All I want for Christmas...

I had just typed in the title of this thing when the phone rang and it was Daughter Two checking in. One question she asked was the standard “What do you want for Christmas?” I know this isn’t amazing as coincidences go, it being the official start of the Christmas shopping season but it did sort of confirm that this is the topic for the day.

I seldom have good gift suggestions for those inclined to ask. Which is not exactly a line stretching down the block and around the corner, so I don’t really need to think about it that much.

But if I DID think about it…

I’d like a potato peeler with a fat handle to replace the standard, skinny metal one we’ve had for as long as I can recall. Arthritis, mild as mine may be, is not helped by skinny handles.

A gift certificate to Half-Price Books or Goodwill is always a good idea. I read more than I can afford and since my odd combination of visual deficits means that I frequently need to break the binding of a book in order to comfortably read it, I can’t rely on library books to meet my reading needs.

Okay, so here’s the problem – I can’t think of anything else just now. And by ‘just now,’ I really mean that I’ve never been good at suggesting gifts for myself. This arises, I submit, not from any failure of imagination but rather from lack of need.

I just went through the exercise of sorting through all the various office supplies that have been clogging shelves, desk tops, counters and boxes in just about every nook and also cranny around Chez McDermott for as long as I can recall. The sheer volume of pens, pencils, markers, paper in an astounding variety of colors and sizes and weights, at least a dozen erasers, not including the kind that you stick on the end of a pencil – I’m talking Pink Pearls or larger, several staplers, at least a dozen rulers. The list goes on.

We’ve gone through all our daughters’ school years and my degree path and now Mary’s certification courses and apparently we never actually, you know, looked through what we had before heading out to the office supply store. And we also seem never to have thrown anything away.

I don’t want to give the impression that we’re hoarders, not in a general sense. But as to office supplies, I’ll take the hit.

My point is that I don’t really need anything. Okay, so I can always use more sweat socks. And sweat bands, since I need to keep ahead of Zoey’s consumption of them (It ain’t easy - the dog LOVES chewing sweat bands!).

There are kids all over the place that need stuff. Basic stuff or fun stuff. But much of it, very necessary stuff. If you read the request cards on one of those mall gift trees, the number of kids asking for winter coats will break your heart. It’s Christmas and they’re asking for winter coats. Damn.

Kids in the area around Tacloban would like (fill in anything, because these kids just lost everything). Kids in many of our own school districts would like books with the covers still attached or any sort of art supplies. Children in Africa, Asia, and Latin America would sell their souls for a daily dose of vitamin A, assuming they understood that it would save their night vision and even their lives.

Really, I didn’t start this post idea as a sermon but it seems to be going that way. Sorry about that.

It’s just that I really don’t need much, if anything. And lots of Dads in this world don’t know how they’re going to feed their children tomorrow.

You know what to do.

The Phillippines

Seven thousand islands.

Imagine trying to form a nation comprising over seven thousand islands spread over well over a hundred thousand square miles, populated by nearly a hundred million people descended from a patchwork quilt of peoples and cultures. The primary languages are Tagolog and English but the welter of tongues spoken in the various nooks and crannies of those thousands of islands provides careers for linguists and anthropologists by the boatload.

I spent a great deal of time in the Philippines during my time as a naval person. While stories of American sailors partaking of the joys of the flesh while berthed in Subic Bay are generally not overstated, it is also true that many of us were less interested in hooking up than in seeing the country. And a beautiful country it is. I loved the countryside around Mt Pinatubo and the gorgeous ocean inlets and the incredibly lush farmland. Jose Rizal Park in Manila has a garden area in which I spent hours just sitting and noticing.

It’s also generally a poor country. Yes, the industrial sector has increased remarkably in the last few decades but still, you don’t have to leave the highways of Luzon between Ologapo and Manila and Baguio and Angeles City to see abject poverty first hand. The country immediately surrounding any of the major cities is agrarian and you don’t see a lot of John Deeres or Kubotas working the fields. Most of the fields are worked by the grunt labor of humans and water buffaloes.

Most housing outside the cities is not built on steel-reinforced concrete pads and most plumbing relies solely on gravity ditches. The people live from hand to mouth and are constantly one failed crop away from disaster.

I’ve been in the Phillippines during some pretty foul weather but rode out my typhoons at sea. I’ve never seen the direct results of a typhoon hitting the area, but I can easily imagine what the people over there are going through.

 If you’ve enough to feel the need to give thanks this Thanksgiving, consider giving some of it to Phillippine relief. These are good, hard working people who’ve just had the rug pulled out from under them. (You can Google “Phillippines relief” and get a lot of information. USA Today has assembled a good list of relief againcies active in the area.)

To know or not (know)

“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching

Let me just say this about that….

Oh.

Taxiing

You always worry a little bit. It doesn’t make that much sense, since I haven’t flown fewer than 50,000 miles in any of the last thirteen years and I’m still here. Oh, I’ve been witness to some minor mishaps including a failed nose gear and a couple of medical emergencies. Seen people arrested in airports for reasons I couldn’t identify.

I’m a gazillion miler and I never give much thought to the various “might happen” scenaria that seem to really bother some people. Something will happen or it won’t and the odds be ever in my favor. Especially since the two times in my life when something potentially awful occurred (the afore-mentioned nose gear problem a few years ago and a smoldering restroom trash bin in [1972?]) on an aircraft that included me among its occupants, the potential was not realized due to prompt and professional action by the people who know how.  

I believe in the safety of air travel, particularly as measured against travel by automobile, for instance. And that belief, that trust, is so centered and firmly entrenched that I no longer even think about it. Not when it's me on the airplane, that is.

So someone please tell me why, when the traveler is not so much me as one of my daughters, just one word texted from that daughter’s phone shortly after she has landed in Boston allows me to relax my shoulders, turn off the flight tracker on my computer and carry on with my afternoon.

“Taxiing.”

What a great word!

Gift mugs

The passing of my friend Susan’s first guide dog was not a happy event. Louise had been fading for months and hadn’t actually worked in some time. She had come to view me as her savior because with Susan’s husband Bjorn working in Japan, my pickup truck and I came to represent in her doggie mind both the last comfortable place before a sojourn at the vet’s and welcome rescue after. She was fairly elderly when I met her and when she’d gone, Susan buried her ashes in the section of their backyard that has ever since been known as the Louise Garden.

Her next guide dog Nellie quickly became a fixture in all our lives and she served Susan well as friend and companion and safety director until the day she couldn’t stand up straight and it turned out she’d had  a doggie stroke. She recovered but she never worked again and so the day came when Susan brought home her new guide dog, Ynez. While Bjorn picked Susan and Ynez up at the airport, I took Nellie to the park by the library to await their arrival. It is important for the retired guide dog to accept the role transference to the new guide dog right from the beginning of their relationship and this is a lot easier if they meet each other for the first time away from home turf.

Of course, Ynez and Nellie got on famously from first rude sniff and Nellie had no problem passing the harness to her new friend. Nellie became Bjorn’s constant companion for the rest of her life and Ynez picked up where she’d left off at Susan’s side. And now seven years later, it’s Ynez who is retiring.

Each of these dogs gave and received unconditional love while providing Susan with a service she needed and could receive in no other way. And each of them contributed greatly to the lives of all the students Susan enriched through her work as an advocate for students living with disabilities.

I got to thinking about this because of the cup I happened to pull out of the cupboard for my coffee this morning. It’s emblazoned with the logo of The Seeing Eye, the non-profit in New Jersey where each of Susan’s canine buddies received their professional training. Susan brought it back for me because she knows I like souvenir mugs.

I received a Goofy mug from Daughter One when she first went to work for Disney and there’s an MIT Dad mug I owe to Daughter Two remembering my birthday. Several served as honoraria from teaching gigs at non-profits in places like Bremerton and Pensacola and Huron. The one I use at work commemorates an infamous hack (MIT-speak for an epic prank). The Turvis insulated mugs with our initials came from Mary’s mom.

We have our nice matched eight that we use for more formal occasions but in the cupboard we go to each morning, you’d be hard pressed to find more than two alike. And just about every one of them has meaning to us. This morning, I sipped my coffee and thought about Susan and her dogs.

You can keep your fine china. Give me a gift mug any time.

I can’t prove the coffee tastes better in a mug that has a history. But then, don’t try to convince me it doesn’t. I like gift mugs.

Family time

Daughter Two is home for just a couple of days, thanks to a round of interviews with a local company that just happened to bring her within arms reach. Better if both daughters were here but that's what Christmas is for, I suppose.

It's amazing how quickly and effortlessly we fall back into routine and routine is wonderful. Routine is the life of this family. Airport hugs and dogs jumping up and down when they see her walk through the door are really cool but the routine of a family that loves each other is more than comfortable. It's a life worth living.

Aimee Mullins

Aimee Mullins gave a TED talk in which she said, among other things, “The only true disability is a crushed spirit.”

I really hope you’ll follow the link below and listen to her chat about…well, I think I’ll let her speak for herself. Because here’s the thing – I was going through the little notebook I carry around in my shirt pocket on which I jot down ideas to which I intend to return later. Some of them become blog posts, some go in the book draft, some alert me to pick up milk and butter lettuce and frankly, sometimes I just can’t recall why I’d written the note in the first place. And that’s the entries I can read, my penmanship being questionable at the best of times.

Anyway, I was thumbing through and trying to decide what to write about this evening and then I came to a cryptic reference to Aimee Mullins. So I watched her talk and I found it of interest. I’m thinking you might, as well. Enjoy.

http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_the_opportunity_of_adversity.html

Breathe

“Nothing ever repeats. Each breath is a new suck at the atmosphere, a gasp for life. A hope for experience. Feel that and go on.”  Kim Stanley Robinson, in 2312

Several people who have earned my love and trust are going through rough times just now. A daughter, a trusted and valued colleague, a friend of many years whose well-being feels necessary to my own. Others less close but no less cared for. One can’t talk, one can’t stop talking, one is straightforward and hiding the hurt – the ways they try to cope are as varied and variably effective as are their personalities and life experiences.

The list of things about which I worry is long and diverse. I have always been a worrier. It is one of my skills, second only to noticing and helping to raise daughters. (Okay, so third, it’s maybe third on my skills list.) I worry about things I can and should remedy, such as my overweight condition and about things I can’t touch, such as chunks of space junk that might bonk me on the head at a zillion miles per hour, having failed to be consumed through frictional ablation as they fall through the atmosphere.

These two categories – conditions I can or cannot personally affect – contribute to my worry quotient but these are not the main drivers of my discomfort. The category of worrisome things that keep me awake nights lies in the middle ground, sort of.

I worry about the problems that I can’t resolve or even help to resolve but that I feel deep in my soul I should be able to… well, do something useful, anyway. I worry about the hurts of people whose presence in the world enhances my life and the lives of others. I want them to have the wherewithal to weather the storms, some of which I admit are blowing at least at gale force, and to sail out the other side, repair their rigging and sail on.

One of the down sides of being a Dad is that over the years you develop this sense that you should be able to soothe all hurts, repair all damage, even as you encounter with mounting dread the horrid truth that this ain’t never gonna happen. I won’t ever be that guy, at least not always and not to everyone about whom I care and that feels like failure.

What I can do is be here for them in their time of need, even though my presence may be neither protective nor restorative.  So, I guess the message of this missive is a simple one. Not particularly profound but certainly, I promise, heartfelt and true. It’s this:

I, bolstered by the virtual but no less real presence of others who are reading these words and nodding, am here for you. We love and care for you and wish you peace.

Still. And always.

Keep breathing.

Ground swell

The first time I really understood the term was as I boarded a large Navy ship from a small water taxi. I’d only joined the ship’s company of U.S.S. Long Beach three days before and was on my first liberty ashore when the entire crew was recalled in preparation to sail from the coast of Taiwan into the relative safety of the South China Sea. The ship needed to clear the area before we were caught inshore by Typhoon Billie, the leading edge of which was heralded by a ground swell that moved our little boat in a long, lazy sin wave as we neared the boarding ladder. Even with the ship hove to so as to create a lee, we were moving a good eight feet relative to the ladder, which itself banged and screeched against the gray expanse of cruiser.

It was quite an introduction to the life of the seaman as I gathered up my courage, took a deep breath and made the leap from gunwale to step. And I gotta say, firm footing had never felt so good as it did once I had both of my dogs planted on that boarding ladder.

Encountering a ground swell in a kayak is a less scary experience mostly because you don’t fight the swell, you ride it for all it’s worth. Oh sure, you have to pay attention when you crest if you want to stay on course and if you don’t keep hydrated you can end up wickedly seasick. But if you keep your head on straight, a ground swell in a human-powered craft can be a great time.

Ground swell is also a term applied to politics and it’s applicable right now. Hawaii just became the fifteenth state to affirm the right of gay couples to wed. This is clearly an idea whose time has come. It makes me happy to say that because I believe this signals a major move in the direction of equitable treatment for all of us by all of us. Social parity still won’t come easily and it will take awhile longer. But the current is moving and in a good direction.

To those who feel threatened, I hope you’ll take this advice from a novice paddler: You can’t fight the ocean. Enjoy the up swells and don’t sweat the troughs. If you panic, you go over. And staying in the boat is what it’s all about.

Hope springs eternal

I’ve only once in my life witnessed a dog catch a healthy squirrel. Okay, technically, I didn’t actually see Sam catch the squirrel; by the time I came into the picture Sam was industriously digging a hole in anticipation of burying the critter for later…   Well, we don’t actually know what he intended to do with it since his dog brain had clearly not grasped the fact that convincing the squirrel to hold still whilst he buried it alive was going to be problematic, at best.

At any rate, however he accomplished the feat, Sam did in fact hold in his gentle jaws a full grown squirrel that was in no way disabled, as demonstrated by the lightning flash it created on its way under the fence when Sam reluctantly let it go in response to my order. So we know that at least one dog has been able to catch a squirrel.

Just not Zoey the Small and Annoying. She has never come within ten feet of any of the half dozen bushy-tailed rodents she starts out after on a typical afternoon. Zoey is fleet of foot, I’ll give her that.  But it does no good at all to be quick when you announce your intent to attack with a series of barks that precedes your arrival at the squirrel’s starting location by several seconds. Furthermore – and you’ll recall my description of this in an earlier post – dogs simply do not understand the Pythagorean Theorem, which means they end up running two legs whilst their prey scampers to safety along the single leg.

Zoey’s forays into rodent hunting inevitably end in a madly barking dog at the base of a tree or at the interstice of two fence lines or occasionally, her squirming butt and wildly wagging tail poking up out of the  space under the shed to the accompaniment of much muffled doggie bark sounds.

Her attempts to capture one of the backyard denizens are numerous beyond counting and no matter how many times she winds up looking silly, I don’t believe Zoey will ever tire of the chase. Somewhere in the recesses of her little walnut-sized doggie brain resides an unreasoning but unquenchable spark of hope that someday, some way she will finally capture a squirrel.

Yeah, that’ll happen…

Dear God

No, not Dear God, as in what the hey!

Dear God: as in, the salutation of a letter.

Yes I am writing as letter to my putative maker and yes, I know I’ve trumpeted loud and long my belief that such an entity is…well…not so much an entity as a legend to which I don’t personally subscribe. Please just stand by and we’ll see if you think the salutation is appropriate once you’ve read what follows.

I’m railing at the unfairness of progress. Again. To me, not all progress is progressive. There are things being shoved aside in the name of progress that shouldn’t and they shouldn’t for the best of all possible reasons – a lot of them are things to which I’ve grown accustomed. My comfort zone is being discomfited.

They don’t make film for my camera any more. Yes, I know if you look really hard and know someone you can come up with a few outdated rolls of zillion speed film. I would not know how to use zillion speed film if it was fresh. But I always liked film and while I confess I haven’t used it in a couple years (okay, so maybe more like a decade), relying as I do on digital imagery for my photographic needs, I’m distressed to find that Kodak et al have abandoned this vestige of my past. What if I ever want to, you know, buy their film again? Which I probably won’t but that’s not the point, is it?

There seems to be a paucity of carbon paper, as well. I always hated using carbon paper because it would slip around on me or a corner would fold over and then you were screwed and frequently lost half a page of typing. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready for the world to be carbonless! Sheesh!

Speaking of typing, I recently overheard a conversation wherein two of our company’s young staff members were commenting about the typewriter we keep in a closet and wondering what it could ever be used for. Not that they didn’t understand that it was once useful, but rather that they could not imagine it ever being useful again. Hmmph! I still have a typewriter of mine own. It’s an eighty year old antique but it still works, after a fashion, and who knows when I might need a typewriter.

Keeping on in the (semi) publishing vein, newspapers are soon to bite the dust and I do seriously lament their passing. Of course, I don’t lament it enough to subscribe to the Times.

75 watt incandescent bulbs bit the dust when they became illegal to produce almost a year ago. Why, I ask? They were the most useful wattage. And I would have written a strongly worded letter to the legistalture had I noticed in time which I did not because I’ve been using more modern lamps for years but still, that’s no reason to STOP MAKING THEM!!!

Transistor radios are no longer… Aw, never mind, you can have that one. I heart my iPod.

All of these things were really useful and could be again if only we would make a few minor adjustments. Like stop using computers. Except of course for this one because typing nine iterations of a 330-page novel was a big pain long before I had the beginnings of arthritis in the old digits. (Yes, I really did that.)

I don’t know whom to see about making progress more palatable for people like me. Far as I can tell, there’s no Ministry of Slowing Stuff Down to be contacted. I considered joining the Society for Creative Anachronism but then I realized they want to bring back a time when neither self-propelled lawn mowers nor good, cheap chocolate were generally available. Luddites!

I want the world to revolve around my comfort zone. So I’m going to ask God to put in the fix. And don’t snort at me. People petition His Imaginariness for things much sillier than my need to be comfortable. Sports requests. Pleading for bigger boobs, smaller ears, a good outcome on a test for which one failed to actually, you know, study…the list is truly infinite.

I want to live in the Land of Plenty. A place where things remain available not because I need them now but because I grew up comfortably ensconced in a world in which these things were available. But I’m not really sure what these things that I need restored to currency might be, so I’m calling on the services of an entity who sees all and knows all.

It seems to me that “Dear God” is perfectly appropriate. I could as easily have wished upon a star or simply started with “I hope…” but I chose Dear God. And let’s face it – you read this far so who’s to say I was wrong?

The million dollar question

So, the question Toni poses is what one might actually do if one woke up in the morning with a million dollars that must be completely spent by midnight.

If it happened today, my first fifty bucks would go to the dog groomer for bathing Zoey theSmall and Annoying. Don’t know what she rolled in today but Dang!

Okay, but seriously. A million bucks. Okay, so what would I…think, think, think…

Yeah, pay off the mortgage and the college fees for Daughters One and also Two. Duh. But that still leaves a LOT of money to get through in the less-than-twenty-four remaining. And in a real world situation, I would probably reach out to family and friends to share the wealth. (I swear, I would.) But for the sake of making this post more interesting, I’m going to assume the riddle requires me to spend the money entirely on moi. See, I’m more interested already!

To enhance your ability to read quickly and move on to less worthy blogs, I’ll present this as a list of items I might find it amusing to purchase:

I would purchase a larger boat to carry my kayak. And maybe a new kayak.

A twelve-string guitar. I’ve missed mine ever since I gave it up.

A new whoopee cushion. The one I have requires manual inflation but now they have them with memory foam inside that makes them self-inflating, thus greatly enhancing the ability to deploy them stealthily. I personally consider this one of the great technological advances of the last decade.

I would book and pre-pay trips to Ireland, New Zealand, Tuscany, Antarctica, and New England.

I might purchase a vacation home in a place of Mary’s choosing. Depends on how hi-falutin her taste in vacation homes turns out to be.

I would buy ballroom dancing lessons for Mary and rent a guy to do it with her cuz I. DON’T! DANCE!!!

I think a lifetime membership in a chocolate-of-the-month club might be nice.

As would a pantry full of chicken tortilla soup and similarly wondrous comestibles.

Air conditioning for mine house.

One of those electric cars, once they invent one that can overcome inertia with me on board.

An old, beat up surf board that I can leave in the garage so when the door is open, passersby and neighbors will be fooled into thinking I was once cool.

A home theatre with Barcaloungers for all

An indoor swimming pool – probably the kind that cycles the water so you can swim laps without swimming laps.

The 64-color set of Crayolas with the built in sharpener that I coveted as a kid and never did get.

The best office chair

A lifetime subscription to Smithsonian.

Also Fine Woodworking.

And perhaps National Geographic.

A dozen new sweaters – I’m a big sweater guy.

A harpoon – if there’s gonna be a harpoon anywhere near me, I want to be the one holding it.

A new grill

A new patio to go under and around and over the new grill

(I know it’s possible I’m running short of money here, but I’m sort of on a roll.)

Three sizes of Vise grips, including the ones designed for stuck nuts.

A me-sized Hula Hoop (Don’t call up the visual on this one – trust me!)

A bicycle for Mary as good as the one she got for me and yes, this is still for me because then we could cycle together.

A small RV and a year’s insurance and fuel.

Plans and kitted parts for a Marty sailing skiff.

Time to go to bed and I need to post this, so I’ll take the rest in cash. Small, circulated bills will do nicely.

Those last few moments...

…come to all of us. It’s how we work. And today I was skulling about what I want to be thinking and how I want to be feeling when my last few moments come.

Now, before any of my friends worry that the following discussion of my eventual morbidity is occasioned by the receipt of some sort of untoward news of the medical variety, allow me to put your minds at rest. Unless we suddenly discover that bad taste in clothing or a penchant for being a smart ass are indicators of impending permanent supinity, I should be okay for the time being. For those who were hoping that this was perhaps the case, sorry to disappoint.

No, this came up just because I was updating my bucket list and realized to my great glee that I’ve many more things I’d love to do or learn or experience than I likely could have done or learned or experienced had I started on the list to the exclusion of all other pursuits thirty years ago. I find life and the world and the things in it endlessly interesting and (mostly) amusing.

There are books I should have read as a teenager or a young adult that I won’t get to and people keep writing good books faster than I can read. I haven’t even done the Cambridge classics list. About seven years ago I started in on the required reading list for a great books program at a local university. There are about eighty books on the list. I’ve read three. In seven years.

This is not to say I stopped reading. I read a book or two a week, on average. But it’s hard to get wound up about Homer when Amy Tan is sitting there on my shelf. A half hour at Half-Price Books puts me completely off my game.

There are so many places I want to go and I go see a new one every now and again. But any serious attempt to visit even all the places I want to see in Washington would mean never visiting any place twice and Fodor be damned, I have my favorites! Yes, I want to paddle Crescent Lake but I also love Lake Easton and never tire of Lake Union or Elkhorn Slough or Salmon Bay. And I haven’t even taken the surf paddling course yet! What’s a boy to do?

I’d like to think I’ve yet to meet a lot of people who will become friends but I’ve so little time now to see the friends I already hold dear.

And so it goes.

I’ve acted as eulogist for friends and family over the years and attended a number of bon voyage observances as an observer. We so frequently speak of the departed as having had a full life, and the high water mark seems to be having left nothing undone, no brass ring ungrasped.

Not me. I want my list to continue to grow and I hope not to ever run out of things for which I hope to find time and energy. Which brings us to the bind… The time available for my various pursuits is not infinite.

It sucks the big one that I have to die someday. Not because I fear death; it would be silly to fear that which can’t be avoided and that even the greatest coward of history accomplished competently. And I won’t consider it unfair. Again, the ultimate in even distribution argues against personal affront.

But for those of you who happen to be with Mary when my ashes go in the river, I want you to know that day that I’ll be righteously pissed. Not at loss of a life that has already been more full and satisfying than anyone deserves. I’ll just be frustrated at my abject failure to complete the items on a list that I’ve spent a lifetime building. So on that day, if you loved me, please don’t waste minutes or hours ‘honoring’ me. I promise I will haunt the first one of you who makes a lame comment about ‘celebrating’ my life.

Celebrate your own. Think of something you’d like to do and go do it. Because I guarantee you that when those last minutes come to me, I’ll be denying the end until the end, and thinking of things I want to do or learn or experience next.

If you want to do something for the newly silent moi, burn my underwear. No one should have their underwear outlive them. Certainly not me – trust me on this.

Things I've enjoyed this week

Mark coming through his surgery okay

Another road trip to Bellingham through gorgeous harvest-and-fall-colors farmland

Getting a LOT of work done (still behind but not as badly)

Breakthrough in understanding some stuff that was driving me crazy

Hanging with Mary

Finished reading Snow Falling On Cedars which was a joy

Cool but not freezing weather

Two is feeling better and has a great Camp Kesem weekend planned

Survivor

Got my self-review done without too much angst

Portions of my desk surfaces are once again visible in both my work and home offices

I did some good sorting (which you already know if you’ve been paying attention)

Chocolate cake (don’t judge me)

A funny young guy doing a running standup (literally) comedy routine while our crammed-full bus was stuck behind an accident for about forty minutes

The incredibly high give-a-damn factor of many of the folks I work with

A woman of maybe fifty who has obvious and debilitating disabilities telling me with a face-splitting grin that she and her daughter were just this weekend moving into their own house for the first time ever, and all this while she never stopped working

Living in this time and place in history