intensive. In between pulling delectable things out of the oven, she will be fretting over the details of her idea of a virtual music concert/talent show called Family Fest 2020 to be held the day after Christmas. Once she gets that squared away, she will turn her anxious thoughts to how best to orchestrate a family photo session with a professional photographer—a special gift given to us by sweet Bernadette—for some time while the kids are home. Color schemes and shoot locations don’t just decide themselves, you know! Of course then there’s the planning of Christmas dinner and all the other menus for the week. So yeah, the least I can do is scrub a few toilets.

Actually, my role here is more important than it would appear to the casual observer. I am usually the one who volunteers to take each of the three dogs outside for their morning, afternoon and evening constitutionals. Consequently, each of the pups knows who loves them the most. It’s Pops! I am also the one organizing the betting pool for the week. Question: Which dog will be the first to throw up? On what surface? Currently odds stand as follows: Frisco 6:1–carpet upstairs.  Jackson 10:1–hardwood floor dining room. Lucy 25:1 tile floor our bathroom. Of course, separate pools have to be set for peeing and pooping, as well as over and under for total accidents, and a special long shot bet on probability of no accidents at all...currently at 250:1. 

I have one more indispensable job around here...Pam’s designated shopper. Just last night, my skills were brought to bear on a tragedy that had the potential to ruin Christmas entirely. Pam had run out of...Grandma’s Molasses...and what was worse was the fact that our Publix was out of stock!! I don’t have to tell you how tragic this would have been. No Grandma’s Molasses means no Molasses Krinckles, no gingerbread whoopie-pies, no gingerbread cake. In other words...no love. So, I girded my loins and hit the road around 5:00 am last night. First Stop...Food Lion. I quickly found the baking goods aisle, scanned the shelves for the distinctive burnt yellow wrapper. Instead, I found a big empty space on the shelf where molasses should have been. Next stop...the John Rolfe Publix, where I found an equally empty shelf. But, out of the corner of my eye I spied a rather rotund and completely bored out of his mind stock boy in his pea green vest looking like he would rather be literally anywhere in the universe other than the baking goods aisle. I approached him with this disarming line, “Look pal...this is the third store I have been to looking for molasses. How about you check out the back room to see if you have any in reserve.” then I winked at him slyly and offered the hook, “I’ll make it worth your while...” He shuffled to the back room with even more listless disregard. Ten minutes later he emerged, walking towards me with an even slower shuffle, small cardboard box in hand, looks at me with complete and total nonchalance and muttered, “you’re in luck.” I grabbed the box...”Give me that!” I snapped. There in the bottom of the box were the last two bottles of Grandma’s Molasses in all of Short Pump...

Christmas was saved! 

But before I can turn my attention solely to all things Christmas, I must clean up the last remaining details at work. Today I have a few hours left at the office, then I’m done for the year. After I wrap up the business year I will head out to get Pam’s stocking stuffers. Something tells me I will go overboard.