I Finished My Novel

Back in February of this year I began writing a story. It centered around the single idea of what it might be like to be a gambling savant. From there it began to flourish into something more than a story, and before I knew it, the thing was off and running. Yesterday morning, six months, thirty chapters and many plot twists later, I have a completed novel on my hands. Each chapter has a title, but the overall work does not, and it needs to be proofed and edited, but the hard part is over.

Although it was a great feeling to finish it, to resolve the thing, to wrap up some of the loose ends, there was also a tinge of sadness. When writing a novel you create a small universe, and populate it with characters of your own design. You endow them with personality, strengths and weaknesses. You introduce conflict; mitigate that conflict with humor where you can, but sometimes it feels better to let the conflict run amok. You discover that your feelings change about your own characters as you’re writing; ones you were quite fond of at first begin to disappoint you like rebellious children. Then you turn on them, meting out literary justice. Then, while driving down the road, or taking a shower, an idea overwhelms you and you suddenly know exactly what will happen next and you can’t wait to write. But eventually the ark of the story begins to exhaust itself and it must wind down. You must find a way to end it. This is the hardest part. There are so many ways you can go. You write the final chapter a hundred times in your head but none of them feel right. A week goes 

by, then two weeks. Then in a flash of inspiration, it all comes to you while you’re cutting the grass. You sit down at your laptop and in two hours, it’s all over. You’re happy with the result, but sad because the world you have created has come to an end. Your characters become frozen in place like a museum exhibit.

So, now what do I do? For me writing is a hobby, a marvelous diversion, but not my profession. I don’t know the first thing about getting anything published. I’ve heard about self-publishing but don’t know enough about the process. Obviously, I like my work but I have no idea whether it’s even good enough to publish. Is there a market for a book that features gambling, dying parents, an ugly divorce, one unsuccessful suicide attempt and one successful one, adultery, ghosts, a gorgeous redhead, mysterious dreams, spiritual transformation, the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, and a dog with unexplained powers?  Guess I’m about to find out.

Losing My Feel For Church

It’s the dog days of summer. You have your shoulder operated on, go on vacation, help your child move home from grad school, and before you know it you realize it’s been a while since you’ve been to church. You’ve gone maybe two or three times over the past two months, and one of those times involved a nasty fall going up a flight of stairs. This is after going practically every Sunday for the better part of 50 years. What happens when you discover that you haven’t missed it?

You miss the people. You miss seeing those with whom you have shared your life, the wonderful people who have loved and cared for your kids almost as much as you have all these years. You miss the fellowship. But you find that you really don’t miss…church.

For one thing, you discover that having a full two day weekend is nice. You can get away overnight some place; get some things done around the house. The weekend doesn’t seem quite so manic, so fleeting, and as a consequence, Mondays aren’t so dreadful.

But, of course, there’s guilt, the linchpin that holds life together. You know that you should be at church. It’s not good for your spiritual health to miss the assembly, the gathering of like minds. The dangers are formidable and profound. You can become indifferent, estranged from other Christians, adrift.

No one from church has seemed to notice your absence, no one has called. This is one of either the benefits or curses of attending a larger congregation…anonymity. But even that doesn’t bother you because it saves you from having to explain to someone that you’ve basically lost your feel for church.

One of the reasons is that you know exactly what will happen every week. It’s not like there will be anything different this Sunday from last. After 50 years you’ve heard every sermon 16 times. You do miss the music since it’s the only thing that ever stirs anything like real emotion. You also miss the huge stain glass mural that dominates the architecture. Whenever your mind begins to drift, which is every two minutes, you stare at the thing. You look into the face of Jesus who looms over you and you think about your savior and what it means to be a disciple. You wonder what he must be thinking right now as he peaks inside the million churches across America gathering to worship him. Is he as mystified by the unrelenting boredom as I am?

But soon, summer and its more hectic schedule will be over, and you will run out of plausible excuses for not being there. You will get with the program. “Do not forsake the gathering together”, the early Christians warned. You will take it to heart. There will be plenty of time for staring into the stain glassed window come Fall.

A Blast From My Past

So, last night I had just eaten dinner and had settled in nicely to watch an episode of Mad Men when the door bell rang. It had completely slipped my mind that Andrew Hemby and Andrew Cannada were coming over to visit. Earlier in the week I had mentioned it to Pam but neither of us had remembered. But there they were. Ten minutes later, just like in the old days, Matt King lets himself in, unannounced and uninvited. I felt 45 again!

Although Hemby had promised to bring me a bag of Nicaraguan coffee beans, he showed up empty handed. Some things never change, I suppose. We spent a couple of hours together catching up and debating my views on gay marriage, the church and Hemby’s pending nuptials, pending in the sense that the only thing missing is a bride. I can’t tell you how proud I am of these three boys.

Andrew Cannada, or “Swift” as he will always be known to his friends is a Doctor, having just graduated with a degree in Physical Therapy. He is married to a wonderful girl named Angie. Matt King is a teacher and also happily married to Sandra, another amazing girl. It is clear that each of them followed my advice and married up, out kicking their coverage by a mile! Andrew Hemby is a consultant for an IT firm and doing very well, all the while trying to decide if he wants to go over to the dark side and become a lawyer.

I spent four years of my life teaching these guys Sunday School back in the day. They were three of over 200 kids that I had the privilege of knowing through the large and boisterous youth program at Grove Avenue Baptist Church. These three were among the best and brightest that I ever taught. It comes as no surprise then that they have all grown into outstanding young men. Listening to them talk last night was an inspiration. Here were three guys who are thinking and caring about important things, trying their best to make a difference in the world. They are working hard, serving their communities, and carving out lives for themselves in a  screwed up world.

I’m getting a little bit tired of hearing negative things about the “millennial” generation. I know all the statistics and I’ve heard every joke there is about the kid who came home from college and took up residence in the basement and hasn’t been heard from since. Most of these jokes are told by members of my generation…the Boomers, the last generation on earth who should feel obliged to criticize anything. We are in the process of handing these “millennials” the most dysfunctional America in history, the one that “we” have been in charge of for the past 15 years. As I sat listening to these three last night, my confidence in the future was given a much needed boost.

So, hats off to the law firm of Cannada, Hemby and King, and hats off to their parents, who clearly did something right.

But Hemby, you don’t promise a guy Nicaraguan coffee beans and then pull the rug out like that. Bad form, bro. Apparently, my work is not yet done!

Do We Live in a Strange World, or What?

This is a very strange world we live in, so much more so than I remember it being when I was a kid. It’s not that it’s better or worse. I’m generally not one to sit around rhapsodizing about the “good old days”. When I was a teenager there were no smart phones, no computers, no internet and no such thing as the Cadillac CTS, so, come on! But still, I can’t escape the feeling that our world has grown exponentially weirder year by year since the sixties in ways great and small. Just a few examples follow.

Our government shuts down 21 embassies in the Middle East and warns Americans abroad to avoid going to “American type places” because of some grave terrorist threat. But we here nothing about it from our President’s lips until he goes on the Jay Leno show. The President of the United States goes on the Jay Leno show for the fifth or sixth time of his tenure in office. It seems like the most natural thing in the world for the leader of the free world to be mucking it up with a comedian on late night television, joking about his “bromance” with John McCain. Strange.

From family values conservative Mark Sanford to flaming liberal Anthony Weiner, it seems that no personal failing disqualifies anyone from public service anymore. Sanford, when governor of South Carolina, lied to his own staff about his whereabouts, then uses tax-payer money to fly to Rio De Janeiro to hook up with his soul mate, leaving his loyal wife and house full of children behind. In the days of my youth this would have been a shameful disgrace that would have forced him out of office and the public eye…FOREVER. Meet the new Congressman from South Carolina’s first Congressional district! Strange. Anthony Weiner’s escapades have been well chronicled here, and incidentally would have been impossible when I was a kid since we didn’t have Twitter. Nevertheless, there he is running for mayor of New York, capitalizing on great poll numbers among young women. Strange.

On the very day that Major League Baseball announces that A-Rod will be banned from the game until the end of the 2014 season, he makes his season debut for the New York Yankees. Wait, what?

Johnny Manziel, a college football player who as a freshman single handedly put his University, Texas A&M, on the map and enriched said university immeasurably, is about to be declared ineligible by the NCAA for taking $7500 from an autograph broker for signing his name to a bunch of memorabilia. It seems that everyone associated with this kid has made a boatload of money off of his football exploits, except Johnny Manziel. Strange kid, even stupid kid, but an even stranger and stupider system.

But, there’s no point pining for the past. This is the only world we have, so we should make the most of it, I suppose. Still…what a strange day and age.  

I Give Up!

http://doug-thetempest.blogspot.com/2013/04/outrageous.html

 

Back then, I thought it “outrageous” that our elected officials would have the nerve to exempt themselves from the most egregious provisions of Obamacare. I found it unimaginable that Republicans would go along with such a scheme. Fast forward to today, and I stand amazed at the manifest foolishness and hubris of the ruling class.

Just for a moment, let’s put aside any discussion of the merits, good or bad, of Obamacare. I would like to ask my readers who support the law to explain to me how you could possibly support your Congressperson exempting his or herself from its consequences in a manner unavailable to anyone else? If this law is such a breakthrough, so beneficial for our nation, then why shouldn’t ALL of us be subject to its proscriptions?

Before Obamacare, members of Congress and their staffs were covered under the Federal Employees Health and Benefits Program, perhaps the richest plan in the history of Western Civilization. So, naturally, any one size fits all plan that would replace it would be less generous and more expensive. So, Senator Chuck Grassley back in 2009 sponsored a bill that would mandate that any health care law passed would INCLUDE all members of Congress. What better way to communicate to the American people that we are all in this together? The provision passed his committee unanimously. But, after the 2000 page monstrosity that famously, nobody actually read, was passed into law, the results of its provisions soon became clearer. Suddenly, members of Congress discovered that they would be paying LOTS more out of pocket for their coverage and in addition would have fewer choices, etc. In other words, details matter, and these details were unacceptable to the ruling class. So, Congresspersons who make $174,000 a year and their highest paid staffs discovered that they would NOT be eligible for any Obamacare subsidies. Democrats and Republicans alike began whining to Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner, “We won’t be able to afford this! Our staff people will leave for the private sector, this is an outrage!!!”

Reports in this morning’s Wall Street Journal suggest that President Obama himself magically worked out a deal with some Personnel Management bureau that will provide ,out of thin air, a $4900 subsidy for individuals and $10,000 per family to help Congresspersons and their employees “cope” with the transition from their gold-plated health plan to Obamacare. In other words, the greatest achievement of Barack Obama’s Presidency is good enough for us, but not quite good enough for our betters in Washington. Provisions must be made for the ruling class that are unavailable for we mere citizens.

Now, I know there are those of you out there who think that Obamacare is wonderful, and long overdue as a matter of justice and compassion for the uninsured etc.. etc… But would someone please justify what has just happened for me, because what little faith I have remaining in government is about to disappear forever.

Mad Men. A Review.

A couple of months ago, my wife walked into the Apple store looking for a cable and walked out with Apple TV. Suddenly we were all hooked up with Netflix just in time for my shoulder surgery. It was a few days later that we discovered Mad Men. Last night we finished season four, so now, a review.

First of all, MM has the coolest theme song ever which features haunting cellos and an amazingly rockin’ drum line that practically demands that you watch the show. So, there’s that. The show is a period piece, set in the early sixties. It takes place on Madison Avenue, New York City back in the days before Giuliani, back when the city was a festering dump of trash and crime. The lead character is an advertising executive named Donald Draper who works for a smallish, boutique firm called Sterling Cooper. Draper is the brilliant, brash, boorish and mysterious creative director of the firm and the character through which the entire show flows. There are an abundance of fascinating characters from his smoking hot wife Betty, to the Rat Packish rogue partner Roger Sterling, to the rich boy brat and insufferably entitled Pete Campbell, all the way to the neophyte secretary/lost lamb in the wood Peggy. All of these characters are essentially horrible human beings inasmuch as each of them sets about doing horrible things to themselves or others. But each of them have a barely there, yet vaguely discernible streak of decency simmering under the surface. You find yourself watching, hoping to catch a glimpse of humanity. Eventually you are rewarded and when you are, it is incredibly satisfying.

But there is one character who is different somehow. She is the statuesque red head who runs the office, Joan Harrison. She overpowers every scene she is in partially because of her stunning hourglass figure, and shocking red hair that shapes her face like a painting. When she walks across the office, coming or going, she plays up her ample assets in a way that stops traffic. But she isn’t just eye candy for the hoard of rude sexists she works for, she brings with her an arrogance, a cool detachment. She is the only true grown up in the room and she knows it. She has the air of self confidence that comes with the knowledge that you are truly indispensable. Joan isn’t much better than anyone else in the morals department, but she makes up for it with the substance of her work and the one thing lacking at Sterling Cooper…integrity. She quickly becomes the only character on the show who you find yourself rooting for.

Donald Draper is another story. Handsome beyond human understanding, and possessed of an artist’s creativity and imagination, he is to advertising what Warren Buffet is to investing, a genius who people tolerate because, well,..because they have to. He waltzes through the show cheating on his wife, cavorting behind her back in ways large and small, all the while running from a terrible secret that gradually reveals itself over the first couple of seasons. He is riveting to watch. You know he’s a terrible person, a real ass, and yet you can’t look away somehow. You can’t decide whether you want him to find happiness and redemption or end up rotting in jail for the rest of his life. And in this conflict lies the brilliance of Mad Men.

We will keep watching because, well…because we have to!

August Stinks

How can it be August already? Seriously, what the heck happened? It seemed like just a few days ago Pam and I were in Myrtle Beach celebrating my birthday and looking forward to warmer weather and now I wake up and it’s…August! You remember August, right? That’s that worthless month sandwiched between vacationing July and Labor Day. There are no holidays. Most people have already taken their vacations already. Now there’s just 30 days of hot nothing.

If you have school-aged kids, you’re counting down the days until they finally go back to class already! If you have college kids in the house, you have setting up a dorm room to look forward to. If you’re a teacher, August is that pit in your stomach, that rude reminder that life is about to get harder soon. Your yard is turning brown; your bank account is empty because you spent too much money at the beach last month. Yes, August is great.

Back in February, my other least favorite month, there comes a time when you’ve had it with the cold. Snow no longer holds any wonder. Christmas is over, you’re sick and tired of hot chocolate, and you just want to go someplace warm. Well, August is that way. There comes a time, usually around the 15^th where you discover that you are very much over summer. You start day dreaming about fall colors, drinking apple cider, and wearing sweaters. But those days won’t come anytime soon because…it’s freaking August!

Thanks to our hard working Congresspersons in Washington, August has been granted a few titles that you’re probably not aware of, in a desperate attempt to spruce it up a bit. For instance, I bet you didn’t know that August if National Romance Awareness Month. Yes there’s nothing like 95% humidity and 105 degree temperatures to make me aware of how romantic the fall will be! August is also National Picnic month. I don’t know about you, but every morning when I go outside and my sunglasses immediately fog over, the first idea that comes into my head is always, “Hey, let’s have a picnic!” And finally August is also National Eye Exam Month. What, was National Anal Exam already taken?

What is wrong with us? We are never satisfied with where we are in the moment. When it’s cold, we want warm. When it’s hot, we want cool. When it’s August, we want it be…anything else.