My sister

Sorry for the hiatus; we’ve been away on a very busy but nonetheless restful vacation. Hung out with family and friends, drove along the coast, it was da bomb!

Mary and Two and I attended a party Saturday evening in honor of my sister’s retirement as a school principal. It was a great party and absolutely the high point was when a half dozen of her former kindergarten students, now high school seniors through college sophomores, surprised her with both their presence and their testimonials as to what she had meant in their lives. It was a tear jerker, as you might have surmised.

None of them spoke of curriculum or lesson plans. Each of them described the impact she’d had on them as children and as people. One credits his choice of college major and career at least in part to conversations she’d had with him way back when.

It made me think of a conference in which I took part come years ago. The participants were parents, students, teachers, college professors and deans; in short, a wide cross-section of persons with a vested interest in the quality of education. We were there for a skull session about the nature of education at the turn of the millennium.

One of the questions we asked each of the eighty-some attendees was, “Describe a transcendent learning experience in which you took part as the learner.” Every one of the attendees chose to provide an answer and upon review, I found two attributes – and only these two - represented unanimously in the responses:

1.       Each of the described encounters involved a direct personal interaction between ‘teacher’ and ‘learner.’

2.       None of the respondents described an episode that was a planned part of the curriculum or set forth in a lesson plan.

In listening to my sister’s former students, I realized that each of them would have had a great answer for our conference question. And each of them would have involved mention of “Mrs. McD,” their kindergarten teacher.

I wish a well-deserved, wonderful retirement to my sister, Anne McDermott.

Road trip

Mary has her last final tomorrow, and then it’s off on our road trip to California. My friends and family - Marilyn and Pat and Toni and Anne and Patty and Gary and Naomi and Sherree  and Barry and Two and Jennifer and Sean and others - think we’re coming for Anne’s retirement and Naomi’s graduation. Don’t tell them the following:

It’s actually all about Duck Butts! Yes, you did hear me correctly, we’re talking mallard posteriors here.

You see, there’s an eatery in Klamath, CA named the Forest Café that has paddler bottoms glued to the blue-painted ceiling to convey the impression of taking one’s repast at the bottom of the pond. And we’re gonna eat there, in spite of the multiple negative reviews I’ve seen concerning minor issues such as food quality and service. As I pointed out in an earlier missive, it’s ALL about context and in restaurants, that means atmosphere.

It is entirely possible that overhead swimmers are not the sole roadside attraction to which I intend to expose mine frau during our coastal sojourn. I predict quite a number of topnotch sites will greet us in our slide south down the coast. Yes, we’ll drive through the huge tree trunk and we’ll look at our share of seashore. But we won’t stop at such pedestrian pursuits, not us!

I can’t wait to take a picture of the love of my life at the Tribute to Prostitutes plaque in Ukiah or the tower of bicycles in Santa Rosa. We’ll check out both the World’s Largest Sea Lion Caves near Florence, OR and the World’s Shortest River (the D River in Lincoln City, OR) and plenty of other oddities de nature.

And the noticing! Imagine the noticing one can accomplish on a trip such as this! The mind is officially boggled!

It’s going to be a heck of a drive. I just hope me beloved can fully appreciate the lengths to which I’ve gone in planning this wonderful, fantastic, once in a lifetime  automotive soiree.

Oh, did I mention the World’s Largest Wooden Hangar?

I can’t wait!

(Sherree, you might want to have a glass of wine ready for Mary. And perhaps a bag of frozen peas for moi...)

The (apparently) infinite list

I crossed a big one off the bucket list this week. Of course, in so doing I sort of redefined the meaning of ‘senior’ as in ‘senior thesis,’ but what the hey.  And I’ll cross another one off the list this coming week when Mary and I drive US 101 the length of the Oregon coast on our way down to California for frolics with amis et famille.

So, one would think that the list de bucket would be two notches shorter, non?

To be succinct, non.

I’ve added more goals than I’ve subtracted. Why is that? Just additions to the sub-list of places I’d like to see are sufficient to ensure that the master list will never be depleted. If we add books I’d like to read, the rate at which the list increases - even correcting for completions such as this week’s - requires a grounding in calculus to, well, calculate. If you add in the things I want to build, places I’d like to paddle, ideas about which I’d like to write…

Anyhoo, crossing off this big one means more time for personal pursuits such as blogging. I’ll leave it to you to decide if this is a good thing.

(Sidebar: Congrats, Sindy! Sounds like the show was a hoot!)

Meetup

I attended my first paddle tonight with a sea kayaking Meetup group in Seattle. It was wonderful! Three hours on Lake Union with lots to see and lovely people! Of course, my butt hurts and I may have overworked the shoulder a bit, but so worth it!

I’ll be back with you when I get this LAST EVER paper finished and submitted. Meanwhile, love and kisses to all!

Brer Michael

Memorial Day

This is a tough holiday for yours truly. But not as tough as it is for the many people for whom the day brings a reminder of loved ones lost in America’s wars.  I truly can’t imagine the emotional burden of these deaths far from home.

I wore my country’s uniform when I was young, went overseas, even to VietNam briefly (and relatively safely). There’s a good reason why you never saw my face on any newsreels. I never dealt with bombs and bullets. At the time, I would have gone wherever they sent me but I readily admit I’m glad I didn’t have to go places where people I didn’t know might have taken a personal interest in killing me.

Frankly, I wish there was no Memorial Day. No memorials, either. I wish they weren’t necessary. But they are. As long as politicians continue to be less than perfect and motivations less than honorable, there will be wars. And as long as there are wars, there will be young men – and now, young women – going off to place their lives and limbs between danger and home. And as long as that happens, we should honor them.

In some cases, we should do a much better job of honoring our fallen. The VietNam Memorial in Washington D.C. is one I personally find offensive. I have friends with their names on that obscene gash in the earth. We shouldn’t have to fight wars and this one was particularly questionable but those who fought there deserved to come back to a nation’s thanks. And those who died there deserved to be honored by a memorial that didn’t appear to hide in shame from public view. I’ve touched that wall, touched The Bear’s name, and I’ll never go back. Dave and The Bear and fifty-eight thousand other young men and eight young women deserved better.

There are many memorials that I’ll visit again and again because I feel that attachment of reflection on the deeds of those whose contributions pulled us all back from the brink. One of my favorite tourist things to do is to stand in the spot where King told us of his dream and Marian Anderson sang. The first time I saw the memorial to Korean War vets, I approached it from behind in a driving rain. As I came even with that eternal patrol, I glanced over and was consumed by the ghosts etched in the reflecting wall.

There are lots of memorials that pull at my heartstrings. I wish there weren’t. I wish there wasn’t a reason for them. And I hope someday we’ll erect a memorial to the men and women currently serving in the Middle East, and that we’ll do better by them than we did for the veterans of our ill-advised adventure in VietNam.

Obituaries

Speaking of obituaries, I read two of them side by side this week, both and each of which gave me pause.  It’s not that I knew either of these guys, except to the extent that they shared some of their most important thoughts and deeply felt convictions with me, which I suppose means I did actually know them on some level but not in the sense that you know a good friend except that I do actually consider them friends of a sort.

Hm-m…

Let’s start that one again.

I was reading the April 8^th TIME, which had somehow lost its normal place on my sequential reading list which sometimes happens when a particular cover catches my eye out of order or when I put some but not all of the unread issues in the throw bag I use when flying or when I don’t notice one in the non-bill mail stack until the stack threatens to spill over so I go through pulling out items in give-a-darn order and it finally manages to come up on my reading radar.

But, I digress. Again.

Here’s the thing: These two obits, out of everything else in this issue, really got to me to the point that I put the issue on my writing desk, open to the obits because I knew I wouldn’t turn another page until I’d put these thoughts down on paper. Chinua Achebe and Anthony Lewis both died in late March and while their passing may not create a crack in the world, I felt a tremor in mine because these guys affected the way I think, the way I care, the way I view the world.

I’m occasionally asked – either by people who understand me well enough to ask or people who don’t understand propriety well enough to refrain from asking – what possessed me to go back to college to finish my degree at my age. There are lots of disparate reasons why this choice was made but perhaps the best one I couldn’t have suspected when I began.

I guess it’s all about serendipity. I am not likely to have chosen to have read Things Fall Apart by Achebe or Lewis’ Gideon’s Trumpet had I not been required to for two separate courses at two separate colleges by two profs from entirely different disciplines. It’s not that I would have chosen not to read them but rather that I wouldn’t even have known enough to check them out had I not taken these courses.

At Bellevue College, I took a law course from a guy named Albert Raines who was then a municipal court judge in a city near where I live. He was a great guy and taught using the Socratic method which untold novelists and screenwriters have tried to convince us amount to intellectual terrorism on the part of law school profs but which I found fascinating and enriching. I loved the case analyses, the discussion of precedents and the argumentation as to the correctness of the rulings. And as a part of that course, Albert assigned us to read Gideon’s Trumpet. It’s the story (since made into a movie with Henry Fonda which was okay I guess but really, please do read the book) of Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark Supreme Court decision that explicated the now-foundational Constitutional principle that criminal defendants have a right to legal representation regardless of their ability to pay.

It was not the first time I’d felt an interest in legal or constitutional topics but reading this book brought home for me that I had a personal stake in understanding the legal underpinnings of the society in which I live. The really amazing thing is that Clarence Earl Gideon submitted his case to the Supreme Court of the United States, written in pencil on lined paper from his prison cell and without the assistance of legal counsel. It was a stunning example of the Constitution working and a story every citizen should understand and embrace, especially since Gideon is under attack on several fronts these days.

Gideon’s Trumpet was not one of the best written books I’ve ever read but it was certainly one of the most compelling stories and one that led to an enduring fascination with reading appellate and Supreme Court decisions.

Things Fall Apart was both one of the best written books I’ve ever read and one of the most compelling. Set in pre-colonial Nigeria, the story of Okwonko is one of a man caught between tribal traditions and the need to respond to a personal ethic, of a man trying to live his life within the dictates of a society whose expectations are in flux due to forces he neither sees nor understands. I read this book as a requirement for a course on Third World literature and while the prof turned out to be something of a hack, his choice of required reading was inspired. I went into the course half expecting to need to have a translational dictionary on the nightstand and I was so glad to find out how wrong I was.

Things Fall Apart is often referred to as an “English language novel” but it’s actually written in the language of life. Reading it opened for me a world of literature written in unexpected contexts but about characters and issues that are merely human. Achebe said in a 1994 quote in Paris Review (reprinted in TIME), “…until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Achebe spoke for those on the ‘they’ side of history and in reading his words, one comes to recognize the inherent ‘us’ in the life of an African tribesman.

Reading these books widened my gaze even as it sharpened my focus and I’ll be forever thankful for the confluence of circumstances that brought them to my reading shelf. So, when I’m next asked ‘why college at your age,’ I think I’ll now have a fuller answer.

Sure, it’s about having the degree. And of course, it’s about a promise to Mom. It’s about ego and validation and the refusal to leave this job unfinished. But to a large extent, it’s about the opportunity to learn things I didn’t suspect I needed to know.

Sad and happy

Things that are making me sad:

1.       Storms in the Midwest

2.       The “tea party”

3.       Odin’s incision – has to itch by now

4.       The renters next door and their midnight campfires

5.       My sciatica

6.       I’m not finished with my thesis

7.       My diet

8.       The last two books I’ve read were clearly not well proof read

9.       The weeds I haven’t got to yet

Things that are making me happy:

1.       Daughter Two will be home for two weeks commencing in less than twenty-four hours.

Happy wins!

Influential people

There’s been a fair amount of angst expressed of late – including by yours truly – about the terribly imperious comments attributed to the CEO of a high end clothing company. It remains to be seen whether this idiot’s elitist pronouncements will cost or earn him business. After all, we should know by now that for every person like me who finds his stance disgusting, there will likely be a well-heeled and borderline anorexic patron who revels in the idea of the increased selectivity of his offerings.

I’ve calmed down considerably since my first outraged Facebook ‘share.’ Perhaps my pique should have been more sustained and it likely would have been if I considered this an important issue. But the sad fact is, there are oodles of self-impressed chowderheads only too eager to leverage their financial wealth into what I consider to be inappropriate channels. That some of them choose shallow paths is a very human failing and frankly, I just don’t have the time or the interest in spending my days analyzing the motives of people whose life experience I don’t share and whose motivations I don’t understand.

I’m much more bothered by a recent issue of Time magazine than by this tempest in a crystal martini pitcher. I use Time as airplane reading and consider it an important source for current events and analysis of same. The April 29 – May 6 issue of the magazine was themed as a compilation of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.” And sure enough, there were a number of people I’d never heard of but whose profiles were sufficiently interesting to lead me to want to know more. Malala Yousafzai, Ren Zhengfei, Gina Rinehart, and a trio of forward-thinking AIDs researchers made the cut and reading their brief profiles added to my learning and inspired me in various ways. I found Joaquim Barbosa’s story heroic and Aung San Suu Kyi’s a reminder of Margaret Mead’s famous comment on the power of a committed few.

These and others made the issue worth the price I paid and if it had been limited to this group, I’d have had no complaint. Unfortunately, the world’s 100 most influential personages apparently include at least 26 entertainers (full disclosure - I lump actors, directors, athletes, etc. in this group), mostly famed for their impact in the U.S. Apparently, there is something globally important about the life work of Justin Timberlake, Mindy Kaling and Beyonce. Admittedly, I agree that Jennifer Lawrence is a fine actor but world-wide relevance? Important beyond her craft? Hm-m…Not so sure.

Since the days of Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton, we’ve agreed that an informed electorate is essential to the democratic process. We have relied on the press and broadcast journalism for our understanding of current events, historical references and future trends. When one of the most respected – until now, that is – avenues for chronicling and informing our democracy fails to comprehend the difference in importance between Palaniappan Chidambaram and Jay Z, the degradation of our ability to understand the choices we make accelerates.

For me, the big problem is not the current snotty CEO of a limited market clothing retailer. We have much more to fear from the incompetence of Richard Stengel and his minions among the Time editorial staff, and from the sheepish attitudes of those who, entrusted with the historic right of democratic franchise, will read this magazine and think these 26 are really among the 100 most important people of our age.  

Thirty things I druther do than write my thesis

·         Laugh at Odin the Large and Lazy with the monster cone of shame

·         Write blog posts

·         Hang with Mary

·         Hang with Pat, Sherree, Sindy, Bill… you get the point

·         Talk to Daughter One and also, Daughter Two

·         Mow the lawn

·         Shop for groceries

·         Cook

·         Go to work

·         Take a road trip

·         Make staple patterns in scratch paper

·         Rock out with my pencil drumsticks

·         Fold clean clothes

·         Throw the ball for Zoey the Small and Annoying

·         Put together a Care Package for One

·         Look up the arrival date of Two for the nth time tonight

·         Stand in the sliding back door watching the rain

·         Stand in the sliding back door watching it not rain

·         Stand in the sliding back door

·         Cycle the dishwasher

·         Fold more clean clothes

·         Watch reruns of Restaurant Impossible

·         Wonder about stuff that occurs to me at random

·         Organize my materials for the yth time

·         Wonder about stuff that occurs to me at random

·         Check the toner in the laser prionter

·         Check my WeightWatchers score

·         Walk around

·         Sharpen pencils

·         Sit and stare at the computer screen

I promise to blog more when the thesis is submitted. Of course, this is predicated on actually starting…

A matter of scale

Mary and I have been trying to decide how to approach the new renters in the house next door. You see, they’re young and act it – staying up late making noise in their backyard, which is more or less under our window. And since the weather has turned nice, they’ve assembled a stone ring and each fair evening finds them burning a bonfire, again more or less under our bedroom window. Wood smoke and sixty-year-old asthmatics don’t mix all that well.

They seem like nice enough young guys, if a bit clueless. And they have a bloodhound that’s to die for. I’m a sucker for a big, galumphy dog. And of course, their arrival means we’re quit of the former renter whose presence was much more problematic for reasons we need not touch on here. Still, the noise and the smoke are annoying, especially at three in the morning. So, we’re going to have to have ‘the talk.’

I’ve been torn between hoping and dreading I’ll find them home each time I come home because while I look forward to having the problem resolved, I really don’t like complaining to neighbors, especially new ones. This whole thing has been weighing on my mind.

Shift focus. I spent a couple hours at the gym today and as I dragged my soaked corpus toward the locker room at the end of the session, my way was blocked by a quickly increasing crowd of first responders working feverishly to restore the heartbeat of one of my fellow overweight exercisers. The poor sap was stretched out on the floor and the display on the monitor which faced toward me did not look hopeful, if my years of watching medical dramas have taught me anything.

TV show miracles notwithstanding, most of the time it’s really not good news when the fireman has to administer CPR. This guy is at best headed for a difficult recovery. I wonder about and hope good things for him but who knows?

What I do know is that this guy’s problem de jour easily eclipses my little problem with the neighbors. I’ll man up and talk to them in the next day or two. After all, it’s not life or death.

(Side note:  Sorry for the silence these past several days. I was teaching in Fargo, ND and while it was a great trip, I didn’t have a lot of time to myself.)

Give aways

So, I’ve been cleaning out the garage and the other day, I put several old filing cabinets – yes, we’re gradually moving toward a paperless state – out at the curb and Mary put up the ‘free’ signs, just in case there was any doubt as to why empty filing cabinets would be where we put them.

Today, they’re all gone. No muss, no fuss.

Hm-m-m…

We actually have quite a few items around here that I don’t want to pay to take to the dump. And both our solid waste service and the local Goodwill et al have become somewhat picky as to what they’ll accept. “Donation” no longer carries the assurance of goneness that some of our objets deserve. But “free” seems to work like a charm.

I should have mentioned that one of the filing cabinets they took had a drawer missing and they also scooped up an old vacuum cleaner. I can’t imagine why anyone would discard a working vacuum cleaner, can you? So, doesn’t it follow that the taker must have known they were hauling away an item that sucks in the wrong sense of the term?

Well, now. Seems to me we’ve opened up a whole new path for saying goodbye to our crap…er…unneeded collectibles. Lemme see…

There’s the three-legged table that’s been out in the garage for years. Just because it once had four legs is no good reason to send it to the land fill.

We have several hose nozzles that will no longer screw onto a hose. And a small TV that could be repurposed as a perfectly serviceable paperweight.

The old barbecue still LOOKS like a barbecue grill. And you can always set things on it.

Paddles from a non-working ceiling fan must be of some use to someone. In fact, the fan motor itself is probably free-able, although it doesn’t go round and round no matter how hard you yank the pull. .

There are lots of lids from things we no longer have and I’m sure someone will take them. After all, they’re free, right?

I’m going to have some fun with this.

I wonder if anyone out there wants my collection of single socks? If so, they’re about to hit the bonanza!

The monster is loose

I’m going outside in a few minutes. My mission – assigned and to be closely monitored by mine own dear wife – is to clean up the grass and other weeds that have begun to sprout in odd areas around the yard. You know the drill. It’s Spring and the ‘wrong stuff’ is sprouting up and if we catch it now, it’s easier to eradicate than it will be if we let it get knee high.

I accept my assignment and I’ll get ‘er done. But still, I admit to a bit of a moral dilemma.

It’s easy, looking over the sea of sprouting green to see it as something evil, worthy of my destructive attentions. Left to their own collective aims, these weeds would inexorably infiltrate and overwhelm more worthy green things. That is, stuff that’s growing at our behest. Weeds are the anarchists of the plant world – ‘anarchists’ being a less than friendly descriptor in the Seattle area where I live – and they must be dealt with.

I get all that.

But that condemnation only works if you look at the weeds collectively. From the standpoint of an individual errant blade, of the tiny dandelion seeking only to raise its delicate, golden face to the sun, the world is a scary place. And today my massive presence will sow terror in gazillions of little weed hearts.

I am Godzilla and they are the Japanese. If I go through with this, untold numbers of budding weed lives will be snuffed out by the cruel blade of my Hula Hoe. They will be tossed onto piles and then hauled away like so much trash to lie rotting in a common and unmarked grave at the community composting facility.

I now know how it feels to be the monster that’s rightfully, abjectly feared by a whole society. An entire civilization will die today at my hand.

I’ll do it. I haven’t the courage to stand up against Mary’s demands. So I will become that monster set loose on the unsuspecting.

I’ll do it. But I won’t like it.

Home alone

(NOTE: Meant to post this last night but I was too busy frantically cleaning the house before Mary got home -NOT!)

Mary comes home tonight. In fact, as I type this, she’s approximately over Helena, MT and in a half hour, I’ll head to the airport. Can’t wait!

Whenever Mary is gone and I’m home alone, I field a lot of “typical husband home alone” comments from co-workers and others. The thrust is that I’m expected – as a man – to be thrilled at the prospect of a long weekend alone in the castle.

The assumption is that I’ll eat ‘my foods,’ rent inappropriate movies and let the place go to the dogs. I actually had someone ask me today if I needed to get home early to clean up the place before Mary returns.

Well, I do eat what I want but probably not what they might think. The house looks at least as good as when she left and not because of any last minute blitz.

I’m never thrilled at the prospect of Mary being gone. The life we’ve crafted, we’ve crafted together. She is my best buddy, true love and occasional verbal sparring partner. What she is not, is my keeper.

I will pick her up tonight and when we get home, I’ll go right to bed so I can be up to catch the bus to work, while Mary stays up awhile to wind down from her trip home.  And that’s okay. Just having her in the house is a win every time.

Jiggs

Jiggs the Exuberant is a boxer who lives in the house around the corner, which also shares about twenty feet of backyard fence line with us. He spends a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to get over, under or through the fence to frolic with our doggies.

Jiggs lives in a rental house occupied by a frequently changing cast of early twenties car enthusiasts and as far as I can tell, he’s on his third ‘owner.’ I think the house comes furnished with him. And while his human roommates seem to treat him well, seem even to take delight in his presence, it’s become clear they don’t all understand the concept of closed gates.

These failures in our neighbors’ security system occur at irregular intervals but generally every couple of weeks or so. Jiggs’ jaunts are short lived but joyful. For whatever reason, he celebrates his independence by making a beeline for Chez McDermott, where he frolics outside the family room picture window until I notice him and come outside, leash in hand. He jumps and licks and squiggles his little boxer body in the most amazing display of unabashed love and joy, then leans against my leg while I attach the leash to his collar. He does this whole body wag thing that threatens to make his nose and butt meet on the far side of my calf.

Meanwhile, Odin the Large and Lazy and Zoey the Small and Annoying are barking up a storm from behind the window, incensed at the idea that their human is being co-opted by the boxer from the back fence. As Jiggs and I head for home, I can hear them barking all the way. They are not impressed with my little buddy.

Jiggs doesn’t fight capture; in fact, he runs to me when I call. And he squiggles all the way home.  Today it was the front door that was left open and Jiggs happily ran inside to his water bowl. Then, his adventure concluded, he gave no indication of noticing my departure.

Upon my arrival back home, of course I have to submit to a round of suspicious sniffing from Odin and Zoey before I can resume my life. That is, until Jiggs’ next Great Escape.

I find myself looking forward to it.

Either you get this, or you don't

Cochrane

My list of inexplicable volunteer activities

Things Mary and I volunteered to do, supposedly in support of our children but really because we thought it would be cool or fun or we just didn’t think about it before saying yes:

·         Built a full-size, working pumpkin carriage for Cinderella

·         Served as cookie managers for the Brownie troop - twice

·         Escorted a first grade trip to the Puyallup Fair

·         Chaperoned a choir trip to Korea – (This was Mary – I would never be so silly!)

·         Hosted up to forty kids for a Christmas cookie decorating party, six years in a row – (Okay, this one was mine, and I still have the multipled sugar cookie recipe that yields 1200 Christmas trees, snowmen, and Santas.)

·         Put up more Christmas lights each year until the FAA started using our house as a beacon for airliners

·         Ran the concession for x number of school plays at a succession of schools

·         Slid around town for three hours taking half the drill team home on the night of the big snowfall when it turned out none of the other parents had four-wheel drive. Neither did we, technically speaking, but SOMEONE had to get them home!

·         Served as line judge for the volleyball tournaments – Not a popular position as it turns out, and impresses no one, but I think I look fabulous doing the dance steps

·         And other things, innumerable

So, what’s the point of building and sharing this list with all my blog buddies?

·         The plus reason – I wanted to share with you how much we loved doing whatever we needed to do to be supportive of our daughters’ activities as they grew up, thus proving we were the coolest parents at (Stevenson Elementary / Odle Middle School, Sammamish High School).

·         The other reason – As we sit watching Survivor and arguing over who’s going to put the kettle on for tea, I felt the need to remind myself that I once had energy and commitment.

·         You choose.

For a friend whose daughter will soon start peeling away…

Here’s what Mary and I think we’ve learned so far:

·         Touching skin will become less and less frequent but touching hearts need not.

·         Your best laid plans are fantasy.

·         Few of us are where we thought we were going but all of us got here.

·         Here is not such a bad place.

·         Making some bad choices is necessary – it’s easier to learn from stumbles than leaps.

·         Become savvy about Skype, etc.

·         When Skyping, study the background, then pretend not to notice.

·         Same for piercings, hair colors, etc. (Okay, so this one took me awhile – what of it?)

·         The quality of your child’s education and the size of your retirement account represent an inverse correlation.

·         Listening remains a key skill set.

·         You have to keep a nest for them at ‘home,’ but it can also serve as your newly acquired office. They’ll get over it.

·         Love and acceptance trump advice and consent every day of the week.

·         That boy you think is trouble, might well be. And you don’t have a vote.

·         In choosing schools, living one’s dream is infinitely more important than following the accepted path. Our dancing stilt walker and our budding engineer are both pursuing their passions. Two successes and neither more or less impressive and welcome than the other.  

·         Help them understand that lots of buddies are loads of fun but one or three truly loved and deeply trusted (and trustworthy) friends will ultimately be more satisfying.

·         Every now and then – and this advice is for both you and the offspring – stop and stare. Notice. Embrace.

·         Noticing will usually be more useful than seeking. Still trying to figure out why that is.

·         They are expected to break holiday traditions as the mood strikes. You are not allowed the same latitude.

·         No one said this would be fair.

·         Speaking of not fair, your sole path to grandchildren runs through them and the choices they make. Get over it.

·         You thought childrearing was tough? Fasten your seat belt, the ride is just starting.

Boston

Friends and family:
Daughter Two is okay physically and hunkered down with her friends. The school and city are pretty much shut down today.  Through bad luck, she was near the scene once again and is trying make sense of it. Please stream your best, most wholesome thoughts toward Boston.
Michael and family

An announcement

As of today, I am 60 years of age.
Can you say, "Senior Discount?"

A letter to my daughter

I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there when people died.

But it’s not the same, not really, is it? In my case, the horror came as the result of accident and I was a ‘first responder,” putatively trained to be prepared for the worst. No one prepared you. It was no accident that drove your experience of yesterday. And that makes it a wholly different sort of awful.

I guess I really don’t know what you and your friends are going through. We can talk about PTSD and survivor guilt and fear until we’re collectively blue in our faces and it does nothing to address your questions or assuage your…what? What do we call the emotions assaulting you this morning after?

Psychology 101 can’t help us understand the infliction of intentional, random, horrific injury. The news media pretend to try but only succeed in revealing their own ingrained blood lust.

What does a father say in response to a daughter’s questions that he doesn’t entirely understand and certainly can’t answer?

Toni is right about two things, at least these two things:

                Talking to someone who knows how to listen helps.

                Concentrating on the positive is central.

So I’ll do what I can do, the only avenue available to me and remind you of some facts that might help or at least I hope can’t hurt.

·         Authorities announced yesterday that they don’t need blood donations because they already have jammed refrigerators. Lots of folks literally gave of themselves to make that the case.

·         People were rushing in to help before the smoke stopped roiling out. If you look at the photos – and actually I don’t suggest you do, better to just take my word – but if you do look, you’ll see so many people, many of them wearing street clothes, squeezing pressure points and holding heads and hands and pushing makeshift wheelchairs. 

·         Uncountable messages were posted in the first hours offering a bed for the night, a dinner, a ride to strangers based entirely on need and not at all on affiliation.

·         Any one of the friends who read this blog would take you in on a moment’s notice. We would do the same for them and theirs.

·         Tobi insisting you get up, shower and go to lunch and lab with her because she knew the last thing you needed was to be alone with your thoughts, was spot on. She’s as good a friend as one could ever want.

·         You have the best big seester in the known world and she’s always at the end of the phone line.

·         The race will be run again next year because ultimately, it’s most important not to give in.

No title

Haven’t a clue what the title should be for this one. Mary and I don’t know what to think.

Someone tried to kill our daughter today. As it happens, Daughter Two is safe. But other people’s daughters aren’t safe. Many daughters and sons tonight are injured terribly, physically or psychically and our hearts and minds reach out to them.

Hurt is hurt.

It’s never a good thing when your cell phone rings and your daughter’s voice says, “I wanted you to know I’m all right. It was right where we were standing but I had already left and I’m okay.” (You can probably hear the sound of a father’s brain spooling up as it seeks answers to questions that begin with the five Ws – especially, ‘what’ and ‘why?’)

She was fundraising for Camp Kesem and a half hour after she left, the place where she had been standing became a terrible new piece of our history. And she will spend the rest of her life knowing this evil that reached out to touch her and missed, owing solely to a fluke of timing.

As a father, I’m feeling what I’m feeling, as you can imagine. We need not go into that here. You get it.

But as a person, as a citizen and as A dad – as opposed to HER dad – it horrifies me that any harm that might have befallen her would have come to her so unthinkingly. The bomber(s) don’t know Two and don’t care to know her. Had she been one of the victims, one of the physical victims that is, the bombers wouldn’t have cared that she was there raising money for a charitable cause.

They didn’t care that she was my daughter…

…or your friend…

…or a budding engineer…

…or one of the best minds of her generation…

…or a beloved sister…

…a volleyball player…

…or  Odin’s bud…

…a gifted singer and arranger…

…or a great, intuitive project manager.

Whoever these demons turn out to be, they just don’t care who they hurt. They do this because they think that in so doing, they can send a message.

I don’t give a crap about them. Their agenda is of no moment to me. I don’t care to know what message was being sent today. I don’t care if they’re feeling oppressed or that their religion has been insulted. Don’t care about any of that. The people who did this just. Do. Not. Matter.

What matters to me is that my daughter and her friends are safe. And it matters to me grievously that others are not.  

It matters to me that in the same snippet of film in which one sees the blast, we also see bystanders, officials, friends and strangers jumping in and pulling away the barricades so they could begin the task of helping the injured. Two bombs went off and I see as many people running toward as away.

Someone tried to kill my daughter today. And that someone is nothing to me. The people that matter to me are all in the newsreel. People pulling together in the first seconds after the horror. People in extremis. People whose first reaction in extremis was, “I have to help.”

Hope

I am in love with that most hopeful of utterances, “maybe tomorrow.”  Al Pacino as Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman says this, confirming to Chris O’Donnell’s character Charlie Simms that he is not going to blow his brains out. Today, anyway.

Several friends have used versions of this phrase recently, one in a blog, others in messages both verbal and in Facebook.

We’ve all gone through tough times here and there. Some of us more than others and some of us have had some truly hard things in our lives. Somehow, we get through tonight.

“Maybe tomorrow” means there will be a tomorrow. Even for Frank Slade.

We’ve used that phrase for much less momentous possibilities.

Will we have roast beef? Maybe tomorrow.

Will I mow the lawn? Maybe. Tomorrow.

When are you going to pay me? Maybe tomorrow…

Orphan Annie was right about tomorrow. It’s only a day away.

Maybe.

Las Vegas

I don’t get it.

I mean, I understand the great shows like Cirque Du Soleil. But those could have been staged in other destination cities. And I have to admit I probably wouldn’t fly here just to see the shows. But I was assigned to teach a class here, so here I be.

I took the shuttle down to the strip last night to look it over and I wasn’t impressed.  I walked through three major casinos in my search for dinner and all I saw was people trying to beat out other people. There’s a sense of desperation here that’s palpable. And the façade at each such establishment (one’s supposedly Arthurian and another ancient Egyptian, and so on) is so thin that they don’t event bother to pretend to establish and maintain a theme at more than a surface level.

The airport is conveniently proximate to the casinos, so that the minimum time is spent getting from the airplane to the gambling. Even the bandits in the airport were doing big business. Seems like people can’t wait to start throwing their money down the maw.

It’s just a way of dressing up theft, to my mind. Except of course, it isn’t. Theft, that is. These people volunteer to donate their money to this fake city that shouldn’t even exist.

I don’t get it.

Measures

Words don’t mean the same to everyone and this particularly applies to words of measurement.

Well, some do. If you’re using avoirdupois or metric and applying a term traceable to an international standard, then of course a cup is a cup and a meter thirty-nine-point-something-or-other inches. An angstrom is a specific and precise unit. (Okay, I had to say that in case the ASTM thought police read this. And now, we return to our regular programming…)

From our first dawning knowledge that the sounds issuing from our mothers’ moving lips carried meaning, we’ve gradually come to know that some of those sounds, repeated over time and enhanced by facial expressions and hand motions and of course, context carry meanings that are at once both well-defined and infinitely adjustable. And we tend to grow up accepting our mothers’ definitions of things, including units of measure.

Take some. No,no, not “take some!” Take, “some.” It’s a word we use every day and it could mean any quantity from three to three million, an ounce to a long tonne. In my mother’s lexicon, it meant a quantity appropriate to the item in question. “Some” ice cream meant a single serving, which in our house was probably more substantial than in some of yours. To Mom, “some” meant as much or as many as needed and no more. Not the same for my Dad. “Some” nails meant enough to join the boards in question together plus another half dozen or so that would end up bent on the floor of the garage. But of course, that had more to do with Dad’s shortcomings as a carpenter than any failure on his part to properly estimate the need.

“Many” is a similarly slippery term. How many is many? Depends. Do you mean many as in a lot or many as in “I didn’t see many,” which is sort of a limiting quantification. “Lot” sort of fills the same usage niche, except when used by a wide-eyed young’un, as in “there were a LOT of them.”

Yeah, expressions of quantity or magnitude could be confusing growing up in our house and neighborhood. But over time and with accumulated experience and maturity, I believe I’ve got a handle on some of the most used terms, so I figured I’d share them with you. Herewith, some definitions, courtesy of Marion’s baby boy:

Soon = Not yet, and if you keep asking, then maybe never.

Smidgen = A quantity that I’m hoping you won’t think is too much, because I really like this stuff.

Passel = More than some, occasionally more than many, but usually not a LOT of them.

Bunch = In carrots, about seven. In flowers, however many I could afford. In all else, some. Occasionally many, as in “They was a bunch of ‘em!”

More than enough = You’ll probably have to share.

Plenty = See “more than enough.”

Units of time can be similarly catalogued:

Days = Three days

Days and days = Four days

Days on end = Longer than Mom found appropriate.

All hours (as in noise from next door until all hours) = Until eleven p.m.

Almost all night = At least thirty seconds past midnight

Way too late = Later than I’d prefer.

As you may have surmised by now, not all of the terms I learned from my Mom are exacting in any definitive sense. But there is no doubt in my mind what they mean, each and all. I’m betting each of you has equivalent – though perhaps not necessarily similar – definitions for each of these terms.

That’s okay. I declare my definitions the correct ones, if for no other reason than I grew up in Marion’s house.

I didn’t promise to be reasonable.

More on dogs

Zoey the Small and Annoying just followed Mary up the stairs to our bedroom. She’ll go back and forth a half dozen times before I’m done posting this, intent on being with both of us and nervous lest I lose my way and never make it to the bedroom.

Odin the Large and Lazy has been upstairs for some time, staking out his place of prominence at the foot of our bed and not at all concerned about the fact that I’ll have to climb over him to make my way into the room. These days, overcoming inertia is not his strong suit. He likes to move as little as possible, preferably once in the morning and once in the evening.

We ran into a guy with a beautiful five-year old Golden while out walking tonight and I let her nuzzle my hand. I’ve always loved Goldens and I’ve never met one that didn’t return my affection. I’m the Golden Whisperer. (In addition to being the Baby Whisperer, but that’s another post entirely.)

There’s a young lady who frequently carries her dachshund on the bus mornings and they snuggle and cuddle all the way to 4^th and Seneca. Tonight she was on the bus without the dog and she was having a tense conversation with someone on the phone. She does better when her dog’s with her.

We were over at the neighbors’ for dinner Saturday night and Ynez the guide dog spent a good portion of the evening proferring her hindquarters for rubbing. I was only too happy to oblige.

We’d wondered what happened to Jiggs the boxer in the house catty-cornered from us but after a couple months of no sightings, all of a sudden there he was on Sunday while I mowed the lawn near the fenceline. He’s really a lovely, special dog who wants only to be friends with the whole world. All at once. And he’s one of those pups who always somehow manages to get out and go gleefully romping through the hood.

There was a dog at the Rainier bus stop today whose owner had dressed it up in a foo foo outfit. As I’ve said before, I swear dogs can show embarrassment.

I love dogs. Can you tell?

That for which I am thankful

1) Toni's blog
2) And some other stuff