The Cafe at West Creek

I show up at 7 am every Friday morning. A few months ago it was pitch black when I punched in the security code to get in. Now the sun is up and its considerably warmer. Still, it feels weird being the only one in the building. A church is not supposed to be empty. Last year my church, at considerable expense and after lots of thought, opened up a Cafe which they decided to call—The Cafe at West Creek. It was to be a donation-only coffee shop with free WiFi opened to the public from 8-4 five days a week. To make it work, they would need volunteers and lots of them. I decided to give it a try for two reasons. First of all it sounded like it might be fun. After setting the place up I would be tasked with welcoming people, showing newcomers the ropes and generally being an encourager. The second reason was on account of the fact that I knew the manager/boss of the enterprise—Jennifer Glotz—who, I have been told on more than one occasion, is the female version of me. When she asked, it was hard to refuse. So, here I am, every Friday morning.

The first couple of months it was like a ghost town in here. For one thing the staff has Fridays off, and for another we were brand new and not many people knew we even existed. As each month passed traffic has picked up to the point where now Friday mornings are busy and a lot more fun. January and February have seen my shift overrun with new faces, groups of two or three meeting for coffee, moms and dads who work from home using the space, and more recently larger groups showing up for meetings of one kind or another. Add to this the influx of parents and grandparents bringing their little ones to Friday morning story time. The place is suddenly hopping. It does my heart good to see a space that before sat empty all week long now being used in this way.

The best part of this deal are the serendipitous encounters you have with total strangers. I have spoken with a young mother who was eight months pregnant with a two year old at home who had asked a friend to look after him long enough for her to have a bagel and some peace and quiet. I met a man who had stopped going to church during COVID and never gone back. We were the first church building he had been inside in two years. Now he comes on Sunday mornings. I see him across the way and wave. He waves back and smiles. I met a lady from Brazil with two toddlers at story time. Someone had told her about this coffee shop where the coffee was good and super cheap ($1 suggested donation cheap). It was her first time in the building. Her kids were beautiful. She looked exhausted but glanced around like she couldn’t believe her good fortune for having found such a place. I met a retiree, probably 7 or 8 years older than me who seemed happy to have a place to come to be around people. One day I saw an older lady taking pictures of the artwork on the walls. Apparently she is a regular but this was her first time coming on Friday morning. She went on and on about how she loved the Cafe, like she was trying to convince me to give it a try. When I told her I was a volunteer we both had a good laugh. Sometimes I will see a group of college kids splayed out in one of the booths drinking cold brew, two booths over from an older woman in an intense conversation with a younger woman. I found out later that the older lady was the younger’s mentor and had been for several years.

My church took a chance on The Cafe. Its not cheap. Just how much we dropped to get this place up and running I don’t know and frankly I don’t care. The church’s finances are not my job. Others with that responsibility will have to answer for the proper stewardship of the church’s budget and spending priorities. My job as a member is to find a place to serve that is suited to my skill set and gifts. When I find it I need to volunteer and see how it goes. If it ends up being a disaster, I’ll know soon enough. (I’m reminded of that time when someone thought I would make a great finance committee chairman back in the day. Worse. Idea. Ever.) But if I find something that is fulfilling and fun, then its a win. The Cafe is fun. You should give it a try.

Our Fun Weekend

Its been over a week since last I posted in this space. Pam and I spent some time in Nashville with Patrick, Sarah, and Frisco. It was a fun few days away. We got to see our talented kids sing some Bach solos. We ate some amazing Cajun food, a delicious homemade pad Thai dinner, a scrumptious breakfast of pastries and scrambled eggs. To top all of that off, we got to watch Frisco play his famous find the ball game—which was easily the most impressive event of the weekend.

In the midst of all the fun was one book business call where we set the price of my book in its various forms and nailed down a release date: May, 7, 2024!!

It will be officially on sale that day in three forms, paperback, e-book, and hardcover. I learned a lot of new stuff during the call, and Pam and Patrick made lots of progress getting my Author website ready. I still feel like a rank amateur when it comes to everything that has happened after writing this book over ten years ago. There are so many decisions that have to be made in rapid fire succession at the various stages of publication. Sometimes it all seems like a blur to me. But, it certainly is exciting, if a bit nerve wracking at the same time. 

We drove back from Nashville on Tuesday and made it home just in time to vote before the polls closed. As it turned out, we needn’t have bothered. As is usually the case, our preferred candidate got clobbered. But you have to vote, right? Even if you know it doesn’t matter, you still have to vote. Why? I’m not totally sure at this point, I just know that you do. So we did. I blame Coach Flanagan, my civics teacher back in high school, who essentially said that if you don’t vote you’re a loser. The actually phrase I remember was “pathetic loser”. Its the sort of thing an impressionable 18 year old doesn’t easily forget.

One more thing…my sister Paula and her husband Ron kept Lucy for us while we were in Nashville. They kept us fully up to speed on Lucy’s activities throughout her stay which usually consisted of pictures of Lucy in varying poses of laziness…

There were a couple of photographs that offered proof that they didn’t just lay around the house the entire time…

In case you’re wondering, neither Lucy or Paula and Ron were injured during the weekend.

Peace-lite

I attended a Bible study last night at my church. This isn’t something our church does in mass very often. We are a small group oriented congregation. But last night’s study was entitled, The Gospel and…Peace. I was interested in the subject so I went.

It was led by David Dwight, our senior pastor, a super smart dude who has a gift for making even the most complex theological subjects accessible and clear. He talked and I listened.

We sat at large tables. The auditorium was packed, probably 250 people or more. I met a couple who were brand new to our church and brand new to Richmond. Nice people. There were cookies and coffee, a Q&A after the study and a time for table discussion. I left as flummoxed by the concept of peace as I have ever been.

David was eloquent. He explained all about the nature of peace and how it is defined in scripture etc etc. When it came time for discussion with my table mates I asked this question: Has anyone at this table ever been totally at peace? A couple of them answered in the positive, using examples from their lives that were quite comforting. My answer was and remains…No. Never.

The closest I come to peace is my time in Maine each year. Being on that lake, emerged in nature’s beauty, fishing in the quiet of the morning from my kayak is as peaceful as I have been. But it’s never complete peace. No matter how perfect the day, how idyllic the conditions, there is always a part of my brain that is alive with turbulence. It has always been so, and here’s the thing—I’m not sure I want complete and perfect peace. I don’t know what I would do with it. Let me explain.

I can only speak from my own experience on this subject and when I do I understand full well that I am an outlier. My mind is never at rest. Even my body is seldom at rest. The most difficult part of last night was sitting still for the entire hour and a half, (I couldn’t, incidentally, spending twenty minutes or so standing up in the back of the room). I am always thinking about what’s next, trying to anticipate what’s coming, consequently, there is never anything approaching mental stillness. If you’re thinking that this sounds exhausting and strange, you might be right. But in my 42 year business career it has served me well. It’s that very restlessness that motivates me to action and accomplishment. In addition, as a writer my mind is always searching and probing stuff trying to discover inspiration. For me I have always thought that peace isn’t attainable for people like me this side of eternity, and I suppose I’m ok with that.

I wish is wasn’t so. Being able to turn off the constant churning of thoughts and ideas bouncing around inside me would be nice. For now, I’ll settle for peace-lite.

Special Delivery!!

I was told by my publisher that I would be getting the final proof copy of A Life of Dreams from the printer soon. They said it would probably take a couple of weeks, but it would be delivered through the US Postal Service. Well, guess what I found in the mailbox twenty minutes ago??

I must admit that my heart beat a bit faster when I saw the package. When I got it inside and held it in my hands, well…it was a pretty cool feeling. What’s so hard to believe is that this one was written over ten years ago. The idea came to me while I was at Best Buy watching a poker tournament on a huge wall of television screens. It must have been on fifty screens at the same time and as I watched the idea popped into my head—Wonder what it would be like to have a super intuitive gift to always win at games of chance? How might having such a gift change a person? Would it ultimately be seen as a gift or an curse? Now, ten years later, I’m sitting here holding a book in my hands that sprang from that ever so brief experience.

So cool. And so terrifying. Suppose people hate it? Suppose it flops? 

Regardless, it’s done. I did it.

A Friend’s Question

A friend recently asked me, “How come you don’t write about politics much anymore?” It was a fair question. I just checked and he was right. So far this year exactly one of my 26 posts have been about politics. One reason I don’t write about politics anymore is—nobody reads when I do. That one post entitled “Are You Ready For Election 2024?”, garnered a whopping 38 views, which for The Tempest is pathetically low. I would imagine that a fair number of my regular readers know of my disdain for the Republican front runner and don’t care to be reminded. But its not just that, most people are either sick of politics are profoundly embarrassed by their candidate, and would just rather not think too long on the subject.

Its a shame. I’ve probably had more fun making fun of politics and politicians than any other topic in the 13 year history of this blog. For one thing, its always been such a target-rich environment. Per capita, people in politics do more cringeworthy things than any other demographic in the country, even celebrities. The profession has inspired more jokes and joke-making than anything I can think of in my lifetime. But now, none of them are funny anymore. Absolutely nothing about American politics is even remotely funny. So, I have chosen to move on to other topics. That’s the answer to my friend’s question.

My Wife’s Tenacity

The people who are publishing my book tell me that I simply have to have a website. The fact that I already have a blog is nice, but not sufficient, I’m told with regularity. No, I need a stand alone Author website. Once my book goes live it will be the perfect place for people to go to buy the thing, they say. Plus, I am constantly reminded that whenever someone buys my book on my author website I make much more money per book than I will if they buy it on Amazon or Kindle. Of course, creating and maintaining a proper website isn’t cheap. In addition I know less than nothing about how to create a website on account of the fact that I’m an idiot. When my wife found out how much it was going to cost me to have someone make a website for me she said something like, “Are you kidding? I could figure it out. Let me do it.”

This was three or four weeks ago. Ever since, Pam has been laboring late into the night essentially teaching herself how to create a website, something I could have done if I wasn’t lazy and impatient. Instead, although she has other much more fun things she could be doing, she has been trial and erroring her way through learning a new skill for three weeks. Last night she finally showed me what she has come up with. 

So here’s the thing with Pam. She is a natural with the computer, but this process was completely different than anything she had ever attempted to do before and it was quite frustrating for her. It was the exact opposite of intuitive. I suspect that these website construction services are deliberately obtuse and clunky so novices will throw their hands up in frustration and say, “To hell with this, I’ll just pay them a gazillion dollars to do it for me!” But these people never met my wife. When it comes to difficult tasks, Pam is tenacious. The more difficult it gets the more determined she becomes to figure it out. Instead of losing her patience like her husband would do, she doubles down on stubbornness.

The site went live last night but I will not give out the address just yet because she says there are still things she needs to do. But I can tell you this…its so much better than what I was picturing it would be in my head. I love it, actually. She made it easy to navigate and super easy to buy the book. Once again, I am in her debt. I’ll just add it to everything else I owe her.

The Next Great Children’s Book

Many years ago, in my earlier days of fatherhood, I developed the particular skill of telling my children bedtime stories with, um..how shall I put this?…colorful plot lines. These stories were rich with life lessons, as well as a fair amount of casual violence. Nevertheless, they were quite popular with the kids, if not their mother. Well, last night I was given the opportunity to reprise my role as the Stephen King of the bedtime story, when Kaitlin and Jon’s dear friends, Bailey and Matthew Wolfer shockingly asked me if I would do the honors for their two adorable boys, Milo and Theo. What follows is a rough summation of the story that poured forth from the muddled grey mush of my brain in the pitch black darkness of the boy’s room. The seeds of this particular classic were provided by a picture that little Theo (age 4) had drawn during dinner of an alien with six hands…

The setting was the frozen tundra of Alaska where two brothers lived in a cold and drafty igloo. Their largely absent parents had a rule that if they ever needed to go outside to pee they must do so quickly and return to the relative safety of the igloo asap. But on this particular morning, the boys were feeling adventurous. Before long they found themselves on the cusp of disaster when they notice that a (herd? Pack?) of polar bears had risen out of the icy waters and was about to charge the two helpless waifs with murderous intent.

Just when things looked hopeless they noticed a bright light above, red, blue and green rotating lights hovering in the sky directly above the scene of potential slaughter. Suddenly, three legs shot out from the bottom of the craft as it prepared to touch down on the snowy ground. Then a giant set of stairs extended down from the spacecraft and the Alien warrior of poor Theo’s earlier imaginings arrived on the scene. At first, the boys were convinced that they had been saved from becoming the polar bear’s dinner only to be abducted by this giant extraterrestrial warrior with six hands—each fitted with a different and unique weapon of mass destruction. But instead, the warrior alien turned towards the six flummoxed polar bears and began their wholesale and systematic elimination. The first polar bear fell victim to a shot between the eyes from the handgun of arm number one. The second polar bear’s fate was sealed when the Samurai sword attached to hand number two decapitated the helpless beast. At this point in the narrative I thought it necessary to point out that the deluge of blood spewing out from this unhappy result clashed terribly with the pristine clean and white surface of the heretofore innocent tundra landscape…(teaching the boys about imagery and the irony of perception in the process). When the third polar bear noticed that the only weapon attached to arm number three was a simple whip, he snorted contemptuously (yet more irony, illustrating the time honored truth that pride indeed cometh before the fall). Before bear number three could get the smirk of overconfidence off his furry face, he too found his severed head flying through the frigid air!

Now there were three polar bears left, and suddenly the boys were worried. The warrior alien’s fourth arm was equipped with a howitzer weapon which had only one shell in it and his remaining arms were normal hands with no weapons at all. But then they noticed the warrior alien alter his strategy towards the polar bears. Suddenly the warrior alien turned from menacing to charming, asking the polar bears if they fancied playing a card game. Clearly, the warrior alien had done his homework, knowing that since ancient days, the polar bears were famous throughout the universe for their skills at poker and gin rummy. In fact the very reason that polar bears lived in the arctic was because thousand of years earlier they had fled the jungles of Africa for Alaska because of how difficult it had become to find an honest game in the jungle what with all the cheetahs. In a shocking surprise, the three surviving polar bears agreed to sit down for a quick game with this creature who had just dispatched three of their brethren so spectacularly. As soon as they sat down of course, in a development that surprised literally no one, The warrior alien let loose with the howitzer, killing all three in a spectacular explosion.

Once the dust settled, the two boys found themselves face to face with the warrior alien. Tension filled the air as they all wondered what would be their fate. Suddenly the warrior alien bent down on four arms to get to their eye-level. Then he spoke in a thunderous voice…

“Now, what will I do with these two disobedient boys? Did not your parents specifically tell you to go outside and pee but then return to the igloo at once? And yet, here you both are where you shouldn’t be, witnessing things that very well may scar you for life.”

At this point the older brother spoke up and pointed out the obvious—“Well, I notice that your two remaining arms are only fitted with hands like ours. You have no more weapons. What can you possibly do to us?”

Even though the warrior alien’s face was hidden in a dome of metal, it did seem to crack a shiny smile right before he said the fateful words…

“Apparently you two earthlings have never heard of the Great Tickle Monster!!!

At this point, the warrior alien grabbed the two boys began tickling them unmercifully with his human like hands, so much so that the boys were eventually reduced to giggling, hysterical piles of arms and legs. The warrior alien then said, “Have you learned your lesson, human boys?? Always obey your parents!!”

The warrior alien walked back up the stairs of his ship, the three legs withdrew from sight and the rotating red, blue and green lights disappeared into the starry expanse.

The End.

Since the boy’s father is a graphic artist by trade, I see a best seller coming in the children’s fiction genre once his illustrations bring this story to life.

Move over, “Goodnight Moon”