The Eternal Search

I've just spent the last hour and a half doing the same thing I do every year about this time. As soon as  the Memorial Day weekend comes around, something draws me to my computer, where I find myself Googling Mid-Coast Maine lake houses. I blame my wife. If I had never met her I would have had no reason to ever set foot in Maine. I could have avoided this obsessive compulsion to be there when warm weather arrives.

A couple of years ago I made the decision that buying a lake house in Maine was a stupid idea. Even if we lived there all summer, (which we would), it would still be a stupid idea because my kids and my future grandkids wouldn't be able to afford flying up every summer. They wouldn't be in a position to visit for a month at a time, like they do in the fevered dreams of my imagination. No, we decided that renting a place for a month every summer was a better plan. Last year it was a beautiful house on Hobbs Pond, this year it will be an even more beautiful place on Quantabacook Lake. And yet, every year, I search the listings. Maybe I'll find the place that has my name on it, the place that I can pass on to my family when I die. Every year, they will all gather there for a couple of weeks in the summer and sit around the fire at night telling stories about me. In this way, I will live on, never leaving their hearts and minds. It would be the Dunnevant family compound and we would all vote on an awesome name for the place. The Bush's have the Bush Compound in Kennebunkport with 24/7 secret service protection. We would have the Dunnevant Compound on Megunticook with major plumbing headaches and a really annoying caretaker. But still...it would be ours.

But, it's just too far away. The trip from here to there is too long, hard and dangerous.

So, we rent a place every summer, which belongs to someone else, and is full of their memories. We Dunnevantize the place for a month and pretend that it's ours, and it actually works quite well. Then Memorial Day comes and I type in Mid-Coast Maine lake houses, obeying some primal urge within my heart which will not be denied.

Oh...here's one, three bedrooms, two baths, on Frye Island in the middle of Sebago Lake accessible only by ferry...an absolute steal at $475,000.

Hmmmm......

The Montana Special Election

Three quick observations about the special election in Montana last night:

1. Whenever the Democrats get around to actually winning one of these special elections, that will be the one which actually will be a referendum on Trump.

2. To all these Democrats complaining about the fact that 35% of the votes cast were early votes which couldn't be changed...here's a novel idea...how about we set up one day where everyone gets to vote, just one day. We can call it Election Day.

3. Republican candidate Greg Gianforte might be the first politician in history who when he says, I'll fight for you, actually means it literally.

I love reading all of the reaction to the body-slamming tango between Gianforte and the reporter. Many Republicans were reserving judgement pending a full accounting of the facts of the case, like what was said prior to the assault. Seriously? Does this mean that if the reporter actually said something really mean and nasty, it would make the assault by Gianforte...ok??

Reporter: Mr. Gianforte, I gotta say man...I think you are the sorriest excuse for a human being I've run across in my entire career covering politics. Think about that for a minute, dude. I cover politicians, and you, my friend are the lowest of that life form! Oh, and your wife is ugly and she smells like mothballs.

Oh, well sure. That explains it!! Damn reporter had it coming.

Full stop, people. I can't believe I'm actually writing this...but there is no circumstance on this planet that would justify any politician physically assaulting a reporter, no matter how obnoxious and moronic the reporter might be. This is non-negotiable. Part of the job of our worthless public officials is to subject themselves to obnoxious questions from the press. There's even something in that Bill of Rights thing about this, you can look it up. Beating reporters up isn't part of the process. I mean, it's perfectly fine to make them look stupid by exposing their biases, but not ok to like...choke them. Belittle them for their laziness and water carrying reliance on Democratic Party talking points? Absolutely. Punch them in the face? No.

Joe's Ice Cream. A Modern Fable.

Bob walks into his favorite ice cream store. The owner of the ice cream store, Joe, is behind the counter:

Bob: What's up, Joe?

Joe: Busy as a one-armed paper hanger, Bob. How's the family?

Bob: Couldn't be better. I'll take my usual.

Joe: Ok, so...I'm afraid I can't do that.

Bob: Wait, don't tell me you're out of macadamia nut truffle!!

Joe: No, not exactly. I've got plenty. It's just that you can't have that flavor anymore.

Bob: But...I love macadamia nut truffle.

Joe: Yeah, I know. You've been coming in my shop twice a week buying macadamia nut truffle for the past twenty years now, and, don't get me wrong, I really appreciate your business, but yeah...you can't have that flavor anymore.

Bob: What do you mean, I can't have my favorite ice cream in the world?? Who died and put you in charge?

Joe: It's not me Bob, if it was up to me I'd sell you a gallon of the stuff. It's this new regulation from the Department of Health. Starting today, I can't serve macadamia nut truffle ice cream to anyone who has bought it for the last twenty years. Something about it being bad for your blood pressure or blood sugar, I forget which. Yeah, so...no more macadamia nut truffle. But, you are allowed to buy anything in this freezer over here.

Bob: But, this freezer only has vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.

Joe: Neapolitan...it's called "neapolitan."

Bob: I know what it's called, Joe!! I don't want "Neapolitan" I want macadamia nut truffle!

Joe: I'd love to help you Bob, but they'll shut me down if I sell you what you want. This is the law now, so if you want to get your ice cream from me, it has to be Neapolitan or nothing.

Bob: You're not the only ice cream store in town, Joe. I could always head over to The Creamery Crock down the street.

Joe: True. But they can't sell you any macadamia nut truffle either. Same regulation applies to them too. Were all the same now.

Bob: I can't believe this is happening.

Joe: Me neither.

Bob: Ok, well I guess I'll take a double scoop of this Neapolitan on a sugar cone, then.

Joe: Coming right up.

Bob: This is ridiculous...

Joe: Ok...that will be $7.37.

Bob: What?? You doubled the price??

Joe: I didn't double the price. This new regulation doubled my expenses. I had to buy a special new freezer, special new ergonomic scoops, and a couple new computer programs to handle the reporting requirements of the new regulation. That stuff adds up, man. I'm obsorbing some of the extra costs, but I'm forced to pass on some of them to you.

Bob: So, let me get this straight. All of a sudden, somebody at the Health Department decides that they know what kind of ice cream is right for me, takes away the ice cream that I love, then charges me twice as much for ice cream that I don't even want???

Joe: Sounds worse when you say it. But yeah, that's about the size of it.

Bob: You know what? I've got half a mind to just start making my own ice cream...at home...with one of those hand crank things.

Joe: I'm afraid that's the whole idea. The Health Department folks don't think much of the ice cream business, you know...all those calories, all that sugar. But, they can't just shut us all down. So they're doing the next best thing...driving us out of business little by little.

Bob: But, they know best, right?

Joe: That's what I'm told.

A Good Boy.

I have one son, and tomorrow is his birthday. He will be 28 years old. I can hardly believe it. Many of you have never met him and only know him as the guy who argues with his Dad a lot on Facebook. Others reading this have known him since he was a baby. He's quite a kid, this son of mine. And incidentally, my daughter argues with me just as much as her brother does...just not on Facebook as much!

I hesitate calling him a good boy, since that makes him sound like a middle schooler. He's a grown man, I hate to admit, since that makes me kinda old. But the fact of the matter is, he is a good boy. He's whip smart, talented and funny. He has a good heart, a pure heart, in that there's lots of room in there for his fellow man. Four years ago when he was still in graduate school, on his 24th birthday, I wrote this...

The thing I’m most proud of in my boy is his ability to think for himself. Patrick will never be bullied into group-think. He thinks things through and comes to his own conclusions about difficult problems. He doesn’t believe a certain way just because his father does. He thinks. He researches things, listens to others and makes his own informed judgment. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don’t, but I’m always proud of how he arrives at his views, through careful thought, without lazy reliance on  dogma. When his views aren’t popular, he has the courage to defend them. A father can’t ask for much more than that.

Yes, my son and I often disagree on issues great and small, especially, on Facebook. But whenever we go at it I am reminded that he learned his argumentative style from his father, so I suppose I should take it as a compliment. 

I'm very proud of my son. He's working his tail off in a city with a different time zone than mine. He has two jobs and is constantly taking on song writing and arranging assignments, all the while spending as much of his spare time as possible in volunteer music projects all over Nashville. Whenever we travel there his friends speak so fondly of him, clear confirmation to his parents that it's not just us, other people see it too. 

My son is a good boy.

A Day In The Life

Yesterday was one of those bad days right out of central casting, complete with rain and dark, low clouds. It was the sort of day one often experiences immediately after a trip away. The awfulness of this particular day centered around three things, giving it a weirdly organized morning, noon and night theme. So, if you were going to write about such a day, it would be rather easy to gather your thoughts. Here goes...

First of all, I have recently come to grips with all of the government mandated changes sweeping over my profession. With the help of my wife I have made peace with it, accepted it's inevitability, and attempted to move on with life. Despite this new acceptance, yesterday brought new revelations that make compliance even more difficult. Just when I thought I had reached the top of the bell curve of understanding, I find myself once again...scrambling up the edges of the thing. Now, a new strategy must be employed, a new, more logical explanation found to use when presenting this new reality to my clients. Yesterday was a jarring one. It felt like a setback to me. Most of my afternoon was spent dealing with this new information, trying to make sense of it. The time got away from me. Suddenly, I looked up and it was 5:00 and time to attend a memorial gathering at a friend's house who had recently lost his wife to cancer. I walked to my car in the parking lot through a misty rain.

My friend is my age. We are two months apart. His wife was Pam's age...and he had spent the past six months or so watching her die. As I drove out to their house I wondered how he would be holding up. He was struggling. He had aged since last I saw him. Who wouldn't have? He loved her in the same way that I try to love Pam, with absolute devotion and honor. Her loss seems to have cast him adrift. In other words, he looks exactly like I would look if I lost Pam. Nobody knows what to say at times like this. I certainly didn't. I mumbled something stupid and empty. He talked about her, struggling to keep his composure. Then, he leaned in close to me and whispered, "Die first..." The drive home was somber. The rain had picked up.

After sleep-walking through dinner, I settled into my library recliner and opened up my iPad. There on Facebook, my newsfeed was dominated by some guy I vaguely remember from years ago at Grove. He was a singer. Not a member of the church, but connected to it somehow. The guy had an incredible voice, and for some inexplicable reason had found his way onto my Facebook friends list. And now, after a very long and bruising day, this thirty-something year old man with a beautiful wife and a couple of kids had decided to announce to the world that he was gay....on Facebook. It was quite the spectacle, an Olympian effort of self pity. Since I came out earlier today, I've lost 134 friends on Facebook. What does that tell you, he pleaded at one point. Well, since he has over 4000 such Facebook friends, it tells me that he lost 3% of them. Not bad, actually. Then, the church where he is employed apparently informed him that he wouldn't be able to sing there any longer. His response was a drama-filled, I would cry but I'm all out of tears.

I read his posts and then scanned through the hundreds of responses. They had the effect of putting me a trance, unable to comprehend what kind of thought process was at play in his mind to lead him to think that coming out on Facebook was a good idea. Although I felt bad for him as a human being, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of day his wife and children were having. I wondered if they were out of tears too?

It was the perfect ending to a perfectly horrible day, a day that felt like something was crumbling around me.

But, today is a new day, and it owes yesterday nothing. On this day, I will move the ball down the field a few feet while grappling with change. My friend will wake up in the house that he and his wife built, without her in it. There will be a gaping hole in his heart where she used to be, but he will put one foot in front of the other and carry on. And my Facebook friend who can't quite decide if he's gay or merely bi-sexual, will, no doubt, be over-sharing his plight on social media.

This is what my world looks like today, May 24, in the year of our Lord, 2017.

All I Have Needed...

Great weekend. The Portara concert was wonderful. Everything went off without a hitch. So, today we make the 600 mile drive back home, back to our life in Short Pump.

The strangest thing happened to me in church yesterday. Patrick is a paid section leader in the choir at West End United Methodist church in Nashville. It meets in one of those old, stately buildings that feature grand stained glass windows and giant stone archways. There's that smell of furniture polish and musty carpeting so familiar to me from my childhood. The service at West End is highly liturgical, and the pulpit is hovered over by an imposing pipe organ, the kind that you feel in your chest at times. Towards the end of the service, the organ began blasting out the notes of Great is Thy Faithfulness, as the recessional. The congregation was invited to sing...all three verses.

...there is no shadow of turning with thee...

Music has a tendency, like smells, to evoke memories. As the words of this old hymn began ringing out in the great hall, a flood of them came to me...the musty taste of stale sugar cookies and kool-aid in cinderblock rooms during vacation bible school, the clink-clank of silverwear in the fellowship hall  while standing in line at a covered-dish supper.

...thou changeth not, thy compassions they fail not...

It had been so long since I had heard a crowd of people inside a church singing this old song from full-throated memory. It occurred to me that it had been one of mother's favorites. We kids would frequently hear her singing it while she did the dishes or ironed our shirts.

...as thou hath been, thou forever wilt be...

I began to feel a sense of great loss for some reason. The memories stirred to life by this hymn felt ancient, yet stillborn. They came from a place I can never again go, a time that only occasionally comes to life in a photograph or in the lyric of a song.

...Great is thy faithfulness, Great is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning new mercies I see...

Then, suddenly my voice went silent. A tightness came to my throat. My mouth moved to form the words, but no words would come. My eyes became moist. It was as if I could actually see my mother standing at the sink, wearing her apron, humming the tune until she got to these words. It was at this moment when we could all hear her rich alto sing the words that I could not...

...all I have needed thy hands hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

The emotion startled me. Where had it come from, so powerful and intense? The second verse began and I quickly recovered, but when the chorus came back around, the heaviness in the throat returned. Once again, I couldn't form the words...

...all I have needed thy hands hath provided...

I don't pretend to understand the complexities of the human mind and the place that memory has in the heart of man. But, for me, music is often the catalyst. But, why this particular line, why these words? Perhaps because it perfectly reflected my mother's entire life on this earth.

...all I have needed thy hands hath provided...

Please. Read. This.

. Www.cua.edu/speeches-and-homilies/2017/commencement-2017.html

The above link is my blog for today. It cannot be improved upon by anything I might add. She is one of my heros, and her commencement address is so profoundly wise and beautiful, I feel it my duty to insure that as many people as possible read it. Pour yourself some coffee, give yourself fifteen uninterrupted minutes and read this. You will not be disappointed.

You're welcomed.