An Observation and a Birthday

Here’s something I’ve noticed about life, although good news feels better than bad news, bad news clarifies the mind. A bad report performs the valuable service of cleaning out frivolous thoughts from your head and replacing them with more rational, sober ones...a not entirely bad thing. Of course, too much bad news can lead to despair, but an occasional broadside of alarm can snap you out of dangerously pollyannish thinking. 

In my line of work, for example, a sharp and sudden sell-off in the equity markets can serve as a reality check for a new investor who has never lived through a major bear market. Watch your portfolio crater in on itself by 25% over two or three weeks and suddenly your internal fantasy math about how you’re going to retire with 5 million at age 45 come crashing down to earth. But this principle works in other areas of life as well. Your first unexpected health scare can shake you out of bad eating habits faster than a thousand lectures from friends. One terrifying flutter of the heart will suddenly convince you that eating a box of donuts every time you feel like it might not be a wise long term diet plan. But, without that terrifying flutter, ignorance is bliss.

So yeah...bad news can be the great clarifier, the mother of correction, you might say.

Just an observation on this 5th day of June. 

Speaking of which, something happened on this day 62 years ago which most definitely was not bad news. My sister, Paula, was born. In her life she has been my playmate, buddy and friend. She has been my ally in pitched battles with our two older siblings. She has been my sounding board, a debating partner and for a couple of years back in the day, a roommate. She has been a proud and doting aunt to my children, a dear friend to my wife, and wicked-good cook and hostess. She can be irrational and overwrought at times, but she is seldom if ever in doubt, the signature trait of all The Dunnevant clan. Like my other siblings, she has always and will always have my back. So, on this day, I wish her the best and happiest birthday.

Wedding Fashion and Me

There are a great many things in this world about which I know nothing, in many cases, less than nothing. But, perhaps there is no single thing that my education, training and experience has taught me less about than the subject of proper wedding attire. Since this is the week that Pam and I are charged with buying our wedding outfits, I thought I would bring this up.

The problem is that people don’t get dressed up anymore. When I was a boy, for example...men wore suits. Everywhere. All the time. Catch any episode of Leave It To Beaver and you’ll find old Ward sitting in his recliner reading his evening paper...still wearing his suit.  I mean, the dude has worked eight hours, come home, had dinner, listened to Beaver’s latest travails for half and hour, and now he finally gets a minute to read his paper and he’s still wearing the suit he put on 14 hours ago! Occasionally, he would let his freak flag fly by taking off his jacket and replacing it with a sweater, but never once would he dare remove his tie. Church? No man in his right mind would show up at the Lord’s house without a suit. There was even a term for this dress code...your Sunday Best. Now, the only time you see suits on guys is when somebody dies, or at a downtown law office...which is kind of the same thing.

Now, I don’t think this is entirely a bad thing. I’ve never been comfortable in suits. I have a half dozen of them in my closet in various stages of fashionable-ness. But the problem with the decline of the dress suit is when it’s time to dress up for something like a wedding. What’s appropriate? What would be considered too dressy? You don’t want to show up looking like a pallbearer, or worse, a lawyer!

Of course, picking out a suit for the father of the groom is child’s play compared to the land mine-strewn landscape of mother of the groom dresses. I mean that decision has more psychological undertones, emotional moving parts and status trap doors than Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. So, I don’t envy my wife this week. I just need to make the proper choice. Something casually dressy. 

Here’s what I’m thinking...

I’ve always had a secret desire to buy a seer sucker suit. It’s cool, southern, and makes a statement...I know I’m supposed to be dressed up for this event, but in my heart I’d rather be in jeans and a t-shirt, so here I am following the letter of the law but being quietly defiant. Admit it, when you’re attending a serious event, which guy do you think is most likely carrying a flask? The guy in the seer sucker suit, that’s who! The thing that has always held me back from going full seer sucker is the fact that in my mind these are old guy suits...even this absurdly handsome model has gray hair! But, now that I’m 60, that hurdle has been jumped, so maybe it’s time. Of course, this seer sucker thing only works if it doesn’t conflict with the official palette of colors assigned to the Dunnevant-Upchurch wedding, or so I am told. Ultimately I will buy only the suit that meets with the approval of my wife, and I am grateful, not resentful of this fact. Having the expert input of Pam Dunnevant assures me that when I show up at the event nobody will be whispering, What the heck was he thinking??

Lucy’s Latest Lunacy

It has not been a great 30 Days for Lucy the Lunatic. May featured record breaking amounts of rain along with accompanying thunder and lightening, which sends our girl into bouts of emotional and psychological torment. During these storms there are only two locations in our house that offer even the slightest fig leaf of security...the small gap between our sofa and coffee table, and the space between the pillows on our bed. Generally speaking, around ten minutes before the arrival of a storm, Lucy will deposit herself in one of these safe spaces to ride out the horror. When the storms occur in the middle of the night, Pam and I will be awakened by the sudden presence of Lucy, jamming her nose as far under the space between our pillows as possible. Then, our bed is transformed into what feels like one of those vibrating beds in cheap motels where you pop a quarter into the box for five minutes of...well, of...never mind. Anyway, Lucy’s entire body endures one shaking wave after another until the storm passes. Occasionally, we will find evidence the next morning of urinary malfunction in usually obscure locations.

But, Lucy’s fear of thunderstorms is not what this blog is about. No, no...Lucy’s psychoses are much deeper and varied than that. Her new thing is her bizarre mealtime ritual. It started several months ago for no apparent reason that either of us can think of. Out of nowhere she started being spooked by her food bowl, or something. Pam experimented with several new locations for the terrifying bowl and finally settled on a weird location that allows her to eat while looking out the windows of the back door. This particular view seemed to cure the jitters. But, a new pathology has now arrived on the scene whereby she refuses to eat until at least one of us, ideally both of us are in a seated position. Yes, you heard that right. Lucy now requires a rapt audience in order to eat.

Ok...here’s the thing. I have had dogs literally all of my life, and the one thing they have all had in common was a combination of voracious appetite and atrocious manners. You’ve all seen it...every meal you give your dog they act like they haven’t eaten in weeks, kibble flying all over the place as they inhale the entire bowl in five seconds! Lucy, on the other hand, acts like she’s doing us a favor by eating. She will pause grandly and gaze down upon her kibble with barely concealed contempt, then let out a plaintive sigh of resignation before daintily placing a single morsel into her mouth. Then she takes a leaisurely stroll to the nearest rug where she deposits the morsel, as if inspecting it for defects, before finally taking it up again, reluctantly. Then there’s an indifferent return to the food bowl, one more disappointed inspection, and finally she will partake. In what I consider to be deliberate defiance, she almost always leaves a couple of morsels in the bottom of the bowl just to let us know of her official ambivalence. And now, she is insisting that we both sit down while she eats. 

If Lucy were a person, she would be our 10th grade teenage daughter!!

The New Normal

Being an American has suddenly become freaking exhausting. With the dawn of each day comes some new public insult about which I am supposed to be outraged. Some B-lister says something offensive on Twitter, and all hell breaks loose. Boycotts get formed. Demands for firing ring out on social media. Then, someone from the other tribe starts with the charges of hypocrisy, since just a few weeks/months ago some B-lister from the other tribe said something offensive but they still have a job. Then it becomes a contest about which insult was more grevious. Is sexism worse than racism? What about homophobia? Where does it rank on the hierarchy of offense? Once it becomes a debate about who is at the top of the greviance totem pole, then it’s full on war. How dare you complain about mere sexism, when I have to deal with systemic racism? Then somebody on Twitter points out that they carry the quadruple burden of being a disabled, lesbian, immigrant person of color. Immediately, a GoFundMe page gets established, and straight, white, woke males are strongly encouraged to belly up to the reparations bar and fork it over. 

Literally every day in my country, somebody, somewhere is pissing somebody else off. No sooner had we settled in to the Rosanne Barr thing when Samantha Bee steps up to the megaphone for her fifteen minutes of fame. Then, out of nowhere, people from my tribe start ringing their hands over someone named Joy Reid. (I’ll have to take their word for it, but apparently she’s on TV in the morning.) After Googling her I discover that she has a history of homophobic social media posts. When they first came to light, she claimed that nefarious actors had hacked her, (the my dog ate my homework excuse for the digital age). Whatever. Eventually, it all blew over, and she’s back in business...I think. Anyway, this was given as evidence of liberal hypocrisy...or something. In America it’s getting to the place where if we didn’t have double standards, we wouldn’t have any standards at all!

The thing is...I just can’t keep up with it all. I don’t think I’m much different from anyone else in that as a human being I have a limited reservoir of outrage. I can’t live my entire life being buffeted from one insult to another. At some point, for self preservation purposes, I have to decide to let stuff go. I mean, if I hear someone like Rosanne Barr say something stupid and offensive, don’t I have to consider the source? Do I have a reasonable expectation that a gasbag like Barr wouldn’t say something stupid and offensive? No, I do not. It’s what she does. Every B-lister that lands in the news for outrageous comments all have one thing in common...they are all desperately competing for eyeballs. With the proliferation of social media, and the millions of voices it magnifies, civility and kindness just wont do if you want to make a splash. In the old days the saying went...the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Today, at least on social media, it’s more like...the provocateur gets the clicks. When we allow ourselves to be offended by them, they are empowered, and we are reduced.

Of course, I can already hear the reaction to this view...That’s easy for you to say! You’re a straight, white, male, small business-owning, Christian, libertarian-leaning suburbanite. What the hell do you know??!! Probably nothing.

There’s an awful lot of blame to go around for the shocking disappearance of basic decency in our public discourse. It’s been slipping away for years. But, I feel confident that the current occupant of the White House shares a respectable amount of responsibility for its recently dramatic decay. The first Tweeting President has sowed the wind with a million juvenile rants and petty insults. Now, we are all reaping the whirlwind. The question is, how do we ever put the genie back in the bottle after he’s gone? I don’t think we can. This is and forever will be...the new normal. Yay.

Thanks, Mr. President

You would forget your head if it wasn’t attached to your shoulders...was a common accusation hurled at me by my sainted mother. I was always dashing off to school and leaving some vital thing at the house. More often my forgetfulness centered around some chore she had ordered me to complete which I had left undone. Selective amnesia, she called it. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have a powerful enough memory. I could recite the starting lineup of the 1969 Mets in game six of the World Series, backwards...still can. You need someone to remember the name of some obscure character from Twelfth Night, or if you’re having trouble recalling the name of the winning general from the Battle of Malvern Hill, I’m your guy. In other words, when it comes to useless mind-cluttering minutia and inane trivia, I’ve got a mind like a steel trap. But if you need to remember something consequential like a password, or where you left your car keys, or that 10:30 doctor’s appointment? Not so much. Turning 60 recently hasn’t helped in the mental acuity department, since now I instinctively blame the calendar for every error I make. But, yesterday, I found encouragement from the oddest source...Abraham Lincoln. In my Memorial Day readings, I stumbled across...this:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln.

At age 56, a mere six months prior to being assassinated, and having endured perhaps the most brutal three years of any presidency before or since, Abraham Lincoln turned out this stunningly beautiful bit of writing. In three short paragraphs, four sentences, he demonstrated for the entire nation what presidential leadership looks like. Over 150 years later, his words still stir the heart and soul. The eloquence. The epic tenderness. This is unrivaled writing. To read it, even now, is to be transported through time and space and dropped in the middle of an unparalleled tragedy, and to feel the freshness of the open wound that was the American Civil War. 

So, reading something this profoundly beautiful, written by a man under unimaginable stress, gives me great hope that whatever issues I might be dealing with can and will be overcome. 

Weddings, Funerals and Reunions

Now that Memorial Day is over, the Dunnevant family can officially be considered in full wedding-mode. There remain a mere 32 Days left before my son, Patrick Dunnevant marries the lovely and talented Sarah Upchurch in Nashville, Tennessee. Between that day and this lies a great chasm which can only be crossed through a terrifying gauntlet of caterers, event planners, photographers and incompetent hotel staff. But, cross it we will.

In the history of a family there are only a handful of things that bring everyone together in one place, and two of them are somewhat unpleasant...funerals and family reunions. Although, in recent years I have warmed to the reunion thing, generally speaking, they wouldn’t make my top ten list of fun things to do. Funerals, on the other hand, almost without exception, are dreadful things, full of sadness and weeping and featuring long lines of people waiting for a two minute opportunity to say something comforting to the bereaved, a ghastly business. But weddings? Now you’re talking! They are celebrations, an opportunity to gather together to eat and drink and shower young people with gifts and advice. The trouble with weddings is that they are a lot like sausage...nobody wants to see how they are put together. The truth is, weddings are logistical nightmares even in the best of circumstances. But, when you’re 600 miles away from the venue, it’s even worse. Thanks to the invention of texting and FaceTime we are making slow but sure progress. I say we when what I actually mean is...Pam, of course, but you already knew that.

As difficult as these things are to plan, organize and execute, once the day arrives it will be over with in a flash. We will then be left with our memories and hopefully several epic photographs. It will be worth all the effort and expense. A new daughter will be welcomed into the family and a new source of stories added to the family lore.

Then, we get to spend three weeks of rehab in Maine. Yes!!!

What’s So Great About America?

Freedom of Religion, Speech, and the Press

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The Right to Bear Arms

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The Housing of Soldiers

No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Protection from Unreasonable Searches and Seizures

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

Protection of Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property

No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

Rights of Accused Persons in Criminal Cases

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Rights in Civil Cases

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law.

Excessive Bail, Fines, and Punishments Forbidden

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Other Rights Kept by the People

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Undelegated Powers Kept by the States and the People

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

On his Memorial Day, I think it fitting that people be reminded what all the fuss is about. The reason we rightfully revere those who have paid the ultimate price is because they died defending a great and noble thing, the American Constitution. This is what makes America Great, and any attempt to make America great again must begin and end with a renewed devotion to this Bill of Rights. 

Even the most casual reader of these ten amendments will notice that the rights listed are intended to restrain government power. These rights are reserved for the people...individuals, and each of them make it more difficult for government to enact it’s will. For this reason, potential tyrants from the right and left have been frustrated by them, hamstrung in their desires to run roughshod over individual liberties, to which I say...thank God.

So, give them a thoughtful read on this day. Ponder which of them mean the most to you, and what your life might be like without these protections. Then be grateful to live in a nation with something worth dying for.