The Puzzle of Death

Yesterday was supposed to be my first day back at the office, the day that my new business year began. Instead, we got seven inches of snow, a bunch of people lost power, and we set some kind of COVID record. How about we all just stay home in January, come back February 1st and try again?

Regardless of conditions, I will go in this morning. One day at home for snow is quite enough for me. But Pam is happy as a clam. She is using her snow days to take down Christmas decorations, organize her new planner—don’t ask!— and continue her pitched battle against the puzzle of death:

Last summer while we were in Maine Pam thought it would be fun if we worked on a puzzle at the cabin. So she bought a Maine-themed 1000 piece monster and we all spend time working on it over a period of days. To my great surprise it was actually kinda fun. When my family does this sort of thing during the beach trips, I always take a hard pass. It looks so…slow and tedious…requiring way too much sitting for my taste. So, I was skeptical. 

But it turned out to be a cool project and a surprising good time. 

But the Christmas vacation version of puzzle fun has been a slow slog of frustration, and it lays there—daunting and unfinished. To make matters worse, the kids are all long gone and we kinda need our kitchen table back. So, it’s just Pam and me…mostly Pam fighting this battle. She is determined that she will finish this thing, no matter how long it takes. Long ago, this thing stopped being fun. Now its war. Its labyrinth of tree limbs, weeds and expanses of white nothingness are the gauntlet between us and our kitchen table being reclaimed, and Pam is on a mission.

Meanwhile, the only positive about snow is the opportunities for photography. May I present our deck at 6:45 this morning…

My Perpetual New Year’s Resolution

I could use less cynicism. It might be nice to look on the bright side every once in a while. It might help to be less critical, more empathetic, less of a smart-ass. My contentment level would probably rise if I was less obsessed with the future and more invested in the present. I should attempt to be a better listener, offer my opinions less frequently, and not hold those opinions in such high regard. I should pursue friendships with more vigor, hold grudges less tightly. I should spend more time in prayer. I should read the Bible more and the Drudge Report less. I should recommit myself to my hobbies, more golf and fishing, fewer excuses. Greater enthusiasm for my profession, more thankfulness, less fatalism. I need to escape the treadmill of politics since it only breeds frustration and resentment, and give the guys on the other side of the aisle the gift of my indifference.

My perpetual New Year’s resolution, first written in 2012.

2022 Predictions

Every year around this time I write a Predictions post. The 2012 post was my best since I absolutely nailed my first two predictions—2012 ended without peace in the Middle East, and the Federal Government did spend more money in 2012 than they did in 2011. But, I must admit that some of my more recent prediction posts haven’t exactly been Nostradamus-like. This beauty from 2016 comes to mind— President Obama, exhausted after seven years of being both a Christian and a Muslim, declares himself the first Buddhist president. 

Lucky for readers of The Tempest, I am not discouraged by miserable failure. So, without further delay, may I present to you…

2022 Predictions

1. Just about the time when the world thinks it has finally beaten back the COVID pandemic, scientists discover the Zebra variant, which originates in a diner in Canada, and whose primary symptom seems to be transforming it’s victims into polite human beings.

2. Joe Biden will survive the second year of his Presidency, costing members of his caucus a fortune since they all took the under on 18 months.

3. A team from the SEC will win the college football National Championship for the 12th time in the past 16 years, which will bring calls to reform the playoff system to allow more inclusion and equity. Suggestions include forcing SEC schools to play with only 9 players.

4. Speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi will die from a fatal reaction to a new anesthetic drug administered during her record 9th face lift operation. Fortunately for the Pelosi family, her husband, venture capitalist Paul Pelosi had recently shorted the drug makers stock.

5. Former President Donald Trump announces plans to build a five star luxury casino inside the Vatican. He promises that all the proceeds from the venture will go to Catholic charities. In an unrelated move, Trump announces his conversion to Catholicism.

6. The 2022 Major League Baseball season is cancelled by the ongoing labor dispute between the grossly overpaid and coddled players and their insanely wealthy and coddled owners. In a last ditch effort to save the season, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is brought in to mediate based on the fact that she once was a waitress at a sports bar.

7. Senator Joe Manchin upsets the political balance in the Senate by declaring himself a Republican. In response, Bernie Sanders, figuring what the hell?, finally decides to declare himself a Communist.

8. The much anticipated 2022 midterm elections set a modern record of being referred to as the most consequential election in history a staggering 6 million times by the media. After all the votes were stolen, faked, forged, and finally counted The Republican Party takes control of both houses of Congress. Barbara Streisand, Bette Midler, and Michelle Obama announce plans to move to France. The French government immediately closes its border.

9. The stock market continues to move up and down wildly in ways that no human being alive or dead can explain or predict.

10. Doug and Pam Dunnevant finally buy their dream lake house in Maine.

Christmas in Pictures

We had the privilege of having all of our kids with us for four whole days over Christmas. This is a rarity since our life stories have placed us in three different cities. To prepare for this event took teamwork. I did my part, helping with some of the cleaning, wrapping most of the presents, and running errands. But Pam was the brains behind the project, and it was her attention to detail and eye for beauty that made the house look magical…

Once everyone arrived, the dogs took over. After the initial burst of energy and frenetic craziness, they all settled down and behaved themselves beautifully.

Jacko and Frisco love Pops the most.

A rare shot of all three of them in the same room.

My favorite picture of the Three Amigos.

So…what did we do with ourselves for four whole days? Lots of fun stuff.

We attempted to put together a puzzle.

We took in a show—It’s a Wonderful Life Radio Show. 

You’re never too old to decorate sugar cookies…

And, of course, what Christmas celebration would be complete without a fire out on the deck?

It’s not like Pam and I slaved away 24/7 waiting on our kids. Every once in a while we put them to work…

It was a magical few days, made so primarily by just being together. Now that they’re all gone the house seems excessively quiet. But, we’re not sad, just grateful. 

When it was time to take the obligatory family Christmas picture, Lucy wanted no part of the chaos, leaving a gaping hole in the finished product…

When Pam posted this on Facebook last night, many people noticed and wanted to know, Where’s Lucy?

Well, we did manage to get this one…

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Dead Week

I simultaneously love and hate dead week. The seven days between Christmas and New Year’s Day serves the dual purpose of providing time to rest up for the new year while boring you to tears. Add to this the inevitable post Christmas letdown, the disturbing weight gain, and the physical exhaustion from two weeks of non-stop holiday hustle and you find yourself mostly sleepwalking through dead week. What snaps you out of the malaise is the eventual resolution list making. But before you can get there you must first endure a few days of reflection. What exactly happened in 2021?

For me, this is easier than for most people since I do not have to rely on my increasingly faulty memory. I have this blog, which conveniently keeps a tidy record. I can look back and see which posts were the most popular each month. I can then easily recall what we were all terrified by back in January or May or that weird week in August. Here are some observations:

Last January it was all about the events of the 6th—the (pick your preferred modifier), riot, insurrection, violent coup attempt, theatre of the absurd, storming of the capital, or glorious exercise of free speech. I wrote a piece entitled Character is Destiny and a bunch of you read it.

February lived up to its well earned reputation for dreariness. Nothing of consequence transpired, evidenced by the fact that my most popular post concerned my adorable next door neighbor kids showing up at my door to deliver the Girl Scout cookies I had bought back in the Fall. Entitled, The Garland Kids Strike Again, it once again reminded me that people love cute kids about as much as anything.

March featured a scary COVID outbreak at my office which shut us down for a week and sent us all scurrying to get tested. The post I wrote about it called, The Return of Covid, was my most read post of 2021. Nothing sells quite like bad news.

April, May and June all featured sentimental posts about nostalgic visits to places I used to live, trying to decide whether I was happy or sad about the disappearance of men’s suits from the modern wardrobe, and a collection of creepy photographs of weird evangelicals. Apparently there is no accounting for the tastes of the average Tempest reader.

Our time in Maine always leads to a pronounced reduction in readership. Although I post something nearly every day while I am up there, people don’t care to keep up with the Dunnevant’s while we are joyously frolicking away in our paradise. Maybe its because its 15 degrees cooler in Maine, and you guys resent being reminded of this unhappy fact. Or maybe, nobody wants to hear all my blubbering about how perfect it is to be living on a lake in Maine. I get it.

For the rest of 2021, my ego took quite a beating due to the fact that the three most popular posts were by guest bloggers!! First, my daughter blew me out of the water with the story of her slapstick accident at the lake, then my friend, Tom Allen, topped the charts not once but twice, with his two posts—Mistakes and Pumping the Brakes. The nerve of that guy!!

While reflecting on 2021 it occurs to me that it wasn’t an awful lot different than 2020. We were all expecting it to be the year when we all got over the COVID thing and got back to our lives. While much improvement was made, COVID is still very much with us, meaning that 2021 has been basically a big disappointment. But that doesn’t mean everything was bad. I made some money. Business was good. Many fun things happened. And best of all, I have not assumed room temperature.

Now, its time I got started on those resolutions. But that is a blogpost for another day.

Merry Christmas From the Dunnevant’s

It is early morning, Christmas Day. The house is as silent as the tombs. Pam is asleep, curled up snug with Lucy. Kaitlin and Jon are sound asleep somehow despite sharing a Queen sized bed with Jacko. Patrick and Sarah just left Nashville for the 10 hour drive home with Frisco in the back seat. Soon this place will be buzzing with activity as we prepare for a house full of Pam’s family for dinner and presents late this afternoon and evening. Tomorrow, it will be a casual dinner and presents from my family at my sister Linda’s house. Last night there was a steak dinner at my sister Paula’s house. Not until Monday, the 27th will Christmas arrive here. These are the happy accommodations you make when you are fortunate enough to be a part of a large and far flung family who all want to be together for Christmas.

When I sat down at my morning spot to drink my coffee and catch up on the news, this is what greeted me…

Meet Giraffe Fren, Jacko’s toy de’jour. Not sure how he ended upright on my coffee table, but at least he had the good sense to blend in with the decor. As I look around the family room, the decorations tell the story of my family. There are six of us…

Along with three retrievers…

On Pam’s side of the family, there are eleven more. My extended family adds another twenty-one. There are newlyweds among us, a couple out in California, along with Fred the cat who somehow survived ten minutes inside a running dryer. One of us lives in New York City. We have someone from Scotland, another from the Philippines. There are conservatives and liberals. We have baseball fans and football fans. There are Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, and none of the above. We have southerners and yankees, republicans, democrats and a couple stubborn libertarians. We have nurses, teachers, and business owners. We have some who work for the government, some for non-profits and others who work in the corporate world. There are musicians everywhere. But everyone, all of us have a place. In this way we aren’t any different than any of your families, or the hundreds of millions of families gathering together to celebrate Christmas from all around the world.

But maybe we are different. Sometimes when I see us all together I can’t help feeling that there is something unique about us. What makes us so is where we came from. Emmett and Betty Dunnevant were different, by practically any measure—not perfect by any means—but different. The magical combination of their DNA running through all of our veins bequeathed to us something rare, I think. There is a devotion we feel for each other. Although we are all so different, the things that bind us together are so much more powerful than the things that would divide us. There are the strong opinions, the loud and boisterous talking at dinner which might seem to outsiders like arguing but to us is totally normal conversation. There are the conflicting memories from our childhoods where we have airbrushed the awful away. Just last night when I reminded my older sister Linda of what it was like to share an apartment in New Orleans with a hundred roaches, she claimed not to remember any of it. Then when I reminded her of how whenever we cut on the kitchen light first thing in the morning they would all scurry away across the walls, floor and ceiling—she hesitated, then closed her eyes in recognition of the long-suppressed horror! Then, of course, there are the noses, that inescapable physical trait that identifies us, setting us apart from the rest of the world. We got it from Mom, the prominent Dixon Nose.

But, despite the occasional horror show, most of our childhood memories consist of the certain and sure…that we were loved by our parents. And, if we knew what was good for us we better love each other or our Mother would wipe the floor up with us. Even now, nearly a decade after her passing, whenever I am uncharitable, rude or dismissive of someone, I am reminded of Mom and what she would say to me if she knew. Whenever I am too busy to be kind to someone, I think of my Dad and immediately am ashamed of myself. Their presence in my life is still very real. They have lived rent free in my head ever since they went to be with The Lord.

So, over the next few days as we gather and eat together, as the volume around the table begins to rise, I will think of them, the two people who started it all. I can only hope that my children will feel the same way about us when it is their turn to carry this torch.

Start With the Kids

According to a new poll 53% of my fellow Americans feel that 2021 has been the worst year of their lives. This negative view exceeds the previous winner, 2020, by a remarkably wide margin. I don’t quite know what to make of this. The results varied by age group with the most negative attitudes towards 2021 coming from the youngest responders, and the most positive from the oldest. Perhaps this is the result of the fact that the older you are the more bad years you have endured and therefore the greater perspective you have. Or maybe the older you are the more financially and emotionally secure you are. Who knows? Regardless, it’s troubling news to learn that so many people seem to be struggling.

Much of it centers around the ongoing pandemic. Our lives have all been changed by COVID. It has altered our daily routines in ways large and small. We are divided over the best way to fight it. We disagree about masks, vaccines, lockdowns, quarantines. We all have different ideas about what government’s role should be. Most of us are confused over what the rules are for social gatherings. With Christmas just a couple days away, every Omicron headline brings with it even more confusion. “IT’S RAMPANT, SPREADING LIKE WILDFIRE!! OMICRON SYMPTOMS MUCH MILDER THAN EXPECTED!! SOUTH AFRICAN OUTBREAK DISAPPEARING AS FAST AS IT ARRIVED!!”  It’s practically impossible to know what to think. So, I guess the poll results aren’t really surprising, when you think about it.

But, I would like to make the case for optimism. Yes, there are many reasons to despair, but there have always been. Living conditions on this planet 100 years ago make today’s world feel like heaven. Compared to the physical hardships endured by America’s Pilgrims, 2021 would be the Garden of Eden. Of course, advances in living standards courtesy of 400 years of technological, scientific, and medical progress isn’t the only measure of the quality of life. Human behavior changes over time, crime rates wax and wane, public manners and civic virtue rise and fall, and most of us would have to admit that in our lifetimes, most of these measures have fallen. But even so, if you are willing to look, the exceptions are abundant and everywhere. For example:

Have you heard about the 15 year old kid working the drive thru at a McDonald’s in Minnesota? Seems that a woman in the car at the window was choking on a chicken nugget. This kid, yells to her manager to call 911, then jumps out of the drive thru window, drags the woman out of her car and starts doing the Heimlich maneuver, which she had learned how to do by taking a babysitter’s class put on by the local Red Cross. When she realizes that she isn’t strong enough to successful perform the Heimlich, she recruits another customer in the drive thru line who is, and soon the nugget was expelled and the woman’s life saved. This heroism from a 15 year old, minimum wage earning kid. 

When the cops arrived and realized what Sydney Raley had done, they handed her two $50 bills as part of the local police policy of awarding $50 to people for personal acts of heroism during the holidays.

While there has always been and will always be reasons for despair, I firmly believe that negative is always trumped by positive. It’s a matter of what you’re looking for. I chose to seek out heroes. They are everywhere. The best place to look? Start with the kids. Always start with the kids. The next time you hear someone prattling on and on about how the “new generation” is deficient in this or that…walk away. Mister Rogers’ advice is still the best advice—“Look for the helpers”

Start with the kids.