Times when I've hollered

I’ve been known to raise my voice every once in a blue moon.

I’m not a constant yeller but neither am I one of those admirably mild souls who manages to hold his water in instances of extreme tension or annoyance. I’m just an average schlub who’s exercised his pipes more often than he’d like to admit.

My bro and sis-in-law are visiting and we were watching old home movies last night. (I really need to get those puppies digitized but that’s another whole discussion.)  And the whole last month, the couple who’ve just purchased the house next store are frantically working on a remodel before they can move in with their very small children. I know from our brief welcome discussion that their rental is up tomorrow and I know from peering in the windows (Oh, come on, you would, too!) that they still have a lot of studs as yet uncovered with drywall.

By now, you may be wondering how hollering, reminiscence and home renovation will ever come together in a heartwarming New Year’s missive.

And here’s how:

Many moons ago, Mary and I bought this house that was exactly what we wanted in grand terms and almost entirely unsuitable in the details. That is, it had the right number of appropriately sized rooms, all badly in need of paint, new fixtures, doors and updated wiring. The plumbing more or less directed anemic dribbles of water to approximately the point of use.

The oven couldn’t get over 350 degrees on its best day, only one of the four stove burners worked reliably and the windows, modern and sleek when the house was built in 1954, were now mere suggestions that some form of barrier had once existed between the weather outside and the tepidly heated inside. The roof leaked, part of the foundation was crumbling and the garage was a cruel joke.

It did have two major advantages: it was in a stellar school district and-  largely owing to its real and perceived deficits - it was for sale within our budget.  So we bought it, moved the family in and embarked on a twenty-year project of home improvement that we hope and believe will now finally be completed in the next year or so. We’ve replaced much of the drywall and half of the windows, all of the interior doors, and completely rebuilt the kitchen. We remodeled one bathroom and built another from scratch. The house now has a walk-in pantry and an in-home office and it’s generally very comfortable. And with the exception of the new roof and upgrading the main electrical service, we did it all with our own hands.

It was tough rebuilding this creaky old shack while raising kids, working full time, taking classes and living our lives. And there were times when we questioned our own sanity. One of those times comes to mind tonight as I wait with drugged dogs for the cacophony of illegal fireworks that will signal the advent of a new year.

We’ve replaced every inch of plumbing in this house, from the water meter to the sewer drain, hot and cold, inflow and egress and vent. And there came a time when I found myself sitting under the house, at the nexus where all the plumbing came together, frantically trying to get the plumbing back in service before Mary and I had to go back to work the next morning and take the kids to school. And as it got to be late on the Sunday evening, it became increasingly obvious that the sun may come up and the world would revolve, but there would be no water passing through our pipes that night or the next morning.

There was just too much left to do, I was too worn out and there had been too many setbacks that weekend for me to confidently predict anything approaching success. My stress level was at its peak when, in trying to sweat a joint of copper overhead, I managed to let the heat barrier slip and dropped a stream of molten solder on my bare leg. This caused me to launch vertically in the attempt to escape maiming but my trajectory was interrupted when mine noggin came into contact with the beam to which the piping was attached.

With blistered leg and bleeding scalp, the fitting now frozen in place but incompletely soldered, I somehow managed to get the torch extinguished and set aside before launching into the longest and loudest uninterrupted stream of expletive-laden hollering that had ever issued from this mouth and these lungs. I cursed my luck, condemned the house and its builder and each previous owner and wondered loudly and plaintively what sort of self-delusion had led me to think I could accomplish this job in one weekend.

I vehemently condemned the hubris that led me to believe I was up to this chore and wondered what I had been thinking and how I had dared to put my family in the position of being without the basic requirements of civilized life ON A SCHOOL NIGHT, for Gawd’s sake! And when I ran out of things to holler, I started over again at the beginning. I’m pretty sure I could be heard in the next county.

This went on for some time but gradually I ran out of steam. Finally I sat, wounded and defeated on my field of dishonor, staring at my filthy, cracked hands and trying to make sense of what should come next, when I heard my wife’s  voice.

She was standing at the access door to ‘down under,’ as we call the utility space in which I was working, and had clearly just been waiting for my soliloquy to run dry before speaking. She was calm but forceful as she began.

“I want you to stop and put away your tools. You’re done for tonight. I have a hotel room across the freeway and the girls and I are going over there to shower. When we get back, you’re going to take your turn. And in the morning, you’re going to call your boss and tell him you won’t be in. And you’ll get this done tomorrow.”

She didn’t say anything about my failed plan, my faulty estimate of the time the job would require, my abject failure to say something long past the time it should have been obvious we needed a Plan B. She didn’t reprimand me for the additions I’d made to our daughters’ vocabulary. She just presented a solution that worked for all of us.

It was one of the times I hollered and also one of the times that cemented for me the simple fact that Mary is a better life partner than I could ever have hoped for. And that simple fact still holds.

Mary is still keeping my head from exploding at appropriate moments and I like to think I do the same for her, as and when needed.

It’s going to be a great new year for me, deserved or not. I hope the same is true for each of you.

The gatherers

I’ve been ill of late – hence the paucity of sharing here - and today was my first day out and about. It was a really cool day with Mary, Daughter Two, the Brother-in-Chief and his esposa.  Since I’m still in recovery mode, we had to do things that didn’t require a great deal of exertion so we went to Chittenden Locks and then down to check out the fishing fleet on Salmon Bay.

The fleet includes many of the boats and mariners you see on shows such as Deadliest Catch, so we’re talking about serious fishermen. When you get within twenty feet of these boats, you realize how small they are in the context of some of the storms they run into in the Bering Sea.

I don’t know where they find these guys who risk their lives and livelihoods bringing seafood to my table. What they do is part of a long and proud tradition shared by the dorymen of the North Atlantic, the men who sail dhows and sampans, the lobstermen who break their backs working their strings of pots in every kind of weather and the indigenous Americans who balance precariously on flimsy platforms to wrest steelhead from the Columbia.

And of course, there are the farmers who bet their futures that the rain will come this year, but not too much. And the folks who grind the grains, load the gondolas, top-load the bales and drive the trucks. I’ve worked hard to get where I am but I’ve never had the kind of daily grind some of these folks face up to every day of a working lifetime.

In this world of modern convenience and specialization, in which most of us haven’t a clear idea where our next meal will really come from, perhaps in this time of thankful reflection we can spare a thought or two for those who labor and bear the risks of our collective food gathering.

Where I live

I know there’s an annoying element to the grand chauvinism of place that I’ve occasionally displayed in these pages virtual. I understand some few of you may actually have had quite your fill of my descriptions of the beauty of the Northwest in general and northwestern Washington (the real Washington, that is) in particular.

I understand all this and yet, I’m curiously unrepentant. Because the fact is, I do live here and I will call it a sad day when Mary and I finally give up and move somewhere else in order to maintain proximity to our Daughters, One and also Two.

For now, I’m content to be where I can watch orcas feeding from the Bremerton ferry, as I did a couple weeks ago. Or watch the spume from the breakers blowing over the floating bridge, which I’ve already done several times this year from the warmth and dryness of a metro bus.  

On a clear day, of which -  contrary to popular belief among people who’ve never made their home here - there are many, I can see three volcanoes from the same bus ride over the same bridge just by turning my head.

This is where I did winter camping with the Boy Scouts and had my paper route and mowed lawns and failed utterly to pursue my first schoolboy crush. And where my buddy Johnny fell out of the Big Fir while playing buck-buck and where my brother surprised the whole neighborhood when he chased the bully with a length of pipe and where we never caught a fish but never stopped trying and where the cat bit Anne right on the nose and where I accidentally stomped on Marilyn’s pet frog. (Turns out, frogs have more guts than one might think.)

This is also where I’ve spent most of my time as husband and father to three strong women who are the glory of my life. It’s where I’ve wielded chain saws with my brother and spackle knives with my wife and taught Two how to hammer and One how to cut shapes out of plywood for theatrical sets.

I could go on and likely I will after I post this blog and surrender to my private musings.  Mary and I are having a low key holiday with Two this year, the first without One.  We hung ornaments on the tree tonight, each and every one with a story attached.  A good anthropologist could put together a reasonable reconstruction of our lives in this house just by paying close attention to the narrative offered by the ornaments hanging on our tree.

We still have One’s ornaments but that will change one year soon as she establishes her own traditions and our tree will thenceforth tell less of the story. Or at least, the same story but from fewer points of view.

This place is home. It may not be for much longer but for the moment, it remains the place where my life is rooted.

My wish for each and all of you this holiday season is that you can take a few moments and just love being where and who you are. My life is rich and made richer by each of you and by these women. And of course, by this place.

We’ll  have family stuff taking up the next couple of days so who knows when I’ll be back to you. But wherever you are and whatever you call this holiday, I hope it’s a time of happiness and peace for you.

Resolved...

This next year is going to be our year, Mary’s and mine.

The year now ending has been a tough one, with upsets in both our jobs, multiple medical misfortunes for the family, more or less evenly distributed, and financial challenges related to the recent recession. I know – wah! But really, this year has been a pain in the bum. Even so, we appear to have gotten through it all well enough.

We’ve been talking a lot about what we want to do with our time and we’ve each settled on a major project for the next year. Mary will be studying for certification in a new field and as soon as my degree program is finito in June, I’m getting back on my book writing. And of course, the upgrading of this blog.

We’re going to do a bit more travelling, as well. Nothing fancy or expensive – refer back to the comment regarding the recession – but relaxing trips we can both enjoy. We’ll finally check out Pat and Patty’s place in Colorado, make it to California for visits with family and friends and perhaps, Christmas in Florida with Mary’s family and Angela.

We’re also keen on finally finishing this house that has been an ongoing project for going on twenty years.

2013 will be a good and productive year. That’s our resolution.

(Thanks to Sheila for a heads up regarding a typo in this post. Are you available for copy editing duties?)

Blogitude

As we head into the New Year, I’m determined to make two changes: less me and more writing output. The less me side of things will be a function of a magical combination that I’ve just invented and may soon patent: less in through the pie hole and more out through the sweat glands. Don’t know how I thought of it. We’ve joined a really good gym where I’ve found I really enjoy spending time. I’ll let you know how the whole eating thing works out.

As to the writing, I’m toying with the idea of taking this blog beyond the confines of a little vanity publication meant for a few close friends and actually start blogging. Of course, this would require a change in attitude.

I’ve become really lazy, both as to quantity and quality. Reading through some past postings, there are some typos that I’m shocked I didn’t catch, odd word choices, questionable usages, flagrant violation of the rules of punctuation, etc. All this as evidence of the way I write these things – once I have the idea, I just write until I run out of words and then hit the submit button. If I’m feeling particularly industrious, I might make as much as a single pass through to catch the most obvious sins. If I’m queasy about posting something – something personal about family or friends, for example – I may do some actual editing and will usually let Mary exercise veto power.

For the most part, though, what you see here is pretty much as it occurred to me. And that also speaks to the other side of the equation – quantity. I’ve felt free to post when the spirit moved me, which is the lazy man’s way of, well, being lazy. If I’m going to turn this thing into a real blog, and especially if I want to start building a following, I have to get that discipline thing going.

But of course, that would mean posting on time, when expected and only good writing free from obvious defects.  I REALLY like writing, and I’d like to start getting an actual conversation going with a regular family of readers, but discipline? Hm-m-m.

I believe perhaps Fagin put it best, “I think I’d better think it out again!”

My latest crush

There’s this guy who rides my bus. Okay, so lots of people ride my bus but one of the things that make this guy special – I’m assuming his friends and loved ones could identify other special-making attributes – is that he is frequently accompanied by a drop dead gorgeous young lady. I have a terrible crush on her. Don’t tell Mary.

She has beautiful blond hair, a trim figure and a come-hither gaze. She’s friendly and polite, interested in the people around her but entirely unobtrusive. Her fashion choices are limited and reserved. Most days, she just wears a vest that says “Guide Dog Puppy.”

I’ve been around service animals quite a lot and I know the rules, so I smile but no more. Occasionally, I’ll have a brief chat with her partner. But I don’t reach out to her or even acknowledge her directly. My yearning for her will go unrequited. She’s in training and when in harness it’s about reinforcement, not distraction.

This young lady will soon leave this man who has raised and socialized her for the next phase, a period of intense training and examination, culminating in her pairing with a human partner whose life will become inextricably interwoven with her own.  Or, she won’t make it through training and pairing for any number of reasons ranging from inability to grasp intelligent disobedience to previously undiagnosed dysplasia and will wind up with a loving family who will have the best pet they could ever imagine.

Whatever happens, this young lady is disposed by breeding and prepared by training to take her place in polite society. And best of all, she’ll be a fun-loving, loyal, protective and intelligent friend to a human who needs just what she has to offer.

This guy who accompanies her on bus rides is one of the good guys. He can’t help becoming attached to this wonderful lady and then has to give her up abruptly and entirely in order to allow her to fulfill her doggie destiny. And he does it gladly – has done it before and will likely do it again.

I really like this guy and I don’t really even know him. As I said, he’s one of the good guys.

I feel a little guilty for having a crush on his girl.

(NOTE: If you’ve interest in learning about Morris Frank and Buddy, the first dog-human pair whose success was pivotal in the development of training techniques perfected at The Seeing Eye, please find a copy of Love In The Lead: The Fifty-year Miracle of the Seeing Eye Dog by Peter Putnam.)

Children…

…should never have to cower in a storage room listening through a barricaded door to the terrifying sounds that signal the deaths of other children and their teachers.

A friend reminded me quite correctly today that the answer to this problem is more complex than just controlling guns or providing more mental health resources. It will take a lot of thought and good will and passion and sacrifice to make this sort of thing a historical footnote rather than a frequent current event.

Meanwhile, let’s start with the possible.

Stand up to bullying, especially on behalf of another.

Don’t laugh at cruel jokes.

Stop watching shows that depend on rudeness, stupidity and cruelty for laughs.

Stop patronizing stores that depend on de facto slave labor offshore to maintain their price structures.

You can make your own list. But we really have to start somewhere.

Headlines including ‘massacre’ have become much too common.

Approaching the cliff

I’m not a fan of brinksmanship, so I really don’t like the fact that pols on both sides of the aisle seem to find the edge so tantalizing. They know and you know and I know that they all assume they will make a deal at the last possible moment to avert fiscal disaster.

I would be much more confident about all this if I felt their self-confidence was well placed. In order to believe they WILL pull back from the precipice, one must believe that CAN pull back, which is to say that they are collectively competent to do so.

I wish I could believe.

I am sore afraid.

Bored ducks

I’ve had a long but not an intimate relationship with ducks. I suppose that’s why when I read a passage in which John Irving referred to “bored ducks,” it sort of clicked for me.

Of course, that’s it! They’re bored!

You see, I’ve often wondered at the frame of mind of waterfowl, ducks in particular. I mean, cormorants and gulls for the most part just go their own way, except to see us as a source of cast off food. The one time I spotted an albatross it was far at sea and other than the obvious references to ancient mariners and other lore of the sea, my primary reaction was that, damn - that was a big bird.

Geese, especially the Canadas that frequent our local lakes and beaches, have an agenda and when my activities intersect theirs it’s immediately, manifestly clear whose plan of the day the geese believe should prevail.  As with the gulls, they examine me as a potential source of food and failing that, they become guardedly aloof, ignoring me unless I should happen to approach their turf and they find it necessary to honk and bite and chase until I go safely away. And of course, to put a point on it, they leave their grease where it will inconvenience me should I decide to re-enter their hood.

Ducks are different. Oh sure, they aren’t immune to analysis of me as a possible food source but they go farther. I think they’re a bit curious about me. Or about the girls when they were young and we’d go explore the local duck ponds. They always seemed more interested in the girls than in me. Maybe it was my size or perhaps some silent and invisible duck-girl affinity.

They never stayed with us long. Not like the otters and harbor seals that approached our kayaks and circled so insistently, intent on finding out what we could do for them and whether we could be coaxed to play for a bit.

Ducks approach curiously but then, satisfied we have nothing of interest to offer, move on away in their unceasing search for something to do. Looking back a few times to make sure they haven’t overlooked some minor way in which we might interest them.

That’s it!

They’re bored. Of course!

Ducks don’t care about me or the girls or my paddle partners. They care about something – anything – that will bring something interesting into their lives.

Next time I’m around ducks, I’m going to do my best to be more entertaining. You should, too.

A list for 6 December, 2012…

…when the Washington State law allowing same-sex marriage went into effect.

Marriage is:

·         A confluence of two lives

·         A public, explicit statement of an agreement that has already been entered into in private and implicitly at a profound personal level

·         A celebration of having found another person upon whose happiness and well-being your own depends

·         Built on a foundation of love and respect or it is nothing

·         Tough, for anyone of any sexual orientation

·         Personal

 

Marriage is not:

·         Based primarily on sex, particularly in a day when few people go into a wedding as virgins and most of us will outlive our libidos.

·         Based on the tenets of a particular religion , especially when you consider that as an institution it predates the religious traditions of the people fighting gay marriage

·         Limited to those of us on the “right” side of the sexual orientation line

·         Designed solely for the creation of progeny

·         The province of a particular political party of my former affiliation

·         Selfish, internally or externally

·         Easy, for anyone of any sexual orientation

Dave Brubeck - in memorium

There is one less artist in the world tonight.

Dave Brubeck was one of my all time favorite musicians and must have been a lot of people’s faves because he was the first jazz musician to sell a million records. The year I was five, the Dave Brubeck Quartet put out a platter called Time Out on which they experimented with non-traditional time signatures. A huge hit single from that album was Take Five, in which the melody and breaks were so expertly woven around the then-revolutionary  5/4 time signature  that most people didn’t  realize right away just why it sounded ‘different.’  I loved the piano and sax solos – Paul Desmond was copied and copied and copied again by lounge players all over the world. Eugene Wright’s bass made you feel right at home in five.

Of course, Joe Morello’s trap work was what grabbed and held me. The drum solo was like a sidebar conversation to the main piece and went its own way for awhile before rejoining the rest of the quartet.  Even ten years after that recording hit the charts, it was magical to be a young drummer hearing it for the first time. Of course, I had to learn it. I had to wait until no one was in the house to practice because without Brubeck chording on the vamp background, it just sounded like a high school kid beating on the drums. Which is of course what I was.

Brubeck and various incarnations of his combo produced a large body of work, much of it in inconvenient, marvelous times. Every piece was interesting and entertaining.  Dave Brubeck continued to play at least as recently as earlier this year and was 91 when he passed.

Daughter One likes to talk about the importance of following your passion as your life’s work. Mr. Brubeck did that. In spades.

Our kids

A week or two ago, I saw a photo on Facebook of our friends’ drop-dead-gorgeous daughter and it came back to mind this evening. I got to thinking about daughters and sons and family in general.  I’m on post-surgical sick watch with Mary (not to worry, all is well) with not much to do but stand by to meet her needs. Both daughters checked in on her by phone. Which is what daughters do, of course.

One and Two check in with us when they have problems or something to complain about or crow about or when they need advice or for no reason at all. And we call them for advice (yes, we do!) or to conduct family business but most often, just to hear their voices. Which is what parents do, of course.

Our daughters are always going to be part of our lives and we will always be part of theirs. As thrilled as we are to see them slipping their moorings and heading out toward their own horizons, we feel their presence. They’re frequently beyond our reach but never outside our embrace.

I wonder how many young adults are out there adrift with no family to send them off or to whom they can come back home. In this country, we do a better job than some of providing foster care for kids whose parents are out of the picture for myriad reasons. Yes, I know we can argue about how well our systems serve the needs of these children. As well as we do, we can definitely do better. And we can debate the best, most caring, most effective approach to providing for the needs of children without reliable home lives.

No matter how well we do for these kids as kids, we utterly fail them as young adults. Because when they hit a given age – eighteen for most benefit programs – they “age out” of the system. The transition is as abrupt and potentially cataclysmic as if they’d sailed over a waterfall.

At seventeen years and three hundred, sixty-four days, they have a home and food and clothing and a school district. The next day, they’re emancipated. Which is an unintentionally cynical term meaning they’re cast adrift with neither compass nor anchor.

I can’t imagine what it would have been like for me when I turned eighteen and went off to the Navy if my parents and siblings, and Mr. McKay, the Ee Girls and Mr. Unland and Aunt Bobbie and so many others hadn’t been in my life. Each of them was there for me at a critical juncture with words of advice or encouragement or even (ahem!) comeuppance as appropriate. And my connection to each of them came about one way or another through family and friends.  

So what about these kids who at eighteen become presumptively independent adults for whom no one has any further official responsibility? Who shares their triumphs and helps them through the rough spots?  What network of relationships provides them with assurance that they’re connected?

I think that’s maybe the word I’ve been looking for. Connection.

We need to do better. Meanwhile, it would be a good thing to at least help these newly minted adults know that they are a welcome part of Us.

While we’re thinking about the holidays and soldiers far from home, perhaps we should also give a thought to these young adults for whom ‘home’ is an illusory concept. If you’re wondering how to do that, please take a moment to peruse the "Foster Care To Success” site through this link: http://www.fc2success.org/how-you-can-help/build-a-student-care-package/.

Great minds

Sheesh!

Mary and I made a Half Price Books run this evening and one of my finds was a John Irving anthology which would have been a steal at three times the three bucks they charged me.

So I’m thumbing through this find and I read the first paragraph of Trying to Save Piggy Sneed:

“This is a memoire but please understand that (to any writer with a good imagination) all memoirs are false. A fiction writer’s memory is an especially imperfect provider of detail; we can always imagine a better detail than the one we can remember. The correct detail is rarely, exactly, what happened; the most truthful detail is what could have happened, or what should have…being a writer is a strenuous marriage between careful observation and just as carefully imagining the truths you haven’t had the opportunity to see.”

Now, I have to admit I was a bit taken aback at the cheek of the guy, so shamelessly plagiarizing my comments in an earlier blog. But then, I realized that the fact of my finding this anthology in a clearance bin at HPB probably means that the Irving work predates mine own musings on the topic in these virtual pages.

I suppose I should be thrilled at Irving’s implied inclusion of moi in the “us” of writers with good imaginations. I wonder how he knew.

Wonders in ice

A couple of times in the last decade, I’ve happened to be in Fairbanks during or just after the World Ice Art Championships. Both times, it was a stellar experience. And not just because of the blanket of stars above.

Anyway, my bro and his wife will be up there this year just in time for the end of the judging and they’re crazy if they don’t check it out. And I realized this is something I want to share with any of you who’ve vacations to plan and have never perused professionally carved ice art.

If you have the brains Gawd gave a corkscrew, you’ll stop reading right now and follow this link: http://www.icealaska.com. And be sure to click on “The Sculptures,” after which I promise you’ll be terminally hooked.

And if it should come to pass that you actually find yourself traveling to Fairbanks to view ice art some future winter, perhaps you’ll consider some advice from one who’s made the trek from the Lower Forty-Eight to the land of frozen masterpieces:

·         Take warm clothes. I have a garment we call my ‘Alaska coat’ that I swear would keep me toasty in anything above absolute zero. It has a hood and a whole bunch of large pockets that I’ve filled with gloves, mittens, a scarf, a watch cap, and several chemical hand warmers. It goes with me to Fairbanks in March, even if I have to pack an extra bag to manage it (the thing is huge).

·         Try to time your visit for just before – but not during – the judging. You’ll avoid the judging crowds and you’ll see a nice mix of finished goods and artworks in progress. And many of the carvers are only too willing to chat with genuinely interested touristas. Especially if you offer to fetch a hot drink.

·         Go at night.  Most of the artworks are intended to be seen with the lighting the artists have provided. It’s worth the shivering (which won’t happen if you’ve heeded the advice adjacent to the first bullet above).  And if you do manage the trip, by all means…

·         SEND ME PICTURES!

You can thank me when you get back.

Another customer service rant

I’m midway through a course with (name of international online university based in Seattle deleted to avoid lawsuits) just now and I’ve been unable to gain access to my university-provided e-mail for about a week. Three contacts later, no joy. The guy on the help desk had to send it in for “troubleshooting.” Isn’t troubleshooting within the realm of tasks the help desk person should be able to accomplish? I’m just sayin’.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of education. The Khan Academy, MIT-x, and even the Brand X organization with which I’m currently, unfortunately enmeshed have made me think a lot about how we provide stellar education and training, where and when needed.

There are a lot of serious minds working on this but seemingly, none of them work for the “University” to which I tendered a couple grand in return for which they’re utterly failing to provide me with anything approaching a satisfactory learning experience.

I’m not bitter.

Okay, so yes I am. The big rub is that I really love both teaching and learning and I won’t have that many college-level courses in my future so I’d like to make each one count. I love going to school and it’s frustrating to have the experience ruined by technical difficulties that should be among their core strengths, being online providers and all.

Let me just say – and I mean this in the most profound sense – wa-a-a-a-a-ah!

Pleasant is plenty

I had a couple of nice customer service encounters today and thought I’d share them with you.

I was trying to check out at the drug store and the guy ahead of me had printed a whole raft of photographs in a variety of sizes and styles. The young guy helping him couldn’t find the photo price list so the customer went through this long-winded dissertation that included not only so many of this size and so many of that, but also a fairly detailed discussion of the content of each picture.

I suppose some of you expect to read next that I fumed and grunted and eventually read someone the riot act. Admittedly, that might occasionally have been my response to such a delay. But it didn’t happen this time, and not because of any forbearance on my part. You see, this young guy kept giving me glances of acknowledgement and a couple of times apologized for the delay.

Even more to the point, he held me at bay without making the picture guy feel rushed. He knew his lack of knowledge about how to handle the transaction – he had to go back and forth to the photo machine a couple times to confirm his understanding of what he was handling – was delaying both of us. We knew it. And he knew we knew it. But his pleasant approach made the whole thing all right.

Later, I was picking up fish and chips from Ivar’s and the young lady taking orders and running the register was delightful, if only marginally competent. Turns out she had been working there just a couple of weeks and this was her first night running the front solo.  The reason I know this is that I asked her while I was waiting for the order I’d had to repeat a couple times before she got it right.

She’d had some trouble figuring out what the customer next in line wanted, as well. But she persevered, asking and repeating in her friendly way until she got it right, smiling genuinely all the while. And in chatting with her once our orders were back, I found that she truly loved her job, working with the public and bustling about, keeping her station clean and stocked. She was in her element, even if she hadn’t quite grasped all the elements.

Nothing particularly profound here except that in separate customer service encounters today, young  folks kept this crotchety old turd reasonably happy and even entertained when I could very well have been impatient and annoyed. And have been, in similar but less friendly situations.

Sometimes, pleasant is all you need.

Utterances to avoid on Thanksgiving Day

I’ll hold your hair for you.

No, I LIKE my turkey rare.

This is almost as good as my Mom used to make it!

Um, what is this again?

I’ll do the dishes.

It’s alright – he yakked it up!

Was I supposed to pull out the little bag before I cooked the turkey?

Hey, at least the dog’s happy!

I’ve never seen one actually explode like that…

And my all-time favorite, uttered innocently as your spouse’s expression heads south, “No, was I supposed to?”

…for which I’m thankful

      ·         I am not on Survivor with Abi

·         That place on my side stopped itching

·         I haven’t caught Clif’s cold…yet

·         I found a last course that I’ll actually enjoy

·         Lots of rain = no yard work

·         Most of the people at LA Fitness are as unfit as I

·         Tomorrow I get to eat turkey that I don’t have to cook

·         Almost all my clothes are clean

·         Three books I haven’t read on my shelf

·         I have enough leftover teriyaki for a light lunch before turkey dinner

·         My new hoodie jacket is da bomb!

·         Really cool chop in the Lake today

·         Daughters having fun together in Boston

·         Mary

·         All of you

No clear answers here

So, I-502 goes into effect December 6^th in Washington state. For those of you who reside elsewhere, this is the questionable result of an initiative aimed at legalizing marijuana in the state. Which has now come to pass.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I do believe our jails and prisons are way over-populated with people whose crimes harmed no one but themselves. On the other hand, I’m not enthralled with the idea of more people being encouraged to toke up.

The bottom line for me is that the government must have, as the Supremes are wont to say, a ‘compelling interest’ when it moves to constrain the activities of its citizens. And truly, I don’t see how cannabis represents a more compelling risk to the populace than booze. The last time we tried to outlaw alcohol, I don’t believe it actually went all that well.

Now that a couple of states have declared marijuana legal for recreational use, I’m going to be very interested to watch the Feds’ reaction. When the Washington Supremes and the 9^th Circuit come head to head on this issue, as eventually it seems to me they must, we may just have an interesting discussion of states’ rights. Too bad it will be over such a silly issue.

Marijuana  has long represented a conundrum for parents who grew up as I did in a time when pot was widely available and a three finger bag without too many seeds or stems cost ten bucks – or so I’ve been led to understand, doncha know. You really don’t want your own children getting stoned and driving over the center line. But then they ask the question and what do you do – lie?

For those of us in the “Yes I tried it once – for about six years” category, it’s become increasingly difficult to counsel abstinence while looking your offspring in the eye. And frankly, one look at my midriff might easily lead the impartial observer to wonder just how many times I heard the Call Of The Munchies over the years.

As I said, I’m torn on this one. But it comes down for me to the fact that as a government of the people, we just have more important things to do than incarcerate something on the order of 40,000 people for marijuana-related offenses while drunk drivers are allowed to keep re-offending until they kill someone. It’s a matter of balancing priorities.

Putting people in jail for toking is just not one of mine. Sorry if that offends you.

Best

As I’ve mentioned before, I keep a running list of ideas for future missives, stories and rants.  Some will end up on this site, some will be incorporated into other writing and some will never succed in capturing my interest.  I have ideas on various scraps of paper in stacks I’ve been meaning to sort. Ideas are written on the backs of ads and receipts and some wind up in the trash without ever being read and turned into something. Some are written on the backs of my hands and don’t survive the next shower.

One list came to my attention tonight that wasn’t my own. It’s captured in a Word doc in my computer writing file called “Mr. Woods’ Essay Topics.” And I really enjoyed reading it just now. Perhaps I’ll share the list with you in a future rambling.

Some background: Mr. Woods was Daughter One’s English teacher in high school and one ‘extra’ he offered was coaching in preparing for college apps. He was constantly encouraging his students to think of topics beyond the time-worn examples that admissions officers get tired of reading. So, he put together a list of topics that he would hand out to sophomores and juniors who were not yet immersed in the college quest. His idea was that every now and then, an underclassman would pull out one of the topics and jot down their thoughts. Then, when they had to write college app essays, they’d have all these starter ideas. I still think it’s a cool idea.

So, I was glancing through his list and one of the lines read “The best reason for going to college is…”

I’m engaged in completing my degree right now and to be frank, taking these last few classes is not going to do much to enhance my career opportunities at this stage of the game. I’ve told you before that I’d promised my mom I’d finish and now that she’s gone, I can’t renegotiate. But really the fundamental reason I’m working to finish the degree is because I want it for myself. That’s my reason. And you know, it really is the best reason.

That question could apply to a lot of aspects of our lives. What’s the best reason for…you fill in the rest.

One of you has been thrilling me with the trips she takes. I’m thinking about writing a blog entry about the best reason for taking a vacation. By which I mean, a specific vacation.

We know or think we know why we do the things we do, but it’s the word ‘best’ that makes this thought process so interesting to me. If I simply ask why I want to go on vacation, I might end up with a white bread version of what should be not only relaxing but invigorating. But Sheila thinks about the ‘best’ reason to plan a vacation and she ends up with the best vacations. We’ve watched her photos from some of the most interesting locales in the world and she’s soon to be off for an ice hotel north of the Arctic Circle. Now the reason for that choice is a best reason.

I think this is the essence of what Mr. Wood was inviting his students to explore. Don’t settle for the first answer. Or even a really good answer. Take the time to think of the best answer and you’ll get into the college that’s perfect for you, find a vacation that’s outside the right box, recall the most important advice you’ve received and thus be able to consider taking it.

Thanks once again to Mr. Woods. And as always, to each and all of you for listening.

Blockage

Our walk yesterday took us through my childhood neighborhood, past most of the houses I once served as the neighborhood paperboy. It was a lot of fun showing Mary where the various adventures of my youth took place. And me being me, it got me to thinking.

This neighborhood defined my world from ages two through fourteen. And as we walked, I realized that in some ways, I’d never left. The memories didn’t so much flood back as well up.

I could share fine details of the lives of most of the families on my block but outside that rectangle , the information becomes fuzzier. To put a point on it, one’s block actually referred to the houses on both sides of one’s street but only as far as the cross streets on each end. We knew some but not all of the folks behind us and nothing at all about the folks one street farther gone.

As I said, within narrow geographic confines, I can recall lots of stuff.  There were eighteen houses and at one point thirty-four dogs (yes, I counted – it got boring making the newspaper rounds at five in the morning) on what I considered ‘my block.’ The woods behind the Windalls’ and the Franks’ houses were shared by all the kids on the block as a sort of communal back yard.  In that grey house, Dave Hunt had a great train layout in the extra bedroom and used to let us watch him fly his model airplanes. He was a teenager who didn’t mind a ten-year-old tagging along behind him so long as said ten year old was available to fetch things from time to time.  Then there was the time he decided to walk across the Wilburton trestle – not, as it happens, the best idea he ever had. And I followed dutifully along, which was not my best idea.

As we rounded the corner headed toward the erstwhile Chez McDermott, I told Mary all about Johnny Sullivan who broke his arm playing buck-buck and Cha Cha Hitchcock who’d had a flagpole fall on his leg as a kid and spent most of his time in a wheelchair. There was the Wilde girl who learned the hard way that a fallen bee hive was not to be kicked and Steve O’Donnell, whose mom was the first woman I ever saw naked when I went to the back door looking for Steve just as she came out of the shower. Over there lived the Reeks, in whose driveway my cousin Sue taught me to ride a bike and just there was the powerline over which Pat’s toy parachute man met his lonely fate. And the Sullivans lived there and Nicholas’s here and all the other families whose kids we played with. I could tell you the precise layout of every house on our block but cross one street and the mental images become sketchy. Beyond our block, even my paper boy’s knowledge of the area ended at each front door.

I could spend hours telling these stories about life within the space of a few acres centered on 14410 SE 15^th St., but almost nothing about the blocks beyond.  It was as though there was a Great Wall at 144^th and a sheer cliff at 148^th, separating our block from the rest of the known world. Oh, there were occasional islands of familiarity. Within a couple of blocks, we knew the Velottas, the Golkas and the Owens – sort of – and the Lallys. But not the people living to either side of them because that was another whole universe.

My friend Mike Nowak lived a mile or so away beyond our school and while I could walk blindfolded around the Nowak house, I always felt a bit like an alien in the Nowaks’ neighborhood. I wondered what it must be like to live there.

My daughters must have had a different sense of neighborhood growing up. They went to a school a bus ride away and so most of their friends lived in ‘other’ neighborhoods. We didn’t have groups of kids blocking off our street to play kickball or Frisbee. There was no such thing as ‘going out to play,’ except to the back yard to play with each other and the dog.

We did everything we could to allow Daughters One and Two to have their latter day analog to the neighborhood gang. I hope they feel we succeeded. In a lot of ways, their view of the world was wider than was mine growing up. I lived in a kind of cloister in which I knew everyone. Heck, I delivered papers to most of their parents.  There is a physical place I can walk through with my wife and show her the framework within which my childhood played out.

For One and Two, it will be different. I hope different doesn’t mean less. Because good memories are the blanket that keeps you warm on cold nights.  

I’m probably worrying too much, a habit of mine that I wish I could kick. Because the truth is, a bunch of houses facing a common street don’t make a neighborhood. It’s not about proximity, at least not entirely. I’m guessing One and Two will have memories of their own ‘hood and it has more to do with the friends than with street addresses.

It's that time again!

No, no, it’s not another list. Relax.

The election is over and the holidays approacheth. Which means three things that tickle my giggler: extra days off, lots of good, home cooked food and Christmas movies!!!

I LOVE Christmas movies! Especially the formulaic ones put out by the well-meaning but tasteless folks at Hallmark.

It probably sounds like I’m doing a back-handed slam at the Christmas movie industry but I swear that’s not the case. I truly believe these movies are the least creative, most predictable features ever filmed outside of porn (or so I hear) or perhaps military training films. And I love them, every one.

Mary and I watched one today. A mother of three who’s been deserted by her ne’er-do-well soon-to-be-ex husband finds herself stranded in a small but lovely town where the good people all pull together to help her arrange a great Christmas for her standard Hallmark kids – the elfish toddler, the wise beyond her years girl and the troubled little boy – and she starts to feel attraction to the young-cop-with-baggage until they have a misunderstanding and he gives the appearance of going back to the harridan who left him at the altar although of course he’ll eventually end up with the heroine, but we don’t know that yet (okay, so anyone who’s ever seen a Hallmark movie knows they’ll end up together at the end, duh!). BIG BREATH! And there’s an older widow who takes her under her wing and a sensitive but clueless minister and of course, the gruff-but-caring old geezer, usually played by Ed Asner but today by Edward Hermann. Asner must have been busy. But Hermann-Asner did a great job of pulling the mother out of her funk and on the side, giving the son just the advice he needed to deal with the playground bully at school.

You get the picture but if not, just watch any Hallmark Christmas movie. They’re pretty much all the same. No surprises. Minor but predictable heart tugs. Don’t know why I love these things but I do.

Except the one this afternoon with Jamie Gertz doing a really ba-a-a-a-ad Jersey accent. Why anyone would intentionally pretend to have a Jersey accent is beyond me but if you’re going to make the attempt, for goodness sake, do it well. That may be the only Hallmark Christmas movie I’ve ever turned off.

‘Tis the season to be hokey and I intend to wring every drop of Christmas spirit out of some of the dumbest made-for-TV movies ever to hit the airwaves. Or, the cable, as the case may be.

I can’t wait for the day after Thanksgiving, when the non-Hallmark Christmas movies start making the rounds of the re-run circuit and my Christmas cheer kicks into overdrive. The original Miracle on 34^th Street is my all-time fave, but I’ll gladly settle for The Santa Clause. And when there’s nothing good on the tube, it’s Anne Murray’s Christmas on the CD player.

For the time being, though, it’s Hallmark time and this holiday hopeful will watch every one I can.

Progress?

I’ve been reading a book for the sheer delight the last several days. Or at least, it started for the sheer delight but has become something more. This author, an international phenom with a string of best sellers, has always been dependable for action and mystery, compelling characters and unexpected plot turns. And absolutely reliable in the sense of providing reading for entertainment that required little introspection, that transported me to a fascinating but utterly disposable world of what if. The author has been a great benefactor for the frequent flier.

The author has taken a different path in this book, electing to use it as a vehicle for explication of a certain personally held philosophy. The book does a great and subtle job of displaying the fallacies and potential horrors of utilitarian ethics and promoting the fundamental truth that even in the calculus of greatest good for the greatest number, the individual must remain sovereign. Even the greatest end does not justify a means that includes violation of the rights of the individual.

I’ve really enjoyed this book on several levels. It was a great read, as they say and also a thought-provoking experience.

By now you know there’s a ‘but’ coming, a ‘however’ that justifies the tone of this missive and the fact that I’m hiding the names of book and author. After all, if I wanted to recommend the book outright, I’d do so. I will later in another post, where I can hide the connection to this blog.

Here’s the rub: The book is badly edited. Ba-a-a-adly edited. I started to become leery at about the third misspelling. Then, I caught syntax errors that couldn’t be explained by lingua franca or regional voice. The real tip-off came when I noticed the frequency of redundancies.

This book wasn’t exposed to the ministrations of a competent copy editor. They used a program! Perhaps even one as lightweight as the spell and grammar checker in standard word processing software.

Living where I do, I’m surrounded by the folks who write many of the standard office programs (get it? Office programs?) that most of us use. And from close association with them, I can tell you that perhaps the smartest thing one can do if you enjoy writing and value proper usage is to disable the supplied language / usage monitor. The folks who write those programs are the same ones who have turned ‘access’ to a verb form and pronounce tilde with a long ‘e.’ They mean well but don’t get it. They don’t understand the gulf of difference between computer language and language.

So, back to the book in question. The errors are all consistent with the use of a program rather than a human. The misspellings were all of the type that software doesn’t catch – a misspelling of the intended word that is still a legitimate word in its own rite. The redundancies would have been caught by a competent copy editor but were entirely hidden to a program designed to find and delete only literal and proximate word repetitions.

There may well be some of you thinking I’m a prig and of course, you’d be right. But I’m not writing this merely for the sake of priggishness. I believe in good writing. I wish I could write as well as the author in question. So it hurts me physically to see this author’s writing corrupted by what had to have been a bean-counting decision to cut out the cost of an adept and sensitive copy editor.

The true tragedy here has nothing to do with me. Well, okay. It’s somewhat about me or I wouldn’t have written this post. But it has more to do with the general dumbing down of, well, everything that’s part and parcel of our descent into reliance on others. The others in this case made some bad decisions.

When I’m teaching process, one refrain I always include, several times in a multi-day class, is that tools are good for organizing and displaying information but people should make the decisions. The more we leave the decisions to the tools, the riskier the proposition becomes.

When we trust the tool, we trust the tool maker. And in the case in question, an experienced copy editor with a passion for great writing is infinitely more trustworthy than a programmer with an English degree.

Relying on ‘editors’ employed to create lowest-common-denominator software filters rather than engaging professionals isn’t progress, it’s surrender. I’m not ready to wave a white flag.

Why I voted how I voted

I started to read the various postings today regarding the election but I had to stop. Between the snarky comments and the whining from those who found themselves on the “losing side” of various choices, I just couldn’t read any more.

The ones that really chap my hide are the pundits who profess to understand why we all voted the way we did. Here’s a clue-in: I voted the way I did because I felt this person was more qualified than the other and is likely, in my view, to help take us where I think we need to go.

I voted in favor of this idea because I think it’s only fair and against that one because passing it will – in my humble opinion – have some very negative unintended consequences.

I voted against a few people, too. And I did so because they’ve aligned themselves with a movement I consider poisonous. I made one decision based on my analysis of which candidate I consider to be fundamentally honest.

Here’s the thing: I don’t know if all my votes were for the ‘right’ person or proposition. But I made them based on my hope for the future and the best information at hand.

Just please don’t second-guess my motives just because you’re ostensibly an expert. Because one thing is for sure – in every contest decided last night, half of you “experts” backed the wrong horse.

That was silly

So, today I decided to tackle the kitchen sink. I’ve been sick for over a week and I’m really fed up with being a moaning, hacking couch potato. And the sink was both leaking and failing to drain, so it was high time to clean out and re-set the strainer.

Now, we’ve been having this problem for some time, including several weekends when Mary and I were both home. Why I chose today, when I’m not entirely up to snuff (I’m still sniffing) and no one else is in the house to help will remain a mystery.

Here’s the thing… If you’re going to pull the drain and strainer assembly from your kitchen sink, one of two conditions must prevail. Either,

1.       You need to have a helper; or,

2.       You need to have a tool called a strainer wrench, in addition to the strap wrench you use to turn the locking ring.

I had neither a helper nor a strainer wrench. Which means I spent about an hour trying to grow a third arm or alternatively, find some way to jam the strainer in place so that it wouldn’t just spin while I tried to free the locking ring. Note for those of you who might try this in future – long screwdrivers, duct tape, the handle end of a channel lock wrench and an old butter knife are all equally and utterly useless for this task.

It’s entirely possible I created several previously unimagined expletives this afternoon. I’m proud of a couple of them but not proud enough to share them here.

I blew about an hour before I headed off to the hardware store, tail between my legs, for the right tool. Of course, by then I’d bludgeoned the existing strainer out of round, so I had to buy one of them, as well.

There’s an old saying to the effect that nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

The job I did today should have been foolproof.

Ahem…

Disambiguate

Yes, it’s true – I have a new favorite word du jour and I’m fixin’ ta go on ad nauseum about how cool it is. Sorry. But then, not so much.

Sorry, that is.

I’ve always sorta liked this word. I love words in general but this one is not only cool sounding, but its meaning is something I can definitely get behind.

In the transitive verb form (alright, I looked that part up, what of it?) it’s disambiguate, which is to make less ambiguous. Which is to make more clear. Direct, even.

I wish the folks on the extreme fringy right would get behind disambiguation. I wish they would just come out and say what the rest of us know – that they don’t really give a rodent’s rear end for the Constitution, and in fact, they don’t really understand the whole point of it. Which is this:

Government exists to organize the factors that must be organized in order to allow us to live together in relative peace and prosperity, and to take advantage of the economy of scale and buying power that allows us to provide ourselves with the things that all of us need collectively and none of us could afford individually. Things like roads, public education and national defense.

Government does not exist to allow a bunch of self-absorbed yahoos to shape our self-governance on the basis of their favorite prejudices or their deeply held religious superstitions. And in every case you can name in which government is based on or subordinate to religious tradition, I will be glad to point out the segment of that society that is being subjugated.   

If that’s not enough disambiguation, let me try this: I worship neither Gods nor flags. I believe deeply in this society and our Constitution. I hope both can survive this swing to the right. Because I would give my life to defend this country but I don’t pray and I don’t pledge allegiance to scraps of cloth.

I’m not a committed – or even comfortable – Democrat. It’s tragic to me to have to vote for candidates while holding my nose. But the folks who have misappropriated the name Tea Party have made clear that if they take over, ultimately they’d be putting people like me in camps. They claim to be for personal freedom but what they’re for is the freedom to force the rest of us to toe their mark.

Sorry for the rant. I promise to be more antidisambiguous another time.
Or not.  

Katie Piper

(NOTE: You can Google this young lady’s name and ignore what I’m going to write following or you can read this post first but either way, please make a point of learning about her. Be warned, her story is not for the faint of heart. But I guarantee it will warm your heart.)

We (okay, I) frequently find myself bemoaning the seeming lack of (commitment, dedication, whatever) of the generation following mine own.  They’re not sufficiently aware of politics. They tend to be rude, by my lights. They’re too often self-absorbed, uninformed, clueless.

It’s easy to discount the motivations of others, especially when they belong to a definable demographic that’s different from your own. I find myself categorizing, measuring and ultimately feeling superior to strangers on the street or the bus, people in the news, and yes, kids. Which these days, means basically anyone under about age thirty-five. Tragic, I know, but I’ve never claimed not to be a Fudd.

I don’t like this aspect of my personality. But it’s undeniable and so, I welcome opportunities to remind myself that I’m not the source and arbiter of all things good and right.

A young – in this case, seriously, young – woman by the name of Katie Piper is the latest in a thankfully long list of folks who’ve forced me to adjust my world view. Katie is a beautiful human being whose very definition of beauty was redefined by the assailant a disgruntled ex-boyfriend hired to throw acid in her face.

Imagine being a drop-dead gorgeous twenty-something until the day you wake up in a hospital bed with one eye destroyed and half your face covered with scar tissue. And then go to www.katiepiperfoundation.org.uk to learn what Katie did.

I’m not qualified to sermonize about the courage, generosity and beauty you’ll see on this site. So I won’t. I’ll just say this – I think she’s still gorgeous.

Picking cherries

I came across a photo the other day that brought back some memories.

It showed our kitchen counter chock-a-block with bowls, pans and Tupperware, each brimming with freshly picked cherries.

Grandma Norma stayed with us for part of the summer several years in a row when the girls were young and during that time, we sort of settled into a routine for the visits. She would always teach them how to do something. One summer, she taught the art of crochet.  A couple of summers, we all made capoletti  together. We’d have a thousand of these little meat-filled dumplings laid out on a beach towel to dry before we froze them for use on special occasions in making caplets.

Don’t know what caplets are? Too bad – go get your own northern Italian mother-in-law. I’m not sharing.

Norma always seemed to show up in time to pick the cherries from the tree in our backyard. She got a big kick out of picking them with her granddaughters. Daughter Two was particularly good at cherry picking, or so I recall.

Grandma made pies and – if I whined loudly enough – streudel from the cherries and whatever else we had in the way of fruit filling. Good stuff.  She was a great baker and all I had to do was eat my share. Or, perhaps a bit more.

I don’t know if a picture is really worth a thousand words but it’s at least worth more than these couple hundred. Because what I can’t put in these words is the taste of those streudels or the pride a little girl gets out of sharing pastry made with her grandma from cherries they picked together.