The Wedding Planning Saga Begins

My daughter will be getting married next July. So this past week the hunt for a “wedding venue” began in earnest, transforming my life into a scene from Father of the Bride. I sat quietly in the corner of rooms as my wife, sister and daughter began discussing the byzantine complications associated with picking the perfect location for the big event. Finally, after a vigorous and comprehensive internet research jihad, the candidates were narrowed to four finalists. This past Saturday, the three of them left the house for an all day tour. A week and a half later, we have a winner.

I must say that the wedding venue business may very well have the most arcane pricing structure of any business in the history of commerce. Trying to find out exactly how much the thing is going to cost is like trying to guess how many Skittles there are in a fish bowl. The only reliable answer seems to be, “This will cost somewhere in a range between $13 and $65 thousand dollars.” Ok.

Here’s how it works. The perky and uber-friendly event planner/sales gal extols the virtues of “The Veranda on the James”, or some such pretentiously named place with glowing words like “elegant, ambiance, dreamlike and unforgettable.”  Then she wraps up her virtuoso performance with, “And you can have all this for a mere $30 per person!” Pam quickly does the numbers in her head, 200 guests times $30 per person, why, that’s only $6000!  Visions of our beautiful daughter walking down the rose covered walkway leading to the Victorian gazebo overlooking the river begin dancing through her head. She’s about to sign the contract and plop down the deposit when she discovers that there are a “few extras” that she might want to consider first.

While $30 per person would indeed pay for a perfectly lovely event, these “extras” will make the difference between ordinary and memorable. She learns that the food included in the $30 intro package isn’t enough to satisfy a hummingbird on Weight Watchers. $30 buys your guests a plate of carrot sticks and low fat ranch dip as an appetizer, followed by an entrée of beans and franks. Of course, if you want your guests to have knives, forks and spoons with which to eat this feast, you’ll have to pay a $5 per guest “utensil fee.” Drinks include one small bottled water per guest. Other “extras” include $2 per guest for chairs, $3 per guest bathroom access fee, and $1 per person rice allotment. Pam soon realized that the $30 intro package was akin to paying $1,000 for a lake house in Maine only to discover that electricity and plumbing are an extra $699,000.

After the full impact of this particularly horrific sticker shock wore off, Pam, and Kaitlin got down to the serious business of decision making. Pros and cons were placed on spreadsheets, numbers were crunched, calls made, e-mails sent, credit lines secured, until finally last night after dinner the light bulb flashed over Kaitlin’s adorable head. YES!! The decision was made, at a reasonable price, everyone including me is happy, so now we can move on to the easy part of…… finding a dress.

Warrantless Cell Phone Searches?

Here’s a question to ponder on this Tuesday morning. If the police arrest you, should they have the right to confiscate and remove evidence from your cell phone without a warrant?

Before law enforcement officials can enter your home searching for evidence of a crime, they first must obtain a search warrant from a judge, in keeping with the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that citizens should be “secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.” But should “papers and effects” now include cell phones?

The Obama administration will ask the Supreme Court today to consider allowing “warrantless cell phone searches”.  The case in question involved a man arrested by police in Massachusetts because they thought he was trying to sell crack cocaine. After the arrest, the police took his cell phone, and found information that led to the discovery of a house full of drugs and cash. The defendant appealed his convictions under the “fruit from the poisonous tree” doctrine that states that evidence seized illegally cannot be submitted in court.

So, what do you think?

If I were ever pulled over by the police because of suspicious behavior and they were to confiscate my cell phone, they would be quite disappointed. What they would find would be a multitude of dog pictures, a Words With Friends app, a bunch of stock market update things, an up to the minute baseball score gizmo, and a boat load of deleted credit score and Canadian pharmacy emails. But, on the other hand, my smart phone does everything that my work laptop does except screw up printing jobs. An enterprising cop could eventually find my payroll downloads, bank account balances, private communications with my wife etc.. Today’s cell phones are where we keep every vital thing to which we need unfettered access. It is in many ways the modern version of the filing cabinet in the attic, something that used to be protected by the Fourth Amendment.

I’m sure that the administration lawyers will yammer on about terrorism or how this is vital as a crime fighting tool. Then they will make the tired claim about how it is very rare that a cell phone is searched anyway, and the only people who should fear such a seizure are the guilty.

What is the deal with Presidents and their hatred of warrants anyway, first Bush and now Obama? Oh well, once again that pesky Bill of Rights is getting in the way of the State and its never ending battle to control us. Damn that James Madison!!

The trend line on these matters is running against “us”. More and more courts are buying in to the arguments of the “security state” so my trick knee tells me that the Supremes will rule in favor of big brother on this one. But, we probably have nothing to worry about since the vast majority of us are innocent, right? I mean, it’s not like the police would ever abuse this new power. In fact, just the other day my President assured me that all of this hand wringing about the NSA eavesdropping on private phone conversations was all hog wash. Just because the NSA has the capability to listen in to our calls doesn’t mean they would ever do it, he explained. I’m sure it will be the same with this cell phone thing. No worries.

A Lot of 'Splaining To Do

In the old I Love Lucy TV show, whenever Lucy got into trouble, Ricky would fold his arms across his chest and in that thick Cuban accent say, “Lucy, you’ve got a lot of ‘splaining to do!”

 Senator Rand Paul introduced a bill a few weeks ago to suspend all United States aid to the Egyptian military. The bill managed to do something that is virtually impossible in Washington D.C. anymore. It managed to unite Democrats and Republicans, going down in flames 86-13, as one senator after another rose to denounce the “dangerous naiveté” of the junior senator from Kentucky. “It would be a terrific mistake,” John McCain intoned, “for the United States to send a message to Egypt: you’re on your own.”

Now practically every senator who voted against the bill is in full ass-covering mode as they watch CNN and FOX and see Egyptian tanks rolling over unarmed protesters. As the streets of Cairo run red with blood, Senator Paul made another statement to the press:

“This is something that those who voted in Congress will have to live with. The question is: How does their conscience feel now as they see photographs of tanks rolling over Egyptian citizens?”

For his part, Senator McCain seems to have had an epiphany of sorts since he now thinks that all military aid should be cut off immediately. Although the President yesterday did cancel an upcoming joint military exercise with Egypt, he refused to cut off the 1.3 BILLION dollars worth of military aid that flows to them unabated, warning that the United States cannot afford to “lose our influence” in Egypt. To which Senator Paul replied:

“For those who think that more weapons is engaging us with the Egyptian people, ask an Egyptian. When you’re protesting in the streets and you get run over by an American tank, you’re not going to be appreciative of American engagement.”

I am fully aware of the fact that Senator Paul is very much a mixed bag. He is relatively inexperienced, confused about some things, flat wrong about others. But, ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to American foreign policy, I haven’t heard an American politician this willing to tell the truth about our wrongheaded bumbling in a very long time. My hat is off to him, and if he wants to throw his hat in the ring for 2016?  Well, let’s just say there will be some very interesting debates, and some mighty nervous candidates with a lot of ‘splaining to do.

The Most Irritating Ads Ever

Perhaps the best thing about writing a blog is that you get to vent about issues large and small. One day I can write about some serious soul-searching spiritual question, the next day I can provide commentary about my ongoing plan to vanquish squirrels from my neighborhood. Well, today I want to talk about one of my most inconsequential yet irritating pet peeves. It concerns an increasingly popular advertising technique that I cannot escape. I see it on television and I hear it on my radio at least ten times a day. It involves the following formulation:

 

“What the ----------------------‘s DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW!!!”

 

In advertisements for everything from hair color to gold, there seems to be a vast conspiracy afoot to keep the truth from you. Apparently there exists an enormous reservoir of inside information out there that various companies are desperate to keep hidden from the masses. But, luckily for us, a million advertisers are working feverishly to spill the beans.

You need a super low rate on your mortgage? Call Rhea Finance to discover what the big banks don’t want you to know! Aren’t you dying to learn how to lose 25% of your body weight in only three days with no exercise? Find out what doctors don’t want you to know. Tired of paying through the nose for car insurance? Find out what the big insurance companies don’t want you to know.

If all this information is so privileged, how come none of these companies were able to keep it from a bunch of ad men? Can nobody keep a secret anymore? This advertising technique feeds into the deeply held American suspicion that everything is a conspiracy. Are you 32 years old, unemployed, living in your parent’s basement? Is this a result of laziness, a series of bad decisions and your fondness for cocaine? Absolutely not. It’s because the “system” and “the man” have gotten together and hatched an ingenious plan to keep you down. It’s the Democrat’s fault. It’s all because of Sarah Palin. And the “lamestream media” is in bed with all of them, keeping the truth of their nefarious plot a closely guarded secret. So when the man in the dark suit with the earnest expression tells you that you desperately need to find out what the Wall Street fat cats don’t want you to know about gold, well…what’s that 800 number again?

Well, I’m about to tell all of you about what the advertising business doesn’t want you to know. There is no hidden truth about floor wax, deodorant, hard wood floors, or hybrid seeds. But there are a million salesmen who would love to make you think there are. Judging from the vacuousness of these “don’t want you to know” ads, the advertising guys think you’re an idiot. Judging from the sheer number of these ads, they must be right.

The President and the Rodeo Clown

I was five years old when my brother and sisters came home early from school on the day that President John Kennedy was assassinated. It’s one of my earliest and most powerful memories. The entire house became solemn and quiet as our old RCA black and white television with the aluminum foil wrapped around the antennae reported the awful news. In 1981 I learned that President Reagan had been shot when I got home from class and saw my father sitting in front of the television with tears coming down his face. I sat with him feeling disgusted and angry that someone would try to kill the President, one Democrat, one Republican, but the same sense of outrage.

The thing is, I’m one of those people who still have perhaps a naïve reverence for the President of the United States. Not that I worship him, but rather, I consider him to be worthy of a special respect and honor, regardless of his performance in office or his ideology. Even when they behave badly and by their failings don’t actually deserve it, Bill Clinton comes to mind, I still feel a bit uncomfortable when they are openly reviled in public. The way the right savaged Clinton was shameful. The left’s disrespect for George Bush was often close to treasonous, and now President Obama is receiving his share of mockery.

However, as much discomfort as I feel at the rampant disrespect for the Presidency that has dominated our culture for most of my lifetime, it has no legal remedy. We live in an imperfect Constitutional Republic with a democratic form of government. We have a Bill of Rights that doesn’t grant us rights but rather protects those God-given rights from government encroachment. The cornerstone of those rights is the freedom of speech. Our President is not a monarch, we don’t bow down to him, we are allowed in fact to despise him and to express our hatred in a variety of ways from scathing editorials, to late night comedy stand up routines and yes even rodeo clown stunts at State fairs.

Had I been in the audience at the Missouri state fair last week, I would have probably booed when the clown appeared with an Obama mask and the announcer started asking the audience if they would like to see Obama rammed by a bull. This is a perfect example of the kind of thing that I find disrespectful and harmful as it ultimately degrades our discourse. However, a simple Google search will reveal that this is far from the first example of rodeo clowns savaging Presidents. A rodeo in New Jersey of all places had done the exact same thing to then President George H. W. Bush back in 1994, going so far as allowing a bull to rip a straw dummy with a Bush mask to shreds. Similar rodeo high jinks in Alabama had targeted both the younger Bush and Bill Clinton. Apparently, the rodeo community is an equal opportunity offender.

But this morning comes news that this particular rodeo clown has been “banished for life” from performing at the Missouri State Fair and has been ordered to endure “sensitivity training.” No…a thousand times no!! It is not a crime to be rude. What makes President Obama above the common ridicule and mockery that has been the fate of every President in American history? Voices now claiming shock and horror at this rodeo clown were silent when the target was one of the Bushes. Why the sudden discovery of decorum, this new found disgust at political theatre? Of all the Presidents who have served during my life, none has had thinner skin than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The Confederate Flag

There is a bubbling controversy here in Richmond, Virginia concerning an organization called The Virginia Flaggers. They have purchased a plot of land just south of the city adjacent to interstate 95 and it is their stated intention to begin flying an enormous 10’ x 15’ Confederate flag atop a 50’ flagpole which will be fully lit by floodlights at night starting next week. This has reignited the tired but still explosive debate over “hate vs. heritage”. Is the Confederate flag an offensive symbol of slavery or does it represent the brave sacrifices made by thousands of young men who rallied to defend Virginia from invasion?

According to Susan Hathaway, spokesperson for the Flaggers, “The sole intention of this is to honor our ancestors.” The local chapter of the NAACP has a different view espoused by its executive director King Salim Khalfani, “If those soldiers had been successful, I’d still be in chains.”

So, what to think? The claim made by Mr. Khalfani that he would still be in chains had the Confederacy won the war is a dubious one since the economic underpinnings of slavery were already unraveling before the war even started, but his larger point is valid. For African Americans, nostalgia for the old south isn’t exactly a hot topic of conversation. The feelings that the flag brings to mind for them are quite different than the simple devotion to ancestors claimed by Mrs. Hathaway. More likely, for African Americans, the confederate flag is associated with jacked up pickup trucks, gun racks and beer swilling teenage boys out on a Friday night looking for trouble.

I write these words from my study at home. On the wall to my right hangs a print of the famous E.B.D. Julio painting, The Last Meeting depicting Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on horseback talking just hours before Jackson would be mortally wounded in the Battle of Chancellorsville. Behind me hang portraits of the two generals and to my left is a picture of Jeb Stuarts plumed hat, riding gloves and pistol taken from him the day he died. In my library there are no less than eleven books about the history of the Civil War. It has always fascinated me and I have studied it as an amateur all of my life. The point is that I have great sympathy for the heritage point of view in this debate. But I must also say that my feelings about the flag and what it represents has gone through many changes over the years. I have come to the position that, like it or not, the flag carries with it a ton of baggage and is offensive to a sizable slice of our population. For this reason, I’m against this enormous display on such a highly travelled highway entering the old capital of the Confederacy. The symbolism is too heavy. I think of how I would feel if this was a giant Mexican flag erected by a Pro-Amnesty group and imagine it would be close to what African Americans feel towards the Stars and Bars. The vast majority of people who see it will not be thinking about the brave men who gave their lives defending their homeland from invasion, they will be thinking, “What the hell? Who put THAT up??”

The question of whether the Virginia Flaggers should be prohibited from flying it is another issue all together. As much as I would prefer that they found a less ostentatious way of honoring their ancestors, they have every right to fly this flag. It’s their land, their flag, and their decision. It’s a free country. But just as they have a right to fly it, those opposed have every right to protest against it. It’s called Democracy, and public conflict and debate is how we roll.

Bring it on.

A Tale of Two Children

God has seen fit to bless me with two children. I have a 26 year old daughter and a 24 year old son. They share the same set of parents…and very little else. In many ways the two of them are polar opposites, God’s peculiar brand of humor, as if to say, “Watch what amazingly unique people I can create from such unremarkable ingredients!”  In perhaps no corner of life are the two of them any more wildly different than in the area of organization. Kaitlin is “the cloud” to Patrick’s overstuffed filing cabinet. For example…

A couple of years ago, Pam and I drove down to Nashville to help Patrick pack up all of his worldly belongings into a U-Haul truck from Belmont University to Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. He assured us in the week leading up to the big day that he had been getting everything ready so moving day would be “no big deal.” What we found upon our arrival still gives me nightmares to this day. There was Patrick, standing amongst the most unruly collection of boxes, bags and plastic bins imaginable. In one particularly frightening box there was a large frying pan with a sliver of dried food still attached, an unfolded tuxedo vest, two boxes of tea, a spatula and a handful of sheet music, the very definition of “miscellaneous.”

Contrast this with our experience two weeks ago when we made the same trip to move Kaitlin home after two years of grad school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We walked in to her bedroom and there were boxes taped up and labeled with permanent marker, “Coffee Mugs”, “Non-perishable kitchen supplies.” A hearty group of able bodied and similarly focused friends had been recruited for the task of packing the U-haul, among them an engineer with an amazing gift for geometry who made packing the truck a breeze. Once home it took three rooms upstairs to contain all of Kaitlin’s stuff, but within the week she had single handedly gone through it all, designating this pile for Goodwill, that for the dump. Imagining Patrick navigating a similar challenge is practically unthinkable. He simply lacks the linear thinking skills necessary to organize and execute such a thing. He would open a box to empty it only to be distracted by a notation on some random piece of sheet music found inside, then run to his keyboard to get to the bottom of it. Two hours later, the next item in the box would be discovered.

So, you can imagine the level of guilt that my wife had that we were not able to be in New Jersey yesterday for Patrick’s move from first year apartment to second year rental home. There was a U-haul involved, and the dismantling and reassembly of desks and beds, and she wasn’t there to help him plow through it all. So imagine our shock when he sends us a picture of his room last night at 10:30. There was his corner desk with his $5000 worth of musical technology up and running. There was his bed in the foreground…MADE. There was a picture hung on the wall, and white Christmas lights strung along the ceiling. We could actually see the floor! He had done it, he had successfully moved and organized his new home without his mother’s guiding hand. Although I have my suspicions about just how much of this he did without some sort of assistance, probably from at least one female friend, still, it was a very impressive picture, more proof that he is closer than ever to becoming an actual grownup.

Amazing.