Apparently, There Was an Inauguration

Last Saturday was a busy day here at the palatial Dunnevant estate. There was a snow storm in the forecast for Sunday and I had to take the outside Christmas decorations down. Saturday was also the day for my 3.5 mile walk. In addition, there were playoff games being televised literally all day long. So, my schedule was packed. Later that evening I pulled up Facebook and was surprised to learn two things. First, Governor Youngkin was inaugurated on Saturday less than 15 miles from my house and secondly—apparently lots of people watched it on television.

Once I thought about it for a minute it made sense—he was just elected in November. It would stand to reason that his inauguration would be in January. That’s the way it works in America. We elect people, then give them three months to pull together a party to celebrate themselves. Then, I ran across this picture in the Washington Post…

Looks like the incoming governor spent the last three months in the Bahamas, while the outgoing governor looks like if you put a dirty old cowboy hat on him, he would be a dead ringer for the guy who used to play Festus on Gunsmoke. 

Anyway, I had forgotten that there was an inauguration Saturday. Frankly, it took me about a minute to not only remember his name but also the name of the Festus-lookalike. But, eventually both names came to me and I breathed a sigh off relief. No, I am not suffering old age memory loss, and no, I am not a terrible citizen.

However, even if I had remembered the occasion, I must here confess to you that I cannot imagine any scenario under which I would have actually watched it on television. Seriously. An inauguration of a governor would be my last viewing choice even if the other choices included the professional badminton draft or The Real Housewives of Des Moines.

I don’t know what it is exactly, but the ceremonies of state just don’t interest me. I’m trying to remember the last time I watched one here in Virginia. Maybe I tuned in for a few minutes back when Doug Wilder took the oath…what was that, 1992? At least that one was historic, he being the first African American governor of the state and all. But, I think that was the last. As far as Presidential inaugurations, I remember watching Ronald Reagan’s first, and Bill Clinton’s first. I tuned in for the speech when Barack Obama took the oath the first time. That’s it.

But, my Facebook wall was full of people commenting on this and that from the ceremony. Apparently there was a flyover, a stirring song or two. Someone even stuck around for the inaugural parade, bragging about how awesome the Marching Dukes were. A couple of folks expressed their dread at what horrible mischief the incoming administration might inflict on the Old Dominion. Others seemed genuinely relieved to be free from the yoke of some sort of Festus-inspired oppression. Meanwhile, the only thing I was being oppressed by were the impossibly stubborn Christmas lights and my pathological inability to keep them untangled.

Maybe this lack of interest in governmental pageantry suggests something troubling about me. Perhaps I have become too cynical about politicians to the point of apathy. Maybe I have become so self sufficient at this stage of life that I feel no urgent need for government. Or, maybe after all the campaigns, all the accusations and warnings of the end of the world if so-and-so doesn’t win, I’ve learned that very little changes from one administration to the next. At best, each side spends their time whittling at the edges, then trying to spin it as change. 

I hold no ill will towards either of the men in this picture. I understand that Northern is going back into medicine. Maybe Youngkin will have success with something that truly matters, or at least—do no harm. My thoughts on all of this is not in any way a criticism of those who hold these ceremonies close to their hearts. In a way, I envy your devotion to the political life of the Commonwealth. If your guy won, good luck. If your guy lost, there’s always 2025. 

A Red Tail Hawk and a Life Lesson

Yesterday morning, I got all dressed up in my winter gear and went for a four mile walk in cold and windy conditions. Sometimes I do things like this for no apparent reason. Anyway, right in the middle of the walk something very cool happened. It was totally random and the entire thing was over in like 15 seconds, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

So I’m walking along in a culdesac in my neighborhood, as quick as I can without actually running to stay warm, when out of the corner of my eye I notice a large bird flying fast and close to the ground coming from my right to my left. I immediately recognized him as a red tail hawk. There are several in our neighborhood. By the time he crossed my path about thirty feet in front of me he was maybe six feet off the ground and descending fast in full kill mode, talons at the ready. Then I noticed the chipmunk on its haunches nibbling on something beside an azalea bush. In a flashing instant, the hawk hooded its beautiful wings and dove in for the kill sending mulch flying. But as the hawk emerged from behind the bush and began an ark to the left, his talons were empty. The chipmunk had somehow escaped. Now the hawk was flying skyward. I watched the elegant flight until he landed on the highest gable of a house on the side of the street from where he had first appeared, standing tall and proud, as majestic as he ever was.

I have since learned that hawks are only successful in 10% of their hunts. As beautiful and efficient as the process looks, 90% of the time they come up empty. But when this particular hawk failed to nab the chipmunk, he simply flew back to his previous perch and began scanning his horizon for the next opportunity. There was no temper tantrum, no fit of pique, no indignant squawking. He seemed to know how his life worked, that many attempts must be made before he gets his meal. Contrast the experience of the hawk with human beings. If our waiter gets our order wrong, if we have to stand in line more than three minutes at Burger King, if we discover that Outback is out of blooming onions, many of us go off the rails. 

Once again, leave it to the animal world to teach human beings how best to live. I see this all the time. I watch the birds taking turns at the bird feeder, all different types of birds, different sizes and shapes, a vast array of colors, all sharing the seed, eating from a common feeder. I see the kindness and loyalty of dogs, their sensitivity to our moods, their willingness to come along side us even closer when we are upset or sick. Of course I also see the worthless squirrel pilfering anything and everything, leaving a path of destruction in his wake…but squirrels are merely the exception that proves the rule.

So yeah…the hawk bungled the chipmunk hunt. But he kept his composure, and returned to the hunt with nobility of effort and purpose, knowing that his failure only meant that he was one step closer to success. An excellent reminder for all of us.

Stumbling Across a Theme

Making steady daily progress through the 90 day Bible reading thing, now a little over halfway through Exodus. I’ve once again noticed something that also stood out to me the last time we did this in 2018. There is a theme that I have stumbled upon. Yes, I am aware that there are many themes through all of scripture and this is not the most prominent one, I’m sure. But I’m only six days in and already I’ve seen it talked about four different times and I haven’t even gotten out of Exodus! Here it is…ready?

God spends a lot of time reminding people to take care of widows, orphans, the poor, and to be kind to the stranger.

That’s it. Thats the thing that has stood out so far. If I remember from 2018, I’m going to run into this theme many more times in the Old Testament and famously in the New Testament with the words of Jesus from Matthew 25: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” I’ve already read about God reminding Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to make provision for the poor and to shelter the stranger. I’ll see it again in Leviticus, Psalms, Ruth etc…It seems to me that a topic that constantly comes up in the Bible should be something we take seriously.

Some of you might be thinking that I’m trying to make some political statement by bringing this up. Nothing could be further from the truth. My interpretation of these commands from God are that they are given to each of us—to individuals. We should take care of the widows, orphans, the poor, and we should welcome the stranger. What we do collectively through organizations, churches, and through government should indeed include these commands. But we are not off the hook as individuals just because we pay taxes that fund programs designed to help. To quote Dickens, “are there not poor houses?”  What this means for me, for Doug Dunnevant in 2022, is perhaps more complicated. After all, there are so many poor, so many homeless etc. But, while I can’t fix every problem around me, I can sure do a better job of noticing them. I can pay closer attention to the men and women who walk past me every single day. I can do a better job of opening my eyes to the needs of others instead of being so focused on my own problems. I can’t help but feel that since this command is woven through the entirety of scripture God must be deadly serious about it. 

Taking care of the poor, widows, orphans and strangers in the land isn’t the Gospel, but rather a result of an encounter with it. Caring for the poor is no substitute for the redemption that comes through faith in Christ, but neither is it some quaint notion that we so easily check off of our to-do list by the fact that we pay our taxes. James 1:27 puts it this way:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

I’m no theologian, but those words seem awfully clear and unambiguous—and something I should take seriously.

Crunching Numbers

Now that I am fully engaged 100% in business mode, my mind has suddenly become immersed in numbers. It happens every year around this time. The life cycle of my business year is front loaded onto the first five months of the year by ingenious design, freeing my summers up for Maine. The only downside to this happy arrangement is that I become a tiresome bore this time of year, insomuch as I become singularly focused on business. For example, ran across this late last night:

Ok, by posting this chart I have lost half of you. I apologize. Anyway, the takeaway from this chart is the news that the Federal government of the United States set an all-time record in the first quarter of this fiscal year (October-December), by collecting an astounding $1,051,873,000,000 in taxes. That’s one trillion, fifty-one billion, eight-hundred and seventy-three million dollars. It’s the first time we have ever collected over a trillion dollars in revenue in any quarter ever. I hear that the Treasury Department threw a party. But, then there’s this:

“At the same time that it was collecting a record $1,051,873,000,000 in total taxes in the October-through-December period, the federal government was spending $1,429,567,000,000. Thus, it ran a deficit of $377,694,000,000.”

In other words, We spent 378 billion dollars more than we took in…in a mere 90 days. If you’re keeping score at home, that amounts to $4 billion, 200 hundred million dollars—every single day. Although these numbers are simply too large and abstract for any of us to truly comprehend, for someone like me they represent some kind of colossal failure. But luckily, almost every single warring faction in Washington DC is united in their conviction that this is not a problem. Or, if it is, its way down the list—after income inequality and transgender rights. I have been worried about this issue for nearly 40 years now and yet we are still plugging along. When I first started worrying about debts and deficits all those years ago, our entire national debt stood at $1.1 trillion dollars. Now that it stands at $26 trillion, I must admit to feeling a bit sheepish. Why have I lost all this sleep over a mere 25 trillion bucks? Oh well…I’m getting ready to turn 64 years old. Guess I’ll just let the kids sort it all out.

Some Really Weird Stuff Happened in the Bible

Just in case any of you are wondering whatever became of the Puzzle of Death from last week? Finished it today!!

So perhaps now we can reclaim our kitchen table…after we admire it for a few days. 

Next is a mental health update with regards to Lucy. We have discovered a new psychosis in the ever-evolving Petri dish that is our Golden Retriever’s personality. As alert readers will recall, Pam received several smart plugs for Christmas which allows her to perform all sorts of tasks with a simple spoken command to Alexa. Now, practically every light fixture in the entire house comes on whenever we tell Alexa to turn on the lights. But, there’s a problem. In the millisecond just before the lights come on, the plugs emit a barely discernible (to human ears) crackling sound. We’re talking about a fraction of a second, and as I said, its barely even a sound. But when it comes to Lucy’s hypersonic super ears, it has become the signal to jump out of her skin and make a beeline upstairs! We have tried to explain the situation to her but she just sits there and looks at us like we have lost our minds. Its like she’s thinking…How many time I have woke up from dead sleep and stare at ceiling? Every time you say, “what she see?” even though it clear as day that I see evil monster. Now, the monster have voice. It name ALEXA and it take over house and taunt me all live long day while you at work. I only thing standing between you and ALEXA, and now you give her power of light! We are trying to walk the sweet girl through this fresh insanity, but prayers would be appreciated.

Finally, a few words about day three of the reading through the Bible in 90 days adventure. I am now knee deep into the bizarre world of the ancient patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, three fascinating but intensely weird human beings. Actually, Abraham and Isaac are fine—scary—but fine. I just can’t warm up to Jacob. I consider him a disaster in almost every conceivable way. He was a duplicitous brother, an absentee father, a cheating businessman, and totally incompetent in love. I mean, how drunk do you have to be to not be able to tell the difference between the alleged “love of his life” with her SISTER?  I was talking about this with a friend recently and made the observation that I had always had a difficult time understanding the ancients. These guys had personal conversations with God like every five minutes. In them, God was constantly assuring them of how he was with them, would protect them, provide for them, make mighty nations out of their families. And yet, let these guys get fifty miles out of town and immediately they start lying about their wives, seemingly terrified that someone is going to steal and ravish them. This, despite the fact that each of them had a virtual harem of wives at their beck and call. I mean, each night it was like a conjugal buffet for these men!!

But then the strangest thing happens, something that makes this reading the Bible in 90 days so meaningful. Just about the time you’re feeling nice and smug about Jacob’s spiritual failings, you hear the slightest whisper somewhere in your heart saying something like this:

“Yes, they had many problems…but they had no written record of my words. You, on the other hand, have access to the Bible from your cell phone in 100 different languages, three dozen versions, complete with graphics, maps, commentaries and even audio versions featuring the voice of James Earl, Freaking Jones, and yet…YOU forget me all the time. No matter how many times I answer your prayers, no matter how many times I prove my faithfulness, eventually you forget all my promises.”

Its then that it dawns on you that whether or not it was 2000 BC or last week, the human heart hasn’t changed much. We are still prone to wander, prone to forget. We all need reminding. That’s what this time in God’s word is about for me. Its the great reminding.

The Gift of Dark Humor

Yesterday afternoon I thought it might be a good idea to take advantage of the sunshine, and comparatively mild temperatures, to go for a run. There was snow in the forecast which provided even more incentive, so off I went. I didn’t set out to break any speed records and didn’t feel quite up to a very long run so after two miles or so I slowed to a walk and headed back towards the house. Soon I felt the beginnings of some mild abdominal cramps. Whenever this happens, a parade of horrifying memories come to mind. I’ve experienced quite a few encounters with this particular ailment but mercifully none recently. My first course of action is always to take a quick mental inventory of what I had eaten earlier in the day. Had I perhaps ingested something unusual that might have triggered my agitation? I came up with nothing. As the cramps began to become more intense I quickened my pace. Once home, I had the delightful experience of three hours of umm…intestinal discomfort. The alert reader will notice the lengths I am going to avoid using the D-word.

Fourteen hours later, I am better but not totally out of the woods. I woke up from a fitful nights sleep around 3:00 am and have been up ever since, not feeling well at all but far better than I was last night. But, the point of this post is not to regale you with stories of this unfortunate illness, but rather to share with you an example of my life long fondness for—dark humor.

Last night around 9:30, I was upstairs in my easy chair trying to do some reading as a distraction, when all of a sudden a joke began to form in my head. I immediately typed it out and texted it downstairs to Pam…

What do you call it when you can’t remember how to spell the D-word?

Irritable vowel syndrome.

My wife’s reply was swift and unequivocal—“That’s terrible. Nothing about d,-,-,-,-,-,-,- is funny!”

In Pam’s defense, her experiences from a week in Maine with her parents last year probably traumatized her to the point where any mention of the word for true rest of her life will be off limits.

But still…I really was proud of that joke. For a brief couple of minutes I wasn’t thinking of how sick I felt. This is the gift of dark humor, allowing as it does a momentary escape from being the victim to the victimizer.

Now maybe the next time you are visited by this scourge, you will remember the joke and find comfort—or not. Probably not.

What Makes a Smart Plug…Smart?

As many of you know, I am married to a woman who is a technology freak. She loves all things having to do with computers and all the various and sundry gadgets that have proliferated from them over the last decade or so. While most women’s eyes light up when you give them jewelry, Pam’s eyes light up when I buy her a new gadget. It’s kinda creepy. Anyway, near the top of her Christmas list this year was something called a Smart Plug. When I did a bit of research into the thing I discovered that it was a new Amazon gadget whereby you could transform anything that needs to be plugged in into something that would respond to voice commands like—Alexa, do the laundry, or…Alexa, bring me breakfast in bed. Just kidding…but not by much.

So, I come down the stairs this morning at 5:50 am, in my usual early morning stupor. I walk into the family room. Its dark like it always is at this hour. I absently shuffle over to the lamp next to the sofa to turn on the light. Nothing. Didn’t I just replace that bulb? Cheap Chinese crap! So, I walk across the room and turn on the other lamp. Same thing. What are the odds? Two blown bulbs! But, its early and I’m not thinking as clearly as I normally do. I continue my shuffle into the kitchen. I proceed with the morning ritual of brewing my coffee. Once that’s finished, I shuffle over to the dishwasher. Pam, knowing my routine as she does has prepared a note for me…

What in the Sam Hill is this woman up to now, I think to myself. Because its early and I am vulnerable to exploitation, I obey,  “Alexa, let there be light.” Basically the entire downstairs explodes with incandescent light. It startles me. I actually jump a little…What the heck??!! I walk over to the recycling and see them all there and realize that this is basically my fault. See, her Christmas list asked for “a”…as in “one” smart plug. When I went to buy the thing I think for a minute, “Wait, she’s probably gonna want more than just one. She loves this crap.” So, overcome with Christmas generosity, I click the number 4 in the checkout cart, and last night while I slept, she struck. 

Of course, as I sit here in the luminous glow of electric light it occurs to me that she has the power to change the magic word on a whim, plunging me into darkness. I could come down here tomorrow and say, Alexa, let there be light, and nothing…while she’s upstairs laughing her head off. Another thing, I see that she did not tell me what the magic word is to turn all these lights off. Smart plug indeed!