Earth Day, Prince, and Harriet Tubman

I will be celebrating Earth Day by playing golf, digging up large swaths of it with my clubs. I will be doing so alongside my recently retired brother, the first such opportunity we've had to play together in several years. I'm sure that the greens-keeper at Mattaponi Springs is praying for rain to save him from the assault of the Dunnevant Brothers, but that's between him and God.

Prince is dead. David Bowie and Prince in the same year. Icons seem to dropping like flies. I wasn't a huge fanboy or anything. I always found Prince to be a weirdo, the quintessential flaky artist. But, the dude could flat out shred a guitar, and had phenomenal rock and roll instincts. When he stepped out of the shadows at the 2004 George Harrison tribute with a solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps, it was pure magic, like all of the other big stars on that stage were looking at each other saying, "what just happened?" Of course, this morning the headlines are suggesting drug problems, the usual suspect whenever an entertainer passes. Regardless, we have lost someone important, a man of transcendent talent.

Harriet Tubman will soon replace Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill. This is a good thing, not because Jackson was a bad guy, but because this is what happens to our currency from time to time. Before Jackson was on the twenty, it was Grover Cleveland. Jackson's been there since 1928. He had a good run. It's time for someone new. Tubman is a terrific choice. Here is a woman who not only escorted over 300 slaves to freedom through her Underground Railroad, but also served as a Union spy during the Civil War. More impressively, and much less known, she was the first woman in American history to lead a military raid...one which freed 700 slaves near Combahee, South Carolina. This was one tough, brave woman. She will also be the first African-American to grace our currency, something long overdue, and the first woman since Pocahontas made an appearance on the back of the twenty back in 1865. Anyone you hear complaining about this change and labeling it as political correctness run amuck...is an ignorant schmuck. Listen, somebody tries to take George off the dollar and replace him with Gloria Freaking Steinem, then you've got a case. But the removal of the white, Indian-killing, slave-owning founder of the Democratic Party, and his replacement by a bible-believing, gun-toting black Republican woman is fine in my book!

Who Is Hillary Clinton's Tailor??

Politics:

Bad night for Bernie. But, what in the Sam Hill was that hideous thing that Hillary was wearing at her victory speech??

It's like she has the same tailor as Chairman Mao.

Sports:

It's April 20th and Bryce Harper already has 7 homers and 20 RBI's. Apparently, last year was no fluke.

Health:

When I was a college student, I was forced to go to an allergist and be tested. It was determined that I was allergic to a lot of things which fly through the air this time of year. Consequently, I embarked on a year long regimen of weekly allergy shots administered with something close to maniacal glee by my nurse-sister, Linda. Since then, the number of allergy episodes I have had has dropped dramatically from one every two or three days, to one every six months or so. Until this year. 

For the past week or so I have felt on the edge of a full blown, 100 sneeze, tissue eating, nose blowing extravaganza. Every morning my nose starts to run. My eyes start feeling itchy. I pop a preemptive Benadryl. The attack is staved off by the little pink miracle. But, by bedtime, the sniffles are back, only, I can't take another pink pill before going to bed because while Benadryl makes most people drowsy, it amps me up. So I contort myself into an uncomfotable pretzel-like position that keeps mucus from gushing from my nose and pray for sleep. Needless to say, I can't engage my sleep apnea machine under these conditions, so, I wake up tired. Then the process starts all over again. Stupid pollen.

Go

Eleven Burning Questions.

Today the State of New York holds a Presidential primary. I'm told that Hillary Clinton will win comfortably and Donald Trump will win in a landslide. Further, the smart people all say that this will be some sort of turning point in this interminable ordeal, a crossing the rubicon moment whereby all prospects for a Bernie Sanders presidency will be dashed, and Donald Trump regains his stranglehold on the momentum lost in the past few week's hive of Republican Party insider hijinks. Color me skeptical.

There are simply too many media companies making too much money for either of these nominations to get wrapped up anytime soon. Politics has become America's most popular spectator sport. Politics has also become America's favorite soap opera. Consider these burning questions:

1. Will Hillary become America's first female president, once and for all time shattering the ultimate glass ceiling?

2. Is Bill Clinton suffering from the early stages of dementia?

3. Will Hillary ever be indicted by the Justice Department over her emails?

4. Are Hillary and Huma a thing?

5. What's up with Hillary's annoying cough?

6. How did a perpetually disheveled curmudgeon like Bernie Sanders score such a wonderful wife?

7. If Donald Trump becomes President, what will be the over/under on how long his current marriage survives?

8. When John Kascich finally releases his delegates, will they wind up supporting Ted Cruz or Hillary Clinton?

9. Will Hillary Clinton go all in on gender by nominating a woman as her Vice President? Someone like Elizabeth Warren or John Kerry?

10. Will Bernie Sanders counter by going all in on Commuism by nominating Van Jones as his running mate?

11. Will Ted Cruz become our first friendless President?

I don't know about you, but I'll be tuned in!

What Happens Next.

In the summer no one thinks about the snow. Sitting at a feast table no one recalls the famine. In the season of peace no one listens for the drums of war. No one except me. I am always moved on to the next thing. And the next thing is always different. It is tiresome to receive a gift of new shoes and only being able to imagine them with holes. But, my gift has benefits. A run of bad luck or ill health is always about to end. It's always on to the next thing. If life seems bright and grand, it's about to turn wicked and dark. But a sick child is about to recover, the long miserable winter is about to give way to spring, crushing grief is about to melt into tender memory. It's what happens next that matters. Always... what happens next.

Gardening in Suburbia

There's nothing I enjoy quite so much as getting dirty working in a garden. I have my Dad to blame. By the time he lived in a place large enough to accommodate a garden, I was the only male child still living at home, so I became his garden slave at the ripe old age of 10. Even though I whined about my servitude and begged for emancipation, over time I grew to enjoy it. Now, I live in a lovely suburban neighborhood in Short Pump, Virginia...not exactly 40 acres and a mule territory...so I must content myself with faux-gardening. That's when you head over to Strange's, pick out your tomatoe plants, herbs, and other flowering plants, then throw 3 or 4 big bags of garden soil in the back of your Pacifica. What follows is a wonderful day of planting cucumbers, peppers, and squash, digging your hands deep into a bag of soil, crumbling out the clods and inhaling that marvelous moldy aroma of dirt. It was a great day for it, sunny and clear with a refreshing breeze. We did well:

However, as it is with most good things in life, there's a downside to all of this communing with nature business. Inhaling all of that moldy earth, and spending nearly 5 hours sucking in lungfulls of airborne allergens began collecting their fee from me yesterday around 4 o'clock in the afternoon. It started with a few innocent sneezes. Then the corners of my eyes began to itch. I pulled my first tissue from the box of Kleenex around 4:15.

Two Pepto-Bismol pink Benadryl pills were popped around 4:30. This had the unfortunate effect of making me feel drowsy while I sneezed while doing nothing to prevent me from sneezing. The eyes were still running and I was going through tissues faster than a room full of women watching Fried Green Tomatoes. At 9:30 then, for no apparent reason, I popped two more pink pills and headed upstairs. Now I felt drowsy and nervous. My legs started feeling jumpy. But the best part was just getting started.

Those of you out there who suffer from seasonal allergies will understand and perhaps sympathize with what follows. Those of you who do not...might want to skip the rest of this paragraph. As I laid my head on the pillow, my nose began to run. I'm talking Niagra Falls scale running. This wasn't simply post nasal drip, this was Old Faithful putting on a show for a gang of Japanese tourists with Canon's buzzing. So, I began casting about for just how I was to lay my head on the pillow to minimize the flow. I tried laying on my left side. No luck. Laying on my right side was a non-starter...as soon as I did I sneezed so hard it flapped the curtains 6 feet away! I finally settled on an uncomfortable pose that featured laying on my back with the crown of my head making contact with the pillow, my hose and mouth pointing to the sky. If my mouth were opened wide I would have looked like one of those baby birds in the nest when Momma bird flies back to the nest with a worm. As uncomfortable as it was, I benefitted greatly from the gravitational impact. Now all I had to do was fall asleep. That's when the sleepy twitches began...in both legs. There I was, clutching tissues in both hands, my nose thrust skyward like Thurston Howell III, with leg spasms. Of course Lucy thought the twitching movements of my legs from under the covers was a fun new game I had invented whereby whenever I twitched her job was to find my toes and playfully chew on them. I thought about getting up and kicking her out of the bedroom, but I didn't dare move.  I feared that if I did, all of the built up mucus in my nose would be released. God knows what that cleanup would have been like. So, I just lay there, hoping I would at some point wake up and it would all be over. 

I did wake up. But, it's not over. I'm practically typing this one handed, my left hand is occupied with drip-control. If Trump wants to build a wall somewhere, he should build one inside my nostrils!

So, that's been my last 24 hours. At some point today, the waterworks will shut down and things will get back to normal. The good news is...in 70 days we will have a bumper crop of tomatoes!

THIS Is Why I Have This Blog.

A word about my last post entitled, Bryan Adams. Hypocrite Extraordinaire...

Wow! Yesterday, I spent the day in Charlottesville playing golf with three really good guys. As is my custom when playing this stupid game, I turned my cellphone off and placed it in a pouch of my golf bag at 8:00am. I retreived it at roughly 3:00 in the afternoon and saw that it was lit up with messages informing me of a spirited debate occurring on Facebook concerning the above post. I nervously began reading through the thread, nervous because I feared that the discussion might have gotten nasty. To my great relief, it had not. Kudos to each participant. There are things I could post in response to some of the points made, but I will not, primarily because I feel that since my blog reflects my opinion, anyone who goes to the trouble of posting their respectful disagreement should be allowed to do so without my interference. Perhaps the strongest criticism came from my cousin Danny, who informed me that Bryan Adams is not in any way "a washed up rocker." Leave it to the one legit rock and roller in the family to set me straight! 

Some who disagreed with some of my assertions made good points, viewpoints that I had not fully considered. I must now think the issue through again in light of these new arguments. It may change my mind, it may not. But I must consider the possibility that I am wrong, right? If I don't, if I dismiss those who disagree with me out of hand I have become an ideologue. If my mind gets changed every five minutes, I am nothing more than a weather vane. My opinions, therefore, must come from my education, guided by my experience, constantly seasoned by new information. I like to think that I am right more often than I am wrong. This blog has often helped me to discover the difference between truth and dogma, transcendence and my biases, largely from enlightened disagreement. For this, I have all of you to thank.

Bryan Adams. Hypocrite Extraordinaire.

One of the most famous scenes in cinema for men of my generation comes from Cool Hand Luke, possibly the hottest, sweatiest movie in history... when the Captain tells the inmates of his prison, "What we have here is failure to communicate!" No line in all of film describes modern American culture as well as this one.

The great divides in America feature entrenched camps of absolutists who either cannot or will not listen to those on the other side of the barricades. Any negotiation feels impossible and reeks of weakness, any accommodation seems like a betrayal. The biblical exhortation, Come, let us reason together has gone the way of the land line phone. A couple of examples...

Washed up 1980's Canadian rocker, Bryan Adams recently made news for the first time in over a decade by cancelling a show in Biloxi, Mississippi over that state's anti-LGBT law. While, I'm sure the fifteen people who had purchased tickets were devastated, Mr. Adams earned rave reviews for his courage from the social justice warriors of the left. 

“I cannot in good conscience perform in a state where certain people are being denied their civil rights due to their sexual orientation,” Adams wrote on his website.

The luminaries of the social justice warrior class immediately began singing Adams' praises...despite the fact that Mr. Adams' latest gig was a concert in that great bastion of tolerance for all things gay...Egypt. Apparently Mr. Adams' finely tuned "good conscience" had no problem whatsoever performing in a state that has recently taken to rounding up gay people in mass arrests. Pot, meet kettle.

But, it's not just washed up has-beens who have jumped on the boycott bandwagon. The very much not washed up Bruce Springsteen is now in the news for cancelling a sold out concert in Charlotte, North Carolina in protest of that state's new transgender bathroom law. So...Mr. Springsteen is refusing to provide his services to customers in North Carolina based on his sincerely held beliefs about sexuality and human rights. It is my view that The Boss is perfectly within his rights to boycott North Carolina. He is a free man and a businessman and can withhold his services from people willing to pay for them if he sees fit, right? Once again, his refusal has gained him wide praise from all of the beautiful people. 

But, what about the Indiana baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding? She refused to provide her services from a willing customer based on her sincerely held beliefs about sexuality. For doing so, the indignant wrath of the entire progressive movement was rained down upon her, despite the fact that there were plenty of other bakers available to do the job. For concert goers in Charlotte...there's only One Boss!!

I have written in this space of my view of the Indiana case, my opinion being that just because one might not approve of gay marriage should not preclude one from baking a stinking cake. I'm just not a boycott kind of guy. However, the way the Indiana baker was treated by those who disagreed with her amounted to nothing more than bullying. Where on earth has the art of getting along gone? Why can't people agree to disagree in the arena of baked goods and 80's Rock and Roll? Why couldn't the baker have said, "Hey, thanks for choosing us to bake your cake!" Why couldn't Bruce have said, "Hey, I think your governor is a jerk for passing that bathroom law and all, but thanks for making my concert a sell out! Baby, I was born to run!" In other words, why must every encounter between people with different views have to be such a drama-queen s**t show?

Seriously Bruce? A guy from New Jersey wants to lecture the people of North Carolina about their discriminatory laws? New Jersey...home of possibly the most bribed legislature in all of the western 
world, where the number one export is New Jerseyans...you want to lecture North Carolinians about good government and human rights? Please. 

"Come, let us reason together..."