Holiday definitions

One of the perplexing things about the holiday season is that people seem to ascribe different meanings to common words and phrases. Since so many of you find yourselves snowed under (no pun intended, unless you like it, in which case I enthusiastically embrace authorship…but I digress…) with holiday falderal, and since in my new status as officially empty of nest I’ve some time on my hands, I thought it might be a mitzvah if I was to take on the task of compilation and definition of this temporary lexicon. Hence, as the observant amongst you might have soused out by now, a start at this new list follows:

Flash mob – The temporary overcrowding at the gym that occurs after the third night of holiday leftovers, chocolates and cookies. Not to worry – the crowds will wane by about mid-February.

FAA – The agency responsible for regulating our family's holiday lighting adventures, which they claim distract pilots approaching the international airport.

So good – The standard, polite utterance when sampling some of the host’s famous holiday oyster and pistachio dip.

Not so good – How one will feel an hour later if one is simple enough to actually consume said dip.

Head banger – The type of injury most often suffered whilst bring up the bins of Christmas decorations from the cellar.

Wrapping paper – A type of doggie toy prominent around birthdays and the holidays.

Low-hanging ornaments – See wrapping paper.

Torture – Hallmark holiday movies.

Addictive substances – See torture.

B-List – Where they go to find the actors involved in Hallmark holiday movies.

Sad – Descriptor for those of us (okay, okay, yes me…) who are completely addicted to Hallmark holiday movies.

Swath – The path that Odin the Large and Lazy cuts through our Christmas decorations while wandering cluelessly about the house wearing his Great Dane-sized cone of shame.

Extreme danger – The condition faced by anyone who drives within a mile of a mall on December 26^th.

Sublime – The correct term for a four-day Christmas weekend off.

Happy Holidays

Daughters One and also Two are celebrating the holiday at One's place in Florida this year, which of course means that Mary and I find ourselves alone together on Christmas Eve.

For the first time in twenty-seven years.

Eating popcorn. Watching Elf.  And we'll be in bed early, not because I have to be up early to be ready with the camera but merely because we are tired and want to get some sleep.

It's a whole new paradigm. I don't know quite how to take it.

What I do know is that I have a better family than I deserve and some wonderful friends, many of whom will read these words. So let me just say this about that:

I love you all. Thanks for reading my drivel. And I hope in the new year not to disappoint.

Merry Christmas, Happy Channukah, Happy Holiday to each and all of you!

Two sides of a coin

The President went on record yesterday as saying that a major motion picture company erred in pulling a movie due to some well-publicized threats made in reaction to its content. The movie (I have not seen it) is apparently a satire in which the central character is assigned to murder the dictator of a foreign power under the guise of conducting an interview. Ever since the trailer hit the airwaves there have been reports of threats, theoretically originating with elements aligned with the dictator against theatres that show the film. Apparently, plausible terroristic threats.

Okay, so that’s the setup.

I admit to some disappointment that the film was pulled and for the very reasons Mr. Obama has identified – we shouldn’t accept this new way of doing business in which our free speech is held captive by the despotic leader of a broken-down country or for that matter, by any whack job with an e-mail account. I get it. This is indeed a very dangerous precedent.

Having said that, we also need to recognize the nature of our duty as citizens of a society in which freedom of speech is held so dear. Free speech only works in an atmosphere of appropriate self-restraint. And with this in mind, I feel the movie should never have been made in the first place. And I don’t say that lightly.

It seems these days that anything can be presented to an audience so long as it is billed as comedy. That’s why we have TV shows and movies that focus on the scatological, the rude, the offensive-as-you-wanna-be-so-long-as-some-yahoo-will-laugh genre.   Think of the most disgusting, offensive, inappropriate, dangerous, downright wrong activity in which human beings engage. Enter it into your favorite search engine and I guarantee someone has not only done the awful thing but has thought it sufficiently clever that they’ve posted it to the net for all to see.

Feel free to be outraged but please do not blame this rising sea of crapola on freedom of speech. Blame it on lack of restraint. And lack of restraint I would argue is the monster in the closet here.

If we are to maintain a free society, we cannot forsake freedom of speech. But we place even that precious principle in jeopardy when we offer the censorship-prone amongst us examples of speech that should never have been uttered. Make no mistake about this: those self-appointed guardians who today want to deny gays the same rights as the rest of us, who don’t believe basic health care for all is the province of the government, and who really believe there’s nothing fishy in a white cop firing twelve shots at an unarmed black teenager will next be telling us what we are allowed to say.

This movie company’s cowardice in pulling this movie will come back to bite us all. But more than that, it was the production of this ill-advised film in the first place that really chaps my hide. Because censorship versus free speech is a foundational argument in this society and this is a ridiculous matter concerning which to frame the discussion. Look, I know writers have a duty to put the ideas out there and even to crowd the edge of the envelope. But at how many levels did theoretically savvy people fail to see that this one was a dumb idea? What idiot green-lighted this disaster? How many individuals ignored the emperor’s exposed backside in preference for going along with the giggling, back-slapping groupthink that produced this mess?

Yes, the ‘leader’ in question is a bullying, rampaging, horrid clown and the world would be better off if he was not in control of a country chock full of toadies with weapons. But really – a comedy about assassinating the jerk? How did you think  he would react? And what sociologically important message conveyed by this film overrode caution?

Damn…

The word is restraint, folks. And for our friends in the movie business – the word has a more important meaning than to describe the leather straps used in slasher movies.

 

Side note: Mary and I just saw The Theory of Everything and it was fantastic! Surely one of the most lovely and complex love stories I’ve seen in a long, long time. Spoiler alert: Don’t go expecting a long-winded explication of Hawking’s scientific achievements. This is a story about two people finding their way, each and together. As I said, lovely. And neither gunplay nor nudity – imagine that! There are some brilliant people still in the industry. Second spoiler alert: The scene with the blackboard - magic!

Erratum

You may have noticed that in recent posts, the final paragraph appears in a different and slightly larger font. I don't know if this is a setting I've somehow misplaced or a function of the interface between my new confuser and the hosting site, or, or, or...

I will figure out how to fix this little problem. Meanwhile, mine ego demands that I tell you it's not me being cute or trying to overly emphasize morals to my missives. It's a mistake, pure and simple.

My first one ever...

Large and lazy and stuperous

Odin the Large and Lazy had ear canal ablation surgery (look it up if your stomach is strong) a few days ago and he is now home recuperating. With his outsized cone, half his head shaved and swollen and his eyes never quite focusing, he is the picture of confused discomfort.  

As I type this, I’ve been on duty with him for about five hours, in standby to keep him quiet and clean up after his occasional upchucks. We think the painkiller is upsetting his tummy but in case something more serious is going on, we’re not leaving him alone today, his first full day back at home.

Being half Dane and going on ten years old, we had to carefully consider whether to go ahead with the surgery in spite of his age and the difficult recovery and the cost. But not for long did we mull; bottom line, we just couldn’t see him continue with constant ear infections caused by his tumor and we were not ready to make that other decision.

His gaze when he focuses on one of us is a blend of wonder and worry and just a hint of “what the (insert doggy expletive) have you done to me?” Of course, he doesn’t know the whys and wherefores or the love that went into our decision-making process. But we do. His day will come but it’s not today.

Today is about watching and waiting and caring. This is the dog who made our daughters feel safe when parents were out, who delighted and frustrated and loved us and made our home whole.
I wish he felt better.

On campus

This afternoon finds me on the campus of a major research university, utterly on my own whilst Mary and Two engage in activities that mothers and daughters consider essential and fathers find excruciatingly boring. Accordingly, I have temporarily but firmly severed ties with wife and daughter in favor of finding my own entertainment.

Yes, I’ve gone noticing. Big surprise, right?

The venue for my current observational adventure is the first floor main lobby of the campus student center. This being roughly lunchtime and having established my ‘blind’ on a well-upholstered couch smack dab in the center of the space, I am vastly entertained by the constant ebb and flow of student life.

This is at once an alien and homey experience for me. Alien because having never had the ‘university experience’ and - no matter how I try - missing by a country mile in my attempt to get inside their minds,  I can never really ‘get’ them. Homey because in any large group of people, acting generally in concert toward similar but highly individual goals, the motivations and worries and fears and joys are mostly the same. People want to fit in, want to get their work done well, need to feel connected while independent, crave what they crave and are repulsed by whatever grosses them out (okay, so the Venn diagrams don’t entirely overlap on that one, so what?).

The young woman in the chair next to me happily agreed to watch my stuff while I went around the corner to get a hot chocolate but I have the sense that her watchfulness was not entirely necessary. No one seems much worried about walking away from their nests for ten minutes at a time to buy food, engage another group, visit the necessary, whatever. Still, I asked and she agreed to be vigilant on my behalf. It was a neighborly moment.

But I digress…

What is constantly amazing to me is not how smart these young’uns are in the academic sense. They were chosen to come here at least in large part on the basis of a demonstrated ability to learn. So no big shock that most of them will survive the rigors to spit out the other end with degree in hand.

What bogs my noggin is their seemingly effortless ability to project manage all the various activities of their lives. The kid over there selling calendars for charity gave his senior capstone presentation yesterday and will be singing in a concert tomorrow evening.  And while sitting at the table, he’s planning an outing with a group of friends. I know all this because he’s a buddy of Two’s with whom I chatted last night and because I am a reasonably accomplished eavesdropper.

All around me, students are talking about classes, finals, assignments of course, but also myriad activities, organized and un- (dis-?) and it amazes me that they keep it all straight. I’ve looked at the syllabi and assignment schedules for some of the class sections here and the weight of just the required elements of three to five courses would seem staggering. And they do occasionally stagger, to be sure. But they muddle through somehow, and they do so while piling on clubs, campus jobs (Two is a campus tour guide), excursions, charitable activities, friends needing shoulders to cry on, laundry, medical problems, and for some, True Love.

I know this level of engagement is not unique to the students at this particular institution because the same was true for the students at One’s college, on the other side of the country and in a wildly different set of majors.

I’m not qualified to judge whether these kids are being well-prepared to become engineers or physicists or cognitive scientists. But I suspect they’re being pretty well prepared for the ever-changing and frequently competing pressures of life.

Nothing Special

That’s exactly what we did over the weekend, nothing special. And it was perfect.

With both daughters home for a surprise visit, we hadn’t planned any of the activities you generally plan for a long-overdue visit.

We took in the latest Hunger Games  installment together, sharing popcorn, red vines and Junior Mints. Mary and the daughters did Black Friday whilst I worked on a writing project. We had a low key but scrumptious Turkey Day dinner with our dear friends and neighbors Susan and Bjorn.

One had dinner with a couple of college friends and Two did coffee with her besty from high school. We sat in the rec room downstairs – currently the depository for all the stuff we’ve found in nooks and crannies – and discussed what goes and what stays, what’s precious and who bought which DVD.

I made my famous turkey soup, Mary prepared for this week’s business trip, One practiced new tunes for her dinner theatre gig and Two studied. We messed with the dogs and took turns doing dishes.

We spent a simple majority of the time in various combinations just being together. Catching up. Watching a hokey Christmas movie. Arguing over the heater setting. Ate out a couple of times. Mostly ate in, whatever leftovers each of us felt inclined to eat at the moment.

As I said, nothing special.

It was glorious!

Thanksgiving

We have a long tradition of surprising each other in this family. And this weekend, Mary continues the tradition. She managed to pull off a surprise (for me) visit by Daughters One and also Two for Thanksgiving weekend.

So I come home with my mind full of just everyday stuff. I’d just been to the gym and then the store where I picked up such thrilling Thanksgiving staples as toilet tissue and Band-Aids. I’m thinking about whether to vacuum before I shower and wondering whether Mary has fed the cat. And I round the corner from the kitchen to the dining room and there they are!

I didn’t know quite what to say and in fact, it took me a second to comprehend what I was seeing. And not just because of the surprise, which was complete.

The two women before me were two women. Not my little girls (although you gotta know they always will be) but two women with their own lives and their own takes on life. Two women with experiences I will never really know from the retelling and whose futures are their own.

If ever there was a perfect time for me to become reacquainted with One and Two, this is it. They are each on the cliff’s edge of heading into new chapters in their lives, lives supported but not defined by our parenting of them. And I get a whole long weekend to get to know them.

I’ve long considered myself the master at pulling off these family surprises. But yesterday, I got schooled a bit by my wife.
I find myself feeling particularly thankful this Thanksgiving weekend.

The need for validation

Let’s face it – we all have it to a greater or lesser extent. Am I a good parent? A valuable contributor at work? Do folks listen when I share an idea that’s important to me and that I think should be important to them?

So many of the ways in which I’ve sought validation in my life thus far turn out not to matter, not really. At one time, I was totally vested in being one of the top paperboys for The Bellevue American. It was such a big deal to me to go to that dinner (free and you got to choose what you wanted from a huge buffet!) and have my name called. And as you might surmise, I am likely the sole living person who recalls today its importance to me.

The funny thing is, in retrospect that instance of recognition was extremely important to me. And still is. I was honored for something that I did that other people valued. And it was not a transient thing that they recognized that evening.

In order to attend that congratulatory event, I had to get up at oh-dark-thirty without waking the rest of the family, fold and stuff all the papers, then trudge around in the rain or the snow or whatever the Western Washington weather had in store for me that morning. The papers were left under cover at the doors in those days, so it was not the drive-by-and-toss sort of thing we see today. Many days I got home with an hour to spare before changing into my Catholic school corduroys and heading off to school. Other mornings, I would be soaked and muddy, with barely enough time to grab my lunch and head back out into the rain.

And of course, the first week of each month my after school time was devoted to collecting the receipts for the paper. I thoroughly hated knocking on doors and begging for money, even though it was owed me for services rendered. Not all of my customers were as forthcoming as I might have preferred and some required multiple visits before they would finally cough up their seventy-five cents. But I dutifully went back and back until all accounts were settled.

My point is that the recognition by the paper company was well earned. And to this day it makes me proud. More so that magna-cum-anything. Marriage and daughters aside, I consider it one of my prouder moments.

Look, I’m no more immune from the need to be recognized than the next guy. I enjoy being told that my chicken soup is tasty or that I’ve done a good job teaching. I like it when people compliment the fireplace surround I built, and I get revved up when I receive the news that my writing has touched someone.

It’s the things I’ve done that I like to have appreciated. I don’t suppose that makes me unique. And right up there in the top five is that paper boy award. It was work I did not much enjoy and it took a lot of it to make any considerable money. But I did it and over time, bought my first set of drums. And let me tell you, that was the real validation.  

Jacqeline du Pre

I like to run music in the background while I work on anything that is mentally demanding. I calms me and shuts out the randomness of office sounds so I can concentrate. The Internet has been a great boon to me in this regard, as it allows me to perfectly match music to mood with a few keystrokes. ‘Bluegrass’ brings forth offerings from The Dillards, Earl Monroe, even Flatt and Scruggs although a purist might cringe. ‘Classical’ allows me to choose longer works that will not demand intermediate choices while I work. I frequently choose a particular group such as ‘Seattle Symphony’ or composer such as, well, anyone.

Last week, I got on a sectional kick and queued up a full day’s worth of percussion ensemble concerts as background to a job of curriculum development. Turned out to be just the thing to get the proverbial juices flowing. I’m a big Dick Schory fan, particularly Music for Bang, Barroom, and Harp. Tuesday I was on a double reed kick – there’s a young oboist named Katie Sparks who has some of her Baylor recitals posted on You Tube and she’s quite impressive.

Thursday was given over to classical guitar, not least being Ana Vidovic. Check her out.

Then Wednesday I hankered for some cello music as the setting for sorting out some old files. I came across a recording of Jacqueline du Pre playing the Elgar concerto. It was wonderful. Her Elgar was so perfect and expressive that Rostropovich is reported to have refused to play it again after having heard her version.

There aren’t a lot of du Pre recordings on the Net because she stopped playing at 28 due to the effects of the multiple sclerosis that would finally take her at 42. And of course, recording technology during her performing life was not anywhere near what it is today. Still, I hope you’ll consider finding one of her recordings and if you can only choose one, choose the Elgar of her mid-twenties.

There are lessons to be learned from this sojourn but I won’t presume to tell you what they are.

Enjoy.

Watching and waiting

I have always been pretty good at watching. Waiting, not so much.

Which seems oddly out of sync to me, since both activities require flexing roughly the same disciplinary muscles. In each case, the whole point is the let it come to you rather than actively pursuing…whatever. Right?

I suppose you might say that watching is the more participatory activity in that it is acquisitive – taking mental ownership of idea, sights, sounds from an outside source.  Waiting is more inquisitive, and after all, who really likes the long pause before the answer?

I dearly love going on noticing adventures during which I can’t possibly know what I’m going to find but patience in anticipation of that which I know will be arriving (soon?) is quite beyond me and always has been. And it annoys me that I don’t understand why.

Writing a book is truly sublime torture. And no, that was not a non sequitur.

A list for the ages

Ages at which one should not do the things listed, in no particular order, not that I’ve done any of them (and we’ll start with writing incoherent sentences at age 61), based on personal experience:

·       Taking off cross country with Johnnie Sullivan in search of the ice cream truck – 4

·       Saying to Bill, “Yeah, what the hell, let’s do enlist together!” - 18

·       Telling your dentist that the reason you’re squirming in the chair is that you fell off the roof whilst installing Christmas lights and then expecting him not to tell your wife, whose appointment was a couple days later. – 41 (approx.)

·       Testing a rotary lint brush on one’s hippie-length hair – 23

·       Telling the cop who has asked permission to search your car “Why not, I didn’t kill anyone,” when in fact they are looking for someone whose description you resemble and who had indeed, just killed someone, at two a.m. while coming home from work at Jeff’s Restaurant– 16

·       Splitting your pants for the second time in the same show and this time, with your underwear unfortunately shifted out of position – 17

·       Falling off the stage in full Caiaphas regalia while singing “Fools, you have no perception – argh!” in front of a full house at the pavilion – 27

·        Throwing up in the jardinière between verses while singing Stookey’s Wedding Song for some poor girl who just wanted her wedding to be perfect – 23

·       Going to the K-Mart in San Jose dressed in a plastic Santa Claus costume  in the middle of August at one‘s brother’s behest to make his girlfriend laugh and getting ejected by the store manager (who was not laughing) and so having to do the walk of shame wearing a now-sweat-soaked plastic Santa outfit – 20

·       Admitting to the other guys (while, ahem, inebriated) that it was indeed remotely possible that up to that point in one's young but no longer teenaged life one had never actually had certain experiences of a carnal nature, which we need not enumerate here, and then engaging in a Navy version of Truth orDare– 20
 

Here’s the bad news – I have not included in the list any of my truly embarrassing memories. You’ll note that no item on this list references an age in the most recent two decades of my life. I’m going to pretend this is because I no longer do anything of an embarrassing nature.

Talking to strangers

I’ve long had a propensity for chatting up strangers. I don’t recall being that way as a boy or young man, although I’d have to rely on old friends to find the truth of that statement. I believe I recall being more reticent up until about twenty or so years ago.

It may have been my daughters who brought about my late garrulousness (garulocity?). Spend enough time as one of the two or three bored-to-tears chaperones at your nth class outing and you’ll happily strike up a conversation with a car fender. Ironically, although they were directly invested in the causal chain that led to my penchant for engaging, Daughters One and also Two frequently find my friendliness uncool, even inappropriately so.

(Sigh!)

So, it is probably just as well that neither of them was with me in Terminal 2 at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport yesterday afternoon, because I was in a decidedly chatty mood. I was capitalizing on the confluence of an early airport arrival and an empty work carrel to further my writing career when a young woman sat down next to me and in the course of figuring out outlet-sharing, we got to talking.

Don’t ask me the youngster’s name, because I never asked, the exchange of names being utterly irrelevant to our conversation.  But we shared a delightful half hour during which I learned that she is almost the same age as One, works in stock brokerage, was on her way to Seattle to visit family and friends and is considering a relocation to the Northwest. She LOVES teaching (she is her company’s corporate trainer) so of course, we had that to talk about.

She is also something of an outdoors enthusiast, so I gave her my card with the name of a young woman with whom I work who is a certified rafting guide – the idea being that if she sends me an e-mail, I’ll put them in touch.

I can’t say I’ll ever hear from her but if I do, I will indeed introduce her to my young friend Diana.

I quite enjoyed talking to her and I believe the enjoyment was mutual.

During a week when there is so much negative foofaral going around in the news, it was nice to just unplug and engage with another friendly human being, without agenda or expectation, attraction, repulsion, or fear of rejection. I may or may not incorporate part of my mental image of her in one of the characters in my writing. But of course, whether I do or don’t the experience will stay with me and it all comes out somewhere.

What a lovely encounter! And now, back to work.

Vote

Please do. I truly feel this could be a pivotal election so it is important that the outcome represents the majority.

Brittany

Type that name – just that name – into your Google search criterion window at 6:57am Pacific Daylight Time on 30 October 2014, and the first three items that come up are articles by NBC News, USA Today and CNN.com about the young woman who has famously decided to take control of her own passing. The media’s approach to this story has been breathless, panting almost. Like a dog watching you grill a thick steak. Except that the dog’s attentions aren’t inappropriate.

But this isn’t a rant about irresponsible sensationalism in news reportage. Another time, perhaps. This one is about choice.

When Oregon passed its assisted suicide law, many opponents predicted a mass exodus of the depressed to Oregon, visualized (figurative) blood running in the streets. It hasn’t happened. In 2013, according to the information I found on Oregon’s own public health site, 71 people died in that state by legally assisted suicide. With the population of Oregon at about 3.9 million, that’s one assisted suicide for every 55,000 inhabitants. It’s one for every 478 of the 33,931 Oregonians or visitors who died from all causes that year. Since the law was passed in 1997, 1,173 prescriptions have been written and 752 people used those prescriptions to make their exits.

Not exactly an epidemic, I shouldn’t think. In Oregon in 2013, more folks died by homicide (90), unintended injury (1,739), other methods of suicide (626, after subtracting our 71). Most people (33,931) died of natural causes.

I could go on and on dissecting the cack stats for the State of Oregon but you get the picture. Currently, three states allow physicians to assist folks in arranging a relatively non-violent way to end their own lives – Oregon, Washington and Vermont. And opponents, mostly religious groups, are intent on preventing any more states enacting similar laws.

I wonder how many of those opponents can still feel comfortable manning the barricades after they watch Brittany describe her life, her decision and her process of dying. Because make no mistake, the girl is dying.  This is not about whether she dies but rather, about when and how. And for Brittany, how is the controlling consideration.

It amazes me that in a nation in which supposedly eminent ethicists can argue in favor of euthanizing non-perfect babies (Singer at Cornell, et al), we cannot respect and honor – even if we personally can’t embrace – the decision by an intelligent, life-loving young woman to choose a deliberate and gentle end, shared with her most special loved ones.

Message to the debaters: This is not about your religion or your fear of slippery slopes, it’s not about Kevorkian or your favorite TV pastor or any of the others who gain notoriety through the debate. This is about a young person who has chosen dignity at the end but also has chosen to give up some measure of that dignity and a whole lot of her privacy in order to show the rest of us that the horror is in her disease, not in her choice to leave us with love.

I truly wish her disease would somehow go away and that she would live a long and fruitful life. But failing that outcome, I wish we would just respect her decision and when the time comes, leave her family and friends alone.

Comfort weather

I’ve previously shared my love affair with weather.

Not all weather, mind you.  I’m not a fan of hot weather (anything above about 70 degrees for more than a few minutes) but I’m happy to experience it as a break every now and then. For example, during the Ball of Twine Tour around the country years ago, we drove through some of the hottest parts of the country at the hottest time of the year. While the experience did not inspire me to move there, it was an okay, even quite enjoyable experience. One time only.

I love snow and cold weather as an experience but not as an environment. I look forward to the times when I’m called to work in Fairbanks or North Dakota during the winter but of course, I dress for the experience. Living somewhere that has a seven-month, hard winter would drive me crazy (I’ve had the experience and look how I turned out), if only for the constant added work of being prepared to be caught outside. And of course, at my age – and never having been the most graceful person in almost any gathering – there is the requirement to be ever on the lookout for frozen patches that might provide me with an unfortunate foray into (ballet? hip hop?). I recall with a shiver an episode forty years ago that resulted in a dislocated elbow…

I am perhaps at my most content, with feelings of absolute peace sitting in bed with the covers up to my chest, my morning cup of coffee on the nightstand, a good book in my hands and the sound of rain outside the window. And I dearly love an afternoon spent writing in the basement office, toasty warm while watching a truly impressive rainstorm through the window in front of me. (A snoozing dog at my feet doesn’t hurt the ambience.)

For being out and about, I’ll take a nice blustery day, cool but not cold and hold-your-hat gusty. Pink cheeks but without the frostbite, thank you very much!

Gotta cut this one short and head out to the vet with Odin the Large and Lazy, who seems to be shaking his ears a lot the last week or so. But I had one of those rain from bed mornings and just felt like sharing it with you.

Hope this finds you all warm and comfy.

Some favorite punch lines (you supply the inappropriate joke to match)

1)      Good, though!

2)      You might turn your wrist just a bit counter-clockwise…

3)      Twang! Slu-u-u-u-r-r-r-rp!

4)      I thought you meant today!

5)      So, I says to the archbishop…

6)      Hit the ball, drag Harry.

7)      Rectum?!? Hell, I kilt the sumbitch!

8)      One of his legs are both the same.

9)      Yeah, but it’s gotta be a mile wide!

10)   Who cares?

And before you start assuming you know the jokes and you want to judge me, here’s a special shout out to Sindy:

You’re thore?!?!? I’m tho thore, I can hardly walk!

The blooming

The umbrella crop was in full bloom today. I love rainy days!
Don’t hate me.

Day trip

Mary and I went for a little – okay, eleven hours – drive yesterday and it was absolutely perfect. We went from rain to rain shadow, from sea level to the tree line, across salt water and up the shoulder of a mountain. We saw some of the coolest little seaside towns and farms galore.  Oh, and had a fantastic breakfast at a local place in Sequim.

The main purpose of the trip was really just to get out for the day but my ulterior motive was to visualize locales for some writing I’m doing. Although the work is fiction and everything in it made of whole cloth, it helps to have a picture in mind and so I spent much of the day mentally and digitally recording the sights.

I found the perfect view from Max’s workshop that plays such a central visual role and the switchback road Julia will drive in Chapter Two. The view of the islands in the straits beyond the foothills from the house is now fixed in my mind, as is the view looking back from the ferry as it departs Edmonds.

Mary didn’t find it odd to share a date while my mind was frequently elsewhere; she’s used to me thinking about writing. She even took pics of the places I needed to capture precisely. So you could say she’s my partner in crime (that is, if you don’t like the book, assuming anyone ever reads it) and my fellow researcher if you do like it. I even found Georgia’s house which I hadn’t intended to describe but now think will provide the setting for a key scene. So IF I finish this hog and IF it gets published or I print off enough copies and IF you read it, you may spot echoes of yesterday’s little ramble.

One scene wasn’t part of the book research at all but did provide a moment of poignancy I want to share with you. About halfway between Edmonds and Kingston, the ferry slowed to a stop and the captain blew the ship’s whistle three times. Mary and I happened to be standing just by the pilot house when she hit the horn and if you’ve ever heard a ship’s whistle from close by, you will understand my saying that I nearly colored my culottes when that thing first went off.

The captain, seemingly unconcerned at having provided me with an embarrassing senior moment, explained herself by announcing a memorial service so we went to the stern to see how they did it. From our vantage on the promenade deck, we were above and behind the four people who had just ‘committed their loved one to the deep.’ They do these things by putting the ashes in a ceremonial container that’s designed to float for a few minutes before becoming sufficiently waterlogged that it sinks and of course, eventually biodegrades and releases the remains on the ocean floor.

For most folks on the M/V Walla Walla – perhaps four hundred people on this off-peak crossing – the slight delay was just a mildly interesting interlude, of no more import than the sighting of an Orca or watching a coastal steamer cross close aboard.  But for the two men and two women standing on the stern ramp of the main vehicle deck, this was a profound event in their lives.

They stood stock still as long as the container remained in view and when it finally sank as the stern began to vibrate and the prop wash began to stretch a broad swath behind us, they still stared. Not a word, not a movement among them until finally they peeled off one by one to head back to their car. The older blond woman in the red car coat blew a kiss before turning away, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

It was their moment and the two crew members assigned to help them get the container overboard without following it stood protectively and silently off to port and starboard. Once they reset the safety chain, one of them glanced behind before they headed off to do whatever deck hands do mid-crossing.

I had this great day driving the Olympic peninsula with Mary and checking sites for the book. And I’d like to think these four people had a good day as well, completing their final duty to someone for whom they’d clearly cared.

Toni's response

Toni's comment on my former post is important so I wanted to make sure you all see it, since I know a lot of people don't read comments. (And yes, I despise flash mobs.)

Toni says:

Well said.
Not liking to label myself, I never know whether to call myself a feminist, a humanist or just a woman who is fed up and pissed off!
During Presidential debates, the media focuses on the statements made by the male candidates and who the designer is of the pant suit the female candidate is wearing.
Almost every cop movie has a stripper pole scene in it. Most of our commercials objectify women.
Photos of women are still photo-shopped to the hilt so that even models and celebrities who make-believe in front of cameras don't look like themselves.
California just passed a law that defines that yes means yes and no means no and not hearing a "yes" means no too.
It pisses me off that we stop touching our boys in America by the time they are 5 years old even though it is proven that the average human being needs to be touched at least 12 times a day to thrive.
I know many men who are fed up with the neanderthal thinking but activism needs to start somewhere, and sometimes, without an invitation, apathy rules.
You have the biggest, kindest heart I know (except when flash mobs are involved) and teeny-bopper actresses tend to exist on the south side of wisdom but perfection doesn't exist. Dialogue needs a place to begin and maybe it starts with offending invitations!

Gender politics

I decided on a bluntly obvious title for this one – and on this sentence - in order to allow those of you who are understandably weary of political diatribes and gender warfare to opt out of reading it before you come across anything that aggravates you. That said, should you desire to stop reading here, I send you off with my best wishes and hopes that you’ll join me again in future.

I want to thank friend Angela for bringing this topic to the front of my mind and Daughter One for understanding that my lens is not hers and to grant me the respect for my unique and undeniably parallax view. This is neither the beginning nor the end of my consideration of this topic or, I’m sure, our discussion of it but perhaps a good time to offer some thoughts.

There have been numerous posts on my social networking feed of late that seek to define feminism and more than that, the proper role that males can and should assume in promoting gender parity. I have to admit to being biased regarding this entire subject and unevenly so. I react as an outraged individual when I feel unfairly lumped in with the Neanderthals among us, as the father of brilliant and self-directed, lovely daughters when confronted with an example of gender bias and (I hope and believe) as a thoughtful citizen when considering how society should deal with this or other issues of equality.

I used the word ‘lovely’ as an adjective in mentioning my daughters above. I did so intentionally so I could ask you to self-reflect for a moment. Kindly consider:

1.       Is my use of ‘lovely’ above in any way pejorative? Demeaning or dismissive? And if so, why?

2.       If ‘yes’ to any of the preceding questions, then please tell me if you’d have been equally alarmed had I referred to “brilliant and self-directed, handsome sons.”

I believe I know how many if not most feminists would answer those questions but I could be wrong. I would love to be proven wrong. The thing is, of late - and by ‘of late,’ I mean in the last decade or so – the message of feminism has morphed from “we demand our rightful place as humans and citizens” to one of disdain for all things ‘masculine,’ as in “men are evil and women are victims.”

  The legislators who voted to grant women the vote were 100% men. While some of them probably did so grudgingly as a political expedient, it is also probable that some were just decent, fair-minded individuals and some (viewing with distaste the regressive tendencies of some or even many of their male peers) were most likely crusaders for full participation. Some may even have grown weary of the burden of decision and welcomed more hands on the plow. Yes, it is true that then as now, many women were passive or even subjugated, but it is also true that women’s suffrage would never have become a reality absent the determined efforts of strong, wise, committed women. Women who might be horrified to find themselves considered passive victims.

If I am to be branded and browbeaten as a representative of the past, I can’t complain too loudly. I recognize that suffering written slings and arrows is less damaging to body and soul than being considered a second-class citizen, being denied a voice in governance of my community or country. I’ve no call to consider myself a victim and I acknowledge the advantages I enjoy as a male, white, educated, caringly raised and nurtured citizen of this country in this century. We could fill volumes, and wiser minds than mine have, enumerating the wrongs inflicted on various demographics by the folks then in power with whom I share certain social or gender attributes.

So, why this missive and at this moment?

You never know which straw is going to break the camel’s back and the one for me in this case caught me by surprise. It came as I viewed – at the invitation of one of my daughters through a shared social media site – the recent invocation by a young actress speaking in her role as “Women’s Goodwill Ambassador” for the United Nations. This young woman spoke out in support of feminism. That is, feminism as she defined it: “ the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.” Hmmm, okay. Seems to me that this definition more rightly applies to terms like humanism or gender equity. Because the feminism she promotes involves men being invited by women to become their better selves, as displayed in their views and actions concerning gender equity. I found myself wanting to answer: why should belief in fair play be seen as particularly a feminine trait? And isn’t this point of view sexist in itself?

This actress, who I won’t name here so as to avoid providing a metadata hook for the crazies, gets points for her courage, as well as a nod to her youthful exuberance. But let’s be honest here - she is not where she is because of the depth and breadth of her life experience, or for her revealed wisdom or for any deserved recognition as a great thinker. She may well prove to be a profound thinker, but that is not what brought her to the world’s attention. She was placed on that bully pulpit based solely on her fame as a person who is accomplished at playing make-believe before cameras. She is an ‘ambassador’ because of a calculation of the social currency of her celebrity. I get that. But please, can we agree that movie celebrity is not a qualification for leadership?

I know there are countries, cultures and religions (DON’T get me started on the evils of organized religion!) whose denigration of women goes much wider and deeper that what you find in most of America. But in this epistle, my intent has been to stick to what I know and at least partially, understand. So as indicated above, I can’t help but speak through the lens of a middle-aged male, mostly white, generally conservative but with alarming leans to the left, well-but-not-superbly educated American in the early twenty-first century who spends loads of time reading, observing, considering and who is frequently full of beans. But I am not anti-women or dismissive of women’s voices and I do not welcome re-education by a speaker who is clearly well-intended but sadly ill-assigned.

A congressional candidate in (the U.S. State of) Georgia was recently quoted as saying a woman is welcome to run for office granted that she is “within the authority of her husband.”  Certainly, I can understand women being disgusted with this statement by a man who has the support of a significant constituency for national public office. What I can’t understand is why it should be solely a women’s issue to ensure this dunderhead is kept a country mile away from the reins of power.

Why would folks oppose this guy (and PLE-E-E-ASE do tell me you would oppose him!) solely under the mantle of feminism? Why not humanism? Why not simple fair play or courtesy or – dare I say it – reason?

For me, this is not a women’s issue any more than the lynching of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner was a Negro issue. It is an issue for all of us, an issue that speaks to our collective need as a democracy to benefit from the wisdom of all voices. Any man who does not understand his own vested interest in inclusion of women’s voices is a fool and any woman who doesn’t understand that many men stand with her is simply not paying attention.

Men who are worthy of the description are disgusted at the thought that this idiot in Georgia would be seen by anyone as in any way representing our collective interests or points of view. But beyond any pique that men might feel at being lumped together with the worst examples of our gender, there lies the supremely important fact that gender bias is bad for society, not just for women and that it injures all of us.

Discounting the views and rights of women would negate the contributions of vital voices in our polity. Eleanor Roosevelt and Shirley Chisholm. Harriet Tubman, Sylvia Earle, Mary Fulton, Jane Anger and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Margaret Sanger, Catherine the Great (I didn’t say they were all nice people), Jane Austen, Indira Ghandi, Margaret Thatcher, Marie Curie, Amy Tan, Malala Yousafzai, Tsering Doltma Gyaltong (I apologize if misspelled – you see differing spellings in various writings by and about her), Margaret Behan, each of the Ee Girls, and yes, my Daughters One and also Two – all had or have experiences and knowledge and wisdom and a point of view to share. And we (WE!) should be listening.  You don’t have to be Betty Friesen to be an important woman. And you don’t have to be a famous actor – male or female - to deserve to be heard. The messages are as diverse and as equally important as the many voices, most of which will never be heard through social media.

Emma, thanks for your intent but I really don’t need you to invite me to the party. And I say this not because social equity isn’t an important issue for me but rather, because it is. It’s not your issue to invite me to take up. Rather, it is our issue, everyone’s issue and the twenty-something actor who deigns to ‘invite’ me is on a par with the young bicycle-riding ‘missionaries’ who offer to tell me how to order my life. It’s not that you’re wrong; you’re not wrong. But putting this message in your mouth and doing so on behalf of an international deliberative body inappropriately narrows the scope of the discussion and tragically misdirects the debate.  It trivializes one of the three or four key social issues of our time.

This is everyone’s fight, not just women’s.  Not just well-known actors'. Everyone’s. I hope you continue to contribute. But as one of us, not as the most famous of us.

(Side note: I hope and imagine Emma’s parents are just bursting with pride! Even though she is vastly experienced in appearing and speaking in front of audiences, she was clearly (or so I thought) nervous about this one. And she did a great job. She showed great courage. At an age when many of her peers famously go off track, she is engaging one of the great issues of her time. Goodonher!)

Contemplation

I’ve been in a contemplative mood of late. Not that I ever stop thinking about what might be, what might have been, what should or shouldn’t be. But for the most part, my ruminations along these lines would fit easily into a category that one might consider wool gathering. Not so, my flights of late.

 There have been a lot of changes in my life and our family’s lives of late. Nothing earth shaking but nevertheless the sorts of things that cause you to reconsider your position in various areas of your life – a serious accident, a new job, impending graduation, reconsideration of career choice, planning for retirement. I won’t get into the specifics of who and how and when and why. If you don’t know, you don’t need to know. And anyway, it’s not my central point here.

 Part of the plan or not, when these and other personal events that I won’t mention converge at a single point in time, wool gathering quickly gives way to deeper reflection.

Mary and I have been getting ever more focused in our plans for the future; that is, our future as empty nesters and eventually, as retirees. We know we won’t spend our sunset years in our present house. Microsoft and Genentech have trailed  their comet tails of young, wealthy retirees whose primary contribution to our hometown has been to make it a bourgeois enclave in which our lifestyle has no place. (No bitterness, I promise – the Bellevue version of gentrification is simply what’s happened in hundreds of communities around this country, only with a somewhat younger, more tech-savvy and more sociologically clueless face.)

To be fair, the demographic shift hereabouts is not the sole reason for our decision to relocate. We want to be close to Daughters One and also Two but of course, who knows where they will end up. Prevailing weather patterns affect our creaky bones.   I’d like to be less suburban. We’d like a more open plan house and probably smaller.

As I said, lots of reasons and the bottom line is a move, probably in three to five years. But our eventual relocation is not the sole or even primary reason for my shift in thoughts. 

I’m in (The Force willing) my terminal job before retirement and loving what I do, I’m freed from the need to think about career moves. I’ve zero interest in ever again having direct reports so as to my job, it is what it is. And what it is, I love to do.

Mary and I have shifted back into high gear concerning the many deferred home improvement projects that will make living here easier for us and more attractive to eventual potential buyers. We’re probably going to complete the landscaping (Oh, my aching back!) this year and even be able to enjoy it ourselves for a few.

My writing is taking a new twist. Producing much less for this blog, as you may have noticed but more in other areas.

Having spent most of my life with strong opinions about politics, I find myself more focused these days on formation than application and more on first principles than on current issues. Which is not to say I won’t chime in here from time to time when something particularly egregious or especially important appears on my radar. But I find myself reading the “news” less and history / philosophy more.

I take great joy and comfort in having circled back to old friends, although my connection methods are modern and streamlined in concert with social media. There are folks in my life that I’ve loved and always will and I try to make sure they know who they are.

I can’t say where all this contemplation will lead. But it feels right, so if you’ll excuse me, I have some serious thinking to do. 

Playing in the sand

I spent a decent portion of today playing in the sand. That is, I spent some time raking a sand bed and setting in place the recycled bricks that will form the platform for our grill.

We cook out fairly frequently. Poor man’s dinner out without heating up the kitchen, doncha know. And we don’t have a place to park the grill that doesn’t detract from our use of the main patio. So for years, I’ve been intending to put in this little auxiliary patio.

We salvaged the bricks from various tear outs around the yard and they’ve been sitting neatly stacked by the side of the garage since One was in middle school. Always intended to repurpose them but never got around to it.

Until today.

So, I’m about two-thirds through the process and this evening Mary and I made a run to the home improvement big box to purchase what I need to complete the job, since the recycled materials came up short of the requirement.

By this time tomorrow, we will have the grill installed in its new home, having reclaimed our main patio for purposes of sitting and staring. But that’s not the point of this missive.

The point is simple and it is this:

I REALLY had fun playing in the sand today.

Don’t tell Mary. She’s still giving me credit for you know, working hard.

Tee hee!

Rainy days

It’s likely to rain tomorrow and I can’t wait!

Now, I know this will not going to come as a surprise to those of you who think of Seattle as the Rain Capital that rain approacheth. Of course, you’d be wrong, since Seattle and its environs ranks somewhere between 30^th and 40^th in annual rainfall among major American cities (the range is due to disagreements as to what constitutes a major American city). So while it does tend to start getting moist long about this time of year, it’s not because we live in place for which the best possible adaptation is  webbed feet. It’s because it’s Fall.

It will come as a surprise to some of you that I look forward to the advent of the rainy season. Some of you think of rain as a bad thing. After all, from kindergarten on we have been proselytized by a string of well meaning but misguided teachers to make the “rain, rain go away!”

Rain is a good thing. It makes our little corner of the world quite green, thank you very much! It feeds the rivers which feed the lakes upon which I love to paddle. It freshens, quenches, cools and conditions. Okay, it does make dogs smell bad but they’re pretty good at that on sunny days, so I don’t count it as a strike against precipitation.

There is nothing better than the smell and the quality of light after a nice gully washer. Of course, being caught out in said gully washer isn’t necessarily a peak experience. I recall one evening when I was about twelve and had stayed late at school and as I began my mile-or-so walk home the heavens opened, as they say. By the time I passed the blueberry farm, there was not part of me that wasn’t soaked through. It took me an hour to get warm after that little hike.

And I loved it. I recall it as one of my most enjoyable experiences. Don’t know why. I just really like rain.

I also like that until the back yard dries out again, Mary won’t make me lay the brick for the grill pad.

So there’s that.

Slowing down

I watched a TED talk the other day in which Carl Honore extolled the virtue of slowing down a bit. Slow down our lives, from conversation to sex and everything in between. It was a cool, thoughtful presentation. And it led me to begin my search for a copy of his book, In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed.

Bet I can find a copy at Half Price Books. Or Goodwill, mebbe.

Meanwhile, the whole topic has sort of assumed squatters’ rights in the ole noggin, and seeing as how I can usually get stuff off my mind by writing about it… Come on, you know what's next...

IT'S LIST TIME!!!

My list of things I like to do slo-o-o-owly:

·         Eat

·         Edit writing (except these little missives that get posted pretty much as they come out of the tips of my fingers)

·         Shower, but I’m usually fairly quick; dunno why

·         Read - in bed, in a lawn chair, in the recliner, in hotel rooms and restaurants on the road, whatever

·         Sight see

·         Walk, except when on a machine

·         Arise in the morning

·         Woodworking – I prefer using hand tools

·         Research for road trips

·         Paddle my kayak

·         Stroll through Pike Place Market during my lunch hour

·         Chat with friends

·         Pet a certain Great Dane of my acquaintance

·         Oh, and, hm-m-m

·         Um…er…yes, that (Don’t tell anyone!).

Sometimes, slow is a good thing.

A conversation with my daughter

I just completed a thoroughly satisfying argument with Daughter One, on a subject concerning which we were each fervent in trying to win over the other. Naturally, I prevailed because my position was correct and supported by the facts. Of course, One remains unconvinced of this, owing to the insufficiency of passed time to have allowed her the distance to realize the errors in her reasoning and the elegance of mine own.

It is not the primacy of my logic of which I take up pen to crow this evening. Nor is it the unassailable nature of my formation of my points, although they were things of rhetorical beauty, I assure you.

What floats my boat is that this young woman whose diapers I once cleaned has become a person with whom I can enjoy such intelligent discourse. I dearly love respectful argumentation and tonight she provided it in spades. She had points and counterpoints in depth and she matched me, thrust and parry. Didn’t get angry or hurt, resort to invective or logical fallacy, kept up her end and challenged mine.

She held her own.

‘Course, she was wrong. ‘Cause I was right.

Gifts

Mary and I spent a very confusing hour shopping last evening. Perplexing, I should say.

We’ve just celebrated Daughter One’s birthday and Daughter’s Two’s is just around the corner. We were intent on putting together a birthday-themed care package and so we went to a local wide line store to troll for ideas.

Ideas that failed to reveal themselves. Hmmmm…

When Daughters One and also Two were little, and even when they were older but still living at home, the choosing of gifts for them was a fairly straightforward matter. First of all, we had the advantage of peer pressure helping to shape their desires.  So we could watch ads and listen to comments at school events and sort of suss out for what they might be yearning. And of course, since there were living at home, we could glean ideas from the odd comment or the surreptitious, covetous glance while shopping.

Not so these days. For Daughter One, we got lucky. Mary happened to know of a couple things she wanted; I was able to choose a book and a couple videos she might like. It was not our best birthday effort ever but not for lack of caring and it worked out okay.

Two presents more of a conundrum. She’s studying engineering which we sort of understand in broad strokes and general terms but certainly not in sufficient depth to yield the perfect gift idea. We understand – or think we do – Two the young woman, and even Two the daughter. We watch her on social media and converse with her often. But as to her daily life we’re fairly clueless and our ability to predict what she might need next is rather constrained.

So there we were, wandering around a huge store where the offerings were clear but the choices not so much.

Two, if you read this, please know we tried.