There is a rhythm to life. We work hard to encourage this rhythm by creating as much order as possible in a world that is famously disordered. Consequently, our lives are for the most part predictable. We awake at a certain hour, perform our daily hygienic repair, go to work, come home, have dinner, indulge in some form of mostly mindless entertainment, then go to bed, starting all over again in the morning. But every once in a while our routine gets rocked. Something unforeseen introduces itself, or even better, everything goes wrong. Nothing is as it should be. The unexpected , the disturbing and even the hilarious moments that occur during these times are the things of which memories are made. While I might never recall one thing that happened to me on 95% of all the days of my life, I’ll remember every detail of “ Bizarroday”. My latest Bizarroday was Tuesday, August 23, 2011.
Tuesday was our last day of preparation before heading down to Winston-Salem to move Kaitlin into her new home at Wake Forest University. First on the agenda was an unfortunate dental appointment. Kaitlin was found with cavity for the first time in 15 years the previous day and so had been scheduled for fillings on the earliest time slot on her last day in Richmond. After being thoroughly numbed on both sides of her mouth with Novocain, the dentist announced that all water had been cut to the building. Without water, no work could be completed so Kaitlin was sent home until further notice, still with cavities but now with a face that made her look like a stroke victim. The adorable crooked smile she was born with was now exaggerated to a freakish sag that gave her the suggestion of diabolical intent. Three hours later water was restored, fresh Novocian was administered, cavities were filled and she was sent home with now an entire face enshrouded in a painkilling glow and wiped clean of expression. When later Pam went into her room seeing the boxes and bare walls and started to tear up, Kaitlin turned towards her and slurred, “ Mom, I’m really smiling at you…you just can’t tell” Pam began to laugh, guardedly at first and then in full throated abandon as Kaitlin’s rubbery face tried to contort into a smile. Then out of nowhere, the ground began to shake.
The first earthquake of our lives hit at around 2 in the afternoon. Pam and Kaitlin froze in place and wondered aloud..”What was that??” For 30 seconds the china rattled, the windows rumbled and Pam, for the life of her couldn’t remember what to do in an earthquake so she shouted, “Lets get in the bathroom!!” Once out of harms way, Kaitlin tried to say..”What about Molly??”, but it came out as “ weribowlolly!” Amazingly Pam understood and about the time the shaking stopped all three of them were crowded safely in the downstairs bathroom. Meanwhile, I was across town picking up the U-Haul truck I had rented for the move. At the precise time of all the excitement I was concentrating intently on backing this ten foot truck into a tiny parking space at the furniture store where I had driven to pick up Kaitlin’s new sofa. I hadn’t felt a thing. When I got out of the truck I noticed people running from inside the store into the parking lot in wide-eyed terror. A 5.9 on the Richter scale quake with an epicenter 30 miles from where I stood had been felt as far away as Detroit and Boston, and I had missed it. After a few minutes order was restored and I stood calmly in line for my sofa when an attractive, young black man approached and engaged me in casual conversation:
“So…what did you buy?”
“My daughter is going to grad school this week so we picked up a sofa for her.”
“Where is she going to grad school?
“Wake Forest…down in Winston-Salem”
“Winston-Salem? I’m never ever going back to that town for nobody!!”
“Wh-.What? Whats wrong with Winston-Salem?
“ A friend of mine asked me to come for a visit so I did. You know where she lived? A house at the corner of Noose Street and Plantation Drive! No sir, never going back!”
By the time I got home with the truck all of the local news channels were on the case with live on the scene reports about the Great Earthquake of 2011. Anchors and anchorettes breathlessly gave us details confirming the rattling of dinner plates in china cabinets from Midlothian all the way to Hanover Courthouse. Reports began to trickle in of pictures hanging terribly askew on walls in the East End.
Some unconfirmed rumors came in describing scores of shattered knick-knacks in Wyndham. A young baby-faced reporter then broke in with live video from the actual epi-center in Mineral, Virginia. There on live television for all to see was the epic damage and desolation. Sixteen bricks lay haphazardly at the base of the chimney of a 100 year old house. We were assured that the residents of Mineral were a hardy bunch and that they were determined to overcome this blow. Just about the time I was starting to feel a bit more secure, channel 12 brought on an Earthquake Expert who warned us of the probability of “aftershocks”. Reeling, I escaped to the dreary comfort of Facebook where I saw that 8 of my Christian friends had posted that verse in Matthew about earthquakes being a sure-fire sign of the end times. From there I retreated to a Drudge Report story from some meteorologist who claimed that hurricane Irene now churning out near the Bahamas had the potential to make landfall as a category 6 storm that might wipe out all of the Outer Banks and cause upwards of 100 Billion in damage. When reminded that there are only 5 categories of hurricanes he responded, “After Irene, there will be 6”. I shut off the computer, walked back downstairs and heard a guy on TV reminding us to tune in after the 6 o’clock news for a special program…”Aftershock Horror..Day 1”
After we finished packing up the truck we had our last dinner together on the deck. It was a beautiful night and the meal was delicious. Kaitlin had her face back. Pam was tearing up again at the prospect of change. But we all looked back on this very bizarroday with fond memories. Oh that there were more days like this.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Book Reviews!!!
18. My Losing Season……Pat Conroy
Seeing as how I believe Pat Conroy to be the finest American writer alive today, this review will not be very fair or balanced. I love this guy and his writing. It is fluid and beautiful with both rough edges and soaring prose. This is an autobiography of sorts since it tells the story of his four years playing varsity basketball at the Citadel in South Carolina. Anyone familiar with his earlier novel The Lords Of Discipline will recognize and therefore not be shocked by the brutality he endures from his quasi-evil coach as well as his pure evil real life father ( The Great Santini ). Still, there is beauty to be found here along with the moving tenderness that is at the root of all of his work. Fabulous.
19. Hell’s Corner ……..David Baldacci
Its been a while since I have been this bored by a thriller. This is my first go at Baldacci and I know what a phenomenal success he has been with the Camel Club bit, but I spent 300 pages waiting for something interesting to happen and then when it finally did it wasn’t good enough to justify the 6 hours I had wasted reading the dang thing. Oliver Stone, the wacko filmmaker is far more interesting than THIS Oliver Stone ever thought of being.
20. Are You Kidding Me?…….Rocco Mediate and John Feinstein
I watched the final two rounds of the 2008 U.S. Open live and could hardly turn away. It was the most riveting, unlikely battle ever waged in my lifetime in the world of sports. Tiger Woods, the greatest golfer of his generation versus the often injured journeyman never-was, Rocco Mediate. I fell in love with Rocco those two days in June along with every other golf fan in the world and in the hands of John Feinstein, this book is as suspenseful , hilarious and unbelievable as the real thing was. Tiger won in the 18 hole playoff, but Rocco won everyone’s heart. Great read whether you like golf or not!
21. Seven Days In Utopia…….David L. Cook
A friend of mine at church dropped this little book in my hand one Sunday and told me I would love it. I read it in one sitting and …liked it. it’s the story of a down on his luck golfer who stumbles upon an old geezer retiree who has carved a 9 hole golf course out of some barren ranch land in West Texas someplace. The old guy proceeds to take the young feller under his wing, teaches him about golf by teaching him to fly-fish etc.. Along the way the golfer also finds food for the soul. You can practically hear the violin music in the background. Come to find out, they’re making a movie out of this thing starring Robert Duval as the old man. Really??
22.Heaven Is For Real……..Todd Burpo
This is the book I read to the family during our vacation a few weeks ago at Nags Head. it’s a true story of little Colton Burpo and his near death experience as a 4 year old where he “went to heaven” during a serious emergency operation. The stories that the kid told of what he saw and what he saw his parents doing while he was under are truly astonishing and give all Christians a measure of hope about the promise of eternal life. Having watched this boy and his parents interviewed on the Today show before reading the book gave them credibility with me since they seemed so genuine and so utterly without guile or agendas. Much of what he says about his experience in heaven is amazing and plausible, although when he starts talking about the Armageddon he loses me. Just find it hard to imagine why Jesus would chose to explain THAT story to a 4 year old. But all in all, a very heart warming and inspiring story.
23. The Help……..Kathryn Stockett
Best book I’ve read all year. After practically every female in my entire extended family read this book and raved, the eagerly ran to see the recently release movie, I just had to find out what the deal was. This was my first book ever on a Kindle, so I’m not sure I can call it a “page-turner”…more like a “button-pusher”. I couldn’t put the thing down. It had everything that great fiction should have..great characters that you find yourself caring desperately about, a moving story that examines every nook and cranny of human emotion. Because its about race relations with all of the hand grenades found in that contentious issue it would have been easy for Ms. Stockett to paint all the black maids as heroes and all of the white housewives as brutal villains. But she digs deeper and illustrates that even in that time of often despicable cruelty, it was possible for grace and beauty to shine through the darkness. She surprises us with twists that are out of the blue and interjects often hilarious details that leave you laughing at times when your mind tells you that you shouldn’t be laughing. Its better than the hype, and I plan on seeing the movie this weekend.
24 thru 27...four books by Dean Koontz
This was the summer that I discovered Dean Koontz. I found myself rummaging through bargain tables at Barnes & Nobel like an addict in desperate need of a fix after reading Breathless back in early June. Here was a writer of thrillers who was a poet and had terribly challenging things to say about the human condition. Then I found Relentless on sale for $6.50. In this one we see the bizarre insanity of a book critic gone mad who chases the protagonist and his little family all over the west coast with murderous intent. All the while, our hero in his desperation rediscovers the beauty and power of family and the importance of holding on to his faith. On the slipcover of each of these books I notice that there’s always a picture of the author with his beloved golden retriever “Trixie”. So when I saw a paperback copy of his tribute to her called, “A Big Little Life” I just had to buy it. Having a golden myself I recognized so much of Molly in his heart warming story and I felt the pain of his loss at her death at a deep level. At that point I thought I was done with Dean for the summer. But when I checked in to our beach house in Nags Head, there on the mantel was a paperback of “The Taking”. This was the most gripping, intense thing yet, the story of science-fiction, thriller, apocalyptic vision and the end of the world as we know it. As the story pulsed on and on getting more grave and chilling by the page there started to appear an almost biblical theme of evil. The only thing that could effectively ward it off was courage and bravery and selflessness. The ending is something for the ages and I have found a new reading passion. Dean Koontz is the man!
Seeing as how I believe Pat Conroy to be the finest American writer alive today, this review will not be very fair or balanced. I love this guy and his writing. It is fluid and beautiful with both rough edges and soaring prose. This is an autobiography of sorts since it tells the story of his four years playing varsity basketball at the Citadel in South Carolina. Anyone familiar with his earlier novel The Lords Of Discipline will recognize and therefore not be shocked by the brutality he endures from his quasi-evil coach as well as his pure evil real life father ( The Great Santini ). Still, there is beauty to be found here along with the moving tenderness that is at the root of all of his work. Fabulous.
19. Hell’s Corner ……..David Baldacci
Its been a while since I have been this bored by a thriller. This is my first go at Baldacci and I know what a phenomenal success he has been with the Camel Club bit, but I spent 300 pages waiting for something interesting to happen and then when it finally did it wasn’t good enough to justify the 6 hours I had wasted reading the dang thing. Oliver Stone, the wacko filmmaker is far more interesting than THIS Oliver Stone ever thought of being.
20. Are You Kidding Me?…….Rocco Mediate and John Feinstein
I watched the final two rounds of the 2008 U.S. Open live and could hardly turn away. It was the most riveting, unlikely battle ever waged in my lifetime in the world of sports. Tiger Woods, the greatest golfer of his generation versus the often injured journeyman never-was, Rocco Mediate. I fell in love with Rocco those two days in June along with every other golf fan in the world and in the hands of John Feinstein, this book is as suspenseful , hilarious and unbelievable as the real thing was. Tiger won in the 18 hole playoff, but Rocco won everyone’s heart. Great read whether you like golf or not!
21. Seven Days In Utopia…….David L. Cook
A friend of mine at church dropped this little book in my hand one Sunday and told me I would love it. I read it in one sitting and …liked it. it’s the story of a down on his luck golfer who stumbles upon an old geezer retiree who has carved a 9 hole golf course out of some barren ranch land in West Texas someplace. The old guy proceeds to take the young feller under his wing, teaches him about golf by teaching him to fly-fish etc.. Along the way the golfer also finds food for the soul. You can practically hear the violin music in the background. Come to find out, they’re making a movie out of this thing starring Robert Duval as the old man. Really??
22.Heaven Is For Real……..Todd Burpo
This is the book I read to the family during our vacation a few weeks ago at Nags Head. it’s a true story of little Colton Burpo and his near death experience as a 4 year old where he “went to heaven” during a serious emergency operation. The stories that the kid told of what he saw and what he saw his parents doing while he was under are truly astonishing and give all Christians a measure of hope about the promise of eternal life. Having watched this boy and his parents interviewed on the Today show before reading the book gave them credibility with me since they seemed so genuine and so utterly without guile or agendas. Much of what he says about his experience in heaven is amazing and plausible, although when he starts talking about the Armageddon he loses me. Just find it hard to imagine why Jesus would chose to explain THAT story to a 4 year old. But all in all, a very heart warming and inspiring story.
23. The Help……..Kathryn Stockett
Best book I’ve read all year. After practically every female in my entire extended family read this book and raved, the eagerly ran to see the recently release movie, I just had to find out what the deal was. This was my first book ever on a Kindle, so I’m not sure I can call it a “page-turner”…more like a “button-pusher”. I couldn’t put the thing down. It had everything that great fiction should have..great characters that you find yourself caring desperately about, a moving story that examines every nook and cranny of human emotion. Because its about race relations with all of the hand grenades found in that contentious issue it would have been easy for Ms. Stockett to paint all the black maids as heroes and all of the white housewives as brutal villains. But she digs deeper and illustrates that even in that time of often despicable cruelty, it was possible for grace and beauty to shine through the darkness. She surprises us with twists that are out of the blue and interjects often hilarious details that leave you laughing at times when your mind tells you that you shouldn’t be laughing. Its better than the hype, and I plan on seeing the movie this weekend.
24 thru 27...four books by Dean Koontz
This was the summer that I discovered Dean Koontz. I found myself rummaging through bargain tables at Barnes & Nobel like an addict in desperate need of a fix after reading Breathless back in early June. Here was a writer of thrillers who was a poet and had terribly challenging things to say about the human condition. Then I found Relentless on sale for $6.50. In this one we see the bizarre insanity of a book critic gone mad who chases the protagonist and his little family all over the west coast with murderous intent. All the while, our hero in his desperation rediscovers the beauty and power of family and the importance of holding on to his faith. On the slipcover of each of these books I notice that there’s always a picture of the author with his beloved golden retriever “Trixie”. So when I saw a paperback copy of his tribute to her called, “A Big Little Life” I just had to buy it. Having a golden myself I recognized so much of Molly in his heart warming story and I felt the pain of his loss at her death at a deep level. At that point I thought I was done with Dean for the summer. But when I checked in to our beach house in Nags Head, there on the mantel was a paperback of “The Taking”. This was the most gripping, intense thing yet, the story of science-fiction, thriller, apocalyptic vision and the end of the world as we know it. As the story pulsed on and on getting more grave and chilling by the page there started to appear an almost biblical theme of evil. The only thing that could effectively ward it off was courage and bravery and selflessness. The ending is something for the ages and I have found a new reading passion. Dean Koontz is the man!
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Why Me?
Today I will meet my parents at their bank to do the necessary paperwork allowing me to start paying their bills every month. From there I will drive across town to attend the funeral of the mother of one of my good friends and business partners. Then I will plunge further into the murkiness inherent in the process of changing Broker-Dealer affiliations, with the mountains of paperwork and the Byzantine complexities that await me in that unhappy place. Then I will pay the bills at work, transfer money from one of my checking accounts to three other checking accounts that require attention. When, in the name of all that is holy, did I become an adult?
For most of my life after age 40 I have looked around at my contemporaries with a mixture of confusion and pride and confidently told myself that I wasn’t like them. I was different. They were older somehow. They had surrendered to middle age and the muddled thinking that goes with it. They were stuck on the upwardly mobile treadmill that is America in the 21st century with its quest for bigger homes, flashier cars, nicer stuff. They were all into country clubs and beach houses and the tyranny of keeping up with it all. But not me. Instead of becoming chairman of the deacons at church, I worked with the kids in the youth department. Instead of networking with like-minded professionals, I preferred the company of pimple-faced teenagers at summer camp. Instead of reading business magazines and trade publications, I read everything else , from PJ O’Rourke to Dostoevsky. Instead of falling in line and becoming a Republican, I somehow became weirdly libertarian. All of this, I convinced myself, was good because I never wanted to become a boring conformist. Its not that I disliked my contemporaries or even that I felt superior to them. I was just determined not to end up like everyone else, living a life sucked empty of joy and spontaneity by the demands of abundance. I didn’t want to wake up one day and find myself consumed by the plodding details of middle age….but wake up I have.
Another thing, when most of my Christian friends read the New Testament it brings them comfort. They find in the life of Christ validation of their view of the world. For me, the New Testament troubles me and the life of Jesus feels like a stunning rebuke. The strength of my belief in him has, if anything, increased. But my understanding of what my life should look like in light of his teachings has taken a few blows. How does my increasing prosperity square with his admonition to provide for the “least of these”? What cross do I take up every day? If Jesus founded the church and we worship a risen savior why does church bore me so? Why can I not shake the feeling that the couple of hours I spend in church are the most inconsequential hours of the week?
For me, age has not brought clarity. It has brought only more questions. Any wisdom that has fallen on me through the passage of time has been the wisdom of greater humility. With many people age and a measure of success brings the bad seed of pride. For me, it has brought questions. Primarily…why me??
For most of my life after age 40 I have looked around at my contemporaries with a mixture of confusion and pride and confidently told myself that I wasn’t like them. I was different. They were older somehow. They had surrendered to middle age and the muddled thinking that goes with it. They were stuck on the upwardly mobile treadmill that is America in the 21st century with its quest for bigger homes, flashier cars, nicer stuff. They were all into country clubs and beach houses and the tyranny of keeping up with it all. But not me. Instead of becoming chairman of the deacons at church, I worked with the kids in the youth department. Instead of networking with like-minded professionals, I preferred the company of pimple-faced teenagers at summer camp. Instead of reading business magazines and trade publications, I read everything else , from PJ O’Rourke to Dostoevsky. Instead of falling in line and becoming a Republican, I somehow became weirdly libertarian. All of this, I convinced myself, was good because I never wanted to become a boring conformist. Its not that I disliked my contemporaries or even that I felt superior to them. I was just determined not to end up like everyone else, living a life sucked empty of joy and spontaneity by the demands of abundance. I didn’t want to wake up one day and find myself consumed by the plodding details of middle age….but wake up I have.
Another thing, when most of my Christian friends read the New Testament it brings them comfort. They find in the life of Christ validation of their view of the world. For me, the New Testament troubles me and the life of Jesus feels like a stunning rebuke. The strength of my belief in him has, if anything, increased. But my understanding of what my life should look like in light of his teachings has taken a few blows. How does my increasing prosperity square with his admonition to provide for the “least of these”? What cross do I take up every day? If Jesus founded the church and we worship a risen savior why does church bore me so? Why can I not shake the feeling that the couple of hours I spend in church are the most inconsequential hours of the week?
For me, age has not brought clarity. It has brought only more questions. Any wisdom that has fallen on me through the passage of time has been the wisdom of greater humility. With many people age and a measure of success brings the bad seed of pride. For me, it has brought questions. Primarily…why me??
Monday, August 15, 2011
Empty Nest II
The living room of my house is packed full of my daughter’s new life. There are boxes of shiny new appliances. There’s color coordinated art work for the bare walls that await her. There’s her old day bed from high school that has been hauled down from the attic and festooned with a red, white and black comforter and matching bed skirt, pillow cases, throw pillows, high thread count cotton sheets and something called a “valance”. There’s also the chest of drawers from the attic that was in her nursery when we brought her home from the hospital 24 years ago. It’s covered in dust and a couple of the drawers were inexplicably filled with very short shorts with a 34 waist that I am ashamed to say don’t fit me anymore. Anyway, its all there in our living room. She is excited to be heading off to graduate school. I am excited that she’s paying for it herself with money she worked hard for this past year while she’s been living with us. So, next Wednesday we will pack it all in a 10’ U-Haul truck and make the 4 hour drive to her rental house in Winston-Salem near the campus of Wake Forest University. We will spend two days putting everything together and getting her settled in her exciting new place. Then maybe Pam and I will continue on down the road another 7 hours to Nashville to check on our son. He’s been in a new apartment for a few months now. When we moved him in and put all of his stuff together it looked great, but I’m sure its like something from Dante’s Inferno by now. After a couple of days visiting him Pam and I will make the long 9 hour drive back to Richmond for the second time to an empty nest.
The first time was truly awful, long grueling hours of tears and more tears. Then we actually left the parking lot and began the drive home! For a few weeks it was like we lived in a museum or some kind of depressing warehouse for used memories. But after awhile it dawned on us that we had the entire house to ourselves and since we were all out of tears we began in earnest to take full advantage of all that privacy. It was liberating. We discovered that we both actually really did love each other. What a bonus!! This time I’m sure there will be more tears and we will mourn a little the relentless march of time. But we know that what awaits us back here in Richmond is our home and the rest of our life together. It’s a life I wouldn’t trade with anyone, with the most beautiful, gifted, and tender-hearted woman in the world. Bring it on.
The first time was truly awful, long grueling hours of tears and more tears. Then we actually left the parking lot and began the drive home! For a few weeks it was like we lived in a museum or some kind of depressing warehouse for used memories. But after awhile it dawned on us that we had the entire house to ourselves and since we were all out of tears we began in earnest to take full advantage of all that privacy. It was liberating. We discovered that we both actually really did love each other. What a bonus!! This time I’m sure there will be more tears and we will mourn a little the relentless march of time. But we know that what awaits us back here in Richmond is our home and the rest of our life together. It’s a life I wouldn’t trade with anyone, with the most beautiful, gifted, and tender-hearted woman in the world. Bring it on.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Stuff I Actually DO Know
There are a thousand things about the global financial crisis now occurring about which I am completely in the dark. The level of interconnected complexities inherent in this system is beyond my pay grade. However, there are several things about this mess that I know, without a doubt to be certifiably true. The first step in understanding the complex is to clearly state what is known. So, in the spirit of discovery, and for personal therapeutic reasons, I offer the following certainties:
1. American banks, large and small, have on their balance sheets millions of underwater mortgages. These were ill-advised loans made to unqualified borrowers with insufficient equity stakes in property which has dropped precipitously in value. Now the banks “own” homes that are worth far less than what the bank is owed. There are many villains in this stupid tale, banker greed, home-owner vanity, government malfeasance etc.. but at this point it doesn’t matter. The problem is primarily this, how does the bank put a value on this huge section of their balance sheet? Exactly how much is all of that real estate worth..today? They don’t know. How long will it take for real estate prices to recover so as to remove this albatross from their future profitability? Nobody knows. If nobody knows the answers to these vexing questions, then how can a reasonable investor make an informed decision about the health and safety of banks? This explains everything I need to know about why banks are so reluctant to lend money these days.
2. American banks and huge brokerage firms like Goldman-Sachs have always loved buying the stock of other banks and brokerage firms, especially those in Europe. Even better, they love buying the sovereign debts of those countries. So, if Greece or Italy, Spain, Portugal, or even France were to default, then that would mean that American banks would hold even MORE worthless stuff than they do now! Who knows, maybe their holdings of sovereign debt would be so awful, it would make everyone stop worrying about all the worthless real estate they own!
3. America is filled with men and women who don’t participate in recessions. These hardy business owners are so busy producing goods and services at a fair value, they don’t have time to watch CNBC and listen to all the experts tell us how terrible things are. They spend most of their spare time trying to figure ways to get better. It’s these people who keep this country afloat and I thank God every day for each and every one of them. But these men and women, who pay this country’s’ bills are not indestructible. They have been taxed, regulated, impugned and harassed to within an inch of their lives over the past twenty years or so, and my biggest fear is that one day they are going to tell the rest of us to take a hike. One day the entrepreneurial class in America just might say…”Let me up, I’ve had enough”. If that day ever comes, we are screwed.
1. American banks, large and small, have on their balance sheets millions of underwater mortgages. These were ill-advised loans made to unqualified borrowers with insufficient equity stakes in property which has dropped precipitously in value. Now the banks “own” homes that are worth far less than what the bank is owed. There are many villains in this stupid tale, banker greed, home-owner vanity, government malfeasance etc.. but at this point it doesn’t matter. The problem is primarily this, how does the bank put a value on this huge section of their balance sheet? Exactly how much is all of that real estate worth..today? They don’t know. How long will it take for real estate prices to recover so as to remove this albatross from their future profitability? Nobody knows. If nobody knows the answers to these vexing questions, then how can a reasonable investor make an informed decision about the health and safety of banks? This explains everything I need to know about why banks are so reluctant to lend money these days.
2. American banks and huge brokerage firms like Goldman-Sachs have always loved buying the stock of other banks and brokerage firms, especially those in Europe. Even better, they love buying the sovereign debts of those countries. So, if Greece or Italy, Spain, Portugal, or even France were to default, then that would mean that American banks would hold even MORE worthless stuff than they do now! Who knows, maybe their holdings of sovereign debt would be so awful, it would make everyone stop worrying about all the worthless real estate they own!
3. America is filled with men and women who don’t participate in recessions. These hardy business owners are so busy producing goods and services at a fair value, they don’t have time to watch CNBC and listen to all the experts tell us how terrible things are. They spend most of their spare time trying to figure ways to get better. It’s these people who keep this country afloat and I thank God every day for each and every one of them. But these men and women, who pay this country’s’ bills are not indestructible. They have been taxed, regulated, impugned and harassed to within an inch of their lives over the past twenty years or so, and my biggest fear is that one day they are going to tell the rest of us to take a hike. One day the entrepreneurial class in America just might say…”Let me up, I’ve had enough”. If that day ever comes, we are screwed.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Stuff I Thought I Knew
The list of things that I thought I understood but now realize that I’m clueless about continues to get longer. They include but are not limited to the following:
1. The assumption that under girds all of Western Civilization that in times of great crisis, the cream rises to the top. The notion that great leaders evolve out of the stress and tumult of great events providing steadiness and visionary leadership. Just a few examples would include Queen Elizabeth, and Winston Churchill from Great Britain, Charlemagne, Otto Von Bismarck and Martin Luther from Germany, and even (although I know this is a stretch) Charles De Gaulle from France. In our own country, in just 235 short years, our turbulent seas have brought forth Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Abe Lincoln, two Roosevelts etc..etc.. But in 2011 we are being governed by the three little pigs ( Obama, Geithner, and Bernanke ) and a host of incompetent boobs in Congress from the shrill and inept Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to the blandly uninspiring Republican trio of Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and the creepy tan-in-a-can John Boehnor. Add to this the prospect of a 2012 presidential campaign of Obama vs. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and well, so much for assumption number 1.
2. I invest money for a living so I know all about the volatility of the stock market. I’m totally aware of the random walk theory of equity prices. I completely get the short term insanity that can sometimes grip investors. But when I see in one trading day the Dow go up 200 points, stay in that general range most of the day, then tank into negative territory in a matter of minutes after one of the Three Little Pigs referenced above opens their pie-holes, then in less than an hour skyrocket to finish up 429 points on the day I can only conclude that…somebody is screwing with us. There’s just something not quite random about this walk and it has me watching the skies for black helicopters.
3. As a Christian I have always believed that our faith was what made the ultimate difference in how we handled adversity. While certainly not exempting us from the vagaries of life, faith in Christ would allow us to accept any cruelty of circumstance that might one day come our way with grace and good cheer. As I have gotten older however I am increasingly seeing that ultimately it hasn’t made a measurable difference. We all get old and infirm and we all rail against the ravages of time with far less grace than many non-believers. For this reason I wish to die in a plane crash or some sky-diving accident or unfortunate bathroom incident before the anger and bitterness of growing old lays bare my lack of faith to my children.
4. Even though here in the West we like to indulge the sociologists among us with their dopey excuse making when it comes to violence and mischief-making by the underclass, I have always believed that this was simply an indulgence that could only thrive in times of relative peace. Surely if hoodlums actually went wild in the inner cities and started pillaging entire cities the grownups would wake up and impose order out of the chaos. But the past three days has seen bands of hooded punks literally burning down the great city of London and the ruling elites of that once great country have spent three days debating whether to deploy the “water-canon” to restore order, debating whether it was moral to fire rubber bullets at the mob. Politician after politician has risen up in Parliament to blame “budget cuts “ for the mayhem while the rest of England has watched gleeful teenagers balancing big screen TV’s on their shoulders stolen from burning stores with no police in sight. Have we actually come to the place where we lack even enough confidence to defend society from lawlessness?? Apparently so.
1. The assumption that under girds all of Western Civilization that in times of great crisis, the cream rises to the top. The notion that great leaders evolve out of the stress and tumult of great events providing steadiness and visionary leadership. Just a few examples would include Queen Elizabeth, and Winston Churchill from Great Britain, Charlemagne, Otto Von Bismarck and Martin Luther from Germany, and even (although I know this is a stretch) Charles De Gaulle from France. In our own country, in just 235 short years, our turbulent seas have brought forth Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Abe Lincoln, two Roosevelts etc..etc.. But in 2011 we are being governed by the three little pigs ( Obama, Geithner, and Bernanke ) and a host of incompetent boobs in Congress from the shrill and inept Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to the blandly uninspiring Republican trio of Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and the creepy tan-in-a-can John Boehnor. Add to this the prospect of a 2012 presidential campaign of Obama vs. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and well, so much for assumption number 1.
2. I invest money for a living so I know all about the volatility of the stock market. I’m totally aware of the random walk theory of equity prices. I completely get the short term insanity that can sometimes grip investors. But when I see in one trading day the Dow go up 200 points, stay in that general range most of the day, then tank into negative territory in a matter of minutes after one of the Three Little Pigs referenced above opens their pie-holes, then in less than an hour skyrocket to finish up 429 points on the day I can only conclude that…somebody is screwing with us. There’s just something not quite random about this walk and it has me watching the skies for black helicopters.
3. As a Christian I have always believed that our faith was what made the ultimate difference in how we handled adversity. While certainly not exempting us from the vagaries of life, faith in Christ would allow us to accept any cruelty of circumstance that might one day come our way with grace and good cheer. As I have gotten older however I am increasingly seeing that ultimately it hasn’t made a measurable difference. We all get old and infirm and we all rail against the ravages of time with far less grace than many non-believers. For this reason I wish to die in a plane crash or some sky-diving accident or unfortunate bathroom incident before the anger and bitterness of growing old lays bare my lack of faith to my children.
4. Even though here in the West we like to indulge the sociologists among us with their dopey excuse making when it comes to violence and mischief-making by the underclass, I have always believed that this was simply an indulgence that could only thrive in times of relative peace. Surely if hoodlums actually went wild in the inner cities and started pillaging entire cities the grownups would wake up and impose order out of the chaos. But the past three days has seen bands of hooded punks literally burning down the great city of London and the ruling elites of that once great country have spent three days debating whether to deploy the “water-canon” to restore order, debating whether it was moral to fire rubber bullets at the mob. Politician after politician has risen up in Parliament to blame “budget cuts “ for the mayhem while the rest of England has watched gleeful teenagers balancing big screen TV’s on their shoulders stolen from burning stores with no police in sight. Have we actually come to the place where we lack even enough confidence to defend society from lawlessness?? Apparently so.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
And Now For Something Completely Different...
And now for something completely different…truth in politics. Wouldn’t it be great if politicians felt secure enough to tell us what they really think? Suppose there were no polls or focus groups and the two parties could just come out with it. Because we are Americans this concept seems incomprehensible. We are conditioned to spin-meisters. All of us instinctively know that whatever our elected officials say is carefully field-tested to appeal to the widest demographic possible. Consequently, we sorta know that we’re being lied to and we accept it as a political fact of life. But, how cool would it be if they just threw caution to the wind and let fire with what all of them wish they could say?
For Democrats it would be liberating. They could stop pretending to like the private sector. They could just come out and say that business is evil and it’s the job of government to take as much money from the rich as humanly possible. See, the problem isn’t that we have too many entitlement programs that cost too much, the problem is that we don’t have enough welfare and the only reason we have budget shortfalls is because the American people don’t pay enough in taxes. Democrats know that the average American is too stupid and too lazy to take care of himself. Besides, even if he can, the odds are stacked against him because this country is irretrievably racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. Those who have succeeded have done so through no personal ingenuity, but rather on the backs of others. Therefore the government has an obligation to step in and level the playing field by eliminating the class and economic disparities that unfairly exist in our society. For Democrats history is simply the story of mankind evolving away from the greed and self-interest of the individual to the utopian paradise of the collective. Each of us needs to give up our personal ambitions and desires and let the government have more and more of our money so that all of the ambitions and desires of everyone can be achieved. They could just cut all the crap about tax rates and fairness and just go ahead and say that the rich should pay a minimum of 75% of their income in taxes and be grateful that it isn’t 90%. With the new-found revenue that would flow into Washington, the great society would finally be in reach. Everyone would have free health care. College education would be free to all. People who lose their jobs would get 100% of their pay for as long as it took until they found a job. Housing would be free. Food would be free. It would be a beautiful world.
For Republicans it would be equally liberating. They could stop pretending to support Social Security and Medicare. They could just admit that the only reason they say that they do support these things is that they realize that the American people do by huge margins and to say otherwise would destroy their careers. They could unburden themselves of their core belief that all of the welfare legislation that has been passed from FDR through LBJ is in the process of destroying the fabric of the country by turning us into a nation of dependant slobs. The type of Americans who established the 13 colonies, tamed the West, and won WWII no longer exist because the modern welfare state has destroyed the epic American spirit of rugged individuality and self reliance. The modern nanny state has made pussies of us all. The real problem with the debt ceiling is that it should be lowered, not raised and we should be talking about scaling back government spending, not just slowing its growth. For Republicans, it would be such fun to just look out at a rally and say something like…”If you people expect the government to take care of you, then move to Norway! This is America. The sky is the limit here and if you want a big slice of it, its yours for the taking. Elect me and I’ll fight to help you keep as much of your own money as possible. But don’t even think of asking me to trim the defense budget because we republicans love the concept of Empire and we like to be able to kick ass every once in awhile. Oh, and if you lose your job, don’t come running to us to pay you a bunch of money for sitting on your assets for two years looking for work. That’s what a savings account is for! Want health care?…buy insurance. Can’t get insurance because youre sick? Sorry. Life is and always has been unfair. Think the government should pay all of your medical bills?…then move to Cuba. I mean really…you think we can provide health insurance for 300 million people? Have you been to the DMV or tried to mail a package at the Post Office lately? You’re on your own out there, like its been for 5000 years of recorded history…deal with it!”
The truth is this. There are more Americans who want the government to take care of them than there are Americans who want the government to leave them alone. Which is why we have a debt ceiling crisis. Ultimetely, the Democrats will win and before too much longer they won’t have to lie about it anymore.
For Democrats it would be liberating. They could stop pretending to like the private sector. They could just come out and say that business is evil and it’s the job of government to take as much money from the rich as humanly possible. See, the problem isn’t that we have too many entitlement programs that cost too much, the problem is that we don’t have enough welfare and the only reason we have budget shortfalls is because the American people don’t pay enough in taxes. Democrats know that the average American is too stupid and too lazy to take care of himself. Besides, even if he can, the odds are stacked against him because this country is irretrievably racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. Those who have succeeded have done so through no personal ingenuity, but rather on the backs of others. Therefore the government has an obligation to step in and level the playing field by eliminating the class and economic disparities that unfairly exist in our society. For Democrats history is simply the story of mankind evolving away from the greed and self-interest of the individual to the utopian paradise of the collective. Each of us needs to give up our personal ambitions and desires and let the government have more and more of our money so that all of the ambitions and desires of everyone can be achieved. They could just cut all the crap about tax rates and fairness and just go ahead and say that the rich should pay a minimum of 75% of their income in taxes and be grateful that it isn’t 90%. With the new-found revenue that would flow into Washington, the great society would finally be in reach. Everyone would have free health care. College education would be free to all. People who lose their jobs would get 100% of their pay for as long as it took until they found a job. Housing would be free. Food would be free. It would be a beautiful world.
For Republicans it would be equally liberating. They could stop pretending to support Social Security and Medicare. They could just admit that the only reason they say that they do support these things is that they realize that the American people do by huge margins and to say otherwise would destroy their careers. They could unburden themselves of their core belief that all of the welfare legislation that has been passed from FDR through LBJ is in the process of destroying the fabric of the country by turning us into a nation of dependant slobs. The type of Americans who established the 13 colonies, tamed the West, and won WWII no longer exist because the modern welfare state has destroyed the epic American spirit of rugged individuality and self reliance. The modern nanny state has made pussies of us all. The real problem with the debt ceiling is that it should be lowered, not raised and we should be talking about scaling back government spending, not just slowing its growth. For Republicans, it would be such fun to just look out at a rally and say something like…”If you people expect the government to take care of you, then move to Norway! This is America. The sky is the limit here and if you want a big slice of it, its yours for the taking. Elect me and I’ll fight to help you keep as much of your own money as possible. But don’t even think of asking me to trim the defense budget because we republicans love the concept of Empire and we like to be able to kick ass every once in awhile. Oh, and if you lose your job, don’t come running to us to pay you a bunch of money for sitting on your assets for two years looking for work. That’s what a savings account is for! Want health care?…buy insurance. Can’t get insurance because youre sick? Sorry. Life is and always has been unfair. Think the government should pay all of your medical bills?…then move to Cuba. I mean really…you think we can provide health insurance for 300 million people? Have you been to the DMV or tried to mail a package at the Post Office lately? You’re on your own out there, like its been for 5000 years of recorded history…deal with it!”
The truth is this. There are more Americans who want the government to take care of them than there are Americans who want the government to leave them alone. Which is why we have a debt ceiling crisis. Ultimetely, the Democrats will win and before too much longer they won’t have to lie about it anymore.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Dummers Beach Journal...Part Five
Our last day at Dummers dawned clear and bright and I felt like my old self. I slept all the way through the night and awoke without a headache. I drove up to Morning Glory bakery, bought 4 muffins and a paper and returned to camp to drink my coffee on the beach. The mountains looked bigger somehow and closer. The sky was filled with thin feathery clouds with a soft half-moon still visable against the pale blue. The forecast was for hot temperatures today but just as I headed back to camp for breakfast a wind had started to blow, raising waves from west to east across the lake, a good sign.
Breakfast was typical Webb Lake cuisine. Bacon and ham, French toast, muffins and juice, and for the first time all week I could actually taste it. Wonderful. By this time a steady wind was blowing, the thin high clouds were thinning further and the sun was getting hotter. We made it to the beach by 10 or so and immediately went for a swim. The water was surprisingly warm and the slow agony of walking a half an hour in thirty minutes before we could jinn up the courage to go under was replaced by going under right away and doing the Dummers Beach crawl in reverse. All morning the view across the lake was stunning. At one point a float plane circled overhead, landed about a mile to the north then took off again soaring up towards Tumbledown mountain. The dude was clearly showing off and I was insanely jealous. Pam suggested that the four of us head to the canteen for a snack. All the very best candy was available, cow tails, Snickers, and the most delicious Nutty Buddy ever! Upon returning to our favorite spot on the beach and after an hour or so of reading, Pam and Kaitlin decided that it was time for lunch. Flashing their best 19th century feminine wiles they offered to serve us on the beach! There would be fluffer-nutter sandwiches, finely sliced chunks of watermelon, our choice of chips, and cold iced tea. Clearly, this place has magical powers.
The rest of the day was spent swimming, floating on rafts, and engaging each other in relaxed conversation. Surprisingly, no tears were shed. Because this would be the last day, Pam was determined to stay in the moment and enjoy every second. After a delicious dinner of Italian grilled chicken, we all loaded up in two cars and made the pilgrimage all the way to Farmington for Gifford’s Ice Cream. The night was perfect with not a trace of humidity, a fine breeze blowing. Heading back to camp we could see the fiery western sky in the distance. The sunset at camp would be incredible if only we could make it there in time. Although we missed the best of it, we all gathered in chairs by the lake to watch the dying embers of this perfect day in Maine. The camp fire later was quiet and soothing, but the smoke kept drifting to where Russ sat. He pointed out that this simply proved the old adage that smoke follows the “most beautiful” person!
We awoke to dark skies and a light mournful rain. It seems that every year we pack up in the rain. Sharon thought that the Lake was crying with us. It was a very sad morning. After saying our good-byes we began the 14 hour trip home. For Pam the tears didn’t slow until we made it to the Maine Turnpike. We arrived home at 11:15 last night to a rapturous welcome from Molly. Now I face the tyrannies that await me at the office, the demands that the real world makes upon me. Today I will rest, prepare for the hectic week ahead, and do my chores. But in a quiet corner of my mind I will linger on that beach and listen for the Loons.
Breakfast was typical Webb Lake cuisine. Bacon and ham, French toast, muffins and juice, and for the first time all week I could actually taste it. Wonderful. By this time a steady wind was blowing, the thin high clouds were thinning further and the sun was getting hotter. We made it to the beach by 10 or so and immediately went for a swim. The water was surprisingly warm and the slow agony of walking a half an hour in thirty minutes before we could jinn up the courage to go under was replaced by going under right away and doing the Dummers Beach crawl in reverse. All morning the view across the lake was stunning. At one point a float plane circled overhead, landed about a mile to the north then took off again soaring up towards Tumbledown mountain. The dude was clearly showing off and I was insanely jealous. Pam suggested that the four of us head to the canteen for a snack. All the very best candy was available, cow tails, Snickers, and the most delicious Nutty Buddy ever! Upon returning to our favorite spot on the beach and after an hour or so of reading, Pam and Kaitlin decided that it was time for lunch. Flashing their best 19th century feminine wiles they offered to serve us on the beach! There would be fluffer-nutter sandwiches, finely sliced chunks of watermelon, our choice of chips, and cold iced tea. Clearly, this place has magical powers.
The rest of the day was spent swimming, floating on rafts, and engaging each other in relaxed conversation. Surprisingly, no tears were shed. Because this would be the last day, Pam was determined to stay in the moment and enjoy every second. After a delicious dinner of Italian grilled chicken, we all loaded up in two cars and made the pilgrimage all the way to Farmington for Gifford’s Ice Cream. The night was perfect with not a trace of humidity, a fine breeze blowing. Heading back to camp we could see the fiery western sky in the distance. The sunset at camp would be incredible if only we could make it there in time. Although we missed the best of it, we all gathered in chairs by the lake to watch the dying embers of this perfect day in Maine. The camp fire later was quiet and soothing, but the smoke kept drifting to where Russ sat. He pointed out that this simply proved the old adage that smoke follows the “most beautiful” person!
We awoke to dark skies and a light mournful rain. It seems that every year we pack up in the rain. Sharon thought that the Lake was crying with us. It was a very sad morning. After saying our good-byes we began the 14 hour trip home. For Pam the tears didn’t slow until we made it to the Maine Turnpike. We arrived home at 11:15 last night to a rapturous welcome from Molly. Now I face the tyrannies that await me at the office, the demands that the real world makes upon me. Today I will rest, prepare for the hectic week ahead, and do my chores. But in a quiet corner of my mind I will linger on that beach and listen for the Loons.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Dummers Beach Journal...Part Four
Of all of the most dreaded contingencies of life, being ill while on vacation isn’t the worse thing that can happen to someone, I suppose. I mean, it’s certainly not as bad as being told by a doctor that you have a rare disease that will prohibit you from ever eating cheese again. It’s not as bad as being forced to watch reality TV all day, or even worse...C-SPAN. But as someone who has been sick almost from the day that I arrived on the sun-splashed shores of Webb Lake, I am here to tell you that it IS worse than most things.
Yesterday it got so bad I had to drive myself to the Farmington Medical Center. I was prepared to write a snarky piece about my experiences in what I was sure would be some rundown backwoods hospital. I had even come up with a name for the place…the Farmington Medical Center/ Book-Emporium/ Late-Night Car Wash, etc.. But I was pleasantly surprised to find the place to be a first-class facility with courteous, competent employees who all seemed devastated that I was here on vacation and had gotten sick. They were even more devastated to tell me that I had the mother of all colds, a venomous brew of bronchitis and sinusitis that would require high powered antibiotics and strong cough medicines. Today I sleep-walked through the day. But tonight I’m screwing on a happy face and taking the family to the Kawanhee Inn for a lovely dinner which for me will be tasteless. Afterwards, as is our tradition, we will pose for a photograph on the beautiful deck that overlooks this great lake. When you see it, you will not be able to tell that I am sick. But every time I look at it for the rest of my life, I will remember the endless coughing, no appetite, sleep-deprived, getting up to pee 5 times a night because of the stupid medicine I was taking ordeal that this week has been.
Today at lunch Vi walked up to the table all excited to tell us that they had in fact sold the camper for full price to a couple of real nice Christian ladies who were just thrilled to have it. Pam instantaneously burst into tears. Even though she understands what good news this was for them, my wife is a person of huge heart and immense loyalties. When the finality of the transaction was announced, she just was overwhelmed with loss. I feel for her and admire the intensity of her emotion. The next few days will be tough last days, as all “last days” are but we will get through it as a family. It’s what families do. It will be my job for the rest of my life to find a place that will, over time, take up residence in her heart. Nothing will ever replace Dummers for Pam, but a new place that we can call home in July will help us build new memories. Family is all about place, and for Pam this was that place for over 45 years. A new place is waiting for all of us out there somewhere. It’s my job to find it.
Yesterday it got so bad I had to drive myself to the Farmington Medical Center. I was prepared to write a snarky piece about my experiences in what I was sure would be some rundown backwoods hospital. I had even come up with a name for the place…the Farmington Medical Center/ Book-Emporium/ Late-Night Car Wash, etc.. But I was pleasantly surprised to find the place to be a first-class facility with courteous, competent employees who all seemed devastated that I was here on vacation and had gotten sick. They were even more devastated to tell me that I had the mother of all colds, a venomous brew of bronchitis and sinusitis that would require high powered antibiotics and strong cough medicines. Today I sleep-walked through the day. But tonight I’m screwing on a happy face and taking the family to the Kawanhee Inn for a lovely dinner which for me will be tasteless. Afterwards, as is our tradition, we will pose for a photograph on the beautiful deck that overlooks this great lake. When you see it, you will not be able to tell that I am sick. But every time I look at it for the rest of my life, I will remember the endless coughing, no appetite, sleep-deprived, getting up to pee 5 times a night because of the stupid medicine I was taking ordeal that this week has been.
Today at lunch Vi walked up to the table all excited to tell us that they had in fact sold the camper for full price to a couple of real nice Christian ladies who were just thrilled to have it. Pam instantaneously burst into tears. Even though she understands what good news this was for them, my wife is a person of huge heart and immense loyalties. When the finality of the transaction was announced, she just was overwhelmed with loss. I feel for her and admire the intensity of her emotion. The next few days will be tough last days, as all “last days” are but we will get through it as a family. It’s what families do. It will be my job for the rest of my life to find a place that will, over time, take up residence in her heart. Nothing will ever replace Dummers for Pam, but a new place that we can call home in July will help us build new memories. Family is all about place, and for Pam this was that place for over 45 years. A new place is waiting for all of us out there somewhere. It’s my job to find it.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Dummers Beach Journal....Part Three
A couple of nights ago we had our first fun weather event. After a gorgeous sunny day of 86 and a nice night around the campfire we got all snuggled in our amazing RV for the night. Earlier, on a whim, Pam had decided to put the 4 inflatable rafts we had been using in the huge storage bay under the RV instead of leaving them on the ground as we had done all week. In literary circles this plot device is called foreshadowing!!
Around 1:45 in the wee hours Pam and I became vaguely aware of a whistling noise from out side. Since we run the overhead fan all night and it makes such a horrendous racket we weren’t entirely certain what it was until we felt the RV start to rock gently from side to side. We quickly opened the shades to our bedroom window that faces the lake. Everything was awash in moonlight with only a few dark clouds off in the distance obscuring the view of Tumbledown. But the boats on the lake were all bobbing up and down wildly. The trees were bent over and small pieces of camp debris was flying through the air. We looked out the back window just about the time that our neighbors were evacuating their daughters from their freestanding tent in favor of the pop up camper. If Pam had left the rafts out in this mess we would have had to drive to Weld to find them! Pam walked down the hallway (yes..we have a HALLWAY in this beast!!) to check on the kids and to reassure them that ,in fact, this was NOT the end of the world. Kaitlin was enjoying the righteous sleep of the just, totally oblivious to the gale-force madness outside. Patrick was newly awake, not quite alert enough to understand what was happening but aware that his bed was rocking a pretty cool rhyme. Who knows, maybe it will inspire a composition that wins him some fabulous scholarship to graduate school.
Actually this is the sort of thing that I enjoy about camp in Maine. There’s a certain amount of fiction at play in Maine, an element of danger, a sense that all is not quite safe here. Anything might happen. Nothing is guaranteed. The uncertainty is visceral. It’s the thing that makes camp unique, the possibility of nature blowing a gasket. When I’m here, no matter how beautiful the weather is I always have one eye on the horizon with a mixture of dread and excitement.
Today I play golf. Then the afternoon on the beach. Then a lobster-roll dinner celebrating Pam’s 4-?? Birthday. I still feel awful, but its vacation so you have to plow through. I read my e-mails last night and discovered that there is a world of grief awaiting my return to Richmond. I will try to cast that depressing thought out of my mind for the next 5 days. In literary circles, that’s called denial.
Around 1:45 in the wee hours Pam and I became vaguely aware of a whistling noise from out side. Since we run the overhead fan all night and it makes such a horrendous racket we weren’t entirely certain what it was until we felt the RV start to rock gently from side to side. We quickly opened the shades to our bedroom window that faces the lake. Everything was awash in moonlight with only a few dark clouds off in the distance obscuring the view of Tumbledown. But the boats on the lake were all bobbing up and down wildly. The trees were bent over and small pieces of camp debris was flying through the air. We looked out the back window just about the time that our neighbors were evacuating their daughters from their freestanding tent in favor of the pop up camper. If Pam had left the rafts out in this mess we would have had to drive to Weld to find them! Pam walked down the hallway (yes..we have a HALLWAY in this beast!!) to check on the kids and to reassure them that ,in fact, this was NOT the end of the world. Kaitlin was enjoying the righteous sleep of the just, totally oblivious to the gale-force madness outside. Patrick was newly awake, not quite alert enough to understand what was happening but aware that his bed was rocking a pretty cool rhyme. Who knows, maybe it will inspire a composition that wins him some fabulous scholarship to graduate school.
Actually this is the sort of thing that I enjoy about camp in Maine. There’s a certain amount of fiction at play in Maine, an element of danger, a sense that all is not quite safe here. Anything might happen. Nothing is guaranteed. The uncertainty is visceral. It’s the thing that makes camp unique, the possibility of nature blowing a gasket. When I’m here, no matter how beautiful the weather is I always have one eye on the horizon with a mixture of dread and excitement.
Today I play golf. Then the afternoon on the beach. Then a lobster-roll dinner celebrating Pam’s 4-?? Birthday. I still feel awful, but its vacation so you have to plow through. I read my e-mails last night and discovered that there is a world of grief awaiting my return to Richmond. I will try to cast that depressing thought out of my mind for the next 5 days. In literary circles, that’s called denial.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Dummers Beach Journal....Part Two
The trip up was uneventful with no rain and very little traffic except for the brief period when I let Pam take the wheel. As soon as she made her way back unto 495 in Eastern Mass. The interstate ground to a halt as if the Gods of transportation knew that something was just not right. An hour and a half and 45 miles later I had had enough. We pulled into a rest area in New Hampshire and I once again seized the wheel. When I merged back onto 95 the mysterious traffic jam had disappeared and it was smooth sailing. The thirteen and a half hour trip ended at 4:45 pm Saturday afternoon. The lake was beautiful, the mountain views stunning and clear, and my throat was on fire and my chest felt like there was an anvil sitting on it. Other than that all is well.
So far Pam has cried/ gotten choked up/ abruptly ended sentences about some Dummers memory only three times. I suspect that there will be many more. She actually had convinced herself that she was prepared to say good-bye to this place. I knew better. Just before I left Richmond I bought 100 shares of Kleenex.
Today it was 86 and sunny with a wonderful breeze. The rest of the week looks even more delightful with even lower temperatures. Our fancy new Rent-A-RV diggs are amazing. Air-conditioning, working fridge and freezer, queen size mattress actually thicker than the hard backed edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This place is sweet. But just so we don’t start feeling cocky we have discovered that the AC leaks causing a small puddle to form right in front of the kitchen sink. And apparently this place does NOT come with a cleaning service as I was lead to believe. My father-in-law….such a cheap-skate!
Ordinarily I would head out to Wilson Lake to play golf in the morning. But I feel pretty lousy and am short of breath so I think I’ll give it another day.
So far Pam has cried/ gotten choked up/ abruptly ended sentences about some Dummers memory only three times. I suspect that there will be many more. She actually had convinced herself that she was prepared to say good-bye to this place. I knew better. Just before I left Richmond I bought 100 shares of Kleenex.
Today it was 86 and sunny with a wonderful breeze. The rest of the week looks even more delightful with even lower temperatures. Our fancy new Rent-A-RV diggs are amazing. Air-conditioning, working fridge and freezer, queen size mattress actually thicker than the hard backed edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This place is sweet. But just so we don’t start feeling cocky we have discovered that the AC leaks causing a small puddle to form right in front of the kitchen sink. And apparently this place does NOT come with a cleaning service as I was lead to believe. My father-in-law….such a cheap-skate!
Ordinarily I would head out to Wilson Lake to play golf in the morning. But I feel pretty lousy and am short of breath so I think I’ll give it another day.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Dummers Beach Journal....Part One
Tomorrow morning at 3 am I will leave Richmond in the wee hours heading to the great state of Maine and a little corner of paradise called Dummers Beach. I was introduced to this obscure dot on the map 29 years ago when I was dating Pam. Her family had always vacationed here since the dawn of time and I just HAD to go. I had heard them all celebrating its many virtues, its beautiful mountain views, its clean and perfect lake, the lobster rolls, a mysteriously named “canteen”, holder of all manner of delectable treasure. So, against my better judgment and drunk on love I climbed into their giant station wagon for the 13 hour trip. Upon arrival I was treated to the pure delight of setting up a pop-up camper in the dark, in a thunderstorm. Afterwords, soaked to the bone, I settled around the camper table for a pizza dinner featuring the much bragged upon and famed “Maddies” Pizza. It was cold and the entire bottom was black. But after the previous 14 hours of my life anything would have tasted good. At that point I figured nothing else could ever be as bad as the trip, the camper assembly and burnt pizza. I was wrong. Once we all got in our bunks for the night, that would be me and all 5 of the Whites in a camper which could comfortably sleep zero people, I discovered the terrifying echo effect that campers have with snoring. Because I refuse to publicly identify the culprit, I will just say that this particular chainsaw-Harley-Davidson-turbine engine-like sound came from my future in-laws’ wing. I may have dozed off once for 10 minutes or so but my night was spent wondering why on earth I had let my love for Pam allow me to make such an epically awful decision.
Then, the sun came up. I rolled out of the rack-o-pain torture chamber that was my “bed”, opened the door and stepped out into perhaps the biggest single surprise of my life. First of all, it was July and it was FREEZING! I quickly rummaged through my suitcase in the car to find a bath robe. Unfortunately I hadn’t packed my winter coat. I cursed softly under my breath for being such an idiot to agree to this God-forsaken vacation where I was going to freeze to death eating molded pizza for the next week. Then I glanced through the trees and saw the sun reflecting off the lake. I saw the path leading down to the water. I found myself walking slowly, mouth open in wonder. I’m from Virginia. It happens to be the best state in the union without question, but the thing is, we don’t have lakes. At least we don’t have lakes like this. I made it to the beach and saw the most beautiful combination of water and mountains I had ever seen. Little did I know then that I would be coming back to this spot 20 more times in my life and that I would fall in love not only with Pam but with her lake as well.
This week will be our last Dummers Beach trip. Russ and Vi have decided that its too much for them at this point in their lives and that’s ok. I am in the process of finding a lake house near Camden because after 29 years I’m hooked on this State. But this will be our last time here. I will be updating this blog with the hilarity that will surely ensue in the week to come. If my tech-savvy children can show me how, pictures will be forthcoming as well. Hope you enjoy.
Then, the sun came up. I rolled out of the rack-o-pain torture chamber that was my “bed”, opened the door and stepped out into perhaps the biggest single surprise of my life. First of all, it was July and it was FREEZING! I quickly rummaged through my suitcase in the car to find a bath robe. Unfortunately I hadn’t packed my winter coat. I cursed softly under my breath for being such an idiot to agree to this God-forsaken vacation where I was going to freeze to death eating molded pizza for the next week. Then I glanced through the trees and saw the sun reflecting off the lake. I saw the path leading down to the water. I found myself walking slowly, mouth open in wonder. I’m from Virginia. It happens to be the best state in the union without question, but the thing is, we don’t have lakes. At least we don’t have lakes like this. I made it to the beach and saw the most beautiful combination of water and mountains I had ever seen. Little did I know then that I would be coming back to this spot 20 more times in my life and that I would fall in love not only with Pam but with her lake as well.
This week will be our last Dummers Beach trip. Russ and Vi have decided that its too much for them at this point in their lives and that’s ok. I am in the process of finding a lake house near Camden because after 29 years I’m hooked on this State. But this will be our last time here. I will be updating this blog with the hilarity that will surely ensue in the week to come. If my tech-savvy children can show me how, pictures will be forthcoming as well. Hope you enjoy.
Monday, July 11, 2011
The Greatest Pitcher of All Time
This being the All-Star break for baseball, sports pages all over the nation are running retrospectives of the 2011 season and highlighting the best performers. So it was in yesterday’s USA Today. There in bold print with a color picture covering half the page was a story about the year’s best pitcher, Justin Verlander. In the article mention was made that he is having a “ Sandy Koufax type year” and that comparisons were being made throughout baseball between Verlander and Koufax, to which I must humbly respond…what a steaming pile of barnyard manure!!
I love Justin Verlander. He is the best picture in baseball at the moment with amazing stuff , not to mention the fact that he grew up right down the road in Manakin-Sabot. But Justin has done nothing this year or ever to warrant comparison with Sandy Koufax except that they both are pitchers. A cursory examination of the numbers would have saved the USA Today writer a world of embarrassment. First, Verlander.
So far this year Justin is 12-4 with a 2.15 era, terrific numbers for this or any season. He has made 20 starts and has 4 complete games and 2 shutouts. In 151 innings he has stuck out 147 batters, all great numbers. In addition , his career numbers through 6 seasons are impressive. He has a 95-56 career record with a 3.6 era, 14 complete games, 5 shutouts and over a thousand strikeouts. Nice work. But to compare him to the most dominant pitcher in history is laughable.
Sandy Koufax was an blazing comet that lit up baseball for 10 short years until an arthritic arm forced him to retire at the age of 31. In the last four years of his career from 1963 through 1966, Sandy Koufax was as close to un-hittable as any pitcher( since the end of the dead-ball era) has ever been. In those 4 years he had a record of 97-27 with a surreal era of 1.84. He was given the ball 150 times and threw 89 complete games and 31 shutouts. In those 1192 innings he struck out 1228 batters while managing 4 no-hitters, one of which being a perfect game. Oh, and his team made it to the World Series twice in those years with Sandy going 4-2 with an era of 0.95, winning MVP both years as he led his team to victory. During that 4 sesaon domination he won 3 Cy Young awards back when only one was given for all of baseball, not one for each league. All three awards votes were unanimous. No other pitcher in baseball history ever compiled such a four year record, not Gipson, Ryan, Seaver, Carlton, Feller, Clemens..nobody. There was nothing like Koufax then and there has been nothing like him since. The only reason he is not universally listed as the most dominant pitcher in the history of the game is because his career was cut short by arthritis. But for those four glorious years the baseball world agreed with the great Mickey Mantle who famously and profanely muttered after being blown away in the 1963 world series by Koufax…” how in the hell am I supposed to hit that sh**??” The great Willie Stargell described trying to hit Koufax this way…” its like trying to drink coffee with a fork”
I am a big Verlander fan and will continue to be. But until he becomes twice the pitcher he is today I will studiously avoid using his name in the same sentence with the great Sanford "Sandy" Koufax.
I love Justin Verlander. He is the best picture in baseball at the moment with amazing stuff , not to mention the fact that he grew up right down the road in Manakin-Sabot. But Justin has done nothing this year or ever to warrant comparison with Sandy Koufax except that they both are pitchers. A cursory examination of the numbers would have saved the USA Today writer a world of embarrassment. First, Verlander.
So far this year Justin is 12-4 with a 2.15 era, terrific numbers for this or any season. He has made 20 starts and has 4 complete games and 2 shutouts. In 151 innings he has stuck out 147 batters, all great numbers. In addition , his career numbers through 6 seasons are impressive. He has a 95-56 career record with a 3.6 era, 14 complete games, 5 shutouts and over a thousand strikeouts. Nice work. But to compare him to the most dominant pitcher in history is laughable.
Sandy Koufax was an blazing comet that lit up baseball for 10 short years until an arthritic arm forced him to retire at the age of 31. In the last four years of his career from 1963 through 1966, Sandy Koufax was as close to un-hittable as any pitcher( since the end of the dead-ball era) has ever been. In those 4 years he had a record of 97-27 with a surreal era of 1.84. He was given the ball 150 times and threw 89 complete games and 31 shutouts. In those 1192 innings he struck out 1228 batters while managing 4 no-hitters, one of which being a perfect game. Oh, and his team made it to the World Series twice in those years with Sandy going 4-2 with an era of 0.95, winning MVP both years as he led his team to victory. During that 4 sesaon domination he won 3 Cy Young awards back when only one was given for all of baseball, not one for each league. All three awards votes were unanimous. No other pitcher in baseball history ever compiled such a four year record, not Gipson, Ryan, Seaver, Carlton, Feller, Clemens..nobody. There was nothing like Koufax then and there has been nothing like him since. The only reason he is not universally listed as the most dominant pitcher in the history of the game is because his career was cut short by arthritis. But for those four glorious years the baseball world agreed with the great Mickey Mantle who famously and profanely muttered after being blown away in the 1963 world series by Koufax…” how in the hell am I supposed to hit that sh**??” The great Willie Stargell described trying to hit Koufax this way…” its like trying to drink coffee with a fork”
I am a big Verlander fan and will continue to be. But until he becomes twice the pitcher he is today I will studiously avoid using his name in the same sentence with the great Sanford "Sandy" Koufax.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
A Crisis of Faith
This week I had a crisis of faith. It came not from any theological epiphany or some obscene example of man’s inhumanity towards man. It didn’t come from a killer tsunami or avenging tornado or some nightly news account of starving children in the Sudan. Rather, my crisis was the result of the simple cruelty of gravity.
The Texas Rangers were playing a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics and there in the front row in the left field bleachers was a 39 year old firefighter and his 6 year old son. The two of them were a fixture at the ball park and everywhere else it was learned later, inseparable father and son taking in a game in the bright sunshine of Texas summer. His fellow firefighters would later say that Shannon Stone would often bring his son to the firehouse on his day off where they would just hang out. “They did everything together”, they would all say. On this particular day he had called his wife to tell her where they were seated so she could look for them on TV. She had stepped out of the room when left fielder Josh Hamilton caught a lazy foul ball down the left field line for the third out of the inning and nonchalantly turned towards the stands, spotted the father and son team and flipped the ball to them graciously. Only the toss was a little bit short. Stone instinctively lunged for it at the rail, lost his balance and in the blink of an eye plunged headlong over the rail and out of sight behind the wall, hitting the concrete floor 20 feet below. Josh Hamilton froze in his tracks, 25000 fans let out a gasp, and Shannon Stone’s 6 year old best buddy stood helplessly screaming at the rail. On the way to the hospital he died in the back of the ambulance with his son riding in the front seat.
It is this sort of thing that has always paralyzed my faith. I can deal with the existence of evil in the world. I can grapple with the challenges that science makes to the nature of faith and its dependence on the supernatural. But when a father trying to catch a baseball for his boy freakishly falls to his death on live television, leaving behind a forever scarred and tortured 6 year old, there is a sound something like rushing wind of the breath leaving my soul. Then something rises up to fill the void, something like fury and anger. After that passes, emptiness and sadness come. I want to pound on the gates of heaven and demand an explanation. To those who chime in piously with the always reliable, “ God works in mysterious ways” I want to scream, “ Tell that to the kid!!” There’s nothing mysterious about the law of gravity. It is inexorable, relentless, and it works every time. Is this the way God intended for Shannon Stone’s life to end? Is this the way God drew it up when he was knit together in his mother’s womb? Or is it all a huge crap shoot where one false move and all of our plans for a long and fruitful life vanish into thin air?
This being America, I know how this story will play out in the weeks and months ahead. The Ranger organization will set up a scholarship fund for the boy. Major League baseball will order a game-wide safety review that will end up erecting giant nets in ballparks all across the country. Some lowlife bottom-feeding lawyer will exploit the family’s grief and bring a 20 million dollar wrongful death suit against the Rangers. Ballplayers will never again flip balls into the stands, another time honored tradition of the game gone. And at some point one of my more grounded, clearer thinking Christian brothers will explain it all to me and I will move on. In the meantime I will try to get the image of 6 year old Cooper Stone crying at the rail out of my head. Josh Hamilton was Cooper’s favorite player. He even had his jersey. I guess I’ll say a prayer for Josh Hamilton while I’m at it.
The Texas Rangers were playing a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics and there in the front row in the left field bleachers was a 39 year old firefighter and his 6 year old son. The two of them were a fixture at the ball park and everywhere else it was learned later, inseparable father and son taking in a game in the bright sunshine of Texas summer. His fellow firefighters would later say that Shannon Stone would often bring his son to the firehouse on his day off where they would just hang out. “They did everything together”, they would all say. On this particular day he had called his wife to tell her where they were seated so she could look for them on TV. She had stepped out of the room when left fielder Josh Hamilton caught a lazy foul ball down the left field line for the third out of the inning and nonchalantly turned towards the stands, spotted the father and son team and flipped the ball to them graciously. Only the toss was a little bit short. Stone instinctively lunged for it at the rail, lost his balance and in the blink of an eye plunged headlong over the rail and out of sight behind the wall, hitting the concrete floor 20 feet below. Josh Hamilton froze in his tracks, 25000 fans let out a gasp, and Shannon Stone’s 6 year old best buddy stood helplessly screaming at the rail. On the way to the hospital he died in the back of the ambulance with his son riding in the front seat.
It is this sort of thing that has always paralyzed my faith. I can deal with the existence of evil in the world. I can grapple with the challenges that science makes to the nature of faith and its dependence on the supernatural. But when a father trying to catch a baseball for his boy freakishly falls to his death on live television, leaving behind a forever scarred and tortured 6 year old, there is a sound something like rushing wind of the breath leaving my soul. Then something rises up to fill the void, something like fury and anger. After that passes, emptiness and sadness come. I want to pound on the gates of heaven and demand an explanation. To those who chime in piously with the always reliable, “ God works in mysterious ways” I want to scream, “ Tell that to the kid!!” There’s nothing mysterious about the law of gravity. It is inexorable, relentless, and it works every time. Is this the way God intended for Shannon Stone’s life to end? Is this the way God drew it up when he was knit together in his mother’s womb? Or is it all a huge crap shoot where one false move and all of our plans for a long and fruitful life vanish into thin air?
This being America, I know how this story will play out in the weeks and months ahead. The Ranger organization will set up a scholarship fund for the boy. Major League baseball will order a game-wide safety review that will end up erecting giant nets in ballparks all across the country. Some lowlife bottom-feeding lawyer will exploit the family’s grief and bring a 20 million dollar wrongful death suit against the Rangers. Ballplayers will never again flip balls into the stands, another time honored tradition of the game gone. And at some point one of my more grounded, clearer thinking Christian brothers will explain it all to me and I will move on. In the meantime I will try to get the image of 6 year old Cooper Stone crying at the rail out of my head. Josh Hamilton was Cooper’s favorite player. He even had his jersey. I guess I’ll say a prayer for Josh Hamilton while I’m at it.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
The Casey Anthony Trial...My take
When it comes to big pop culture events like the Casey Anthony trial, I always come to the party late and over-dressed. I only really became aware of the thing and how huge it was while listening to the verdict being read on my car radio coming back from the beach. Basically I knew the outline of the story but none of the details. I never watched one minute of the trial on television. What I knew was that this batty party girl single Mom was accused of killing her adorably doe-eyed daughter. I also knew that pictures of Ms. Anthony had surfaced showing her partying like it was 1999 at the same time that her child was listed as missing. Although these facts prove conclusively that Casey Anthony is a loathsome human being, they do not necessarily add up to a murder conviction.
The reaction to the innocent verdict in this case has been reminiscent of the anger that poured forth out of the nation after the O.J. Simpson trial. It is seemingly unanimously believed that a gross injustice has been done here. The jurors in this case have been subjected to bitter condemnations from all quarters. The talking heads of the media have been apoplectic in their outrage. Cable news legal analysts who were all so outrageously and spectacularly wrong were reduced to sputtering incoherent gibberish and ass-covering. Nobody enjoys watching the media being made fools of more than me, but I did sense that justice had been denied. The overwhelming and sometimes ridiculous reaction of so many to the verdict did spark curiosity on my part to at least investigate the story and see what all the fuss was about. After doing so I have come to the conclusion that A. Casey Anthony was guilty of murder and therefore got away with it, and B. the jury made the right decision to acquit her of the charge. Let me explain.
In our system of justice the scales are and should be tilted towards the accused. We have a presumption of innocence. The state has a harder job than the defense. A defense attorney only has to convince one juror that there is reasonable doubt to free his client. The prosecutor has to convince all 12 jurors. In this case in particular where the case against Anthony was circumstantial the job is even harder. As I researched this case I learned that there was no murder weapon, no forensic evidence, not even an agreed upon cause of death or even time of death. What there was , was a despicable woman and a dysfunctional family and an adorable innocent child. But the jurors were not charged with making moral judgments about the defendants’ character, they were charged with coming to a unanimous conclusion concerning the facts and evidence of the case and they did so. The prosecution could not argue the facts of the case so they portrayed Anthony as a slut and unfit mother. The defense did its job of proving reasonable doubt by pointing out the lack of actual evidence. This case had bushel baskets of reasonable doubt! When the state places the fate of a human being in the hands of a jury of her peers one hopes that that jury listens carefully to the facts, follows the charge given to it by the presiding judge, and makes their decision accordingly.
Did Casey Anthony kill that little girl? I’m 99% sure. But in our system it has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In such a system, sometimes guilty people are set free. When that happens it isn’t pretty. However, I prefer to live under a system of justice that occasionally sets guilty people free than one that routinely convicts the innocent. God bless America.
The reaction to the innocent verdict in this case has been reminiscent of the anger that poured forth out of the nation after the O.J. Simpson trial. It is seemingly unanimously believed that a gross injustice has been done here. The jurors in this case have been subjected to bitter condemnations from all quarters. The talking heads of the media have been apoplectic in their outrage. Cable news legal analysts who were all so outrageously and spectacularly wrong were reduced to sputtering incoherent gibberish and ass-covering. Nobody enjoys watching the media being made fools of more than me, but I did sense that justice had been denied. The overwhelming and sometimes ridiculous reaction of so many to the verdict did spark curiosity on my part to at least investigate the story and see what all the fuss was about. After doing so I have come to the conclusion that A. Casey Anthony was guilty of murder and therefore got away with it, and B. the jury made the right decision to acquit her of the charge. Let me explain.
In our system of justice the scales are and should be tilted towards the accused. We have a presumption of innocence. The state has a harder job than the defense. A defense attorney only has to convince one juror that there is reasonable doubt to free his client. The prosecutor has to convince all 12 jurors. In this case in particular where the case against Anthony was circumstantial the job is even harder. As I researched this case I learned that there was no murder weapon, no forensic evidence, not even an agreed upon cause of death or even time of death. What there was , was a despicable woman and a dysfunctional family and an adorable innocent child. But the jurors were not charged with making moral judgments about the defendants’ character, they were charged with coming to a unanimous conclusion concerning the facts and evidence of the case and they did so. The prosecution could not argue the facts of the case so they portrayed Anthony as a slut and unfit mother. The defense did its job of proving reasonable doubt by pointing out the lack of actual evidence. This case had bushel baskets of reasonable doubt! When the state places the fate of a human being in the hands of a jury of her peers one hopes that that jury listens carefully to the facts, follows the charge given to it by the presiding judge, and makes their decision accordingly.
Did Casey Anthony kill that little girl? I’m 99% sure. But in our system it has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In such a system, sometimes guilty people are set free. When that happens it isn’t pretty. However, I prefer to live under a system of justice that occasionally sets guilty people free than one that routinely convicts the innocent. God bless America.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
My 4th of July
Just got back from 4 days in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where I celebrated the 4th with my wife, my sister and her husband, and the 50,000 others who decided to do the same thing. Heretofore I have always spent the 4th either in the back yard of my parents’ house or at Nags Head. So nothing I have ever experienced in the past prepared me for the throngs of people as far as the eye could see on the wide beaches of the Grand Strand. Each day we would drive from our palatial condo on the hill 4 blocks away down to the public access parking lot where we would battle for a space, deposit the money into the collection station,( $1.50 per hour ), and then grab our considerable gear and trudge through the hot sand to do battle for a spit of land to call our own. Once our beachhead had been established we would sit in our rickety chairs with one eye on the books we had brought to read and one wary eye on the very large reptilian woman in the chair 18 inches to our right who smelled oddly of Old Spice. Then there were the several women and men who served as excellent examples for any teenagers who cared to look, of the consequences of poor decision making and youthful indiscretion in the area of body art. Yes, that super cool starburst fruit chew design that seemed so right that Saturday night years ago after that Grateful Dead concert in Hoboken doesn’t hold up to the ravages of time and the inexorable pull of gravity.
As I took a walk down to the Apache pier zigzagging through the teeming masses I was treated to the Super Bowl of people watching. It was a moving feast for the eye. Every kind of body type of our species was on display in every possible stage of development. There were the skinny, the fat, the tiny daintily featured , the big-boned. There were the fair skinned wearing large floppy hats hiding under canopies, then there were the grotesquely seared ones whose skin looked as if it had been prepared for use in the manufacture of leather wing-back chairs, the kind you see in the lobbies of law firms who specialize in personal injury cases. Then there were the ladies who had managed to pour themselves and their ample bosoms into bikinis designed for 14 year old girls. Oddly these particular ladies seemed fond of beach games that required rapid movement and quite a lot of lunging, like beach volleyball and corn hole. More often than not their bodies were also adorned with ill-conceived tattoos whose futures were not good. One in particular sported a brightly colored butterfly right across her belly...which if she ever gives birth will soon resemble an axe-murderer with a handlebar mustache.
As I walked and watched this slice of Americana it seemed that most of the people my age were fabulously unhappy. We looked hot and annoyed at the presence of so many other Americans. But there was one group that seemed totally unfazed by the universal hassle of human beings too close to other human beings. The toddlers. Those adorable kids experiencing the beach for the first time. The bright eyes, the look of wonder when they see their toes disappear in the sand after a receding wave washes over them on its way back out to sea. The fearlessness of the two year old who sees his Grandpa out in the water and runs headlong into a crashing wave with his little arms out and face turned up in joy. It’s the sort of thing that you can’t help but watch with a certain lump in your throat. That kid was you 50 years ago, and that kid was your own kid just last week, it seems.
All was not lost because of the overcrowding. I read two books, took some killer naps, shot 81 at Pine Lakes. And ate some truly wonderful food. I missed my kids though. Hope they missed me.
As I took a walk down to the Apache pier zigzagging through the teeming masses I was treated to the Super Bowl of people watching. It was a moving feast for the eye. Every kind of body type of our species was on display in every possible stage of development. There were the skinny, the fat, the tiny daintily featured , the big-boned. There were the fair skinned wearing large floppy hats hiding under canopies, then there were the grotesquely seared ones whose skin looked as if it had been prepared for use in the manufacture of leather wing-back chairs, the kind you see in the lobbies of law firms who specialize in personal injury cases. Then there were the ladies who had managed to pour themselves and their ample bosoms into bikinis designed for 14 year old girls. Oddly these particular ladies seemed fond of beach games that required rapid movement and quite a lot of lunging, like beach volleyball and corn hole. More often than not their bodies were also adorned with ill-conceived tattoos whose futures were not good. One in particular sported a brightly colored butterfly right across her belly...which if she ever gives birth will soon resemble an axe-murderer with a handlebar mustache.
As I walked and watched this slice of Americana it seemed that most of the people my age were fabulously unhappy. We looked hot and annoyed at the presence of so many other Americans. But there was one group that seemed totally unfazed by the universal hassle of human beings too close to other human beings. The toddlers. Those adorable kids experiencing the beach for the first time. The bright eyes, the look of wonder when they see their toes disappear in the sand after a receding wave washes over them on its way back out to sea. The fearlessness of the two year old who sees his Grandpa out in the water and runs headlong into a crashing wave with his little arms out and face turned up in joy. It’s the sort of thing that you can’t help but watch with a certain lump in your throat. That kid was you 50 years ago, and that kid was your own kid just last week, it seems.
All was not lost because of the overcrowding. I read two books, took some killer naps, shot 81 at Pine Lakes. And ate some truly wonderful food. I missed my kids though. Hope they missed me.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Our Not So Brave New World
I was a history major in college. I changed my major 4 times at the University of Richmond, so totally aimless and irresolute was I during those 5 years. I settled on history for two reasons. One was that I truly loved it. The other was that I was a gifted enough writer and consequently could bluff my way through essay exams with the barest of actual knowledge in the subject matter. I had not the vaguest clue what one would do with a history degree. I ended up in the investment business, but there on the wall over the leather wingback chair hangs my diploma. What I have learned in the years since is that once a history buff, always a history buff. My knowledge of history informs my thinking about almost everything. Like the author of Ecclesiastes, I know that in fact there is nothing new under the sun. And yet I can’t help wondering if this particular slice of history that we live in is uniquely tenuous and fragile.
We live in an era of unsurpassed technological triumph with the promise of greater advances to come. People are living longer, less stressful lives than at any time in the history of civilization. We talk a lot about stress, I know, but whereas a century ago people stressed about having enough food to eat, today we stress about relationships and where we will go on vacation. Today we communicate instantaneously with anyone, anywhere, at anytime, a feat unimaginable a mere 50 years ago. The gadgets we pay less than a thousand dollars for and hold in the palms of our hands are more powerful and do more things than literally rooms of machines did 50 years ago. But with all of these manifestly beneficial breakthroughs has come no feeling of greater security and no enrichment of the human spirit. With all of our newfound access to knowledge, we seem to have gained no measure of wisdom. With all of our freshly minted communication devices, we seem to say less to each other than ever before. A casual reading of message boards on social websites seems vulgar and vapid laid next to the letters written between John and Abigail Adams 230 years ago, which were teaming with emotion and immediacy even though most were already months old when first read.
Although man has it within his grasp today to protect himself from peril in ways that past generations couldn’t possibly have imagined, I cannot escape the feeling that we are teetering on the edge of something dreadful. The unnatural interconnectedness of world finance and the staggering complexity of its instruments bring with them the nagging suspicion that events in Greece and Ireland ultimately will bring us all down. The masters of the universe who design the systems of this world have no answers except more complexity, in the vain hope that the solutions will be stumbled on by the next generation of geniuses. As a student of history I have concluded that man’s scientific and technological evolution has far outpaced his ability to find joy, to experience beauty, to give and receive grace. In our mad headlong dash to conquer, discover and build, we have ignored our souls and have created civilizations capable of killing each other with blinding efficiency. Even our art isn’t created to inspire but to shock, not to lift the human spirit but to magnify the course and baser regions of our nature.
Perhaps a tragic turn in our destiny will cause us to return to first things. Maybe if the tools of technology bring about our destruction, we will find a way to refashion them into something that serves a higher purpose.
We live in an era of unsurpassed technological triumph with the promise of greater advances to come. People are living longer, less stressful lives than at any time in the history of civilization. We talk a lot about stress, I know, but whereas a century ago people stressed about having enough food to eat, today we stress about relationships and where we will go on vacation. Today we communicate instantaneously with anyone, anywhere, at anytime, a feat unimaginable a mere 50 years ago. The gadgets we pay less than a thousand dollars for and hold in the palms of our hands are more powerful and do more things than literally rooms of machines did 50 years ago. But with all of these manifestly beneficial breakthroughs has come no feeling of greater security and no enrichment of the human spirit. With all of our newfound access to knowledge, we seem to have gained no measure of wisdom. With all of our freshly minted communication devices, we seem to say less to each other than ever before. A casual reading of message boards on social websites seems vulgar and vapid laid next to the letters written between John and Abigail Adams 230 years ago, which were teaming with emotion and immediacy even though most were already months old when first read.
Although man has it within his grasp today to protect himself from peril in ways that past generations couldn’t possibly have imagined, I cannot escape the feeling that we are teetering on the edge of something dreadful. The unnatural interconnectedness of world finance and the staggering complexity of its instruments bring with them the nagging suspicion that events in Greece and Ireland ultimately will bring us all down. The masters of the universe who design the systems of this world have no answers except more complexity, in the vain hope that the solutions will be stumbled on by the next generation of geniuses. As a student of history I have concluded that man’s scientific and technological evolution has far outpaced his ability to find joy, to experience beauty, to give and receive grace. In our mad headlong dash to conquer, discover and build, we have ignored our souls and have created civilizations capable of killing each other with blinding efficiency. Even our art isn’t created to inspire but to shock, not to lift the human spirit but to magnify the course and baser regions of our nature.
Perhaps a tragic turn in our destiny will cause us to return to first things. Maybe if the tools of technology bring about our destruction, we will find a way to refashion them into something that serves a higher purpose.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Whats that smell???
Ok..this falls under the category of…”so weird you have to see it and smell it in person to believe it”. A couple of weeks ago our garbage man..er.. “refuge technician” asked us to stop putting large plastic bags of grass clippings in our big garbage cans because they made the thing too heavy to lift into the truck. This says something profoundly disturbing about where we have evolved as a nation when trash collectors start demanding better working conditions but I will save that thought for another time. So today when I finished cutting the grass I took two large 45 gallon plastic bags of grass clippings and two weeks worth of Molly’s bowel movements down to the curb as instructed. I placed them five feet or so in front of my daughter’s boyfriend's car. After a lovely dinner out on the deck I decided to try out my new battery powered weed eater that I had bought earlier in the day but hadn’t used yet because the battery needed 8 hours to charge. When I made it around the corner of the house to the front yard I was met with a bracing stench that I first thought was from the neighbors newly sealed driveway. I ignored it the best I could and instead concentrated on my very cool new weed eater which was doing an awesome job of giving my lawn that finished look. Eventually I made it around to the front curb where I noticed that Jon’s car was gone but oddly, so where the two bags of clippings. At this point the stench became even more foul and overpowering. Suddenly my neighbor Walt pulled up and leaned out the window with his hand over his mouth and said, “Hey Doug. I think you have two bags of grass and dog crap in the middle of Hazeltree Court.” Time stood still as I simultaneously noticed that there was a 6 inch wide slimy green trail leading from the spot where the bags had been, disappearing up Aprilbud Place and then leading around the corner and out of sight. I looked down at Walt with my mouth open, eyes now burning from the toxic mixture of rotting grass and manure. “Yeah, it looks like somebody dragged them or something and they made it all the way to Hazeltree but then the bag busted open so there’s a big pile of dog turds up there. I just followed the trail to you.” Walt felt it necessary to get me fully up to speed on the malodorous affront I had inflicted on the community on this otherwise fine Saturday evening in suburbia. “ I’m really sorry Walt,” I managed to say. “ I cant imagine what happened but I’ll go up right away and clean it up.”
I quickly jumped into the Pacifica and followed the green trail of tears up the street around the corner to the stop sign. There a few small pieces of canine feces that I recognized pointed the way up the hill of Center Ridge drive. When I got to the sweeping left turn on to Hazeltree there it was…two ripped and soggy black bags of shame lay in the middle of the street with large unruly piles of grass in various stages of decay littered around in all directions with small hills of dog crap floating on top like so many brown lily pads on the surface of a dirty pond. An elderly Asian couple out for their nightly constitutional held frilly handkerchiefs over their mouths as they scurried past me trying not to make eye contact. At this point Jon pulled up in his car, looked out the window and won the world championship of stating the obvious with this gem…” I think I might have done that.”
As we worked to clean up the mess I asked him why he didn’t hear something dragging underneath his car as he was driving out of the neighborhood. “We had the radio on I guess”. But my daughter knew something was amiss when she asked the question..”Jon, how come your car smells like a baby’s diaper?”
My abilities as a writer will be sorely tested as I struggle to describe for you the offending fog that has drifted over all of Wythe Trace.
Even now as I bang these words out I can still catch whiffs of it off of my thrice washed hands. The bags were full of two week old dead grass that had been cut wet and then subsequently rained on several times along with large amounts of dog feces. Think of a skunk with a dirty diaper crawling out of a dead skunks behind. Or maybe the smell of a gigantic belch from a biker who just ate a dozen rotten eggs with a side of expired sardines. Maybe its more like 25 bedpans from the diarrhea ward at the old folks home…anyway, you get the picture.
But the problem is more than just the smell because eventually that will fade away. No, long after the smell is but a nauseating memory, there will still be the damning evidence of the long green arrow on the streets of the neighborhood that will point for all to see to 3308 Aprilbud Place as the source of the offence. Like some 21st century scarlet letter, it will remind everyone who was to blame. I had no choice. I mean I like Jon and all but I have to live here. I feel bad about it, but it had to be done. I tacked a brightly painted sign on my mailbox with 4 simple words….”KAITLIN’S BOYFRIEND DID IT”
I quickly jumped into the Pacifica and followed the green trail of tears up the street around the corner to the stop sign. There a few small pieces of canine feces that I recognized pointed the way up the hill of Center Ridge drive. When I got to the sweeping left turn on to Hazeltree there it was…two ripped and soggy black bags of shame lay in the middle of the street with large unruly piles of grass in various stages of decay littered around in all directions with small hills of dog crap floating on top like so many brown lily pads on the surface of a dirty pond. An elderly Asian couple out for their nightly constitutional held frilly handkerchiefs over their mouths as they scurried past me trying not to make eye contact. At this point Jon pulled up in his car, looked out the window and won the world championship of stating the obvious with this gem…” I think I might have done that.”
As we worked to clean up the mess I asked him why he didn’t hear something dragging underneath his car as he was driving out of the neighborhood. “We had the radio on I guess”. But my daughter knew something was amiss when she asked the question..”Jon, how come your car smells like a baby’s diaper?”
My abilities as a writer will be sorely tested as I struggle to describe for you the offending fog that has drifted over all of Wythe Trace.
Even now as I bang these words out I can still catch whiffs of it off of my thrice washed hands. The bags were full of two week old dead grass that had been cut wet and then subsequently rained on several times along with large amounts of dog feces. Think of a skunk with a dirty diaper crawling out of a dead skunks behind. Or maybe the smell of a gigantic belch from a biker who just ate a dozen rotten eggs with a side of expired sardines. Maybe its more like 25 bedpans from the diarrhea ward at the old folks home…anyway, you get the picture.
But the problem is more than just the smell because eventually that will fade away. No, long after the smell is but a nauseating memory, there will still be the damning evidence of the long green arrow on the streets of the neighborhood that will point for all to see to 3308 Aprilbud Place as the source of the offence. Like some 21st century scarlet letter, it will remind everyone who was to blame. I had no choice. I mean I like Jon and all but I have to live here. I feel bad about it, but it had to be done. I tacked a brightly painted sign on my mailbox with 4 simple words….”KAITLIN’S BOYFRIEND DID IT”
Friday, June 24, 2011
" My Girl"
A couple of days ago my son sent us an email with a recording attached to it. He had written an arrangement of the old classic “My Girl” for a jazz ensemble or something. After he finished with the writing he sat down at his computer and the $300 fancy microphone he had insisted that we get him for Christmas and proceeded to record all 6 parts along with the percussion himself and then somehow mixed everything together. I know virtually nothing about how any of this is actually done but I console myself with the knowledge that all of the technical hardware that it was done with was paid for out of my generosity. When I hit the play button on my computer I was overwhelmed with a torrent of conflicting emotions. I heard my son’s voice doing a spot-on impression of David Ruffin , then his voice filled out all of the crisp harmonies of the other Temptations and all I could do was sit there and smile. The song was a musical feast , so beautiful that if Smokey Robinson heard it he would have picked up the phone to offer his congratulations. When it was over I pressed the play button again and again.
Whenever he sends us some new recording or some new video of a musical creation I am overcome with two competing emotions. On the one hand I am so proud of him and his freakish talent that I instantly want all of my friends to hear it and marvel with me. But then the other emotion rears its ugly head. I think to myself…How is this kid ever going to be happy and fulfilled in this life if he doesn’t end up in the music business? When you’re walking around with this sort of musical creativity bouncing around in your head 24/7, how can you be happy being a high school chorus teacher? Not that there’s anything wrong with that…some of my best friends are high school chorus teachers. But the problem for me as a parent is that I am afraid of the music business. It seems to be a dirty rotten collection of egomaniacs who live a life contrary to what most parents dream of for their children. Unless he is able to find some benign corner of the business unblemished by drug use, broken relationships and rehab, I’ll always be worried about him. But that’s just the way it goes as a parent I suppose.
Whenever he sends us some new recording or some new video of a musical creation I am overcome with two competing emotions. On the one hand I am so proud of him and his freakish talent that I instantly want all of my friends to hear it and marvel with me. But then the other emotion rears its ugly head. I think to myself…How is this kid ever going to be happy and fulfilled in this life if he doesn’t end up in the music business? When you’re walking around with this sort of musical creativity bouncing around in your head 24/7, how can you be happy being a high school chorus teacher? Not that there’s anything wrong with that…some of my best friends are high school chorus teachers. But the problem for me as a parent is that I am afraid of the music business. It seems to be a dirty rotten collection of egomaniacs who live a life contrary to what most parents dream of for their children. Unless he is able to find some benign corner of the business unblemished by drug use, broken relationships and rehab, I’ll always be worried about him. But that’s just the way it goes as a parent I suppose.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
"Let's Make A Deal"...my first Oval Office address
Good evening. This is the first chance I’ve had as your President to address you on live television here from the Oval Office, and I must say, this place is amazing. Much bigger than it looks in the movies. Anyway, back last November when you guys shocked the world by electing me President, I began work on what I was going to call my administration. You know…Teddy Roosevelt had “The Square Deal”, his cousin Franklin Roosevelt had “The New Deal”, and Harry Truman came up with “The Fair Deal”. Well, after weeks of thought I’ve decided to call my Presidency…”Let’s Make A Deal”. And the deal is this…as the representative of the government I promise to get Leviathan off your back and out of your way, balance the books around here, and generally introduce some common sense reforms so that you won’t be embarrassed every time you watch the news. In return, you’ll have to promise to knock it off with all the belly-aching, stop blaming all of your personal failures on somebody else, and get out there and make something of your life. What do ya say?
First, let me explain my end of this bargain. I will not here go into exhaustive detail about every issue facing us as a nation. For one thing, I don’t have all the answers. Heck, half the time I don’t even know the right questions! For example, I know virtually nothing about energy( although I’m pretty sure its none of my business what kind of light bulbs you should be allowed to buy)or housing or agriculture so I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I do. There are some broad themes that I do know a thing or two about and so I will lay out tonight what the goals of my administration will be. Hopefully this won’t take too long because I don’t want you to have to miss the American Idol finale…so here goes.
Foreign policy: effective immediately I am pulling all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Europe, Japan, and South Korea and any other place they may happen to be. The first three countries on this list are just a God-awful mess and combined not worth one drop of American blood. The next three are all pretty wealthy places and I figure that they need to take care of their own defense needs. The party’s over guys since we have no money. Henceforth as long as I am President the military will never be asked to be the world’s policeman and the days of the US marines being turned in to community organizers are over. In addition, to help safeguard against the casual commitment of US forces in some ill-conceived mission in the future, I shall make it mandatory that all children of elected officials be required to serve in frontline units of any and all combat divisions of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Domestic policy: effective immediately I have ordered an across the board 15% spending cut throughout all agencies of government with no exceptions. Now I know that this will punish all agencies equally and some will argue that some departments should be exempted. But the more I think about it the more that I like the across the board idea…so much easier. If we ever balance the budget, then we’ll talk about restoring some of the cuts. But until we get our financial house in order..a little shared sacrifice, OK? I will also propose a complete overhaul of the tax code with all of its Byzantine contradictions and Rube Goldberg logical leaps and replace it with a flat tax of 17% with NO deductions…for anyone. That’s right, you heard me. No charitable deduction ( if the only reason you give is to catch a break on your taxes, shame on you), no home mortgage interest deduction ( why should we make it more desirable to own than rent? Its none of my business where you live.), no deductions period. Also, everyone will be required to pay their taxes themselves either with a check or online, NO WITHOLDING allowed. That way people will understand exactly how much they are having to pay in taxes. This change will eliminate the need for the IRS and place millions of accountants out of work but on the bright side, it will save everyone else a fortune in fees and lost sleep. Now I know some of you are thinking “I’ll have to pay more under this plan”, or “that rich guy over there he might end up paying less”. Well, get over the class envy people. Our current system has produced a nation where 45% of Americans pay no income taxes at all. That can’t be right can it? Besides, if you eliminate all of the complexities of the system, you will effectively take away all power from politicians, and won’t that be worth it?
And oh yeah, by the way…I’ve decided to decriminalize casual drug use. Over the past 50 years there exists no government initiative that has been a bigger failure than the “War on Drugs”, with the possible exception of the “War on Poverty”. But at least with the war of poverty we don’t imprison those who stay poor. Alcohol use in this country destroys millions of lives and consumes millions more in property and yet its legal and the government collects a fortune in tax revenue from its sale. I see no reason why some kid who smokes a joint should be thrown in jail. And since the majority of violent crimes are drug related, maybe a lot of that violence would disappear and the government would raise some much needed cash. Have you noticed how broke we are? Oh, and one more thing. I will introduce legislation next week to make our congressmen and women part time legislators just like they are in most of the states. Along with the part time status will come an elimination of life time congressional pensions and health benefits. The Founding Fathers never imagined full time career politicians. An added benefit of this plan will be that since there is less time devoted to “law-making”, there will be less of it. Plus, during the off season, the capital building will be available for civic groups to rent out and also for birthdays and bar mitzvahs. We need income, people.
In closing let me mention that since I am President, I have taken the liberty to impose a few changes outside of government..just because I can. First off, for the remainder of my term in office the American League is hereby forbidden to use the designated hitter. I also have taken it upon myself to bring back the chain gang work crew concept in all federal prisons since there is so much work out there that Americans just won’t do. And last but not least, I have declared lite beer to be illegal in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Well, its been a pleasure to speak with you tonight and I see from the clock right above the Thomas Jefferson portrait that its 8:50...made it with ten minutes to spare. I hope in the future to always thus exceed your expectations. God Bless you and God Bless America.
First, let me explain my end of this bargain. I will not here go into exhaustive detail about every issue facing us as a nation. For one thing, I don’t have all the answers. Heck, half the time I don’t even know the right questions! For example, I know virtually nothing about energy( although I’m pretty sure its none of my business what kind of light bulbs you should be allowed to buy)or housing or agriculture so I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I do. There are some broad themes that I do know a thing or two about and so I will lay out tonight what the goals of my administration will be. Hopefully this won’t take too long because I don’t want you to have to miss the American Idol finale…so here goes.
Foreign policy: effective immediately I am pulling all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Europe, Japan, and South Korea and any other place they may happen to be. The first three countries on this list are just a God-awful mess and combined not worth one drop of American blood. The next three are all pretty wealthy places and I figure that they need to take care of their own defense needs. The party’s over guys since we have no money. Henceforth as long as I am President the military will never be asked to be the world’s policeman and the days of the US marines being turned in to community organizers are over. In addition, to help safeguard against the casual commitment of US forces in some ill-conceived mission in the future, I shall make it mandatory that all children of elected officials be required to serve in frontline units of any and all combat divisions of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Domestic policy: effective immediately I have ordered an across the board 15% spending cut throughout all agencies of government with no exceptions. Now I know that this will punish all agencies equally and some will argue that some departments should be exempted. But the more I think about it the more that I like the across the board idea…so much easier. If we ever balance the budget, then we’ll talk about restoring some of the cuts. But until we get our financial house in order..a little shared sacrifice, OK? I will also propose a complete overhaul of the tax code with all of its Byzantine contradictions and Rube Goldberg logical leaps and replace it with a flat tax of 17% with NO deductions…for anyone. That’s right, you heard me. No charitable deduction ( if the only reason you give is to catch a break on your taxes, shame on you), no home mortgage interest deduction ( why should we make it more desirable to own than rent? Its none of my business where you live.), no deductions period. Also, everyone will be required to pay their taxes themselves either with a check or online, NO WITHOLDING allowed. That way people will understand exactly how much they are having to pay in taxes. This change will eliminate the need for the IRS and place millions of accountants out of work but on the bright side, it will save everyone else a fortune in fees and lost sleep. Now I know some of you are thinking “I’ll have to pay more under this plan”, or “that rich guy over there he might end up paying less”. Well, get over the class envy people. Our current system has produced a nation where 45% of Americans pay no income taxes at all. That can’t be right can it? Besides, if you eliminate all of the complexities of the system, you will effectively take away all power from politicians, and won’t that be worth it?
And oh yeah, by the way…I’ve decided to decriminalize casual drug use. Over the past 50 years there exists no government initiative that has been a bigger failure than the “War on Drugs”, with the possible exception of the “War on Poverty”. But at least with the war of poverty we don’t imprison those who stay poor. Alcohol use in this country destroys millions of lives and consumes millions more in property and yet its legal and the government collects a fortune in tax revenue from its sale. I see no reason why some kid who smokes a joint should be thrown in jail. And since the majority of violent crimes are drug related, maybe a lot of that violence would disappear and the government would raise some much needed cash. Have you noticed how broke we are? Oh, and one more thing. I will introduce legislation next week to make our congressmen and women part time legislators just like they are in most of the states. Along with the part time status will come an elimination of life time congressional pensions and health benefits. The Founding Fathers never imagined full time career politicians. An added benefit of this plan will be that since there is less time devoted to “law-making”, there will be less of it. Plus, during the off season, the capital building will be available for civic groups to rent out and also for birthdays and bar mitzvahs. We need income, people.
In closing let me mention that since I am President, I have taken the liberty to impose a few changes outside of government..just because I can. First off, for the remainder of my term in office the American League is hereby forbidden to use the designated hitter. I also have taken it upon myself to bring back the chain gang work crew concept in all federal prisons since there is so much work out there that Americans just won’t do. And last but not least, I have declared lite beer to be illegal in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Well, its been a pleasure to speak with you tonight and I see from the clock right above the Thomas Jefferson portrait that its 8:50...made it with ten minutes to spare. I hope in the future to always thus exceed your expectations. God Bless you and God Bless America.
Friday, June 17, 2011
A Tribute To My Father
I was 13 and very much looking forward to summer. Early May was already hot in the afternoon so I was cutting the grass without a shirt at 10 o’clock in the morning. Just one more month of school and I would be free. As I made the long sweeping turn from the front yard toward the garden I saw him. He was walking across the back yard in a v-neck tee-shirt and overalls and my heart sank at the sight. I knew that the minute I finished the grass he and I would get into an argument over working in the garden. I would object on the grounds that I had already spent 2 hours mowing the yard. He would point out that when he was my age he had already put in 2 hours of work before breakfast and besides he couldn’t do it alone. He needed my help so I had better stop with the crying and get on with it.
My Dad didn’t have my gifts of logic and reason, my skills at debate, or my winning charm but even so I never once won an argument with him. He would look at me with a half-smile and patiently listen to my brilliantly argued and flawlessly reasoned positions and when I was through he would say something like,”Ok, well, pick up that bag of fertilizer and lets get started.”
Although I could tell I was his son, he was much bigger than I would ever be. He was in his late forties and very strong and straight. His big arms hung down to his sides when he was in his suit on Sundays, down practically to his knees. Out of those dark jacket sleeves would emerge two enormous and powerful hands that were calloused from hard work and genetics. Even though Dad was a minister and a man of thought and learning, he never lost his taste for demanding physical labor. He was a man of toil. In the fall and winter it was carpentry work , building junk in our cramped pit and the pendulum basement. He would stay down there for hours sawing and drilling and sanding and emerge covered with sweat and sawdust. In the spring and summer it was the garden. As soon as the ground thawed in March he would get someone to plow it up since we didn’t own a tractor. Then he would crank up the old orange roto-tiller that he bought at Western Auto and stored under the back porch all winter since we had no shed. He would go back and forth over the molded-smelling dirt over and over again for days until the ground was all the same sandy color and fine as rice. I had actually looked forward to my big chance to run the roto-tiller after watching Dad all those years. The thing was loud and I liked the way it ground up weeds and clods with such violence. When my chance finally came when I was 10, the unwieldy beast practically ripped my arms out of their sockets. After I suffered through 3 passes down a single 6o foot row I wrestled the monster into neutral and then made the mistake of holding on to the kill switch too long once it made contact with the spark plug. The shocking jolt knocked me flat on my backside. Dad helped me up and said, “ You’ll get better son”.
It was then that I first became aware of just how strong he was. He stood around 6’2” and weighed 210 or so with broad shoulders , a big head and dark jet-black hair. All the ladies and half of the men in our church accused him of using Grecian formula, but I knew that he didn’t. The only health and beauty aids in his medicine cabinet were a Schick injector system razor, a can of Barbasol and a bottle of Aqua Velva. There never lived a man with less vanity than my father. When he worked in the garden he always wore this ridiculous floppy straw hat with a green eye shade thing built in to the front brim. It was huge and sitting on top of his enormous head towering over 6 feet in the air he looked like a menacing extra in the prison yard from the set of Cool Hand Luke. The odd thing was that he was as gentle as a lamb. The only time he raised his voice in anything approaching anger was when he was in the pulpit holding forth on the dangers of sin. His face was handsome with unruly eyebrows, a prominent nose that I had inherited and kind, tender eyes which I had not.
“OK son,” he began slowly. “ Today we are going to lay down some corn and potatoes and if we’re lucky maybe some pole beans.”
“What’s so lucky about pole beans?” I mumbled under my breath.
“ I know you’d be happier playing ball or riding your bike, but when we finish today you’ll be able to look back proudly on what you’ve accomplished. A job well done need not be done again, my daddy used to say.”
“Then how come I have to cut the grass every week?”
“ Well, almost every job. I think that this year you need to learn to use the push plow”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Me? Me, getting to use the push plow?? This was not going to end well. I had been preparing myself for the yearly lesson about the importance, nay, the cosmically crucial to the survival of mankind importance of laying down straight rows. How it was a matter of family pride that rows be perfectly straight, any crook in the line an indication of sloth and inattention at best and darkness or even madness at worst. How it was ok to set a stick in the ground at the end of the row but unsporting and somehow cheating to tie a string to it to guide your work. A virtual encyclopedia of information about a man’s character could be revealed by an inspection of his garden. And now my father wanted me to do the honors, our family reputation in the community riding on my slim teenaged shoulders.
“ Dad, you can’t be serious” I pleaded.
“ I’ll help you every step of the way son. You’re 12 years old boy, its time you learned”
“ I’m 13 Dad!” I was always indignant with him when he would forget my age or what grade I was in. The man could recite entire chapters of the Bible, tell you every detail of the life of every Christian from Martin Luther to Vance Havner but half the time he couldn’t remember my middle name.
“ Well, of course you are. What did I say.. 12? I tell ya son the older I get the more that happens. I’ll be thinking one thing in my head and something else will come flying out of my mouth!”
“ Good thing that doesn’t happen in the pulpit , huh dad?”
“ Don’t be so sure “, he answered with a smile.
We both laughed a little at the joke, which actually was funny unlike most of his jokes, the kind of jokes that he would get out of those dreadful “500 Clean Jokes” paperbacks somebody was always giving him. Stupid church people.
Dad walked down to the end of the garden closest to the road and drove a tomato pole into the ground with a 10 pound ball peen hammer. Three licks and it was stiff and straight.
“ Ok son , keep your eyes right here on this stick and walk slow and steady!”
The dirt rolled up and over the plow in soft clumps to my right and I tried my best to straddle the row with my feet trying not to look down too much, keeping my eyes on the stick. The more I stared at the stick the dizzier I became. When I made it to the end of the row I was light headed from the stress and my heart was beating loud in my ears. I was afraid to look back. Dad put his hand on my shoulder as we both inspected my work. After an uncomfortable moment of silence he finally spoke up.
“ Son, that’s about the worst looking first attempt at plowing a row I’ve ever seen. Which means that it can’t get anything but better. Let’s try her again.”
My father was not a parent in the modern sense in that he was incapable of coddling. When I did stupid things he let me know about it. He didn’t buy in to the notion that every kid should get a trophy, that all kids were wonderful. He never seemed to be very concerned with the level of my self esteem, figuring that my self esteem would rise when I learned to do something well. But because he never lied to me about how great I was, I learned that I could believe him. Always. My dad could be depended on to tell me the truth.
Dad ran the roto-tiller over my hideous s-shaped row until all evidence had been erased and then I tried again. This process was repeated 5 more times until finally he was positively beaming.
“ Look at that !!!” he yelled, clapping his big hands together. “ Its beautiful!”
It really was beautiful. With this triumph behind me I warmed to the work. Now it was time to line the furrow with fertilizer, horrible smelling nitrogen fertilizer that came in a big 25 pound burlap bag with a paper lining. I would drag the thing behind me as I dug down and grabbed a handful of the blue crystals and scattered them along the furrow. I never wore gloves so by the end of a day of this my hands would be on fire and all of the hair on my fingers had been burned off. Such were the appalling conditions under which I toiled in clear violation of numerous child labor laws. But by this time I was thoroughly into it and eager for what was next. I would drop the seeds a foot apart then flood the row with water from the garden hose, then cover up the row with the push plow and then rake up the foot prints so it looked perfect. I would spend hours out there with him during the summer, first plowing and planting then hoeing and weeding and finally the harvest would come. We would walk back to the house with a bucket of potatoes or a grocery bag full of string beans and always a half dozen bright red tomatoes. I always felt grown up when bringing those vegetables to the house. There was yellow squash, black-eyed peas, lima beans, English peas,corn…although Dad always had something negative to say about the corn. The stuff never suited him for some reason. It was either too puny or too wormy.
Dad doesn’t keep a garden anymore. He’s 86 now and finally gave it up 6 years ago. I miss those hot miserable days, the stinging flies, the dirt, the smell of the soil. Mostly, I miss seeing my Dad in control of that little piece of ground. I miss hearing him tell stories of when he was 12 years old and was given an entire field by my Grandfather to grow whatever he wanted. He chose tomatoes and made 200 dollars in 1936. I couldn’t even imagine such a thing. He would stand in the shade towards the end of the day, lean on a hoe and tell me how God loved a hard worker. How important it was that a man learn how to provide for himself and how out of God’s rich blessings we could know the unspeakable joy of giving to others.
“ Why is it so hard, Dad?” I asked late one afternoon. “Why is keeping a garden so hard? It’s non stop sweat from March to September.”
“ Because nothing in this life that’s worth anything is easy. Gardening is hard, work of any kind is hard. Preaching is hard. Going to school is hard. Jesus had a pretty hard time up on that cross, don’t ya think? But everything that’s hard produces something wonderful.”
“ I guess so,” I said absently.
“ Besides, gardening might be hard, but it sure is easier than starving”
We smiled at each other and walked back to the house as I admired the calluses on my hands in the dying light of the day.
My Dad didn’t have my gifts of logic and reason, my skills at debate, or my winning charm but even so I never once won an argument with him. He would look at me with a half-smile and patiently listen to my brilliantly argued and flawlessly reasoned positions and when I was through he would say something like,”Ok, well, pick up that bag of fertilizer and lets get started.”
Although I could tell I was his son, he was much bigger than I would ever be. He was in his late forties and very strong and straight. His big arms hung down to his sides when he was in his suit on Sundays, down practically to his knees. Out of those dark jacket sleeves would emerge two enormous and powerful hands that were calloused from hard work and genetics. Even though Dad was a minister and a man of thought and learning, he never lost his taste for demanding physical labor. He was a man of toil. In the fall and winter it was carpentry work , building junk in our cramped pit and the pendulum basement. He would stay down there for hours sawing and drilling and sanding and emerge covered with sweat and sawdust. In the spring and summer it was the garden. As soon as the ground thawed in March he would get someone to plow it up since we didn’t own a tractor. Then he would crank up the old orange roto-tiller that he bought at Western Auto and stored under the back porch all winter since we had no shed. He would go back and forth over the molded-smelling dirt over and over again for days until the ground was all the same sandy color and fine as rice. I had actually looked forward to my big chance to run the roto-tiller after watching Dad all those years. The thing was loud and I liked the way it ground up weeds and clods with such violence. When my chance finally came when I was 10, the unwieldy beast practically ripped my arms out of their sockets. After I suffered through 3 passes down a single 6o foot row I wrestled the monster into neutral and then made the mistake of holding on to the kill switch too long once it made contact with the spark plug. The shocking jolt knocked me flat on my backside. Dad helped me up and said, “ You’ll get better son”.
It was then that I first became aware of just how strong he was. He stood around 6’2” and weighed 210 or so with broad shoulders , a big head and dark jet-black hair. All the ladies and half of the men in our church accused him of using Grecian formula, but I knew that he didn’t. The only health and beauty aids in his medicine cabinet were a Schick injector system razor, a can of Barbasol and a bottle of Aqua Velva. There never lived a man with less vanity than my father. When he worked in the garden he always wore this ridiculous floppy straw hat with a green eye shade thing built in to the front brim. It was huge and sitting on top of his enormous head towering over 6 feet in the air he looked like a menacing extra in the prison yard from the set of Cool Hand Luke. The odd thing was that he was as gentle as a lamb. The only time he raised his voice in anything approaching anger was when he was in the pulpit holding forth on the dangers of sin. His face was handsome with unruly eyebrows, a prominent nose that I had inherited and kind, tender eyes which I had not.
“OK son,” he began slowly. “ Today we are going to lay down some corn and potatoes and if we’re lucky maybe some pole beans.”
“What’s so lucky about pole beans?” I mumbled under my breath.
“ I know you’d be happier playing ball or riding your bike, but when we finish today you’ll be able to look back proudly on what you’ve accomplished. A job well done need not be done again, my daddy used to say.”
“Then how come I have to cut the grass every week?”
“ Well, almost every job. I think that this year you need to learn to use the push plow”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Me? Me, getting to use the push plow?? This was not going to end well. I had been preparing myself for the yearly lesson about the importance, nay, the cosmically crucial to the survival of mankind importance of laying down straight rows. How it was a matter of family pride that rows be perfectly straight, any crook in the line an indication of sloth and inattention at best and darkness or even madness at worst. How it was ok to set a stick in the ground at the end of the row but unsporting and somehow cheating to tie a string to it to guide your work. A virtual encyclopedia of information about a man’s character could be revealed by an inspection of his garden. And now my father wanted me to do the honors, our family reputation in the community riding on my slim teenaged shoulders.
“ Dad, you can’t be serious” I pleaded.
“ I’ll help you every step of the way son. You’re 12 years old boy, its time you learned”
“ I’m 13 Dad!” I was always indignant with him when he would forget my age or what grade I was in. The man could recite entire chapters of the Bible, tell you every detail of the life of every Christian from Martin Luther to Vance Havner but half the time he couldn’t remember my middle name.
“ Well, of course you are. What did I say.. 12? I tell ya son the older I get the more that happens. I’ll be thinking one thing in my head and something else will come flying out of my mouth!”
“ Good thing that doesn’t happen in the pulpit , huh dad?”
“ Don’t be so sure “, he answered with a smile.
We both laughed a little at the joke, which actually was funny unlike most of his jokes, the kind of jokes that he would get out of those dreadful “500 Clean Jokes” paperbacks somebody was always giving him. Stupid church people.
Dad walked down to the end of the garden closest to the road and drove a tomato pole into the ground with a 10 pound ball peen hammer. Three licks and it was stiff and straight.
“ Ok son , keep your eyes right here on this stick and walk slow and steady!”
The dirt rolled up and over the plow in soft clumps to my right and I tried my best to straddle the row with my feet trying not to look down too much, keeping my eyes on the stick. The more I stared at the stick the dizzier I became. When I made it to the end of the row I was light headed from the stress and my heart was beating loud in my ears. I was afraid to look back. Dad put his hand on my shoulder as we both inspected my work. After an uncomfortable moment of silence he finally spoke up.
“ Son, that’s about the worst looking first attempt at plowing a row I’ve ever seen. Which means that it can’t get anything but better. Let’s try her again.”
My father was not a parent in the modern sense in that he was incapable of coddling. When I did stupid things he let me know about it. He didn’t buy in to the notion that every kid should get a trophy, that all kids were wonderful. He never seemed to be very concerned with the level of my self esteem, figuring that my self esteem would rise when I learned to do something well. But because he never lied to me about how great I was, I learned that I could believe him. Always. My dad could be depended on to tell me the truth.
Dad ran the roto-tiller over my hideous s-shaped row until all evidence had been erased and then I tried again. This process was repeated 5 more times until finally he was positively beaming.
“ Look at that !!!” he yelled, clapping his big hands together. “ Its beautiful!”
It really was beautiful. With this triumph behind me I warmed to the work. Now it was time to line the furrow with fertilizer, horrible smelling nitrogen fertilizer that came in a big 25 pound burlap bag with a paper lining. I would drag the thing behind me as I dug down and grabbed a handful of the blue crystals and scattered them along the furrow. I never wore gloves so by the end of a day of this my hands would be on fire and all of the hair on my fingers had been burned off. Such were the appalling conditions under which I toiled in clear violation of numerous child labor laws. But by this time I was thoroughly into it and eager for what was next. I would drop the seeds a foot apart then flood the row with water from the garden hose, then cover up the row with the push plow and then rake up the foot prints so it looked perfect. I would spend hours out there with him during the summer, first plowing and planting then hoeing and weeding and finally the harvest would come. We would walk back to the house with a bucket of potatoes or a grocery bag full of string beans and always a half dozen bright red tomatoes. I always felt grown up when bringing those vegetables to the house. There was yellow squash, black-eyed peas, lima beans, English peas,corn…although Dad always had something negative to say about the corn. The stuff never suited him for some reason. It was either too puny or too wormy.
Dad doesn’t keep a garden anymore. He’s 86 now and finally gave it up 6 years ago. I miss those hot miserable days, the stinging flies, the dirt, the smell of the soil. Mostly, I miss seeing my Dad in control of that little piece of ground. I miss hearing him tell stories of when he was 12 years old and was given an entire field by my Grandfather to grow whatever he wanted. He chose tomatoes and made 200 dollars in 1936. I couldn’t even imagine such a thing. He would stand in the shade towards the end of the day, lean on a hoe and tell me how God loved a hard worker. How important it was that a man learn how to provide for himself and how out of God’s rich blessings we could know the unspeakable joy of giving to others.
“ Why is it so hard, Dad?” I asked late one afternoon. “Why is keeping a garden so hard? It’s non stop sweat from March to September.”
“ Because nothing in this life that’s worth anything is easy. Gardening is hard, work of any kind is hard. Preaching is hard. Going to school is hard. Jesus had a pretty hard time up on that cross, don’t ya think? But everything that’s hard produces something wonderful.”
“ I guess so,” I said absently.
“ Besides, gardening might be hard, but it sure is easier than starving”
We smiled at each other and walked back to the house as I admired the calluses on my hands in the dying light of the day.
Business Geek-Speak
I have seldom used this blog for peevish rants but today I make an exception. I just returned from a business meeting in Pittsburg where I endured 8 hours of what I like to call “business geek-speak." Men and women in suits who work for home offices somewhere all seem trapped inside a language cocoon of their own making. They all seem to somehow have developed a distinct language unlike any spoken anywhere else in the world. I don’t know exactly where this language came from but I suspect that it probably has something to do with the dreadful business periodicals they all read. You’ve seen them on planes and trains when everyone else is reading the sports page or the Sky-Cab magazine. There they are, their noses firmly implanted in the latest copy of the Economist or Forbes. Whatever the source this new language, it's at the top of the list of things that piss me off. So, just because I can, I present to you a short list of the most inane and annoying. For your enlightenment I have also provided a translation of this idiocy into understandable English:
1.Paradigm Shift. Whenever I hear this I think of that great song by The Who…"meet the new paradigm, same as the old paradigm." Whenever a home office stooge starts throwing out “new paradigm” what he really means is..."We’re hemorrhaging money so we’re going to cut your commissions." But when they say “new paradigm” it makes them sound a bit smarter and not so overwhelmed by events.
2. Value Proposition or Value Added. Whenever nervous home office guys keep saying things like this what they are practically screaming at you is…"We do very little to help you and consequently are having one hell of a time justifying our existence”
3. Seamless Transition.…"This new thing we want you guys to do has more trap doors and moving
parts than a Paris whorehouse and if you make it two weeks without your computer exploding it will
be a miracle."
4. At The End of The Day. OK, if I heard this expression once I heard it a hundred times, to the point where if everything that they said was gonna happen at the end of the day actually DID happen at the end of the day, then the end of the day would implode in on itself and the universe would disappear. How about something simple and elegant like..."ultimately?"
5 Cutting Edge Technology.....the stuff we don’t have yet
6. Broad Based Consensus….we’re all wrong
I could go on but maintaining “sustainable” blood pressure readings are a “stage one priority” for me.
1.Paradigm Shift. Whenever I hear this I think of that great song by The Who…"meet the new paradigm, same as the old paradigm." Whenever a home office stooge starts throwing out “new paradigm” what he really means is..."We’re hemorrhaging money so we’re going to cut your commissions." But when they say “new paradigm” it makes them sound a bit smarter and not so overwhelmed by events.
2. Value Proposition or Value Added. Whenever nervous home office guys keep saying things like this what they are practically screaming at you is…"We do very little to help you and consequently are having one hell of a time justifying our existence”
3. Seamless Transition.…"This new thing we want you guys to do has more trap doors and moving
parts than a Paris whorehouse and if you make it two weeks without your computer exploding it will
be a miracle."
4. At The End of The Day. OK, if I heard this expression once I heard it a hundred times, to the point where if everything that they said was gonna happen at the end of the day actually DID happen at the end of the day, then the end of the day would implode in on itself and the universe would disappear. How about something simple and elegant like..."ultimately?"
5 Cutting Edge Technology.....the stuff we don’t have yet
6. Broad Based Consensus….we’re all wrong
I could go on but maintaining “sustainable” blood pressure readings are a “stage one priority” for me.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Yard Sale Madness
Every two years in my life there is a famine in the land. It’s the year that the locusts eat. The year of the great scourge. When it comes I am powerless to prevent the desolation. I simply bow to its inevitability, and soldier on until its plague has passed. What am I referring to, you may ask? The Dunnevant family Yard Sale. It’s our family’s bi-annual excursion into the strange land of the entrepreneurial experience whereby Americans pretend to be turning their junk into money when in fact they are voluntarily spending weeks working for less than the current minimum wage…in Angola.
Weeks ago it began. Pam and I spent a rainy day plowing through the attic gathering the most worthless of the accumulated debris of our 27 years together. To even get at it I had to flatten and remove literally thousands of gift boxes which I carried down two flights of stairs to the back of my van. Six trips to the dump later I was through. Now we could begin the arduous task of staging the chosen items into the “yard sale pile” in our newly spacious attic which by now was a toasty 90 degrees. By the end of this 8 hour torture-fest Pam and I knew that we had only just begun to prepare for this wonderful family tradition.
The actual week of the big event is a very special and unique time in our home. We shuffle by each other timidly with slumped shoulders trying not to get our feet tangled up in the growing organism that has taken over the downstairs of our house. With lots of heavy sighing Pam trudges through the “staging area” of boxes, grocery bags, and worn out electronics with a clipboard full of freshly printed pricing stickers. “50 cents” one says. “1 dollar” says another. The irony is lost on us. When you are in the midst of organizing the unorganizable it never occurs to you to ask “why”. So all week she prices and all week the piles grow larger and larger as if the beast is taunting us in our futility. All the while more man hours of labor accumulate.
The night before the big event might be the worst part. We all make the 30 minute drive all the way across town, Pam in our loaded down van looking like a cross between Ma Joad and the Beverly Hillbillies, me in a truck I borrowed from my father-in-law.( I will not here discuss the fact that on this night I was visited with a violent bout of irritable bowel syndrome because to do so might make me cry.) We all descend on our premium location in Mechanicsville which my brother-in-laws’ saintly mother provides free of charge. For three hours in 97 degree heat and oppressive humidity we sort through bags and boxes of stuff in various stages of readiness trying to determine what goes where. Which folding tables should be placed in which location? Shouldn’t all household items be kept together? Should the three thousand books we have brought to sell to the masses for 50 cents each be left in boxes or arranged more provocatively fan-like on the large wooden table that sags in the middle? “ Why don’t we write down how we did it two years ago,” someone asks over the roar of the floor fans. “ That would make this so much easier!!”
Finally D-Day arrives. I am the first to arrive at 6:30 sharp so I can assemble the game table that I had to take apart so it would fit in my borrowed truck which has just made its third trip across town. On trip number one I noticed that it wouldn’t go any faster than 60 mph without a violent shimmy and shake. When I pointed this out to my father-in-law he pleaded ignorance. “I’ve never driven it 60 before so I’ve never noticed” he said, filling me with needed confidence. Although all of the signs posted around advertising this adventure, along with the ad that ran in the Mechanicsville Local clearly state that the sale begins at 8 AM, I found myself beating back the eager customers. “ Uh..W-wait. We don’t open for business until 8!” I yelled as they began to nose around at the garage doors which I had foolishly opened prematurely. Thankfully, soon reinforcements arrived. And by the official starting time of 8 o’clock we had already sold $300 worth . Soon the crowds began to swell in more ways than one. Car after car began to arrive left randomly askew in the middle of busy streets. Very large and determined shoppers came seemingly in packs, expertly rummaging through our inventory with practiced eyes searching for bargains. We took their quarters and dimes and nickels and stuffed their purchases in grocery bags as they said “God bless”. I sold the game table for $70 bucks to a Mexican man with two young kids who served as his interpreters. They were thrilled to get such a prize and their father seemed so thankful to me for letting him buy it..I was actually a bit embarrassed . Maybe if I were a better Christian I would have given it to him. But this was no time for existential angst. There was money to be made and from the constant stream of morbidly obese shoppers making their way to our sale the prospects for profit looked good.
The time finally came for us to close up shop, gather everything left into the garage for some Christian charity to pick up later and count our money. It was an all-time record. We made $1100. That would be more than enough to pay for all the groceries for our beach vacation at Nags Head in August. We would be eating well, no doubt. After I drove around town returning all of the tables I had borrowed, returned my father-in-laws truck, and spent an hour in the bathtub bringing feeling back to my feet, I began to do a cost benefit analysis. It wasn’t pretty.
There are 15 paying members of our family when we go to the beach for vacation. The total profit from the sale was $1100. That comes out to $73.33 per person. For my family, that means that we made $293.34 from the yard sale. But first I have to deduct the $20 worth of gas I had to put in Russ’ truck. A cursory examination of the man-hours involved ( or in Pam’s case, woman hours) reveals that between the two of us and Kaitlin we contributed 60 hours of labor towards the enterprise. So, that means that my family toiled for $4.88 per hour. Put another way, if I wanted to make an equivalent contribution to our vacation food fund I would simply have to set aside 40 cents a day for the next two years and I could save myself the agony of having to watch someone pay 50 cents for a hardback of the Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe. 40 cents a day people, 40 cents a day.
Weeks ago it began. Pam and I spent a rainy day plowing through the attic gathering the most worthless of the accumulated debris of our 27 years together. To even get at it I had to flatten and remove literally thousands of gift boxes which I carried down two flights of stairs to the back of my van. Six trips to the dump later I was through. Now we could begin the arduous task of staging the chosen items into the “yard sale pile” in our newly spacious attic which by now was a toasty 90 degrees. By the end of this 8 hour torture-fest Pam and I knew that we had only just begun to prepare for this wonderful family tradition.
The actual week of the big event is a very special and unique time in our home. We shuffle by each other timidly with slumped shoulders trying not to get our feet tangled up in the growing organism that has taken over the downstairs of our house. With lots of heavy sighing Pam trudges through the “staging area” of boxes, grocery bags, and worn out electronics with a clipboard full of freshly printed pricing stickers. “50 cents” one says. “1 dollar” says another. The irony is lost on us. When you are in the midst of organizing the unorganizable it never occurs to you to ask “why”. So all week she prices and all week the piles grow larger and larger as if the beast is taunting us in our futility. All the while more man hours of labor accumulate.
The night before the big event might be the worst part. We all make the 30 minute drive all the way across town, Pam in our loaded down van looking like a cross between Ma Joad and the Beverly Hillbillies, me in a truck I borrowed from my father-in-law.( I will not here discuss the fact that on this night I was visited with a violent bout of irritable bowel syndrome because to do so might make me cry.) We all descend on our premium location in Mechanicsville which my brother-in-laws’ saintly mother provides free of charge. For three hours in 97 degree heat and oppressive humidity we sort through bags and boxes of stuff in various stages of readiness trying to determine what goes where. Which folding tables should be placed in which location? Shouldn’t all household items be kept together? Should the three thousand books we have brought to sell to the masses for 50 cents each be left in boxes or arranged more provocatively fan-like on the large wooden table that sags in the middle? “ Why don’t we write down how we did it two years ago,” someone asks over the roar of the floor fans. “ That would make this so much easier!!”
Finally D-Day arrives. I am the first to arrive at 6:30 sharp so I can assemble the game table that I had to take apart so it would fit in my borrowed truck which has just made its third trip across town. On trip number one I noticed that it wouldn’t go any faster than 60 mph without a violent shimmy and shake. When I pointed this out to my father-in-law he pleaded ignorance. “I’ve never driven it 60 before so I’ve never noticed” he said, filling me with needed confidence. Although all of the signs posted around advertising this adventure, along with the ad that ran in the Mechanicsville Local clearly state that the sale begins at 8 AM, I found myself beating back the eager customers. “ Uh..W-wait. We don’t open for business until 8!” I yelled as they began to nose around at the garage doors which I had foolishly opened prematurely. Thankfully, soon reinforcements arrived. And by the official starting time of 8 o’clock we had already sold $300 worth . Soon the crowds began to swell in more ways than one. Car after car began to arrive left randomly askew in the middle of busy streets. Very large and determined shoppers came seemingly in packs, expertly rummaging through our inventory with practiced eyes searching for bargains. We took their quarters and dimes and nickels and stuffed their purchases in grocery bags as they said “God bless”. I sold the game table for $70 bucks to a Mexican man with two young kids who served as his interpreters. They were thrilled to get such a prize and their father seemed so thankful to me for letting him buy it..I was actually a bit embarrassed . Maybe if I were a better Christian I would have given it to him. But this was no time for existential angst. There was money to be made and from the constant stream of morbidly obese shoppers making their way to our sale the prospects for profit looked good.
The time finally came for us to close up shop, gather everything left into the garage for some Christian charity to pick up later and count our money. It was an all-time record. We made $1100. That would be more than enough to pay for all the groceries for our beach vacation at Nags Head in August. We would be eating well, no doubt. After I drove around town returning all of the tables I had borrowed, returned my father-in-laws truck, and spent an hour in the bathtub bringing feeling back to my feet, I began to do a cost benefit analysis. It wasn’t pretty.
There are 15 paying members of our family when we go to the beach for vacation. The total profit from the sale was $1100. That comes out to $73.33 per person. For my family, that means that we made $293.34 from the yard sale. But first I have to deduct the $20 worth of gas I had to put in Russ’ truck. A cursory examination of the man-hours involved ( or in Pam’s case, woman hours) reveals that between the two of us and Kaitlin we contributed 60 hours of labor towards the enterprise. So, that means that my family toiled for $4.88 per hour. Put another way, if I wanted to make an equivalent contribution to our vacation food fund I would simply have to set aside 40 cents a day for the next two years and I could save myself the agony of having to watch someone pay 50 cents for a hardback of the Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe. 40 cents a day people, 40 cents a day.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Not a Good Day to be a Man
Just watched the Anthony Weiner press conference. Its official. I am embarrassed to be a man.
It all started I suppose with Tiger Woods. Every golf fan remembers where they were when they first heard that Eldrick, the famous Buick pitchman, was a serial adulterer. Although he was married to a former Swedish model and was the father of two beautiful children it just wasn’t enough. He was spending his down time chasing around with trailer-park porn stars, women who were all 10’s on the skank-meter when he had the fabulously gorgeous Elin waiting for him at home. But there he was laying unconscious in the street after wrapping his Escalade around a tree in his front yard trying to get away from an enraged wife waving a nine iron with murderous intent, a Buick nowhere in sight.
Then there was John Edwards, he of the perfect hair and the “Two Americas” stump speech. Much of America held him in high regard after the announcement that his wife Elizabeth had terminal cancer but would soldier on with her husband while he campaigned for the presidency because of how much she loved him and believed in him. Although the adoration wasn’t enough to trump America’s fling with Barack Obama, it did endear him to millions. Then came word that the slimy senator had a love child with a campaign worker, a relationship that had thrived before and after the discovery of Elizabeth’s illness. Two Americas, indeed. Dude wasn’t even allowed to attend her funeral.
Of course, any discussion of male infidelity wouldn’t be complete without mention being made of Gov. Mark Sanford of the great state of South Carolina. After becoming somewhat of a star in the Republican party for his conservatism and “family values” reputation, it was discovered that while on a trade mission to South America the Governor had met the love of his life. Meanwhile back in Columbia, the wife of his life and the four boys she had brought into this world were devastated and his career was over. As soon as he left office in January of 2011, he was spotted on a beach in Rio with his new soul-mate. Which caused me to wonder why it is that married men always seem to find their soul-mates in warm climates. Why does no one come back from a trip to a plastics warehouse in Idaho to announce to their wife that they have met someone new?
Speaking of slimy Republicans, just before announcing his candidacy for President Newt Gingrich felt the need to clear up this business about him cheating on his wife and forcing her to sign the divorce papers while she was dying from cancer in a hospital room some years back. Gingrich explained, “ in the past there have been times when I loved my country so much that I worked too hard and things happened that were not appropriate”. So I guess that means that he cheated on his dying wife…with Uncle Sam. How’s that for a family value?
Which brings me to the ill-named congressman from New York. After a picture of his crotch was published on twitter Mr. Weiner spent 10 days denying any connection to the photograph, blaming it first on an anonymous hacker and then on a practical joke gone bad. For 10 days the good congressman (if you will pardon the expression) castigated anyone with the temerity to question his version of events. But by yesterday it had become clear to Weiner that the game was up. There were more pictures and more women coming forward with lurid details of his depravity. And so we were all treated to the smartest guy in the room having to face the music on live television. Riveting. This newly married progressive champion admitting to being a pervert. Would he resign? No. You see, he hadn’t “broken any laws”. I for one am glad he cleared that up.
I heard a sports show host the other day say that we fans have no right to criticize athletes or other famous and rich men who get caught cheating on their wives because the only reason the rest of us don’t cheat is because we don’t have as many opportunities. If we had hot women throwing themselves at us in fancy hotels in exotic locals without our wives in attendance we too would stray with equal frequency. Maybe so.
Maybe he was right, but if he is what does that say about us as men? Are we just dogs with clothes? I have been married for 27 years and have never been unfaithful, but maybe its just because I haven’t had enough opportunity. I like to think that the reason I haven’t had opportunity is because I have constantly strived to avoid temptation. I don’t put myself in situations where I might have to discover how weak I am.
Its not just opportunity. There’s something else. Something that’s absent from all of the stories that I have mentioned above. Shame.
For the past 13 years I have taught scores of high school and college kids the basics of Christianity. Hundreds of students. Many of them have for whatever reason held me in high regard and continue to long after I taught them. They admire me, want to be like me. The guys want to marry someone like my wife. Many of the girls wish their fathers were more like me. For better or for worse I am a role model to them. If I cheated on my wife all of the good will built into the lives of everyone of those kids would be wiped out. More importantly, I have two kids of my own. How could I possibly face them, look them in the eyes and admit that I had betrayed their mother? And what of the vows themselves? I spoke solemn words in front of my family and friends and God himself. Do those words mean anything? Why don’t the Anthony Weiners and the Mark Sanfords and the Tiger Woods of this world slink away in shame hiding their faces from us? How can they call a press conference? What has become of us? What has become of men?
On the odd chance that my pastor reads this, if you have the guts...this might be a good sermon topic.
It all started I suppose with Tiger Woods. Every golf fan remembers where they were when they first heard that Eldrick, the famous Buick pitchman, was a serial adulterer. Although he was married to a former Swedish model and was the father of two beautiful children it just wasn’t enough. He was spending his down time chasing around with trailer-park porn stars, women who were all 10’s on the skank-meter when he had the fabulously gorgeous Elin waiting for him at home. But there he was laying unconscious in the street after wrapping his Escalade around a tree in his front yard trying to get away from an enraged wife waving a nine iron with murderous intent, a Buick nowhere in sight.
Then there was John Edwards, he of the perfect hair and the “Two Americas” stump speech. Much of America held him in high regard after the announcement that his wife Elizabeth had terminal cancer but would soldier on with her husband while he campaigned for the presidency because of how much she loved him and believed in him. Although the adoration wasn’t enough to trump America’s fling with Barack Obama, it did endear him to millions. Then came word that the slimy senator had a love child with a campaign worker, a relationship that had thrived before and after the discovery of Elizabeth’s illness. Two Americas, indeed. Dude wasn’t even allowed to attend her funeral.
Of course, any discussion of male infidelity wouldn’t be complete without mention being made of Gov. Mark Sanford of the great state of South Carolina. After becoming somewhat of a star in the Republican party for his conservatism and “family values” reputation, it was discovered that while on a trade mission to South America the Governor had met the love of his life. Meanwhile back in Columbia, the wife of his life and the four boys she had brought into this world were devastated and his career was over. As soon as he left office in January of 2011, he was spotted on a beach in Rio with his new soul-mate. Which caused me to wonder why it is that married men always seem to find their soul-mates in warm climates. Why does no one come back from a trip to a plastics warehouse in Idaho to announce to their wife that they have met someone new?
Speaking of slimy Republicans, just before announcing his candidacy for President Newt Gingrich felt the need to clear up this business about him cheating on his wife and forcing her to sign the divorce papers while she was dying from cancer in a hospital room some years back. Gingrich explained, “ in the past there have been times when I loved my country so much that I worked too hard and things happened that were not appropriate”. So I guess that means that he cheated on his dying wife…with Uncle Sam. How’s that for a family value?
Which brings me to the ill-named congressman from New York. After a picture of his crotch was published on twitter Mr. Weiner spent 10 days denying any connection to the photograph, blaming it first on an anonymous hacker and then on a practical joke gone bad. For 10 days the good congressman (if you will pardon the expression) castigated anyone with the temerity to question his version of events. But by yesterday it had become clear to Weiner that the game was up. There were more pictures and more women coming forward with lurid details of his depravity. And so we were all treated to the smartest guy in the room having to face the music on live television. Riveting. This newly married progressive champion admitting to being a pervert. Would he resign? No. You see, he hadn’t “broken any laws”. I for one am glad he cleared that up.
I heard a sports show host the other day say that we fans have no right to criticize athletes or other famous and rich men who get caught cheating on their wives because the only reason the rest of us don’t cheat is because we don’t have as many opportunities. If we had hot women throwing themselves at us in fancy hotels in exotic locals without our wives in attendance we too would stray with equal frequency. Maybe so.
Maybe he was right, but if he is what does that say about us as men? Are we just dogs with clothes? I have been married for 27 years and have never been unfaithful, but maybe its just because I haven’t had enough opportunity. I like to think that the reason I haven’t had opportunity is because I have constantly strived to avoid temptation. I don’t put myself in situations where I might have to discover how weak I am.
Its not just opportunity. There’s something else. Something that’s absent from all of the stories that I have mentioned above. Shame.
For the past 13 years I have taught scores of high school and college kids the basics of Christianity. Hundreds of students. Many of them have for whatever reason held me in high regard and continue to long after I taught them. They admire me, want to be like me. The guys want to marry someone like my wife. Many of the girls wish their fathers were more like me. For better or for worse I am a role model to them. If I cheated on my wife all of the good will built into the lives of everyone of those kids would be wiped out. More importantly, I have two kids of my own. How could I possibly face them, look them in the eyes and admit that I had betrayed their mother? And what of the vows themselves? I spoke solemn words in front of my family and friends and God himself. Do those words mean anything? Why don’t the Anthony Weiners and the Mark Sanfords and the Tiger Woods of this world slink away in shame hiding their faces from us? How can they call a press conference? What has become of us? What has become of men?
On the odd chance that my pastor reads this, if you have the guts...this might be a good sermon topic.
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