A new year

Another year has gone by, which will come as no big surprise to any of you.

Troubles and triumphs, fun times and sadness. I suppose you could say that in a retrospective of any year but the one ending in a few hours as I type this has been singularly spiky in terms of ups and downs.

We’ve marked a college graduation, a couple of new jobs, a close friend’s retirement, relocations, a book project finished (sort of), lots of progress on decluttering our dwelling, not so much on decluttering our lives.

Both daughters learned life lessons - many of them painful - and had experiences from which we wish we could have shielded them.  But they persevered and are both back to living their lives under their own direction.

The pride we feel in both our daughters is quite profound. And the love we felt during our collective visit over the holiday now ending reminded me of what family can and should mean.

I hope this next year finds each and all of you happy and healthy.

A holiday missive

I sit in my home office in my floppy sweater and slippers and sweat pants. Daughter One is preparing to go pick up her boyfriend to join us for the evening. Daughter Two and her boyfriend are just now waking up after late night cross-country flights. Mary is wrapping.

I have worries today. Such as, did I get enough stuffers for Mary’s stocking? Will everyone enjoy the meals we’ve planned? How will I get that durned Santa blow-up figure to stand upright?

Okay, I get it. Not exactly earth-shattering concerns. But I do have more substantial worries. Will my editorial readers like the book and give me the feedback I need to proceed with final edit? Will I receive Cochran’s book on ISO 9001:2015 in time to have it read before the training in two weeks? What to do with all the crap that has settled in this office as we work to de-clutter the house (and how did my writing space become the designated bin-de-crap)?

I admit I find myself somewhat ashamed of this paltry attempt to find drama in my life. The fact is, I am better off than a high percentage of dads in this world. My kids never had to wonder whether food or shelter would materialize. Or whether they were loved. Or welcome. And growing up, neither did I.

 Most of my friends and I grew up in a bubble of time and place and circumstance in which our subsistence was assured. We were halfway up Mazlow’s Heirarchy of Needs the day we were born. And if we missed out on ‘Esteem’ or ‘Self-Actualization,’ the failure was at least in part a function of our own choices, or lack thereof.

This is the time of year when many of us gaze upon the mountains of gifts under trees and wonder at the concept of ‘enough.’ Don’t get me wrong – I do not propose guilt at largesse. The urges to provide and to please are both positives, to my mind. But the charity we all seek this season will be more complete if we extend the ring outward, don’t you think?

I find myself reflecting on the people who through no fault of their own find themselves today in less secure circumstances.  Some of them are short on cash, some suffering from illness, some just having trouble sorting out life. I wish hope for them all.

One demographic that we can each and all help are the teens who are ‘aging out’ of foster care. Please consider helping one of these kids, many of whom just need a secure place to stand as they make their start. And perhaps every now and then a shoulder to lean on.

Many of these kids reside in the twilight existence of ‘almost.’ Many need not much more than a hand and a nudge.

You know what to do.

http://www.childrensrights.org/newsroom/fact-sheets/aging-out/

http://www.jimcaseyyouth.org/about/aging-out

http://www.aecf.org/resources/helping-children-aging-out-of-foster-care-prepare-for-independence/

https://www.covenanthouse.org/homeless-teen-issues/foster-care

Generation Betterthanus

Not long ago, I came across a posting on social media in which a young(er) person went off about how my generation has ruined the world and it’s up to the younger generation to save us from our folly by getting behind Bernie Sanders’ candidacy. (I will refrain from pointing out that Ol’ Bern is a member of the generation being slammed and widely supported by my own friends, also of the target generation. Oops, I said it!) What made this posting come to mind again today, since I saw it some weeks ago is that I observed some protesters in their usual place across from my office building this morning and they were similarly opining as to the worthlessness of generation mine.

I guess we’ve been the worst thing since smelly toe jam. Dang, and just when we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. We’ve messed up the world and the youngsters wish we would just melt away and let them get on with the task of repairing the mess we’ll be leaving behind.

Fair enough, but I wonder if the current generation of young adults will give us any credit for all the things that were created prior to their arrival on the scene that make it possible for them to pontificate from the comfort of their computer chairs.

I was talking to a friend and colleague today who spent a significant portion of his adult life running a plant that made large moldings – think stackable chairs but on a much larger scale. This guy’s duties involved coordinating all the purchases of ‘stuff’ they needed to make their products. Everything from the smallest rivets to billets of aluminum, plastic resins to paint, operating manuals for huge machines to copier paper. Most of those items he purchased on a just-in-time basis, to arrive just as they were about to be consumed, so when I say coordinating, I really meant he spent a lot of time frantic running back and forth to keep the plates spinning. And I surmise that he did his job well.  

It made me think back to a couple of my jobs as a plate spinner for manufacturing startups. My point here is not about the job of coordinating all these inputs but rather about the sheer number of different inputs and inputs to the inputs that went into making the products that we rely upon and take for granted every minute of every day. You see, each of our upstream vendors – the makers of polyethylene beads and the ink formulators and the paper mills and so on – had their own list of vendors, who in turn had theirs. And all of these inputs worked together to create the world in which members of the next generation find themselves so uncomfortably ensconced.

Some of the things we made we would have been better off without, no question. We know now that asbestos is a killer in the long term but when I donned my ‘Hot Papa’ proximity suit aboard ship in the early 70s, I was glad that it would protect me from flames or from spills of liquid nitrogen. In those days, I was frequently elbow deep in asbestos while lagging a pipe in the machinery spaces. I wish we hadn’t used it and it may rear up to bite me yet but at that time it was what we had and we viewed it as a miracle material. So now we’re paying in spades for our ignorance.

I wish we hadn’t developed many of the weapons systems of the last century, not least among them nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. I look back and wonder how we could have been so misguided. Thalydomide was a horrid mistake as are assault weapons for the commercial market. Drones – that one is yet to bite us but trust me, it’s coming. For every technological generation, I’m sure there is something that we would have been better off not developing.

And we haven’t always been exactly prescient when it came to lending our support and casting our votes for politicians. You can be forgiven your screeds about how hopelessly hopeless my generation is as to politics, given the Klown Kar of candidates with which we have provided ourselves during this electoral cycle. Damn, wouldn’t mind a few do overs in that sphere.

This is not to be taken as apology. It’s not. I am not guilty of wrongdoing. Wrong deciding, maybe, I’ll own that. But here’s the thing about politics and about life, for that matter – you vote where you are, when you are, with the information then available to you. More than once, subsequent developments have proved the folly of my choices. But they were (usually) made in good faith and if you can’t accept that, I’m not the only one with a problem.

So continue to post your screeds if you must. If you want to feel superior, that’s probably the way to go. But if you want to avoid the condemnation of the generations that follow you, stop posting and get to work.

Do better than we have. I readily admit we’ve left room for improvement.

Writing

It’s an odd thing to do as a hobby, I suppose. After all, most of us during twelve years of mandatory schooling did everything we could to avoid writing assignments. When we couldn’t, we would scrutinize the wording of the assignment to discern the minimum effort that would meet the teacher’s requirement as to word count, spacing, sources, etc.

We all looked askance at the one person in our class who actually enjoyed writing and would turn in the well-researched paper, the interesting opinion piece, the compelling story. That person always seemed intent on ruining things for the rest of us, poisoning the well so that none of our more minimalist efforts would could possibly satisfy. Not as long as the ‘good student’s’ submission was available for comparison.

To this day I can bring to mind the faces of (names withheld to protect teacher’s pets), the students with whom I shared teachers and recess but not our dedication to our studies. With one of them I shared every classroom and teacher from kindergarten through eighth grade. She was my nemesis, that evil kid whose presence on the class roster each September quite effectively banished my own thematic offerings to the realm of less-than.

So, one might think that my emergence from state-sanctioned education would signal the end of my interest in writing. As you’ve probably figured out by now, it didn’t quite work out that way. After high school I found myself writing just to write – bad poetry, song lyrics, a couple of atrocious scripts, the occasional short story. During my time in the Navy I found that long hours sailing the ocean blue provided lots of ideas for story lines and plenty of time to explore them in writing. Foolscap became my single largest non-nicotine expense. I didn’t enjoy cards in the mess or board games, so my down time was divided between playing guitar in the shelter of the blast shield for the #2 Terrier missile launcher and writing at an unused desk in the calibration lab.

Writing settled my soul at a time that I felt a bit shut off from the world. Then, in the course of transferring back to the States for discharge, somewhere between Subic Bay and Treasure Island, I lost the bag that included all my writing to that point. Never got it back. Crushed me. But rather than being discouraged, I found myself even more attracted to writing. And it sort of freed me. I was released from the history and weight of all my earlier attempts at coherent writing.

And so, I started anew. Wrote a book (now lost to the ages), then another (got an agent but eventually abandoned it in a welter of rewrites). Wrote song lyrics as a volunteer staff singer for a church. Wrote essays and small stories, edited a few theses. Basically, I would write anything just to be writing. Took creating writing courses four different times at four different institutions of higher learning.

I’ve never stopped, never entirely. And now, I can’t stop. As I’ve shared before, anywhere I’ve spent any time at all is likely to be awash in scraps of paper, browbeaten notebooks, my computer filled with starts, a few paragraphs on this or that idea, the sourdough starter of the writing addict.

I have a monkey on my back. And this particular monkey is welcome to ride.

Michael whining

As I type this the temperature in Fairbanks, Alaska is reported by the National Weather Service as 17 degrees below zero. The highest the temperature is predicted to reach between now and Wednesday is 15 above zero.

Normally, I’m not particularly bothered by sub-zero temperatures. I always go fully prepared with warm clothing, including toasty socks and layers for the bodkin. I even take Long Johns. Heavy hiking boots. Ski gloves. My own window scraper, just in case the one the rental car company provides proves unequal to the task.

Of course, I take what we’ve come to call my Alaska Coat. It’s a REALLY warm parka with a plethora of pockets, each stuffed with cold weather accessories such as extra gloves, muffler, knit cap - you get the picture.

My preparation is complete.

Well, sort of.

The thing that’s missing at this point is health. I have a cold. Wait – did I say A cold? No,no,no, I have THE cold. The mother of colds. The cold from Hell!

I’ll be okay, really. I’ll ride in a heated tube, then drive a heated car, eat in a heated restaurant and settle into a heated room, where I will sleep under the covers from both queen beds. I will be working in a heated office until time to turn around and repeat the process in reverse order, all within a succession of warm artificial cocoons.

So, I can’t really whine about catching a cold just in time for a trip to Fairbanks, can I?

Sure I can! 

Waaaaaaah!

A time for heroes

             Monday morning, I will board an airplane for a three-plus hour ride to another large city, so that Tuesday and Wednesday I can work with a nonprofit that trains and employs people living with disabilities. Wednesday afternoon, I will board another plane for the trip home.

               As I board planes these days the same few thoughts occupy my mind. Ticket, check. All my stuff, check. What goes in the up bag and what in the throw bag, check.  Will seatmate be a troll, a heavy perfumer, a hulk?

               My status as frequent flier means I get to board near the front of the line and my routine is so long settled that I have plenty of time to scan the crowd as they file on. I find amusement in the people who clearly don’t understand the concept of checked baggage. Watching a person trying to stuff a ten gallon backpack into a five gallon space can be high entertainment, assuming you’re not the person in line behind them. Occasionally one of these people becomes truly nasty in their self-absorption and you get to watch the scene develop until they’re actually kicked off the plane. High opera!

               The cabin staff go through their programmed shtick of facilitating, guiding and yes, arguing in the attempt to meet that holy grail of the airline industry – the full-cabin, on-time pushback.

               All of this plays out in the twenty minutes or so required to stuff a couple hundred humans into a flyable metal tube. And at some point in the process, a small but insistent voice will whisper in my ear, causing me to wonder whether this will be the time.

               Our world has become a place in which carrying out your normal activities carries the weight of volunteering for martyrdom. Not dramatically, not even really likely. But possibly. Could happen. Has happened, and to people who thought it as unlikely as will I as I board those planes.

               Still, we board the planes. We go to work. We attend the big games, ride the subway, assemble for events, eat at restaurants, write what we believe, say what we feel.

               Because not to do so would be surrender. Because this is a time for heroes.

               I do not refer to the folks who throw themselves on grenades to save their comrades, although certainly I honor them beyond measure. I do not refer to professional athletes, because I do not honor them.

               The heroism called for by these times is of a quieter, more personal nature.

               It is the heroism of London in the Blitz, of the miners who go back down, of the Syrian father in the photograph who faces drowning and starvation and hatred upon arrival to try to bring his family to safety, of the mother who will not lay down her burden although arms are leaden and back is strained because that burden is a life that deserves a chance.     It is the heroism of just carrying on.

               We face the terrorism heralded in the media. We get on planes that might be brought down and up elevators to heights not reachable by fire equipment. We assemble in places with too few exits if the shooting starts. We send the children that we love more than life off to school in the morning.

               Yes, I do believe all these and more are examples of the heroic actions we need to take every day.

               But we also need to display another kind of courage. The courage to not allow our distaste, distrust, outrage and fear to become broadly brushed across convenient canvases.

               Many of our politicians are willing to harness the power of collective fear in rallying support for hateful and counterproductive platforms. But the people I fear most are not ISIS and not Trump. The people I fear deepest in my soul are the people cheering for Trump. These are the people who are willing to trade who we are for the illusion of action.

               The people I fear most are those who are content to blame the massacre on mental derangement (or Autism? Really, you cowardly idiots?) rather than on the fact that in this country just about anyone has access to overwhelming firepower.

               The people I fear most are those described by Elie Wiesel as bystanders.

               I like to believe of myself that I would take the bullet for the child, run into the burning building to save the invalid, ram the car before it gets to the crosswalk. But those are opportunities I hope I never have to face, and probably won’t.

               The opportunity for heroism today, the opportunity presented to us, each and all is that of rising to the promise of the American social experiment. Of rising above the hate mongering of political opportunists and haters of every stripe. It is the opportunity to carry on, yes, but also to resist.

               I have the opportunity to challenge the hateful comments when I hear them, to defend the right as I know it. And of course, to simply carry on.

               I hope and intend to rise to the challenge. I will board the plane. And the next one, and the next. Because if ever it were true, this is a time for heroes.

 

Please Google “You will not have my hatred.” Listen to what Antoine Leiris has to say. Please.

Today

Today was a good ‘un. I finished recording a teaching module before lunch time and I think it’s one of my better efforts. I know business training might not seem sexy to some of you but it’s what I do and it’s always nice to feel you’ve done something useful, well.

Mary made elite status with her primary air carrier midway through her flight to Dallas today and I will do the same somewhere over Wyoming on my way back from Omaha next week. In this time of declining comfort and courtesy aboard airplanes, it sure is nice to be able to claim an exit row aisle or even (dare I say it?) get upgraded to First Class. Don’t care about the food; it’s all about leg room. Small victories, doncha know.

Having found and purchased appropriate binders to contain the manuscripts of my latest book last night, this evening I can begin printing and prepping the copies to go to my first round reviewers. I love writing, love the process and just don’t get the published authors who go on about what sublime torture it can be. Even so, it’s always nice to have one in the can, so to speak, especially one I like as much as I do The Patent Desk.

To top things off, when our office manager went through the desk of a former colleague who retired last week, what should show up but my copy of On the Nickel, one of my all-time favorite movies? Since it’s out of print and not likely to be reissued it was a big deal when I was able to find a copy and it had gone missing over a year ago. I must have loaned it to this guy to watch – we shared music and movies all the time - and we both forgot he had it.

I know none of these looms large on a global scale. We face immense societal problems that must be resolved and I hope to continue doing my part.

Still, for the moment and in my little corner of the world, I am content.

As I said, today was a good ‘un.

C'est finis!

The first draft of The Patent Desk is finished, as of 2:43pm Pacific time today. Within the week, it will be printed and on its way to my first round reviewers.
And may gawd have mercy on your souls.

Some ideas for your listening pleasure

I had just finished recording a teaching storyboard for training and this thing was graphics heavy and of course full of narration so, big file. BIG file and because of slow server speeds, etc. it was taking forever to save to my F:/drive.

Doing anything else with my computer during one of these mass data moves, I’ve learned from experience, just slows things down so I pulled out a tablet and Googled ‘TED talks disabilities.’ I really have too little time for primary research so I find that the TEDs frequently lead me to fruitful lines of inquiry. The two links that follow were informative, yes, but more than that, thought provoking and really just lovely. I hope you enjoy them.

Rosie is 16, charming and brilliant. Would that we were all so together at her age. Enjoy:

https://www.ted.com/talks/rosie_king_how_autism_freed_me_to_be_myself

 Andrew Solomon is, well, Andrew Solomon. He talks about parenting a child who is different from the parent in a significant way, such as a child with a disability or in our case, children who are orders of magnitude more intelligent than their parents (Yeah, there’s some prideful bragging at first; then it just gets hard.). I love finding people who obviate the need for me to share my thoughts because they’ve already done it so eloquently:

https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_solomon_love_no_matter_what

The season of...what?

I have to admit it’s very tempting these days to write and post screed after rant about politics. There is so much going wrong and so much wrong being said in our names that every trip to the news feeds has me coming away with jaws clenched and temples throbbing.

This does not make me unique, if the posts and comments I see on various social media are to be believed. Many of us are aghast, sickened by the horrific stances being taken by many people who are given the bully pulpit simply because ‘the media’ no longer include enough people I would describe as thoughtful journalists. I won’t name the screamers here because I’m sure there’s an algorithm running somewhere that would take the mention as a sign of support. But we all know to whom I refer.

I won’t let these people I see in the news define this season for me. I choose to define it for myself.

I look forward to time with family and friends. Bjorn and Susan and Mary and Daughter One and Boyfriend of Daughter One and Odin the Large and Lazy and Zoey the Small and Annoying and yours truly will gather for food, conversation, and scrutiny of said boyfriend. You know, the standard Thanksgiving Day observance. We don’t make a point of talking about being ‘thankful’ but we all are. Two and Boyfriend of Two will be celebrating at her apartment in Chicago and we’ll talk or Skype at some point.

This weekend in our corner of the country we have two days of dry sunshine to spend, so we’ll put up the lights. A big chore (you’d have to see our house during the holidays to understand how big) but we have fun with it and especially with all the cars that slow or stop each evening to look at what the ‘crazy people’ did this year.

With the passing of Thanksgiving we will of course go into prep mode for the Big Day (actually, Thanksgiving is my personal fave, but what the hell) which means among other things, gift shopping.

The tradition in our family, in which I am no different from a zillion other Dads and husbands in being impossible to shop for since I really, truly have everything I need, is to give me a little card saying that a present has been purchased and given to some kid through one of the ‘giving trees’ you find at our local malls. I’ve shared this idea before and I so love this little tradition.

There is another group of folks of whom I’ve become more and more aware the last couple of years. I speak of all the foster children who ‘age out’ at eighteen in most states and locales. I recall what a clueless bumpkin I was at that age and I had the love and support of a wonderful family and friends with whom I am still in touch today. I can’t imagine facing the transition from high school to the wide world the way many of these kids do: ‘Congrats on being eighteen; see ya!’

A couple of years ago I tried to find an organization through which I could channel some help to these kids…Sorry, young adults. The results of my research were underwhelming at the time – a couple or three well-meaning but not entirely thought through efforts.

The other day, my buddy Sheila forwarded to me the web address you’ll see below. If you have a moment or two to spare (and if not, how can I help?) please close your eyes and try to recall being eighteen. Remember your hopes and fears, your life plan or your terror because you didn’t have one. And then, imagine facing all that with no money, probably no job or a minimum wage job, being gently evicted from your latest foster home, no loving family or established support system.

See what I mean? Then, please follow the link below. If it isn’t a live link once it makes it to you please take the time to copy it into your browser. I promise these folks will explain the need much better than I.  

We do not have to spend the holidays cringing at the news. We can look forward to giving a stranger something to which to look forward. We need not allow the haters and cowards to convince us there is no future. We can instead proclaim the future by helping these kids embrace it.

Either use search criterion ‘foster care to success’ or follow this link: www.fc2success.org

Keepin Syrians out

               Governors of 27 states have now made statements to the effect that Syrian refugees are not welcome in their states. (Let’s set aside for the moment that immigration is not an issue of states’ rights, seeing as how it’s regulated by the Federal government. If you didn’t know this, stop reading my blog and please go read the Constitution, particularly Art I, Sec 8.)

               Their justification for taking this illegal stance is that a fake Syrian passport was found near the body of one of the suspected Paris terrorists. Yes, a fake passport found near one of the suspected terrorists. So in the minds (and I’m using the term loosely as a matter of charity here) of the governors of Alabama, Texas (okay, basically everything south of Mason-Dixon, big surprise), Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire this tenuous evidentiary thread – and by tenuous, of course I mean imaginary – establishes guilt by association for every person whose papers indicate they originated in Syria.

               And since the governors do not have the power to regulate immigration and naturalization (again, due to that pesky Constitution), the only possible outcome of their irresponsible announcements is to rouse the rabble. They’ve declared a de facto jihad against immigrants of Syrian extract. Of course we’ve done this before, to Irish and Italian and Jewish and Chinese immigrants. Worked out well for us before, didn’t it? Oh, wait…no, it didn’t.

               Even so, I think these governors might be on to something. Let’s kick out all the people who might be members of any identifiable demographic that might also include criminals. Ready? I mean, you had to know it was about time for one of my famous lists, right?

List of folks to boot out of the USA:

               Never mind, I can’t do it.

               I can’t make a joke out of something that’s so clearly wrong, pig-headed, bigoted, anti-American and just plain married-to-my-first-cousin-make-my-own-hooch-Bambi-hunting-third-grade-reading-level stupid. Besides, I’d have to start with Christians since more criminals in this country self-identify as such than as any other religious persuasion and pissing off Christians is like touching a third rail in this country.

               NO, I don’t believe I’ll favor you with a list this evening. But while I’m here, allow me to leave this note to the Republican Party (which I’m told boasts 26 of these 27 governors among its membership – mostly Christians too, by the bye): If you ever wonder why lifelong party members like myself have walked away, it’s not because we’ve become Democrats – we haven’t. And it’s not because we’ve given up on fiscal conservatism – we haven’t. And it’s not because we suddenly believe in Big Brother governance – we don’t.

               When you ask, if you ask, the answer is this – I can’t continue to be associated with the Republican Party because it’s just become too damn embarrassing.

Really? Now?

So, within 30 hours of the terrorist attacks in Paris both Donald Trump and Rick Santorum shamelessly used the event to make scurrilous political attacks. Trump claims that the answer to ISIS and other terrorist organizations is to have everyone carry guns. Santorum says that the whole ISIS thing is President Obama’s fault.

I don’t have one complete and effective answer for the problems of terrorism and gun violence. I don’t believe adding more guns to the equation will help anyone but the gun makers and vendors. I believe the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the right to bear arms was flawed and will eventually be revisited, just as Dredd Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson were revisited when more rational heads prevailed. I have friends who own guns and friends who have had their families torn apart by them. And I can still talk to each and all of these friends. Rational people have differences that are resolved over time and lots of discussion. And yes, some painful experience.

Santorum is an idiot and an opportunist who thinks playing to his core means making outrageous and easily refutable statements. Perhaps so, since his is a rather fringe core. He’s an idiot and we should not let him near the Oval, even wearing a visitor’s badge. But he’s not dangerous. Because as the polls confirm, he’s in no danger of doing much more than providing the non-journalists running CNN and Fox and MSNBC to post a titillating sidebar.

Trump, on the other hand, is dangerous. And not because he might ever actually occupy the White House – my faith in humanity and Americans demands that I believe we’re just not that dumb. I have to believe he will never get elected because to not believe that would just be way too depressing.

The thing is, the danger of Trump is not fourteen months down the road. It is here and now. Trump is damaging the reputation of the country as I type this. His poll numbers suggest to the world that somewhere between fifteen and twenty percent (keep in mind, we’re not all Republicans) of likely voters actually claim to be riding his train to Insanity. And our beloved media eat his crapola up, not because he has anything useful – and certainly not anything respectable – to say but because they know that people really do love a good, public train wreck.

He is hurting us every time he opens his mouth and those of us who see through him view his supporters as moronic lemmings while his supporters view us as their ideological enemy. His spew need not be reasonable, informed or even intelligent. His posturing need not be respectful and his claims need not be provable. In fact, better for Trump when he is proven to have trotted out a downright lie. Because he’s maybe the only person in the country who would be more horrified than would I should he actually win election.

You see, Donald Trump is not in this to become President. He doesn’t want to be King, he just wants to be the kingmaker. In his shriveled little mind, it’s all about being seen and heard and considered a Big Man; content is not important. So it’s not a problem for him when he capitalizes on the tragedy and horror in Paris today to make outrageous political comments. Because the sycophants at CNN and elsewhere gave him what he sought – a platform and cameras.

Trump doesn’t want to have to deal with the crushing details of being the Chief Executive and he’s said nothing – No. Thing. – that would convince any reasonable person that he would have a doctrine of any kind. Let’s face it, he’s using the wrong parts of speech for a leader of a great nation. As you know and The Donald apparently does not, ‘great’ and ‘world class’ and ‘excellent’ and ‘fantastic’ are mere adjectives. Actually planning real proposals for action in the world of adults would require the use of those more substantial elements, things like nouns and verbs. Complete, actionable thoughts expressed in coherent sentences. I wish the debate moderators and reporters and editors and commentators would start asking him ‘How’? Because then even his erstwhile supports might be compelled to acknowledge that he’s rather short on answers to that simple question.

Trump hasn’t the sense or goodwill to be ashamed. But the editors who decided to publish his insane gibberish on a day that people of goodwill the world over are focused on the suffering in Paris and Beirut and elsewhere, should be.

Cultivating wierdos

I was trolling for ideas just now and I came across an article in Writers’ Digest Online suggesting that a momentarily artistically bereft writer such as myself should ‘Cultivate wierdos.’

I get what they’re suggesting – put yourself in the proximity of strange or at least interesting people and sooner or later, assuming you’re paying attention something worthy of writerly scrutiny will pop up. And this would be simple to do since my office is located in downtown Seattle, wierdo capitol of all four hemispheres (yes, four - don’t protest, just look at a globe). All I have to do is establish myself in an appropriate vantage point overlooking Westlake Park or 3^rd Ave between Pike and Pine or anywhere near the public market at Pike Place and sooner rather than later someone is going to do something writable.

I’ll definitely do that. But not today.

Today, I’m off on a flight of fancy stirred by that same title but deriving from it a somewhat different prompt. Because if I’m honest, the idea to ‘cultivate wierdos’ does not bring to mind denizens of Seattle’s downtown. It actually made me think of my family.

You see, for a member of family mine, ‘cultivate wierdos’ is simply a more casual way of saying ‘embrace your heritage.’

This is not to say that I don’t honor and love my family – I do. Well, except maybe my grandfather on my mother’s side. But that’s a story for another day. Or never, let’s go with never.

So, I do love and respect my family as much as can anyone whose sixty-year old brother can recite the entire alphabet whilst belching.

You see, we’re not exactly anyone’s idea of high class folk. We don’t always hold our pinkies out when drinking tea. And an invitation to one of our soirees is like as not to consist of a phone call at the last minute asking why you didn’t remind the host to invite you and can you bring chips. And maybe an avocado. Yeah, an avocado would be nice.

But we love each other. Well, except when we’re pissed off enough about something inconsequential to not be speaking to each other. Not that this ever happens. Lately, anyway.

My mother used to spend the better part of two days tying up the Christmas tree so each branch would fall exactly right, then stand guard over our application of ornaments and woe betide the McD child who hung tinsel crookedly or in what Mom called ‘clumps.’ In our family clumpage was a crime and creation of a clumpitudinous tree was an outcome to be avoided at all costs.  Better to fart loudly during midnight mass than to be observed applying tree tinsel without the proper balance and alignment.

I loved my mother but she could be a real nutter about the Christmas tree.

Dad had two hobbies: avoiding yard work and singing songs guaranteed to drive a station wagon full of road tripping McDs to their wits ends. He once sang “George Washington Bridge’ (those three words constituting the lyric in its entirety, by the bye) nonstop from Missoula, Montana to Sheridan, WY. Swear to Gawd, that’s how I remember it. The only thing that stopped him in Sheridan was he needed to sing the Wyoming state song. Yup, the man knew the state song of every single state of the union and he would sing them as we entered and again before we left each sovereign entity.

My dad wore the most god-awful greenish plaid walking shorts atop blindingly white legs with black socks jammed into brown loafers and a white, vee-neck tee shirt capping the ensemble. In public. Around people we knew and would actually have to, you know, see again.

And then there’s my sainted Uncle Bill who used to tell all the assembled cousins the most ridiculous lies about his time in the paratroopers. How he used to be able to raise his hands all the way over his head (demonstrating) but since he was wounded could only raise them halfway (again, demonstrating). We loved Uncle Bill and we loved – and believed - his tall tales. ‘Course, being little snappers we didn’t know at the time that he was going through what we would today call PTSD and that Aunt Alice would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to find him standing on the bed, reaching overhead to handle the risers as he relived for the nth time that night drop into Normandy.

My other Uncle Bill is the best teller of jokes I’ve ever known. Doesn’t matter ‘tall that his repertoire is a bit moldy. Hell, his laugh alone will split your gut. His wife, my Aunt Bobbie used to torture me singing the polka-dot bikini song or the Purple People Eater while all I wanted to do was get my cereal eaten and escape her vocal ministrations. Which prompted her to sing more loudly.

Cousin Joanne loves the way her husband Butch tells funny stories. So much so that after prodding and cajoling and pouting until he finally gives in and starts one, she jumps in and finishes it for him. I don’t believe the man has ever told the punchline of any story solo.

My Uncle Johnny was a wheeler dealer his whole life and toward the end of it drove his second wife (his former high school sweetheart) to distraction after he took a retirement job running a storage outfit, one of those places where you can rent lockable space to keep the stuff you don’t want around but can’t bear to get rid of. Now, most operators of storage outfits really like to get paid every month. Not Johnny. Johnny lived for walk-aways. A hundred and twenty days plus a midnight after the last payment, he would gleefully wield his bolt cutters to find out what true treasures his former tenants had abandoned to his loving care.

Of course, Mrs. Uncle Johnny wasn’t all that thrilled when he brought home all this stuff that total strangers hadn’t bothered to take with them. But Johnny could see the value in Oswald’s broken bowling trophy. Didn’t matter one whit that he had not the vaguest idea who Oswald might be. And I liked that about him.

Well, it’s getting late and I’ve told enough of my family stories.

If there’s a moral, I suppose it’s this: I don’t need to cultivate wierdos – I was raised by them.

Lazy boy

So, came home from work early to avoid the whacko demonstration of the week in downtown Seattle.

Took a nap.

Daughter One made dinner and it was wonderful!

Did the dishes.

Drew a layout of the town for the book.

Now, dinking around on the Internet whilst Mary and One work on the project of the night.

I might get around to blogging tomorrow.

Then again…. Lazy feels ju-u-u-ust…about….right!

Recovering short term memory

I carry a little notebook around in my shirt pocket along with a pen or pencil. Okay, truth is I usually have two pens because you know, what if one goes dead?

As I’ve shared in earlier postings, these little notebooks, 4-1/2” x 3-1/4” versions of the composition books we all remember from elementary school are what Mary and I refer to as my short term memory. I say this only partly in jest. Anyone who has lived with me for, say, twenty-eight years will confirm that while I recall details of arcane events from forty years past, recalling the third item on a grocery list is frequently beyond me. Hence, the paper-based short term memory. 

I have accumulated quite a collection of these little guys. Most of the time, I cross out an item as soon as I’ve taken the action, brought the groceries, written the blog entry or looked up the word that escaped me. But sometimes not.

So what I have here is a notebook, thoroughly dog-eared and with a binding that tape will no longer hold together. Prior to retiring it, I thought to go through it one last time and dispose of the extant entries.

Hm-mm, he says. What have we here?

The Amber Alert info from two months ago – probably wouldn’t notice if I saw the car at this point. Line through.

Similarly, the address for a nonprofit in Pocatello is not immediately useful and anyway, I can look it up anytime, so out it goes.

I won’t bore you here with the entries I just can’t read. My penmanship is not deluxe, especially when I’m quickly jotting down – whatever that says. Pretty sure this one was rendered in Klingon which would make Leonard and Sheldon happy but does me no earthly good.

“Rachel sheets” – Was I supposed to wash them? Buy her some? Probably moot at this point so I line through the entry.

A really neat writing prompt that I thought of at some point but I might still use it so I don’t believe I shall relate it here.

“When genius and insanity hold hands” – I actually remember this one as the title of a TED talk I really liked. Feel free to check it out. But I’ve seen it, so goodbye.

“The Light Between Oceans” – I already read it, so cross this one off. Good book, by the way.

Same deal with “The Art of Racing in the Rain.”  Wow! This must be an older notebook than I thought!

Another Amber Alert – I always write these down. Hey, you never know…

Julie Warner – No earthly idea

“Govt involvement in marriage should be registry, not regulation” – Pretty sure I wrote that one, so out it goes.

Daedalus – Yeah, the dumbass who sent his son Icarus off flying around on wings of wax wth predictable results. Why did I even spend the energy required to write this one down? Sometimes, Michael…

Elizabeth Gilbert? Not a fan of Eat, Pray, Love, so what… Never mind, out with her!

Ooh! A really cool African proverb that I think I got from the movie The Good Lie but no matter because it’s cool no matter from whence I plagiarized it. Ready? Here goes: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Cool, right? (Good movie, too.)

Okay here’s a good one on me. I wrote down “Roberts dissent, pp 27-28” but did not write down the decision to which it refers. Useless.

At some point I wrote down “I am better than the sum of my failures.” Damn, I sure hope so!

Kirov. Just that, “Kirov.” What the…?

 

Okay, so not all the left behind entries are gems and for at least some of them, it’s probably clear why they had not previously been crossed out. What I haven’t shared with you is the ones that I liked and thought “Wow! I can write about this!” For those, stay tuned.

Midnight in the afternoon

I booked flights today for a business trip to Fairbanks that will have me there a few days before the winter solstice. Which means in the middle of the day the sun – actually just a tease of it – will grudgingly ease itself above the horizon for less than four hours. That’s four total hours of SOME sunlight, not four hours of blazing orb. Otherwise, the landscape will be shrouded in darkness.

At approximately one o’clock, Ol’ Sol will make it all the way to two whole degrees above the horizon before rolling over and slipping back into somnolence. But you see, Fairbanks is about a hundred or so miles south of the Arctic Circle, so all this is to be expected.

Did I mention it will be butt cold? I’ll have my Alaska coat and my two pair of heavy socks within my hiking boots. This is not a trip calling for business casual. And I’ll have my note-taking materials because if you live in the lower forty-eight you don’t get a chance to see these sights and feel these feelings every day.

How cold, you wonder? Well, the rental car will have a plug hanging out under the hood. This is so you can power the block warmer so your engine doesn’t freeze while you’re asleep in the hotel. Or just in the store grabbing groceries. Parking lots have poles at each slot with outlets so you have a place to plug in said block warmers. 

Next to my favorite Fairbanks restaurant is a ramp down to the river. In the summer it’s a boat ramp. But in December it’s an on-ramp for a very convenient shortcut taken by drivers and snowmobilers alike. (I took that route one time years ago with my boss as passenger and found out later he was scared blankless during the whole adventure. Oops! My bad!)

Not to worry, we were safe. This is the river from which a couple months later they will begin harvesting massive cubes of ice for the International Ice Carving Championship. I’ve been there for that event, and if you haven’t it should really be on your bucket list. It’s an amazing event with sights you can see nowhere else and at no other time, ice carvings being, you know, perishable.

I know there are people including some beloved friends who will read this, shiver and make allowances for my sanity. And I understand your idea of a wonderful vacation is an umbrella drink in hand, shade bonnet overhead and sun-drenched ocean in front of you. If you ever considered Alaska, it would be during the summer and most likely from the deck of a cruise ship.

I don’t blame you; I was the guy with a camera on the South Rim while others hiked to the bottom. But please, at least consider going in winter to a place with midnight in the afternoon. Drive north of the city lights a few miles and see the aurora borealis the way it’s meant to be seen. I promise this is not one of those things that can be appreciated from photography.

And seriously, bring a good coat. Because when you’re in a place where folks can tell the temperature within a few degrees by the brittleness of their nostril hair, you’re gonna need it.

An end to bachelorhood

Tonight is my last evening of bachelorhood. For a while, anyway. Mary and One are bedded down in a hotel a mere 4-1/2 hours drive away, which means by the time I get home from work tomorrow, I won’t have to depend solely on the dogs for my welcome.

Sidebar: This is not to say the dogs don’t welcome me heartily or that I’m not happy to see them after a day of human stuff. But their welcome dances, focused as they are on being fed and petted and such, has something of a dog-centric cast to it.

Anyway, Mary has been gone for about a month, the longest we’ve been apart since we got together (mumble) years ago. Daughter One was here much of that month and I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed having her within reach, but she’s not Mary (no offense, kiddo).

So, tonight I got her coffee creamer (Blech! How can she drink that stuff?) and did an extra sweep and tried to make the dog bed look like Zoey hadn’t been gnawing on it. And tomorrow, after hugs, we’ll talk about how the family’s doing and her adventures in Florida and plans for the weekend and watch a favorite TV show together.

Nothing special.

Okay, that’s a lie. It’s all special.  

Confused canines

As I may have mentioned once or possibly twice, our household includes an alleged cat (I say alleged
because it is over twenty years of age, bedraggled, crotchety and frequently filthy – I’m not sure it’s not actually a zombie cat) and two canines, one Large and Lazy named Odin and t’other Small and Annoying named Zoey. They have long since given up on the polite fiction that ours is a stable household.

 It was bad enough when I was the only frequent traveler among the human members of the family. They would shift sleeping habits to guard Mary’s bedroom threshold and do their insane happy dances upon my return but otherwise, the rhythms were predictable and comfortable and their lives made sense to them.

 They adjusted, albeit grudgingly to Daughters, One and also Two going off to college and returning at unpredictable intervals. They even learned to accommodate our occasional vacations (they love our house sitter). Of late, however, they seem to have abandoned all hope of any return to what they consider an appropriate cycle in the waxing and waning of the makeup of our living group.

Mary has begun traveling for her work and my own travel schedule, for at least the foreseeable future will be ramping up significantly. One is back living with us which gives them another human to love but also banishes them from the rec room which has become her chamber de slumber.  Two has moved to Chicago but will be coming back for holidays and such, sometimes with her beau in tow (yes, intentional). And of course One’s boyfriend frequents the place, just enough to keep their little walnut-sized nuggets confused as to his position relative to their own.

 They can’t figure out what is going on. Zoey exhibits her confusion through excessive demands for loving by standing staring at us or forcing her head under a hand – whose, she doesn’t care. Odin occasionally interrupts his slumbers to bark while looking at us sideways or suddenly burying his head into a crotch. But mostly, he sleeps – his reaction to the confusion in our communal pattern is subtle.

It’s your new normal, doggies. Get used to it. And quit pulling paper out of the recycling can.

Flash prompt - A single difference

I went to another meetup on Thursday and the flash prompt was "A single difference." The whole thing with flash writing is that it's complete within the time frame  - in this case, 50 minutes. So I haven't edited and pre-apologize for the clumsiness of the writing.

Lots going on in the next week and I may not be back before next weekend; hence, two in two days. Enjoy.

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So many ways.

In so many ways, he was just like every other man (boys, really, if she was honest with herself and Gawd if ever there was a time to be honest with herself…) she had been with in the six years since Adam had died.

She never seemed to expect more from any of them and so her social life became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This was not to say she dated monsters or drones, not at all. In fact, she would have been hard pressed to identify a common thread among her failed relationships that she should have been able to spot earlier, that might have allowed an earlier exit and relieved her of the painful, juttering descent, ending always and in all ways in the too-familiar denouement of emptiness.

Ralph was a good guy. Even today, a full year after she had deleted and blocked him, she had to admit it. A good guy. He smiled at her humor, looked adoring at all the right moments. He remembered her birthday, the solitary one that had fallen within the window of their time together. Polite to her father, complimentary to her mother. In point of fact, there really was no good reason why it didn’t work out.

But it didn’t.

She remembered her half year with Phil - Philo, but he ha-a-a-ted it and she was careful never to call him that - with a crooked grin. He was her intellectual lover, the one with whom she could spend hours in rapt attention to the topic of the moment, pretending to understand Proust and Aquinas and making throw away references to Great Books that she understood now neither of them had ever read all the way through. Phil was off in Minnesota working on his doctorate in philosophy and she occasionally found herself missing the sheer mental exercise of each trying to gain the upper hand in arguments over the issues of the day. Late nights with Phil were the closest she would ever come to manning the barricades in a tragically lost cause.

She glanced at her  watch and performed a quick calculation – landed at four, half hour to collect his bag, allow  twenty for the taxi queue and maybe thirty-five for the drive…Any minute now…

‘Really, this is bordering on the ridiculous,’ she thought. ‘He’s not a superhero, after all. He’s a man, he’s just a man, and I’ve had so many…. Okay, enough with the show tunes!’

Chuckling at herself, she thought of Willie. Willie could make anyone laugh; at least, he could always make her laugh. And he did, sometimes in the most awkward situations. Like the time she was on the phone with a friend whose cat had died. Willie decided that was prime time to dance naked with the single prop of a spray can of fake whipped cream. (There were sights that simply should not be seen by a woman trying to comfort a bereaved friend on the phone.) Willie would do anything for a smile and that’s probably what killed their relationship, truth be told. But a good guy. Yup, a really good guy.

They were all really good guys, each in his own way and with his own ways about him. But. But she never expected more from them and so, she never got more. You get what you look for, maybe. And each and all of them failed to measure up to the one with whom none could compete. Adam had been more than soul mate – they had shared a soul if any two people could. And how could a mere mortal compete with that?

She had given up looking, settled into a solitary routine in which she could feel comfortable if never quite comforted. And then, he seemed to have just shown up one day although they had known each other at a distance for years, in the manner of neighbors who can be counted on to bring in the mail when the other is away without taking the slightest interest in return addresses.

But one day, they both returned sweaty from workouts at the same moment and before either of them understood why they had each showered and dressed and were out their adjoining doors together in search of sustenance.

And maybe a bit more, as it turned out.

They became new friends and old friends in the same brief span of moments, a matter of recognition that passed between them unspoken. No thing led to another. They simply were.

He didn’t replace Adam. Neither of them demanded or yielded pieces of their pasts. What they were and all they had been – each and the other – was part of the thing that built between them seemingly without effort. There was no competition with ghosts or memories as they began to construct their own legend together.

And for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why. Why him? Why this guy?

Once he found out her middle name was Daphne he took to calling her Daffy at odd moments and she hated it but loved him for it. He studied her face while she talked, really studied it like he couldn’t get enough of her and couldn’t bear the thought of missing the smallest fragment of meaning or intent.

He opened doors and walked nearer the curb and cleared the dishes and told her when it was advisable to roll down the window. Now. Quickly.

Small things. Neither bigger nor more remarkable than a hundred things one or more of her previous boyfriends had done. There was truly nothing she could think of that set him above or apart from the others, no one thing that she could put her finger on as the reason she’d spent the whole day glancing at the clock in anticipation of catching sight of him for the first time since he’d kissed her goodbye on Monday as he headed to the airport.

Well, maybe there was one thing.

She loved him.

And that, after all, was the single difference that made her smile in spite of herself as he stepped through the door and looked around for her.

Flash philosophy

I've been flash writing lately, flash fiction with a meetup group and flash everything else during lunch at work. It really helps clear my mind for working on the book, which is closing in on finished, I so swear. This one I'd like to share with you in hopes that some of you will come up with your own Flash Philosophy lists.

So, here’s the dealio: Make a list of the alphabet and then go back starting with Z and record a thought - any thought -  with the first (or more) word(s) starting with the letter in question. DO NOT begin with A because you’ll spend too much time worrying about Q and X and Z and this is not supposed to be about worrying. Go as fast as you can and don’t stress – this is not a test, so you are allowed to use a dictionary. And NO EDITING – once you’ve written an entry, go to the next letter and don't look back.

And pre-forgive yourself; they won’t all be nuggets, as you can readily discern from my list below. I did this while I ate a salad for lunch yesterday.

My alphabetical list for the day.

Ask; if you don’t, the answer is always ‘No!’

Buffoon: See Donald Trump.

Customary makes for comfort but crushes cultivation.

Dogs do it because they can; what’s your excuse?

Ebb and flow is one of my favorite ways to imagine life.

Furtive is not a way to live one’s life.

Grimy is a nicer adjective than pristine, don’t you think? (More fun, anyway…)

Heap your plate with good food; then stop as soon as you’re full.

Inflexibility makes one’s back hurt.

Jealousy will almost always drive that which you seek further from your grasp.

Kitten starts with ‘k’; cat does not.

Let it go.

Mammaries on men mortify me (I mean, er, them).

Nouns are useless without verbs.

Only uncaring idiots hit the ‘door close’ button.

Pay attention, but don’t lurk.

Question. Frequently.

Rip one in church. If they don’t laugh, find another congregation.

Stop and watch.

Take time. In the end, that’s really the only thing you can do with it that has worth.

Upgrade your knowledge; your computer can wait.

Vary your routine.

Wear comfortable clothing.

Xylophones are not only for pre-schoolers.

You is a word on which to focus; better yet, we. Leave them for those others.

Zig-zag – you’ll see more and the baddies can’t zero in on you.

Street art

Gazing out the window of the temporarily-vacant-due-to-maternity-leave office across from mine is one of my favorite workday pastimes. Which explains (for any of you who might care to wonder) why when we moved to this building a few years back I volunteered not to have a window office. Yes, part of the reason is that I like wall space for project planning – I’m a sticky note addict – and most non-corner window offices are fairly small for the simple reason that pert near everyone wants a window so the planners try to squeeze in as many as possible around the perimeter of the building. Small office means not much wall space on which to lay out my lesson plans. Not optimal but still not the major reason why I opted for a window-free work space.

The big reason why I don’t like having a portal from which to gaze is that I am a devotee of the art of wool-gathering and no better way to practice my art than to have a window handy. The Big Rub being that no employer thus far has expressed a willingness to pay me for staring out at the scene below.

Since I really like things like eating and wearing clothing and maybe being able to pay off bills and retire someday, pragmatism leads me away from the window office. But I can’t help my great affinity for staring and – one hopes – noticing, so since Michelle went out on leave I’ve bowed to temptation for at least a few minutes each day, usurping her office’s fenestral feature.

I watch the scene below which for the most part means wartching lots of strangers going about their daily meanders. I see the bus waiters and the lunch eaters, the walkers with luggage and without. And while there is no intended or definable pattern to the movement there is an orchestration of sorts occurring before my eyes. I like to imagine the music of the street.

Don’t scoff. There is music here that is discernable only to those who are willing to listen without being too focused on actually hearing. The shuffling of the elderly and the skipping of the young create very similar sounds but with quite different rhythms and timbres – one slow and deliberate and announcing arrival, the other quick and carefree and trumpeting departure.  The sounds of laughter, high pitched from the children playing on the big toys, deep and rumbling from the elderly bench sitter reacting to a comment from one of his crones, staccato and worried from the addict trying to ingratiate herself and thus – please gawd – make a deal which means getting through another day.

Street traffic provides the accompaniment, the phrases are metered by traffic signals and the movements flow with the time of day. Taken together, there is a symphony being written, performed and forgotten as quickly as my last heartbeat.

Of course, I can’t hear these sounds from my vantage point on the fifth floor. But aided by the visuals I can imagine the sonic ebb and flow, the art being created and recreated down there.

And isn’t that what art is about – imagining?

Chrysler's irresponsible advertising

I’m not a big fan of advertising but I do grudgingly recognize it as a necessary evil.

On the other hand, advertising should not actually BE evil.

There is an ad campaign running right now for Chrysler Ram trucks that brazenly encourages young people to do dangerous things under the banner of “live your life!”

It mocks mothers with a series of ‘you’ll put your eye out’ type warnings from off screen motherly voices as young folks engage in activities like driving recklessly, cliff diving, etc. The tag line, after relating driving a Dodge to engaging in thrill-seeking is, “Sorry, Mom!”

When do we get to be done with anti-social advertising?

When will we stop immersing girls in depictions of ‘perfect’ bodies? Or using ‘the most interesting man in the world’ to push drugs? (Yes, alcohol is a drug.) Or using rudeness as an inside joke (remember the ‘fresh’ ads for Mentos)?

Advertising people seem to think that ‘edgy’ is the epitome of persuasion. But when edgy is simply a synonym for irresponsible, I vote with my feet.

There are actors whose movies I won’t watch, companies whose products I won’t buy and stores I won’t patronize because I don’t want to contribute to their messages. Admittedly, neither the Walmart people nor Ben Stiller are likely shaking in their boots. And since I’m not likely to ever buy another pickup truck, the Dodge folks are probably not sorely vexed at my refusal to consider purchasing their products.

But I can’t help harboring the (probably insane) hope that enough people will believe and act as I do to make a difference.

UPDATE NOTE: I thought Ram was still a Dodge brand but Chrysler has pulled it out as its own brand line. Sorry for the error, but my opinion stands.

 

Government and marriage

There’s been a great deal of blather going around lately about the involvement of government at various levels in the certification of marriages. I’m fairly certain you have seen or heard or even been directly involved in the debate, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t go into identification and discussion of the issues present regarding the morality of same-sex marriage.

What brings me to the keyboard today is consideration of the role of government, regardless of the gay / not gay slant. There are two facts that lead me to conclude that the role of government in certification of marriages should be limited at best:

1)      The institution of marriage  in a form we would recognize today substantially pre-dates both our form of government and most extant religious traditions, so the supposition that our government (or your religion, for that matter) has any legitimate institutional claim on marriage is without foundation;

2)      In order for the government to claim a compelling interest in regulating the sanctioning of marriages, we would first have to agree on which form represents a true marriage. The vows which form the promissory basis of the practice are in no way consistent or even compatible from tradition to tradition in this diverse society.

I believe it is in the best interests of society to promote the well-being, rearing and education of children but that doesn’t come close to arguing in favor of a standardized marriage format. We’ve seen saints and monsters, geniuses and blithering idiots raised by couples, extended families, in-laws, single parents, adoptive parents – need I go on?

And by the way, for those who fear what might happen if we ‘allow’ gay folks to raise children, what makes you think that hasn’t always happened? And using celebrities as an example (solely so we’ll all understand what I mean here – I do not view celebrities as a special class deserving of special consideration; they’re simply well-known and thus convenient for the sake of this argument), who would you rather see raise a child – Bill Cosby or Jody Foster?

Some might say we need the institution if only so that we can encourage the family unit. What is the family unit? And how do we encourage it? By breaks on taxation you say? No sale to this customer – I am in favor of a flat tax with no exemptions whatsoever. Do the math and you’ll find that it won’t break gazillionaires and the poor will not be poorer. But that’s of course an argument for another day.

Seriously, folks, why should I care who chooses to live their life with whom, so long as there is no abuse or coercion and they don’t try to enlist me in their family life?

Plural marriage – okay by me. I don’t get it, but okay.

Gay marriage – what’s my compelling interest one way or the other? The only interest I see as legitimate – the establishment of a ‘nest’ for the protection and nurturing of children – has nothing at all to do with the sexual orientation of the parents, once the child is born.

Non-child producing marriages – Is it not always of benefit to society to have people engage in a long-term, mutually supportive, loving relationship? Please do tell me in what universe that could be a bad thing. And can you not think of a fun couple that would be incompetent or unwilling to raise their own children but are welcome participants in your own children’s lives? How about folks who can’t have children and can’t or choose not to elbow their way through the welter of officialdom to adopt – should we rescind their union?

Religious vows – You wanna marry someone you can’t prove exists, that’s okay with me. Wickedly silly to my mind, but what the hey.

I could go on. And on.  And on…  We (society) do have a compelling interest in the protection of children from their own ignorance and from the ministrations of predators. And that’s why ‘doe-eyed’ Mary Kay leTourneau should have spent her life behind bars. Any adult who abuses, neglects, or otherwise intentionally harms a child should earn the permanent censure of society, even if the child in question considered the abuse entertaining.

But other than criminal activity that would be simple to identify as such (bestiality, necrophilia, me wearing a Speedo come to mind), why should I care and under what derived authority should government at any level act in a regulatory manner? As I’ve said before, your right to swing your fist expires at the end of my nose. And my nose came through attendance at a gay friend’s wedding just fine, thank you very much.

AND NOW< FOR A SIDESTEP, SORT OF…

Incidentally, if you want to see a great example of an attempt at governmental overreach being exposed as simple religious bias-driven falderal, check out the video of Jason Chaffetz getting owned by Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood. I’m actually not a fan of PP and don’t believe it should receive federal funding (not just PP but the thousands of budget line items I find not to be within the legitimate province of a federal government) but his attack was rude, his argument specious and his ‘evidence’ made up. Run the video and then tell me – is THIS the guy you want helping to make the rules regarding marriage?