Family stuff

So here I sit in our hotel room in Cambridge. Daughter Two has gone off to one of her pre-grad events and Daughter One is not flying in until tomorrow evening, so Mary and I are sharing a lovely, quiet evening. Tomorrow we’re going to tour some sites and sights in Boston that we haven’t seen on previous trips. Friday is commencement and then we have a couple days together as a family.

We’ll help Two move out of her house for the last time, share meals at places we’ve been meaning to try and of course, the non-me members of the famille will most likely do some ‘good shopping,’ whatever that means. We will have lots of time to just be us as a family.

I know it is not news to you that I’m proud of our daughters. They have each accomplished much in their still-young lives. Any Dad would be beaming to have these two as offspring. But it goes beyond that.

I spent a weekend last month with One, seeing her dinner show and just talking about stuff over meals. And today Mary and I did the same with Two. And I am struck by the fact that each of them is a person I’m glad to know. A person I’d love to invite to dinner if I were just meeting her for the first time.

Both have good brains, large hearts and a huge well of compassion. They are fun and goofy and fascinating and insightful and knowledgeable. Insatiable readers and noticers and understanders.

These are two young women that any of you would be happy to know.

And Mary and I get to spend the weekend with them.

Beat that with a stick.

Please send positive thoughts

I'm asking for focused vibes tonight. Send brainwaves, think positively, pray if you must. But please, however you do it share positive energy on behalf of the Solar Impulse, a totally solar powered aircraft that has just begun the longest (trans-Pacific) leg of its round the world journey.

We simply must move away from our dependence on fossil fuels and coal. This incredible engineering feat helps us move forward in terms of bringing efficient solar power within reach. And the incredible courage of the pilots - they fly one at a time which means one of them is tackling this five day leg solo - dwarfs in comparison many of the acts that people these days call heroic.

This marriage of elegant design and gut wrenching courage deserves our attention. Now, start thinking!

Thanks, Pals!

Bigots and bigots

As I type this, a group of ‘Americans’ are gathering outside a Phoenix mosque. They have come there for Mohammed Cartoon 2015.

These people are gathering to take a poke at the Muslim community, to make the point that their free speech rights include drawing cartoons of whomever they like. Some of them are armed, since they say they are there celebrating and enforcing their rights under both the First and Second Amendments.

Yeah, sure they are.

And the fact that the organizer is frequently seen wearing a tee shirt emblazoned with “F--- Islam” does not mean he’s trying to provoke a reaction, right?

On how many levels does a yahoo have to be wrong before we can just toss him in a padded bin?

I’m not comfortable finding myself in the position of defending any religion, much less one that subjugates women as does traditional Islam. Father of daughters, remember? I consider religion in all its forms and traditions to be collectively a great evil. But who made me the King of Right?

So, I respect people’s right to believe whatever they want to, so long as they keep it out of my face. I don’t like ISIS or the Tea Party or the Roman Curia. But I would never go to the Vatican and deface the Sistine Chapel. And neither would I join the ‘protesters’ in Phoenix.

These cowards are going to stir up caca but it won’t land on them. It won’t be the worshipers of that mosque who retaliate and the retaliation won’t be taken out on the pistol packin’ yahoos who are drawing their cartoons and shooting off their mouths this evening.

Rest assured there will be retribution. And when the yahoos who incited it are crying their crocodile tears, I hope we all remember why they held this little gathering. It’s not to exercise their rights under the constitution, not really. It’s because they hate Islam and they want to stir something up.

The terrorists who will retaliate are responsible for the havoc they will wreak. But so are the bigoted a-holes gathering this night. I hope they don’t wave American flags. They don’t represent any of us except the tiny, horrifying minority who look forward to religious war. Bigots inciting bigots. And innocents will pay the price. Lovely.

They’re just stirring up hate. And they know it. They can’t be stupid enough not to understand the probable reaction. They just can’t be that stupid – they’re still breathing.

Spring evening

I had a hard night last night. Woke up every hour or so. Heartburn. Repeated fluid adjustment events. It was one of those nights when sleep just does not seem to play a major part. And wouldn’t you know it – this was the day I needed to be up at five a.m. because of a work commitment.

The work was fun and interesting, as it frequently is but still it was, you know, work. So by the time I got home I was plenty tired. Brain dead and plumb wore out, as they say.

I came in and hello’d Mary. Let the dogs out the back door and followed them out. And the whole day changed.

The back yard was freshly mowed and as green as only recent spring rains can make it. The air was cool. Birds chattered their dissatisfaction at my presence and Zoey the Small and Annoying did her dancing feints and retreats until I threw her toy for her a couple times. Odin the Large and Lazy sprawled on the grass in validation of his name.

Mary ordered pizza so we didn’t have to cook, I’m spending some time writing (duh!) and we’ll watch Reese Witherspoon in Wild before I go to bed early and, one hopes, slumber through until my alarm heralds a new cycle.

Meanwhile, life is good. I truly love evenings like this.

Don

I met a guy named Don the other night. I had come to Orlando on a turnaround trip so I could see Daughter One’s show in the Fringe Festival. The show was great and One did a killer job of selling her big song. The girl has an incredible talent for making an audience live the lyric. And of course, she has the pipes I always wished I’d had.

It has been a great trip and a wonderful visit but as you might surmise from the title, not what this missive’s about.

I was sitting outside at a table drinking my diet drink while I waited for the house to open and struck up a conversation with another greyhair who was there by himself. Turns out that Don has attended a lot of the Fringe Festival events over the years so he was a great source of stories and information. Eventually we got around to talk about families, as geezers are wont to do. Both of us have grown children who are doing well defining their own lives.

Don has been there and done that. World travel, several careers, raised children and made lifelong friends. Interesting stuff. The book I’d brought with me to pass the time until the venue opened (One and I carpooled so I was there quite early) remained closed. Much more interesting chatting with my new friend.

He really got to me when he started talking about his wife, Dorothy. She is ill and fading and he doesn’t know how long she has. His eyes got misty when he shared that bit of information.

They have travelled the country and the world, building and enjoying lives together. So when she began to decline and the doctors gently suggested a long term care facility, Don said no way. They sold their house and moved together into senior housing and he became her primary caregiver. Marriage is a pact that’s not broken by illness. But I don’t think that’s why Don devotes most of his time 24/7 to their partnership.

I asked him if he had seen any of the other Fringe shows this year and it turns out this was the first night out he’d taken in three weeks. And he kept looking at his watch. And finding reasons to mention Dorothy.

You know, we talked about lots of things but every few minutes, no matter the current topic the conversation somehow circled back to Dorothy. Things she’d said, goofy things she’d done on this vacation or that. Times they’d spent together. The way she’d looked one special night, what a great mom she’d been. He dominated the conversation in the way that only a lonely guy can do, a guy who sees things slipping away and needs someone his age to just sit and listen.

That was okay with me.

Don left pretty much as soon as the show ended. Back to Dorothy.

This summer

It’s almost here. Summer.

Usually a period of time characterized by too much heat in our un-air conditioned manse, drudgery in the yards to keep it presentable, primarily for the dogs. And of course, primarily in spite of the dogs. I‘m not a warm weather person, never have been. So I suppose my generalized distaste for most things summery is simply a matter of druthers. Certainly I don’t expect others to share my preference for a nice blustery fall day or driving rain outside whilst I’m reading inside.

I have to admit to a number of positive aspects to the approaching dry season. My brother and his wife usually visit and we get in some paddling. We get to see one or both of the Daughters, One and / or Two. And grilling our dinner is nice. Throwing toys for the dogs where no lamps will be damaged.

So I guess you could say that I usually view summer as a mixed bag.

But not this year. This year it shall have been glorious, as the King might say.

In a couple of days I’m off for a quick turnaround trip to see One’s dinner theatre show, which has me on pins and needles. Can’t wait!

Then we go to Boston for Two’s college graduation. Followed by two (count ‘em – two!) cross country drives with Two and a return trip with Mary.

Yup, it’s gonna be a good summer.

As summers go.

Recuperation

As many of you know, Mary is recovering from surgery to both feet.  She’s what we think of as a trouper when it comes to surgery. Even so, with healing wounds on both feet, she hasn’t been doing much ballroom dancing the last week, know what I mean?

So, we’ve done a lot of sitting around in the last week.  Okay, so she has been sitting and I’ve been fetching and toting and that’s how it should be when one of us is ailing. I’ve really been enjoying the quiet time together. We’ve watched the tube, read, worked on our individual projects and talked.

We’re coming to a very big crossroads this summer. I’ll get a lot of daughter time and I’m looking forward to that. But with Two graduating and going off to live in yet another distant city and One settling in with both a full time job and her entertaining gigs, they’re really moving down their life paths. And at some point, they’ll each disappear around a bend.

I’ve been worried about that. I have my work and my writing and Mary has her work and her hobbies but I worried about what the third person in the room – the ‘us’ person – would do once we truly become empty nesters.

This week has gone a long way to relieving my fears. I get to go see One’s show in a couple weeks, then we’ll all of us meet for Two’s graduation, then Two and I will do our father-daughter road trip and in August I’ll drive with her to her new city and Mary and I will drive back together. And then here we’ll be, alone together.

And that’s okay. Way okay.

I like old stuff

I decided this morning to convert old 8mm video cassettes to digital with my old confuser whilst I worked on Da Book with my new(er) confuser. So I got out the cables and the old video recorder and some tapes, hooked everything up and got to multi-tasking.
Or actually, not.

Couldn’t get the conversion program to work. Probably too old. Me or the program or both. But Daughters One and also Two gifted the converter to me and it’s not their fault I took my own sweet time getting around to trying to use it, so I’m not giving up on it yet.

Mary will try loading it on her confuser and if that doesn’t work, we’ll have Two take a look when she comes home for the summer. I hate discarding a product simply because I let its shelf life run out. And it may well be that I’m just not competent at using the durn thing and Two will figger it out right sprightly. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, it was a trip pulling out the old camcorder. I had forgotten what a joy it was to use. Well, except maybe for the fact that rewinding seems to take forever in the context of today’s point-and-click world. On this old relic, every button is clearly labelled, indicating what it does in terms even I can understand. And there is a discreet button for – wait for it! – each and every function! I can actually operate the thing without accidentally deleting or corrupting anything because I didn’t understand where I was in multi-function land!

I know tape is old speak and I admit that my intent is to produce a non-tape copy of our entire photo / video family history for each Daughter and another for Mary and me. I will create them on Terrabyte drives that fit in one’s pocket. So I’m not entirely bent on stepping back into Old Techville.

The camcorder will end up donated and probably sooner rather than later. But I have to admit I’ll miss its straightforward utility. Lots of things seem to be going that way.

Sad. And inevitable.

The Ball of Twine Tour

In the year after the 9/11 attacks, Mary and I loaded the car with Daughters One and also Two and headed out on what for us would prove to be an epic adventure. With a carefully packed van and printouts of directions to myriad points of interest in each of the states through which we intended to pass, off we went.

In order to facilitate communication with family and friends during our grand tour, we set up a web site called The Ball of Twine Tour (okay, so One’s twelve year old friend set up the site after I failed utterly and completely to understand how to do so – what of it?). The name arose from the fact that I had researched the world’s largest ball of twine and threatened Mary with the prospect of visiting all three locations that claimed the title (the real one is in Cawker City KS and Darwin, MN are the real thing, if you care to know, while Branson, MO is a pretender).

We didn’t actually visit the twine balls on that trip, although One and I did finally visit the one in Cawker City during a later trip. But the BallofTwineTour moniker stuck and we really enjoyed posting pics and comments to the site for the enjoyment and edification of our homebound correspondents.

Jump forward to yesterday. We had finally decided to dump the site and stop paying $12.95 for its maintenance. So after downloading and printing out each of the web pages for posterity, we arranged to drop the site and the contract.

Or so we thought.

I will refrain from subjecting you to a recounting of the entire sordid process we have gone through on this. Suffice to say that in spite of our multiple requests that the site be taken down, all Yahoo did was kill the functionality while continuing to bill us.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

1)      A family website can be a really fun thing that means a lot to each and all of us, but…

2)      Yahoo is not the place to host a website and not a company with which we’ll ever do bidness again.

I were wrong agan

The title of this missive will come as no great shock for those who’ve known me well or long and especially both well and long.

I just returned from a teaching trip which was a peak experience but quite draining and I was looking forward to some non-brain-challenging semi-face time with friends and family via social media. I was not disappointed for the most part, that is, until Mary led me to a video that required some reflection.

Daughter Two’s sorority sisters had scripted, recorded, edited and posted a video as a sort of sendoff tribute to her and it forced me to face up to one of the more glaring instances of me having chimed in as a Dad and then turning out to be, you know, full of caca.

You see, when Two went off to college, one of the decisions on which I took a fatherly stand was the whole idea of her joining a sorority. I didn’t have the university experience, as many of you know. So I can’t say I really knew much about what it’s like to live and learn and grow in that intellectual and cultural setting. But one of the things I thought I knew was that Greek life was pretty uniformly evil.

While I didn’t exactly take Animal House as a documentary, I have to admit that the stereotypes it parodied were pretty much consistent with my image of frats and sororities - spoiled rich kids with more focus on the social than the academic aspects of college life, Biffs and Buffies into partying, wearing sheets and drinking til dawn. Snottiness and debauchery in equal measure and a view of life completely devoid of any connection to the rest of us. Exclusiveness and meanness to anyone not deemed ‘worthy’ of the Greek mantel.

Turns out, I was right. That is, if you only consider such bastions of backwardness as Sigma Alpha Epsilon in your evaluation.

I was wrong – completely, massively, unfathomably wrong – when it comes to the ladies of Kappa Alpha Theta at MIT.

I fought Two on this, to the extent that a Dad of a daughter who is of age and going off to college has any standing to fight. And being Two, I believe she truly listened, considered, and then overrode my arguments. And in my opinion today, her decision to go her own way on this may be the primary reason why a stressful experience like undergraduate studies at MIT proved survivable for her.

It has become a cliché for writers and commencement speakers to refer to college students as the hope for our common futures. But in the case of the women of Kappa Alpha Theta, the cliché rings true. To the extent that Two’s Theta sisters actually do represent the leaders of tomorrow, Tomorrow is in the best of hands.

I’ve seldom been gladder to be proven wrong.

Other instances of this phenomenon have included:

-          My insistence that Disney was not the right place for One – yeah, blew that one

-          My reticence to get a sleep study done

-          My attempt to take Odin back to the pound after he’d done a certain amount of exuberant property damage in his first couple of weeks with us

-          My argument that we should reno the bathrooms before the downstairs

 I could go on. Suffice to say, any success I’ve had as a parent and husband has as often been related to my willingness to cave in as my ability to prevail. And regarding Two’s membership in Theta and her residence in their house, this was a wonderful example of me being concerned and thoughtful and insistent. And wrong as hell.

Yup! I were wrong.

Again.

My baby's feet

I went with Mary for her pre-surgery appointment with her foot surgeon this morning. It was so cool looking at her x-ray images where for once even an amateur like moi could readily see exactly what the doc was describing to us.

It was fascinating looking at the skeletal structure as it always is. Something about the workings of the human body is just riveting.

More than that, my true love has been in serious foot pain just about all the time for as long as I can recall. And this guy was able to show us why. And show us what he’s going to do about it. And predict that her post-surgical pain will be no more than 20% of her pre-surgical pain because most of the nasties causing the pain (but only most - can’t do much about the effects of arthritis) will be gone.

I always hate for any of my loved ones to undergo surgical risk. But in this case, I think we’re both honestly looking forward to it.

Plus, it’s a day off work, so I got that going for me.

Had another birthday

Yesterday.

Got a nice toy from Mary. And calls from our Daughters, One and also Two. And a promise of lunch at the Der (yes I KNOW they dropped the ‘Der’ from the name but I’m a purist, so please just let it go) and a miniature cake.

The dogs didn’t seem to take much note of the sixty-second anniversary of my natal day. They were, however, impressed to the usual level when I fed them and Zoey the Small and Annoying took delight in chasing her ball. Odin the Large and Lazy mostly just lived up to his name.

Mary and I made plans for today, involving such red letter events as getting new tires for the truck, searching Half Price Books for a copy of the tome I was halfway through when I left it on top of the payment machine in the airport parking garage. Didn’t find it but did find a new Amy Tan so all was not lost.

My buddy Sheila called to wish me a happy which was very cool because I’d forgotten so it truly was a nice surprise.

I had a wonderful chat with my bus buddy Marsha who teaches at the maritime school in Seattle. She’s a fascinating person who has sailed the seven seas as crew on board yachts of wealthy people. She and I are both teachers so we frequently talk shop and of course, there’s always the fact that she has lived the life that a zillion others wish they’d had the guts and fortitude to pursue to hold my interest. I wish One and Two could meet her.

I’m looking forward to being a whole family for a few days at Two’s graduation and to doing a road trip with Two to California and to kayaking, etc.

One is singing a lead part in a big showcase and I am so basking in the pride I know she must be feeling.

It’s been a really good birthday weekend so far.

Insurgency

You see, the thing about writing a novel is that if you really create living characters, characters with their own motivations and histories and baggage and aspirations as well as perspiration, they don’t tend to neatly follow the directions you’ve laid out for them. In fact, you can’t really know where the book is going to go until you have some understanding of the forces at play, not if you want the story to ring true. And while some of those forces are situational, the initial conditions and setting and precipitating incidents and all, many of them are relational and transactional, which means character-driven. Rising action really means rising emotions and emotions are messy.

This can quickly lead to anarchy. And anarchy is not a wonderful thing, given that your aim - the whole reason for embarking upon this flight of fancy in the first place - was to tell a simple little story that you thought would interest readers, make an insightful point regarding the human condition even and which you have therefore, you know, planned out.

But no-o-o-o, the crowd that inhabits the novel decides they want to have their own say in things. So Maggie, who was originally going to be a bit player in the piece and whose sole job was to provide a love interest for Marc so as to take that bit of tension off the relationship between Marc and Julia, decides she needs a life of her own and even (crap!) a third dimension and needs, for Gawd’s sake. And a daughter. Don’t get me started on the damned daughter!

And the townspeople refuse to fit into the neat Mayberry-esque framing I had planned for them and start lobbying for more page time, both individually and collectively and the next thing you know, there’s a couple dozen where I’d figured on maybe six and new neighbors showing up every writing day.

Then there’s Max. All Max had to do was die. His demise takes place in the prologue so that one might reasonably have thought that he would play his scene, thereby providing motivation for the other characters to come together (no, not like Big Chill except really precisely like Big Chill, but not really) and then to be content in his croakitudinous condition and Just. Stay. Dead.  You think he could handle that? One might think that being deceased, he could have just, you know, stayed quiet. One might think that and one would be wrong again! Which brings us to Georgia but I’m not going to sound off on Georgia because I really like her, even if she wasn’t one of the original characters and sort of wheedled her way in on the figurative coattails of the dead guy who refused to stay dead.

These people are making me crazy!

Which I must have been for ever thinking I could write this thing.

Which I can. I will. I am.

But I don’t have to like it.  

Except the dogs. The dogs be cool. (They have very little dialogue.)

Easter Sunday...

…is not so much like it was when Daughters One and also Two were young.

In their younger years, Mary would put together these quite amazing Easter baskets chock full of goodies and objets d’plaisir. (Okay, I made that Frenchified bit up but I like to fake being worldly so please just let me have it.)

We would fill the obligatory plastic eggs with candies and coins and hide both the eggs and the baskets in obscure places about the house. Come the morn, I would go down and feed the dogs and start coffee before beginning the torturous process of preparing the girls for the festivities of the day. Said preparation consisted primarily of suggesting a string of activities the girls might want to engage in before starting the hunt d’ goodies.

For example, I might suggest washing the truck or mowing the lawn or taking a lengthy hike, and ponly then beginning the festivities. Each of my suggestions would involve more of a delay and each in turn would be met with a louder chorus of boos, until finally I would ‘surrender’ to their wishes and the hunt would be on.

Of course, we took videos and still pics as the girls scurried about looking here and there to a raucous chorus of barking dog(s), depending on which year we’re considering.

This year is a bit more subdued. One is in Florida, so other than a call for well-wishing, sort of out of the picture (sigh!). Two flies back to Boston tonight but before she does, we have Mary’s sister and niece and her boyfriend here for a dinner of spiral-cut ham and cheesy potatoes. It looks to be a lovely evening.

It’s only natural that things change as time marches on. The girls, being adults now, are not to be entranced at the prospect of searching under cushions and behind doors for chocolate eggs. As I say, it’s only natural…

Still, I must confess to an insane urge to hide the ham.

Homecoming (sort of)

I had an evening fall free while working in Omaha this week and so I started checking maps to determine whether I was within visiting distance of my friend Evelyne; alas, it was not to be. However, whilst scanning the maps I found I was but an easy drive from my father’s birthplace of Oto, IA (current pop: 108) and decided to go check it out.

My father’s folks emigrated from Moville, County Donegal, Ireland at a time when economic conditions and subjugation by the Brits made it advisable for Irish of the Catholic persuasion to skedaddle. John B McDermott, my father’s grandfather founded the town of Moville, IA (current pop: 1,618) by the simple expedient of agreeing to the siting of the local U.S. Post Office in his front room.

I know, you might be wondering how the McDermotts, having come all the way from Inishowen Peninsula and the shores of Lough Foyle and having founded a town that is prospering to this day, failed to evolve into a dynasty. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind knowing that my own self. Seems like the McDermotts of my ancestry have always been more interested in raising children than money and we have succeeded admirably over the years in both child production and the avoidance of accumulation of wealth. In fact, given the numbers of McDermotts currently residing in the U.S. and figuring the birth rate based on the relatively small number who originally made their way here from the Old Sod, one might reasonably infer that the making of babies is a singularly McDermott-ish talent.

We have a coat of arms, with the primary imprint including profiles of three boars’ heads. (Me Da was not impressed when I wrote a report about this in the fifth grade, in the course of which I referred to our ancestral heraldic emblem as featuring “drawings of The Three Pigs.”)  No one these days seems to know why my father’s ancestors found boars’ heads representative of their clan. On the evidence of provable affinities, we might more accurately and descriptively have opted for a drawing of diapers, but perhaps they didn’t have those in the days of coat design.

It IS emblematic of our tribe that the town (Oto) of my father’s whelping is both small enough to erase any delusions of grandeur and thriving enough to prove the hard-working bull-headedness of the inhabitants. You can look up the township for yourself using your favorite search engine. It does show up, barely. Unfortunately, the street-view availability stops at the intersection where one would turn right to go into, you know, the town. Mayberry is a megalopolis by comparison. Even so, this is part of where I came from, however distantly or indirectly, and it was a very cool evening’s sojourn.

All hail, mighty Oto, forever may your banner wave! (Okay, so they don’t have a banner; what of it?)

A perfect word

Some words are just meant to be. One such is ‘magnificent.’ I can’t imagine it meaning anything other than what it does. It could never swap meanings with ketchup, say or bucket. Neither sandstorm nor pickle could mean what magnificent does.

I was flying from Omaha to Seattle yesterday afternoon and the diagonal route meant that we were over mountains for a goodly portion of the trip. Not mountains like the puckered up hills they call mountains in Kentucky or Virginia. Mountains worthy of the title. Valleys and peaks, canyons and crevasses, dry alluvial fans and bowls filled with pristine, above-the-tree-line snow. No roads or rails, just forest and millennial-carved stone, the impossibly sharp knife edge with the glare of snow blindness on the sun side and deep, mysterious shadow on the other.

Plateaus cut by fissures that gave way to canyons cut by snaking rivers flowing out of sight. Endless scrub that from 35,000 feet looks soft as the down on the back of a newborn fawn.

How could a word like ‘magnificent’ mean anything but this?

 

 

(not) Pondering last moments

On Monday, the day I began this trip the big news was of an airplane that crashed into a mountain for what at first seemed no good reason. I usually check CNN or Reuter’s online evenings when I’m away from home and so I learned in due course that was misdeed as opposed to mishap.

Another instant mass murderer has taken his fifteen milliseconds of fame. Another hundred-plus people with no unifying theme more compelling than a common choice of conveyance shared their last moments together, probably in the mounting panic that accompanies a rapid descent from the heavens to oblivion.

So I have to wonder how many of the people with whom I share this plane, my flight home from Omaha paused to think as they boarded whether they would end up collecting baggage at SeaTac or being collected from a lonely ridgeline in the Rockies.

I didn’t. Worry about it, that is. Except that it clearly crossed my mind; hence this missive. I don’t wonder what it would be like to hang from my seatbelt in an inverted plane, trying not to understand just how final this trip had become. Because I can’t.

I can’t dwell on this sort of thing and still do what I do. And what I do is more important than what some crazed individual might do.

Or, so I tell myself…

Portcullis

I came across this word the other day while reading and was reminded how much I like it. Feels great on the tongue, does it not? Portcullis. I’ve always enjoyed this word but until now I don’t believe I’ve ever found a place for it in my everyday usage.

To save you a trip to the OED, a portcullis is the massive vertically-drawn iron gate with wicked sharpened appendages at the bottom that is raised to allow one to enter the sally port of a medieval castle or a nineteenth century fort. The proverbial castle gate at the end of the drawbridge. You’ve seen them in movies or if you’ve ever been to the castle at the Mouseland. Castle designers (castle-tects?) usually employed two of the buggers, so they could trap baddies in between and kill them by means of arrows or hot oil delivered through slots they charmingly called murder holes.

Not to worry, I haven’t become murderous in my old age.

I received in the mail yesterday an editorial review of the beginning of a book I’m working on from one of the women who agreed to look it over for me. Sruthi offered some very good (if somewhat hard to read – sniff!) ideas for improvement. That’s the way it goes with editing. A good editor is both skilled and honest. Which leaves one no way to turn if what you’ve submitted can stand a bit of tweaking.

She is one of two writers among the six or so folks I’ve invited to read and make comments. All women. No offense men, gentle- and otherwise, but the protagonist is a woman so I most value women’s points of view at this point.

I knew when I sent out the samples for these friends to read that a couple would go down black holes, some would try to be gentle and some I hoped and believed would give me the straight skinny. Sure enough, Toni and Sruthi have chimed in with precisely the feedback I needed.

By putting my writing in the hands of these folks I have bared my soul in a way that I’m not sure folks who don’t write will quite understand. I have entered the tunnel and let the portcullis slam down behind me.

You see, these are people I don’t want to disappoint and they will know for the rest of our lives if I don’t finish or if I write half-assed or dishonestly. I can’t know at this point if this work will ever gain a larger audience than this little group of intelligent and thoughtful friends. And the only way to satisfy them (and my ego) is to produce as good a finished product as I possibly can.

Sending off those six envelopes was an exercise in both brilliance and insanity, dependent on confidence and subject to abject fear. I could not have continued to write the book without knowing that the basic idea might make sense to a reader. Sending it out sucked. And was profoundly liberating.

I would ask Sindy and Larry, how did you do this for so many years? Except for the fact that I guess I know the answer. Because you have to. Because it’s what you do. Because having searched for and found and then fleshed out the idea it is impossible to just leave it lying by the side of the road.

The portcullis has rung down behind me and the only way to open the gate ahead is by cranking it up one rung at a time. No going back and hesitation might be fatal.

Damn!

Rainy evening

Too many gone of late. Two young suicides at MIT. Four teens on a stretch of road not meant for partying. A dear friend’s son in the final days thanks to a cancer that the doctors just could never get ahead of.

I have seen death before. In person, violently and not. And at a distance. Due to old age, disease, once a fire, a road accident, at their own hands. And these latest deaths follow the pattern of my experience.

It won’t surprise most of you that my offering this eve will be neither profound nor cheering. Not if you know me. And certainly not if you’ve known death among the young.

The only thing I can think to say, and to do, is to make good use of the time I have. Not the time remaining. The time I have. It’s not a continuum of which there is some percentage behind and some ahead.

There’s only what’s ahead. And I’ll be damned if I’ll waste any of it.

Hollis and Lana

That’s all it said, Hollis and Lana.

Well, actually it was more like HOLLIS and LANA, since the names were rendered in block letters. Surrounded by a gorgeous mural, but the letters didn’t intrude on the artwork.

I’m not generally much of a fan of graffiti – I consider it vandalism, pure and simple. But I have to admit that while I can’t officially approve, this bit of scribing (scribery?) got me to thinking.

I found myself wondering about Hollis and Lana. Are they star-crossed lovers or teenagers professing their newly found devotion largely to convince themselves of the truth of their declaration. They might be a married couple larking during a walk around the block.

Since I’m not inclined to set up surveillance and Hollis and Lana probably won’t repeat their artwork in the same location anytime soon, it doesn’t seem likely I could catch them in flagrante, as they say.

But I am curious about them. And maybe a bit proud. You don’t see this sort of message all that often. It seemed a lovely expression and it made me smile.

I sure hope Hollis and also Lana are good to and for each other.

Pi Day

It has become a well-settled tradition that the admissions decisions for MIT are announced on March 14^th (Pi Day – get it?) and already, the blogs and twitters relating to that institution are filling up with the anxious comments of potential students. Mary and I will never forget standing in the background with fingers and toes crossed in the moments leading up to the moment of truth for Two. That the decision went well for her in no way erases my memory of the stress and hope and fear that accompanied the spool up to that announcement.

Pi Day has become something of a landmark event in my mind in the years since; each early March, I find myself drifting to the blog comments of students awaiting their fate.

It would be easy to dismiss this fascination as a byproduct of my natural affinity for events affecting one of my daughters. But it goes beyond that. I have watched these kids during the applications and acceptance (or not) process and seen them arrive at the school with high hopes and focused intent. These students are different from your usual college freshmen. And not because MIT is such a great learning place, although it is.

I think a big part of the angst vested in the MIT decision is the realization that for many of these kids, in their highly functioning minds it is the only place where they feel they are assured of fitting in.

While some of the prospective Beavers of the Class of ’19 will be drawn from the rarified ranks of the privileged who already attended top prep schools, others – a majority, actually – come from regular old secondary schools. Many of them rose to the top of this year’s high school crop not because they were carefully nurtured in a system with the best of everything, but because their own raw intelligence and drive to understand allowed them no other path.

That second group of kids come from situations in which they were the ‘smart kid’ madly treading water in a sea of the rest of us. And many of them spent their most formative years feeling misunderstood, different, unwelcome. For those, the choice of MIT is much more than the simple matter of getting into a really good college.

For the off-charts-smart kids of this year’s application pool, getting into MIT or one of the other four or five institutions in the world dedicated to the education of one-in-a-thousand minds, the acceptance decision is a signal event in the cultural and social, as well as academic realms. For many, way too many of these kids, getting into MIT or Cal Poly of Rose Hulman or Tsinghua or Harbin means that for the first time in their young lives, they will be surrounded by people – other students as well as profs – who understand them.

It will be a coming home and for that reason, for those who are not admitted or those who are admitted only to find the rigor beyond their abilities, there will soon be the realization that for them, there may be one more denial of the human need to Just. Fit. In. This realization can be soul crushing and I wish I could hold each one of them and find a way to help them find a way.

I understand that an MIT or a Berklee or a Kings College can only admit so many students. And I understand that the admissions process is inexact. But I’m bothered that the decision has to be so binary. Admitted / rejected. Included / excluded. Learn / languish. Fit in / remain outside.

One of the signs that we have at last matured as a society will come when our system allows for differences in a non-binary way.

We need to find a way that works for every one of us. Not only for the incredibly intelligent but also for the pretty smart. For the average kid, yes, but also for the kid who comes with labels. Autistic. Artistic. Exceptional. Odd. Different.

A week from tomorrow, many thousands of potential Beavers will receive the news. And for over ninety percent of them, it will not be the news they seek. Think about that – over ninety percent of the students who did well enough in high school to harbor thoughts of admission to MIT will find themselves rejected. There’s something very twisted about that.

I hope they can somehow understand how badly we as a society need for them to keep on keeping on. I hope they each and all find their way. And I hope that someone will be there to make each of them feel not only different, but special.  

Off the grid (sort of)

I am out of town. Which is not to say I am not in any town. I am in fact in A town, just not MY town. Which means, of course that I am not at home with access to our home network. Which further means I don’t have internet access.

So, you can fairly assume that this missive will be posted, if it all, sometime after I wrote it. I can’t call it in like the old time reporters who would dash to a pay phone, shoving all the other reporters out of the way as they scramble for the scoop (as though getting to the phone a few seconds faster would make a difference to a print news organization) cradling the headset between ear and shoulder, then shouting that riveting line, “Hold the presses!” And then the reporter, with his cheap hat with the press badge in the band would dictate the story to a harried copy boy at the other end of the line (completely off camera so they don’t have to credit another bit player) and punctuate the urgency with “Got that? Okay, read it back!”

So anyway, that’s what my writing and posting of this missive was NOT like. So I am just typing it out and hitting save and waiting until Pat finds the password I can post this.

Which now he has done and now I shall do.

The doggie cage

In the course of skinnying down our supply of crapola around the manse, we’ve been ever alert for news that some friend’s need for new crapola corresponds with some of the crapola we have available for donation. With this in mind, Mary heard that a friend was in need of a dog crate, one of those cage-like things you use to help new, incontinent little doggies transition to house-friendly pets. In the spirit of moving crapola we haven’t used in some time in the direction of gone, she offered him our old one.

It’s a nice-size crate suitable for a large dog or a small bear and it’s served several occupants, having served our own canine buddy and then loaned out twice.  And for years now, it’s been stored disassembled in the garage, against the wall behind two unused sheets of drywall and one of tile backer, several partial sheets of plywood, a couple of windows that I can’t quite recall why I decided to keep when we had them replaced, my old painting frame, and sundry other items.

Before I could even begin unleaning stuff to get at the crate, I had to move the truck rack frames, two ladders, a dozen bags of donation stuff waiting for pickup by Services for the Blind, and then roll the kayak rack out of the way. And of course, once I started pulling it out and with a few hundred pounds of the afore-mentioned stuff leaning against my hip, the various sections of the wire-mesh crate decided to interlock, meaning I had quite a time getting it to where I could actually – you know – shift the damned thing.

 I finally got it stacked in the back of Mary’s car and the various other stuff back in the garage. By the time I was finished, I was sweaty and annoyed and not fit for human company.

BUT!!!!!!!!

The dog crate is gone. One more unused thing out the door.

Only about a gazillion more to go…

P.S. To Shawn, if you should read this – no tags back! Gone stuff stays gone. Get it?

Be careful what you ask for

I have a number of friends who are really good writers and even more who are thoughtful readers. So naturally, as I write my book, I selfishly consider how to put this resource to good use - which of them might be helpful, editorially speaking.

There are a few I’ve asked to accept my submission set (Prologue plus five) as readers and to give me their thoughts as to whether this thing is AKC-ready or just a dog. Another group I will ask to read the full manuscript when it’s finished (April? May? Twelfth of Never?) and provide me with any feedback they consider appropriate.

One might think that letting folks see the initial chapters would be scary but actually, not so much. These are old friends who know me and my writing and I trust them to be gentle but firm and besides, I’ve been at this exposed writing thing long enough to have reasonably thick skin. ‘Reasonably’ being a key word here.

Then there’s the group I will invite to read the manuscript through once it’s finished. That will be a scary time for me since at that point, I’ll have the work essentially ‘done’ in my own mind and it will be disappointing if one or more of them is less than impressed. Still, I think I’ll be okay with whatever they say because acceptance or rejection is a part of the gig with which I’ve had long experience, including previous book length disasters.

No, I don’t think my stable of test readers will crush my soul even if they do ultimately express something other than breathless admiration at my work.

The one that scares me most is the friend who is serving as my live reviewer/mentor/editor during the actual writing process. I was afraid to ask her, afraid to submit to her, afraid to open her first responses. She is a longtime friend and a truly gifted writer and thoughtful and gentle. Also, direct and honest and intelligent, which I suppose are the parts I feared.

I was being silly, I guess. Frightened of shadows.

So far, I’ve found the experience of allowing a trusted someone to peer over my shoulder to be liberating. In the process of opening up my writer’s soul, I’ve found validation and truth and acceptance.

She has already caught me out on a couple of really rookie errors and exposed some of my conceits and now she says she’s going to re-read and dig deeper. Deeper? That wasn’t deep?!?

Oh, (expletive deleted)!

I have a feeling the ride will get bumpier before it gets smoother. Especially because I failed to heed the thinly veiled warning when I asked her for this great favor and she sent me an email that said, paraphrasing here, Be. Careful. What. You. Ask. For.

I asked for it.

And she’s delivering.

And between us, I’m eating it up (but please don’t tell her).

Slow down, calm down, put it over

These are the words I would breathe to myself when Daughter Two came up to serve during her high school volleyball games.

“Slow down, calm down, put it over.” It became a mantra for me as Volleyball Dad, so much so that when I was officiating as a line judge, I had to remind myself NOT to offer her any aid, even of the mind meld variety. I mean, even if you don’t believe in the power of positive thinking we can accept that if I’m in ‘supportive dad’ mode I might fail to notice a foot fault. (Not to worry, the first foot fault I ever called was against – you guessed it – Two.) So I was careful to leave the mantra behind when I picked up the flags.

When I wasn’t line judging, I would chant this simple phrase just as she addressed the ball and lined up, every time she served. Can’t say it helped but it would be difficult to prove that it hurt. Her record of successful serves offers no clue to the validity of my method. But as I say, what could it hurt?

As I write this, Daughter One is going through a job interview, one that she really wants to have go well and concerning which Mary reports she was a bundle of nerves when they chatted this a.m. And just before I started typing this, I found myself facing east-southeast and silently exhorting her to – you guessed it – slow, down, calm down, and put it over. From 2,600 miles away.

I don’t believe in a supreme being of any description, the idea of poltergeists fails to faze me and I consider psychics, mediums and channelers to be charlatans, one and all. Penn and Teller are among my favorite entertainers but as they themselves will tell you, even their act is all flim flam. Really, really good flim flam, entertaining flim flam but flim flam, nonetheless.

So, being a guy who does not go in for ethereal imponderables, why on earth do I find myself earnestly offering long-distance thought coaching to Daughter One?

Because I can. And at the moment, it’s the only ‘can’ open to me.

You go, girl! Slow down, calm down, put it over.

Bubba’s thinking of you.

Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Sparks is really not good at suspense.

And that’s okay by me.

I thoroughly enjoy reading books by this guy. Just now I’m reading The Rescue and I’m enjoying every page, sentence, stanza and turn of phrase. Even though I’ve known since about page fifteen what’s going to happen and the twist with the title revealed itself early on.

There is something satisfying about starting a book in the sure and certain knowledge that good will out and the protagonist will ultimately be okay. It’s relaxing and reassuring and, I don’t know… homey, I suppose.

It also helps that I like characterization and this cat is a past master at creating characters I can come to know quickly and understand entirely. I hope the characters in my fiction are just as clearly their own selves.

His settings aren’t bad either.

I really like Sparks, even if he doesn’t do suspense.

Appropriate sanctions

In the context of my job, I have been doing a lot of research into training delivery through the Internet. One of the professors I’ve watched is a guy named Walter Lewin, a professor of physics at MIT. His recorded teaching was energetic and fascinating and even a lot of fun. He had some truly delightful recorded lectures on the Net and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

And now, for the most part, they’re gone.

It turns out, this guy had been using his cachet as a ‘great professor’ and his access to lots of eager students to feed his penchant for sexual harassment. I won’t go into it here – you can easily look him up – but suffice to say the guy is a real pig. And when one of the women complained, MIT conducted an investigation. When they determined the charges had merit, they disassociated from him, taking away his emeritus status and disavowing him. They couldn’t fire him, since he’d retired in 2009. What they did was erase his standing and to a guy like this, standing is everything.

So far, so good. But then, MIT started a campaign to further distance themselves from this guy by pulling down any and all of his lectures, presentations, in fact any and all reference to him in any way being connected to the Institute. Not that they hid from their long and mutually profitable association, they stood up and announced exactly what he’d done, what they did when they found out and why. Follow the link below if you’re interested. They announced to the academic universe that they were determined not to be in any way associated with the scumbag.

(Sorry, Doctor Scumbag. Harrumph!)

The rub came recently when some misguided folks, including some of his colleagues among academics around the world, complained that by taking down his recorded courses and demonstrations, the Institute was actually hurting the students, present and future who might benefit from his enlightened teaching. At least one guy posted a diatribe in which he hinted that Lewin’s foibles paled in comparison to the greater good to be gained from continued availability of his recorded brilliance.

MIT won’t budge. Not only did his actions violate their principles and policies regarding proper conduct and their duty to protect each other from harm, but the investigation found that he actually used MIT-x and Ed-x channels as part of his harassment scheme. So down he came. And this all happened quickly, by investigative standards. The first whisper of all this came to MIT officialdom’s attention in October and now, three months later the investigation has been conducted, measures decided upon, the severance of ties announced and while you can still find Lewin all over the Net because that’s the nature of the Web, nothing by or concerning him other than the severance announcement can be found through MIT’s website.

 A creep like this lives for his fame and stature. And losing it all, including the esteem of most of the academic community (whatever, there will always be a few chowderheads), is a fitting end to a career that as it turns out, never should have been celebrated. The only sad element of MIT’s response is that it did not involve forfeiture of any tender body parts.

Where’s the ol’ gelding knife when you really need it?

  http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/lewin-courses-removed-1208

Things that are flaccid

NFL footballs, apparently. At least the ones used by certain teams.

I’m learning much more than I ever wanted to know about football inflation of late. Seems like the major news organizations consider this an item of some import. Between CNN, Reuters (yes, Reuters?) and various online versions of soon to be defunct newspapers, I am very well informed concerning the ‘mystery’ of the somewhat underinflated balls.

This is an entertainment enterprise through which we pay guys who never grew up millions of dollars each year to run around on a big lawn, throwing and kicking said balls and pushing each other down. And we’re supposed to feign surprise when one or more of them lets some of the air out of a few balls.

Some folks seem to choose really odd things to worry about.

Excuse me, I have a really important yawn coming up.

The Friendship Nine

Fifty-four years ago, nine back men sat down at a ‘whites only’ lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina and asked to be served. The lunch counter sit-ins that began in Greensboro, NC some years earlier had begun to lose steam, having devolved to a familiar formula – sit in, arrests, fines paid, done.

What was different about the Friendship Nine is that they decided that in order to have the most profound impact, they needed to put it on the line in the same way that Martin Luther King did in Birmingham, a sojourn that gave rise to some famous letters. So they decided not only to sit at the counter but to refuse to move when so ordered by the police, to demand their own arrests.

Then – and this was the capper - once they got to jail, they refused to pay their fines. This “jail, no bail” approach brought their protests immediate widespread coverage and put the issue of segregation right back where it belonged, in the spotlight. They did this at a time (1960) when people of color who stood up for their rights too frequently disappeared without a trace or found themselves struggling to breathe at the end of a rope under a gnarled branch while a small crowd of grinning yahoos looked on and cheered.

Now, according to various news sources, the five survivors of the original nine are going to court to be exonerated for their crimes.

Exonerated for their crimes.        

Is it just me or is there something twisted about them needing to be exonerated for anything? Should not the city of Rock Hill and the State of South Carolina and every other city or county or parish or state that participated in these historical atrocities be offering their very public and abject apologies to these men and millions more?

Really, is it just me?

Books

It’s no big secret I love to read. Said reading, combined with my penchant for keeping stuff, has resulted in shelves and stacks of books in every room of the house. In nooks and also crannies, on tabletops and under other books and in drawers and boxes and bins.

Okay, before you start thinking you might see me showing up on a reality show sometime soon, it’s not actually THAT bad! Let’s just say we’ve accumulated more books of varying types and topics and descriptions than a body actually needs.  So at the moment – or rather, over the course of the last week or so – I’m going through the process of figuring out which books mean something special to us, which I’ll keep for reference, which I haven’t read yet (and which I’m not that likely to read) and so forth.

Many of the books pass quickly and easily through my hands, either because they’re not special and go right to the giveaway stacks or because they are and I put them in one of the sort-for-shelving stacks. Others require a minute or two to figure out if I’ve read them and if not, whether I am likely to in future. Some I think I’ll keep in my reference collection, only to find out a couple stacks later that I’ve two copies or a later revision of the same book. After all, I probably don’t really need two editions of the same writers’ stylebook.

Dictionaries represent a challenge. It’s a good thing to have several, since the compilers take different points of view and a vibrant lexicon cannot be captured in a single Webster’s. I’m thinking seven is about the right number of dictionaries for a household and I’ll donate the remainder. This is not including the massive 1920s library model with which I will NEVER part. Yeah, seven is good; it’s not like the girls are still living here and need them for school use.

I admit my collection of Heinlein is for old times’ sake and being paperback, they don’t take up much room. But Uris and Michener are outta here, not because I don’t cherish them but simply because I won’t read them again and someone needs to. My Amy Tans and Anita Desais go to an old friend. Twain and Solzhenitsyn and Plato and my Gary Larson compilation go to Goodwill where one hopes they’ll find their audience. Most of my old textbooks also go to Goodwill, hopefully to find a second life as doorstops or bed levelers.

Coffee table books are tough. Most were gifts and some are actually cool but the truth is, we don’t have a coffee table. I’m determined to make it through Les Miserables so it stays, for the moment. Daughter One’s Stephen Kings and Two’s Orson Scott Cards will be preserved for the moment. And of course, yearbooks – I really wish I still had mine from my senior year.

We hope we’re going from five bookcases to two with no excess in odd locations around the manse.

Wish us luck with that, won’t you?

The third grade comparison

For whatever reason, I sometimes tend to draw comparisons between where I am now and where the third grade me might have thought I’d be today. For example, when I see homeless people, I can’t help wondering what the third grade version of that person wanted to be when they grew up. I’m sure I’ve talked about this sort of thing before.

So, tonight as I sit in my room d’hotel contemplating flying home tomorrow night, I found myself thinking about eight-year-old me once again. I don’t recall being the tidiest person back then. So, what would  flood-tide Michael have thought if he had known that one day he would be sitting alone in a hotel room salivating at the thought of spending the weekend upcoming sorting stuff for give-away and rearranging rooms and cleaning nooks and crannies we haven’t seen in some years because they’re behind, say, my Aunt Suzie’s vanity that we never move because we’re afraid it will finally fall apart and besides, it’s heavier than (insert something that you think of as really heavy and make it something interesting, not heavy as ‘hell’ or heavy as ‘all get out’ because even though I loved my Mom and would give anything for another moment with her I have to admit that I never really understood what an ‘all get out’ was or how one might determine its weight) so absent a really good reason we wouldn’t even be moving it now?

I think I would have shaken my head at that thought as I tossed another gum wrapper under the bed.

Solitude while not alone

In the course of using my portable music device as a defensive weapon whilst riding the bus next to an insistently talkative transit denizen recently, I got to thinking. Not that there was much else to occupy me, owing in part to the fact that we were at that moment passing through a very long tunnel with no particularly interesting features, and in part to the fact that the battery of my player was not just merely dead, but really, most sincerely dead. So as I said, I got to pondering and the subject of mine pondering resulted in (yes, I know you guessed it but sheesh, just let me have my moment of faux suspense) a list, the subject being:

The following may provide solitude while not actually, you know, being alone

Earphones – As explained above, even if no music is issuing therefrom

Looking out the window of the bus, plane, car – Also as explained above

A function you got roped into attending while conversation goes on around you – Make sure to keep an insipid smile plastered to your face and nod slightly every now and then

Watching television in the same room but not together

When there’s something awkward remaining unsaid but the two or more people within earshot are each determined not to be the one to break the silence

In bed, staring at the ceiling while your love sleeps but you have the thinkies and an hour has gone by…and now another…and now only thirteen minutes…

On airplanes, most flights (thankfully)

In the company meeting room, during most meetings

In a crowded mall, while all the zillions of people walk past in sublime ignorance of your august presence

Almost anywhere, when a really killer idea comes to you, no matter how inopportune the timing

And just for the record, I rather enjoy solitude in most of its forms.

My holiday epistle

Okay, yes, I know I meant to actually send out cards or at least a newsletter this year and yes, I understand the disappointment of those of you who counted on receiving my card as evidence of your continued residency on the A List.

Get over it.

And I mean that in only the most loving way. In my defense, I have been busy basically since the surprise visit for Thanksgiving of Daughters One and Also Two. I just never got revved up on lots of things I’d meant to do. So you see, card-writing is not the only holiday activity that sort of fell by the wayside. We got the outdoor lights up in true Griswold fashion and the tree up and trimmed, but we never set out the rest of the Christmas deco and went through the big day with green and red storage bins still sitting in the front room.

You might say we just sorta ran out of steam. Which is not the same as saying that we didn’t enjoy the season. With One and Two here - a BIG surprise for moi – Thanksgiving was the best one we’ve ever had. Since the visit was a surprise, we hadn’t lined up a lot of planned activities. So as I said in an earlier post, it was just a lovely, relaxed visit.

Mary and I spent a week in the Boston area and really enjoyed walked, talking, and gawking – the three awks of relaxed tourism. I did a PILE of location research for my writing, we saw Two’s a capella group sing and attended her senior design project presentation. Met or refreshed our acquaintance with a number of her friends and enjoyed being a couple on vacation.

Then Two came home again for a week between end of classes and departing for Orlando and Miami, where she is now just finishing visits with One and also with their respective boyfriends.

Odin the Large and Lazy had a couple of office procedures and finally major surgery, his recovery from which required us to operate a doggie sick room for a spell. Thankfully, Two was home to help nurse her boy and just today, we were able to take off his cone, for which our home furnishings and door jambs are thankful. On a more somber note, the surgery did not remove his malignancy, so there will come a time for a tough decision. But not today. Today, he’s back to being his usual, dumb-as-a-post-but-lovable-as-a-… well, as a big galumphy Great Dane, I guess, self.

Zoey is Zoey. Eager, fun, annoying, loving, frightened of fireworks and thunder, and absolutely a wonderful companion.

Mary’s new job seems to be a great match and she’s really enjoying it. I’m enjoying having a second salary in the household after a lo-o-o-ong stretch of decidedly lean times.

My book project has really taken off and I’m having a wonderful time with it. Sublime torture, writing is. And I truly love it!

Life is good and I hope that is also true for each and all of you!

Happy New Year! And I’ll try to do better next year.